Episode 1

OOC: Jabes bro, you are going to hate this, but I have to toss out what I think is a candidate for "Most Annoying Feat Detail to Players":

"When a creature within melee range of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn’t have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against the attacking creature."

Thorn "The Other Sentinel" somehow makes your would-be Reaction strike ... impossible?

Weird, but we've been riding this rule out and are going to stick with it. I think it is a measure to avoid the whole party (or army potentially) from getting Sentinel and just getting a Reaction Attack every single round back and forth between everyone.

Split Rounds: 6 second adjustment
Advance to TR4 for Bear Fight (Ivor, Thorn, Maeriks, Doirind)
Hold at TR3 for Goat Fight (Bryn, Kray, etc.)

Ivor
TR4

Ivor chops in on the struggling but still dangerous Bear.

Attack: Hit
(Taken from Post above, previously planned as Reaction)

DEATH MARK 1 Inflicted

Doirind
TR4

Hearing Donnchad roar out after the injury, and seeing him relentlessly pressing on as if he will never stop, Doirind throws herself upon her former husband in a ferocious leap.

"You are dying now!!! It is over!"

She grabs onto Donnchad's bear mask from behind, jerking it by the fur with both hands. The rough torque on the mask makes the hulking man pull backward, off balance.

"For Tierney! For Caes! Die, you horror! I hate you!", Doirind wraps one arm around Donnchad's right arm that is holding the axe, and pulls it back. She is nowhere near strong enough to stop him, but in her fury she is obstructing his movement and causing him to lose his guard.

Action: Help
Next Attacker gets Advantage on Attack.

Ivor
TR4 (cont'd)

In Doirind's fury she tears the elaborate and heavy bear mask completely off of Donnchad's head. Doirind falls to the ground as the mask breaks free, and the mask it self tumbles down on the ground in a heap.

Donnchad's face is visible for the first time. He is a beefy square-jawed brute with a thick beard and wild sweaty hair. His eyes are rolled back in his head, and his jaw is chattering in a convulsion. His lips are curled up and his teeth are clattering together. He looks more like a monster without the mask.

Ivor sees the opening and exploits it immediately. The rugged Ulathi knife scrapes through the flesh of the right side of the neck. The blade goes so far back into the tissue that it scrapes along bone at the back end. Muscle, sinew, veins, arteries, and windpipe - it is all torn open as Ivor's blade carves in from the side and out the front in a rough sweeping chop. Blood pours out into Donnchad's beard, on his chest and onto the floor in a splatter.

The hulking warrior stumbles forward. His axe falls to the ground in a loud clatter and his one remaining hand pulls up to grip the devastating wound in his neck.

Shifting his feet back and forth, the barbarian comes to a stop. Body swooning and swaying. Blood covering his entire chest. He stands there, holding his neck with his one good hand, bleeding almost everywhere now. And the mad look of contortion and spasm still jerking his face in a wretched visage of horrifying inhumanity.

DEATH MARK 2 Inflicted

Thorn
TR4

Seeing Ivor's devastating attack, Thorn thrusts his over-sized sword straight the middle of the dying barbarian's chest.

Thorn knows that he bursts the heart and severs all of its arterial routes.

DEATH MARK 3 Inflicted

Thorn does not wait for long though. He is already arching around, changing the blade's trajectory in a smooth shift - around, down, up and over. And then arching back, coming overhead at a high angle.

Donnchad's inhuman body still stands for a brief moment, still defying all natural order that would demand its collapse.

Urdav's blade hits the spine barb near its peak as the blade drives through the neck and down at an angle. The great two-hander crashes through the high vertebrae, breaking at least three of them as it plows through and splits the bone spine barb in two.

Donnchad's body goes limp like a rag doll and drops to the floor in a wild crashing thud.

Glaakieou Spine Barb Destroyed.

Kray
Round 3

Kray's Murmaran steel drives through Cealwin the Goat's neck, piercing through the leather mask covering, through the trachea, and then glides in beside the spine and pierces out of the back side angle of the neck. The blade lifts the back flap of the mask without piercing it.

Seeing that his foe is disabled and finished, Kray twists the blade and jerks it back outward in a dragging cut, tearing back through the sinew and muscle on the front side of the wound.

The rough pull of the exit stroke actually shifts the masked man's momentum from backwards to slightly forward. Cealwin leans over and drops to his knees. His spear drops to the floor and both hands reach out and brace, as the Goat catches himself before he collapses entirely.

Blood pours out from the fatal neck wounds just inflicted by both Bryn and Kray. The dying barbarian holds in this position, bent over and bleeding the watered down Glaakieou blood, for a few seconds. Kray stands there over him and assesses.

Cealwin was once called Cruotaobh, meaning "hard side" in Dannein, because of his grit and steadfast endurance in battle against enemies of the Bat Hannoc Clan. Now he has been called the Goat of the Hive, and he falls face down on the stone floor, just at the stair before the Dark Throne of Dagan.

Kray and Bryn look over in time to see the brutal ending of unmasked Donnchad the Bear at the hands of Ivor and Thorn. Maeriks and Doirind are there also.

Rhone, Sine, Casidhe, and Laoise are gathered together near the base of the Throne, watching wide-eyed and alert at all of the injury and death around them.

Hinka still stands at the side of the Throne.

Rutcranna has already taken back her seat. Had she even got up at all?

When everyone looks at her, they can see and hear that she is speaking, declaring outward in a proclamation, but in a language that no one can understand. Her eyes are alert though, and gleaming with a stare as one who is seeing more than what others do.

In the outer stretch of the room, in all directions and not far from the team at the center of the throne, mortal combat is raging. The Deep Ones are catching the Glaakieou madmen in nets, stabbing them with spears, javelins, tridents, and long knives.

All the while though, the enraged masked barbarians are slashing and chopping with their swords and axes.

On the outer edge of the wall, alligators lurk and dart forth, grabbing fallen men in their crushing jaws. Titan is now crunching and swallowing a bloody and broken Glaaki pawn madman.

As Rutcranna's voice gets louder, the effect can be seen outside of the circle. The Glaaki madmen are reeling now, stumbling and holding their heads. Their strikes are becoming more erratic and ill-thrown. Some of them lose their footing and stumble. And the Ulathi are punishing them for it, stabbing and killing more and more of them with each passing moment.

Sorcha Rhone is holding close to her friend Sine. She looks out at the melee going on, then back at her mother sitting on the Dark Throne, and then back again at the armed mercenaries who stand around her.

Though Rhone has at times seemed like not only an adult, but in fact a capable leader, it has never been more clear than right now that this is still a very young, very frightened little girl.

Rhone looks at Kray cautiously, and then back at her mother.

"Mum?," she asks, looking away from Kray only briefly.

No answer from Rutcranna. She is glaring out into the melee, speaking intermittently in the strange language, her face filled with lust for the carnage.

Rhone looks back at Kray. Then at Maeriks. Then back to Kray. She is definitely scared.

(speaking Dannein)
"I think my mom is gone. She is still there, but ...." tears well up in her eyes. Her mouth turns to a frown of sadness. "... I cannot hear her voice at all." She is crying for a moment. She buries her head in Sine's shoulder. Sine too starts crying and looks terrified.

Rhone digs deep to pull herself back together though. She wipes her eyes and looks back at Kray. She walks towards the Throne, but as she passes Kray she says to him, "It is not safe here - not for any of us. We have to get out. I have to get her to open the door, and then she has to get up off of the chair."

Rhone passes and stands in front of the Throne, looking up at her mother.

"Mother. We have to go. You have to open the door, and then we have to leave here. Hurry, Mum. It's me. Sorcha Rhone."

No response. Rutcranna still is enthralled at the battle, which is now an all out murder of the Glaakieou by the Ulathi.

"Mum! Listen to me! We have to go!" Rhone starts to cry as she talks.

Nothing.

"RUTCRANNA!" the girls yells.

The witch woman looks down, startled a bit. An angry look, like one who annoyed by a sudden interruption.

Rutcranna's eyes scan Rhone up and down, as if she is assessing her for the first time. Kray sees that it is completely strange. Something is not right about Rutcranna. She moves differently. Has different expressions. Talks differently.

"Ken ou seyen aya? Tun ushna'set. Tapani hana ere, houlet'tha manit kesn ou'runa, tepati. Do'menet, han sirepti?" Rutcranna says to Rhone. Completely foreign language - but it sounds like there are questions in there.

Rhone sets her own face, and tilts forward a bit, with an ever so slight hint of bite in her own words. Quietly but firmly she responds, choppy and short, "Nesat et han sirepti. Nesa yen Rutcranna. Camo muran na. Noretect emus barik kw'ausa."

Rutcranna's brow turns in in the middle. She barks back at Rhone in a voice that makes the little girl flinch.

The two are now back and forth in a foreign conversation. An interchange that Rutcranna is clearly dominating, and Rhone is taking like a rain of arrows falling down upon her, each word hurting more and more.

Rhone is shaking her head back and forth. As if she is saying no again and again, and trying to explain. Tears are filling her eyes again now and her lips are starting to quiver.
Soon she can no longer speak at all, because she is only crying. She is looking to the side, to her girlfriends, and to Maeriks.
And to Kray. She sends an expression that has little hope.

From the back of the room, a familiar voice yells out. "Rutcranna! We are here. Help us! Get us free!"

It is Boann! Those who look back south, near the threshold that was previously open but is now closed by the great wheel stone that rolled shut, see that Boann is held captive by two Deep Ones, each holding her arm. She has a rope around her neck, like a leash.

Beside her, other Ulathi are holding Muirne and Aisling in similar fashion, as captives.

Rutcranna seems to pay no mind to the call, she is still sitting on the Throne, leaning forward and scanning the melee, watching with satisfaction as the last few Glaaki madmen are slain. She barks a few sentences out in the foreign language.

As the Ulathi finish their killing, they become infatuated with looking towards the Throne, enthralled by it and by the woman who sits upon it. For the first time, some of the Ulathi are seen and heard speaking with one another. They talk quietly in an unknown language, with eerie whispering and raspy voices. Their bulging eyes scanning slowly through the ranks of the humans in the room.

Still, none of the Deep Ones are threatening. None raise their weapons towards the party.

Those who see Thorn fight take notice. Most back away from him quickly. One of the Ulathi warriors meets him eye to eye. After a pause, he gives him a small salute with his javelin.

Doirind has chopped off Donnchad's head and cock, and takes a few steps out towards the outer perimeter to toss them both to the alligators.

She is wary though and comes quickly back to the center of the circle. She is still covered in blood, some her own and some Donnchad's. She looks around warily at all of the Deep Ones around, and still holds her drusus at the ready.

Doirind glances at Ivor. She says nothing though. One Dannein to another, no words are needed.

She knows he is still ready to fight if they must, and he knows the same of her.