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He should have fallen on his sword. That would have been the sensible thing to do.
Punched his ticket for Elysium right away, no waiting around.
He thought they'd only kill him.
Why did he think that? How stupid was he? Why in the world did he think that?
And now instead of his next great adventure he's flubbed a save against dominate person.
But you didn't fail by 10 or more.
Her CMD is at least 16 but no higher than 26.
Assuming Improved Trip, at least 14 STR, and at least 10 DEX, her max level is 12.
Moving to flank Kroft without provoking an AoO will take an Acrobatics check against DC 24-or-less.
Altronus will chance it.
Round 2
32, 17.
Altronus wipes out, Choryon dances out of reach.
Kroft's bonus to Trip is at least +13 and at most +15. Her minimum level is nine, her max is still 12.
Choryon, it's all on you.
Her CMD while entangled is 21 or higher. No, wait! She needs Dodge for Whirlwind attack, and 13 DEX for Dodge.
Her CMD is either 23 or 24.
Your bonus to Trip while flanking is +6.
You need to roll a 17 or higher. Possibly an 18 or higher.
And if you miss the attack, we lose.
As a move action I'll stand on top of Lyvina. Higher ground gives a +1 bonus to hit.
With the help of Altronus harrying the flanks and Olin Mull pulling on the net, standing atop Lyvina Mayyad, Hasagi Choryon's whirling naginata drops Cressida Kroft crashing and clanging to the Vault's stone floor.
Cressida Kroft has neither 13 DEX nor Dodge. She qualifies for Whirlwind Attack with the feat Artful Dodge.
The combat is over, you're no longer in initiative order.
That. Was. Spectacular!
Not that she'll visibly freak out about it.
The picture of Chellish dignity, she.
Kroft remembers when, fifteen years old, she first saw Vencarlo Orisini fight.
It took her breath like a blow to the stomach, she could feel the beauty in her physical eyes.
She always hated it when her parents would drag her to the opera, but with her mouth hanging open in Orisini Academy Cressida finally understood what they got out of it.
What a curious thing to have common with the Queen.
...Ileosa's so young. Even younger than Cressida was at her age.
It all happened so fast.
Kroft draws her sword. The four assume a battle formation Ileosa cannot see the sense in.
And then... one thing after another!
The Field Marshall crashes into them fast as lightning and heavy as an armored Hellknight makes perfect sense of the formation's ablative armor and Kroft is gone again just as quickly, Ileosa's neck an oiled bearing, mind racing to piece together - Ileosa saw her barrel into the cleric but when the cleric fell he fell forward on his face, and now Kroft's holding her sword by the blade; she hooked the crossguard behind Lyvina's ankle and knocked the wizard on her ass but when.
And then! A dirty trick; scrambling to his knees the Megapope throws an entangling net, and Choryon rushes with her glaive, all grace and power and joy and violence, halfway dancing with her Tian spear. Choryon feints with hips and shoulders, a wild haymaker low to the ground, but instead she swings high to catch Kroft jumping and tangle her legs and foil the landing but the Field Marshall doesn't jump.
And the kasatha sprints and rolls and slides! Light as a shadow and nimble as an osyluth, he leaps an outstretched leg, ducks an outstretched hand, and he's behind Kroft now with four grasping hands for her to bat away.
The Field Marshall whirls her sword and Altronus blocks high but Kroft ducks low and somehow the kasatha's been flipped on his back and in that same moment Kroft is spinning on her heel and lunging in her net and has her sword's tripping hilt behind Choryon's thigh but doesn't have the leverage to pull Choryon over and
Choryon gets free of the bind and steps on Lyvina and Altronus taps the flat of a knife against the Field Marshall's greeve and the cleric yanks his net and
and
and
and!
The way Choryon just walked on a wizard without the slightest pause or reservation is nothing short of incredible.
It seems to confirm what Ileosa suspected: the samurai does not have the normal inhibitions. She'd stab you without flinching if it looked to her like the next step in the dance. Things that others wouldn't even think of to reject just look to Choryon like actions she can or cannot perform, and which will or will not help.
Maybe the Queen is letting her imagination run away with her, but she imagines that this impulsive knight's past is checkered with shallow graves.
Also, implied by the above: Choryon is almost certainly an inveterate liar. Likely she doesn't even think to track what is or isn't true - thinks only in terms of which syllables will have which short-term effect.
You'd be an utter moron to trust her, in nigh any sense of the word.
Ileosa might be in love.
For the record, Hasagi "I am a non-ronin lordless wandering samurai" Choryon is both Lawful and Good or Kroft will eat her hat.
And it's a metal hat.
The Tian warrior lives by a code of good conduct and it is immensely important to her.
Or, that's what Cressida Kroft would like to say. That's what she feels in her gut.
But her gut is clearly unreliable.
Because she would have said that these four people while odd were being entirely forthright.
'Oh, we met earlier this morning,' claims party of four that fight together like an oiled machine.
'We don't know each other well,' claim four people comfortable trying to embarrass each other in front of royalty, neither giving offense nor expecting such.
'I'm first-circle with minimal combat experience and no deep faith in the ability of these three people to improvise in tandem with me,' claims wizard who throws herself into melee as a distraction without the faintest trace of apprehension.
'I hardly know these people at all,' claims woman who used other woman as a footstool as if that's not an extremely odd thing to do to a total stranger.
'We don't have shared party culture,' claim the four weirdest people in the Vault despite being weird in twenty of the same ways as one another.
You can spread that on your plants, because it's Grade A hippogriff shit.
What really throws her is that as far as she can tell, as far as they can tell, they aren't lying.
And if they're such great actors as to have her utterly fooled, why leave such giant fucking holes in their story?
With how confused she is, that doesn't count for much with her, but still her brain supplies theories fitted to the evidence.
If they're telling the truth, then what. Their sleeping minds adventured together on the Plane of Dreams?
(Is that even possible outside of stories? She'd ask her wizard but he's dead.)
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