SchNGrBTwM

[1] I think our best defensive maneuver [...] WE go underwater [...]!

[3]

Being a vampire, this is actually pretty sensible.

Sure, your master never got round to actually teaching you how to doing all the really cool vampire stunts like turning incorporeal in sufficiently large bodies of water, or, for that matter, telling you much about how to vampire at all. Sure, you learnt the basics. Rest daily in your waters of origin, carry waters of origin to seed resting pools when you're travelling, don't get salt in open wounds.

Dumping your sword boots pack and armor on the boardwalk, you figure whatever didn't come up in your tragically-truncated childerhood should be the sort of things that comes naturally.

You stride confidently off the boardwalk, and into shin-deep mud. A glowing feeling* in the three-fifths of leg that is submerged in water instead of silt is your finely-attuned vampire senses warning you this is brackish water.

The black-eyed pipsqueak is nowhere to be seen. Something kicks you in the back of the leg, knocking you off-balance and face-first into the swamp.

Probably-the-same-something, you know, at a wild guess, sticks a knee in your back and shoves your head further into the muck.

You struggle with your assailant for a good five minutes, limbs failing to find purchase or momentum enough to land a blow. Their punching you in the head isn't helping matters any, and you're so deep in mud that you probably couldn't do the dissolve-y thing even if you knew how.

It's another two minutes of this nonsense before you figure an easier resolution; you do some suitably-theatric last-gasp struggling before falling limp. You get punched in the head a couple more times for good measure, and the weight eases off your back experimentally.

You let them spring clean away before hauling yourself from the mire; it's sluggish going and by the time you've dragged yourself out and faced the right direction the little prick (a merfolk, because of course it's a goddamn merfolk) is already trying your boots on. It looks more offended than you, no mean feat even if you are caked in swamp.

"When did you leggers start breathin' dirt?"

The only reasonable response is to spit out a chunk of mud. The merjerk is an ambiguous mass of richly-embroidered robe, the sleeves pushed back to its shoulders in voluminous plumes of pale-green and gold. Their limbs (a cooler, duller green against the bright notes of their garb) are splashed with mud, but their clothes are improbably clean considering your little bout.

You lunge at the thief, but the slippery bastard snatches up your sword and pack and leaps froglike onto a low branch. They're up in the canopy and well out of reach with a series of hops and scrambles, their ridiculous robes clearly no impediment.

You snatch up your armor and try pursue them on foot down the boardwalk, managing to keep pace with them until they notice what you're doing and go brachiating off at right-angles to your walkway. Fucker.

Weeeeelp. With your pack goes all your supplies of sewer water, which means you've got about half a day to either make it back to the Vrance Keep sewers (wherever the fuck that is relative to you), track down that asshole mer, or steadily and inexorably wither away due to not maintaining basic vampiric hygiene.

Also, you've got a splinter in your toe. Maybe two. Awesome. Great.

*It's like if you'd just eaten something very mildly spicy, with the full knowledge that capsaicin gives you really bad acid reflux.**

**Alternatively, it's like basking in a campfire at a comfortable distance, but the campfire is really unsubtle about how much it hates you.
[/3]