Brief Recap: Last turn, the company (with new addition Fyona, whom Blade miraculously recognized from across the battle based on a single swipe of her rapier and while in the heat of disentangling his knife from his sleeve) meeleed with Thaddius and his gang in the snowy streets of Galay. It is early morning, and the company was on their way to board the ship which Egmund had chartered to take them to the Tomb wherein they would find the long-sought Obsidian Stone...

The Delay in Galay!

Drezik, standing on the balcony, sees Humphrey cast Lightning Bolt at Thaddius. He hears Thaddius' command: "Kill that damn mage!"

Drezik has just the spell, another Lightning Bolt to answer the rogue Humphrey's. The words spring to his mind, and he quickly begins the incantation. He is certain the wounded old man will not survive it.

But as Drezik nears completion of the spell, he notices the orc in the party pointing a rod at him. Drezik saw the orc slay Odan just a moment ago, with what looked like potent magic indeed. Odan's body still lay crumpled on the cobblestones beneath the balcony whence he fell, smoke steaming from his ruined eyes, his dead hands clutched in a rictus of pain. And the orc looks to be just about finished with his own strange chant.

Drezik decides Thaddius can kill the mage himself, and at the last moment turns his spell on the orc, in defense of his own life. The lightning crackles from his stretched fingertips, but the charge does not strike the orc. Instead, it is absorbed into the creature's rod, which only glows briefly with a red light as it absorbs the spell.

Mog's grin exposes his tusks as he completes his own spell. The burst of light from his rod strikes Drezik in the face, and his head ignites like a magnesium flare. He drops to the floor of the balcony dead.

As that happens, Thaddius twists his fingers into strage positions while he speaks the incantation of his next spell, looking straight at Humphrey. He doesn't see Blade advance.

Thaddius tosses a small white orb over the heads of the party, closest to Humphrey, which explodes in a freezing shower of cold. [Blade, Humphrey, Bibi, and Mog take 15 damage each, no save--Blade is down to 110/125, Humphrey is down to 7/35, Bibi is down to 57/72, Mog is down to 93/108.]

Blade ignores the cold as his weapons whisper from their sheaths. Thaddius looks from Humphrey just in time to see Blade hack his wand-hand off at the wrist with a short sword. His surprise is shortlived, however, as in the same motion Blade slices off Thaddius's head, the long sword's blade only catching slightly on the mage's spine as it cleanly slices through his neck between vertebrae and leaves the head standing precariously on its disconnected shoulders for a moment, balanced impossibly before it tumbles to stain the snow below.

Blade remember's Gayrlana's famous quote, "The sword is quicker than the art."

When Thaddius and Drezik fall, the fighters take stock of the situation. They all start to move backward, away from the party...

[You can let them leave, maybe to warn others or get reenforcements, or report Humphrey is in town, or you can press your attack. Ghotu has one of them still in his Net of Entrapment.]

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