>>5392902>12 (injury sustained, spell broken and more mana lost)However, in spite of this blast being channeled through your open maw as a sort of “Moonblast”, you currently cast it, the energies are not so native to you as your own firebreath. It takes quite the expenditure of mana to focus the blast. This admittedly carries a lot less potential for collateral damage or catastrophic failure than dragonfire, but it also takes your attention away from the bugbears which now set upon you and the Junior Novice!
‘Junior’ fights them off valiantly, of course, taking full advantage of his increased size and ferocity to repel them with tooth and claw, tail and wing. This is all in service of himself and his own safety, though, not yours. He may cringe away from you, kowtow to your will, but he is no trained and loyal guard-dogbold, leaping to his master’s defence. Instead, using his strength to shuck them and his wings to glide away, the Junior Novice is quite eager to abandon this battle, as if sensing something subtly wrong with the foes. It isn’t long thereafter that you’re given the personal opportunity to assess this ‘wrongness’ more closely, yourself.
You’ve never before had the displeasure to wrestle one of the Bogbarri without a protective suit of armour. As two of them now tackle and grab for you, you are painfully reminded of the first name which your people devised for these mammals: barbed devils, for their keratinous spikes and bristles, hidden amongst their hair and bundled-fabric attire. Several of these barbs now puncture you like a pincushion engrappled with a porcupine. You are sent tumbling end over end as the grasp and cling to you, further skewering your vulnerable flesh—your natural armour can only do so much to protect you from their own.
You watch as the Novice Fleshweaver, Throat-singer, and Ivno all flee to safer ground at the opposite end of your constructed bridge. For your part, you leverage your greater size and mighty musculature to climb to your feet, shoving back your aggressors before they can club or cut at you with their weapons. This grants you a welcome reprieve from the stench of them. Bugbears are foul-smelling creatures at the best of times, but these examples of the race are possessed of a truly foul odour, the strength of which matches their uncanny strength of arms!
Wait, that smell…
