Combat in an online game tends to be interminable, and so I avoid it any more than is absolutely necessary. 
Scott
Actually, when the rabbit keeled over, Alcimus dived in for the kill, and is too occupied to answer questions.
I need to know what Gregorius and Fray are doing for the next round.
Scott
How large are the passages here? Obviously large enough for a size +3 quadruped, but how much bigger could something get? +5, +6?
Fray is contemplating making himself more defensible, but I need to know how much space we have in the tunnels.
The rabbit is close to as big as an animal could get and stlll fit through--and it benefits to a great extent from the fact that a rabbit is shaped well for navigating tunnels.
Scott
Gregorius starts asking his question anyway, before seeing that Alcimus is "otherwise occupied". He supposes if you do stick a rabbit in front of a wolf, you shouldn't be too surprised if the wolf gets hungry - but he doesn't really want him eating the creature's vis. Can he tell whether the rabbit is still alive, just apparently incapcitated, or is actually dead?
The rabbit is very much alive and kicking--he just fell over. Alcimus is going in for the kill, not lunch.
Scott
[If you're doing combat damage (i.e. when you have an attack roll, as opposed to spell damage), you don't add a die roll to damage, just the Attack Advantage. Finesse based attack spells are a slightly edge case, but I think David Chart confirmed on the forums somewhere that they were meant to have a die rather than carrying forward the attack advantage.]
Alright, let's gang up on the rabbit. Gregorius will send another rock at it:
[ReTe 20, casting total 16 + 7 + die 3 = 26, so no fatigue (invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4542989/).
Finesse targetting rolls: Per 3 + Fin 7+1 + die 8 = 19 (invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4542990/)
Damage = 15 + 2x7 = 29 (invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4542992/)]
[Sorry for the delay--my daughter had a birthday party on Saturday, and there were umpteen family members and friends around, some of them staying at the house.]
Before Alcimus can reach his prey, something unuual happens; one of the rabbit's four wounds heals instantly.
Then, something ordinary happens--or rather, it would be ordinary coming from a three-pound rabbit; coming from a rabbit as big as an ox, it's downright terrifying. As Alcimus latches on to the rabbit's flesh, the rabbit kicks with his rear legs, to rake the wolf with his claws.
Alcimus' defense roll is 11 + stress die 3 = 14.
invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4546404/
Fortunately for Alcimus, the rabbit's wounds prevent its attack from succeeding, and after the party's subsequent attacks, the rabbit is still breathing, but no longer able to fight back.
Scott
Alcimus doesn't take well to the rabbit's attempt to ambush him (his pride is a little stung by falling for it, even if it does miss him), and doesn't let up in his attack.
[Atk 13+ die 6 = 19. Damage = 4 + Attack Advantage. (invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4547678/)]
Gregorius, meanwhile has started saying to Fray "Have you got any good way to test its might? Would be useful to know in case we run into any more of them" before realising that the rabbit probably won't have any might for much longer and starting to try to get Alcimus to hold off for a moment (but too late for this round).
"It's might is non-trivial, but I can not be more accurate yet. That alone tells us to be very wary."
"If it continues to heal we need an indirect approach to neutralise it. Perhaps we sink the rabbit into the floor and suffocate it?"
Fray will try a MuTe effect to turn a segment of the tunnel floor beneath it into air and back again. But only if Alcimus can be persuaded to back out. Regardless of Alcimus retreating or not, Fray will move out of it's direct reach as I'm assuming the dagger did very little.
Goal of the effect is to momentarily change the earth underneath and near the rabbit into air, so it falls downward.
- MuTe5, R:Touch +1, D:Mom, T:Part +1
- Base 3 - Change earth to liquid or gas, Affect 10 cubic paces of earth at base. 10 cubic paces is pretty large, so the temporary pit should be pretty deep too.
- Spont CT is 31 +roll if/when its needed.
Before Fray can do that, Alcimus has finished the thing off, and it's lying dead before you.
Scott
Well, Alcimus is pleased with himself. Gregorius slightly less so, as he'd have liked to have run some tests on it, but not to the point of serious annoyance. Instead, he just asks:
"Are either of you hurt at all? And was that the creature you could smell earlier, Alcimus?"
He'll also check the rabbit for vis:
[Non-fatiguing spont, InVi Base 1 (detect the presence of vis) + Hearing 3 =4 vs (In 6 + Vi 5 + Aura 7 + Sta 1 + G 1)/5 = 4 He'll do this several times if necessary to pinpoint the vis' location in the body.]
"Unhurt, but still surprised with the creature's nature. Rather ridiculous."
Fray wishes to spont cast an InAn effect to determine if the rabbit was born naturally large, or had it size altered quickly.
i.e. born massive is one thing, or if the change in size was very quick it is unlikely to be due to the supernatural aura, and we are facing something else.
- [Fatiguing spont InAn4 (to learn a specific fact about a body) + R:Touch +1 = 5 vs (23+roll) /4.
- ((In 0 + An 11 + Aura 7 + Stm 3 + WG 2 + roll) /2 for flaw) /2 spont
- Casting roll 1d10=5 = 28/4 = CT 7 which succeeds the casting.
- Then Weird Magic roll of 1d10=4 so no ill effect.
"and now a little puffed".
[Sorry, I missed both your replies.]
Alcimus confirms that, indeed, this was the creature he was tracking. He's understandbly confused that he identified a rabbit as a predator, but he sticks by that assessment: the scent he was tracking was the scent of an aggressive animal, on the hunt, not the scent of fleeing prey.
Yes, the rabbit contains vis, in its ears: 4 pawns of Mentem (doubtless the result of wandering about a labyrinth).
Fray's spells suggest that this rabbit was indeed natural, not a Warped animal or the like.
Scott
[Gregorius will have to do another couple of spells to determine the amount and quantity of vis - he'll cast them over the next couple of minutes, resting in between to get his breath back.
Sense the Nature of Vis and Scales of the Magical Weight, both InVi 5. Casting total (In 6 + Vi 5 + Sta 1 + Aura 7 +die)/2 = (19 + die 5, die 6)/2 = enough, both go off without a hitch. (invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4552002/)]
Once done, he looks at Fray and smiles.
"Well, pick an ear - they should each have two pawns of Mentem in them. Unless you want to swap it for another two pawns of the vim we found earlier? I've got more use for the Mentem myself."
To Alcimus, he says:
"Not hunting us, presumably, or we'd have caught up to it a lot quicker rather than just following it around. I wander what it does eat - one way to find out, I suppose."
Once Fray has made his decision on the vis question, and after the ears have been removed, he crouches down by the rabbit, and seems to be going for his knife before changing his mind, and starting to cast a couple of Rego Animal spells.
[He's trying to butcher the dead rabbit, first skinning it, then separating out the offal as a prelude to examining the contents (if any) of its stomach. He possibly could do this with his Hunt ability, but he's not actually terribly good at Hunting, so he's going to use craft magic instead.
Base 1 (manipulate an item made of animal products) + 1 Touch +1 Size =3. Casting score is Re 8 + An 1 + Sta 1 + Aura 7 = 17, so he can do it without fatigue (and can do an extra level if he adds in some gestures if necessary). Finesse rolls are Fin 7 + Per 3 + die 5 and die 3 (invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4552025/ ), for Finesse totals 15 and 13. Butchering even a giant rabbit is only going to be a day's work, so those should make the ease factor.]
I figured I'd speed things along, since I knew he could cast the spells, but thanks for rolling, just in case of a botch.
"Not necessarily....Some predators prefer to pick a time and place, and ambush their prey--cats, for example. I think we simply caught up with him before he was able to arrange that."
It's actually typical rabbit food--various greens--just, of course, quite a lot more of it then you'd find in an average rabbit's stomach.
Scott
"The Vim is more useful to me at present. If the inspection fails, Intellego might give you it's last meals too".
"As must as I can tell the beast grew naturally in that manner. Where there is one rabbit, there will likely be many more. Now the blockage in the tunnels make more sense, but does not explain the small fire."
Fray will wait for the examination to conclude.
"There's still something that seems very odd about a predatory rabbit. I wonder if the creature Fray spotted in the water earlier is just a gigantically sized version of a normal fish as well?
Gregorius smiles, and passes Fray a couple more pawns worth of the Vim containing pollen before taking both ears for himself. "Excellent. I need Rego or Mentem vis for the familiar bond."
"There seems to be only green stuff in his stomach, so it's omniverous rather than purely carniverous. That does imply there's an area we haven't found yet with a decent amount of plant-life - it won't have eaten all that green stuff in these tunnels, and it seems unlikely it's been climbing up and down the cliffs to swim to the island. I agree there's probably more of them. By the blockage, do you just mean the things we could hear moving around, or something else?"
[OOC: not sure if I'm forgetting something with the blockage?]
He bundles up the rabbit fur. "I'm sure we can find some sort of use for this large a piece of fur. Would probably have been a better coat if we'd got to it a few months earlier, but you can't have everything. Do you mind if I get Aison to carry it?"
Alcimus meanwhile has started eating one of the rabbit's legs.
Once everything's arranged with the furs, Gregorius asks:
"Shall we keep moving? Do you have any particular ideas how to proceed? I'm slightly tempted to try and follow a stream to its source, but I think that will mean backtracking all the way to the cavern. Alternatively, we could just keep following these passages."
Fray swaps and stows the vis; with a nod and furrowed brow.
"The blockages I meant are the rubble which stopped you from exploring this area initially. Now that we know there are several hostile creatures here, and some others we have yet to find who are intelligent enough to have fires; well, the area is certainly dangerous."
"We certainly need to keep exploring, although I am aware of being confused in the tunnels. Going forward without knowing how to get back is stupid when more creatures like this are likely. Were it three rabbits rather than one we'd be in a different state. I suggest we backtrack to the main cavern, then mark out pathway. A marker on the floor of each intersection pointing back to the huge cavern would do. That way if you are lost you need to look for the markers, which then dictate the path home."
"It shouldn't take too long to walk back the three turns we've taken now. And better now than later, and then we can spend as much time as we need."
[ooc: open to suggestions for the marker?]
- MuTe a section of floor, so that it has a big pointer of another material in it. Base 2 effects material is huge for dirt to sand, so can easily affect a large area of floor. T:Touch +1, D: Moon +3, T:Ind +0. Roughly MuTe10.
- CrIm a pointer. Base 1 for a single sense. T:Touch +1, D: Moon +3, T:Ind +0. Roughly CrIm5.
- or any Rego/Perdo effect to carve a mark, but i didn't want to make them permanent if it could be avoided.