"I'm not sure I like your plan, Rolly," Ozzy was standing in front of the entrance to the barracks, right in the path of anything that broke through.
Rolly was marking places on the ground where he wanted people to stand, and yelling directions to others. "That's good, Ozzy, makes you worried. You always perform better when you're worried. Not that you really should worry. For a plan I made up on the fly with a total lack of info, this one is a dandy! And Fearless Leader made it better!"
Timmy was standing in his circle, watching the preparations. He desperately wanted to go lay down in a corner. He wasn’t sure how much he drank last night, but it must have been a LOT more than he remembered. It had just been a few large tankards of Victory Brew, maybe a round of shots from that bottle of red liqueur? Oh, and he remembered being handed a full glass of the sweet red stuff. After that...more beer? He leaned on his shield and hoped they started fighting soon. He planned to use his Second Wind ability to give himself a boost as soon as the battle began.
Suzette danced down the stone stairs from the ramparts, leaping the last few feet. As she walked over to Team Speed Bump, she rummaged in her potion bag. "I have presents for you all! Zephyr says these will help out a lot. She and her dad are great alchemists. They don't just make bombs."
She handed Ozzy a bottle, "This one is for you. Don't take it until the rat-kin are starting their final advance. It won't last long, and should give you a bit of a boost. Oh, and I have a potion for the general. Here you go." She handed a similar flask to General Themis.
Themis looked at the bottle, identifying it, "Thank the alchemist for me. An extra boost to STR and CON is always nice." Themis was in good spirits. She’d enjoyed a night by a fire drinking with the boys downstairs. And had a nice little scrap with a daemon. And now another fight? She rarely got pampered like this. She was quite happy she’d sent her scale-bearer back up to the keep to relay a report. She could fight and maybe die just like any other soldier.
Suzette moved on to Timmy. She grew concerned when she saw his pale, sweating face, "Oh no! Are you sick?"
Brandon laughed, as best he could. "No, your little boyfriend there drank too much at his celebration party. He and David are about to keel over with exhaustion and a bad hangover."
Suzette made a sad face. "Well, we can't have that. Here's a potion like those I gave Themis and Ozzy, one for each of you. Save them for the battle, but I can also give you another potion to get you one your feet. I have to warn you though, you'll want a good night’s sleep later on, they wear you out." She handed each one a greenish vial. "Drink these down, but promise me you'll get some rest later, and eat a good meal."
Timmy felt so horrible, he wasn't about to argue. He poured the vial down his throat, grimacing at the taste. But it worked. He got back a good chunk of mana and stamina, and some of the health he was down healed. Best of all, he wasn't hung over and felt ready to fight!"Wow! What the hell is that? Those are great! Do you have more?" Seeing the improvement in Sir Timothy, David downed his, very surprised at the effect.
Suzette shook her finger at Timmy, "Nope. Those aren't healthy for you in the long run, but we need you ready to fight today. I don't need you over-dosing on them before the fight. Oh, and try to eat one of these to settle your stomach. All of the workers eat them every day and you can see how healthy we are." She handed each of them a groat muffin before running off to hand out the alchemical concoctions to more of the players and workers.
Cham was lugging a huge timber over to Ozzy, "Here you go, best we can do on short notice. It's a little rough, don't get splinters."
Ozzy just laughed, "Least of my worries right now." He hefted the large timber and checked its balance. It would do. It was one of the twelve-foot-long timbers left over from construction of the fort. This one was made out of white oak and about eight inches on a side. Cham had carved the last four feet, making it easier to hold. He'd also put a wicked point on the other end. Five foot back from the point was a four-foot wide cross-bar that attached solidly to the main timber. The over-sized boar spear weighed in at nearly four-hundred pounds.
Rolly was working with one of the stone masons to remove a flagstone and replace it with a larger rock set deep into the floor. Ozzy jammed the end of the timber into the stone. "Feels solid. I'm just worried about the timber moving on impact."
Rolly smiled, "Got that covered. Hit it, Squirmie". The butterfly spat a sticky mass of webbing at the point where rock and timber met. "Good shot Squirmie. It isn't going to move now Ozzy, no worries." Rolly yelled up at Ben, "What news from the Rat-watch?"
Ben yelled down. "The Imperial Rat-Watchers are happy to report another dozen rat-kin casualties, but the big one is starting to head this way."
Rolly was running around the courtyard moving people and things around to fit his plan. He looked like a Broadway director on opening night, "Places everyone, no more delays. The next time Ubermaus starts heading this way, we're going with Operation: Maus-trap.
Ben saluted Rolly, "In the immortal words of Mr. Emmerson, 'When the world is beating down your door, it's time to build a better mousetrap', ...or something like that."
=*=
Ubermaus had lost interest chasing down rat-kin. Since it didn't smell any more of the tasty meats and cheeses anywhere, it grudgingly allowed the rat-kin to tempt and goad it towards the large stone den. It could smell more food within. There were doors. It knew what doors were. Food hid behind doors. If it had to, it would gnaw through the doors and eat them, but it was more fun to run at them and burst through. The food often had comical expressions on their face when it did that.
The rat-kin were lining up behind Ubermaus. The monstrosity would make them a hole and then the last building would be pillaged and the battle won. More rat-kin prepared their makeshift ladders to assault the sides of the fortress. Skweel Team 7, 8, and 9 were ready to throw grappling hooks and assault from the rear. Overloard MadSkweek Dreadklaw was leading from the rear, in the place of honor. His massive metal claw had been polished and his uniform was resplendent. Everything was ready!
Several rats with pointy sticks poked Ubermaus from behind and urging the rat toward the doors. It slowly picked up speed. Soon it would crash through the last obstacle.
Ben yelled, "3...2...1...NOW!" Many things happened at once.
Four of the workers hauled on ropes attached to the unbarred doors and opened them up.
Zephyr and Aliestair threw three sticky potions each at the entry way, as fast as they could. They blossomed into a huge patch of sticky webbing.
Not to be outdone, Squirmie hacked up a massive web-ball and spat it at the same place.
Adrianna threw rolls of ribbon that unwound in the air, creating a lacy black spider-web in the small tunnel area just past the open doors. And all four got the hell out of the way.
Several of the workers on the walls held incendiary potions Aliester had made and distributed. They waited to toss them at the giant rat, or down onto the rat-kin hordes.
Ubermaus hit the area and was slowed by the sticky mass of webbing. Slowed, but not stopped. It was too strong, and weighed too much. Adrianna’s ribbon-web held for less than a second before it snapped, but it also slowed the gigantic rat.
The final obstacle was a large, grinning butcher with one hell of a large, pointy stick. Ozzy had downed the potion Suzette gave him just before the opening curtain of this act. His muscles surged dangerously, but the gifts he had received from leveling to tier 2 took all of the horrible strength that the potion granted and channeled it correctly. This had been a huge gamble.
For while Suzette had given Themis and the other warriors potions that boosted STR and CON, Ozzy had downed a potent version of her Potion of Catastrophic Strength. Some testing had determined that it vastly increased the chance of breaking things and causing critical hits, possibly on the drinker, but usually to other people. Ozzy wasn't worried about the damage he was going to take in a few minutes from it. He doubted he was going to live through the first few seconds. He needed to really sink the spear deep into the rat to ensure the rest of the plan. After that, he figured there was a good chance he was rat food.
Rolly yelled, "Countercharge!" And Themis, Brandon, David, and Sir Timothy all triggered their various versions of the Countercharge ability that would slam a shield into a charging enemy and stop them in their tracks. Only Themis had even a slight chance of it working, but with all four of them hitting, they hoped to slow the rat down.
Ubermaus continued its mad charge. Ozzy tried to aim the massive boar spear at the rat's chest, next to the shoulder. This gave him the best chance of piercing the heart and lungs.
The potion had other ideas of how to help. Ozzy's foot slipped and the spear shifted, stabbing Ubermaus in the mouth. The rat's momentum drove it onto the spear which thrust up through its snout, took out its right eye, and crushed some of its skull before exiting. The sharpened timber drove itself up to the crossbar, which was almost swallowed by the large rat’s mouth.
The rest of Team Speedbump slammed into Ubermaus, cancelling the last of its momentum, leaving just its head sticking into the barracks and the remainder in the short tunnel formed by the thick walls.
The sound of chains and gears was barely heard over the scream of the monstrous rat as the pain hit its small brain. It was about to experience a lot more, as the portcullis slammed down onto it's back, trapping it in place. Rolly's plan had worked! Ubermaus was a Tier 5 Monstrosity. Three tiers higher than the charnel daemons, and tougher than an elite. Only Themis had fought anything like it before, and she'd had an army with her that time.
Ubermaus screamed and started eating the timber impaling it. Its back legs scrambled for purchase trying to lift itself up. Ozzy felt the thick wood he was holding in place start to crack.
Themis used her Commanding Voice to encourage her team. "Hit it! Hit it hard!" Her sword slashed out, leaving long gashes in the rat's hide. Losing its heavy fur coat in the fire had taken away a lot of Ubermaus' mitigation, but its tough skin still made it nearly impossible for David and Brandon to wound it. Sir Timothy did a bit more, his paladin abilities giving his strikes an added punch. He could feel his stamina dropping rapidly.
Jorges yelled something at the workers within the walls of the fortress. Any veteran of medieval castle sieges could have told Ubermaus he was someplace you really didn't want to be. The small tunnel past the castle gate was a killing zone that defenders prepared years in advance. Some of the strongest workers thrust sharpened metal rods into the rat's flanks through the murder-holes in the wall. If they had been trying to use them as spears, the damage would be pathetic, they couldn't use spears. But they were great at hammering in stakes. Ubermaus was probably as tough as the stone some of the workers broke into slabs. They used the same method here, slamming their heavy mallets time and again to drive the long chisels into its body.
Two other people got the fun part. Betty and Thelma were on the ballista. Jorges thought the toughest opponent to attack his little fortress would be something like the daemons. He'd prepared a bit of a surprise for them if they started pounding on the portcullis. Two ballistae were built into the walls and fired through murder holes in the stone. The iron headed, 3" thick darts punctured Ubermaus and drove into the monstrosity.
And still it wasn't enough. Ubermaus was pinned, but it still had two paws. One of those lashed out, its claws shredding David’s chest armor and disemboweling him. The rat tried to use its paw to swipe him into its mouth, but the timber Ozzy held was in the way. Ubermaus bit down on the timber and shook its head back and forth. Squirmie's webbing parted and Ozzy was suddenly swinging wildly at the end of the spear. He lost his grip and was thrown fifty feet to slam into the wall of the barracks where he slumped down into a pile.
That was more than enough to piss off Suzette who started throwing out Solar Arrows as fast as she could, aiming for the remaining eye.
Ben had little hope that either his whip or hand-crossbow would do the monster damage. He leaped down onto Ubermaus' back and shot four darts into its skin, barely penetrating. His whip wrapped around its other paw. This probably saved Themis from a nasty wound, but Ben was yanked off of the rat's back, landing on its snout. One hand gripping each of its hairy nostrils, he held on for dear life as the rat tried to toss him into the air and make him a tasty snack. Annoyingly, it couldn't seem to dislodge the courier by shaking him.
Paws were another story. When it couldn't shake Ben off, it used its paw to knock him off its snout and onto the floor, and in the next second a giant tongue flipped him into its maw and down into its gullet. Ben had only a moment before he died. He used it to grab the two incendiary grenades and trigger them. Fire belched from its throat and the rat squealed in agony.
Themis took advantage of the bad case of heartburn to thrust her sword into the rats remaining good eye. Everything went dark for the rat, and it roared. But its senses of smell and hearing were quite keen. The prey wouldn’t avoid it and it could heal the small wounds during a nap.
Brandon took a blow from a paw on his shield. His shield broke in half and he was knocked away from the fight. He staggered up, and then moved away. He'd had enough of nearly getting killed. He'd had enough of a lot of shit, actually. The rat was in bad shape, maybe it was time to take out a few of the people making him miserable and then get the hell out of this deathtrap.
Suzette was paying no attention to anything but the rat. She had thrown over a dozen Solar Arrows at it, and was running low on mana. Brandon's first attack came down heavily on her shoulder. It should have taken her in the neck, but at the last moment, she shifted to the side, avoiding the killing blow.
Brandon cursed his luck. He would have cursed a hell of a lot more if he had known that Suzette had twice his own health, and there was no possible way he was killing her in one hit. She turned on the ground, preparing to avoid his next hit. And then she smiled and started laughing.
"Damn you, woman. What could possibly amuse you about me killing you again?"
Suzette snorted, "Squirmie is a funny bug. I agree. Time to 'Keel Moose and Squirrel'. Goodbye, Moose."
Squirmie landed on the back of a very confused Brandon's neck. His six sharp talons bit into the gap in his armor under his helmet. Squirmie has very, very sharp claws with several levels of enhanced damage thanks to his symbiotic bond with his pet. As the butterfly beat his wings and lifted them both in the air, his talons cut through Brandon's neck, dislodging his head. His body dropped in front of Ubermaus, distracting it from killing Themis and Timmy for a moment.
Squirmie threw Brandon's head in the air, the light not quite faded from his astonished eyes. A long sticky tongue uncurled, grabbed the head, and Squirmie swallowed it whole. Ubermaus was not the only hungry monster around.
Ozzy had managed to stand up. Slamming into the barrack's wall had done nearly a thousand points of damage; not quite half of his health in just one blow. Ubermaus had double his STR, even with the potion he’d taken and burning stamina to enhance his STR. Plus, the monster was three tiers higher, enhancing its damage horribly. It had used the timber like a lever to throw him, and imbibing a potion that liked breaking things wasn’t helping matters.
He eyed the piles of timbers he’d landed on and picked out the biggest. Dragging it behind him, he started towards the rat. Themis saw him coming and triggered two of her remaining skills. One of them was I'm the one you need to worry about, a taunt that focused the rat on her. The other was By the Emperor's Will!, which let her hold her ground and reduced damage, but also made it impossible to retreat. This was the best fight she'd been in for a decade. She wasn't leaving anyway. She fended off two paw attacks and a bite as Ozzy charged.
Rolly was moving up from the opposite side, and Squirmie was stooping at high speed. Joseph was doing his best to heal Timmy and Themis to keep them in the fight, but he was low on mana.
Ozzy swung the huge chunk of wood in an arc that took advantage of the momentum from his charge, and slammed it down as hard as he could onto the rat's back. The make-shift caber he was wielding weighed 600 pounds. He slammed it onto Ubermaus' spine as close to the wound inflicted by the portcullis as he could. Push Onward and the Potion of Catastrophic Strength boosted his STR to 25. Without the benefits from Sculpted and Monstrous, he would have torn off his arms.
There was a sickening snap as the caber broke the monstrosity's spine and the caber snapped in half. The jagged end of the broken timber flipped high in the air, impaling Lori Lightingale on its downward arc as she was zapping rat-kin scaling the walls. She died instantly.
Ubermaus squealed in pain. Squirmie swooped down in front of the rat's wide-open mouth and breathed lightning into it, cooking it from the inside and stunning it. Themis took advantage of this to strike again at the creature’s eye, but still couldn't kill it. Ubermaus had a huge skull and an itty-bitty brain.
Rolly slashed the rat in its side, then ran over the top of it, coming down next to Ozzy. He was in full 'super-shepherd mode, barely recognizable as once human. He slashed the same spot twice, cutting through the monsters hide. "I'll slash, you stab, it's heart should be around there somewhere."
Ozzy took the jagged end of the broken caber and jabbed it into the hole Rolly made, working it in deeper and deeper. Themis and Sir Timothy had managed to cripple one of the paws. Blind, the rat was having trouble getting blows on them, and they kept their distance, darting in and out to slash at it.
The end came when Ozzy finally pushed the jagged end of the beam in to Ubermaus' huge heart. The rat convulsed, throwing them all a few yards away. His death throes shook the gate tower, bringing it down in ruins. Betty, Thelma, and a half dozen other workers died, buried in the rubble. Being the tallest point on the building, Aragoon the Ranger and McStabby the Rogue had been using that vantage to shoot rat-kin. They also died in its collapse.
The collapse sent a stone avalanche into the rat-kin horde, crushing dozens. But the remaining warriors squealed in excitement as they scrambled up the rubble and into the building.
Astounding! Your raid has managed to kill Ubermaus: A Tier 5 Monstrous Boss
All members of the raid group will receive EP, CSP, and treasure dependent on their contribution to the fight.
All members of the raid group also receive the special ability: Punching above your Weight Class.
Congratulations on living through Round 1: Ubermaus Snack-Time
Please Prepare for Round 2: The Horde Attacks!
The rat-kin that had paused as they heard the horrifying death scream of Ubermaus began to climb over the rubble and rush into the barracks.