Serendipity Raiders led by Akallas von Aerok (#1)

[akallas]

Akallas von Aerok watched as the peaks of the southern Kilanthro Mountain Range below him moved behind him. He then took his eyes off them and looked forward.

The past half-a-day's worth of journey had been quiet. Nothing drastic or bad happened aboard so far.

However, he was still curious about one of his raiders.

The one with the blood-stained green cloak.

Her effect on people that he could not experience. Something he knew he could put to pretty good use, especially against elite soldiers like mordecai.

He dismissed those thoughts. For now, he would focus on the raid.

Right now, it was dusk. He and his raiders were just below the clouds, not that there were many today, and he could almost see his first target in sight.

[ScalesNDbook]

Valona wanted to know more about the mask wearing mercenary. She have notice that  he is blind,   and she  have sensed that he is a magic user.
All her life, Valona have suffered from bad eyesight.  After her Resurrection  this wasn't  a problem since her  sense of smell improved dramatically.  She was curious if  the mask  wearing mercenary have  a sense of smell  as good as her  or he use some form  of magic .


Valona approached the mercenary, trying  to walk toward him as gently as possible. She cleared her throat.
" hello " - she said as friendly  as  possible.

[Wave]

Ray turned towards the woman, just out of courtesy. He wasn't particularly busy, just trying to get over the felling of being on a ship somewhere in the air.
He didn't say anything and just observed her. He was fairly sure that she was a vampire, but hasn't exactly meet one before, meaning he could easily be wrong.

[ScalesNDbook]

" Have you ever been in  Connlaoth before" - Valona asked

[Wave]

"Probably?"
He was unsure what she wanted, but wasn't interested in wasting time.
"What do you want?"

[ScalesNDbook]

" Noting. Why do you think  I want someting"

[Wave]

Ray didn't reply. She could either leave or say what she wanted.

[ScalesNDbook]

" As I said I don't want anyting from you. "
She looked at him curiously trying to find what kind of magic is he using.
" Sorry for wasting your time " - Valona  walked away.

[akallas]

The first city was in sight.

It was a small thing. It didn't even have walls. It probably didn't need them, though. Being surrounded by a mountain tends to make such things unnecessary.

Well, he was striking from above.

Akallas allowed his ship to orient itself to its port side. Then he turned to the ship's speech amplifier, a small bronze ring in front of the steering wheel. "Ladies and gentlemen, we've arrived at our first destination. Our plan for this raid is simple and easy: I strike at our target to remove any form of garrison they might have before I land you guys. You will then pillage throughout the entire target and bring as many hostages as you can. You will be paid depending on how much hostage you bring aboard. I don't care about other loot; you can grab as much as you can carry."

A pause.

"With that said, let the raid begin."

He turned to his DANs. "Fire."

Three Carpathi-hull mana artillery cannons lined up on the port side of the Finicky Gutfish flashed a dim blue before they all fired. They each fired a short beam of magic. These beams closed the 20 kilometer distance in the span of five seconds before exploding spectacularly in blue and white on the town hall.

With a spin of the wheel, the Finicky Gutfish jerked back to forward. Then the ship sped up. It would be less than 2 minutes before their arrival at the city.

[Wave]

Ray staggered backwards as the cannons fired, having to lean against a wall as he regained his senses. He was completely blinded by the cannons blast.

"Good-...". Talking wasn't a good idea as the headache set in.

[akallas]

The ship swerved just a bit up before landing right outside the city. The explosion from his previous shot at the city had the city burning already.

"Go make yourselves some money, boys!" Akallas shouted as he opened the aircraft's rear cargo bay.

Thugs who had been waiting in the cargo hold poured out like a torrent.

Unfortunately for the first man out, he got a crossbow bolt to the head.

(numbers are positions, so you (idk) add them to your post later to show where you are in comparison to each other)

[ScalesNDbook]

Valona exited the  airship. Several crossbow bolts were flying towards her body. She sensed them in time and use magic to raise a protective wall of water which stopped the bolts.  She used magic to summoned a  eruption of water, which engulfed one of the crossbowmen crushing him to death.

[Wave]

His vision was still blurry as Ray exited the airship, but good enough for now to get this done.
He'd have to figure out how to avoid the blast before the cannons fired the next time.

He stayed in the back of the crowd. The more died right here the better.

[akallas]

Akallas approved of the situation. The defenders were sufficiently armed and numbered to kill decent amount of his raiders -which in turn meant he had to pay less of them- while his own raiders dealt them enough casualties.

He ordered the DANs to stay inside for now while gathering the dead raiders for later conversion.

He himself stepped out of the cargo hold and fired off a [Inferno] spell. The blue fireball flew from his mail glove hands and struck a building holding a few defenders. The building, more of a wooden hut of farmers, caught fire and the defenders rushed out. To Akallas's "glee," his raiders -the few stupid enough to come out of the cargo hold without defense- rushed after those fleeing men and women.

He paused before staring into his cargo hold. There were still plenty in there. "Get to work, boys. I don't pay anyone who doesn't work."

Then a crossbow bolt struck through his "face." Considering that he didn't have a physical body outside of the bronze chain mail and armor he called his "body," all the bolt did was annoy him.

Akallas sighed before he pulled the bolt out. "This doesn't hurt me, boys!" he said to the defenders of this tiny city.

[ScalesNDbook]

Valona manege to sneak to the  opposite side of the town. The street was full with the bodies of  death raiders and defenders.  A muscular defender  armed with an axe attacked her.  His axe was covered Whit blood . Valona killed him with a blast  of powerful water magic, which crushed his scull. She searched his body for money, but don,t find anything.  After that she drunk some of his blood.
"Why I'm so unlucky today" she thought while searching the corpses for money and jewelry.

[Wave]

Instead of trying to take the defenders head on like the rest, Ray managed to get around the line of fire.
They were surprisingly well organized, but most of them attempting to ambush Ray weren't skilled fighters. The few that were didn't prove a challenge either.

The defenders seemed to focus all their ranged fire on the airship, and Ray left those up to the rest to deal with. He went further, looking if they had any more powerful defenses.

[akallas]

Akallas led the two dozen or so raiders willing to take direct orders from him.

"Set fire to the houses. Draw out all of the defenders."

They did so using what little magic they could to toss fireballs. Houses lit on fire and people who ran out of the houses were caught and dragged before Akallas.

The first victim was a young man. He was missing a hand, freshly cut, and was beaten.

Without a word, Akallas extended his left hand to the man and activated the Core-Dust Conversion.

The young man screamed as his skin began to blacken and orangish dust drained from him into Akallas's waiting hand.

"Next!" he yelled when the man's blackened corpse turned into ash.

[akallas]

Then something shot from across the town and struck Finicky Gutfish. Unfortunately for Akallas, he hadn't installed magic shield runes to his ship yet, and whatever that had struck his ship tore into the ship's side.

Akallas turned towards the direction where the object had struck from.

It was a cannon.

"Get them!" he roared.

The cannon fired again.

[ScalesNDbook]

Valona heard someting very loud in her vicinity.
She sneaked to the source of the noise and saw a grope of defenders fiering with a canon. The canon ball flew in the direction of the airship.
'' let's kill these bastards ''  yelled their commander. His soldiers quickly reloaded the cannon. Valona casted a spell which moisturised the gunpowder in the cannon. One of the soldiers ignited the fuse. The cannon exploded killing the soldier and wounded two of his comrads. The powerful explosion was heard in the whole town , and Valona decided to retreat before more defenders arrived to investigate. Then she heard another loud sound. It was a different cannon. And judging from the sound it was fiering at the airship.

[Wave]

Ray had already found the other cannon. He stumbled in on the defenders setting it up, but this time they were surprisingly more competent.

One of them was an ice mage, managing to save his fellow comrades a few times, enough for them to still fire the cannon two times.
"Enough of this", he said as he killed the last one manning the cannon and turned to the mage.

The shards the mage shot at Ray disappeared in a purple orb. His expression would have been priceless if Ray could see it, but instead he just lunged forward. He didn't disrupt mage sooner to keep the surprise once it was his turn to die.