Due to weapon benefits, Kon has actually succeeded in concealing his dagger and can roll his attack.
Felicia is attached to the pyre and covered in oil and will burn to death in 5 turns. Anatole thankfully hero pointed this one for us as our GM min-rolled a 2-turn limit.
Kon rolls to attack with his dagger. He rolls 21 to hit and max damage, with 8 to start out combat off. This is his stride and strike action, to end his turn and let all hell break loose, he attacks again with 7 piercing.
The combat proceeds… kind of ok. Fester is surrounded and I am far away from the action, he triggers all attacks of opportunity.
We have a brief moment where we discover the Step action again, because otherwise Fester goes down instantly, but Izeck doesn’t know about it.
I Step closer and then attack the wooden pole that Felicia is attached to – the wood cracks and splinters, but does not break yet.
The Lord High Chaplin Arctis reaches into a pouch, pulls out a Greater Smoke stick and activates its effect – letting loose a smoke screen concealing all of the fighters centered on the pyre.
Kon and Fester attempt to hit the moving High Chaplain and Fester succeeds, then she leaves the town through the East (?) gate.
We survived another round of combat to lead to Kon’s turn. Felicia has 3 rounds before death. Anatole bites a man so hard that he chomps down on the heart, killing him. Anatole steps into the smoke and throws a bomb, the resulting explosion breaks the wooden pillar and then kills the Inquisitor nearest to him with a crit. I contribute a little bit of damage into the cloud of smoke and then get attacked by the bandit as it leaves the cloud.
Through the smoke we can smell the unmistakable burn of human flesh, Kon seems to be faring well, and kills two inquisitors, slashing one’s head clean off and it bounces off of Fester, before landing in the flame.
Throughout the encounter, Felicia has been screaming. As her screams haven’t died off, we can assume she is still alive and kicking. Everyone is covered in viscera but me. Anatole runs across the smoke to coincidentally, where Kon is, and he attacks the remaining bandit. Fester drags her out of the flame and tries to pour water on Felicia to try and cool her down, lessening the burning of her flesh from the remaining oil.
I run through the smoke away from Anatole to the screaming woman, “Fester, just ignore this,” then I lay my fingers across her forehead and cast Heal, “Heal the wound, mend the flesh, make her whole again.”
I roll a healthy 6 out of 8 to heal her and in the back of my mind I hear “Yes, my child. Look after others as I look after you.” Ominously.
The remaining bandit drops his weapons and tries to flee, but his wounds are grave and he is unlikely to survive his attempts to reach the next town, especially without his weapons. Kon rolls to hit, then hero points it and critically succeeds, dealing more than 4 times his remaining health. Kon holds his shorts word almost scraping against the ground and then swings his sword straight up and twirls the blade for showmanship and then the bandit slowly falls in twain.
The smoke fades as Fester and I barely see the end of the bandit’s life being cut in two. Ignoring this, I administer a healing potion to Felicia.
Kon loots some weapons and Anatole finds an Alchemist’s Fire bomb, and an unusable (cut in half) armor set.
As the bodies of the Inquisitors are burning in the pyre, Anatole’s weird burning hunger resurfaces and he hears a voice, “Feed me… Free me.” He reacts appropriately – which is to say, he freaks out quietly.
To a lesser degree, I feel the flash of hunger, “Food… is good. I will be free.” I intuit this is Rovagug’s voice, which is odd because the Inquisition is supposedly praising Atreia.
Anatole, however, has been to the Altar of Atreia, the god of who this is supposed to be, this feels nothing like her. He has also been to the Altar of Rovagug, who he can tell that this voice belongs to. Whenever the fire is in view, he feels hunger.
For my part, I intuited this, but the Inquisition, who say they revere Atreia, has summoned Rovagug instead.
“The Inquisition, right? Fuck them. Fuck this…”
“Yes, this was largely unpleasant,” he pauses to cough some viscera out of his mouth, “This is not right, is it? Something is deeply amiss about all this. You sense this, yes?”
“Something does not feel right.” Says Fester.
“Well, as I keep saying, the Inquisition is full of fucks and they’ve taken one faith and perverted it into another. You can be damn sure whatever they say is true, is false.” I stand and try to help Felicia up with me.
She stands with me and thanks us for saving her, meekly. I say we should get her to the Church and Alert the High Pontiff that she is alive.
“Yes… I know that Æthelhard will provide shelter for the night.” I assist her by helping her walk to the Church. I push Fester and Anatole to take her to the Church whilst I collect bodies and push them into the fire but Felicia says Aethelhard can handle that, so I stop, mid drag.
“Thank you… I saw what you did. You took action against a power clearly greater than you own, you were very brave. All of you were very brave.” She says to Kon.
“I am very grateful, but I feel like these guys were not a greater power than me.”
“I unfortunately know Chaplain Arctis, if she had stayed to fight, I shudder to think… But she had to guard the sacred fire. But I am not a Witch, as they say, I cannot even call magics.”
“Yes, we thought as much.” Anatole says. I double check with Read Aura, but find no magic on her.
Kon offers his arm to her and I come back to her other side to contribute as she seems to be very damaged with burnt feet.
When we reach the door, I knock, but I motion for her to call out, “Aethelhard, the adventurers you sent, or may have sent have secured my safety.”
He offers to assist us, and I usher everyone inside. As Kon drips blood onto the carpet and miraculously, the carpet fibers seem to absorb the blood into the crimson pattern. Anatole and I try to intuit if the pattern was all blood or only there because of the blessing, but we cannot figure it out.
Aethelhard asks if she is injured, then sees her clearly crispy skin and says “Sorry, foolish question.” He reaches for one of the many symbols he has around his neck – a sword. This is the Holy symbol of Thamir – waving it alongside his staff, he casts the symbol over her skin, muttering various incantations. Felicia’s skin begins to recover its noble luster – well moisturized, well kept, she bathes more than once a week.
“Can I have some please, Mr Pontiff.” Says Fester.
When done, Felicia stretches and flexes her new skin, “Thank you Pontiff, if you could, our rat friend took many stab wounds in my defense.”
Putting away the holy sword of Thamir, the Pontiff brings out an inverted pentagon and begins muttering a different chant over Fester.
As the Pontiff is muttering his religious prayers, talking about the great ruler, He who knows all, sees all, requesting that Fester be freed of his suffering so that he may better serve. The prayer of healing ends with the classic “What once was his, will be again.” Fester heals for 37HP, which is notable because our current maximum heal is 1hp per long rest, or 8hp from Heal, or 16hp from two-action heal with max rolls.
Whilst the Pontiffs have many clerical spells, they look frail – almost as if (and this is all conjecture) great power comes at great personal cost, when the Gods of our time are involved. Fester thanks the Pontiffs deeply, and has a small feeling that he should maybe have hunted down those Inquisitors that escaped and that he was silly to have shown mercy, but then it passes very quickly.
I take this pause to ask after Eddward, the Pontiff says that after what happened outside that we should join him. “Well at any rate, thank you kindly for healing our friend Fester.”
“What once was his will be again.”
“When the cage crumbles.”
He then proceeds to do some fancy moves with his staff and a mechanism clicks below us to open the hidden room that he has told us exists below the chapel.
I offer to help him bar the door again and then he invites us into the Undercroft.
