Warlock! Something is Rotten in Grim Biskerstaf...

"Och, what did I tell you, it's a sea drake!!!" Rausimod, clearly disturbed by this creature in its full glory, scrambles back with a look of shock and disgust on his bearded face!

"What in the deeps?!" Foghorn's never seen the disgusting thing's like before. Though visibly shaken, the fisherman makes sure not to lose the catch so they get paid. He makes a warding sign against evil. Fishermen are a superstitious lot.

Peering between the crates at what can only be called a living, human-ish mass, Banio Pheblt feels his gorge rise. There's a shudder in his throat and shoulders, an acrid taste on the back of his tongue, but the little man claps a soft, plump hand over his mouth and utters only the faintest of gurgles. He doesn't want to give away his position to the confessor, and he wants nothing at all to do with the abomination that his erstwhile crewmates are maneuvering onto the dock.

Much to the disgust of many an onlooker, the boat crew and the city guards combine efforts and eventually get the blasphemous mass up onto the dock. The thing seems half-dead as it settles onto the weathered wood of the wharf, its bizarre, fleshy, mushroom-like ‘cap’ drooping to cover all the twitching horrors that had just been revealed. It quivers and tremors as Tyrinious approaches, a gleam in his eye as he opens a large jug of oil.

"The Thrice Blessed sees you!" he shouts across the dockyards as the wincing guards unfasten the flesh-filled net from their hook. "The Thrice Blessed condemns you!" he continues, louder. "Foulness from beyond, monster which should not be!"

Oil flows then, dark and slick as it runs all over the softly pulsating creature’s porous, amalgamated tissue. "Begone, blighted fiend! Leave these fouled waters! The Golden Crown casts you back whence you came, to the unholy dark! Away!"

A spark is struck, a fire roars. It takes a few crackling seconds before the screaming starts. A few seconds that fill nostrils near and far with the smell of charring, searing flesh — with the aroma of something that smells both horrific and delicious, somehow.

The screaming, when it starts, is muffled — for it comes from the many mouths on the underside of the thing, covered by the limp and now burning folds of flesh that Foghorn and his crew first spotted floating in the river. The flames soar ten feet in the air as the tissue sizzles and melts, as it blackens and twists. Black, acrid smoke pours into the sky as the wailing continues, then the flaming beast shifts, partly lifting itself somehow. The crowd screams as the grotesque being shifts a few feet towards the water, and this brings a roar from Confessor Tyrinious.

"No! Stop the demon! Do not let it escape!"

"The blasted creature must be put down before it escapes to its lair! Kill it, damn you, kill it!" The dwarf shouts and shouts as he takes the mace from his side and begins pounding away at any exposed... flesh? But it is clear that he is not experienced on docks, and between the lack of balance and the intense urge to be sick, he manages to slam only a nearby gull, and even then only a glancing blow.

Lambert doesn’t even speak. He just nods his head and pushes by Tyrinious, then grabs the thing with the long fishhook. He doesn’t care where he gets it, but when he grabs something solid, he plants his feet into the dock and pulls for all he’s worth! The hook is jerked around from the impacts of the dwarf’s mace!

He’d talk to the captain about hazard pay later!

Bloody… help… me… he thinks, as his feet start to give under the weight of the ugly thing.

Not having a harpoon at hand as the horrid thing slips the net, Foghorn instinctively reaches for the cudgel at his hip. Not for the first time, he wishes he hadn't taken on a bunch of landlubbers for crew!

When the commotion kicks up on the dock, Banio figures that it's safe to shuffle out of hiding and peek over the crates for a better look. That look convinces him that he wants no part of arresting the burning, screaming thing's flight.

What Banio Phelbt would like, all things considered, is a piece of Confessor Tyrinious. The man is a threat to Banio's business, and with all of the monstrous chaos afoot, well. Accidents happen.

Watching the confessor all the while, Banio creeps round the boxes and disembarks. He keeps low-- not hard to do for a man of his stature-- and tries to get up behind Tyrinious, who is hopefully absorbed in the matter of the demon. Phelbt uses other gawkers for cover as he moves along.

Trusova reaches for her spear and thrusts it at the flaming, unholy thing, screaming a bloody battle cry. "Back to the abyss with you!"

Foghorn realizes this thing isn't going to stun as easily as a silverpike. Sink me, I should've gone for the gaff!

While the others start about clubbing the thing, Lambert just focuses on not surrendering an inch and digs his hook, and his heels, in!

Trusova's spear penetrates the demonspawn's flailing limbs and pierces one of its many eyes. She drives the tip deep, then pulls it free, and the resulting wound vomits gore all over the dock's rotting planks.

The scene is one of chaos as the flaming, screeching monstrosity tries to make for the water, and the thing is swarmed by people trying to variably hold it in place, or kill it. When the crew swarms up and off the ship to help, Banio is with them, keeping to the back, out of sight. Mace, cudgel and spear strike as Lambert and the two guards helping him are dragged to the edge of the wharf, unable to hold the terrified blob back. The weird flesh lacerates, bruises and ruptures as violence is visited on it, then a number of vile, multi-jointed, many-fingered limbs emerge from beneath the creature to try and ward off further attacks. Foghorn strikes hard, but Rausimod has his weapon seized by a groping hand that possesses terrible strength — and watches as his mace is flung into the dank, deep waters of the harbor.

The road warden, with her hood still up, ends it. She is strong on her spear, and drives it deep. Forged steel pierces the still flaming flesh, then lances something denser at the very center of the abomination. It shudders one last time, then collapses fully when Trusova pulls her weapon free. Dark purple blood, chunky and sticky, bubbles from the ruined eyehole and gushes from the exit wound on the bottom of the thing. A half dozen mouths wheeze and exhale their last as the quivering mound dies.

"Are ye fuckin’ mad, witch-killer?!" The bald docker shouts as he re-approaches the group, angrily, his meaty fists balled. "Hauling this thrice-damned freak up onto my dock?! My dock where the fuckin’ Crystal Dra…"

The sound of steel singing free of leather quiets the man, as does the point of that long dagger, pressing against the man’s throat. Tyrinious moved like the wind, drawing the foot-long blade he’s used to gut so many heathens, to murder so many girls and women accused of witchcraft. The docker swallows hard as the edge draws blood and he opens his fists, splaying his hands to show his surrender and helplessness.

With the pile of malformed flesh burning nearby, collapsed just a few feet from the edge of the dock, the Confessor gnashes his yellow teeth and narrows his dark eyes beneath the brim of his hat. "Go on, dockhand. Go on. Give me a reason to see deviltry in your eyes, to hear it on your tongue…"

Banio suppresses a flash of annoyance at Trusova's efficiency. The woman is simply too good with her spear! To shove Confessor Tyrinious into the burning monster during the fray might have been accounted an error; to do so now, when things are settling down, would simply be murder. And murder is one of the crimes that Banio Phelbt prefers not to commit in the light of day.

Therefore, the little man keeps his place among the onlookers, behind the confessor and largely shielded from Tyrinious' view. Maybe, Banio thinks, he'll get lucky, and the guardsmen and dockers will fall to blows. It looks like the latter are already crumbling, though.

The dwarf kneels at the end of the dock, looking out to where his weapon was flung. In water like that, it was surely lost. "That was a gift from me mother, and now she's gone from me..." And whether from the loss or the motion of the ocean, he retches.

For those who have been lucky enough to see a dwarf by the water, this is actually a pretty typical scene. Overdramatic, overstimulated, and over their heads.