"We have food and water for one nigh, if you think its safer here than outside we can barricade the doors and be sure we take turns on watch. If something comes through that door looking to kill us while we are asleep without our armor on we'll be a in a big pile of trouble."
He looks around at the others
"What do you think, can we defend this if we need to? Or at least make a fighting retreat if we get attacked."
Barthrum says, "If the intruders have not shown interest so far in rooting this place out then I believe it safe. I am much more comfortable fighting in tunnels than open space too."
He obviously has an idea of some sort and turns to locals, "If you know - are these creatures nocturnal? Were you attacked in middle of the night or day?"
"Hmm, I ain't sure. Hard to tell in the mine, and we don't go out often." One of them says. "And we only left to bury the others once we were sure nothing is waiting for us on the other side."
Barthrum says, "Right, no worries. Lets bar the doors and make the best of it. It's evening outside right now and we'd like to start moving at first light."
After some preparations have been done he says, "I'll take first watch."
After watching Barthrum barricade the doors Thenmer decides he can probably try to relax a little.
"I hope I can sleep, I've not slept in a mine since.... well since the cave-in nearly did for me. I'd better try though, or else I'll be a liability on the road tomorrow. Wake me when its my watch"
He pulls out his bedroll, packs away his cooking equipment and begins to take off his mail. Eventually he tries to settle down, but he is clearly not feeling comfortable. He tosses and turns for a good long while before he gets any sort of sleep. He wakes, tosses and turns some more and then sleeps fitfully some more.
He has strange dreams, the crude little carving is in his dreams and he sees his friends try to kill a huge rat-thing which just laughs at them. All he can hear is the laughter in a horrible high pitched voice that runs right through him. He reaches out to his friends in his dreams and they vanish, the rat can't see them any more. In its anger the rat rips away the pit props and the ceiling gives way burying them all.
Thenmer wakes again, sweating. Seeing no giant rat person and an intact ceiling his breathing settles down once more. He pulls his blanket over himself and tries to get a bit more sleep ahead of his turn on watch.
Who watches at what order? Don-Jon and the Dwarves will listen to you and will watch in the order that you assign. (Remember the rules for long-rests require you each to get at least 8 hours of rest, out of which at least 6 hours are spent sleeping.)
(Barthrum is first watch, I will let him nominate the next watch although it could certainly be Thenmer. Hopefully each watch also wakes up one of the dwarf miners or Don-jon as an additional pair of eyes - very helpful in not falling asleep. I was assuming without saying that us 3 would always have one on watch. That means we take 9 hours to take the rest with 6 hours of actual sleep each)
Barthrum asks, "So who of you wants to tell me their life story over the next three hours?" He points to the one who stopped them killing him earlier, "How about you. Thank you for your quick reaction before."
He will wake Dolgrim for the next watch and says, "Thenmer took a while to fall asleep, maybe wake Don-Jon for the third watch instead."
Dolgrim sleeps surprisingly well this time. In his sleep he is again a young child running around a huge (at least to his children eyes) wooden building. There seem to be many people around, mostly dwarves and humans, but no one of his age. He sees his father and his father's father among the dwarves but they seem to be too occupied by the building and are not paying attention to him. Most of the other people are busy too, some by hauling wood others seem to cut the wooden planks into a smaller ones, others seem to be just digging the mud. Dolgrim is however more interested by what's happening in the grass than by the construction of what will one day be his own brewery. He sees a small ant carrying a huge peace of leaf. The leaf is much larger than the ant but yet still, he does not seem to be burdened by it at all. They think us dwarves are strong, but look at you little one. Says Dolgrim in admiration and follows the ant for a while until he finds a himself near a large anthill. Dolgrim sits by a tree next to the ant hill and watches how the thousands of little insects tirelessly work. His parents often told him about the dwarven holds and cities and how busy their forges and mines were, but he never understood it until now. His little adventure into the forest soon takes it toil as Dolgrim starts to yawn and soon after falls asleep. Dolgrim, Dolgrim, wake up!
Dolgrim opens his eyes and sees Barthrum. Right back here, in the mines filled with the ratmen. You know when to wake a man, Barthrum. Wish I could return to my dreams instead of this, this... I don't even have a word for this place. Anyway did anything happen during your watch?
*Just to not block things, you can assume I will wake Don-jon when my watch is over*
Thenmer tosses and turns in his sleep, he can feel the weight of the hillside pushing down on the roof above him. A weight that wants to crush him as it did before.
In his dream the rat person sneers as the roof starts to collapse on them, his friends are crushed and immobilized for rocks do not care if you are invisible. Desperately Thenmer seeks out something he can do, something he can say. Something in the rat's expression sparks an idea in his dream, he sees the clockwork of its mind and how to jog the mechanism to his advantage. In his dream he speaks these subtle words that reach deep inside the mind of the rat person, tilting the whirring cogs so that they change their motion. The rat-man stops digging in the rubble to kill and devour them and instead leaves - returning to its home that it had before invading the mine. Slowly but surely the dream Thenmer digs them out with his magic.
There are muffled sounds from Thenmer in his sleep "Mfff, emffh, go back mmfff"
You all go to sleep, dreaming of pleasant, or unpleasant situations; leaving Barthrum in the waking world, accompanied only by Fundar and the smell of Thenmer's cooking. And, well, the snoring six Dwarves and Human.
Barthrum's watch is mostly uneventful. Fundar's story isn't particularly interesting either: A Dwarven miner born to a family of miners, has worked in two other mines in the past. One of them was a coal mine, the other did not yield anything beyond hard rock that was sent to be used for sturdy buildings built in Leilon. He has been working in this mine since last year's winter. The light in the oil lamp flickers a little near the end of your watch, as the oil is running out. If you choose to check the room through which you passed to get to this room, you find that the oil there has already burnt out.
Dolgrim, however, along with another one of the Dwarves, does not get to enjoy the lamp's warm light for long. After a little less than an hour after being woken up, the flame in the lamp flickers one last time before dying out. Your eyes quickly adjust to the sudden darkness, as you begin to see the room in shades of grey. The other dwarf grunts, but doesn't seem too bothered by it. If anything, you come to wonder whether the dwarves always sleep under the oil lamps' light.
You're two-thirds into your watch when you begin to hear sounds. Someone is trying to open one of the barricaded doors at the part of the room that is beyond the passage that is the centre of the room. Then, suddenly, they manage to push it open. Unfortunately, there was nothing useful to barricade the doors with, but the few things you managed to gather forced the invadors to make noise as they entered. The dwarf with you looks at you, frightened, and doesn't do more than that.
Meanwhile, Dolgrim can hear a whisper in common, though he cannot see the invador(s?): "I told you I smelled something good, Rabra. The dwarves found some food to eat, this means they will stay here for longer. Perhaps we should just finish them off and be done with it." There's a moment of silence before the whispering continues. "Don't look at me like that. I'll only be doing Zeleen a favour, she'll appreciate it."
Initiative order (grouped):
- You three (may act in any order between you). Only Dolgrim is awake though.
- Allies (Dwarves, Don-Jon... except for one, all are asleep).
-Invadors.
Dolgrim is first to act. Anyone who is woken up by Dolgrim will only be able to act from the following round on, but will be able to take reactions immediately. The passage to the other part of the room is 10' away from Dolgrim at the moment. Everyone but the invadors are within 5-10 feet of you.
Dolgrim, hearing the ratmen, quietly walks to Thenmer, puts his hand on Thenmer's mouth to silence him, and gently shakes with him to wake him up. When he is awake, Dolgrim whispers.
We got company, there are some ratmen planning to ambush us, lets wake the others.
Dolgrim awakens Thenmer, and it takes Thenmer a few moments to wake up. (Turn spent on waking up, but he can use reactions now. Think of it similar to being surprised... kind of.) Seeing Dolgrim act, the other dwarf on watch attempts to do the same. He tries to wake up one of the other dwarves, who also wakes up. All those who are awake can hear two sets of steps. One slow and louder (in comparison to the other one, not actually loud), the other quick and silent; both sound like bare feet, though the second one can't possibly be a humanoid creature. The steps are too quick. A moment later, two figures appear in the narrow passage between the two parts of the room. One of them is similar to the ones you saw before, at the entrance to the mine, though it resembles more of a human male than a female. The other looks like a normal rat, except it is about twice the size of any rat you have ever seen, in every dimension. There's a brief moment during which everyone can see each other, their eyes locking, everyone realises that the others have seen them as well. The humanoid creature quickly pulls a shortsword from his belt.
Back to the top of the initiative. Thenmer can take actions as normal from now on (including). Barthrum is still asleep.
This post has potentially manipulated dice roll results.
(Edit, cancel what i said. I had missed the intervening post)
Thenmer looks in horror at the creatures, his nightmare had come alive. He grabs at his crystal as he gets to his feet and backs up behind the other dwarfs. No need to wake them now, what he had to do would wake them rudely enough.
He recalled all his experiments, every time he had tried this. Even as he raised his hand and began to chant words to focus his mind he remembered the waterfall and is never ending power. He needed to become that power, that power that just goes on and on. He wills himself to be the power, to split that power like a waterfall over a great boulder and then seeing the look in the eyes of the rat things he unleashes the power.
(Going to do the rolls before I try to narrate the rest because a hit and a miss get narrated very differently. Using split spell metamagic on Witch Bolt. Upcasting to level 2
Lightning forks out of Thenmer's hand towards the two intruders. The rat is nimble enough to duck under the blue-white lance but the rat man is struck by the blast. Thenmer furrows his brow as he tries to maintain the lightning, tries to either finish the rat-man off or drive him away.
"ATTACK, INTRUDERS"
He shouts over the sizzling sound of his spell as he backs off behind Dolgrim
"Dolgrim, can you hold it there long enough for my spell to finish it?"
I will do what I can, I hope they cant regenerate when I crush them with my wee hammer. Dolgrim focuses really hard at the ratman, trying to spot any weakness in its armor Hunter's Mark). When he believes he has found a week spot he moves closer and smashes it with the hammer, making sure he is standing between the enemies and his friends, trying to give them some more time to wake up and defend themselves.
Thenmer's call is answered by a few confused dwarves for a moment, but quickly they get on their feet. Barthrum among the other dwarves, sees the scene of Thenmer's blue-white arc connecting to a rat-person such as the one they've met before, as Dolgrim swings his hammer at it.
The rat-person screeches in pain when he's hit by Thenmer's spell, some of its fur where it was hit by the arc appearing burnt, and doesn't seem to regenerate in any way. Dolgrim's hammer, however, doesn't seem to do much, as the rat's body regenerates the damaged tissues.
The miners seem scared of the rat, though seeing Thenmer's spell cheers them up. The one who was already awake starts to raise his pickaxe, but seeing Dolgrim's futile attack, he goes and stands in front of Thenmer to protect him while he focuses on his spell.
"You'll pay for this!" The rat-person calls as they try to stab Dolgrim with their shortsword twice. One of them is deflected by Dolgrim's armour, but the other pierces through one of the armour's joints, piercing Dolgrim's armpit. (Critical hit, Dolgrim takes 9 points of damage.) Meanwhile, the giant rat to Dolgrim's legs tries to bite him. The teeth don't pierce through Dolgrim's thick boot, though.
Thenmer looks at the hammer wound as it regenerates instantly
"Magic is all we have against them, I'll do all I can but I'm no archmage"
He holds his hand out and keeps the lightning flowing into the rat-man. Hoping it will be enough. He sees the dwarf move to protect him and nods his thanks, moving behind the protection, knowing that if they can break his spell the dwarves are likely doomed.
(Just a damage roll then, keep his reaction back to save anyone from being attacked with advantage or for shield spell on himself. Damage 12 )
Barthrum leaps into action, grabbing just his shield and sword (I assume we sleep without armor on).
He will attack the rat-person: Attack: 11 Damage: Unable to parse dice roll.. He will aim at the point where the magic that Thenmer is utilizing is connected to, hoping to enhance the effect. (if allowed, I'd like to use Diving Smite to add 9 to the damage (it's not a fiend, is it?) )
"Where do ye think? Further into the mine. The rats could barge in any moment if they wanted to. They didn't try it yet, though." One of them answers.
Varielky
"We have food and water for one nigh, if you think its safer here than outside we can barricade the doors and be sure we take turns on watch. If something comes through that door looking to kill us while we are asleep without our armor on we'll be a in a big pile of trouble."
He looks around at the others
"What do you think, can we defend this if we need to? Or at least make a fighting retreat if we get attacked."
Barthrum says, "If the intruders have not shown interest so far in rooting this place out then I believe it safe. I am much more comfortable fighting in tunnels than open space too."
He obviously has an idea of some sort and turns to locals, "If you know - are these creatures nocturnal? Were you attacked in middle of the night or day?"
"Hmm, I ain't sure. Hard to tell in the mine, and we don't go out often." One of them says. "And we only left to bury the others once we were sure nothing is waiting for us on the other side."
Varielky
Barthrum says, "Right, no worries. Lets bar the doors and make the best of it. It's evening outside right now and we'd like to start moving at first light."
After some preparations have been done he says, "I'll take first watch."
After watching Barthrum barricade the doors Thenmer decides he can probably try to relax a little.
"I hope I can sleep, I've not slept in a mine since.... well since the cave-in nearly did for me. I'd better try though, or else I'll be a liability on the road tomorrow. Wake me when its my watch"
He pulls out his bedroll, packs away his cooking equipment and begins to take off his mail. Eventually he tries to settle down, but he is clearly not feeling comfortable. He tosses and turns for a good long while before he gets any sort of sleep. He wakes, tosses and turns some more and then sleeps fitfully some more.
He has strange dreams, the crude little carving is in his dreams and he sees his friends try to kill a huge rat-thing which just laughs at them. All he can hear is the laughter in a horrible high pitched voice that runs right through him. He reaches out to his friends in his dreams and they vanish, the rat can't see them any more. In its anger the rat rips away the pit props and the ceiling gives way burying them all.
Thenmer wakes again, sweating. Seeing no giant rat person and an intact ceiling his breathing settles down once more. He pulls his blanket over himself and tries to get a bit more sleep ahead of his turn on watch.
Who watches at what order? Don-Jon and the Dwarves will listen to you and will watch in the order that you assign. (Remember the rules for long-rests require you each to get at least 8 hours of rest, out of which at least 6 hours are spent sleeping.)
Varielky
(Barthrum is first watch, I will let him nominate the next watch although it could certainly be Thenmer. Hopefully each watch also wakes up one of the dwarf miners or Don-jon as an additional pair of eyes - very helpful in not falling asleep. I was assuming without saying that us 3 would always have one on watch. That means we take 9 hours to take the rest with 6 hours of actual sleep each)
Barthrum asks, "So who of you wants to tell me their life story over the next three hours?" He points to the one who stopped them killing him earlier, "How about you. Thank you for your quick reaction before."
He will wake Dolgrim for the next watch and says, "Thenmer took a while to fall asleep, maybe wake Don-Jon for the third watch instead."
Dolgrim sleeps surprisingly well this time. In his sleep he is again a young child running around a huge (at least to his children eyes) wooden building. There seem to be many people around, mostly dwarves and humans, but no one of his age. He sees his father and his father's father among the dwarves but they seem to be too occupied by the building and are not paying attention to him. Most of the other people are busy too, some by hauling wood others seem to cut the wooden planks into a smaller ones, others seem to be just digging the mud. Dolgrim is however more interested by what's happening in the grass than by the construction of what will one day be his own brewery. He sees a small ant carrying a huge peace of leaf. The leaf is much larger than the ant but yet still, he does not seem to be burdened by it at all. They think us dwarves are strong, but look at you little one. Says Dolgrim in admiration and follows the ant for a while until he finds a himself near a large anthill. Dolgrim sits by a tree next to the ant hill and watches how the thousands of little insects tirelessly work. His parents often told him about the dwarven holds and cities and how busy their forges and mines were, but he never understood it until now. His little adventure into the forest soon takes it toil as Dolgrim starts to yawn and soon after falls asleep. Dolgrim, Dolgrim, wake up!
Dolgrim opens his eyes and sees Barthrum. Right back here, in the mines filled with the ratmen. You know when to wake a man, Barthrum. Wish I could return to my dreams instead of this, this... I don't even have a word for this place. Anyway did anything happen during your watch?
*Just to not block things, you can assume I will wake Don-jon when my watch is over*
Thenmer tosses and turns in his sleep, he can feel the weight of the hillside pushing down on the roof above him. A weight that wants to crush him as it did before.
In his dream the rat person sneers as the roof starts to collapse on them, his friends are crushed and immobilized for rocks do not care if you are invisible. Desperately Thenmer seeks out something he can do, something he can say. Something in the rat's expression sparks an idea in his dream, he sees the clockwork of its mind and how to jog the mechanism to his advantage. In his dream he speaks these subtle words that reach deep inside the mind of the rat person, tilting the whirring cogs so that they change their motion. The rat-man stops digging in the rubble to kill and devour them and instead leaves - returning to its home that it had before invading the mine. Slowly but surely the dream Thenmer digs them out with his magic.
There are muffled sounds from Thenmer in his sleep "Mfff, emffh, go back mmfff"
You all go to sleep, dreaming of pleasant, or unpleasant situations; leaving Barthrum in the waking world, accompanied only by Fundar and the smell of Thenmer's cooking. And, well, the snoring six Dwarves and Human.
Barthrum's watch is mostly uneventful. Fundar's story isn't particularly interesting either: A Dwarven miner born to a family of miners, has worked in two other mines in the past. One of them was a coal mine, the other did not yield anything beyond hard rock that was sent to be used for sturdy buildings built in Leilon. He has been working in this mine since last year's winter. The light in the oil lamp flickers a little near the end of your watch, as the oil is running out. If you choose to check the room through which you passed to get to this room, you find that the oil there has already burnt out.
Dolgrim, however, along with another one of the Dwarves, does not get to enjoy the lamp's warm light for long. After a little less than an hour after being woken up, the flame in the lamp flickers one last time before dying out. Your eyes quickly adjust to the sudden darkness, as you begin to see the room in shades of grey. The other dwarf grunts, but doesn't seem too bothered by it. If anything, you come to wonder whether the dwarves always sleep under the oil lamps' light.
You're two-thirds into your watch when you begin to hear sounds. Someone is trying to open one of the barricaded doors at the part of the room that is beyond the passage that is the centre of the room. Then, suddenly, they manage to push it open. Unfortunately, there was nothing useful to barricade the doors with, but the few things you managed to gather forced the invadors to make noise as they entered. The dwarf with you looks at you, frightened, and doesn't do more than that.
Meanwhile, Dolgrim can hear a whisper in common, though he cannot see the invador(s?): "I told you I smelled something good, Rabra. The dwarves found some food to eat, this means they will stay here for longer. Perhaps we should just finish them off and be done with it." There's a moment of silence before the whispering continues. "Don't look at me like that. I'll only be doing Zeleen a favour, she'll appreciate it."
Initiative order (grouped):
- You three (may act in any order between you). Only Dolgrim is awake though.
- Allies (Dwarves, Don-Jon... except for one, all are asleep).
-Invadors.
Dolgrim is first to act. Anyone who is woken up by Dolgrim will only be able to act from the following round on, but will be able to take reactions immediately. The passage to the other part of the room is 10' away from Dolgrim at the moment. Everyone but the invadors are within 5-10 feet of you.
Varielky
Dolgrim, hearing the ratmen, quietly walks to Thenmer, puts his hand on Thenmer's mouth to silence him, and gently shakes with him to wake him up. When he is awake, Dolgrim whispers.
We got company, there are some ratmen planning to ambush us, lets wake the others.
Dolgrim awakens Thenmer, and it takes Thenmer a few moments to wake up. (Turn spent on waking up, but he can use reactions now. Think of it similar to being surprised... kind of.) Seeing Dolgrim act, the other dwarf on watch attempts to do the same. He tries to wake up one of the other dwarves, who also wakes up.
All those who are awake can hear two sets of steps. One slow and louder (in comparison to the other one, not actually loud), the other quick and silent; both sound like bare feet, though the second one can't possibly be a humanoid creature. The steps are too quick. A moment later, two figures appear in the narrow passage between the two parts of the room. One of them is similar to the ones you saw before, at the entrance to the mine, though it resembles more of a human male than a female. The other looks like a normal rat, except it is about twice the size of any rat you have ever seen, in every dimension. There's a brief moment during which everyone can see each other, their eyes locking, everyone realises that the others have seen them as well. The humanoid creature quickly pulls a shortsword from his belt.
Back to the top of the initiative. Thenmer can take actions as normal from now on (including). Barthrum is still asleep.
Varielky
(Edit, cancel what i said. I had missed the intervening post)
Thenmer looks in horror at the creatures, his nightmare had come alive. He grabs at his crystal as he gets to his feet and backs up behind the other dwarfs. No need to wake them now, what he had to do would wake them rudely enough.
He recalled all his experiments, every time he had tried this. Even as he raised his hand and began to chant words to focus his mind he remembered the waterfall and is never ending power. He needed to become that power, that power that just goes on and on. He wills himself to be the power, to split that power like a waterfall over a great boulder and then seeing the look in the eyes of the rat things he unleashes the power.
(Going to do the rolls before I try to narrate the rest because a hit and a miss get narrated very differently. Using split spell metamagic on Witch Bolt. Upcasting to level 2
vs rat man to hit 19 and damage 13
vs giant rat thing to hit 25 and damage 9 )
Lightning forks out of Thenmer's hand towards the two intruders. The rat is nimble enough to duck under the blue-white lance but the rat man is struck by the blast. Thenmer furrows his brow as he tries to maintain the lightning, tries to either finish the rat-man off or drive him away.
"ATTACK, INTRUDERS"
He shouts over the sizzling sound of his spell as he backs off behind Dolgrim
"Dolgrim, can you hold it there long enough for my spell to finish it?"
(Re rolling that damage 16 )
I will do what I can, I hope they cant regenerate when I crush them with my wee hammer. Dolgrim focuses really hard at the ratman, trying to spot any weakness in its armor Hunter's Mark). When he believes he has found a week spot he moves closer and smashes it with the hammer, making sure he is standing between the enemies and his friends, trying to give them some more time to wake up and defend themselves.
Attack: 12 Damage: 4 Mark: 5
Thenmer's call is answered by a few confused dwarves for a moment, but quickly they get on their feet. Barthrum among the other dwarves, sees the scene of Thenmer's blue-white arc connecting to a rat-person such as the one they've met before, as Dolgrim swings his hammer at it.
The rat-person screeches in pain when he's hit by Thenmer's spell, some of its fur where it was hit by the arc appearing burnt, and doesn't seem to regenerate in any way. Dolgrim's hammer, however, doesn't seem to do much, as the rat's body regenerates the damaged tissues.
The miners seem scared of the rat, though seeing Thenmer's spell cheers them up. The one who was already awake starts to raise his pickaxe, but seeing Dolgrim's futile attack, he goes and stands in front of Thenmer to protect him while he focuses on his spell.
"You'll pay for this!" The rat-person calls as they try to stab Dolgrim with their shortsword twice. One of them is deflected by Dolgrim's armour, but the other pierces through one of the armour's joints, piercing Dolgrim's armpit. (Critical hit, Dolgrim takes 9 points of damage.) Meanwhile, the giant rat to Dolgrim's legs tries to bite him. The teeth don't pierce through Dolgrim's thick boot, though.
Back to top of initiative, all may act normally.
Varielky
Thenmer looks at the hammer wound as it regenerates instantly
"Magic is all we have against them, I'll do all I can but I'm no archmage"
He holds his hand out and keeps the lightning flowing into the rat-man. Hoping it will be enough. He sees the dwarf move to protect him and nods his thanks, moving behind the protection, knowing that if they can break his spell the dwarves are likely doomed.
(Just a damage roll then, keep his reaction back to save anyone from being attacked with advantage or for shield spell on himself. Damage 12 )
Barthrum leaps into action, grabbing just his shield and sword (I assume we sleep without armor on).
He will attack the rat-person: Attack: 11 Damage: Unable to parse dice roll.. He will aim at the point where the magic that Thenmer is utilizing is connected to, hoping to enhance the effect. (if allowed, I'd like to use Diving Smite to add 9 to the damage (it's not a fiend, is it?) )