Into the castle!

[Breila]

When Thelma and Eloise round the keep (#6) far enough to look at building #9, their initial target, they see that this building's ground floor is completely open to the courtyard. The upper timberframe storey is supported by massive beams. All in all, this looks like the former castle smithy, with enough room for several smiths to work around the centras furnace, The furnace is lit, but the fire seems to be dying, though four men are standing around it, moving something around in a pan as large as the furnace. The smell of burnt food is still strong.

To their surprise, the girls see Christopher emerge from between the keep and the octogonal building, followed by Saul. A shout of alarm comes from one of the men at the furnace, who almost drops his ladle. "Keep working!" admonishes a voice from the inside of the building. "That knightling is not from these lands." With these words, a stooped old man in peasant clothes comes forward and dresses himself before Christopher aas high as his walking stick allows. "What do you want here?" he asks, sounding confident and quite hostile.

[Ismaels-Legacy]

Saul raises his right hand in salutation. "Peace, good sir. We do not mean to interrupt your work. We were sent here to investigate the smoke. That is all. The townsfolk's superstitions prevent them from investigating it themselves."

[Breila]

"I don't believe a word or this" the old man says to Saul."We just started the fire. You can't have come up from the village since then."
The younger men continue their work, tossing grains in the big pan so that it roasts, but does not burn.

[Stik]

Christopher blinks at Saul's statement. The priest is flat-out lying. To go along with that would be equivalent to lying as well, something best avoided. For his own sake and for Saul's, best put a stop to this immediately.

"Pay him no mind, old man. A good many things were said about this place before we set out, and in more than one language. My friend seems to have misunderstood some of them." Christopher touches Saul's shoulder. Hopefully that will be enough to rein him in..

"I am called Christopher. I would know your name and your purpose for being here. This place is said to be abandoned by its rightful holders. By whose authority are you here?" Christopher's hand is purposely not near his sword. He is counting on his bearing and his appearance to convey the proper air of authority.

[Jenara]

"We should help them." Eloise suggests, "But I don't know, they have it under control, so let's watch from the shadows. We can help them when they need it."

Hide in shadows: 1d100=14 Pass, Move Silently: 1d100=54 Fail

Moving as quietly as she can towards building 10, keeping to the shadows as best she can.

[Breila]

"My name?" the old man chuckles. "I can give you any name, you would never know if it is really mine or not. If you want to use one, call me Gisbert." He chuckles again and shakes his head.
"You ask me by which autority I am here, Well, I could ask you the same thing. You are not from here, I can hear that and I know the coats of every knight around here, yours is not one of them. You have as little right to be here as I am, for I don't think the abbot sent you." For a moment, the eyes flicker to Saul, but then he looks Christopher back in the eyes.

Coming close to building #10, eloise realises it's quite a good place to watch without being seen, because at eye level for her, the timber framework is not filled, there are just the beams that reach up another foot and a half before the roof begins. The inside is in shadows and if she's careful, she can watch from there. The entrance to the biulding faces towards the keep (#6), so she could slip in safely.Near or in building #10, she is close enough to hear the conversation.

[Stik]

Christopher grins broadly - perhaps a bit too broadly. "That is terribly clever." Christopher turns his head slightly, to address Saul (without taking his eyes off the old man). "Did you hear that, Brother? That droll response? Gisbert-or-not-Gisbert here fancies himself quite the wag."
He turns back to Gisbert, and the big big smile goes away, replaced by a stern look. "But you made a mistake, Gisbert. I am here as an agent of Sancta Mater Ecclesia, but you have just admitted to me that you are trespassing here. That means I can disrupt your operation, knock holes in your kegs, mix road-apples in with your malt, and feed your hops to the horses, and then smile about it in Church tomorrow."
Christopher does his best to loom, and to look mean, calling on his experiences in the Holy Land to add weight to his stare. "Are we done joking now?"

[Ismaels-Legacy]

Saul looks levelly at the old man and simply shrugs. "He is correct. A bit to the extreme, but technically correct. Granted, a law abiding man would not be so hostile to simple inquiry." In order to continue the ruse that Christopher used earlier, Saul continues, "I did use the correct words this time, brother?"

[Stik]

Christopher squeezes Saul's shoulder and gives it a little shake.

[OOC] What is Saul's proper title. "Father"? "Friar"? "Brother"? [/OOC]

[Breila]

The old man's eyes dart here and there during this exchange, then he looks like he's doing some hard thinking. Suddenly, he makes a hand gesture to the young men, who drop the ladles they've been working with and go into the back of the smithy. When they return, two of them are carrying large hammers and two have wood chopping axes. Three charge Christopher, one charges Saul.

Actions and rolls, please?

[Ismaels-Legacy]

((OOC Saul is a Monk voluntarily, so I suppose his title would be Brother? He took a vow of poverty in the Holy Land and is on a return trip to his home in Scotland where he will seek to join a monastery officially.))

Initiative = 3

Saul swings his staff at the legs of the man charging him, attempting to topple the assailant. ((To hit = 10, damage = 4 [3+1 from Strength]))

[Jenara]

Hiding in the shadows, Eloise keeps her dagger close to her chest in the hope that it calms the pounding from her heart. She will wait until the figures gets close enough and puts his back to her, so she can strike from behind.

[NoTrammeling]

Matthias gawks as the men rush out with their axes, hardly believing his eyes. He recovers quickly enough, "Fool, old man! This is why we cannot trust people. Better a hovel in the woods than axes in the castle." Gathering himself up the apothecary crooks his hands into strangely curved claws, undulating the fingers as his arms sweep in slow ever-shrinking circles. His low mutters sound sharp to the ears, maddeningly tickling the furthest corners of one's mind.

Reality shivers as a score of arrows streak down into the ground between the combatants, fired from an equal amount of archers who crouch on the parapet that the party first used to spy on the inner courtyard.

(Casting Phantasmal Force)
Init 11

[Stik]

"Mistake," Christopher says, drawing his sword as soon as weapons appear.

Christopher will move away from the old man, angling (if possible) such that his attackers have to go around the man to reach Christopher. The idea is to break their momentum and slow them down so that they arrive one at a time.

Then he will strike at the first one to arrive with his sword.

1d10, 1d20+3, 1d8+3=[3], [18, 3], [8, 3]
Initiative 3, Hits AC -1 for 11 Damage

[Breila]

Eloise is far from the action, nobody will come close enough for her to strike. Dale, however, draws his dagger and runs out from behind her, intercepting one of the men who came to attack Christopher. The man is so surprised that someone with armor but just a dagger tries to stop him, so he misses his swing. Dale cannot really reach into the man's defenses, so he misses as well.

Having been prepared for the worst, Saul and Christopher are faster than their attackers. With a warhanner in his hand, one man runs towards Saul, only to find his legs knocked from under him. He land face first on the rocky ground, one fo his tibiae broken..
The first man to squeeze past the old man and Saul swings his axe at Christopher, but the aspiring knight is faster and cuts him down before the man can even reach him. The other two young men and their old leader can't even react to these calamities when they see a shower of a dozen arrows land among them, fired from archers on the rampart. The young men make moves to retreat, but the old man shouts: "Fight on! We have nothing to lose!"


Initiative order: Saul (3+4); Christopher (3+5); Georg (3+5+2)and Dale (6+2); Gerald (5+4+2) and Matthias (10+1), Gernot (9+5)

Rolls for Dale: 1d10, 1d20=[6], [4]
Rolls for the enemies:
Gerald (attacking Saul): INIT 5(+4+2); To Hit 12+2, hits AC 6 for 2 dmg
Georg (attacking Christopher): INIT 3(+5+2), Critical hit!, 1+ 4 dmg
Gernot (attacking Dale): 1d10,1d20=[9], [4]

(OOC: I rolled for critical hit damage because I had at first forgotten the initiative penalty for charging. Kafen, there is no longsword in your inventora, so I assume Dale couldn#t afford one and chose to use the dagger, because firing at the charging men would have been difficult without putting Saul and Christopher into danger.
Remark: The axe Georg is using not being a true battle axe, I reduced its values parallel to the difference between a long sword and a short sword, e.g. init value 5 instead of 7 and damage of 1d6 insted of 1d8.)