Goo Attacks!
It's a miserable day in the market district. The sky is dark in spite of the hour, and rain falls from the sky in cold sheets that do not welcome anyone to venture out of their homes. Even so there are some that do. People striding purposefully with shoulders hunched against the rain for the things they need. Merchants outside in spite of the weather to sell their wares for those brave or foolish enough to venture outdoors.
Azog didn't figure so many people would be out on a day like today. Turns out Azog's not the only one that lives day to day, shopping or hunting for food is much the same, though in this case, Azog bags a hare and a brace of potatoes for some copper instead of costing him an arrow or two. The potatoes are the hard ones, sometimes you need a few arrows.
It's really miserable for anyone who has to be out in this sort of weather. Shagara happens to be in the marketplace looking for something for her instructor. Mostly tea for him, but she actually looks for a bit of meat for herself. She doesn't need much, thankfully. So she's looking for the best cuts of meat.
Acedia struggles mightily with an umbrella, working against the wind. As a result, she's buffeted back and forth, and makes unhappy Gobbo sounds when she finds the particularly deep puddles. The Gobbo does find the lee of a building to pause in, panting and shaking water from her legs and feet.
As you pass through the market district you can hear the sounds of shouting. A not surprising thing really given how... vigorous the banter can get. Still there's something more to this yelling than is usual. One of the merchants is pulled bodily from her stall by a man in surprisingly nice clothes given that he's out in the rain and manhandling a small khazad woman about. She lays on the ground coughing and quickly becoming soaked now that she's not beneath the safety of her stall's tarp. "Plague-bearer!"
He kicks mud at the woman and the sound of silence around them could be touched. Eyes start to fall on the scene. Tension starts to build. There's something dangerous in the air here.
Shagara sighs as the calls of plague-bearer becomes louder. The woman simply pushes her way through the line and tilts her head. "What's going on here?"
Azog looks over to another stand where a fellow that sells Gnomish Gyroparasols is doing a brisk trade. His attention shifts at the call of Plague-bearer, and he looks around for the source. It's a bad thing all around. He makes his way in that direction. Luckily, a seven foot oruch pretty much goes where he likes in Alexandria.
"RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH", yells the Goblin, as she runs down the road towards the man who stands above the Khazad woman. Her umbrella is forgotten as she draws her blade, taking an aggressive stance as she slows, attempting to get between the man and the Dwarf on the ground... "You leave her alone!"
The man suddenly isn't the only danger here. Someone from amid those watching throws an egg. It's poorly (or well) tossed and hits the woman in the shoulder as she struggles irritably to her feet. She coughs heavily and glares at the man that kicked mud at her.
"She's a plague-bearer. Out here trying to sell her pies! How /dare/ she?" The man takes a step back from Acedia but doesn't seem as intimidated as he should be by the sword. Instead he utters a few words under his breath and points at the woman he's been yelling about.
A gout of water appears, slamming down on the woman and rocking her back onto her knees where she remains, coughing and hacking like she's about to... and there she is; throwing up more and more black goo onto the watery ground.
This is where Shagara nudges the man back from the dwarven woman. "The next one that throws anything at this woman shall meet me in the colosseum." Shagara says before she starts to help the woman to her feet. "Come on. Let's get you to the Soldier's Defense."
Azog will reach out to grab the man around the upper arm. His grip is like iron, though he's not as fast as many. "And you'll come with us, too," he says in accented Tradespeak. "Your eye for plague victims will no doubt interest those who work in the Soldier's Defense."
The Goblin squeaks at the gout of water, and advances on the man, though she pauses when Azog steps in, and Acedia turns her attention to the Khazad woman. She looks to Shagara, "I can take her. You are probably needed here. People tend to get ... frightened over these things, and there might be more fighting. I have a few heal spells and I work in the Soldier's Defense... I can get her there." She moves to prop up the Dwarven woman.
The woman can hardly stand she's throwing up so violently. The black goo coming out of her plops onto the ground with sickening noises that are nearly as bad as the ones she's making to get it out. She leans heavily on Shagara and Acedia.
The man tugs on his arm, trying to get it back, glaring at Azog. "Unhand me! It's clear what she is, just /look/ at her!" He points with his free arm in disgust at what's going on with the woman.
The goo that the woman is throwing up is... disgusting. Black as night and thick as tar. Nobody really wants to look at it. Otherwise they might notice how it's starting to clamor up Shagara's foot.
GAME: Azog rolls perception: (15)+15: 30
"Interesting." Shagara says as she looks at her foot. "Yes...take her to the Soldier's Defense." She says to Acedia. "If you need someone to give you a path...I can."
Azog mutters to Acedia and Shagara, as he eyes the slime crawling on Shagara, "I think you'd both better go there. I will be joining you," he adds. "And our observant friend, of course." His suspicious mind at first thought maybe the thrown egg was some sort of plague canister. But seeing it came from an egg stall, it seems more like a projectile of opportunity.
The Gobbo woman nods to Shagara, and then to Azog, before becoming mesmerized by the goo. "Oh. Well fuck." She gives a mighty pull on the Khazad. "We need to get her to the Defense, now. And the guards have to be called in." Acedia is careful to avoid the goo as best she can. "I've seen this shit before..."
"So have I." Shagara says softly. "I had already planned on going there as well." She's way too calm about having goo crawling up her leg. Way too calm.
The man /screams/ like a small child seeing the monster under their bed coming out. "Sweet Daeus' left foot it's /moving/." The man casts another spell, summoning something to fight the thing for him. You never get to see it though, the gunk rises up off the ground and /eats/ it in one gulp. Then starts crawling even faster up Shagara's leg. It's also bigger now. Considerably so. The man unsurprisingly screams again.
The woman that Acedia and Shagara are helping gives up on holding herself up, allowing herself to be carried about as the goo starts flowing out her nose; effectively choking her.
Shagara says, "We need to get her there fast. Not because of me." Shagara says as she visibly shoulders the burden of the Dwarven woman and starts to run....a lot faster than one would think....towards the Soldier's Defense."
GAME: Shagara rolls strength: (12)+3: 15
"I'll keep you clear!", the Gobbo says to Shagara. She eyes the thing on Shagara's leg, and takes a swipe at it with her rapier.
Azog forces his arm-grab into an arm-lock. And when a seven foot oruch built like Azog arm locks you, you're not going anywhere that he doesn't want you to go. And right now, he wants to go to the Soldiers' Defense with Shagara and Acedia. Seeing them struggling with their burden, he calls out, "Trade me. He's going to need a punch in the face if he doesn't stop trying shit, and I can carry her, no problem."
Shagara is already on her way.
On this tempestuous day, Ga'Elian is wearing clothing other than his normal attire. He is dressed in exquisitely tailored finery of leading edge noble fashion, as if he is on his way to the social event of the year. The colors and prints are attractive in a clever way that accentuates the wild elf's natural features to stunning effect. Clearly, this ensemble was made for him by a master artist of fashion, yet it still affords him the unbelievable agility that nature and magic have combined to produce in him.
He was walking gracefully from the highbridge, looking more anxious than his usual cheery self, but at observing the commotion, he snaps to awareness of the here and now, and moves both silently and swiftly to get a better view of what is happening.
There's a group of adventurers made up of Acedia, Shagara, and Azog hauling as quick as they can from the market district toward the Soldier's Defense. Azog has a unknown man practically tucked under his arm while Shagara has a woman held in her arms. The woman in question is Khazad in nature, and throwing black gunk up all over the woman holding her. Notably there is black gunk quickly encompassing Shagara, and as the woman in her arms starts to shake like she's having a seizure the black gunk gives a mighty heave and throws itself over the last remaining feet of Shagara's body so that it's covering her entirely.
GAME: Shagara rolls fortitude: (6)+8: 14
Shagara does not stop....and she tromps up the steps of the Soldier's defense to put the Khazadi woman on a table. Then...without hesitation, she walks over to another table and lays down pointedly.....
"Okay, let's get you settled..." The Gobbo helps the Khazad woman into the bed, and then sees to Shagara. "This.. this is a slime of some kind. We found it in the sewers. There must have been more.." Acedia pulls out a small vial from one of her pouches. "This is holy water.." Which gets splashed liberally onto the goo. "We need HELP IN HERE!", she yells out.
Azog drags, carries really, the fellow that called out the dwarvish woman, all the way to the soldier's defense. He sets the man on his feet, but draws his sword and tells him, "If you run away, I will hurt you so bad it will kill everyone you know." Just by way of friendly warning. When they get a bit of attention, he will tell one of the attendants, "This man saw plague symptoms where no one else did. He may have some skill others do not." Or he may be causing it, but no need to panic the man yet. The priests here will figure things out.
Ga'Elian follows along, gaining enough to arrive just behind the others. But while he is a master of wilderness survival, he is nowhere near as experienced a healer as the hospital statf. So, his attention is focused more on the well-dressed, curiously odd man that Azog bodily carried. He scrutinizes the man as he might scrutinize a footprint, seeking to learn what the eyes of a careful observer might reveal.
As Shagara lays down her body ceases to move, her breath stops. The goop on her doesn't wait for more than that, leaping from her body onto its nearest alternate target. Namely Acedia who is close enough to pour holy water on it. The water itself doesn't seem to help the goblin. Meanwhile her words do garner a reaction. Immediately the staff closes in on them, one of them helping to roll the poor woman onto her side so that she doesn't choke on the stuff coming out of her in a near stream.
Several members of the staff approach Shagara with caution. "Is she alive?" One of them asks uncertainly while the others remain further away wary of the stuff that is now covering Acedia from head to toe.
The man that Azog is holding pales considerably at the sight of a weapon leveled in his direction. He throws his hands up to show them empty of anything, and they shake where they're risen. In truth there's nothing remarkable about him aside from Azog's certain words and his fear of the other man.
GAME: Acedia rolls fortitude: (7)+3: 10
The Gobbo looks quite upset to see that Shagara stops moving, and she prods her with the now-empty vial. "Lady? Lady! Oh please don't be d..." Now the goo has started to work on the Gobbo, she drops the vial, squeaking noisily. "NONONO! Get offa me! You ain't taking me!" She eyes the others in the room. "HELP!"
Azog will just hold the man captive until the hospital staff get around to him. He's patient, unlike so many of his kin. Which probably helps the man in deciding to not run away.
Ga'Elian stands forward, albeit giving the new goo a wide berth, and says, "This is tragic, to be sure, but small and isolated in comparison to what I observed just outside the City. Here, it is afflicting and even killing several people, but in the woods, whole groves are given over to corruption to the degree that I could hardly find any healthy beasts or trees for leagues in several directions. I have warned the lumberjacks of Wilderness Pointe to take the threat seriously. The Ygdrassil Union are scrambling to react for the good of the land, and Mictlan is tightening security." He settles himself into a corner and begins to play a soothing lullaby of the Sylvanori softly to attempt to bring some beauty and peace to those enduring suffering, fear, and sadness in this place of holy healing.
For a long moment it seems like no one is going to help Acedia. Then suddenly as the woman's body stops shaking, or even breathing he lets go of her and grabs hold of Acedia's arm. Frantically he tries to wipe it off, but all it does is get on his hands where it starts to quickly creep up his sleeves. It's oddly calm in here given what's happening. Two guards come forward to take custody of Azog's man, but they look at the goo in complete confusion of what to do with it.
GAME: Acedia rolls Fortitude: (1)+3: 4 (EPIC FAIL)
Azog explains to the fellows that come for his man, "He has some odd insight, he saw the plague in the woman before anyone else could. Or else he is the cause. I do not know." He'll go away with the guards, though, before the goo gets to him.
The Gobbo looks quite upset as she fights with the goo, and then stops as she begins coughing. "Gah... dammit." She looks around, and moves to the hallway, where she pries a torch from its sconce. "I'll need carrying back in here in a moment." She pauses to cough again. "I'll be pretty badly burned... and I think the plague's got me... but this slime will be done." The bang and rattle of her rooting through a cabinet is heard ... and then she heads outside with a small container and the torch.
The priest who helped Acedia lets out a horrible noise as the ooze reaches his face and... he stumbles after her as quickly as he can clawing at his face to get it off though... that doesn't help much. It seems to divide and then reform even as he scratches at it.
-End