Hence my checking! I will say that you dodged.
Einar rolls 19, 16, 11, and 6... yeesh. Nothing having the top level in Both Guns Blazing and then employing the light pistol's double-shot function makes Einar's aim less stupendous... but those are very solid hits. His favored right-hand pistol sees to it that a pair of bolts striking your thigh for 17 damage! Ouch.
Remember that Fortune points can be retroactively spent to improve dodges.
You shoot back as Einar retreats through the doorway. A 16 finds your mark, hitting him for 6 damage. Skrall also gets a shot in, but misses. Einar vanishes into the throne room.
Arvus now enters from the rear, stepping over the bodies that now litter the Chamber of Patience. So many dead, Melkor...
"Where were you?!" Janus shouts.
"Watching my own hide," Arvus snarls. "I don't feel like getting shot up like all of your troops. Nice going on the massacre."
Skrall starts to say something, but Janus cuts him off.
"No time for this," Janus says. "We go after Einar. Melkor, you must be the one to kill him. It is how you become the Castellan."
The four of you burst into the throne room. Arvus has resorted to his bowcaster, you and Janus sport your noble pistols, and Skrall has drawn his nasty knife.
The throne room is darkened, blast shields drawn over the windows. The only source of light comes from the holographic display table that is charting a battlefield. Purple circles on the field represent the Erengardian soldiers, of which there are thousands. Bigger circles represent heavier artillery units or those bulky landspeeders. Massive red squares on the opposite end of the field of battle represent your AT-AT walkers.
But it is only the four of you in here. No sign of Einar.
"That equipment was destroyed," Skrall says. "My men had it."
As you move into the throne room, past the table, you start to remember some of your childhood. Sometimes your father would have his sons in here with him, telling you stories or showing you his responsibilities as Castellan. But there was one time... that he showed you a secret passage...
It is a Savoir-Faire roll to remember how it worked.
The four of you- Melkor in the lead, Janus just behind, Skrall after him, and Arvus at the rear- tumble headlong into the cold air beyond the door. You find yourself in the Rear Courtyard, behind the Palace. This is the place where Melkor was ambushed by his assassin by the fountain, and where the Great Maze is.
As soon as you emerge, shooters start popping out from all sorts of hiding places and open fire on your position. Skrall and Arvus start covering you, thick beams and rail charges zipping this way and that.
You catch a glimpse of Einar running into an entrance to the Great Maze...
The Great Maze is a labyrinth composed of hedges and stone walls that was built when the Palace of the Castellan was. It is breathtakingly beautiful and you have spent many an hour wandering through its outer paths. It gets more confusing as you head further in, and at the far end is a path into the mountains- one that has been blocked by your ancestor, Castellan Gwynplaine Esgabath, originator of the Esgabath line of Castellans.
You were, actually, showing it to your female companion from Solstheim earlier, before she departed for home and Einar tried to kill you in the fields. The last real moment of peace you had on Erengard...
"You know it better than I!" Janus shouts as part of the wall behind him explodes from gunfire, spraying hot powdered stone in your faces. "You get after him, we will cover your dash across the courtyard!"
"Aye, we'll move with you!" Skrall shouts, not turning his eyes away from a target that he blasts down. There is a whistle as Arvus fires off that railgun of his once again, taking a chunk of the fountain with it.
That sound... it still bothers you...