ow

The caravan guards are rallying now they've gathered their wits.

"[Double Thrust]!"

    "[Armor-Piercing—"

Heat and light blooms from the right as something like a Fireball goes off.

The other fighters are worse than Blai, even accounting for Skills, but downsides of being a giant snake: lots of surface area for ouchies. They don't get in each other's way; every sword and spear makes it bleed.

"[Penetrating Shot]," someone shouts behind; someone next to Blai ducks, and an arrow sprouts in the basilisk's eye. It rears, hissing, and spits a fine spray of venom.

Only some of it gets on Blai's skin—it's a contact toxin, spreading a prickling, numbing sensation where it falls—but some of the others aren't as well-covered, or don't make their fort saves, and flag or fall to their knees.

It's pretty injured, though, and looks like it might be considering retreat.

He'll prep something for it in the morning. Thwack thwack thwack.

Despite the rude awakening, the sand basilisks are not, in fact, more dangerous than a lot of the demons you run into at the Worldwound. The snake gets a few more good swings in across the defenders, and manages to take out the elementals which are not what's doing the most damage but what it's most afraid of, but goes down to their efforts before it has the chance to repent of its life choices. Around the same time, the other one fighting to the right finally collapses, looking a bit roasted and full of holes.

But there was that third one, which was circling around the back, and not directly threatening the valuable cargo these caravan guards were contracted to defend.

It looks like the non-alchemist two-thirds of the Blai's temporary traveling party have teamed up with the two young men with shortswords, and are... not quite holding the last snake off, but slowing it down, at least. Tessane has the reach advantage with her glaive but isn't quite fast enough to fend the basilisk off while getting her own hits in, and the boys are barely trained and mostly trying to buffer her and distract where they can; the wizard, Veront, is staying in the back, forming and hurling bolts of light that look like they're doing as much as a Magic Missile.

Blai will keep fighting till there aren't snakes left.

...Yeah, the last snake will actually, like, try to leave, once it sees its friends are dead.

He will take tactical cues on whether to let it get away from the locals but if they're not chasing it it's time to get everybody Stabilized (via his Presence; he didn't actually prep it today as an orison) and channel at them.

They're not chasing the giant sand basilisk! In particular whoever cast the light spell that's still hanging in the air isn't sending that light after the fleeing snake, and even if someone wanted to take it on, they're not running out there in the dark.

There's six injured, three critically injured they're trying to keep alive, four dead including one partially chewed up, and eleven hit by whatever paralytic the snakes spit. And a chewed-up camel. In his [Stabilising Presence], wounds stops bleeding, adrenaline re-regulates, and airways clear and lungs inflate enough for their owners to maintain rattling breaths. It's not quite the same thing as "cast Stabilize on everyone in a radius", but it's something in that direction.

At his instruction, they'll drag everyone who might benefit from a channel into his radius and breathe a sigh of relief when they heal.

"I can do that again if necessary. They refill at dawn."

Two of the more worse-off ones aren't fully healed, but they're on their feet and examining their uncrushed ribcages in disbelief, at least. The poisoned ones are not improved, by the channeling, and aren't worsening but look a bit sickly.

One of the more well-dressed men from the caravan group comes up to Blai.

"Thank you, thank you... what's your name, ser? If you can do that—we owe you a debt, regardless. Loriat wouldn't have made it if not for you. And many more of us, I wager."

Blai didn't carry that fight, exactly, but is the closest to it among those who fought. The guards and the other contributors were... the equivalent rank of strength of a second-circle caster, at best, many of them closer to a first-circle, though it's hard to judge with Skills.

"I am Select Blai Artigas." He'll go drop a Guidance on everyone still badly off, though it doesn't help much with poison if you don't get it to them before the poisoning.

He is right now the Coolest Person in the camp and there's a lot of whispering and impressed-slash-awed looks as he makes a circuit. The place is noticeably emptier than what it looked last night; a bunch of people must have run off. Or been eaten silently before someone clocked the snakes.

The poisoned people are sat up by the rock face, with blankets over them. Some of them have recovered a bit of control over their extremities, but most of them are still fully paralyzed. It's hard to tell if Guidance helps.

The remaining guards are talking about setting up a redundant watch for the rest of the night. (They're not sure what happened to the last one; there's no sign of them or their body.) Sending a small team to scout the nearby area is suggested and vetoed.

A man in robes is standing under the light sphere that's still illuminating the area, and grimacing as he sips at a bottle of something murky and swamp-green.

The two guys who helped with the last snake are trying to start another fire with shaky hands. Actually they might benefit from a Guidance so they don't cut themselves on the flint.

Ilique is crouched near one of the snake corpses, draining dark-red blood from it.

Blai can Guidance the shaky guys. "Is the blood usable in an antidote or only for unrelated potions?" he asks Ilique.

"It's probably usable as an extractive base but not uniquely... I'm making an antidote right now, though. Speculatively. A lot of venomous creatures have self-neutralizing blood."

Guidance for her too. "Let me know if you want more of those, they don't last long."

"—oh! That's interesting. I'll ask you when I get to the actual brewing part. Thanks."

And she's got enough blood now, she's going to go digging for the venom glands.

"Is that going to be soon enough that I shouldn't go back to sleep?"

"More than half an hour, less than an hour and a half? Your thing won't affect whether I succeed or fail, just how many tries it'll take me, so you can sleep if you want."

He goes back to sleep.

[Cleric Level 10!]

[Skill – Lesser Resistance: Mental Obtained!]

[Skill – Dangersense Obtained!]

Maybe those Skills are common enough that he'll be able to learn about them from someone.

At dawn, most of the camp are still asleep, but the envenomed people are no longer propped up by the rock and are not in the row of corpses to the side; if Blai looks for them, they're sleeping back with their groups. Looking a bit pale, but maybe a channel will fix that?

The people who disappeared yesterday still haven't reappeared, so either they got eaten, or they ran and didn't look back.

There are two of the caravan guardspeople on watch, and Tessane and a few other miscellaneous people have woken up. The rest will start waking up one by one in the next hour.

Blai doesn't have time to more than glance around before he needs to be about his prayers.

The caravaners are having some sort of meeting over in their corner of the site, and glance at him a few times as if meaning to talk to him, but seem to decide not to bother him while he's praying. They do speak to Ilique, and then Tessane, and the supplies seller, and the other two men who helped out yesterday.