A small trickle of sweat runs down Kluhs' cheek as he stares at the massive creature in front of him. Watching the creature closely he seems to be trying to make a break for it as soon as the creature is distracted. As the scorpion appears he lunges away and towards the party longsword in hand. As he starts to sprint away he pulls up short looking at Antonin. "You, hey now is not the time ta talk business" He says as the sound of steel clearing scabbard and he turns to face the monsters.
OOC: The below assumes the correction occurs per the Celestia thread.
IC: Seeing Kluh hesitate, Grundun roared, "MOVE lad, we're coming but those things will chew you up for sure if you just stand there slackjawed!" He gestured once more toward his own direction and position.
Moony moves up to join you, having been momentarily distracted by an oddly dressed foreigner with a pet monkey.
To the southeast, the man near the laden wagon moves up to steady its horse. The goblin in the boat nearby moves up a bit to get a better look, as do the gnoll and half-orc by the dock.
Most everyone else flees. The child on the doorstep ducks inside. The boatman who had ferried the wolf's crate in takes up his oars and prepares to row away. The two men nearest the wagon dash past you, clambering over the crates in their way and giving Grundun a wide berth.
Their mad dash damages the crates, one of which was full of chickens, which begin to escape onto the docks.
The kobold, spotting an opportunity to loot, steps up to the crates, grabs a chicken, and begins stuffing lemons and tomatoes into his clothing.
A man standing near Jarl shrieks in terror, giving the woman standing near him a shove that sends her sprawling, then leaps into the water. The woman responds by drawing a pistol as she regains her feet and shooting him while he tries to swim away.
Nearest the wolf stands a large, shirtless man with impressively bulging pectorals. He picks up the anchor lying on the ground beside him, provoking the wolf to bite him savagely. The big man swings the anchor two-handed with surprising strength, but the weapon proves too unwieldy, and he smashes it into the wagon instead.
Meanwhile, the bald-headed orc, who is dressed as a shopkeep but wears a sword at his hip, screams in rage, drawing his short sword and stepping up to engage the scorpion. He plunges the sword into the giant vermin's back, sending up a spray of ichor. The blade is slightly deflected by the creature's carapace, and so misses any vital organs.
While the scorpion is a larger threat to the wolf, the man with the anchor is an easier target and standing in its way. It lunges, but stumbles awkwardly, its teeth closing on air.
Humming to himself brightly, Grundun concentrated, and then strode forward with a bit more energy. As he moved, he unlimbered his lucerne hammer from his back and took up a position nearby the wolf. He smiled pleasantly at the looting kobold as he passed it. A kobold after his own heart, no doubt.
To the man Kluh, who'd only recently been dangerously close to the wolf and now was obviously much more safe, being boxed in as he was by Grundun, the blond Dwarven warrior said comfortingly, "Just stay behind me lad, it'll all work out fine."
The old man scoffed at Kluh's declaration. "Ha," he retorted, dropping his accent in order to fit the man's earlier remembrance of him. "Give it a moment, and you just might disagree." With that, Antonin slapped his hat firmly down upon his head and moved a distance away from Kluh.
Safely out of listening distance, Antonin sized up the wolf, whispered an arcane spell under his breath and nonchalantly covered his mouth with his hand.
Antonin has not heard of this creature before, though it seems the likely sort of thing to be running around the mountains of his northern homeland.
He does recall a legend of a she-wolf, called Svanhildur, whose breath was the killing winter... the sort of winter that blew down from the mountains perhaps once a century, or once a decade in unfortunate times like these.
Svanhildur was the daughter of the highest mountain and the clouds that rested on its peaks. She was a lonely creature, for the wolves of the forest could not abide her and hid in their dens. She was once mated to a wolf of extraordinary fortitude, but when the time came for her to give birth, the cubs dropped from her womb frozen and dead and shattered on the icy floor of her barren den.
Her bitterness is born of sadness. She is a lonely, tragic figure.
This knowledge is of little comfort to those whose lives her terrible storms destroy.
Nor does this tell Antonin what this particular beast is, or if it has any facility with the common tongue.
Grundun Gemcutter
