Lair of the Lamb session five:

Pool Party

A torch doesn't light a room as well as you might hope. It's all well and good to say "It sheds light for 30 feet", but that's not some spherical bubble of clarity. The dark is always pressing in, the shadows taking root in the flickering of the flame. Things already get a bit murky and indistinct at 15 steps; at thirty feet, you're lucky to see a silhouette.

On the western side of the room, three Things pause mid-step, caught mid-sneak up to the party. They're each roughly as big as a calf. For a beat, they hold still, shrouded in the dark, their heads pointing at the torch in Alec's hand, then they walk forward. As they come into the light, their features resolve.

They look like smaller, thinner, more youthful copies of the Lamb, four large legs and dozens of tiny ones, still covered in the blood and brick-dust of their birth from their mother's corpse.

Silently, they charge.

The Dead:

The Living:

The Sleepy:

The little lambs come crawling in. Lenny thinks of his brother, now forever in the Lamb's belly; he thinks of the sun gleaming on the walls of the winding streets of Lon Barrago, thousands of thousands of bricks like the one he now holds, where they once clambered. He throws his battle-brick at the nearest Little Lamb. It bonks it in the noggin; it's sporting a bruise. The Little one hisses and glares at him, angling its charge to bear down upon him. Battie throws Annie's skull at it. It's not very effective.

(Though the skull's eye does glint a little as it tumbles to the ground.)

The child shrugs off the hits and closes the distance. Its jaw splits wide, and it gores Lenny in repayment for injury dealt. He collapses to the ground, injured (concussed!) though not imminently dying.

Gwyn, Alec, and the rest brace themselves against the other two. The Little Lambs share their parents' fear of light, which Alec uses to stymy their attacks, while He and Gwyn land hits, injuring one. It stumbles, for a moment, but rallies.

Meanwhile, Kurt reasons that discretion is the better part of valor, and also that dying here would not serve DAVOK. He runs through the newly-pried-open door, away from the Little Lambs.

Inside, he sees another square room. Two more doors out, one pinned shut with iron spikes (?!), and three very old men. Probably old men. They're wizened and wrinkled enough that it's hard to tell, not to mention that all the light he's getting is coming from Alec's torch in the other room. They seem to be wearing nothing but loincloths, and they're lying in pools of bright pink liquid, set into the floor. They seem asleep, eyelids twitching every now and again. He can't make out the faces of the ones in the back, but the nearest one is smiling - slack, contented, enticed.

While Kurt boggles, wondering whether looking at naked old men(?) dreaming Dreams Of Questionable Virtue serves DAVOK or whether he can look away now, the fight carries on behind him.

Rubend, apprentice of Kurt Hammer and fellow admirer of the Heavy Temple, tries to shove the Lenny-Biter to the ground. Two members of the Line of the Lamb have assaulted members of whichever family Lenny & George belong to within a one-year period. This qualifies as a blood feud under Barragan Law. Rubend will attempts to deliver a cease-and-desist. The shove turns into a scuffle which turns into a wrestle, which Rubend loses. The Little Lamb flings him off, and to the floor he tumbles.

Meanwhile, Battie dodges and ducks around the Lenny-Biter and recovers Annie's skull. The Lenny-Biter gives her some scrapes and near misses once it's bowled over Rubend, still contemplating its first meal. Meat. Fresh. It's good.

At the end of the exchange, Annie is left teetering off-balance, but with skull in hand, while the Little Lamb is left aware of its own hunger.

Alec, Gwyn, and the rabble, meanwhile, clash with of the injured Lamb and its sibling. The dagger stabs, the Claw crushes, the torch blinds, the rusted armor blocks. The injured one is smashed to paste by Alec's claw, and the other takes Gwyn's dagger to the eye; the humans don't take significant damage. (D-man stands in the back, Kes on his shoulder, looking a bit nervous).

Meanwhile, Kurt Hammer reaches out and shakes an old-timer by the withered shoulder. "Hey! Wake up! Help us! (and DAVOK)!"
Sleepy, wrinkled eyelids sputter open, and eyes faded grey by the long years - the irises ragged like an unravelling tablemat - struggle to focus on the Blacksmith. Kurt shakes him again, and the eyes snap to his, going wide. "INTRUDER!", wheezes a voice like a broken bellows, and Kurt hears it in hears ears but also echoed in his mind, where it sounds even less coherent, more of a scream. The other oldies snap awake.
Kurt feels this may not serve DAVOK quite as he had hoped.

The Lenny-Biter sees its siblings fall. Fear tugs at its heart, calling it to run, hide, grow.
The fear is overpowered by the growing hunger, and the scent of hot blood in the mortal before it. As Gwyn & Alec run over to finish it, as Rubend climbs to his feet, the Little Lamb pounces on Battie and tears out her throat with a single bite.

The Necromancer formerly known as Stephanie - now going by the Mage-Name Marika, thank you very much - has been hiding under her cloak for far too long.

She had just stopped off on her way back from a job - widow wanting to talk to her husband one last time, classic one, including the part where the customer got annoyed the ghostly visit wouldn't be any more conjugal - to have a quick meal (flatbread-wrapped-tomato), when the tiny pile of mouse bones she kept in a cloak-pocket rattled and knitted themselves together into a skeleton. She stopped instantly, checking nobody else was in eye or earshot - she'd walked a short way off of the road from some farming village to the city - before letting the un-creature crawl up out of her collar.

"ONE OF THE SEEDS HAS TAKEN ROOT BENEATH WHAT YOU CALL LON BARAGO", it hissed at her, "A NEW RECRUIT NAMED 'ANNIE'. GO FORTH AND FETCH HER, THAT WE MAY TEST HER VIRTUES. BRING HER TO THE LAIR BENEATH THE BREWERY, YOU KNOW THE ONE. TRY NOT TO DIE."

And then, with little fanfare, it collapsed, bones plinking off her shoulder and falling to the ground - one-time-use-rodent - and her vision went dark and she awoke in the pitch black, sitting on cold stone, her back up against a cold stone wall, hearing the occasional snore and grunt and sigh. She quickly pulled her cloak over her head, for all the good that would do, thought.

What did she have on her? Raise Spirit wasn't really called for, here, for all it was bumping around in her mind nervously, it took too long to cast... unless...? But... Hmm... Oh, she really couldn't afford to mess this up, she knew that mistress didn't take failure very well, and she knew other apprentices that messed up too much got repurposed... hmm... she had her spellbook, currently with bindings fit to hold Raise Spirit but no spell inside (it being in her head), but it was pretty heavy... she could throw her cloak over something, if only she knew what that something was...? She could sneak...? She could...

And so Marika-formerly-known-as-Stephanie sat there, pondering, shivering, pondering, till some brute slammed open the door and started engaging in abuse of the elderly.

The Lenny-Biter, slayer of Battie, basks in the warmth of its meal. The blood runs down its throat, tendons nicely rip, meat parts under its grinding teeth -
And then the rest of the peasants chase it down down and murder it by dagger and claw and fist and kick, falling upon it like the men of old upon a boar. They've scarcely time to take in the sight of their ally, twitching beneath the animal as her lifeblood drains, head at a strange angle, connected to the body by nothing but a scrap of flesh and cracked spine, when a mental scream from the next room - where Kurt Hammer went, damn him - shocks them out of it.

Rubend is first in. He sees the old men straightening up, spines cracking audibly as they stand. The two in the back are waving their hands and wiggling their fingers like one of those magicians he's heard about. That can't be good. (And also these guys' posture is atrocious, come on. Age is no excuse!)
The one standing in front of Kurt Hammer has taken on a drunkard's sketch of a boxing stance, and slaps Kurt with the back of his fist. Kurt socks him in the face. The old man bends limply with the punch before rebounding.

Rubend decides to get in on the action, and charges the one in the back. He barely gets there in time, and his spontaneous combat chiropraxy manages to disrupt whatever the geezer's doing. The old man's eyes go wide as his fingers flail, before narrowing. He stares at Rubend and - perhaps for lack of better options - starts again, hands moving, fingers wiggling.

Marika-formerly-known-as-Stephanie, knowing how easily spellcasting can be disrupted, decides that this is her time. Surely this "Annie" must be affiliated with these people! With a flare of her cloak, she springs up from the floor and swings her book at the third old man.
He twists strangely with the hit, and locks eyes onto her, his slack face tightening in desperate concentration for a moment splitting into a toothless smile; he's managed to hold on. His hands finish their motion, and with a flourish, he points his finger at her; she senses the discharge of energies as a spell rushes forth from his mind and out into the world and into her and it's her mother holding her and soothing her and it's time for bed and she's so tired and it's so warm and then she's asleep, slipping to the floor.

(Rubend, Kurt, and the old men aren't sure what to make of her).

As Alec, Gwyn, and the rabble come up to the doorway, the northern door - unspiked - swings open. A old woman, not quite as decrepit as the pool-men, stands there. She's wearing a robe - seemingly hastily-put-on - and is dripping with familiar pink pool-fluid.
One of her arms is a crab claw, just like Alec's.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!", she cries, fingers and claw twitching as if ready to cast, eyes flashing around wildly, wincing in the light, until they fall on Alec and widen.

He skids to a halt in front of her, hand out - "Let's talk! We don't need to fight!"

Her eyes dart between his claw, the eye on his brow, and the vista behind him in which Gwyn is trying to stab one old man while Rubend gets bowled over by the sleep-caster. Kurt Hammer's octogenarian is casting; Kurt lunges, for The Wizard Cannot Cast If You Disable His Hands, but just before impact the old man snaps his fingers and vanishes. Kurt teeters over the pink pool.

"Surrender! Now!", she says, pointing her hand and crab claw at Alec. She starts wiggling. Alec's quicker. He bashes her with his claw, disrupting her cast, then sets it about her neck, ready to clamp down.

She has little choice but to call off her men, at that point.

It transpires that the woman is named Vandress. She is a priestess of the White Temple, and this is her retirement. [infodump]

"Clearly we were mistaken!", she says, smiling weakly, "mistaken! Mistaken to try to sacrifice you, when we should have recruited you! But how fortunate, that Vandoh chose you, that we may know our error!"

The two old men remaining slump back into the pools, groaning in relief.

Lenny tries some of the pink liquid.
It's good.
It's really good.

"What the fuck did you just fucking say about DAVOK, you little bitch? I'll have you know DAVOK graduated top of DAVOK's class in the Navy Seals, and DAVOK's been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and DAVOK has over 300 confirmed kills. DAVOK is trained in gorilla warfare and is the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to DAVOK but just another target. DAVOK will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark DAVOK's fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to DAVOK over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak DAVOK is contacting DAVOK's secret network of spies across the USA Lon Barago and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. DAVOK can be anywhere, anytime, and DAVOK can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with DAVOK's bare hands. Not only is DAVOK extensively trained in unarmed combat, but DAVOK has access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and DAVOK will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. DAVOK will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.", said Kurt Hammer.

"Plus, he's not really that bad a guy, guys, he's just misunderstood and in a bad headspace! Give DAVOK a chance!", he added.