Find a Place Opening Credits
Opening Credits: Chapter 10: Find a Place to Die
Grolm 9, 578
about 4:45 p.m.
about 4:45 p.m.
Definitely not the voice of Barry Campbell:
Zhang Sephia sensibly gets under the workbench that fills the southeast corner of the room. Xifeng the hawk flutters down there with her, figuring stupid mammals never look under the fallen log for TALONS OF DEATH.
Miro Teague races toward the low-lying workbench on the western wall as he spits an ingredient list at Miss Melinda: "Quickly! I need a stone bowl, sodium nitrate, sulfur, charcoal, and Magnesium!"
"RIGHT! MAD ALCHEMY!" Miss Melinda drops her goggles into place over her eyes. She zooms around the room at a speed too fast for eyes to track as more than a blur. First she drops a glazed iron bowl on the low workbench. It is not the stone bowl Miro wanted, but the glassy glaze will prevent unwanted interactions for just barely long enough.
Bruthazmus has already looked around. He can't fit in, behind, or under anything in this room with a realistic expectation of concealment or cover. "Get her packed and moving," Bruthazmus says over his shoulder as he shoves past the skin-crawly warding field and into the hallway. "I'm countin' on you. Don't let me down."
Bruthazmus hurries out the door, opening it wider in the process which means it fully covers Lee Chung.
Miro fishes his pipe lighter out of its pouch. He dumps the contents of two flasks into the bowl while Miss Melinda collects a cheesecloth bag of charcoal from the storage bin closest to the potbelly stove. In Miro's grasp, that bag will be about a hand and a half in size: probably not four charcoal bricks, probably smaller chunks. He is going to smack the entire closed bag on the workbench a few times to powder its contents.
Bruthazmus gets to the top of the stairs while Rowtag makes a tight circuit of the stairwell landing for possible perches. Bruthazmus looks down the stairwell. There's a Hell Woolie halfway up. It looks startled.
Sephia comes out from under the workbench, muttering about her bananapants fellow ranger and about the possibility of more Hell Woolies being nearby. "Fiiiine! be that way!" She flounces out the door after Bruthazmus.
The Hell Woolie drops the dinner tray and the tiny salad bowl atop it. Tray, silverware, and shattering bowl all go clattering down the stairs.
Miss Melinda drops a final flask on the workbench. This one contains off-white flakes of a pungent substance that is probably not pure magnesium, but close enough for signal flare purposes.
Bruthazmus already had an arrow ready. He fires in time to the drumbeat in his soul. His arrow goes dead center through the demonic sheep's throat, silencing it before it can even bleat in confusion.
Miro dumps the crushed charcoal into the bowl as fast as he has ever done anything. He snatches up the bowl and runs to the door. Spiro snatches up the fourth flask and flies after him.
Sephia catches up to support Bart. They look down the stairs at the dying Hell Woolie. A nasty neon green light oozes up out of it in the dark stairwell, like a will o' the wisp. It curls above him for a heartbeat, then dives into the stone steps next to the ram's cracked and blood-soaked horn.
Miro pauses in the creepy-feeling doorway to focus almost all of his attention on the creepy anti-pixie ward. Dismantling it would take time and study. Adjusting it would take time, study, and practice. But disrupting it? He just has to move enough pieces out of alignment violently enough and then duck!
"We could haul the corpse up here and hide it," Sephia suggests to Bruthazmus. "Maybe Jesse can clean up the blood on the landing."
Miro casts Dispel Magic with a shove of his willpower. The enchanted power source for the ward goes inert and slides away in the air vent, no longer held in place by its arcane link to the glyph itself. Miro yells over his shoulder "I kept my end of the bargain!" as he vanishes into the stairwell area of the attic.
Bruthazmus' ears are twitching under that broad-brimmed hat of his. He slides his bow back into its holding strap. He does not exactly sigh as he seems to answer someone else's question before he returns his attention to his fellow ranger: "That he did. Well, c'mon, Feathers: dead body won't haul itself. Besides. This is the most normal thing we've done all week!"
Chica Alston turns, wide-eyed, to stare at Jesse. Chica is accustomed to people acting swiftly in a crisis, but it's always of the "get on your horse and get control of the stampede" variety. Rangers and pirates are an entirely different level of swift action!
Starring:
- Bruthazmus and the SNAFU Guild!
- A furious ranch hand supervisor!
- The absent inventor!
not to mention
- Local farm hands!
- Assorted ranch hands!
- Trouble on the Hoof!
- Sheepsquatch!
- Blood-sucking Cabbages!
- Thorny Spite!
- A twisted tree!
Remember to keep an eye peeled for signs of
One Dangerous Outsider
Time to let the GM know that you are ready to start the reel!
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