Ula has been battered to within an inch of going down herself ((2hp)). She shakes her head and grasps the holy symbol hanging round her neck. She says a prayer and it glows with a faint light…

Bonus action (healing word): she regains 10 hp.

Then, she picks her mace up from the floor out of the dust, steps towards Demai, and without a word swings the mace towards them…

Attack action (mace): Attack: 17 Damage: 10 (non-lethal bludgeoning damage)

As the faint glow envelops Ula and energy level is visibly restored, the crowd gives a collective groan, sensing that this will prevent them from seeing another dwarf go down.

"Hmm. Sounds like the crowd didn't like that. There's no entertainment value in healing," older bald Hargrove says. "You're going to put everyone to sleep with that."

But the crowd begins to hum when they see Ula's mace rise. These spectators have either seen enough fights or been in enough confrontations themselves to know Demai has no clue what she's doing out there.

The mace swings up, easily bypassing the clumsily held shield and cracks Demai on the chin. Even though Ula's pulling her blow at the last second, Demai's head rocks back and her feet almost leave the ground.

Adelysia Demai, the condescending merchant, dismissive of Ula's family, teeters for a second then falls backwards. A small cloud of find sand puffs up as she hits the ground, out cold.

The remaining human looks around at Jan, Ula, Avaria, and Marrin and shakes his head. He throws his spear and shield to the ground.

"I yield," he says.

Boos and a few whistles can be heard from the crowd.

"Well they don't seem to like that do they," the elder Hargrove says. "You're all new here and don't know the rules of the Hargrove Grotto Arena, so let this be a lesson. The audience decides whether yielding is allowed."

He holds up his right hand and extends his thumb upwards.

Except for a couple of boos, there's near silence in the crowd.

He then holds up his left hand and extends his thumb downwards.

The crowd erupts with cheers and shouting.

"Ah, hear that. My guests have spoken."

His hand changes to a pointed finger.

Arrows whip down from above. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. Four arrows his time pierce the unknown human's body. He collapses to the ground, lifeless, blood seeping from all four wounds.

Geffroi's eyes widen as he sees what's likely to happen to him if he just gives up.

He looks down at the daggers in his hands, look over at the five of you. He clearly doesn't know what he's doing with the weapons. He takes a few steps forward and throws one of the daggers at the general direction of the four forward party members.

2  

Attack: 19 Damage: 2  

Either from desperation or sheer luck, the dagger sails through the air, straight at Jan. The crowd is as surprised as the elven bounty hunter when the dagger connects and draws blood.

The crowd erupts in cheers for Geffroi.

"Sorry," Geffroi calls out to Jan.

-------------------------------------------

Ethel's up.

Standing over Adelysia Demai, Ula looks less like The Cleric of Istishia and more like the eldest daughter of tavern owners, having just ejected an unwanted patron from her bar room. She stops short of spitting on the condescending merchant, but looks like she was thinking about it.

What a surprise... the bloodthirsty bastards are thirsty for blood, Ethel thinks as she sees the arrows cut down the unfortunate stranger.  

Evil and stupid sometimes go hand in hand.  Let's see if the crowd is made of equal parts both.

She once again clutches a clawed hand to her mouth and whispers, but this time instead of the incantation for Chill Touch, she conjures a mage hand.  She orders it to try to grasp Geffroi.  From there, it is up to the man to hold up his end of the impromptu performance.

[I realize Mage Hand cannot attack, so its up to the DM to interpret how to handle this, or whether it fails on its face.  The intention is to impersonate the Chill Touch spell she cast earlier, with a Mage Hand instead.  Ethel is worried a Chill Touch might kill Geffroi outright.]

[Ethel knows Geffroi has some intelligence to him after their discussion on the Rose Marie, but she's going to need to give him some sort of hint as to what's coming. Once she gives some warning, we can go a combination of Ethel rolling a Persuasion Check and Geffroi a Perception Check - as long as one of you passes a DC12 we'll say he figures out enough to try playing along]

“I’ll finish this,” Ethlehyn croaks to compliment her ruse, “And may the dead man stay dead, unlike in Gheldaneth!”

Persuasion: 16

Geffroi's eyes grow wide with momentary panic at the appearance of the spectral hand, at first thinking that it's the same as what he'd seen earlier, but as it gets closer to him, he relaxes. Those on the arena floor can see recognition in his eyes. Then he locks eyes with Ethel and allows the mage hand to encircle his risk.

"I'll never give up," Geffroi shouts, which elicits cheers from the audience.

Then Geffroi lets out a scream, "It burns."

He collapses to the ground, rolls around for a moment then lies still.

The crowd cheers again.

Some of you catch the elder Hargrove watching Geffroi. His eyes narrowing slightly but he then looks around at the cheery audience and smiles.

He holds up both arms to quiet the crowd before looking back down at the party.

"Congratulations. My son was right about you five. There is something special here," Hargrove says then he looks out to the crowd. "What do you say we bring them back again later today?"

The crowd cheers.

"The Amorous Octopus is offering two for one for the next half hour to celebrate our new acquisitions. Go and enjoy."

As the audience trickles out of the viewing area, it's now easier to see a half dozen hobgoblin archers arranged around the stands, as well as a handful of other guards.

The bald, bearded man walks to the railing at the edge of his platform and looks down at the five of you.

"Welcome to Hargrove's," he says. "I'm William Hargrove. I hope you enjoy your stay. I know I already am."

He then turns quickly and disappears from your view.

A third doorway you hadn't noticed earlier, on the far western wall of the arena opens with the same clanking winch mechanism sounding. But this time you can see two guards above in the viewing area turning the handle to open the door.

A half dozen goblins, dressed in ripped clothing, some little more than rags enter the arena. The poke the downed combatants and quickly determine Jaroo the gnome and the two unknown humans are definitely dead and they start dragging them towards the open doorway.

The doorway you came through now opens as well with two hobgoblin guards coming through.

"Come," one of them says before pointing at Demai, Hammerdasher, Snowreign and Geffroi. "Bring them."

-----------------------------------------------

Out of initiative for now.

 Marrin looks around again before grabbing Snowreign and dragging him where directed.

Doubting they will be permitted to retain their weapons, Jan tucks the one she was 'gifted' out of sight in her clothing.

((Sleight of Hand: 16))

As combat has ended, Avaria's rage slowly subsides and she sees what she has done to Jaroo.  She stands there and stares at the gnome as he is dragged away with the others that are dead.  "I..I.." and she looks down not knowing what to say.

She looks to her friends, crestfallen, and Avaria walks over to Hammerdasher, heaves him up, grunts, and tosses him over her shoulder.  She then follows behind Marrin.

Ethlehyn walks over to Geffroi and mutters, "Excellent performance... it saved you a braining from the other girls here."

Ethel asks Ula to give her a hand with the 'unconscious' Geffroi.  "Well done," she compliments the cleric.  "I'm impressed we were able to get out of that with so little loss of life.  From where I was standing it looked like you took a few hits... were they pulling their punches?  Or are you badly hurt?"

Once they are closer together, she will whisper in Dwarvish:

Ula moves over towards Ethel to help with Geffroi and anyone else that needs moving…

”Thanks. I did take a couple of hits. I’m not sure if they were pulling their punches or not… …It felt pretty real!”.

“I’m okay though now, but I had to call upon healing, so I don’t think I’ll have much favour left for many more miracles today!” ((0/2 spell slots left)).

Ula will whisper back in Dwarvish too:

She gives Ethel a little conspiratorial wink too.

As you bring Hammerdasher, Snowreign, Demai and Geffroi towards your entrance, Geffroi starts walking on his own. The hobgoblin guards don't appear to care as long as the arena floor is cleared of bodies.

Back in the preparation room you had your hoods removed in, you manage to get all of your defeated opponents up on their feet.

"Everything back," the hobgoblin guard that spoke to you before says, gesturing at your weapons and your spell foci. He points at Ethel's spellbook. "You take. Use more magic next fight."

The iron gate to the arena closes behind you with a loud clang as the winch above is released. The only other exit is a closed door you assume you entered through originally. There are fewer guards with you now; six in the prep room. But you see a metal grate in the closed doorway. Through this hobgoblin guards outside the door look through the metal grate in towards you. There appears to be a hallway behind them.

When they talk about the spell book, Ula holds her amulet up, the chain still around her neck. “I need this too!”, she says. “So that I can pray and meditate on new spells for tomorrow”. She looks them calmly in the eye, like it’s obvious, and without waiting for an answer turns away tucking it into her vest as she replaces the shield and mace obediently.

"And as you can see, I need this for much more than spells," Ethel piles on, waving her walking stick.  "Would you deny a crippled woman her cane?"

Ethel, you can see hesitation in the hobgoblin when you mention denying a crippled woman her cane. You sense he's about to relent when one of the other hobgoblin leans in closer to him and speaks quietly in goblin. You can all make out one word repeated several times, "Drusus". The first hobgoblin nods and looks back at Ethel.

"No" the hobgoblin says, loudly. "No. Just book. Everything else stay."

He gestures at both Ula and Ethel and points at the table.

Ethlehyn gives a heavy sigh.  "Very well."  With some effort, she lifts her cane onto the table and then limps back to join the others.

Avaria says nothing as she dumps the two scimitars on the table with a big clang.  She then positions herself between her friends and the hobgoblins, unsure of what is going to happen next now that they are unarmed.  She doesn't think anything since they are apparently on deck for another fight, but doesn't want to take any chances.

Ula frowns and turns back to the table to place her amulet there. As she does she tries to catch someone like Marrin’s or Jan’s eye, with a meaningful eye and a nod towards her amulet…

Then she turns back to the hobgoblins to block most of the table with her wide dwarven bulk, stretching her arms wide and swivelling her head to click her neck with the widest most ostentatiously blocking distraction she could muster…