[Ed. Note; this was after all the players had specified what their characters would do during the bar brawl]
Aron
Aron froze, beer mug in hand. he was always on edge, ready for some asshole to try to wail on him. It had happened plenty of times before with little or no warning, and even less reason. A bit of Urakai blood, and you were shit in other people's eyes. So it didn't take but a second to recognize that the muttering behind him was a spell, not typical pub conversation, and from the intenisty with which the person was prepping, some kind of offensive spell at that. His reaction was instantaneous and automatic. Pushing off from the table, he swung around and made a wild toss of his beer mug at the cowled figure he saw behind him. The toss wasn't even close, crashing into the door, but Aron hoped for a moment that the noise would distract the man from his prep.
It didn't work. Aron pulled his dagger and sprinted for the man. He knew he was fast, but it seemed to take forever to get untangled from his chair, start building up enough speed to hit the chair between him and the target with enough speed to jump it, and...
His thought was distracted by other events. Across the room, he could see one guy diving under the table... Aleht, Aleath, something like that... he had seen the guy before. Everyone else seemed frozen in place, blank looks of amazment on their face at his charge, which to most must appear to be the work of a lunatic. Off to his side, he heard a crack, and sensed more than saw out the corner of his eye a sudden shower of glass from the window over there, that and something else...a blur of motion too fast to really see. Something thudded into his side with such force he stumbled, and instead of hitting the chair and catapulting over it, he slammed sideways into the table. The voice in front of him hit a sudden high pitch, and he knew he was too late, the bastard had gotten the spell off. He looked up and gasped. The guy wasn't even looking at him, was looking past him and had actually shifted to cast past his right shoulder. It had to be a heat beam, and it was going to miss him in search of another target.
The world disappeared in a blaze of light, followed by a darkness Aron almost welcomed as an escape from the unbearable pain that accompanied the blinding flash.
Delrin
It was too sudden, too fast. A man Delrin had already marked as dangerous had jumped up, charged a newcommer. But the newcommer had a Flamebolt he fired too quickly for it to not to have been ready, a wider area weapon than a more selective heat beam. It had burned through the small pub, cutting a huge swath of destruction and lighting the wall opposite him on fire. That, and the unexpected crossbow bolt that had come through the window, hitting the charging man with terrible force, indicated that this was not simply a case of a drunkard going wild and attacking an unprepared guest.
There was at least one other person hit by the indescriminant flamebolt, the dandy at the table nearest the far door, who had taken the brunt of the fearsome blast dead center and been tossed backwards to the floor. He was out of sight now, and quite possibly dead. The klutzy one sitting next to him, who had dropped his beer mug, had luckily been under the table picking it up when the blast of flame and heat turned the table top he was sitting at into a still smoldering cinder. He appeared to be prudently staying down with his beer mug.
Now everyone in the room was moving, the two fighters from Kanday moving to engage the cowled figure who had just entered through the door, the handsome black-leather clad one and his companion tipping their table and ducking behind it for cover, the odd, short person in front of the fire ducking behind a table and moving to aid the dandy, the other handsome one, the drinking companion of the large man who had charged across the room, standing and prepping a spell in turn.
The cowled figure stepped backwards out the doorway he had entered only seconds before, drawing a sword at the same time with a ease that implied he was no stranger to the weapon. Delrin caught a flash of metal armor as well.
Delrin had no real desire to be in the middle of that. His unusually keen memory brought forth a picture of the wall behind him, and he grabbed his chair and moved quickly to the window in that wall. One way or the other, he needed to depart this death trap with no easy exits quickly.
[IMMEDIATE RESPONSE REQUIRED]
GLORM
Pause to pull the shield, or out the door? Fast decisions, and precious little time to make them. He was lucky these outlandish humans were so ridiculously tall. He barely had to crouch in order to use the tables as cover. As he rounded the table, still smoking from the blast that had come from the doorway, he almost stumbled over a human who was clutching a beer mug tightly and clearly indecisive about what to do. The other human, the one in fancy clothes... or at least, they had been fancy... was not looking too healthy at the moment, and might be dead.
"Hurry" he hissed excitedly in the still strange-sounding human speech, "Drag the injured one this way." The human looked confused for a moment, and Glorm wondered if the accent he could not control was too thick to be understood in the excitement of the moment, then comprehension dawned in the man's eyes. He moved to grab the burnt one under the arms and began pulling him toward the door. Glorm decide to ignore the shield for the moment; it would take too long to pull it off his back, and the wall was turning into a sheet of flame where the flamebolt had hit it. Glorm tossed the door wide. It provided momentary protection from the heat of the blaze, and he quickly escaped into the corridor outside.
He could hear the whinny of the horses from the stables outside the narrow corridor he was standing in, was peripherally aware of the human and his unconscious companion as he tried to pull him to safety after Glorm. It meant nothing to him; he had a more immediate concern. Directly in front of him was a human in chain, looking surprised, both arms wrapped around an apparently light but bulky box. Just behind him was another man in chain, looking just as startled, no weapons in hand, but with a sword at his belt.
The hammer was in his hand and swinging before he thought about it. The blow connected solidly, and the man, too encumbered by the box to even dodge effectively, went down, stunned. The other one stepped back, began to draw his sword. Glorm scampered over the first human, confident of his ability to avoid entanglement, and smashed at the other human before he could draw his weapon. A hit, but a glancing blow that did little through the man's armor. A second blow followed quickly, and again he scored a glancing hit, but the man had his sword out now and returned the attack almost as quickly. Glorm tried to dodge, but stumbled for a moment over one foot of the downed human, and glancing down noticed the box carried by the first man had broken open in the fall, to reveal... what looked like rumpled, dirty clothes. Glorm felt a sick shock of horror as he suddenly realized these might be simple guests, with no relation to the fighting that was going on in the other room.
That moment of indecision was deadly. He felt the sickening thud as a sword plunged through a weak point of his armor and into his abdomen. The pain was enough to make his vision blur, and he fell to his knees, knowing it would more than likely be the last thing he ever did.
EL SID
It was almost laughable. This had to be one of the most inept assassination attempts he had ever heard of. Who in a ghod's name would use such blundering tactics? Instead of minor pass of the hand over a beer, and a sudden, unfortunate, but hardly suspicious heart attack, you had the likelihood of an entire inn burning to the ground. It was stupid, stupid and impertinent. Tipping his table on its side provided cover, but it had also dumped his almost untouched beer on the floor. Very irritating, very irritating indeed. Someone was going to pay. He pushed once more, Don joining in, and the table slide to the wall, allowing access to the other window in front without exposing the two of them to attack. El Sid looked through the window carefully, and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, began to smash out the window with the pommel of his sword,. He cursed as the glass and grit rained down on his armor. Cleaning bills as well. Yes, someone was going to pay dearly for this.
El Sid took a second to take stock of the situation. Tristan had fired a heat beam at the original attacker at this first opportunity, apparently hitting but doing little in the way of obvious damage. It was more than the normal absorption of armor; the sizzling beam seemed to just fizzle out when it hit the man. Tristan had then turned his attention to the crossbowmen at the window, and had moved while prepping... a gutsy move for most, since it tended to make your prep more likely to fail, but Tristan had a capability to focus beyond that of the average spell caster. El Sid snorted in amusement. Yes, he could cast, but whoever had taught Tristan heat beam had done the usual half assed job at it. Tristan obviously didn't realize the heat beam was single target and would stop when it hit the window, wasting a round and the mental anguish associated with spell casting as his heat beam splattered against a window pane, causing it to crack and fall out.
In the meantime, the Kanday Armored Tanks had rushed the Magic User. The one with the bright red sash (the sash that screamed "look here, I'm a target") had actually run right by him, screaming like a maniac and... El Sid looked closely just to confirm it... frothing at the mouth.
Tristan, with two firebeams down and nothing to show for it, was moving to the window, again prepping, and this time while moving past chairs and other obstacles. It was clearly to get a shot off through the hole the crossbow bolt had left. Like the druid, brave and foolish. A light crossbow could have nailed him before he even got his first spell at the archer off, never mind the second.
A small shattering of glass came from the window in front of Tristan. El Sid ducked for a moment, then realized there was simply no way anyone could angle a shot at him and it had to have been at Tristan. He raised his head again and was surprised to see Tristan still up and even attempting to finish his spell, an attempt that fizzled. But how had the crossbowman missed? Ahhh... they had skipped the obvious target in favor of a shot at the dandy who had caught the flamebolt in the face, and who was halfway out the door to the corridor, being dragged by that klutz, Morgan.
El Sid smiled, suddenly realizing that the crossbowman outside the window had been a backup for the magic user that had taken the first shot at the dandy... but they hadn't timed it right, and instead of a simultaneous attack, the archer had waited long enough to be forced to shift to a different target. It was lucky for them, and it was almost understandable that they had been unprepared for such a need. The massive half-breed Aron had moved unbelievably quickly, and might have caught the MU before he had his spell off had it not been for the well aimed bolt.
El Sid glanced back at the sound of crashing glass. The green cloaked one, the druid, had finished knocking out the glass and was now jumping through the window, ahead of El Sid because of his brave and very foolish decision to ignore any kind of cover when he ran for the window. El Sid heard his plea to Aleath to move outside as well, but it looked like Aleath was playing it safe and staying where he was. Probably a good move for the handsome but overly cerebral man. He risked a glance over the table. The red-sashed Kanday knight was spattered with blood, but looked like he might have also landed a blow.
There was a sudden flash of bright light just in front of the knight, so bright El Sid saw stars in front of his eyes even from his vantage point.
[IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED]
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