07.08g Gated Landscapes

[Joshua]

"That's a shame." He will say... and attempt to sucker punch Aibne. He's no slouch (amber stats) but aibne isn't either. Still... there's a lot of them, and they add up quick.

[Draylen]

Aibne takes the blow, turning slightly to avoid any significant damage, growling a little. "Is that the best you've got? I've been hit harder by a woman with no arms!" he taunts, but doesn't make a move to fight back. Yet. He's obviously waiting for something, but it's equally obvious even he doesn't really know what it is. His ring starts to glimmer faintly, the topaz glowing for a brief moment before he shakes his head. "Yer a daft fool, ya old codger, you couldn't take a babe from a cradle it didn't want to leave!"

[Joshua]

One person isn't a huge threat to Aibne. Although, as a reminder, there is a level when such attacks cannot be ignored and that level is Amber. The house is swarmed by the several dozen townsfolk (somewhere between 60 - 100 on all sides). All seem to be working together and are at Amber level stats (+5 for hive-mind coordination). So, you get folk boosting others up onto the second floor of the cottage and into the shuttered windows. They are armed with mostly peasant weapons, pitchforks, staffs, fishing spears... Simon, being the butcher, will draw a cleaver. Between the Amber level strength and the weapons, every entrance into the cottage is starting to fail.

If there's any doubt this is unnatural, Lleufer will try to get the attention he of a few people, who he clearly knows and clearly don't recognize him in their current state. This... is not going to take enough time for the trump call, although with burst of psyche, Alys can just barely make contact before she's run through with a spear.

Tinder, on the other hand/paw, has decided this is just not going to work for him. He shifts into a black-chitin-covered emaciated hellhound, and sets the immediate back-room on fire. he barks at Priscilla to follow him.

Priscilla will scream about not leaving without the children... Lleufer will insist the kids go. The kids will insist their daddy follows... and Tinder will be very upset and unable to move the whole family. Thankfully, Priscilla is magic enough to follow, between the two of them, the family does manage to vanish into the flames.

[Draylen]

"Okay, enough!" I hope I have enough time for this, Aibne thinks to himself, lifting Simon bodily and flinging him back into the crowd. He ducks back, considering slamming the door shut but shaking his head. It'd take too long, and he needs every single second he has. He flexes his fingers and starts to incant, the topaz glowing as he specifics the two lynchpins he needs - it's a spell to form a thin shell of granite around the entire cottage. It'd start from the bottom, growing rapidly up around all sides of it, perfectly even, until it meets above the cottage ceiling as a dome, complete. "Dome an Druid!" he cries, unleashing the spell, hoping he has enough time to let it get through.

[Joshua]

A lynchpin is a LOT of time when you're talking about combat... The spell is able to get off, but in the time it takes to manifest, Simon and another townsman have managed to enter the front door (with however many managed to enter the burning back-room).

Simon grumbles. "Surely we can talk about this. I'm willing to negotiate, although... a show of force is also acceptable."

[Draylen]

"Generally, one doesn't attempt to ambush someone you want to negotiate with," Aibne counters. He shrugs a little, glancing at the two in the room with him. "I'd rather not hurt the people you're possessing. Why don't we start with a simple introduction?"

[Joshua]

"I am God." He says. "And I desire order. Now, will you truly insult me by forcing me to talk to this proxy?"

[Draylen]

Aibne blinks, utterly confused. "You're not God. I've heard His stories. You don't fit anything about Him." He blinks again, very, very confused. "I'd much rather talk to you without the proxy, but if you insist on using yours, I'll... continue to use mine?"

[Wyvern]

Alys takes the hit in order to push the Trump contact through, bringing up a (somewhat shaky) mental image of a certain cat.

Is this*, Asai snarks, really your highest priority right now?

Alys responds with a somewhat jumbled pile of thoughts / recent memories, while reaching out to try to pull Asai to her.** The high points of said jumble being:

• We are facing an entity that was capable of tracking us through shadow and knows about Amber and Aibne's status within it. This is bad news all around, even if it has not yet demonstrated access to any greater power than sorcery.
• It is using a village full of innocent people as pawns; I could certainly kill them all, but I do not need more blood on my claws, and doing so would not be useful anyway.
• I had planned on asking you to trump Priscilla and her family back to Amber, but that now requires tracking down Tinder, first; as long as the entity doesn't think they are important, they should be safe enough wherever he has gone.
• I really hope you have some sort of mass antimagic or mental protection or at least disable-people-without-killing-them spell racked...

The moment Asai has actually arrived, Alys shifts focus to combat, snapping the haft of the spear off where it enters her chest, and then sucker-punching the hapless villager who put it there. Her skin quickly shifts to dark red scales as she maneuvers to keep anyone from getting a clear shot at Asai, and several additional hits slide off the added armor.

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* "This" referring to opening the trump call - the implication being that, for most people, having a spear through your chest might be a higher priority than making a polite social call...
** Note that this isn't Alys trying to force Asai to show up - she's well aware that Asai could choose not to. She just thinks it's too time sensitive to bother with a formal request of permission, and is thus acting and assuming that Asai will block the attempt if she'd rather stay in Amber.

[Veyska]

Asai drops to the ground in a spray of sparkles, her fur looking oddly* damp. Taking one quick look at the surrounds, she dives behind the nearest piece of cover that looks to be at least slightly less flammable than the rest and mutters a spell under her breath. A few moments later a faint barely visible ripple, like an inverted shock wave comprised of a single flickering heat shimmer, collapses inward on one of the villagers fighting Alys.

(*And not just in a "Asai dove into a random fountain/pond" sort of way. Asai cheats, though it's hardly outright fire immunity on such short notice/time limit.)