<strong>Name;</strong>Zam Sharrow<br/><strong>Location;</strong>The Prancing Pony, Everesta<br/><strong>Time;</strong>Just after midnight<br/><strong>Tagged;</strong>Eldrith, Zachariah, Victoria, Kei, Mizuki, Ryuuga, One Metric Fuckton of Demons<br/><br/>Zam had been in a prime spot to witness the first flood of toads to stream through the door of the tavern. He suspected a glitch at first, but then the screams began outside, and something malign pulled against the ethereal senses accorded to him by his elfin blood and black magic training.<br/><br/>Demons.<br/><br/>He'd always believed in discretion being the better part of valour, and so he valiantly dived over the bar and hid. Three black arrows, oozing with some kind of diseased pus, slammed into the brickwork not a second after his dodge. He landed on the barman, who was already cowering behind the counter. He risked a peek over the surface, and was rewarded with a screaming toad-thing leaping towards his face. He yelled and recoiled, slamming into the shelves behind the bar, the demon landing in his lap. Huge canines began to grow in its mouth, and its skin started to sweat blood - that sizzled as it hit the shadowsilk of his armour.<br/><br/>He flicked it off his legs with a cry of revulsion, grabbed the nearest bottle, and pounded the creature until it died. He wasn't the most graceful or natural of fighters, but he'd been in plenty of bar brawls in his time and would do anything to win a fight intact. He felt his anger rising. Perfect timing.<br/><br/>He looked about himself, catching a glimpse of something under the bar, and laughed. "Of course you have one of those," he said to the barman. "Why the fuck not? You're a barkeep. I'm borrowing it."<br/><br/>"The hell you are! That's an expensive weapon!" he retorted. Zam dug around his satchel, and tossed a coinpurse at the landlord.<br/><br/>"Fine. I'm renting it."<br/><br/>He reached for the blunderbuss, finding it loaded and ready. He stood, seeing for the first time the carnage in the tavern in its entirety. The adventurers were giving the demons a hell of a hard time, but as yet there didn't seem to be any great diminishing of their numbers. The winged elf was flinging divine retribution spells at every demon within reach, burning them in the righteous fury of her pantheon, the dark elf was generally making today a bad day for any demon he could reach, and there was the Amazon knight, carving her way through the horde with all the apparent effort of going on a Sunday stroll. If his hearing wasn't deceiving him, there was also either a high-level NPC battlemage outside or a pissed-off adventurer. Eldritch shrieks floated down the stairwell - was that the necromancer making his presence felt?<br/><br/>He levelled the cumbersome rifle at a section of the tavern with relatively few remaining citizen NPC's, reflecting that the two or three left alive wouldn't be for much longer anyway, and he'd rather be killed by a blast of grapeshot than a demon any day. If he had to die at all, which wasn't high on his list of priorities. He pulled the trigger.<br/><br/>A bass<em><strong>boom</strong></em>roared over the noise of battle, sending a ravening cluster of shot into the horde. Hydrodemons squealed and humanoid demons screeched as they died or were wounded by the balls of lead. Zam's ears rang. "HA. Fuck you!" Demon archers turned their attention to the new threat.<br/><br/>"Ohshit." He dived for cover again as more diseased arrows pelted the shelving behind the bar. "Hey. Hey! Where are the powder charges for this thing?"<br/><br/>The barman looked bewildered. "What?"<br/><br/>"To reload the thing, you fuckwit!" Zam was struggling to keep a handle on his temper.<br/><br/>"I never... I mean, it's mostly for show. Trouble tends to calm down once they see it... I've never had to use it before. Not even when that pyromancer tore up the place!"<br/><br/>His fingers tightened around the weapon, his knuckles turning white, an expression of thunder on his face. He growled in frustration and threw the blunderbuss at the barman. "Have your fucking paperweight back, then!"<br/><br/>He looked back over the bar. Reaver demons and archers were advancing on the bar, using the toads as fodder for the adventurers spells and attacks. He ducked back down, and looked at the barman. "Run, first chance you get. You don't want to be here any more than I do."<br/><br/>He readied his shadow spells and drew his dagger. He couldn't think of a single situation he'd gotten himself into to match this one.<em>First time for everything...</em>