Wing Three

ADVENTURE 84: THE ICE PRINCESS, PART 1

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"I have gone through my notes and records, and I believe there's still a good chance that the Orb of White Dragonkind is to be found in the treasure hoard of a white dragon wyrm named Kerrarpalax," said the elderly sage sitting at the head of the table in one of the Adventurers Guild conference rooms. Guildmaster Farthingale sat immediately across from him at the other end of the table, while on either side sat the various members of Wing Three and a few of their cohorts. "He lairs in a cave network carved from a floating iceberg, high up in the northern seas," continued the sage, passing over a detailed ink sketch of just such an iceberg. "While the interior of his lair seems to be shielded from scrying, this should be an accurate enough depiction to allow you to get there via a greater teleport spell - and it will need to be that spell, as his lair is far enough away that a simple teleport spell won't be able to bridge the distance." Cal took the drawing from the sage and studied it intensely, while those on either side of him looked over his shoulder.

But this was no ordinary sage sitting at the conference room table - this was none other than the gold dragon Gorgoldand, recently rescued by Wing Three from the enchanted mirror in which he'd been imprisoned for a decade or so, currently in his human guise. The Wing Three adventurers were aware of his true nature, but they had neglected to add that into their after-action report to the Guild, and as a result Guildmaster Farthingale had no idea that Gorgoldand was anything but what he appeared to be: a white-bearded human of some 70 summers or so.

"These are some of my top adventurers," boasted the portly Guildmaster. "I'm sure they'll be up to the task, and will be able to retrieve the Orb you seek." He ushered Gorgoldand out of the room with a string of such assurances, handing him over to the care of a young Guild page who escorted him out of the Headquarters building. Once Gorgoldand was out of earshot, Farthingale confided to the team of adventurers, "You wouldn't believe the amount of money that old sage is willing to pay us if we can find that Orb of his! This has to be your top priority! With the cash he's willing to throw our way, we'll be able to fund the Guild for years!" He chuckled in glee at his good fortune.

Rale got down to the important details. "How much are we getting paid?"

"Get this," replied Farthingale. "He'll pay 20,000 pieces of gold to each Guild member willing to fetch him the Orb of White Dragonkind - provided you're successful, that is."

That was all Rale needed to hear. "I'm in!" he called out, looking at Cal.

"That suits me," Cal replied. "I've got a trading business I need to look after. Which reminds me," he said, turning to face Farthingale. "I'm not planning on quitting the Guild or anything, but I do think it's best if I move my goods to my own manor house. It'll make it easier as I start to get the hang of my new business ventures."

"But you'll still be my backup?" asked Rale, suddenly concerned that he might be headed into battle without a high-powered cleric of Kord as his own personal cavalry.

"Oh, certainly," agreed the cleric of Kord. "In fact, I'll wear a pair of the scout goggles, to keep an eye on what you're up to." He pulled on a set of the goggles, smiling amicably. "And I can cast a spell on you before you depart that will allow you to cast a small handful of my spells yourself - probably some healing, maybe a protection from evil for good measure."

"Excellent!" replied Rale, giving Cal a warm handshake to seal the deal - and then palming Cal's ring of protection as he did so, having already come to the lightning-quick conclusion that Cal's ring was over double the power of Rale's own; that Cal wouldn't likely be willing to loan it to him; and that the odds were in his favor that he'd be able to snatch Cal's ring without him even noticing. He was, incidentally, correct on each count.

"Well, I won't be coming with you this time," Dez said, looking at her employer. "I've already been killed once by a dragon; no need to repeat the experience. Plus, I want to work on that play - opening night will be here soon enough!" Rale didn't bother trying to argue with her; having been slain once by a kraken himself, he knew he wouldn't be overly eager to jump headlong into a battle with another of those beasts and could definitely understand Dez's justifiable sudden respect for dragons.

"Well, I'm in!" said Thunderwolf.

"And I," replied Telgrane. Those two were practically a given, as neither had a "bink-partner" as backup with which they had to share duties.

Chalkan looked across the table at Galrich, not all that eager to jump at the chance to battle a powerful white wyrm, but at the same time not exactly eager to broadcast his unwillingness.

"Dibs!" called out Galrich, and Chalkan gave an exterior nod of acknowledgement and an internal sigh of relief. Aerik said nothing; it was understood by all that if Galrich was going, then so was his loyal dwarven bodyguard.

"You'd better take this one," said Delphyne to the half-elven druid sitting at her side. "Without Cal, they'll need your healing spells more than anything I'd be able to contribute." Feron agreed.

The next hour or so was spent on planning, right there in the conference room. Between them, Chalkan and Cal would be able to provide enough resist energy spells to cast one on everyone but Aerik, who'd be given a protection from energy spell instead. Each of the spells, naturally, would be cast to protect its recipient from cold energy, since they'd be facing a white dragon. They'd each be under the effects of an endure elements spell as well, cast by those who would not be on the "strike team," so the spellcasters heading into battle would still have their full complement of spells at the ready. That made sense to Rale, but he still wanted to be outfitted with cold weather gear, on the off chance that a dispel magic spell or a zone of antimagic might strip away his protection. Galrich, Aerik, Thunderwolf, and Feron followed suit, and they all decided to get fitted for cold weather gear before heading out as well. After all, Gorgoldand had been imprisoned for nearly a decade, so it wasn't likely that another day's delay was going to make much of a difference.

So that evening, their planning done, their shopping done (they hit the magic shops and stocked up on some healing potions as well, and Feron spent a considerable sum on a wand of cure critical wounds), the group unanimously decided to get a good night's sleep and start their adventure fresh the first thing in the morning.

- - -

Delphyne cast the greater teleport spell, and the group collectively winced and squinted at the bright light suddenly bombarding them from all directions. They were on a flat sheet of ice that made up about a fourth of the iceberg's upper surface, with a slight downhill incline leading to a flat plane of ice directly in front of a wide cave opening some 80 feet away or so. "Good luck!" called out Delphyne, casting a duplicate of the spell she had just cast, returning her to Wing Three's central living area in the Guild Headquarters building.

The group was blinking furiously, getting accustomed to the polar light reflected by the snow and ice from all directions, when a whuff! of irritation announced that they weren't exactly alone. Telgrane was the first to notice that a large blob of whiteness directly in front of him was in fact a walrus of enormous proportions - easily 20 feet long from tusk to back flippers. It had apparently been sunning itself on the edge of the iceberg - for sure enough, there were waves lapping directly behind the young archmage, some 5 feet below the surface on which he stood - and did not exactly appreciate the sudden interruption.

Another snort from the left indicated that his mate wasn't thrilled at the sudden appearance of the adventurers either.

"Floatdisks!" suggested Telgrane over the Rary's telepathic bond spell he had cast on the group before teleporting in. He followed his own advice, stepping onto the drow-made shield and rapidly elevating it to a safe height. Infernia leapt upon his back as he did so, and it was always a comical sight to see a 9-foot-tall being composed of living flame towering over a relatively lanky human wizard while they both balanced on a shield-sized drow floatdisk, but despite her size Infernia only weighed a paltry 4 pounds or so. (If she wanted to, she could flare up to 16 feet tall with little effort, but 9 feet tall had proven to be a fair compromise between "large enough to keep most foes at bay" and "small enough to still be able to interact easily with her master.") Most of the others followed suit.

Feron, however, had other plans. Casting a speak with animals spell, she assured the walruses that the heroes were not there to hurt them, but rather to seek the dragon who laired on the iceberg. The response she got from the massive beasts could best be translated as "DRAGON?" - followed by a quite impressive waddling speed as the walruses dove over the side of the iceberg and into the polar seas below. Feron stepped onto her own floatdisk and joined the others.

Galrich and Aerik had skimmed forward, just over the surface of the smooth-as-glass patch of ice directly in front of the dark cave. It was difficult to judge distances in this all-white world, but Galrich was fairly certain that a wyrm would be able to fit through the confines of the cave opening. Rale wasn't as sure, though, and as the others followed Galrich's lead, he instead rode his floatdisk directly up, scanning the sheer ice cliff directly above the cave. Sure enough, it rose for what he guessed to be a good 60 feet before flattening out onto a ledge, beyond which was another ice cliff - and what looked like it might be an even larger cave. He started passing on what he had seen to the others over the mental link...

...but they were otherwise occupied, for stepping out of the lower cave stood a quartet of strange, humanoid figures. They were a bluish-white, with backs so hunched and gnarled they seemed to suffer from the worst kind of debilitating bone disease. However, they grinned evil smiles full of crooked teeth upon sight of the heroes and one of the said a short phrase in the Giant tongue, which Feron and Thunderwolf recognized as "Looks like lunch is here, boys!"

Telgrane cast a fireball spell smack-dab in the middle of the group of ice trolls, infuriating them immensely. Feron followed suit with a flame strike, which did more than infuriate them - it actually killed the two in the front ranks, who toppled over onto the ice, dropping their weapons in the process: a crude-looking hammer or club, and an intricately-carved greatsword of impressive workmanship.

The two remaining trolls had an interesting reaction to this obvious display of fiery spellcraft: one immediately dashed back into the cave, while the other took a step forward, tapped three times on the ice with the butt of his hammer-club, and then immediately followed suit.

"We've got them on the run!" exclaimed Aerik, skimming his floatdisk into the cave and pushing his way past the winter wolf pelts hanging from a bunch of metal pitons in the icy ceiling. He was immediately attacked by both trolls, who had positioned themselves to swing their weapons at anyone who might follow them into their cave. Aerik grunted in pain, but just barely managed to stay on his floatdisk.

Galrich, however, was at the same time gasping in surprise, for the ice beneath him suddenly exploded upwards and a mass of snakelike heads rose up out of the frigid water. Several heads snapped at him, one actually drawing blood and attempting to get the barbarian in a firm grip between its teeth - no doubt for an immediate plunge back underwater, where the aquatic cryohydra would have the definite advantage - but Galrich squirmed away from the snapping jaws at the last moment and remained free of the beast's wicked teeth. Feron and Telgrane hurled a couple of fire-based spells at it, and the dozen pairs of eyes goggled in astonishment at this sudden onslaught. It crashed down beneath the surface of the water and did not return.

Thunderwolf wasn't taking any chances that the two motionless ice trolls were actually dead. He shot arrows at each from his flaming longbow, grunting in satisfaction when neither one moved after being hit. Just to be sure, though, Infernia leapt off of her master's floatdisk and landed astride the two, doing a little hopping dance from one to the other, eventually setting the two ablaze. Then she jumped off before their bodies could melt through the ice, for the fire elemental had no desire to plunge into the icy waters below. Instead, she entered the cave to help Aerik finish off the ice trolls, leaving melted depressions of her footprints as she walked across the icy cavern floor.

It wasn't much of a fight, and Aerik was displeased to see that the trolls didn't have much in the way of treasure besides a few clean-picked bones and some smelly furs in a smaller cavern in the back they obviously used as a bunkhouse. Thunderwolf, however, had lowered his floatdisk to the surface long enough to pick up the greatsword the troll leader had been using. He had Telgrane give it a quick look with his arcane sight, and the auras of necromancy and transmutation looked similar enough to Galrich's recently-purchased axe for the archmage to state with full confidence that it was a vorpal greatsword. Xanthros said nothing as his master slid the new sword into place on his belt, perhaps not wishing to appear petty or jealous.

During this time, though, Rale had elevated himself to the height of the higher ledge. It was unoccupied, but certainly large enough to allow a white wyrm to laze about under the polar sun there if it so desired. Rale also noted the dimensions of this higher cave opening were more in line with the bulk of a wyrm, being about thirty feet wide and of equal height. He didn't like the look of the snowdrifts leading from the ledge partly into the darkened depths of the cavern; to test a theory, he let fly an arrow into the nearest of the snowdrifts. It slid silently into the snow and buried itself up to its feathers without hitting anything hidden underneath.

The others rose up to the ledge level, and the group had a silent discussion over their telepathic bond.

"Who's going in?" Rale wanted to know, his demeanor suggesting that he was certainly not volunteering to be the first to trespass into the lair of a white wyrm.

"Galrich, Aerik, what do you see?" asked Telgrane, partly stalling for time but also well aware that of their group of heroes, they were the only two with darkvision.

Galrich skimmed up to the cave entrance and peered inside. "It's about 40 feet wide, 60 feet deep," he reported back. "Ice cliff in the back rises straight up for about 30 feet. Ceiling's about 50 feet high here, taller in the back. Empty, far as I can tell."

"I don't like it," said Rale, nervously.

"I think I can hear breathing," added Feron, straining her half-elven ears. "Big, deep breaths, like a massive bellows."

"I'll send in some spies," suggested Telgrane, casting a summoning spell. Four ice mephits popped into existence, looked around, and apparently liked the environment in which they found themselves. Telgrane gave them their orders, and, wings fluttering, they entered the dark cavern. Once there, they gave the big open space a quick peruse before rising up to check out the ledge above. Not surprisingly, they discovered the massive, sleeping form of Kerrarpalax, resting in the middle of the upper ledge.

As quietly as possible, the ice mephits split up to check out the rest of the area. Behind Kerrarpalax, a side cavern dropped down 40 feet or so; this obviously served as the wyrm's hoard, as it was piled with coins, gems, and a few scattered weapons. One ice mephit dropped down to do a quick survey of the treasure, specifically looking for the white orb Telgrane had told him was the object of their search.

Another mephit found a wide tunnel leading down from the level of the upper ledge; he found it to be large enough in diameter to fit Kerrarpalax's gargantuan form and went exploring to see where it might lead.

The other two mephits didn't get a chance to do much exploring, for at this time Kerrarpalax gave a mighty influx of breath as he suddenly awoke, having picked up the sounds of the mephits' wings as they flew past. He went from a sound slumber at one moment to full alert in the very next, springing to all fours and spreading his wings out wide. He gave a massive roar of outrage, causing the mephits to freeze up in terror. Out on the exterior ledge to his lair, the wyrm noted a handful of adventurers give a sudden start at the fierceness of his roar, and spent less than a second deducing their likely intentions before leaping from the ledge, gliding down to the front of his entrance cavern, and blasting the group with his frozen breath.

Fortunately, the heroes' precautions prevented much of the damage from getting through, but only Rale managed to avoid any kind of damage altogether. He also took the opportunity to slide his floatdisk around the corner of the cave entrance, out of view of the dragon, and activate one of the powers of his rod of thievery. Immediately, he disappeared from sight as an aura of invisibility cloaked his features; only Telgrane, who had recently upgraded his magical eyesight yet again to include a permanent see invisibility effect, was able to still see the rogue.

But Telgrane had other things on his mind at the moment. He unleashed one of his most powerful spells, sending a meteor swarm streaking at the angry dragon, hitting Kerrarpalax straight in the face with his flaming missiles. The dragon bellowed in pain and raced forward, snapping out at Galrich who had the misfortune of being the closest within range, tearing into the barbarian's body with its dagger-long teeth. Galrich allowed his rage to fly forth at this attack, and started striking back at the wyrm with his vorpal war axe, hoping to sever the dragon's head from its shoulders as he swung his blade in fury.

Feron cast a finger of death at the wyrm, but the spell failed to penetrate past the dragon's inherent spell resistance. Another flame strike followed immediately, this one managing to scorch the dragon severely. Snarling in increased fury, Kerrarpalax was forced to spend time during his battle casting a defensive spell, shielding him from fire-based attacks. He hated having to waste his time on such measures, but he reluctantly came to the realization that it was a necessary evil, for the fire spells were rapidly taking their toll on the massive wyrm.

While the spellcasters were busy flinging spells at Kerrarpalax, Galrich and Aerik were doing their best to carve into the dragon's thick hide with their axes. Thunderwolf hung back, shooting arrow after arrow into the beast's hide, his magical longbow causing each arrow to burst into flame in flight.

"I could use yer vorpal sword about now!" called Aerik over his shoulder to Thunderwolf. "Mebbe we can cut the head off this beastie!"

"Come back here and get it, then!" called back Thunderwolf, not slowing the pace of his archery at all. "I'm kind of busy!" Aerik grumbled, but continued swinging his axe at the dragon, unwilling to leave his liege to face the wyrm in combat alone for even a moment.

Kerrarpalax roared in pain again as a polar ray struck him. Normally, he'd have been immune to the effects of the magical ray of pure coldness, but Telgrane had used his arcane training to convert the cold energy to electricity as it left his fingertips. The dragon, protected though he was from cold and fire, had no defenses against electrical damage once the spell had made it past his inherent spell resistance. Kerrarpalax then did what he had vowed he would never do, but he was rapidly running out of options - these adventurers would likely kill him in less than a minute if things kept up the way they were going.

"Mistress!" the white wyrm called out in the Draconic language. "I seek your immediate assistance!"

Several of the Wing Three heroes understood the Draconic language and translated over the link for the benefit of those who didn't. This brought immediate gasps of shock among the heroes, for Kerrarpalax had been one of the toughest opponents they'd ever faced to date, and the thought that it was merely a guardian for an even tougher opponent caused no small amount of concern. But they saw no one else, and so concentrated their efforts on the one foe they knew they had to defeat.

Rale, however, saw an opening between the dragon's body and widespread wing, and dashed through the span on his invisible floatdisk. He looked around the cavern for any other foes, but saw only two of the ice mephits returning back from their explorations to give their findings to Telgrane. However, he did hear a feminine voice speak a few arcane syllables from somewhere off to the side of him, and whipped around to find the speaker, in vain.

The spoken syllables, however, had an immediate effect. The snowdrifts at the cave entrance - where Kerrarpalax was even now giving his final, defiant roar of fury as his lifeless body crashed to the ground - warped and swirled and took on a stocky, draconic shape. It was only about half the size of the slain Kerrarpalax, with a much smaller neck, but it charged forward at Thunderwolf, who desperately tried dodging back out of the way. Telgrane, originally convinced that this snow dragon was a clone of the white wyrm they had just slain, soon revised his estimate as the animated snow creature was quickly put to rest. It had been nowhere near as tough an opponent as Kerrarpalax had been.

But now new enemies were approaching. As the remaining ice mephits reported their findings to Telgrane, two man-shaped chunks of ice broke free from the back ice cliff, and the ice golems shambled forward to engage the heroes. Rale had heard the same voice give the command that freed the ice golems and set them forth on their mission, but still didn't see anyone. "We're facing a spellcaster!" he called to the others over the link, not wanting his voice to give away his position. Just to be safe, he backed his floatdisk over against the back wall, so nobody could sneak up on him.

Feron cast a simple detect magic spell in the entrance cavern to see if she could see any magical auras and while she didn't find any, her scrutiny along the back wall allowed her keen half-elven vision to spot a dark shadow about 30 feet up. This shadow was about the right size and shape for a normal doorway; elevating her floatdisk high enough to see into the carved depression, she saw an amazing sight: a human woman with pale skin, clad only in an elaborate headdress, sitting upon a throne carved of solid ice depicting white dragons surrounding her and bowing before her. "She's up here!" Feron called to the others.

Telgrane wasted no time determining the possible intentions of this new player in the mix; he cast a wall of fire directly across the throne, covering the icy seat and the woman seated regally upon it.

Dardonelle, the self-styled Ice Princess, stood up from her throne in irritation. Granted, her thrall Kerrarpalax had kept the intruders busy enough for her to cast a great number of defensive spells upon herself, among them a protection from energy spell that temporarily shielded her from all fire damage, but she didn't want to have it leeched away by remaining in the wall of fire for longer than necessary. And, on a more practical front, it was difficult for her to see through the dancing flames. So she stood, spoke the words to a dimension door spell, and instantly reappeared at the top of the ledge where Kerrarpalax had recently enjoyed the last sleep of his lengthy life.

Her foes were currently few in number, for Thunderwolf, Galrich, and Aerik had stayed behind out on the ledge, not only for the archer to pass over the ice troll's vorpal greatsword to the dwarf, but for Aerik to start systematically chopping away at the slain Kerrarpalax's neck. Galrich had gotten it into his head that the wyrm's head had to be cut off to prevent it from being reanimated (having fought it once while it was alive, he had no desire to have to fight it again while it was dead), and the loyal dwarven bodyguard was more than willing to follow through with his liege's wishes, especially if it meant testing out the properties of a powerful melee weapon. That left only Telgrane, Infernia, and Feron as apparent adversaries, for Rale was still cloaked in invisibility along the back wall, but was rising his floatdisk up to a higher level.

Thunderwolf surprised the wizard by sending a fusillade of flaming arrows headed her way. He, in turn, was surprised to see them strike her body and deflect off in various directions, without any seeming actions on her part.

Infernia made a sudden decision and didn't wait around for her master's orders. She jumped off the back of his floatdisk, leaping at the Ice Princess and wrapping her fiery arms around the female spellcaster in a bear hug. The fire elemental was surprised at the coldness of her opponent's skin; Infernia was used to most everything around her being colder than her own flames, but the wizard's skin was much cooler than that of her master's, or of any other living thing she had encountered. She passed this information on to her master, and Telgrane immediately started harboring suspicions that the wizard might be undead. Suddenly, Galrich's concerns about removing Kerrarpalax's head didn't seem so far-fetched.

Down below, though, Galrich had lost interest in his own project once he saw the ice golems approaching and an opportunity for combat. Calling back to Aerik to finish the draconic decapitation job (which he had been helping with, wielding his own vorpal axe), Galrich leapt back onto his floatdisk and raced over to meet the closest ice golem in combat. Aerik looked over with some concern, then saw it was a mere two shambling automatons at a hulking 9 feet tall each - nothing his liege couldn't handle. And Thunderwolf was already shooting flaming arrows into the broad chest of one of the golems. Without a word, the dwarf went back to cutting his way through the dead dragon's thick neck.

Arms pinned at her sides, Dardonelle tried escaping from Infernia's grasp, but failed. But no bother; she didn't need her spells to defeat such an opponent. She sucked in her breath and blasted a wide cone of frost directly into Infernia's face, catching Telgrane in the blast as well. Infernia, surprised, loosened her grip enough for the Ice Princess to step back out of her grasp. Telgrane nearly fell off his floatdisk, but kept it steady at the last moment, his mind now entertaining thoughts that their foe might be a half-dragon, despite a lack of any outward draconic features.

Feron, seeing how successful Infernia had been at grappling the nearly-nude wizard - for the druid could see various patches of thick ice adhering to Dardonelle's body, enough to make a bare minimum nod towards modesty - decided to up the scale a bit and cast a summon nature's ally spell. A blast of flame behind the Ice Princess marked the appearance of a huge fire elemental, who immediately tried the same trick, grabbing at the wizard's body with wide-stretched arms. But Dardonelle had learned that this was not the best position from which to have to fight, and ducked under the flaming limbs. She countered with a mass hold monster spell. Telgrane and Feron both shook off the effects, but the more immediate threat - the two fire elementals - was temporarily dealt with, for they stopped all movement but the involuntary flickering of their flaming forms.

Feron cast a call lightning storm spell, dropping a bolt of electricity down upon the Ice Princess. However, it arced away from the intended target at the last moment and struck the astonished druid instead. Feron gritted her teeth in fury at having had her own spell directed back at her, but dutifully passed on the information to the others over the mental link that their foe was shielded from directly-targeted spells.

By this time, Aerik had finally cut through Kerrarpalax's neck and Galrich and Thunderwolf had made short work of the first of the ice golems. Shards of ice exploded across the cavern as Galrich's axe finally shattered the golem's torso into pieces beyond number - the act even more impressive considering the half-orc had been temporarily blind while doing so, having taken ice shards to the eyes at the beginning of the golems' attack. With a grin, though, Galrich felt his eyesight returning and turned to face the second ice golem. Thunderwolf changed targets with his longbow as well, and Aerik looked over, glad to see they had left one for him to help destroy. He jumped back onto his floatdisk and skimmed over towards the remaining golem.

Above them, Dardonelle the Ice Princess stood flanked by fire elementals looming motionless above her, while Telgrane and Feron floated on their magical disks above the cavern below. Unseen, Rale was at the same level as his two companions, invisibly shortening the distance between him and their alluring young opponent. Tactics and counter-moves flashed across everyone's mind as they eagerly sought out the best way to defeat their foes....

- - -

...and that's where we left off, as Jacob had an appointment he had to go to, so we quit the game session at 5 PM. I had already figured this would likely be a two-session adventure, so I wasn't concerned. But we did what we always do when we have to pack up in the midst of a battle: we marked the positions of each character in pencil on the back of the desk calender that was serving as our geomorph, I put a rubber band around the initiative card deck so we'd be able to pick up next time exactly where we left off, and of course I still have my tracking sheets showing the relevant info on hp status, spells in effect, etc. for both my enemies and the PCs. When we start up next time, I'll do a brief recap and remind everyone about their PCs' current hit point status and which spells are active on which PCs.

Kerrarpalax started combat with 445 hit points, easily the most hp of any creatures the PCs have yet faced in this campaign. He didn't last as long as he would have had he been able to prepare some defensive spells up front, but then I knew that the time spent with him combating the PCs was time that Dardonelle would be able to put to good use, and she entered combat with half a dozen protective spells already cast. I'm often surprised at how short a time a foe I've built for the PCs to fight lasts in actual combat with them, and frequently tell myself after the fact that I probably should have bumped the creature's AC up first, or did this, or did that. This time, while building Dardonelle, I found myself wanting to weaken her a bit, thinking how tough she'd be to beat with that high of an AC, and that many defensive spells in effect, and so on. But I resisted the impulse, figuring the PCs need a truly tough fight every once in a while. So we'll see how it all works out.

ADVENTURE 84: THE ICE PRINCESS, PART 2

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Dardonelle the Ice Princess stepped away from the looming arms of the two fire elementals towering above her, each frozen motionless but for the flickering of their flames by the mass hold monster spell the frost mage had cast. Steam rose up from the feet of the elder fire elemental as its immobilized body melted away the ice floor of the cavern on which it stood, the water pooling at its feet and being vaporized from the heat of its body. The process was painful for the fire elemental, for the brief contact with the liquid water ate away at its flames, but there was nothing it could do but continue struggling in vain to escape from the Ice Princess's mental command to remain immobile. Infernia, having spent months learning not to burn things by actively decreasing the heat from the area she wished to contact solid objects (and due to the ring of fire protection her master had given her), was having no such similar problems with melting ice, but she struggled mightily against the spell as well, to no avail.

Down in the lower cavern, Thunderwolf and Galrich were making quick work of the second ice golem, the former with his flaming arrows and the latter with broad applications of a vorpal greataxe and a barbarian's rage. A final grunt of effort and the half-orc's weapon split the golem's body in twain, ice shards exploding out behind it as its upper half toppled onto the cavern floor and shattered.

Feron, hovering on her drow floatdisk 30 feet above the lower cavern, pulled a little-used item from a pouch at her hip and tossed it towards the Ice Princess, calling out a command word as she did so. The little figurine landed by Dardonelle's feet and expanded into a Huge constrictor snake - a modified rope of constriction in serpentine form. It bit at the Ice Princess as the first step in entangling her, but she dodged nimbly out of its way, her bare feet uncannily steady on the slick surface of the ice. She turned to face the constrictor, moving her hands as if to cast a spell at it - when she was suddenly grabbed from behind by a pair of powerful arms made of solid flame; the elder fire elemental had finally freed its mind of the Ice Princess's spell and caught her up in a bear hug, lifting her from the floor.

"What are you?" snarled Dardonelle to the intruders at large. "Dragonslayers, come to take the head of my dragon? Then take it and begone! Treasure seekers? Its treasure lies yonder in that pit - I have no use for it. Or are you just plunderers, here to infiltrate my home and rob me of my belongings?" She spit in disdain, the spittle hitting Infernia's still-immobile form and evaporating in a little puff of steam.

Infernia wasn't going to take that from an enemy spellcaster, especially one who had tried to harm her master. True, she was immobilized and still frozen by the frost mage's mass hold monster spell, but she didn't have to move to mentally activate the ioun stone still whizzing around her head. Her master had been wise indeed to fill it with two combat spells! She sent a scorching ray screaming towards the body of the Ice Princess, groaning internally to herself as the spell missed.

Telgrane, also balanced on a floatdisk, tried a similar approach, casting a cone of cold at the Ice Princess, but using his archmage training to not only convert the cold energy to electricity but also have it avoid the space taken up by the elder fire elemental. As this spell wasn't targeted directly at Dardonelle - although the end results of Telgrane's spell modification made it all but so - it was not reflected back at him, and the archmage grinned at the grunts of pain his spell invoked in the group's mutual enemy.

"We're here for the Orb," answered Telgrane.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," snarled Dardonelle in reply. Rale, meanwhile, had made himself invisible again and flew over the struggling combatants to get a good look of the treasure pile of the slain dragon Kerrarpalax for himself. He didn't see anything like an orb of white dragonkind among the dragon's treasure, but he smiled in appreciation at the many gemstones scattered along the treasure pit's floor.

Infernia, still immobilized by the spell, tried casting the only other spell stored in her ioun stone. With a mental push, a series of magic missiles went screaming from the stone to the Ice Princess's body, only to reverse direction at the last minute and go slamming into Infernia's fiery body instead. Infernia silently shook off the pain and understood why she usually left the spellcasting to her master....

Feron, seeing the problems her summoned fire elemental was having with the melting ice, cast another spell to summon an elder earth elemental at the base of the ice cliff on which the Ice Princess stood, still struggling to escape the fiery grasp of her foe. But then Dardonelle suddenly ceased her attempts to escape, her mind cleared of the frenzied panic of face-to-face combat, and she spoke a simple word to a spell, sending her immediately...elsewhere.

"Crap--teleport!" cursed Telgrane.

"Or maybe dimension door," reasoned Feron. "She might not have gone that far. Everybody look around." Rale immediately followed Feron's advice by lowering himself down into the treasure pit and getting a much closer look at the valuables stored therein.

Thunderwolf floated his magical disk over to the Ice Princess's throne, still blocked by Telgrane's wall of fire spell. At the fighter's request, Telgrane dismissed his spell and Thunderwolf looked at what once was an ornately-carved throne of ice, flanking its user in fearsome-looking dragons - and what was now a featureless lump of mostly-melted ice. He looked around for secret passageways, finding none. Telgrane followed, using his magical vision to look around, and immediately spotted a vertical shaft directly above the throne, rising up some 20 feet or so. He flew up to investigate; the others opted to allow him to face any dangers there alone, confident that his immediate screams for assistance would alert them if they were needed. In the meantime, Rale searched for secret passages from the treasure pit, absently pocketing a gem or two (or a dozen) as he did so.

Feron, meanwhile, was curious as to the diagonal tunnel leading down from the higher level of the ice cavern where they had been fighting the Ice Princess before her sudden disappearance. According to the ice mephit who had explored it and reported back to Telgrane, it continued down at an angle for some distance before being flooded with water. Wildshaping into the form of a water elemental, Feron slipped down the tunnel, which she observed was easily wide enough to accommodate Kerrarpalax's massive body. She hit the frigid water and submerged, exploring the underwater cavern in which she found herself. It led to a spot directly under the sheet of ice upon which they had fought the ice trolls below, for the hole from which the aquatic cryohydra had attacked Galrich was visible just ahead, and the slain beast's corpse lay just below the hole in the ice, where it had fallen. Over in the opposite direction, Feron found a smaller cavern which had apparently been the cryohydra's lair, and the druidess surmised the tunnel was merely a "back door" which Kerrarpalax might have used to exit his cavern through the pool of water rather than through the upper-level cave entrance. She exited the water, resumed her half-elven form, and returned to the others.

Telgrane, meanwhile, had found in the level above the throne a mere 10-foot-by-20-foot room, its walls apparently carved into maps of the local area, with colored gemstones marking what he assumed were cities, towns, and villages. (He was partially correct; while the red and green gemstones did indeed represent towns and villages, the blue ones depicted white dragon lairs the Ice Princess had discovered during her explorations of the arctic environs.) Nothing appeared magical to his enhanced eyesight, until he turned to look back the way he had come - specifically looking for hidden runes that might shunt him, say, naked to the Ethereal Plane - and saw the glimmer of a magical aura peeking out from a small cubbyhole down at foot level. Bending down, he saw a spherical form and was convinced he had found the orb of white dragonkind, until he grabbed it and pulled it out to him, discovering in the process that it was merely a hemisphere, not a full sphere, and it had a small, half-cylindrical projection along one side of the bottom.

It was, in short, an igloo the size of a crystal ball.

Why in the world would she have a tiny igloo--? thought Telgrane, before realization struck: this was likely similar to their own Daern's dollhouse, and if that was the case.... With an evil grin, the archmage held the igloo in his hands and shook vigorously, hoping he was sending a tiny Ice Princess bouncing from wall to wall inside. Then, realizing that if it were indeed like their own device the interior gravity plane would have no bearing on what was happening to the outer container, he brought it with him and returned to the others in the lower ice cavern.

Puzzling over potential command words, Telgrane tried the one their own dollhouse used, but speaking aloud "minimus" had no effect. He tried a couple other possibilities, before Rale took it from him, turned it over, and held it just right in the light from Infernia's flames, where the word "frigidius" could be made out engraved on the bottom. He handed the igloo back over to Telgrane with a look that said that maybe archmages spent just a little bit too much time on fancy "book-learnin'" and not enough on basic common sense.

There were two schools of thought about how best to proceed. Rale was all for the group entering the igloo of the Ice Princess and tracking her down, while Telgrane argued that they should try casting dispel magic on the igloo, since a successful disruption of the igloo's magic should sent the Ice Princess back out to the ice cavern, where she'd find herself surrounded by her enemies - although that no longer included the elder fire elemental or the ice mephits, all of whom had returned to their native planes by then. Feron was sorely tempted to try out one of her most powerful spells, elemental swarm, eager to see Dardonelle be shunted into a ring of powerful fire elementals, but the lengthy casting time had her opt to channel the energy for that spell into a summon nature's ally spell (the most powerful of its kind), and within seconds an elder earth elemental stood among the group. The heroes arranged themselves in a rough circle around the igloo (Feron noted with a small smile that not only was Rale at the outer edge of the circle, but also that Telgrane had taken a protective step behind Infernia), and then the druidess cast a greater dispel magic spell upon the igloo.

The results were immediate, and more than the heroes had bargained for: not only did the Ice Princess appear before them, as intended, but apparently she had also summoned the aid of a saber-toothed tiger and an ice devil and had a snowy owl as a familiar, for these three creatures appeared at her side. And that wasn't all, for everything that wasn't a part of the actual structure of the igloo's five-story internal structure also suddenly manifested in the middle of the ice cavern, and the heroes found themselves fighting amongst scattered crates and barrels, a bed and dresser, a winter wolf pelt rug, various bits of alchemical apparatus, a dining room table and four wooden chairs, a metal birdcage, and assorted wizardly paraphernalia.

Fortunately, despite all of the chaos, the heroes had made themselves ready for the Ice Princess's sudden appearance, whereas it was quite a shock to the inhabitants to suddenly find themselves shunted into the lower ice cavern of Kerrarpalax's lair. Telgrane cast a modified delayed blast fireball (hold the delay) that slew Dardonelle's familiar Whitefeather and the saber-toothed tiger in an instant. (Feron saw the tiger transform into a small figurine and, according to the long-established Wing Three custom, called out "Dibs!" in the heat of battle.) The archmage was momentarily surprised to see the ice devil shrug off the blast as well as did the Ice Princess, and although he knew from prior experience that she was apparently protected from fire damage due to a protection from energy spell, it took him a moment to recall that devils - even those obviously more suited for an arctic environment, like the one they faced now - were immune to fire.

Galrich, Aerik, and Thunderwolf were all positioned in such a way to make the ice devil the closest target and they tore into it with a savage bloodlust that surprised even the coldest-hearted of the denizens of Baator. In mere moments it was peppered with arrows and wore deep gashes carved into it from two separate vorpal weapons. Rale snuck up behind it and gave it a crippling stab deep into its vitals. Thunderwolf finally took it down with another barrage of arrows, and then the Ice Princess found herself once more fighting alone. As the massive earth elemental bore down on her, attempting to catch her in yet another grapple, she teleported to the upper cavern, away from the circle of enemies.

Rale did a quick perusal of all of the gear that had shown up when the igloo had been dispelled and failed to find the orb of white dragonkind among the various goods. Then he looked up at their foe, standing confidently down at them from the upper ledge, and did a quick estimate of how much could be stored underneath the icy headdress she wore. Realizing that anyone who owned such a powerful magical device would likely wish to always keep it at hand, he called out to the others over the Rary's telepathic bond, "The orb's in her headdress!"

As if in confirmation that the Ice Princess still had control over white dragons, a familiar reptilian form popped up, dripping wet, from the diagonal tunnel leading down from the upper ice cavern. This dragon was smaller than Kerrarpalax, but the heroes were getting low on their spellpower by now and having another foe of this size and power was a somewhat demoralizing effect. "Kill them, kill them all!" commanded Dardonelle, pointing down at the assembled heroes.

The dragon did its very best. It flew to the edge of the ledge and let loose with its frosty breath, catching most of the heroes in its area of effect. But then Thunderwolf saw that he now had another target for his bow, and let fly with a series of flaming arrows. Galrich and Aerik flew up to the upper level on their floatdisks, Rale following suit after returning himself to invisibility. Telgrane flew up on his carpet of flying, dropping Infernia off to attempt to grapple the Ice Princess, since she was so heavily shielded from spells that that had been their most effective tactic to date. Not wanting to be grappled yet again, Dardonelle cast a chain lightning spell at Infernia, having it arc off to hit most of the other heroes and their summoned allies as well. She also tried casting a flesh to ice spell at Telgrane, hoping to have him fall and shatter to the lower level below, but he shook off the spell's effects.

The old white dragon was finally pummeled to death by the massive fists of the elder earth elemental, but not until after having done a fair amount of damage to Galrich, Aerik, and even Telgrane with its teeth and claws. But then the Ice Princess was again surrounded by her foes, and it was only a matter of time before she too succumbed to their numerous attacks. Telgrane by this point had surmised that she had no particular protection against electrical attacks, and cast a modified cone of cold (cold energy converted into electricity, shaped to avoid his allies in the area of effect), and she finally fell, lifeless, to the floor of the ice cavern, the difference in coloration between the icy floor and her own icy flesh somewhat difficult to discern.

Removing the headdress from the Ice Princess, Rale was pleased to see that he had been correct and that underneath it was a pearly-white orb the size of a crystal ball. Holding it triumphantly in his hands, his mind was feverishly calculating the estimated values of Kerrarpalax's treasure hoard, plus the valuables that had popped out of the igloo of the Ice Princess, plus the 20,000 gp each promised by Gorlgoldand....

Rale flashed a wide smile to the other members of his team. "Let's gather up the goods and get on home," he said. "I can't wait to cash this baby in!"

- - -

As is often the case with my adventures, this one went slightly differently that I had anticipated. The igloo of the Ice Princess, despite being igloo-shaped on the outside, was a five-level sphere on the inside, and I had envisioned the heroes going inside to fight Dardonelle there. Naturally, I had done up geomorphs for each level of the igloo, and I made them out of more durable cardboard this time rather than the desk calendar paper I usually use. So I was a little sad to see the players all decide to just flush Dardonelle out with a greater dispel magic spell and not explore the igloo's interior at all. But all that effort wasn't necessarily wasted, as the igloo was part of their treasure, and they may end up using it themselves on future adventures, in which case I'll be glad to have made the geomorphs.

ADVENTURE 85: KRAGGOTH, LORD OF STONE

PC Roster:

NPC Roster:

"I tell ye, 'e's a durned fool!" exclaimed the dwarven visitor to the Adventurers Guild Headquarters. "If 'e's not careful, 'e could blow the whole blasted city sky high with 'is carelessness!"

Rale frowned at the dwarf sitting across from him in one of the conference rooms scattered about in the Headquarters building. He was no expert on magic, but he wasn't aware of any spells quite that powerful. Hopefully the dwarf was just being melodramatic.

Arvath Stonecrafter had approached the Guild that morning with an unusual story. It seems he had recently been hired by a human wizard named Kraggoth to help him identify the properties of an enormous hunk of stone the wizard had unearthed during his explorations in a cavern system underneath the nearby mountains. Arvath immediately recognized the rock as a chunk of fluxstone, a dangerous but naturally-occurring gem that warps magical energies in the immediate vicinity. (Indeed, most rods of wonder – including the one owned by Feron – contain a core cylinder of fluxstone to help shape their chaotic abilities.)

Despite warning Kraggoth that using a chunk of fluxstone that size for magical experiments was inherently dangerous, the wizard ignored the dwarf's repeated warnings, sticking by his intentions to incorporate the fluxstone into his keep's defenses and dismissing Arvath from his service. (Worse yet, he refused to pay the dwarf the consulting fee he had been promised.) In desperation, Arvath had approached the Adventurers Guild, hoping there might be a wizard there who could talk some sense into Kraggoth.

"So this Kraggoth, what is he like?" asked Delphyne. She and Telgrane, as arcane spellcasters, had been drafted into this discussion as potential "sense-talking Guild wizards."

"Frankly, 'e's a bit o' a loon," replied Arvath. "'E's a human, like you two" - and here he pointed towards Rale and Delphyne, giving Telgrane an appraising assessment before apparently discarding him from consideration - "but 'e fancies 'imself a bit o' an expert on dwarven culture. 'E's got dwarven weapons on 'is walls, dwarven mead in 'is kitchen, that sort o' thing. But the fool's got no in'erent sense o' value or craftsmanship! 'Is 'dwarven trinkets' is all low-quality stuff - I suspect some dwarven merchants're scamming the ignorant tosser into purchasin' the worthless crap they couldn't otherwise get rid o'."

"But he's a powerful wizard in his own right?" asked Thunderwolf, frowning.

"Well, now, I dunno 'bout that, son. I figger his 'mastery o' the arcane arts' is about as factual as 'is 'mastery o' dwarven culture.' But 'e is a wizard, I kin attest t' that - I seen 'im cast spells an' the like. But 'ow powerful a wizard? No idea. Me specialty's stonecraftin', not magic."

"But this fluxstone is dangerous?" pursued Thunderwolf.

"In large quantities, yes," responded Telgrane. "It has a warping effect upon magical energies, which is why it's used in rods of wonder and similar items with chaotic attributes. And there's no telling what effect any magic cast in its vicinity might have: it could turn the caster into a walking pile of sentient mud or indeed vaporize a city, as Arvath warns - if the fluxstone were large enough."

"Sounds like we'd better go have a talk with this Kraggoth," grunted Galrich, standing up and placing a hand on the hilt of a weapon - one of a half dozen - hanging from his belt, signifying he'd heard enough and was ready for some action. "Where's this guy live?"

"'E's got 'isself a keep on th' outskirts o' town," replied Arvath.

"Figures," snorted Aerik. "It's always the outskirts of town with these wizard types."

"You have to admit, it's safer that way," replied Rale. Their friend Pythagoras Greymantle kept a small manor at the edge of town, the better to contain any magical experiments gone awry. In fact, so had Palliphron Vex, and it was a good thing too when one of his chaos magic experiments literally exploded in his face and produced the carnivorous "butterflies of doom."

"Let's go," said Telgrane, standing up from his chair and patting his own belt-stored powerful weapon - only in his case, it was the tinder box inside which his Large fire elemental familiar, Infernia, lay sleeping in her ember form.

- - -

"It's jus' over th' hill here," said Arvath, leading the adventurers down a street leading out of the city of Greyhawk.

"Wait, what was that?" asked Delphyne, holding a hand up for the others to stop, and cocking her head to listen.

"What was what?" asked Rale, not having heard anything. But he stopped and listened with the others, and before long he could hear it as well: a slow, steady thumping sound. He was a bit disturbed to realize that he could not only hear the thumping sound, he could actually feel it through the soles of his boots.

"It's getting louder," observed Thunderwolf. Looking over at the others, he saw that Galrich and Aerik already had their weapons out and at the ready.

And then the head rose up into their field of vision beyond the curve of the hill. The group scrambled to the top of the hill to get a good look, and their eyes boggled at the sight before them: down the center of the road strode an enormous humanoid figure, looking to have been created out of the stones of a small castle or keep. Massive, rectangular legs ending in no discernible feet thumped down into the dirt of the road, propelling the stone colossus at a respectable speed. Two arms made from curved towers swung at his sides, and atop his right shoulder sat a wooden ballista. His head was another small tower perched upon a wide slab of stone spanning the breadth of his wide shoulders; between the crenelations on top and the narrow window slits, this highest tower gave more than a little the appearance of a warrior's protective helmet. On either side of his head crouched a stone gargoyle.

"ARVATH STONECRAFTER!" bellowed the humanoid tower, spotting the dwarf standing among the assembled heroes. "YOU LITTLE WEASEL! I TOLD YOU I WASN'T PAYING YOU FOR YOUR FEARFUL ADVICE!"

"Holy crap!" exclaimed Rale. "That thing--it's Kraggoth himself!"

"AND YOU CALL YOURSELF A DWARF?" continued the walking tower. It focused its attention on the adventurers standing beside the dwarven stonecrafter. "WHAT, DID YOU GO RUNNING TO THE ADVENTURERS GUILD FOR HELP? PATHETIC! THOSE IDIOTS WOULDN'T KNOW A TRUE ADVENTURER IF ONE WALKED UP TO THEM AND SAID, UH, 'HELLO, I'M A TRUE ADVENTURER!'"

"What's he on about?" Rale demanded.

"Oh, of course: Kraggoth!" said Thunderwolf, everything clicking into place in his head. "I was helping my uncle, Farthingale, the other day with the new Challenge of Champions contest for new applicants. Kraggoth applied for membership, and went through the contest, but he failed. Rather spectacularly, as I recall. That's where I knew his name! It's been bugging me since the briefing this morning."

"I OUGHT TO GO GIVE THE ADVENTURERS GUILD A LITTLE VISIT!" bellowed Kraggoth, stomping forward. "I WONDER IF I'M POWERFUL ENOUGH NOW TO JOIN THEIR STUPID LITTLE CLUB?"

"Uh oh," said Rale.

"I think that's our cue," replied Telgrane, flipping open the top to his tinder box. A stream of embers arced out, taking on the 9-foot-tall flaming form of Infernia as it hit the ground. The fire elemental seemed nonplussed at seeing a walking tower approach her; it was always something like this since she had agreed to serve her master as a familiar. "Saddle up!" commanded Telgrane, stepping upon the carpet of flying he had just unrolled from his back. Infernia stepped behind them, and the archmage caused the carpet to rise up from the ground.

To either side of him, the other heroes were following suit. Rale, Galrich, and Aerik stepped onto the drow floatdisks that did double duty as shields, whereas Delphyne preferred the comfort of her own broom. Rale took the opportunity to become invisible, using the first of the powers from the rod of thievery he carried. He dashed off to the far right, then skimmed along the road hoping to circle around the stone colossus.

Arvath, meanwhile, shook himself out of the state of shock he had experienced upon first seeing this stone monstrosity. "I'll, uh, I'll go warn the Guild!" he cried, high-tailing it back the way he had come.

Technically, Thunderwolf initiated hostilities by shooting an arrow at one of the gargoyles perched at the top of Kraggoth's body, suspecting it might not just be the carved sculpture it looked to be. He was correct; upon being shot in the torso, the gargoyle shrieked in pain, extended its wings, and leapt from the top of the walking tower, making a bee-line for the young fighter. This was enough to wake the other into aggressive movement as well, but by the time it made it all the way to Thunderwolf he had already slain the first one. The young fighter hurriedly switched targets, weaving erratically on his floatdisk and belatedly realizing he was facing his gargoyle opponent in its own favored element.

Kraggoth stomped inexorably forward, surprised to see his enemies all flying in seemingly different directions. Telgrane cast a meteor swarm at the colossus, modifying it in mid-casting to create sonic energy, thinking that might be the best way to damage what was, in effect, a moving structure. But he gasped in dismay as the spell rapidly crossed the distance between them and then just fizzled into nonexistence. He recognized the effect as some sort of antimagic, and warned Delphyne about it as she was still within yelling distance. (It was at this point the archmage regretted not having cast his traditional Rary's telepathic bond spell on the collected group before they scattered.)

Galrich and Aerik helped Thunderwolf take care of the second gargoyle, and it too fell the short distance to the ground, its stony body cracking and shattering upon impact with the road surface below.

Altering his tactics, Telgrane cast a wall of force spell directly across the road Kraggoth was traversing, causing an invisible 10-foot-tall plane of protective energy to come into existence at the colossus's feet. Delphyne, having recognized Telgrane's spell by the verbal components and anticipating his strategy, turned herself invisible with one of the wands in her bracer and shot around to the left of the creature, hoping to line herself up to cast a Bigby's crushing hand spell to push the walking tower over the invisible tripping hazard.

But the wall of force wasn't a hazard just to Kraggoth; Rale, not up on his verbal spell components, had no idea that there was now an invisible field of force blocking his path, and slammed face-first into it, toppling off his floatdisk and falling in a heap on his back, the now-unmanned disk returning to visibility once it lost contact with him and falling at his side, spinning in a circle along its edge in ever-increasing speed like a dropped coin. Still invisible, Rale grabbed his bruised face and struggled to get up, snatching at his floatdisk with his other hand as he did so. It winked back into invisibility with him as he did so.

By now, Kraggoth had reached the wall of force and blundered into it. Despite the vast bulk of the stone colossus the spell effect held true, and he tripped over it but somehow managed to regain his balance. "WHAT THE HELL?" boomed Kraggoth in obvious consternation. Telgrane, with his permanent arcane sight, was the only one able to actually see the wall of force, and noted Kraggoth now stood with one towerlike leg on either side of the invisible impediment.

Seeing that force effects were able to penetrate Kraggoth's anti-magic, Delphyne and Telgrane started peppering it with magic missile spells. The archmage then summoned a greater earth elemental and commanded it to topple the stone colossus over the wall of force. It gave its best effort, but even the Huge elemental was dwarfed in size by the massive construct, who probably stood a full 70 feet tall when standing upright. (The heroes had noticed it walked rather hunched over, as if preparing itself to strike out at its much smaller foes with its massive tower arms.)

Galrich flew his floatdisk to the level of the colossus's shoulder and hovered directly in the thing's face. Aerik, sworn to keep his liege safe (and, if failing to keep him out of danger, at least following him into his foolhardy schemes), did likewise, only he decided to veer off to the creature's right shoulder and see what he could do about the ballista, which had already shot at Telgrane twice and only narrowly missed the archmage each time. His vorpal greatsword cut great chunks of wood from the ballista's structure, while his liege lord hovered directly in Kraggoth's face wondering at the best approach now that he was up here. The colossus didn't seem to have any actual eyes to poke, just a slit of darkness from the front face of the small tower that made up its head. But Galrich didn't have time to make a choice, for Kraggoth was much more flexible than the half-orc would have given him credit for, and the stone colossus swatted Galrich from in front of his face as he would an irritating gnat. Galrich was hurled bodily through the air some thirty feet to Kraggoth's left, to land in a crumpled heap after a sixty-foot descent. His floatdisk landed on the "roof" of the walking structure, between the pair of broad shoulders and in front of Kraggoth's artificial head.

"M'Liege!" cried Aerik, ready to leap after his fallen future king, but the dwarf relaxed once he saw Galrich rise up to his feet, admittedly somewhat unsteadily, the full fires of his rage stoked to maximum. He's fine! thought the dwarven bodyguard to himself with a touch of relief. He redoubled his efforts at striking the ballista, thinking the best way to save Galrich was to take down this wretched construct.

Delphyne was in the proper position by now and cast her Bigby's crushing hand spell, sending a Large handlike projection of pure force energy slamming into the area equivalent to the stone colossus's shoulder blades. That, combined with the earth elemental's efforts below, had the desired effect: Kraggoth, with a roar of surprise, toppled over the wall of force and came crashing down to the ground.

Unfortunately, Thunderwolf was directly in its path. He was 30 feet in the air on his floatdisk and quickly assessed his two options: either try to steer the drow device out of the way or simply make a frantic leap for it. His survival instincts must have kicked in, because he barely registered having made his snap decision before he was leaping through the air to the ground below, tucking and rolling when he landed to cushion some of the blow. His abandoned floatdisk fell to the ground beside him, followed immediately by the towering Kraggoth, whose crashing body caused the earth below him to send up divots of solid stone larger than Thunderwolf himself. The fighter rolled out of the way, then, when it was safe, went back to retrieve his floatdisk.

Rale could now see the bottom of the stone colossus's feet: solid planes of smooth stone. He pulled out a handful of pitons from his pack and approached the downed Kraggoth, thinking to hammer a few pitons into each leg as a means to secure some rope, or better yet, chain - if they could get their hands on any. Aerik came flying down after the stone colossus, having maneuvered out of the way on his own floatdisk during the construct's plummet to the ground. Galrich, eyes blazing with barbaric fury, charged the colossus's leg with his vorpal greataxe, while the earth elemental battered it from behind.

"YOU WILL ALL PAY FOR THIS!" bellowed the outraged wizard, his body intrinsically merged with that of his own stone keep after ignoring Arvath's advice about messing about with the fluxstone. He tried but failed to return himself to an upright position, in large part due to the crushing hand still pressing down upon his back. "I AM KRAGGOTH, LORD OF STONE! I WILL GRIND YOU ALL TO POWDER! I WILL DESTROY YOUR HEADQUARTERS! I WILL PERSONALLY SMASH TO PASTE EVERY SO-CALLED ADVENTURER IN THIS CITY!"

But by then, the greater earth elemental had pummeled great gaps into the stone colossus's body, and the last of his life energy seeped out of the no-longer-mobile edifice.

"You will shut up," observed the elemental in the guttural Terran tongue, standing by for further orders from Telgrane now that its original objective had been achieved.

Telgrane put the elemental to good use while it was still present: using its ability to move through solid stone, he had it wade through the keep in search of obvious treasure. Most of Kraggoth's furniture and all of his delicate alchemical apparatus had been destroyed in his final fall, if it hadn't already been shattered simply by the act of the construct lurching down the road, but the wizard of dubious talent had kept a few chests of treasure easily obtainable by the elemental - and, more importantly, intact. The earth elemental was also able to separate the fluxstone from the rest of the colossus, and the Wing Three adventurers took that with them as well, partly to avoid a similar incident in the future, but also because the substance was fairly valuable and could be sold to a responsible buyer for a tidy sum.

"I think our job here is done," replied Telgrane. "Good call on the Bigby's crushing hand, Delphyne."

"And good thinking about the placement of the wall of force," she responded in turn.

"Yeah, real nice job there, Telgrane," complained Rale, rubbing his bruised forehead. He was going to have quite a goose-egg there, he could already feel it.

- - -

This short encounter came about for one reason and one reason only: I absolutely fell in love with the concept of the stone colossus once I saw it in Pathfinder's Bestiary 4. One of the advantages of gaming as infrequently as we do is that I have the preparation time to come up with some really unique models. I decided I was going to build a scale model of the stone colossus, and since I was already ahead of the game by some four adventures or so at that point I figured I'd have plenty of time to build it. I picked up some grey crafting paper at my local Michael's Hobby Shop - not as thick as cardboard, but heavier than normal paper. I had originally tried creating a "spine and legs" skeleton out of paper towel and toilet paper rolls, and actually had something that stood up in a striding position, but it all fell apart once I started adding layers of torso from my craft paper. So that was my first deviation from the stone colossus illustration: I ended up making rectangular legs from the craft paper, so it was more stable and would take the weight.

The spine was still a paper towel roll, upon which I dropped four overlapping levels (each wider and thicker than the ones below it) of torso, each with a circle cut out of the top layer and barriers along the hidden interior edges so each would rest on the level below it at the appropriate height. The head was the general circumference of the paper towel roll with a "point" at the front; the advantage of building all of this around a paper towel spine allowed the torso sections and head to swivel from side to side, so I could position my stone colossus in the best configuration for its current stance. The arms I kept fairly circular, dangling down from the oversized shoulders. I built a cardboard ballista to sit inside the battlements of the creature's right shoulder, just like in the Pathfinder illustration. And I drew in some windows and a few crenelations to keep it from being just all bland grey. To keep it standing, I built it an 8-inch-by-8-inch base out of a sheet of tan poster board (complete with one-inch grid lines), and to ensure it would stay in place I cut the areas under its feet on three sides and folded them up and glued them to the insides of its hollow legs. The whole thing stood about 14 inches tall, putting it at 70 feet in D&D Miniatures scale.

We played this short adventure during the last half of our second session of "The Ice Princess." I never know what the players are going to come up with, and while I thought the second half of the adventure would likely take most of the six hours we had allotted for gaming, I thought it might not be a bad idea to bring the next adventure with me, just in case we finished early. I had three adventures written and ready to go, but the next in sequence was possibly going to be a two-session adventure, while the two adventures that followed it were both definitely done-in-ones. I opted to bump "Kraggoth, Lord of Stone" forward one adventure, and I'm glad I did so. We started our gaming session at noon, like normal, and finished up part 2 of "The Ice Princess" by about 3:30. I went to the back of my van and got my stone colossus "miniature" (hidden from view in a garbage bag) and we started this adventure up, finishing up around 5:45; we usually try to finish between 6:00 and 6:30, whenever possible. So everything worked out for the best.

ADVENTURE 86: RISE OF THE LIZARD KINGS

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The Guild page ran along the upper hallway of the Wing Three living quarters, pounding frantically on doors as he went. Inside the individual rooms, the adventurers were awakened by the hammering on their doors; some of them, having recently been rudely awakened in a similar manner by a serpentine assassination force determined to kill Galrich before he could assume the throne of Kordovia, grabbed up weapons before tentatively opening their doors and peeking outside to see what all of the commotion was about. But as soon as the first of the doors started opening, the Guild page blurted out, "She says she knows you." He pointed down the stairs into the common living area, where another Guild page was helping a wounded gnomish woman, who held one hand to her stomach in an effort to stop the flow of blood from the parallel claw-marks dug deep along her midsection. The gnome - who indeed, was recognized by some of the Wing Three adventurers as Tamble "Sky-Captain" Paddiwack, of the Hepmonaland Adventurers Guild - looked up at the heroes and said, weakly, "I-- I need your help," before collapsing to the floor, unconscious.

Feron rushed down the stairs to Tamble's side and cast a cure critical wounds spell on the limp form of the gnome. Cal, meanwhile - never the trusting type - grabbed up his gem of seeing and peered at Tamble through it just as she started blinking her eyes into wakefulness. She looked down at the rends in her leather armor, amazed to see the now-unblemished skin underneath, already sealed up by the power of the druid's spell. "Thanks," she said in appreciation to Feron.

"What's going on? What time is it?" demanded Rale from the upper corridor. He was not pleased to hear from one of the pages that it was just past two bells.

"We have a visitor," replied Telgrane. "I'm sure she's just about to fill us in on what's going on." He looked at the gnome expectantly through the twin jets of flame where his eyes once were.

"They came out of nowhere," Tamble said in response. "A few of them scaled our walls, or flew over by magic – I'm not really sure. But once they were in, they opened the gates around our enclosure, and likewise the drawbridge to our Guild Headquarters proper. We adventurers were awakened in our bunks by the alarm horns blown by the sentries, and then by their screams. We scrambled to help, but by then the whole place was filled with them – lizardfolk, everywhere you turned. And this is the weird part: they moved like soldiers, all in concert with each other, very regimental, you know? Not like any lizardfolk tribe I've ever seen.

"And that's the other thing: there were members of different tribes all intermingled, working together – even tribes that normally war against each other, like the Blue Fins and the Dark Talons. I don't know who or what's got them all working together like that, but the results were devastating."

She shivered. "Most of us didn't make it. I saw Guildmaster Palimar taken down by a half dozen of the lizards, and Kalia, and Brunegor, and Tyche, and – well, I know you don't know them all, but they were respected adventurers, fully capable of handling themselves in a fight. And they were all butchered by the lizardfolk.

"I knew I wasn't going to be safe running off into the jungle, even if I could find a way out of the HQ. And then I thought of the teleportation circle in the basement. I cast a quick invisibility spell on myself, and made my way to the hidden passageway. But on my way I was attacked by a lizardfolk spellcaster of some sort, who must've been able to see me anyway. I fought him off as best I could, using a blindness spell to escape down the stairs without being seen, and I activated the teleportation circle to get over here to you guys. But we've got to hurry! Our Guild HQ is done for, I know that, but we've got to get back there and destroy the teleportation circle, or they may be able to track me and figure out how it works, and then you'll have the lizardfolk horde right here on your doorstep!"

Rale, like the other Wing Three members, had been listening intently to Tamble's story. At its conclusion, he turned to Cal and said, "Looks like this one's yours," before heading back into his bedroom and closing the door.

The group decided quickly which of them would respond to the threat and they hurried to gather up their weapons and armor, while those of a spellcasting bent quickly filled any relevant holes in their current spell inventory. Then they all rushed down to their own basement, where the teleportation circle awaited. On the way the spellcasters cast some of their standard preparatory spells: a stoneskin for everyone, a magic circle against evil centered on Cal, and Telgrane's standard Rary's telepathic bond, linking all of the heroes (and Infernia). Feron added a barkskin upon herself and Telgrane cast a mage armor spell on his fire elemental familiar while he was at it. Then he cast a flame arrow spell on both Chalkan's and Thunderwolf's quivers of arrows, using his archmage training to convert the potential fire damage to electrical damage for the young fighter and sonic energy for the arcane archer.

"Are you sure you wish to come with?" asked Feron, concerned about Tamble's reaction should they find all of her teammates slaughtered by the lizardfolk force. Her trusty eagle Felix perched silently on her shoulder as she spoke.

"I'm coming," replied the gnome in a we're-not-going-to-argue-about-it tone of voice. On the way to the basement, she filled them in on some of the things she had noticed during the attack. In the confusion of the sudden carnage, the gnome had nonetheless noticed several of the lizardfolk striking out at foes they hadn't really been focusing on, even if it meant attacking those to the side or directly behind. Every lizardfolk she'd seen had a stripe of blood between their eyes, and some looked as if they'd been crying bloody tears recently. And she reemphasized the fact that there were members of opposing tribes, some of whom had regularly traded foodstuff for weapons with the Adventurers Guild in the recent past. None of it made much sense to the gnome, but she was determined to find out who or what was behind the attacks and see justice done for her fallen comrades.

But the first order of business was getting to the Hepmonaland teleportation circle and putting it out of action before it was discovered by the lizardfolk. Tamble was well aware that she had been bleeding when she left, and it wouldn't be too difficult for a devoted lizardfolk to trace her path, secret passage or no.

Fortunately, her fears on that matter were unfounded. The group stepped into the teleportation circle in Greyhawk City, Telgrane spoke the activation phrase, and the heroes were suddenly standing within the similar arcane circle in the basement of the Hepmonaland Adventurers Guild. A quartet of everburning torches hung in each corner of the small room, providing ample illumination - not that it was needed, with Infernia's burning form among the assembled heroes - showing no lizardfolk had made it this far yet.

Cal took out a metal piton from his pack, lined it up in the center of one of the rune-carved stones making up the teleportation circle, and gave it a strike with his hammer of frost and all the might of a cleric of Kord, God of Strength. The stone shattered, and the softly-glowing runes on all of the other stones dimmed to nothing. "Well, that's taken care of," announced Cal. "Let's go see how bad it is upstairs."

A short flight of stairs led up from the hidden basement room to a trap door. Leading the way, Tamble cautiously opened the passageway, and the others followed her into a bunkroom. It was trashed, with the contents of the two trunks scattered all about. The lack of blood - or bodies - indicated that somebody had searched the room after its two occupants had already left.

There was a single door out of the room, but also a ladder bolted to one wall leading up to a higher level. "What's up here?" Cal asked, pointing up the ladder.

"Two more bunkrooms like this one," replied Tamble.

"We'll try this way," said Chalkan, opening the door.

The room beyond the door was a mess hall, with long tables and benches denoting its use. This room was not empty of occupants; two lizardfolk warriors stood near a pair of doors, having apparently just entered, while across the room stood a towering figure: a larger, stronger version of the two across the room from him, differing not only in his looming form but also by the leathery wings folded at his back. Each of the reptilian foes wielded a fierce-looking club and carried several javelins.

Chalkan immediately cast a fireball spell across the room towards the powerful-looking lizard king, who seemed to take it in stride. Thunderwolf stepped up behind the arcane archer and shot a flurry of arrows at the lizard king, hitting him with several of his shots. Then he spun to his left and faced the two human-sized lizardfolk, who rushed him as their nearest foe. Infernia took the opportunity to race forward and slam the lizard king with a flaming appendage, but he merely hissed at her in irritation and returned the favor with a swing of his serrated club. Feron stepped up to where Thunderwolf had just been and tried dropping the lizard king with a baleful polymorph spell, but she failed to bypass his inherent spell resistance.

Telgrane was still in the bunkroom, unable to get past the narrow doorway and into the battle. Behind him, Cal and Tamble were in the same boat. "I'm going to check out the rooms above," said Cal, "if you guys have this." Telgrane acknowledged that it seemed like the others were holding their own, so Cal climbed the ladder to the next level, stepping off onto a platform with a closed door. Tamble followed, it having been decided that she was to stay with Cal, who would be the most likely to be able to see to her safety.

Telgrane, meanwhile, unable to get into the fight, used his magical vision to check out his foe. The lizardfolk had but a single magical emanation, centered on a purple stone worn around his broad neck on a leather thong. In the archmage's arcane sight, it gave off an aura of divination. Interesting, thought Telgrane, as he heard a series of thumps on the roof above Chalkan and Thunderwolf. The fighter had switched to his sentient longsword Xanthros for the close-quarters fighting, and had already dropped one of the lizardfolk warriors. After Thunderwolf stepped forward to take on the last of the pair, Telgrane finally scootched into the room, making his way over to the corner, between two doors.

Feron cast a call lightning spell and caused a fork of electricity to strike the lizard king. He seemed to take it in stride.

Suddenly, the meaning of the thumps overhead was made clear as four stoneswimmer ophidians dropped through the solid ceiling, having phased their way through the stone and increased their density in doing so. Two landed on Telgrane, who was sent sprawling to the floor even as his stoneskin spell absorbed the damage of the attack. The other two landed on Thunderwolf, with similar results.

Feron called down another arc of lightning, which struck the lizard king without any appreciable effect, when Telgrane decided to try out one of the new spells he had recently mastered. Using his archmage training to bend the area of effect around his own allies, he spoke the words and caused a prismatic spray to strike each of the reptilian enemies. One of the ophidians was briefly bathed in an eerie, purple light, and then promptly vanished - having been shunted to a random plane. The others were all struck with a field of glowing blue, and instantly turned to solid stone.

With that single spell, combat suddenly ceased in the mess hall. "Excellent work, master!" enthused Infernia.

"I'm not quite sure I agree," replied Telgrane. "That was supposed to be prismatic, not two-toned. I suppose I might need to work on my casting of that spell..." he muttered to himself.

Up one level, Cal and Tamble had caught a lizardfolk fighter in tearing the room apart, searching for weapons. This had apparently come after he had ripped apart the half-asleep occupants of the room, for after Cal had taken the reptile down with the might of his hammer, Tamble identified the remnants of her fallen companions. Fortunately, that was as far as the lizardfolk forces had made it, for the room directly above was empty of occupants but not yet looted.

The two groups quickly updated each other on their respective progress over their shared mental link, then Telgrane opened the door to the open courtyard. Through the telepathic bond, he quickly described to Cal and the others what he saw.

The Hepmonaland Adventurers Guild Headquarters was a stone keep, similar in size and shape to Vandergrotten Keep back in Kordovia. The three bunkrooms stacked on top of each other had comprised the southwestern tower, and the mess hall sprawled across the space between the two southern towers. In the dawn light, having opened the door to the courtyard, Telgrane saw about a dozen lizardfolk fighters on the ground, on the stone steps leading up to the ramparts, and on the ramparts themselves. Three more lizard kings were among them, two on the tops of the towers and a third in the courtyard. Each had been engaged in either looting a slain adventurer's body or helping himself to chunks of flesh from the same; once the door opened, each and every one turned its reptilian snout in unison in Telgrane's direction.

"Go on back down with the others," advised Cal to Tamble as he cast an ethereal jaunt spell upon himself that allowed him to fly up through the roof of the bunkroom onto the top of the building's parapets, then move unseen along its southern rooftop walkway and behind a unsuspecting lizard king perched on the top of the southeastern tower. Tamble, meanwhile, scrambled down the ladder to join the others.

In the courtyard, Telgrane cast a sunburst spell up into the air, situated in such a way as to catch all of the reptilian invaders in its area of effect. There were hisses of pain and astonishment, but as one, each of the lizardfolk and lizard kings unstrapped their javelins and sent a flurry soaring at the archmage. Again, his stoneskin absorbed the damage, but Telgrane was surprised that none of them seemed to have been blinded.

However, that was far from the case. In point of fact, all of the lizardfolk fighters and all but one of the lizard kings had succumbed to the blindness effect of the sunburst spell; but as long as even one of them retained his sight, all of them could see through his eyes. (On the down side, having multiple viewpoints of a single target made it that much easier to hit said target; now that all of the hivemind lizardfolk were seeing through a single set of eyes, they fared no better with the hivemind than they would have done so without it.)

Chalkan and Thunderwolf poured out of the door and into the enclosure. They each chose their targets and let fly with arrows. Feron stepped out as well and called a few lightning bolts down from the sky onto her chosen targets. Telgrane cast a second sunburst spell, and this time the sole holdout was also blinded; once none of the reptiles could see, their hivemind did nothing to help them fight, and it was a matter of a mere few minutes for the heroes to cut them all down, with spell or weapon, each to his or her preferences.

Tamble went immediately to the bodies of her fallen comrades, hoping in vain to find anyone alive, but the lizardfolk surprise attack had been more than effective - she was the sole survivor of the entire Guild. The others searched the lizardfolk for clues, Telgrane in particular checking out the purple-hued necklace gems, for indeed each of the lizard kings wore one identical to the one that had turned to stone with its petrified owner back in the mess hall.

"I've seen that kind of rock before, years ago," pointed out Tamble, after noticing the archmage's interest. "It was in a cave, a couple of miles south of here."

"Could you lead us there?" asked Cal.

The gnome gave it some thought. "I could from the air," she offered - for most of her travels had been on the back of her now-dead roc.

"Fair enough," replied the cleric of Kord, and cast an air walk spell upon the assembled group.

Flying through the air above the jungle, the group passed what might have been a wave of reinforcements, consisting of a lizard king, a half dozen lizardfolk, and a tyrannosaurus. They passed close enough for the heroes to note that even the dinosaur had the telltale stripe of blood down its muzzle. But the reptilian foes either didn't notice the cloud-bodied heroes or failed to recognize them for what they were, and they continued towards the Guild Headquarters to the north as the heroes continued their journey south.

"That's the cave there," pointed out Tamble a couple of miles later. Cal led the heroes to the ground, where they each concentrated on assuming their solid forms once again.

"The cave floor dips down almost immediately after entering," said Tamble, "then opens up into a large cavern overlooking a pool of water. There are ledges up above, all around it. And there's a growth of crystals rising up from the pool, of the same type we saw on those necklaces. The entire outer walls are coated with them as well."

The first to enter were Cal, Thunderwolf, and Chalkan, the latter two with bows drawn. Telgrane and Infernia followed on the archmage's carpet of flying just over their heads, and the light from the fire elemental's body was reflected in the various crystals, illuminating the entire cavern.

The first thing the heroes noticed was the crudely-sculpted statue in the back of the cave, seemingly carved out of a massive stalagmite reaching up to the cavern's ceiling. It was vaguely humanoid, but with lizardfolk features and six arms; Cal vaguely recalled a demon named Sess'innek who fit that description. He filled in the others over the telepathic bond, pointing out that this was a patron deity for some lizardfolk tribes.

There were a total of five desiccated lizardfolk bodies lying upon the ledges overlooking the pool. Each was unmoving, and positioned in such a way that one arm dangled past the ledge and over the reddish-colored pool.

Off to the left side of the cavern, six lizardfolk fighters grabbed up their weapons in surprise of the intrusion. Across the cavern from them, a lizardfolk shaman likewise gathered up a spear.

Telgrane reacted first, accessing the inherent powers of his half-fire elemental form and summoning forth a firestorm that stretched across the cavern, reaching out to hit all of the lizardfolk, alive, dead, or undead (for while the mummified corpses didn't seem to be moving yet, he wasn't about to take any chances). The living foes cried out in agony as they were immediately burned to a crisp; the mummies reacted by leaping up to their feet as parts of their undead bodies burst into flame. They reacted in unison, one causing a blade barrier to spring up in a circle around the three heroes on the ground; another causing a separate blade barrier to cut diagonally across the circle and into the bodies of Cal and Chalkan; a third attempting to shut down Telgrane's vision with a blindness/deafness spell that failed to penetrate the spell resistance offered by his robe of the archmage; a fourth caused a flame strike to fall down upon the four heroes; while the fifth cast his spell onto the graven image of Sess'innek at the back of the pool.

Cal jumped to the left while Chalkan dove to the right; both were still inside the circular ring of flashing blades but were no longer being sliced by the separate wall of blades bisecting the circle. "Floatdisks!" commanded Cal, leaping onto his and flying up and over the wall of blades, hovering off to the left by the charred bodies of the lizardfolk fighters. Chalkan and Thunderwolf floated theirs in the opposite direction, over by the corpse of the charred shaman. Telgrane, meanwhile, piloted his carpet over alongside Cal, while Feron moved down into the cavern and left Tamble keeping guard outside.

At the same time, with a powerful lurch, the statue of Sess'innek stepped off the ledge and into the pool of reddish liquid. As it waded over towards Chalkan, Telgrane tossed a delayed blast fireball with no delay and whose flames he converted to sonic energy. It seemed to have no effect upon the six-armed statue, but handily shattered the crystal growth rising up out of the pool. Feron summoned an elder earth elemental in the place the statue had just vacated and commanded it to strike the six-armed carving; it did so, but was unable to follow the statue as it waded through the pool below it.

So intent was Chalkan on attempting to move out of the way of the approaching statue that he failed to see another foe. Lightning-quick, up out of the reddish liquid burst a pseudopod that smashed into the half-elf and engulfed him in its protoplasm. Chalkan felt his skin and armor start to burn in a powerful acid; with an apology to the others, he double-tapped his Guild ring and binked back to Guild Headquarters (where, he found out, his "bink-partner" had apparently gone back to sleep - by the time he had woken Galrich back up, too much time had passed and the half-orc's ring was no longer able to trace the signal back to where Chalkan had just left).

Cal and Telgrane dropped multiple flame-based spells on the mummies, having noticed how vulnerable they seemed to be to fire. Before too long, they had been taken care of, and all that was left was the Sess'innek golem and the "pool of reddish water," the latter of which turned out to be a form of grey ooze grown too massive to leave the cave depression in which it was housed. Cal, grinning, dropped a blade barrier of his own along the blood ooze's diameter, and laughed at the mess it made, chewing up the ooze's protoplasm and sending drops of it flying in all directions. Seeing how it was unable to leave the area of effect on its own, the cleric of Kord realized that it was merely a matter of time before his spell chopped the ooze into nothingness. He noted that Feron's earth elemental had shifted targets, and was now slamming its massive fists directly into the ooze's protoplasm. The ooze struck back at the elemental, but its acid was geared towards dissolving clothing and flesh, not stone.

Then the ooze suddenly switched targets itself, catching Telgrane up in a pseudopod. The archmage spent a moment of sheer panic worrying not about his own life but the state of his expensive magical robes, then spoke a single arcane syllable and teleported over to the cave entrance. Infernia steered the carpet of flying back out of range, concentrating very hard on not setting it ablaze with her fiery body.

In the meantime, Feron got a warning from Felix, who the druid had sent flying reconnaissance in great circles above the cave before having entered it herself. "We've got company coming," she announced over the telepathic bond. Tamble, so alerted, looked off into the distance and saw a tyrannosaurus approaching, along with half a dozen or so smaller figures - no doubt the group they had passed in the air on their way here. Which makes sense, the gnome thought, if they're all hooked into a hivemind; they probably already know everything that's gone on in the cave. She cast a quick illusion over the cavern's entrance, making it look as if it had recently caved in and been covered in falling rocks, realizing that the hivemind entities likely wouldn't be fooled by the ploy but eager to try in any case.

Finally, Feron took care of the Sess'innek statue with one of her most powerful summoning spells, bringing into existence five Huge earth elementals who surrounded the statue and beat it to gravel. At about the same time that the six-armed golem fell to pieces, Cal's blade barrier had its final effect on the hivemind ooze, chopping the last of its protoplasm into jelly and distributing it all across the cavern.

With their enemies in the cavern destroyed, the heroes turned towards the tunnel to the ground above, expecting at any moment to hear the approach of the reptilian reinforcements. But they never came; once the crystal structure was shattered the hivemind's ability to spread itself across great distances (to the immediate vicinity of a chunk of crystal worn about the neck of a lizard king) ceased, and once the blood ooze - the core of the hivemind, brought to life by the sacrifice of the life-blood of the five lizardfolk clerics which in turn caused them to mummify into undead beings - had been destroyed, the hivemind collapsed.

To their great surprise, the lizard king and his six lizardfolk followers suddenly found themselves in the immediate vicinity of a hungry tyrannosaurus that was no longer a part of any shared hivemind. They were quickly gobbled up by the ravenous dinosaur, which then trotted off to find a comfortable place to sleep and digest.

- - -

The heroes returned to the Hepmonaland Adventurers Guild to lay the fallen adventurers to rest. They gathered up what they could of their remaining armor and weapons, intending to see that they were put to good use among the heroes in their own Guild. Tamble returned to Greyhawk with them (by remaining in the Daern's dollhouse in Feron's pack while the heroes binked back to their own Headquarters, since the teleportation circle had been destroyed), but turned down their suggestions that she join their own Guild. The little gnome had had enough of adventuring for a while. Telgrane promised to introduce her to Piddilink Dundernoggin the following day, as he was always looking for additional help around his magic shop, and would likely not turn down the chance to hire a good-looking gnomish woman, and a spellcaster at that, who could likely aid him in the creation of his potions and various magic items.

But in the meantime, the group collapsed in their own private bunks, ready to finally catch up on the sleep that had been interrupted the night before.

- - -

This was fun to run! I got to use my homemade cardboard castle keep yet again, after having already used it both as Vandergrotten Keep and then Castle Shatterhope. I kept the exterior walls as it had been built and just made a different set of interior rooms. (The stairs to the upper ramparts were on the other side, for one thing.) Telgrane's sunburst spells really took the wind out of my marauding lizardfolk army's sail, though, as I had designed my hivemind stats such that they each got a +1 to hit and to AC depending on how many of them were in the immediate vicinity and visually focused on the same foes. Once they were all blinded, all of that went away.

The cavern was one big geomorph on a full sheet of desk calendar paper, and it was a refreshing change to have a bunch of enemies all laid out all over the map instead of fighting room by room. But again, Telgrane's firestorm cut the number of my enemies down in no time flat. (I keep telling Logan one of these days I'm going to have to build an adventure that takes place entirely on the Elemental Plane of Water just to spite his half-fire elemental conjurer.)

ADVENTURE 87: DESDEMONA HONEYTONGUE CAN GO TO HELL

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It was a frantic day behind the scenes of the Greyhawk Theater. Dez had been running around in a frenzy, trying to get all of the last-minute details hammered into shape for the opening of her first play on stage at this prestigious location. This was, at long last, her shot at establishing a good name for herself among the upper classes and she desperately wanted to make a good showing. Rale and the rest of the acting troupe had been scrambling with her to get everything done.

Finally, though, a break appeared in all the hubbub and bustle. Dez looked around for Rale, suddenly realizing that he'd been missing for awhile. Then, unexpectedly, he entered the backstage area with a cake topped with burning candles. Flanking him were a handful of the Wing Three Adventurers Guild members. "Happy birthday!" everyone cheered.

Dez dutifully made a wish and blew out the candles before turning to Rale and saying, "But my birthday isn't until tomorrow!"

"Well, it wouldn't be a surprise tomorrow, would it?" he grinned. "Plus, it's a dual-purpose cake: 'happy birthday' and 'break a leg.'"

A crooked smile appeared on Dez's face, partly due to her appreciation that Rale had remembered her birthday - her big one, too, her 21st! - and partly at the realization that he had found a way to save himself some coin by merging two cake occasions into one.

Regardless, the cake was quite delicious and served as a well-needed interruption in the hecticness of the day thus far. But tonight's opening was only hours away, and the acting troupe soon found themselves back at the grind of last-minute changes and improvements.

- - -

That evening, Rale and Dez were backstage behind the curtain, ready for the play to begin. It was a dramatic retelling of one of their recent adventures - the fight between a heroic band of rugged heroes and the green dragon Antharvalos in his forest lair - although it had been embellished just a bit: for one thing, the roles of the dashing male rogue and his spunky female sorcerous cohort had been elevated almost beyond recognition, whereas the frumpy-looking elven druidess, "Deron Fru," spent most of her time mooning over Rale, and the trio of dwarven, half-orc, and human warriors seemed almost embarrassingly timid, only daring to stride into combat after Rale led the way. But Rale had no doubt it would be a hit; after all, the nobility loved stories of heroic adventurers - it was a life they often envied, but a path they generally dared not tread themselves. And with Dez's illusion spells at the ready, the "dragon" they would fight was sure to be a hit.

Out in the entryway of the theater, a handful of Wing Three adventurers prepared to enter and take their seats. "Are you sure you don't want to sit up in one of the balconies?" asked Delphyne. "Telgrane and I will be up there, and you can see the stage much better from that level."

"No way!" groused Chalkan, still upset that he'd been told he wouldn't be allowed to bring his bow with him to the theater. "Thunderwolf and I will be in the back row, closest to the exit doors, so we can get out of here as soon as this thing's over." At his side, the young human fighter nodded his agreement. He, too, felt naked without his weapons and armor.

"Well, then, have a good time," said Telgrane, turning to head up the stairs to his balcony seat.

"Wait!" called Delphyne, putting a hand on the archmage's shoulder. "How about casting a Rary's telepathic bond spell on us first?"

Telgrane tilted his head in puzzlement. "Are you expecting we'll be called away to combat?" he asked. The flames from his eyes briefly flared in emotion - and after he'd been concentrating on dampening down the effect so as not to alert the theater-goers.

"Well, no," admitted the young witch. "I just thought we could use it as, you know, a heckling conduit. We can make all the comments we want about this horror of a play without disturbing anyone else." Delphyne had heard snippets of what to expect from Rale and Dez rehearsing and was prepared not to be amused. Her views on "that whore" were well known among the members of Wing Three, and she was glad there would not be a "Belphyne Dabbleberry" character appearing on stage.

"Yes!" exclaimed Chalkan, his expectations for a pleasant evening rising significantly at the very thought.

"Do it!" encouraged Thunderwolf. He had no bad feelings towards Dez, but silent heckling did sound like an awful lot of fun.

"Very well," replied Telgrane, popping open his tinderbox so he could add Infernia to the mental link. She had promised to remain in her cinder form during the play, for while she had been practicing not setting things ablaze she hadn't entirely mastered the art just yet. Plus, a nine-foot-tall fire elemental was sure to be somewhat of a distraction to the others in the audience.

"Let's go," said Delphyne after the spell was in place, leading Telgrane up the stairs to their two-person balcony on the right side of the theater, while Thunderwolf and Chalkan cracked silent jokes over the telepathic bond on either side of the main exit doors.

Once everyone had taken their seats, the lights - everburning torches with some sort of variable illumination control, Telgrane noted from above - dimmed, a hush came over the audience, and the velvet curtains opened for the first scene.

"...And the torment begins," said Delphyne over the mental link.

- - -

Dez was enjoying herself immensely on stage. The play seemed to be very well received thus far, with laughter at the appropriate times - Rale had discovered during the writing stage that rewriting the dialogue of a historical event allowed one to come up with the exact best thing to say in any given situation, and his character came across as very smooth-tongued and quick-witted indeed as a result - and a palpable sense of excitement as the stage players neared the dragon's lair. Right now, she and Rale were the only two on stage, giving an impassioned speech about the importance of being an example for those lesser heroes who needed a role model to follow. Positioned as they were facing the audience, they had a perfect view of the large circle irising open against the back wall of the theater, reddish light spilling from it and capturing in silhouette the metallic figure that scuttled out of it.

It was a spider, but one made entirely of metal. The thing scurried out of the vertical circle and down the central aisle of the theater, heedless as its eight mechanical legs trampled over audience members in the first three seats on either side of the central aisle as it did so.

In an instant, chaos erupted everywhere in the Greyhawk Theater.

As the spider-thing's body passed over them, Thunderwolf and Chalkan sprang to their feet, each instinctively grabbing for a weapon that wasn't there. The screams of those around them caused a panic even among those who had not yet even seen the spider's silent entrance. But each mechanical leg's stride either knocked a theater-goer out of his seat or impaled him on its pointed end.

Telgrane called out a single word over the telepathic bond: "Retriever!" It was larger than he had come to believe these creatures generally were, but then, as a construct, a retriever could be built to just about any size, he supposed.

Chalkan got in the first strike; he'd been disallowed to bring any weapons with him larger than a dagger, but there had been no prohibition against wands. He spoke the command word and three streaks of magic missiles buried themselves into the spider's metallic hide.

From the balcony, Telgrane could see the panicked crowd scrambling out of their seats and trying to all fit along the outer walls of the theater. He cast a modified polar ray down at the spider-construct. Using his archmage training, he converted the cold energy to sonic energy on the understanding that fewer creatures were immune to sonic damage than cold damage. The spell hit the retriever, but it was difficult for the archmage to see if he had actually done any damage to it - after all, against a metal automaton, any sonic damage was likely to be internal. He just hoped it hadn't bounced ineffectually against the creature's spell resistance. Telgrane hated it when that happened.

Up on stage, Dez froze in sudden panic. This isn't part of the play! her mind insisted on pointing out needlessly. She probably would have stood there motionless until the spider reached her, had Rale not scooped her up in his arms and pulled her behind the back curtain. As he did so, he called out a quick command to Delphyne at the top of his lungs, "SHUT DOWN THAT GATE!"

The witch looked at the glowing, reddish circle against the back wall. It blocked the only visible exit in the actual theater part of the building, although she knew from experience earlier that afternoon there were two exterior doors in the back, one in the prop room and one in the storage room. However, her current collection of prepared spells held nothing with which she might close the circular gate.

The panicked crowd fled from underneath the mechanical spider as it headed toward the stage, but they were unsure where safety lay after that. None seemed eager to go through the vertical red circle.

But that was because none of them were adventurers. At Delphyne's urging over the telepathic bond, Thunderwolf stuck his head through the circle for a quick peek and then pulled it right back out again. What he had seen was quite puzzling to the young fighter.

One the other side of the circle stood a completely different city from the Greyhawk City Thunderwolf had grown up in. This one was built mostly of iron, with iron buildings rising up to great, jagged heights from streets also made of iron. The iron was blackened, standing out in contrast from the reddish sky. Heat blasted Thunderwolf's face from his brief peek through the gate. He quickly described what he'd seen over the shared link.

"Hellish," commented Delphyne.

"Sounds like Dis," agreed Telgrane. "But that would mean this thing's devil-built. I thought retrievers were a demonic construction." He shrugged and returned his attention to the battle at hand.

Seeing its intended prey disappear, the diabolic retriever had fired a beam of red energy at the back curtain of the stage, setting it instantly ablaze. It scuttled the rest of the distance to the stage, its front legs getting a firm grip upon the slightly higher elevation of the wooden stage with their retractable blades.

"Any idea why this thing might be after us?" asked Rale from behind the now-burning curtain.

"No idea!" replied Dez, then grabbed Rale tight and cast a spell. The two dimension doored across the length of the theater, appearing amid the crowd at the front doors, for the circular gate had just winked out as suddenly as it had appeared and there was now a mad rush by the audience to escape this ill-fated building.

However, the retriever was not fooled for an instant. It started immediately to turn around - but was grabbed by an enormous hand made of solid force that had suddenly appeared in front of it.

"Got it!" called Delphyne from up on the balcony, having just cast the Bigby's crushing hand spell that grappled the spider-construct. The look of pride on her face shattered a moment later, when the spider-construct popped out of view and her magical hand closed into a fist, there suddenly being nothing for it to grab onto.

Screams from the exit told everyone where the diabolic retriever had gone. Dez, about to make it out through the door to the relative safety of the street outside, suddenly saw the monstrous arachnid form materialize directly in front of her, its mechanical mouth-parts open wide to embrace her. She screamed in momentary panic, felt Rale grab her back from its clutches, and verbalized the words to another dimension door spell that returned the two back to the stage.

"Why's it after us?" Rale repeated.

"I DON'T KNOW!" screamed Dez, flustered beyond belief but honestly having no idea why she should suddenly have a giant spider monster trying to eat her. It was also sinking in that her hopes of stardom among the upper classes were apparently doomed to failure. There were bodies littered along the rows by the central aisle and a mob of flailing bodies at the exit as those in the theater tried to leave and those at the exit, whose path to freedom had suddenly been cut off by the appearance of the diabolic retriever just outside, tried desperately to get back inside. Being crushed among the panicking bodies were Thunderwolf and Chalkan, each now desperately wishing they had found a convenient excuse not to attend this opening night fiasco.

Through the open doorways, the spider-thing could see Dez and Rale back on the brightly-lit stage - although it didn't actually need to rely upon sight to know the exact location of its intended prey. It activated its inherent ability to dimension door and reappeared over by the stage once again. Rale quickly grabbed Dez again and pulled her into an adjacent side room, where props for other productions were kept. There were no lights on in this room, and they stumbled in the dark to find the exit.

But in a matter of seconds, the diabolic retriever had dimension doored into the room with them, its vast bulk filling the storeroom from wall to wall. Dez and Rale were directly underneath its body. It opened its mouth-parts again....

...and Dez grabbed Rale by the shoulder and suddenly they were one balcony down from Telgrane and Delphyne.

"You didn't even say anything this time," commented Rale.

"I had one silent dimension door prepared," explained Dez. "But that was my last one. Hopefully, we'll be safe up here. It'll have to climb the wall to get to us - maybe that'll buy us some time."

A sudden thought struck the young actress. "Your Guild ring!" she exclaimed. "You can use it to escape back to HQ!"

In truth, the thought had already occurred to the rogue, but he'd reluctantly ignored the impulse in order to see to his cohort's safety. He was saved from having to give a response, though, as the diabolic retriever used the massive blades on its front four legs to shred its way through the wall of storage room. Another of its eyes flashed and a beam of energy struck out through the space between it and the balcony across the theater, striking Dez unerringly.

Dez barely had time to lift an arm as if to block off the attack. Her scream was cut off as her entire body instantly petrified into solid stone.

But Chalkan missed that part of the battle, for he was sprinting up the stairs to the balcony he had seen Rale and Dez suddenly appear in. He figured he'd get a better shot at fighting the spider-thing close up if he was where it would likely appear next. He was still only armed with a handful of wands and a dagger, but he was contemplating trying to smash some of its eyes. Meanwhile, at the exit, an unarmed Thunderwolf had decided his best course of action now was to ensure the safety of the theater-goers, and he ushered them through the doors, helping to pull those who were being pushed from behind back up onto their feet.

Up above, Delphyne leapt from the balcony, not wanting to stick around in case the spider headed over her way. A feather fall spell ensured she landed without harm from the 20-foot drop. She then redirected her Bigby's crushing hand spell over to grapple with the spider-thing once again. It gripped the construct by the head, but there was sufficient room for one of its eyes to focus on Dez's petrified form, and yet another beam struck out. This one remained more than a brief instant, bridging the gap between the Dez-statue and the spider-thing's eye and remaining in place, lifting Dez into the air and pulling her closer to the construct. Apparently it had been sent to retrieve Dez but wasn't particularly concerned by what kind of shape she was in when retrieved.

Telgrane cast more attack spells at the thing, converting over to sonic energy, but Delphyne called out a warning. "If we kill that thing while Dez is still in the air...." She didn't finish the thought, instead beginning the words to a Bigby's forceful hand spell, pushing Dez away from her, but also "landing" her safely on the theater floor as she did so. The green beam of telekinetic energy never broke its grip on Dez.

But the construct never did get to complete its mission, and Dez didn't make it any closer to the spider-thing. Another few spells from Telgrane and the beam shut off, the light died from the gems it had in place of eyes, and its mechanical legs relaxed as its heavy body crashed to the ground. A bright red glow exploded from it in a circle, and then the entire circle of light vanished, taking the arachnid automaton with it.

"Is everybody okay?" asked Rale. He had used his winged boots to fly down from the balcony to where Dez's stone body had landed. Chalkan had made it up to the balcony Rale had just left, and gave a thumbs up signal to the rogue down below. Thunderwolf replied from the theater's front entrance, where he was just now guiding the last of the surviving audience members to safety. Now that the diabolic retriever had been dealt with, Telgrane looked over to the stage and noticed the flames had burned down the back curtain and were doing a good job of engulfing the back of the stage and the room behind it. He summoned a group of water elementals to deal with the flames, and then dismissed them once the task had been finished.

"Anybody have any means of returning Dez back to flesh?" asked Rale, looking over at Telgrane and Delphyne. They both thought about it, as did Chalkan, a bit miffed that once again he had been overlooked as an arcane spellcaster. Delphyne had a break enchantment spell prepared, which in theory could reverse the transformation, although the witch had never used it in that fashion before. Telgrane had recently learned the wish spell, but was unsure if they needed to use such a powerful spell now when a lesser spell could easily be used later.

"Anybody have any ideas what this was all about?" asked Rale, looking at the petrified form of his cohort and not waiting for an answer to his first question.

"I believe I can exzzzzplain," said a voice from the stage.

Looking up at the stage, the heroes saw a trio of unusual figures, another red circle vanishing behind them. Flanked by two beautiful women, their angelic features only accentuated by the pair of white-feathered wings rising up from their shoulders, stood an elegantly-dressed figure, everything about him indicating a nobleman of the very highest class – except for his enormous fly's head. He held a hand up as if to indicate a truce, and his beautiful bodyguards, each holding a flaming longbow with an arrow nocked at the ready, had their weapons pointed at the floor of the stage rather than at any of the adventurers.

"I am Beezil," the fly-man announced by way of introduction. "You have dezzztroyed my my diabolic retriever, but I am willing to overlook that if you will allow me to take my property and leave you in peazzzze."

"And just what property are you talking about?" demanded Rale, certain he already knew the answer.

"Why, my bride-to-be," explained Beezil, indicating the statue of Dez, who still held her arm up as if to shield off an attack. "Perhapzzz I zzzhould explain." Rale's posture indicated he was willing to listen to the newcomer, and the other adventurers followed suit, although the "hecklers" were in frantic conversation over the telepathic bond.

"Are those angels?" Thunderwolf asked. "That doesn't make any sense." He wandered up the aisle to stand just behind Rale.

"Probably succubi," reasoned Delphyne.

"Succubi are demons," corrected Telgrane. "And they have bat wings. These must be some kind of diabolic equivalent."

"What kind of a devil is that Fly Guy?" Chalkan wanted to know.

"No idea," admitted Telgrane. "But if he's a devil, he's probably immune to fire." Telgrane - and especially his fire elemental familiar, Infernia - hated enemies who were immune to fire.

In the meantime, though, Beezil began his story. "One night, zzzome eight yearzzz ago, Dezzzdemona'zzz father, Jank Zzztreetzzzweeper, drunkenly bemoaned hizzz fate to the heavenzzz above and wizzzhed he were a rich man inzzztead of zzztruggling to get by in the Zzztyezzz."

Over the telepathic bond, Chalkan repeated, "'Jank Streetsweeper'? And Dez grew up in the Styes?" This was all news to the arcane archer; Dez had never gone into much detail about her early life.

"I heard hizzz drunken appealzzz to Fate, and appeared before him. I offered him untold richezzz in exzzzchange for his immortal zzzoul. But drunk azzz he wazzz, he wazzzn't quite that drunk.

"Zzzo I azzzked him what elzzze he would be willing to zzzell me inzzztead of his zzzoul. And he zzzuggezzzted the hand of hizzz daughter in marriage.

"I wazzz flabbergazzzted. But I azzzked how much he wanted for hizzz daughter."

There was no way for Beezil's fly-head to express a smile, but the heroes could certainly hear it in his buzzing voice. "At firzzzt, Jank zzzuggezzzted 100 gold piezzzezzz. I inzzztantly agreed, but he zzzaw my eagernezzz and upped the cozzzt to 1,000 piezzzezzz of gold. I agreed to thizzz azzz well, but then he dezzzided he wazzz crafty enough to outzzzmart a devil, and upped the cozzzt to 'azzz much money azzz it takezzz to provide me with all of the boozzze I want for the rezzzt of my life.' And he had zzzome conditionzzz. Apparently, he wazzz okay with marrying hizzz only daughter off to a devil, but inzzzizzzted that I wait until zzzhe turned 21. I zzzuppozzze he figured zzzhe'd likely be married by then, and then there would be no harm by hizzz actionzzz.

"I pretended to think it over, and then reluctantly agreed. I produzzzed a contract for Jank to zzzign, with the termzzz exzzzactly azzz the drunkard had zzztated them. Jank zzzigned on the line...and then I killed him, immediately fulfilling my part of the bargain." The fly-headed devil pulled a rolled-up scroll from inside his vest pocket and held it out for Rale to see. "You may inzzzpect the document, if you wizzzh. You will find everything izzz in order."

"Maybe so, but you're a day early," replied Rale defiantly. "Dez doesn't turn 21 until tomorrow."

Beezil jumped as if stung. "Impozzzible. I zzzcried upon her, and zzzaw your birthday zzzelebrationzzz."

"One day early," replied Rale, feeling confident that he had the upper hand. They still had a day to deal with this, and if he could shoo this fly-devil away, he could get Cal to marry him to Dez tonight, thus preventing her from having to go through with this arranged marriage to a denizen of Hell.

Beezil's body buzzed in a sudden flurry of motion, his hands moving faster than could be seen. "Repeat that zzztatement," he ordered. Up on the balcony, Telgrane's magic-enhanced eyesight recognized the aura of a zone of truth spell the fly-devil had just cast on the area.

Rale cleared his throat dramatically and repeated, "Desdemona Honeytongue does not turn 21 until tomorrow."

Beezil flinched as if struck, and hastily rolled his contract back up, returning it to his inner vest pocket. "No matter," he replied. "I will take control of my merchandizzze now, and delay my gratificazzzhion until tomorrow." The unseen smile was back in his voice.

"I don't think so," replied Rale. He was wearing his full adventuring gear as part of his stage portrayal of Rale the Heroic Archetype, and pulled the hammer he used to pound pitons into place from his belt. Gripping it in his right hand, he took Dez's upheld left hand in his own and brought the hammer down in a powerful blow. Dez's left hand broke off at the wrist.

"Your contract gives you Dez's hand in marriage," Rale said, holding out the petrified hunk of stone. "Take it and go."

Beezil had but one reply to this effrontery. "Dezzztroy them all," he said to his bodyguards.

Instantly, the erinyes devils pulled up their flaming longbows and fired off shots, one targeting Telgrane (whose flaming eye sockets identified him as a potential source of powerful trouble), the other at Rale, apparently the leader of this group of mortals. But Rale activated one of the powers of his rod of thievery, turning himself instantly invisible while rising up into the air, courtesy of his boots of flying. The arrows whizzed by him without striking home.

Telgrane had been thinking furiously during Beezil's story, and commanded over the shared link, "Chalkan! We need Cal's gem of soul trapping! Bink back and have Galrich bring the gem if Cal's in the area!" The archmage was concerned that simply killing Beezil would allow his essence to remanifest in Dis, to trouble them again. He was hoping that if Cal's gem could contain the devil's essence for at least a day, they could break the contract Dez's father had signed before his death. In the meantime, he sent a sonic meteor swarm directly between Beezil's multifaceted eyes, catching both erinyes in the areas of effect as well.

"Got it!" Chalkan replied before binking out.

In the meantime, Beezil cast a mind fog up at the balconies, catching not only Telgrane but a confused Galrich, who had just binked back into Chalkan's place, directly into the area of effect. "Cal's not at HQ!" he roared, quickly trying to get his bearings. Theater, angels, fly guy, got it. The half-orc succumbed to the spell's effects, but Telgrane managed to brush it off, as did Delphyne once the fog billowed down to encompass her location on the theater floor directly below the balconies.

One of the erinyes called forth and summoned additional allies. In a wink, four bearded devils appeared on stage, standing in an arc between Beezil and the heroes. Glaives gleaming, they grinned at the anticipation of the upcoming slaughter.

But so did Galrich. Raging, he leaped down from the balcony, landing on the back of a seat and running down the row until he hit the central aisle, where he charged the devils. Beezil tried using a suggestion that the half-orc barbarian might enjoy skewering his friends instead of him, but Galrich allowed his ioun stone to absorb the spell in its entirety. On his way, he tossed his own flaming longbow and a quiver of arrows at an appreciative Thunderwolf, who was delighted to be armed once again. The fighter put his expertise to immediate use, sending an arrow through the neck of one of the erinyes devils, slaying her outright.

Galrich waded into battle against the bearded devils, whose own battle-lust paled against that of the half-orc. He knew back at HQ, Aerik was undoubtedly throwing a fit, knowing the liege he had sworn to protect from all harm had once again ditched him to leap into battle. But Galrich didn't care; he was more focused on slaying the devils before him. And slay them he did, although the prospect was made much easier by a spell or two from Telgrane and Delphyne, who managed to blind not only Beezil but also half of the bearded devils.

Telgrane even allowed Infernia out of the tinder box, figuring she couldn't do too much more harm to the theater, which was already seriously burned in the back and had had several walls destroyed by the diabolic retriever. She manifested into her full form, Telgrane jumped upon her shoulders, and she leapt down to the floor below. Telgrane's last few spells in the battle were cast from this precarious position, but Infernia was more than happy to have her master perched up where she always knew his location. It was much easier to keep track of him that way.

Eventually, the invisible Rale positioned himself directly behind a now-blind Beezil and stabbed at the fly-devil for all he was worth. Despite his origins on the Nine Rings of Hell, the devil had the body of a human, and Rale knew exactly where to strike a human from behind for maximum impact. Rale's blade slid into Beezil's torso from behind and thrust out of his chest in a spray of diabolic blood. Beezil's body was thrust forward, off his feet, and he fell to the floor of the stage, dead beyond question.

Telgrane immediately noticed the devil's body did not disappear upon death as it would have had Beezil been summoned to the Material Plane - and neither did the body of the second erinyes, at Delphyne cut it down with a spell - and breathed a sigh of relief. That meant Beezil and the erinyes had stepped through a gate, and slaying them here meant slaying them forever. The bearded devils, on the other hand, had been summoned here, and Galrich and Thuderwolf sent them exploding into oblivion with each slaying.

Finally, the devils had all been taken care of, and the heroes were once again the only living beings remaining in the Greyhwak Theater. Galrich and Thunderwolf gathered up the erinyes' bows and quivers, while Rale did a quick pat-down of Beezil's body and recovered a flask of liquid which would later prove to be a vial of stone salve - the means by which he would have reverted Dez to flesh and bone to become his unwilling bride.

Delphyne walked up to Dez's petrified remains, bent down, and picked up the severed hand which had fallen to the carpeted floor. Part of her not believing she'd be using up a spell to benefit "that whore," the witch nevertheless felt a twinge of sadness on her behalf, after finding out Dez's drunken father had held her well-being in such low regard he'd been willing to cast her into Hell just to reach his own drunken desires. At least both of my parents loved me while they still lived, thought the young witch sadly. Then, holding the severed hand back into place, Delphyne cast a break enchantment spell upon the wizard, reverting to her human form. Dez, confused about what had happened since being struck by the diabolic retriever's ray, rubbed her wrist, looked around, and asked, "Wh-- what happened?"

"I'll tell you later," replied Rale, taking her arm and leading her to the theater's exit. "For now, let's just head on home."

But in the back of his mind he was thinking, With Beezil dead, I guess I won't have to marry Dez myself to save her from the literal Marriage from Hell. Boy, that was a close one!

Pleased with his good fortune, Rale smiled all the way back to Guild Headquarters.

- - -

And that was that. This was an unusual adventure for me for several reasons. First of all, rather than build a theater geomorph like I'd normally do, I just picked up Paizo's "Theater" flip-mat from their GameMastery line. It doesn't like to unfold very flat on a table top, but nothing a few cans of Mello Yello (inevitably the beverage of choice at our respective gaming tables) on the corners couldn't fix.

Next up, I wanted to use a retriever but didn't have a suitable retriever mini, nor had I heard of one. I did, however, have two rather large plastic spiders I picked up for a dollar each at Target several years ago, so I set out to build a "costume" for one of them. Using two shades of gray art paper, I built leg segments of the appropriate size to slip over each of the spider's own plastic legs, and made the segments of alternating colors. The retriever's body was much more difficult to build, as there was very little room between the legs and body and measuring was difficult. In the end, I just had to best-guess some of the shapes, and eventually just started plunking down strips of the art paper in overlapping chunks and gluing them down. The end result looked like a retriever some demon had built out of scraps in his garage, but it did the job. Of course, it was much larger than a retriever normally is, so I simply advanced the creature from its standard stats. (I made the leg-blades retractable because they'd look funny and off-center if I tried gluing them into place on my plastic spider's legs. In hindsight, it might have been easier to just build my retriever from scratch rather than fit it over a plastic spider. Live and learn.)

And then that brought about the biggest changes. I had wanted to deal with devils instead of demons (the PCs had fought demons on numerous occasions, but I'd never written a devil-specific adventure before), but I also had in mind Dez being hunted by a retriever. Well, I reasoned just because D&D lore describes retrievers as being built exclusively by demons, there was no reason why a bright devil couldn't build his own retriever - and it gave me the opportunity to "upgrade" some of the standard retriever's abilities, like giving it a telekinetic eye ray and a dimension door spell-like ability (which seems like it would be useful to even the standard demonic retriever).

Now all I needed was a devil wishing to purchase mortal souls and I'd be all set. It's always seemed odd to me that the standard D&D devil array doesn't really say much about the purchase of souls; all of the devils are described as far as what role they play in the Blood War, and that's about it. I couldn't see an ice devil, or a bearded devil, or even a pit fiend trying to buy a mortal's soul by trickery. So I cast my net wider, and checked out Pathfinder's Bestiary books. Lo and behold, Bestiary 3 had the contract devil, which seemed to be suited to my needs. However, I was a bit disappointed with the contract devil, not only by the artwork (with its ridiculously oversized horns), but by the fact that it fought opponents in combat wielding its numerous contracts as weapons. (This brought about the image, in my mind, of a fearsome devil trying to kill a mortal foe with...paper cuts.) Um, no. Fortunately, that very same book also had the coloxus, a fly-headed demon, which much better fit the image I had in my mind of Beezil. So, wielding the omnipotent power of DM fiat, I decided that my campaign world included coloxus devils, whose job it was to collect mortal souls, and that there was no such thing as a coloxus demon. (Nor, for that matter, are there massive-horned contract devils who paper cut their victims to death.)

And with that, I had my soul-purchasing devil, I had my justification for a diabolic retriever (and one so much bigger than the standard demonic model), I had my Dez backstory, and I was all set to go. I built Beezil a mansion in Dis in case the PCs ended up having to track down Dez after she'd been abducted, but that never came to pass. (Pity, too, or else the PCs would have gotten additional encounters with a hellfire golem, another pair of erinyes, and a pair of bone devils with their trained hellcat come to investigate the break-in by a group of mortals into the personal dwelling of a denizen of Hell.) That's a set of paper geomorphs I may never use, but I feel it's always better to have something and not use it than the other way around.

Oh, and I came up with a cool idea for an in-game prop. When Logan and I brought our gaming gear into Dan and Vicki's house, I left the spice cake I had asked my wife Mary to bake for us the night before in the back of my van. Then, at the appropriate time, I asked Dan to help me with a prop I had left in the van, and had him bring a lighter. I brought the cake into the house, stuck a candle into it, Dan lit it, and then I went back to the kitchen (where we play at their kitchen table) and read the boxed text I had prepared to the players. Dan entered, as Rale, bearing a spice cake that read "HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEZ" along the top and "BREAK A LEG!" along the bottom. That was a pretty big hit! (My wife makes excellent cakes - the only way I could get away with having her make a cake and then take it away from our house was if I promised to bring back a piece for my nephew Harry, who lives with us. We ended up eating half the cake at Dan and Vicki's and then splitting the leftovers after the game session was over. Harry was suitably appeased by this course of action.)

ADVENTURE 88: EYE OF VECNA

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
"Thank you for meeting with me," said Brother Altamaic the Calm, as the group took their places around the table in one of the side rooms of the Church Library of Boccob.

"One of our brethren, Brother Kasperius, has discovered a carving in the side of a cliff face, in a desert canyon, facing inwards so it cannot be seen by anyone outside of the narrow confines of the canyon. The carving is about 60 feet tall, of a hooded skull with a faint light coming from only one of the eye sockets. We believe this to be a representation of Vecna, the God of Secrets.

"History suggests there is likely a treasure trove of information hidden inside that carved skull," Brother Altamaic continued. "Given Vecna's evil nature, some of that information is best kept away from those who would use it against the world at large. We feel it would be safer locked away in one of our own storage vaults, should it prove to be of a dangerous nature.

"However, history has also shown that Vecna's hidden troves of knowledge are often protected by deadly traps and guarded by fearsome beasts. As such, our representative feared to enter the cliffside himself, opting instead to get word of it to us, that we might hire those more readily equipped to handle such dangers. And that, naturally, is where you come in."

Brother Altamaic proposed the following: the Wing Three adventurers would be paid a 5,000 gp retainer up front, to be spent upon any material goods they felt they needed before exploring whatever chambers might be hidden behind the carved skull. In return, they would turn over all books, scrolls, tomes, and other recorded documents to the Church of Boccob without question. Any other goods, whether it be the treasure of monsters slain or any mundane goods from the interior of the Vecna Complex, would be the group's to keep. As a final incentive, the Church of Boccob agreed to finance the cost of any true resurrection spells to return to life those heroes who might be slain during the course of this mission.

Brother Altamaic offered to repeat his offer under the effects of a zone of truth spell and to sign any documents the heroes wished stating the terms of this agreement, but the heroes didn't take him up on his offer. They had dealt with him specifically, and the Church Library of Boccob on many previous occasions - he was on the short list of people the group trusted implicitly. The Wing Three adventurers agreed to Brother Altamaic's terms, accepted the retainer, and went off to purchase supplies.

After deciding who would be going on the mission and realizing Feron would be their only source of divine healing, the first place they hit was Dundernoggin's Magic Shoppe, to purchase a large quantity of potions of cure critical wounds. Rale, seeing that Galrich and Aerik would be on the mission and fearing the half-orc barbarian would once again have his will dominated and used against the party, insisted that Galrich invest in a periapt of Wisdom, to increase his mental willpower against such intrusions. Telgrane bought a major circlet of blasting for his familiar, always eager to find ways to allow Infernia to contribute in combat. Thunderwolf picked up a Heward's handy haversack, after having seen the advantages to be had from extradimensional storage. (He'd been saving up the money he'd earned on his various missions, and thus picked up a second one while he was at it, giving it to Delphyne. The witch thanked him with a smile, and he blushed and turned away.)

Eventually, the group was ready to go. Rale put on his pair of scout goggles, putting them in transmission mode, while Cal donned the other in the set, putting his pair in receive mode. They confirmed the pair was still fully functional, then Cal slipped his up to the top of his head so he could see through his own eyes long enough to see the group off.

"Are we all ready?" asked Brother Kasperius, unrolling a large scroll. It contained two castings of the teleport without error spell. After Telgrane and Feron had finished their standard preparatory spells, to include a Rary's telepathic bond spell to link the heroes together, the group gathered around Brother Kasperius, Cal stepped back, the Boccobian read the words of the top spell on his scroll, and the group vanished from sight.

They arrived into a barren world – or at least, that was the immediate impression. They heroes stood among desert sands, with a rock cliff rising up above them on both sides. They faced a wide crevice between two canyon walls, with a great sandy desert at their backs.

"It's down this gap," said Brother Kasperius. "It goes a couple hundred feet in, then veers off to the left. The skull carving faces the back wall of the canyon. Good luck to you, my friends." And with that, he began reading the words to the second casting on the scroll.

However, just as he disappeared from view, the area he had just occupied became covered in shadow, engulfing Rale who had naturally drifted into the back of the group as they had started traversing the confines of the cliff-face crevice. Rounding the corner from the cliff behind the rogue stood a humanoid figure made entirely of cacti, thick thorns sprouting from its every surface. Opening its maw, it issued forth a deep, booming voice that expressed its anger even to those who could not understand its words.

Fortunately, Feron understood the thing's booming, guttural words as being spoken in the Sylvan language. "Who are you, and why do you trespass upon the Burning Lands?" the cactus-man demanded. She turned to face the massive being, holding her hand up to the others to hold off their attacks. They lowered their weapons, although none was foolish enough to sheathe them entirely.

"We are adventurers, come to rid the world of the evil contained in the carving beyond," Feron responded in Sylvan, pointing down the crevice they'd been traversing.

"Lies!" roared the saguaro sentinel - basically, the desert equivalent to the forest's treant. "I have been warned of your arrival, of your intent to despoil the fragile desert environment in your search for buried treasure!"

"Who gave you such a warning?" asked Feron.

"The wizard Pondari," replied the towering cactus-man.

"Our intentions are pure," responded Feron in her most reasonable tone of voice. "I am a druid; my last desire would be to harm any aspect of the natural world. We will not be passing onto the desert reaches behind you, merely confining our explorations into the side of the cliff wall, where we believe there is evil to be fought."

The cactus-man took on a defiant pose, his bulk blocking the entrance to the gap between the cliffs. "Then go your way," he said. "I will ensure you stay within the boundaries you have stated."

"Fair enough," Feron replied with a sweet smile, turning her back on the mighty saguaro sentinel and heading back down the way she'd been going. "C'mon, guys." The others followed the druid, although not without a few nervous glances at the towering form behind them. The saguaro just snarled at irritation at their nervousness.

Several hundred feet back, the crevice turned to the left, just as had been described. Looking up at the cliff wall looming above them, they saw the carving that had been described by Brother Altamaic. The enormous skull appeared to have been sculpted directly into the face of the vertical stone cliff; protected as it was from the desert winds, it was difficult to say how long ago it had been carved. But the likeness was unmistakable: not only was the skull encompassed within the folds of a carved hood, but its right eye – and only its right – seemed to hold an eyeball that looked directly at the heroes, no matter which way they moved.

"Creepy," commented Thunderwolf.

Suddenly, the sand before them exploded upwards. Like the sand in an hourglass in an upside-down world, the particles rose up from the ground and stopped about ten feet up, filling in the shape of a humanoid form from the top down. The end result was a massive, featureless figure, which approached menacingly. Telgrane thought it was likely a sand golem, and passed that information to the group over their shared link. He couldn't recall any specific details about its powers, but if it was a golem then it was likely immune to most spells. "Let's fly above it," he suggested, backing up, unrolling his carpet of flying from his back with a snap and leaping upon it in a one fluid movement. Infernia stepped on as well, and he levitated them both straight up.

Thunderwolf, Rale, and Feron quickly followed suit, stepping upon their drow floatdisks. Aerik did likewise, but as usual waited until Galrich had done the same before he would allow himself to flee to safety. The half-orc was a bit slower than the others, and as a result both he and his bodyguard were still landbound when the sand golem struck.

Aerik, being the closest (for he had naturally positioned himself between the sand golem and his liege), took the brunt of the golem's attack. A massive fist struck the dwarf, but worse yet, the sand particles flying in a cloud all about the construct immediately started filling his nose and mouth. Feron quickly cast a wind wall between them to prevent any further sand particles from getting to the dwarf. Aerik staggered and coughed, trying to dislodge the lump of sand stuck in his throat, to no avail. He tipped forward, dropping his weapon, and would have collapsed face-first upon the desert floor if Galrich hadn't grabbed him by one of the leather weapon straps crossing his broad back and sent his own floatdisk rocketing straight up, out of reach.

From the air, Telgrane summoned a Huge earth elemental to deal with the sand golem, and the two creatures traded a series of powerful blows. Up in the air, the heroes regrouped. Aerik still convulsed in Galrich's grasp, struggling to no avail to gather a breath. Feron hesitated; her natural instinct was to cast a healing spell upon the dwarf, but that wouldn't help him, for there were no gashes to close, no wounds to clear.

"Hold him still," commanded Rale, steering his floatdisk over by Galrich's and unstoppering a potion. He grabbed Aerik by his beard, yanked open his mouth, and poured the contents down his sand-clogged throat. The sand likely absorbed a good chunk of it, but enough made it into Aerik's system to have the intended effect. The dwarf's body converted to a gaseous cloud, taking with it the fighter's armor, weapons, and gear - but not the sand that had forced its way into his air passages. That fell to the desert floor below in a wet clump. Aerik allowed his gaseous form to drift to the sands below, where he reformed into his normal self and gathered up his dropped weapon and his floatdisk before joining the others in the sky.

"That was a close one!" gasped Feron, casting two consecutive cure critical wounds spells from her wand upon the dwarf, for she could see the ordeal had just about sapped him of all of his vigor.

"I'm better now," was all the dwarf had to say on the subject, embarrassed at having been brought so close to death that quickly.

Below them, the two humanoid figures battled on. Telgrane maneuvered over to the skull sculpture, examining the two eye sockets.

The skull's left eye - that is, the one on the right as viewed head-on - was a dark hole some 20 feet in diameter that led into darkness, although Telgrane could see the stone floor dropped down to a steep angle shortly inside the confines of the eye socket. Moving over to the carved skull's right eye socket - the one on the left as viewed by the archmage - Telgrane saw it contained an enormous, bloodshot, age-yellowed eyeball floating at its center. It moved about, following the archmage's progress as he maneuvered his carpet of flying to different viewpoints. It was an unnerving effect, but Telgrane's arcane sight told him the "eye" was bathed in an aura of illusion magic, and he was willing to bet it was harmless.

"Here's my best guess," he told the others over the telepathic bond. "The open socket is the most obvious means of entry, so I'm guessing that one's heavily trapped. I'd say the one with the eyeball's the safe way in."

"Let me see," replied Rale as he maneuvered his floatdisk over. After all, while they were expecting to find some undead creatures inside the Vecna Complex - at which point Cal's ability to turn undead would prove be invaluable - there were also likely to be all manners of traps, which were Rale's area of expertise. Wanting to display his usefulness, he gave the exterior of the eye socket a thorough examination before flying straight through the eyeball with no ill effect. "It's safe," he called back to the others.

The area beyond was a wide hallway, 20 feet wide with an equal height. After about thirty feet, the stone floor turned into a set of stairs leading down into darkness. By the light of Infernia's flaming body, the group could see the passageway made a right turn just past the bottom of the stairs.

Telgrane and Infernia opted to remain on the carpet of flying, to avoid any pressure plates that might be lying in wait to be stepped upon. The rest of the group followed suit, traveling forward on their floatdisks.

A short distance past the turn, the passageway opened up into a wider area, with an even wider area just beyond that. Two looming shapes stood in the shadows at the edge of Infernia's illumination; moving cautiously forward, the shapes took on the forms of massive scorpions, poised to strike with their tails. But even in the poor lighting, the group could see the scorpions were carved of iron and stood completely motionless.

"Statues," observed Thunderwolf. "Or sculptures."

"Or constructs, ready to activate and try to kill us all," added Rale.

"Look on the floor, Master," said Infernia, pointing down at the first section of the room, where the distance between the side walls was about 45 feet wide. There was a grid of stone tiles, arranged in four rows of nine each, each with a letter carved in its center. Together, they read as follows:

F I R E W A T E R
D E A T H L I F E
A L I V E D E A D
W E E D G R A S S​

Click to expand...

The tiles upon which the words "WATER," "DEATH," "DEAD," and "WEED" appeared were of a smoky-gray slate, while those containing the words "FIRE," "LIFE," ALIVE," and "GRASS" were of white marble.

The group gathered up to examine the words on the floor, each careful not to cross directly above them. Rale gave the floor a close scrutiny and discovered narrow grooves between each tile. "There's a good chance these are pressure plates," he told the group at large. Everyone prided themselves on having remained afloat thus far.

Telgrane peered into the room beyond the letters on the floor. The twin scorpions had an aura of transmutation magic - not very powerful, but that was probably because it was waiting to become active; right now it was likely in a dormant state, before one of the heroes did something that would trigger their movement. Of more interest to the archmage was the aura on the ceiling in the room beyond, which was likewise currently dormant but looked to hold a significant amount of potential evocation magic.

"Thoughts?" asked Rale, looking over the letters again.

"In a complex devoted to Vecna, maybe the darker words are the safe ones? That would include 'DEATH' and 'DEAD.'"

"Yeah, but 'WATER' and 'WEED,' too," replied Rale. "Those two words don't really have a 'Vecna' feel to them."

"Anybody have a rock?" suggested Thunderwolf. "We could toss one onto the letters and see what happens." It was a valid approach, but Rale wanted to try something first. "Everybody scoot back," he ordered. "If these are pressure plates, it should be safe to just fly right over them." Telgrane and Infernia remained in place where they were, the archmage eager to see the effects, if any, Rale's gambit would produce; the others retreated back against the far wall, where the stairway ended and turned the corner.

"Here goes," Rale said, slowly moving his floatdisk forward.

As soon as it crossed over the first row of letters, a bolt of electricity came flashing down from the cavern's ceiling, striking Rale squarely in the chest and sending arcs out to likewise hit Telgrane, Infernia, and Galrich, who was the only one of the group in the back to still be within range of the chain lightning effect. Rale howled in pain and hurriedly backed his floatdisk up to hover before the first row of letters; Telgrane tensed to see if the magical effect would repeat, but apparently the conditions of the trap had been set to strike those who had passed too far into the room in the improper manner, but to hold off once they had retreated and the conditions were no longer in effect.

"Well," reasoned Rale as smoke curled up from the armor on his chest, "We learned some valuable information."

"Wait a minute," said Thunderwolf suddenly, jumping down from his floatdisk in his excitement and grabbing it up. He ran over to the right-hand side of the letter grid and pointed at the first "S" in "GRASS." "This column here," he said matter-of-factly. "It spells out 'SAFE.'"

"It sure does!" agreed Feron. "Nicely done!"

"It would have been nice if you'd have figured it out a half a minute earlier," grumbled Rale to himself, but he too dismounted from his floatdisk and walked over to the "SAFE" column. Carefully stepping only onto those squares, he made it into the room - and once there, was undisturbed by chain lightning effects. "It's safe to follow," he called back, "but nobody touch anything! I want to check out these statues."

The others all dismounted, stowed their floatdisks back into shield mode, and walked safely into the back half of the room. Rale, meanwhile, was carefully examining the two scorpion statues, one at a time.

"What's the point of this room?" asked Feron. There doesn't seem to be any other way out." Aerik was traversing the outer walls as she said this, using his innate stonecunning to search for possible secret doors, but thus far finding none.

"Maybe we should go back outside and try the other eye socket?" suggested Thunderwolf.

"No, there are two exits from this room," corrected Rale. "Directly in front of each statue, on the floor between its claws, is a trap door. I just want to make sure these things aren't going to activate if we open them up."

The others verified his findings, and sure enough, there was a five-foot-square raised tile before each scorpion, with evident hinges in the back.

"Maybe they animate if you open the wrong door?" guessed Telgrane.

Rale gave the trap doors a very close scrutiny, and his keen eyes detected a few scratches along the front side of the one on the right that were not present on the other trap door. Reasoning it was because the Vecna cultists who likely used this place used the untrapped door exclusively, he carefully stepped between the claws of the rightmost guardian scorpion and pulled that trap door open with a strong tug.

The scorpions - despite the fact that Rale's hands-off examinations had revealed their joints would easily allow the sculptures to move about - remained motionless. "Careful now," he told the others. "Don't touch the scorpions, and we should be fine." Beneath the trap door was a narrow set of stairs; he descended, the others following suit.

The stairs descended a good twenty or thirty feet before the passageway leveled out again and made a turn to the left, expanding in width to 10 feet as it did so. Thirty feet ahead there was a closed door centered on a stone wall.

"Hang back," ordered Rale. "I'll check it out." He approached carefully, examining the floor in detail before taking his next step forward. And sure enough, about ten feet from the door, there was a narrow line in the stone along the floor, a possible seam that could be the edge of a trap door or something similar. Stepping back upon his floatdisk, Rale followed the seam onto the walls. They continued along each wall in a circular arc leading up to the top of the wall in which the door was centered.

The rogue grunted to himself, convinced now that this was a mechanical trap - likely, if the door were to be opened, the entire section would flip forward. He closely examined the doorknob and the wall along each side of the door, discovering a loose chunk of stone. Rale tried pushing it, to no effect, then pulled it away from the rest of the wall. It was, in effect, a large, hollow brick, covering a metal lever.

"Here we go!" he cried out in excitement. "You guys stay there!" And with that, he pulled the lever.

As he expected, the floor behind him immediately began rising, as the wall containing the door started tipping forward at the same rate. Behind him, the others saw the floor slowly rise up to form a new wall where the original wall had been, revealing a chute of some sort dropping down into darkness where the original floor had been. Galrich approached cautiously and listened intently; he could just make out a dry, skittering noise far below that gave the half-orc the chills. It sounded like a massive swarm of some type of horrible insect, crawling all over themselves in an effort to find prey.

The trap had by this time reached the end of its course and assumed its new configuration. Rale waited patiently on his floatdisk and sure enough, after half a minute or so, the section of floor and wall reversed its course, returning to their original positions.

"That was interesting," said Rale. "I'd bet anything that if you just try to open the door regularly, the floor section would move much faster and dump you into a pit or something below us."

"Spiders," replied Galrich. "Or maybe beetles."

"Anyway, saddle up," commanded Rale, getting everyone back up onto their floatdisks (or carpet of flying, in Telgrane's case). They moved forward, Rale activated the lever, and they waited as the whole section flipped forward and let them past once the door was on the floor before them.

The corridor beyond extended straight ahead for a bit before opening up into a small room with a podium in its center and a closed door on the far wall. An unseen voice whispered to the heroes, its words echoing throughout the chamber: "You must pay (pay pay pay) in Vecna's coin (coin coin coin) to pass further (further further further). Speak a secret (secret secret secret) known to no other than you (you you you). Let the first approach (roach roach roach)." As the echoes fell away, a feather quill pen rose up off the podium, and a large book flipped open to an empty page. Apparently, to pass further into the Vecna Complex, each hero would have to voice a secret which would then be copied into the book.

Once again, Telgrane's enhanced vision caught several magical auras in the room. He detected a faint aura of enchantment magic, but his experience told him that was likely the effects of a zone of truth spell, or something very similar to detect spoken falsehoods. He also recognized a faint conjuration aura in the vicinity of the podium, but took that to be an unseen servant recording the spoken words. Much more unnerving was the strong aura of evocation magic on the ceiling, which could be another chain lightning spell or any of a score of other possible effects.

Thunderwolf stepped forward. "I'll go first," he said to the others, then directed the podium. "I am creeped out by the thought of zombie clowns." He had never actually encountered such beings, of course, but others in Wing Three had done so and the young fighter had heard their tales. While he had put on a brave face during the telling of such tales, not wanting his compatriots to think any less of him, deep inside the very thought gave him the heebie-jeebies.

Much to Thunderwolf's concern, the pen - despite there being no ink well - wrote the following onto the blank page of the open book: "Thunderwolf of Greyhawk City is creeped out by the thought of zombie clowns." As soon as the written sentence was completed the ink seemed to absorb into the page, leaving it a clean slate once more. "How did it know my name?" Thunderwolf asked the others silently over the telepathic bond, clearly disturbed. But at the same time, there was a click from the back of the room and the door swung partially open with a rusty squeak.

"Go on," Rale said to the fighter. "We'll be right behind you."

"Couldn't we all just--" began Galrich, but Telgrane cut him off. "There's a magical sensor on the ceiling. I don't think it's safe for anyone but Thunderwolf to go through the door." Thunderwolf nodded at the group, swallowed nervously, and turned to go through the open door. It closed behind him.

"You still there?" asked Feron over the link.

"I'm here," Thunderwolf replied.

"Don't go any further without us."

"I won't."

The remaining heroes looked at each other. Aerik, not liking the idea of leaving his liege behind in a trapped room, but equally not liking the idea of letting him brave unknown dangers ahead, stepped forward. At least if he went now, Galrich would still have a pair of powerful spellcasters keeping him safe. He looked straight at the floating feather and stated, for the record, "I like to steal men's socks." The dwarf didn't look down at the page, but the words "Aerik Battershield of Kordovia likes to steal men's socks" sunk into the page immediately after the words had been written.

The dwarf ignored the gasps of surprise from behind him and stepped through the doorway without looking back.

"I thought I was missing some socks!" said Rale aloud, not wanting to send his accusations over the telepathic bond, where Aerik might hear. After all, even if Rale was correct and Aerik had stolen his socks, he wasn't eager to challenge the burly dwarven fighter.

"Who's next?" Telgrane asked.

"I will go, Master," replied his familiar in a quiet voice. She approached the podium, and in an even smaller voice, and careful not to simultaneously broadcast over the telepathic bond, spoke a few words. The door opened once again and Infernia crossed the room, the door closing behind her. She too paid no attention to the book on the podium, which completely absorbed the words, "Telgrane of Greyhawk City is not the first master the fire elemental Infernia has served as a familiar."

"I'll go next," said Feron. She followed Infernia's lead, speaking aloud a secret in such a way as to keep it from her companions. "I have always felt responsible for my father's death," she said quietly, before crossing the room and walking through the door.

Telgrane approached the podium next. He didn't bother trying to keep his secret from Rale and Galrich, but said aloud, "I had a crush on one of the teachers at my arcane college. The only reason I specialized in conjuration magic was because she was a conjurer and it meant spending more time with her." A broad grin spread across Rale's face as Telgrane confessed his secret crush; it was the first valid reason he's ever heard for spending all of the time and effort needed to master arcane spellcraft. The archmage crossed the room and vanished through the door.

"You ready yet? Rale asked Galrich. The half-orc shook his head; he was having difficulty deciding what to confess.

"Then I'm up," replied Rale, confidently approaching the podium. But when it was his turn to speak, he too did so in a quiet voice and outside the confines of the telepathic bond. After all, he had a reputation to protect.

"I do not covet gold," the rogue whispered almost inaudibly. It seemed to fly in the face of years of his past behavior, but Rale knew it was technically the truth, because he secretly really only coveted power, and gold was but one of several paths to obtain that which he truly sought. The magical sensors in the room apparently believed him, for the door swung open with a rusty squeak and he exited the room with a confident swagger.

That left only Galrich. He cleared his throat, and then said, "I killed my father."

Immediately, a beam of red light fired down from the ceiling, striking the barbarian in the chest. He howled in pain and snarled, "What was that for? It's the truth!" And it was, indeed, the truth, for years ago Galrich had slain the orc chieftain Jorrak of the Bloody Hand tribe in the Vesve Forest, shortly after having found out he would be the next king of Kordovia. But fighting down his rage for once, Galrich thought his way through the problem. Oh, right: the condition was that it had to be a secret known to nobody else but him, and others in his party had not only seen Galrich slay Jorrak, but had heard the chieftain's lament that he should have killed Galrich when we was born and saved himself the trouble of letting a halfbreed live. Apparently Galrich's patricide wasn't a secret known only to him.

"Okay, then, I've always blamed my mother for not being there when I was a kid! Happy?" Galrich snarled up at the ceiling, half expecting another bolt of energy to strike him down. But this secret was apparently found to be suitable, for the door opened with a squeak and the entire adventuring party was reunited. "Let's go," said Galrich, eager to get on with it and leave all of the "talking about your feelings" business behind him.

The narrow stone corridor beyond the door descended even further downwards, only instead of the smooth, carved steps the group had encountered in the Vecna complex thus far, these were entirely natural steps, coming at irregular intervals. Looking up, there were stalactites hanging down from the ceiling as well. The passageway opened up into a vast, open cavern, lit only by Infernia's flames in the front and a group of six glowing weapons on a ledge in the very back of the cavern. The ledge was about 30 feet tall, and the weapons circled slowly in place, basking the cavern in ever-shifting shadows. At the bottom of the vertical cliff leading up to the ledge stood an iron door in a recess in the stone.

Close to the front of the group, Telgrane's arcane vision spotted an irregularity on the stone floor in the center of the open cavern: a broad patch of illusion magic, fairly obviously an illusory wall spell cast horizontally. Then, popping up through the false floor erupted a Gargantuan blue dragon, its forelimbs raised as if about to attack, its lower half not visible, as if it were standing in a deep pit.

"Rowr!" roared the dragon, somewhat ineffectually, before freezing in place in a menacing pose.

Telgrane took a close look at the reptilian form and saw an aura of illusion magic emanating from it. "It's an illusion," he confirmed over the telepathic link, piloting his carpet of flying past the phony dragon and heading for the six floating weapons above the ledge in the back of the cavern. Thunderwolf squinched his eyes up and could see part of the dragon's outline seem to blur, but he couldn't get it to disappear entirely - the illusion must have been a fairly high-level one, he supposed.

As Telgrane and Infernia approached the floating weapons, he could see they orbited over a large pile of coins, gems, and art objects - mostly carvings and ornate carpets. There were no auras of illusion covering any of the goods. "That's odd," he muttered. "A dragon's hoard, but no real dragon."

At the front of the cavern, the ancient blue dragon Alaerthrax suppressed a draconic chuckle and leapt out of the pit, sending wildly dancing arcs of electricity leaping from his mouth to the heroes in the tunnel before him. Aerik, still weakened from his ordeal with the sand golem, was slain in an instant. Feron, Galrich, and Thunderwolf were all massively singed but not slain outright, while only Rale managed to twist his body in an instinctive response to the dragon's breath weapon and avoid all damage entirely. He activated one of the effects of his rod of thievery and became invisible, maneuvering his floatdisk past the dragon and zooming towards the relative safety of the back of the cavern. (The fact that that was where the dragon's treasure hoard was kept was no doubt entirely coincidental.)

Feron hated to do it, but she had been severely hurt by the dragon's sudden attack and burns covered the majority of her body. Whispering the words to a meld into stone spell, she backed into the side of the tunnel wall and spent the next half minute or so casting healing spells upon herself.

Galrich, seeing the dead body of his loyal bodyguard crumple to the ground, smoking from multiple burns, raged. He flew forward on his floatdisk, an inarticulate cry of fury exploding from his lips as he cut a bloody swath of pain and damage with his greataxe. Alaerthrax, having had a grand old time of it thus far, was suddenly taken aback as he recognized the energy crackling along the axe's blade: vorpal! Ancient dragon or no, one wrong swing of that weapon could find him beheaded in an instant! The dragon snarled in a rage of his own and attacked Galrich with teeth and claws. Behind the half-orc, Thunderwolf peppered the dragon with nearly a dozen arrows - enhanced with not only fire from his flaming longbow but also sonic and cold energy, courtesy of a pair of spells Telgrane had cast earlier upon his ammunition - but was disappointed to see the majority of them bounce harmlessly off the dragon's thick scales.

Switching to Xanthros, the fighter followed Galrich's lead and charged the dragon on his floatdisk. "Now we're talking, son!" boomed the intelligent blade, eager to see combat once again.

From the back of the cavern, Telgrane cast a sunburst spell, carefully shaping it to avoid blinding his allies. Unfortunately, the dragon was able to shake off most of the spell's effects, including the blinding effect, and the archmage sighed in frustration as one of his most powerful spells had almost no effect at all upon the massive reptile. Infernia let fly with the daily blast of energy afforded by her new magical circlet, and it had a slightly more powerful effect upon Alaerthrax.

But neither spell proved to be as effective as the invisible Rale, who had diverted course and snuck up behind the dragon, flying in for an invisible sneak attack. Racing his floatdisk to its fastest speed, he positioned his twin blades in such a fashion as to hopefully slide them beneath the dragon's scales by its spine. The success of the rogue's sneak attack was evidenced by the roar of pain bellowed out by Alaerthrax, which echoed back and forth throughout the underground cavern. The dragon snapped its head back to bite at its unseen attacker...

...but suddenly the attacker wasn't the only thing unseen in the vicinity, for Telgrane had just had much more success with the second casting of his sunburst spell than he had with the first. Alaerthrax, ancient blue dragon and willing ally to the followers of Vecna, was blind, and his own impressive knowledge of arcane spellcraft offered him no immediate way to correct the deficiency. Attacked simultaneously from the front by Galrich and Thunderwolf and from the back by Rale, the dragon was soon slain.

Feron eventually exited the stone wall, having been healed of almost all damage. She cast healing spells upon those who needed it, and unpacked the Daern's dollhouse long enough to lay Aerik's body to rest in one of the rooms therein. In the meantime, Rale and Telgrane had been gathering up the contents of the dragon's treasure and stuffing it inside the extradimensional space of Thunderwolf's new Heward's handy haversack. Rale took one of the hovering weapons, a rapier of puncturing, for his own personal use, and Feron did likewise with a sylvan scimitar. Then the group moved on.

A side cavern to the south led to a patch of sand, which Telgrane surmised was the dragon's means of secret exit and entrance to his lair: blue dragons were capable burrowers and could leave behind no passage behind them as they dug through the ground. In the meantime, Rale had been examining the iron door at the foot of the treasure ledge above; after having detected no traps and discovered no lock to pick, he used a knock spell from his rod of thievery and the door swung open. Beyond, another set of stairs led down into darkness.

These eventually led to a large set of double doors, upon which were carved a common holy symbol of Vecna: a skeletal hand holding a severed eye. After giving it his thorough examination, Rale declared the doors safe and pulled them open.

At long last, the treasures they had been sent to retrieve for the Church of Boccob stood readily apparent, for the rectangular room held bookcases on all four walls. A wide set of stairs descended through a large, circular opening in the center of the floor to a lower level; a quick examination revealed that there were in fact four levels to this Hidden Library, each accessible by the same set of wide stairs leading down from the top level to the bottom through a series of ever-decreasing circular openings in each floor.

"I think we might want some backup," commented Feron, casting a shambler spell. Instantly, a quartet of shambling mounds materialized in the back of the room. Rale, in the meantime, had moved to the eastern wall, upon which, between the bookcases at either end, was a mosaic of interlocking gears. Some had hemispheres jutting out from their centers; as the rogue examined them, there was the sudden snap of retracting bolts, and the four spheres hovered into the room, leaving behind semicircular indentations in the centers of the gears they had occupied.

Being simple constructs with simple commands, each of these four deathspheres reacted to their programming and headed for the nearest living being. One flew at Infernia, another at the nearest of the shambling mounds, and the two in the middle flanked Rale from either end. As they flew, each projected a sharp spike from its equator. The southernmost deathsphere impaled the shambler's head with a wet squelching sound, then began emitting an ever-rising tone that shot waves of sonic energy into the humanoid vegetable.

Rale ducked and weaved, then decided the best way not to be impaled in the head by a deathsphere was not to have a head available to be punctured. Grabbing up another potion of gaseous form from the slot on his belt, he guzzled its contents and fell backwards over the hole in the floor behind him. At the same time, Galrich raced over to attack the deathsphere buzzing at Infernia's head, slicing it handily in twain with his greataxe.

But combat was not limited to the upper level. On the floor below, a lich stepped into view and cast a lightning bolt spell up the stairway to catch Telgrane, Infernia, and Thunderwolf in the area of effect. In return, Telgrane stepped forward and caught the lich in the middle of a wall of fire spell he sprung up into being around it, careful not to let the ends of the wall of flames reach either side of the room, where the bookcases stood. Engulfed in flames, the undead being pointed a skeletal finger at the archmage and called out, "The curse of Aberoth upon you, human!" - while falling through the opening in the floor before it to its fiery destruction.

Two more undead forms sprang into view from the second floor of the Hidden Library. One was another lich; unbeknownst to the heroes, this was the very same Pondari who had not only warned the saguaro sentinel of their imminent arrival (having earlier detected Brother Kasperius's discovery of the carving of Vecna's skull on the side of the cliff) but also had its own sand golem wait in hiding to attack strangers who might approach the carving. Pondari, stepping into view from the west, cast a slay living spell up at Galrich, who was close enough to the hole in the floor to be within the dry lich's line of sight. Fortunately, the spell fizzled ineffectually against the ioun stone silently whirling around the half-orc's head.

The second undead was of a form previously unknown to the heroes: a grisgol, constructed from the remains of a slain lich and covered with scraps from torn scrolls and damaged spellbooks, it looked very much like a mummy covered in arcane writings. This odd creature raced up the stairs and struck out at an astonished Feron, who hadn't even seen it coming. Her body responded poorly to its leathery touch, freezing up in paralysis. Had she not been able to communicate to her friends through the telepathic link, they'd probably have assumed she had been slain, for her body crashed unmoving to the floor after she had been punched by the mummy-thing.

"I'm paralyzed!" cried out Feron telepathically over the link. "Does anybody have any means to restore me?" Naturally, of the assembled group, this pretty much meant Telgrane, the only other spellcaster present. The young archmage mentally went through his spell repertoire. He knew the workings of the break enchantment spell, but unfortunately did not have such a spell currently prepared. "Ah," he said, smiling, the solution coming to him. He had Infernia grab Feron's paralyzed form and slide it out of the way of the grisgol's reach, then stand between them, fending off the parchment-covered creature with her own burning body. Telgrane cast a limited wish spell, transforming vitality from his own body to reshape the world in a small way to his liking. Feron stood back up, the paralytic effects completely neutralized.

Two of Feron's four shambling mounds had moved over to directly above Pondari and struck out at him from the floor above, reaching down through the hole surrounding the four-story staircase. The lich spat a curse at them and moved north, out of range of the shambling vegetation and out of view of the other heroes. Feron sent them to follow the undead spellcaster, and they immediate stepped into the hole in the floor to land on the level below with a pair of wet plops. The other two remained in place on the top floor, trying to remove the deathsphere lodged into one of their heads. Pulses of sonic energy ripped apart the vegetable mass making up the impaled shambler's body, and it collapsed in a heap, no longer even vaguely humanoid. The deathsphere then turned to the other shambler, but was brought down by a well-placed bolt of energy from a call lightning storm spell, Feron's targeting not only destroying the deathsphere but increasing the vigor of the shambler battling it.

Rale, in the meantime, had flown to the southern section of the library's top floor and rematerialized. The two deathspheres he had left behind sought out a new target: Galrich. Galrich carved one of them in two while avoiding the other one buzzing around his head. Feron dropped the other with another bolt from her lightning storm.

The grisgol activated one of the spells inscribed on its body, encompassing all but Rale and the surviving shambler up on the top floor in a mass hold monster spell. Fortunately, all but Thunderwolf and Galrich were able to shake off the effects. The grisgol then dodged around Infernia and made a rush to attack Telgrane, but the fire elemental was having none of that. She grappled the rune-covered creature from behind, dragging it away from her master. Mold spores puffed out of the grisgol's body, but they had no effect on Infernia and nobody else was within range. The grisgol, much smaller than its nine-foot-tall captor and not nearly as strong, activated another spell to get free of her grasp. The feeblemind spell took Infernia by complete surprise, and once her intellect dropped to that of a lizard she instinctively let go of her prisoner, not recalling the importance of keeping it away from her master.

The grisgol soon learned the folly of attacking Telgrane's beloved familiar, for the archmage retaliated with full fury, sending a blast of sonic energy (a delayed blast fireball spell without the delay and with its energy converted to sonic damage, the entire effect shaped to avoid Telgrane's allies) directly into its body, destroying it instantly. Feron then healed Infernia with a charge from her staff of healing, restoring the elemental to her full intellect once again. She then wildshaped into the form of a Large air elemental, that she could continue her spellcasting while also being able to fly great distances at a respectable speed. As the rest of her equipment melded into her new form, she specifically exempted her bow and quiver of arrows, feeling she could bring them to good use.

One level below, the dry lich Pondari cast a harm spell on the nearest of the shamblers harassing him, destroying it at once, then scuttled down the stairs to the third level of the library. He was followed by the other shambler, who reached out at him with a massive limb. "We are under attack!" called out Pondari, activating the guardians of the third level.

Instantly, a pair of erinyes devils appeared. They watched as Pondari dispatched the remaining shambler with another harm spell, assessed that the third level was secure, and flew up through the central hole connecting all four library levels. The second level was not inhabited; apparently the problem was up on the first. Sure enough, flying up to the top level revealed a group of invaders, including a fire elemental, a pair of spellcasters, a lone shambling mound, and a pair of warrior-types frozen in place. (The devils didn't spot Rale behind them, who was doing his very best not to be noticed.) Going for the easy targets first, they peppered Thunderwolf and Galrich with arrows from their flaming composite longbows.

The pain gave Thunderwolf the final push he needed to break free from the grisgol's mass hold monster effect; Galrich, unfortunately, was not so lucky. Although he was currently raging at his immobility, the increased adrenaline was not having any effect on his ability to break free. But Thunderwolf returned the erinyes devil's favor, shooting her with a flurry of rapidly-shot arrows, each magically enhanced to contain not only fire but also electricity and sonic energy. The female devil, slain, dropped through the holes in the library's multiple floors and crashed to the floor of the lowest level, directly below. Rale silently cursed, for he'd been sizing her up for a sneak attack with his own bow.

From two levels below, Pondari circled the hole between the floors and cast a bolt of desiccating energy up at Thunderwolf, attempting to turn the fighter into a pillar of salt. Thunderwolf gritted his teeth in pain at the attack, but while he felt an incredible thirst and a slight weakness he had not fully succumbed to the dry lich's attack and remained in the fight. However, Pondari immediately regretted having brought attention back to himself, for he was dropped by an almost casual bolt of energy from Feron's still-active call lightning storm spell. About the same time, Galrich finally mustered sufficient resolve to break his mind free from the grasp of the mass hold monster spell, and he roared in triumph.

The remaining erinyes flew over to the north wall by the double-door entrance to the library's first level, the better to target her shots against Telgrane. Then, in a surprise move, she switched both targets and weapons, flicking the end of a coil of rope towards Thunderwolf, who had just slain her partner. The rope tangled around his lower legs and she flew back to the top of the hole, dragging him with her. Once the fighter was dangling above the opening to the lower levels, the erinyes released him from her enchanted rope, causing him to plummet 50 feet to the bottom floor. He landed with a painful crash upon the arrow-riddled body of the erinyes devil he'd previously slain.

Suddenly, there was a rumble and one of the enormous gears on the side of the eastern wall moved inward, then rolled off to the side, revealing a wide corridor just beyond. Standing in the corridor was a massive cyclopean being, some 25 feet tall, wearing a blacksmith's apron. One gnarled hand gripped an enormous hammer; in the other was a book. "Return to shelf," said the one-eyed titan, Mechanothestes, and the book was taken from his hand by an invisible force, flown across the room, and returned to its place on one of the shelves. "Golemaic Arcanabulum," he then demanded, and another tome came flying from a shelf across the room and into his empty hand. Then, as if absentmindedly just now noticing the battle raging on around him, the titan looked around at the intruders and casually commanded, "Rise up against your masters!" He then turned and went back the way he had come, the massive gear sliding back into place behind him.

The results of his command were instantaneous. Galrich felt motion in one of the pouches at his belt, and an ivory figurine leapt out of its confinement and manifested as the Goat of Terror. It immediately snapped its teeth and kicked at Galrich with its front hooves. At the same time, on the bottom floor, just as Thunderwolf was rising to his feet he found his ebony fly extricating itself from his backpack and expanding to full form. While it was an ineffectual combatant, it guarded the stairway as if to prevent the fighter from getting past it and returning to his compatriots. Feron, flying high above, gave a sudden thought to the fact that she carried a serpent of constriction as part of her combat gear, and worried that while it was currently subsumed into her air elemental form it might likewise manifest and attack her as soon as she returned to her normal half-elven body.

Neither the Goat of Terror nor the ebony fly posed too much of a threat to the seasoned adventurers. While Galrich and Thunderwolf took care of their rebelling figurines, Rale noted that the remaining erinyes devil had unerringly lined herself up for a sneak attack, just as he had been planning for her counterpart. He got her in the neck, his arrow dropping her with a single shot. Unfortunately, she had been positioned directly above Thunderwolf, and her dead body came crashing down upon him, knocking him to the floor and close to senseless. He shook his head in an effort to regain his senses, and then systematically gathered up the weapons of both erinyes devils. He also stripped Pondari's corpse of a magical-looking periapt on his way back up the stairs to meet up with the others.

By the time he arrived the combat was over with and the group was discussing whether to go after the cyclopean titan or start grabbing up the books from the shelves, which was the reason they had been sent here in the first place. Feron took the initiative and decided they could accomplish both tasks at the same time. She cast an elemental storm spell - one she'd often longed to cast before but its lengthy casting time made it a poor choice for combat - summoning forth a group of air elementals. She returned to her own half-elven form long enough to unpack the Daern's dollhouse from her pack - noticing as she did so that her serpent of constriction remained in its statuette form - and provided the air elementals with the command words. They were instructed to start grabbing all of the books, tomes, and scrolls from the shelves of the library, starting at the top floor and working their way down, and storing them inside several rooms of the Daern's dollhouse. Then she went about seeing to the needs of the others, casting healing spells to get them back up to full strength.

In the meantime, Rale had been examining the gear motif of the eastern door, and found what he thought was a means of activating it. "Everybody ready?" he asked. Galrich was off to one side, ready to swing his vorpal greataxe at anyone rushing them when Rale opened the door. Thunderwolf and Feron, the latter back in her air elemental form, had their bows ready to shoot down the corridor once the gear-door rolled out of the way. Telgrane and Infernia were on the archmage's carpet of flying, ready to do battle. Seeing everyone was in readiness, Rale hit the activation button and leapt to the side.

The gear-door opened, revealing the corridor they'd seen before. Mechanothestes was in the far back of the massive room just beyond, hammering contentedly at an enormous anvil with flames rising up all around it from a magic circle immediately below it. However, standing in an imposing stance at the end of the corridor, blocking the way into the construct lab, was an iron juggernaut, a greater iron golem with a sword raised and ready to do battle.

Telgrane cast a summoning spell, bringing a greater earth elemental rising up from the stone floor of the corridor. The earth-being stomped forward and the two giant forms started trading blows. Thunderwolf ran forward and entered the corridor, using the earth elemental's body as a shield as he tried to line up a shot against the cyclopean titan still working away at his forge without even a care.

Rale decided to become invisible, using one of the powers of his rod of thievery, then used his boots of flying to travel across the corridor at almost ceiling level. He ducked past the two giant combatants, seeing two smaller constructs in the corners of the room, on either side of the corridor. He called out a warning to the rest of the group over the telepathic bond, then continued easing his way behind Mechanothestes.

Feron and Thunderwolf were having a tough time lining up a shot with the earth elemental and the iron juggernaut in the way, and Galrich couldn't get past the two. After quickly warning the others of his intentions, Telgrane cast a disintegrate spell along the northern side of the corridor, expanding its width by a full five feet. Galrich took the opportunity to race into the room, where he was attacked by the first of the two maugs waiting for such an opponent to make it into the room. By this time Telgrane's summoned earth elemental had destroyed the iron juggernaut, and it fell backwards into the construct lab. The elemental strode forward, and another one rose up from the floor to join it, this one summoned by Feron.

Thunderwolf got off a shot at the cyclopean titan, distracting it from its work with a look of intense annoyance. It blasted a quickened chain lightning spell at the heroes, catching all but Rale - who was well within the limits of the spell's reach, but apparently undetected by the titan. Mechanothestes then spoke a few arcane syllables, and a massive fire elemental - larger in size than any even Infernia had ever seen - entered the plane through the gate to the Elemental Plane of Fire underneath the titan's anvil and manifested into a roughly humanoid form. It struck out at the nearest of the greater earth elementals, while the other maug raced forward to catch Galrich between the two blocky constructs.

Galrich didn't seem to mind. His vorpal greataxe had reduced the first maug to rubble with a mere two strokes, and he confidently turned to face the other. But at the same time Mechanothestes sent another quickened chain lightning at the group, this one almost slaying Infernia outright. Telgrane backed his carpet of flying up and dropped it down to the second level of the library, out of sight of the cyclopean titan. "Quickly, in here," commanded Telgrane to his familiar, opening up his tinder box. Infernia looked at first as if she would argue, but apparently saw the logic behind her master's command; she was in no shape to help him survive, and would only be a distraction. She meekly took cinder form as she arced into her tinder box, then her master rose the carpet back up to the top level to see how the battle was faring.

As it turned out, not too badly. The twin earth elementals were pounding their boulder-sized fists into the sides of the fire elemental that towered over them, and despite the size discrepancy they were better suited to hurt it than the other way around. Feron was helping the process along with additional strikes from her call lightning storm spell. Galrich had made short work of the second maug and was racing straight for the titan, eager to see if his vorpal weapon could sever the head of a creature that large. None of the others could see it, but Telgrane's enhanced vision - now fully capable of seeing what would normally be invisible - spotted an invisible Rale lining himself up for a sneak attack against the titan's unprotected back. Not wanting to miss out on any of the action himself, Telgrane sent a shaped meteor swarm directly into Mechanothestes's face, hitting him three times with the four missiles, which exploded with sonic energy instead of flames due to a tweaking of the spell made possible by the archmage's training. The titan roared in pain, then roared again as Rale struck home with a weapon in each hand, one of them the new rapier of puncturing he'd taken from the blue dragon's hoard earlier that same day.

The Gargantuan fire elemental was finally taken out, its flames flickering away to nothingness as it died. Mechanothestes soon followed suit, helped along in no small part by another of Telgrane's modified meteor swarms. The overconfident cyclops, the self-described "Titan of Constructs," fell over backwards with a crash, his adamantine warhammer clattering to the stone floor of his construct lab. Standing unfinished along the south wall was what would no doubt have been a greater stone golem of some type; its warrior's body had been sculpted already, and Mechanothestes had been in the process of constructing some metallic enhancements when the heroes had barged in.

Weary and wounded, the adventurers gathered up the items of value they could find in the construct lab, then oversaw the air elementals' progress as far as gutting the hidden library of Vecna and packing its contents into the Daern's dollhouse. They discovered the bottom floor of the library had been protected by the books themselves; each one held a magical symbol or glyph on its front cover which exploded or had some other ill effect when even glanced at. Feron directed her elementals to pack all of those books into a separate room of the dollhouse so they'd be isolated from the rest.

But even then, once all of the books had been packed away, Telgrane realized they weren't finished with their mission. After all, he and Rale had suggested the group enter through the carved eye-hole containing an illusory eye; they had no idea what the other eye-hole might reveal.

They decided to send Feron's one remaining shambler in first, then followed immediately behind. The floor just behind the open eye-hole sloped drastically shortly past the plane of the cliff's face, ending up in a small cavern whose floor was covered in gems and coins. "Excellent!" cried Rale, seeing the riches, before noticing that the pile of treasure also contained a gem-encrusted skull, which rose up, unsupported, into the air upon their arrival.

The demilich struck at once, before anyone could react. Telgrane gave a cry of pain, then his body dissolved into a fine dust, all of his possessions dropping to the stone floor below him. He found himself imprisoned in a green, crystal world, much like an insect in amber. Little did he know it, but the demilich had imprisoned his soul in a gem embedded into one of its teeth. Fortunately, Galrich's immediate reaction was to charge it with his vorpal greataxe, and the weapon seemed inordinately well-suited to destroy the floating skull, for although Feron bounced spells off of it with little effect, the barbarian's weapon soon had the skull split halfway through its length, to the point where Rale had to help him extract it from his weapon's blade.

The group gathered up the demilich's treasure and fortunately noticed Telgrane's tiny shape imprisoned inside a green-hued gem on a tooth of the split skull. Galrich crushed the gem with his axe, and a half-seen mist was released - presumably, Telgrane's disembodied spirit seeking his destroyed body. The group ensured there were no other exits from the cavern before using their Guild rings to bink back to their Headquarters, after which they'd meet up with Brother Altamaic, turn over the Vecna writings, and take them up on their offer of true resurrections for both Aerik and Telgrane.

- - -

This adventure took up two sessions, on two Saturdays only two weeks apart, this time at our house instead of at Dan and Vicki's. My wife Mary had made these dinner party affairs, so after the game sessions were over we enjoyed a two-family dinner, followed by conversations among the adults while Joey and my nephew Harry went upstairs to play Skylanders together. (Harry, not yet interested in being a player in our group, had entertained himself with Skylanders while we played.) The sessions went pretty well, but they'll be the last ones this year, as we have other things to deal with in December (Christmas parties, Harry's Christmas pageant, Harry's birthday, etc.) that will eat up our gaming time. But we've reserved New Year's Day as our next session, once more at our house for a game-and-dinner session. I'm already looking forward to it, since we're going to try to play more often in 2015 so we can finish up this campaign (with adventure #100!) in time to start up the next one before Jacob goes away to college in the fall.

ADVENTURE 89: A POX UPON YOU ALL!

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:

"We got us some big-time problems, boss!" said "Shifty-Eye" Marcus, one of the many rogues currently in Rale's employ. "There's this plan afoot to set off this big ritual across the whole of the city – it's gonna be plague rats, and attacks in the street, and people turning into zombies, and all kinds of nastiness! And we don’t have a lotta time to stop it!"

As per Rale's instructions to his numerous rogue hirelings, "Shifty-Eye" Marcus had infiltrated one of the many oddball cults headquartered in Greyhawk City. The cult he'd "joined" revered Incabulos, the God of Plagues, Sickness, Famine, Nightmares, Drought, and Disasters, and he'd just found out the cult leaders were planning a ritual which would unleash all manners of horrors upon the city. The four cult leaders - plus a Death-Priest of Orcus, Demon Lord of the Undead, who had his own reasons for wanting the Incabulos Ritual to succeed - were splitting up and heading to five different points across Greyhawk City, said points forming a gigantic pentagram when viewed from above, defining the ritual's area of effect. The lower-level cult members were all assigned to one of these five ritual teams, to ensure nobody got through to stop the rituals from occurring. "Shifty-Eye" Marcus had managed to drop back from his assigned group and high-tailed it to the Adventurers Guild Headquarters to brief his boss. On the way he was able to snag another four of Rale's followers and the five of them were ready to follow Rale's lead on what to do about the whole deal.

After explaining what he knew to Rale and the handful of Wing Three adventures on hand about what he'd discovered, "Shifty-Eye" Marcus explained the cult leaders were going to start the Incabulos Ritual when the bells of the city struck twelve noon - in just less than a half-hour.

"We need to stop those bells from ringing!" declared Rale. "Can we send some of the rest of the Guild to go stop them while we split up and try to take out the cult members?"

"Possible, but unlikely," countered Telgrane. "If there were just the one bell tower, then maybe - but there are bell towers all throughout the city. We'll probably not be able to get them all."

"Then we need to concentrate on stopping the rituals from succeeding," reasoned Rale. He turned to his wild-eyed follower, still wearing the robes of a member of the cult of Incabulos. "Where are the rituals going to be performed?"

"Shifty-Eye" Marcus ticked them off on his fingers. "There's an abandoned warehouse; a back alley in the Styes; in one of Lord Henway's hedge mazes; in the storeroom under Brody's Tavern; and in the carriage house of one of the nobles of the city. I briefed the guys on the way here" - here he indicated the four other members of Rale's team he'd managed to gather on the way to Guild HQ - "and they can lead each group to where they need to go. I've got the warehouse."

"I got the back alley in the Styes, boss," piped up K'Klark, one of two kenku rogues in Rale's employ.

"And I have the hedge maze," added his counterpart, Skrawk.

"I can lead you to the carriage house," said Streetweasel, a greasy-looking human rogue in black leather armor.

"And I've got Brody's Tavern," replied Roughknuckles, a burly half-orc thug. "They all know me there."

"Okay, guys, who's going where?" asked Rale. Then, as an afterthought, he addressed "Shifty-Eye" Marcus again. "Do we know who we'll be up against?"

"I dunno who's going where. I don't know much about the cult leaders, either, though at least one of 'em's supposed to be undead. One guy's got a skeleton arm - no kidding, his left arm's got no flesh on it. My money's on him bein' the undead guy. The rest is all guys in hooded robes, so I got no idea if they're clerics, or wizards, or what. Oh, but one of them's a hot elf chick - I forgot about her."

"Oh?" asked Rale. "And you're sure you don't know where's she going?"

"No idea," admitted "Shifty-Eye" Marcus. "Sorry, boss." Both Delphyne and Dez silently shook their heads in disbelief at observing Rale trying to find out which ritual location was going to involve a "hot elf chick."

"Okay, don't worry about it," said Rale, looking over at his cohort Dez's scowl, and doing his best to convey an expression of total innocence. "Okay, who's going where?" he repeated to the group at large.

"I'll take the carriage house," said Delphyne, not eager to go traipsing through abandoned warehouses or dealing with the squalor of the Styes if she could help it.

"I guess I'll take the warehouse," said Thunderwolf, thinking that a large, open space like a warehouse interior would give him plenty of room with which to put his archery skills to good use.

"I've got the hedge maze," said Telgrane, taking the opportunity to cast a Rary's telepathic bond on the five Guild adventurers, Dez, and Infernia.

Chalkan volunteered to take the Styes alley. "Then I've got Brody's Tavern," said Rale. "Roughknuckles, Dez, you're with me."

What followed next was the standard flurry of prepping-for-combat spells. Telgrane cast a pair of flame arrow spells on the ammunition in both Thunderwolf's and Chalkan's quivers, converting the fire damage to sonic through the use of his archmage training. Delphyne, Chalkan, and Telgrane each cast a stoneskin spell upon themselves, and the two kenkus were given the benefits of the same spell as well. Delphyne cast a protection from evil spell upon herself, Rale passed out potions of cure light wounds to all five of his followers, and then the group was ready to go their separate ways.

"Let's go," said the arch-witch to Streetweasel, activating her broom of flying and motioning for him to get behind her. "Just watch the hands," she warned, giving the oily rogue a warning glare to ensure he remained on his best behavior during their flight across the city. He hurried to comply, and they were off.

Thunderwolf unsheathed Xanthros and held it above his head, mentally summoning the sky-horse bound to his blade. A burst of electricity erupted from the blade and took the form of a ghostly horse; Thunderwolf leapt upon its back, followed by a rather more hesitant "Shifty-Eye" Marcus. Once they were both on the steed, it galloped through the Guild HQ, out the door, and took to the skies, heading to the warehouse district.

Chalkan cast a pair of longstrider spells upon himself and K'Klark. "Let's go!" he called to the kenku, who started sprinting in the direction of the Styes with the half-elf right behind him.

Rale led Dez and Roughknuckles to the Guild stables, where they mounted a pair of horses (Dez riding behind Rale) and dashed off towards Brody's Tavern.

Telgrane unrolled the carpet of flying from his back and stepped onto the front position, while Infernia resumed her ember form in mid-leap to her tinder box while Skrawk took his position behind the young archmage. Telgrane piloted the carpet out the nearest door and raised it to several dozen feet above the rooftops, aiming it in the direction of Lord Henway's Menagerie, where all manners of exotic beasts were kept in cages and several hedge mazes could be found.

By this time, it was a mere handful of minutes before noon. Whether the various teams would each make it to their destinations in time was open to speculation.

Thunderwolf and "Shifty-Eyes" Marcus were the first to arrive at their intended destination. "It's that one, there," the rogue pointed down from his perch behind the young fighter's flying, electrical steed. The warehouse he pointed to was a rather small building, with a pair of thugs in robes guarding the large doors in front and another pair guarding the side entrance by the loading dock. Thunderwolf had his aerial steed hold position in mid-air and sent a volley of arrows down at the two cultists guarding the loading dock doors; the four arrows struck true, and the guards collapsed to the ground, dead. The young fighter had his aerial steed land on the loading dock, and "Shifty-Eye" Marcus gratefully slid off the back of the sky-horse to regain his footing on solid ground. Thunderwolf likewise leapt from his mount and dismissed it back into his enchanted blade.

While his guide lugged the dead bodies out of the way, Thunderwolf opened the loading dock doors a crack and peered into the gloom of the warehouse. He saw a few scattered crates and a pile of wooden pallets stored in the corner, evidence of the building's original use. However, the floor of the wide open space now held a magical circle inscribed with dozens of arcane runes, around which stood twenty or more zombies. In the center of the circle stood a robed man wearing a horned helmet; once Thunderwolf got a look of the emblem on the front of his robes, he swore silently to himself, cursing his luck for having ended up with the Death-Priest of Orcus. The man, Chalmus Nighttide, looked to be in his late 50s, with a stern countenance that brooked no interference. He seemed to be performing warm-up exercises with his hands, as if getting himself ready for some serious spellcasting. Which made sense, because despite not having heard any bells yet, Thunderwolf supposed it was probably only minutes away from noon by now.

Well then, no point in waiting around, thought Thunderwolf as he kicked the doors in, stepped into the warehouse, and shot at the Orcus priest. His arrow flew true, lodging into Chalmus's shoulder and eliciting a grunt of pain from the middle-aged spellcaster. With a motion, he sent two of his zombie servitors over to deal with the intrusion while he pulled the arrow out.

While this was occurring, across town Telgrane and Skrawk had reached the area above Lord Henway's Menagerie. There were several small hedge mazes in the park, but the archmage quickly focused on the one that was part of the Incabulos Ritual - it was, quite obviously, the one with the numerous rats crawling through the shrubbery to meet up in vast swarms at the maze's center, where stood the life-sized statue of Lord Henway himself. However, a magic circle of arcane runes entirely ringed the statue, and a wererat - currently in his hybrid form - stood there, focused on feeding a potion to one of the rats he had called to himself in preparation for the upcoming ritual. "Shifty-Eye" Marcus had mentioned something about plague rats; Telgrane supposed the ritual would infuse these rats into carriers of some vile disease to be spread throughout the city. (He was entirely correct, for the wererat - named Mange due to the numerous bald spots in his fur when in dire rat or hybrid forms - was the only nonspellcasting cult leader, and his job was to sacrifice a rat who had been fed a vial of the virulence disease upon the noontime signal, which would infuse the rats with the disease and allow it to be quickly spread throughout the city.) At the sole entrance and exit to the hedge maze stood two burly thugs in cult robes, wielding clubs to encourage others to stay away - as if the numerous rats still entering the maze from all sides weren't enough of an incentive.

Still, Telgrane had an easy way of dealing with this threat: not even bothering to alight from his carpet of flying, he cast a meteor swarm spell down upon the hedge maze, shaping the spell's energies to perfectly align with the spaces between the hedges, so as to burn the rats to a crisp without setting Lord Henway's shrubbery on fire. None of the rats survived this immediate onslaught; Mange staggered under the initial assault but remained on his feet - although only long enough for Infernia to leap down from her master's tinder box and finish him off. Unnoticed by the two on the carpet of flying, the two cultist thugs guarding the hedge maze looked over their shoulders at the sudden explosion of flame behind them, shared a frightened look at each other, and without a word each broke into a hard run, fleeing in opposite directions.

Telgrane reported his success to the other over the telepathic bond. "Great!" replied Rale. "I'm still on my way to the tavern!"

"I'm still in transit myself," added Delphyne. "Same here," chimed in Chalkan.

"I could use some help over here!" admitted Thunderwolf.

"Where are you, again?" asked Telgrane.

"Abandoned warehouse!" Thunderwolf reminded the archmage, while shaking off the effects of a spell that Chalmus had just cast on him, hoping to rob the fighter of his eyesight. He whipped out Xanthros and cut down the zombie standing in front of him, then slashed at the second one attempting to grab at "Shifty-Eye" Marcus, who stepped back out of range of the undead creature trying to kill him.

Telgrane lowered the carpet to allow Infernia to jump back into her tinder box, and then he cast a teleport spell, sending the carpet in the air above the warehouse district, figuring he could determine which warehouse Thunderwolf was at by the sounds of combat. Finding Thunderwolf was even easier than the archmage imagined; Chalmus Nighttide cast a flame strike spell at the loading bay door, capturing both intruders in its area of effect. Thunderwolf merely gritted through the pain, whereas "Shifty-Eye" Marcus staggered backwards in a daze, concentrating on not losing consciousness from the pain of the rain of fire. But the bright flash of flames drew Telgrane's flying carpet to land unerringly at the young fighter's side.

"Shifty-Eye" Marcus, singed almost to a crisp and feverishly concentrating on remaining conscious, did his best to swig down the potion of cure light wounds Rale had provided to all of his followers earlier. The potion likely saved his life; just to be safe, Skrawk pulled his fellow rogue out of harm's way, the pair of followers jointly deciding to let Rale's adventuring companions handle the threat.

Telgrane handled the threat in the warehouse with about the same level of ease as he did with the threat in Lord Henway's hedge maze. This time, instead of casting a spell, he called upon the energies from the Elemental Plane of Fire that burned within his own half-elemental body, manifesting another firestorm in the warehouse, which caught Chalmus and the zombies ringing the magic circle in its devastating area of effect. The zombies - all but the other one at the door, which Thunderwolf brought down with Xanthros - burst into flame and crumpled where they stood; Chalmus lasted but a few seconds longer, finally falling victim of Infernia's fiery embrace.

"Two down," Telgrane announced with satisfaction over the telepathic bond. "Any of you guys even make it to your designated targets yet?"

"Just pulling up now," replied Rale, as he and Dez jumped down from their horse in front of Brody's Tavern. Roughknuckles followed suit. Then, after a brief huddle, Dez cast an invisibility spell upon herself and Rale likewise vanished from view, using one of the powers of his rod of thievery. The two invisible adventurers followed the burly half-orc into the tavern.

Roughknuckles was well-known by the bar patrons, and by Brody himself, who kept bar with the help of his two nieces, Tabitha and Roxanne. Brody was a retired adventurer, his face and arms covered with numerous battle scars. "The usual?" he asked Roughknuckles, already filling a tankard with ale.

"Sounds about right," replied Roughknuckles, taking a place at the far end of the bar, away from the stairs leading down to the storeroom below. Rale and Dez, careful not to bump into anybody, climbed up onto and over the bar, sneaking down the stairs unseen and unheard.

"We're at the alley," suddenly announced Chalkan over the shared link, sounding a bit winded as he and K'Klark had run all the way at spell-enhanced speeds. "I see a couple of thugs guarding the alleyway." He and the kenku lined up their shots, let fly, and the two robed guards fell into the mud of the street. A quick peek around the corner revealed a dozen or more dire rats converged in the back of the alley between a half-dozen crumbling buildings. Standing among them was an overweight spellcaster in filthy robes, his most striking feature the enormous goiter growing from the side of his neck. K'Klark signaled to Chalkan that he was going to climb the nearest building and get a rooftop shot lined up; the half-elf nodded his agreement and gave a verbal description of his situation to the others over the telepathic bond.

"You want a hand?" offered Telgrane.

"Do you have a way to get here quickly?" countered Chalkan.

"I've got one more teleport spell readied," replied the archmage. "I can show up in your general vicinity, high up in the air, and then you can shoot me a message spell with that bow of yours. I'll see the trajectory and follow it back to where you are."

"Sounds good," replied Chalkan, readying the message power of his elven bow, Rilisivae Athelgala.

Back at Brody's Tavern, Rale and Dez had entered the storeroom below the bar and discovered a small magic circle inscribed on the floor and eight zombies crammed into the small room, among the various boxes and barrels. Inside the circle stood a robed figure, but the robe didn't cover the figure's most interesting trait: his left arm and hand were both completely skeletal. This was Villock, a necromancer with an undead graft in place of his left arm. Realizing time was counting down and the ritual would likely be starting soon, Dez cast the spell she and Rale had decided would be their best bet at shutting this node of the ritual down the quickest. The young spellcaster became visible as she cast the charm monster spell upon the necromancer. Fortunately, Villock was taken completely unawares and succumbed immediately to her verbal charms.

"I was sent to warn you," Dez said matter-of-factly. "There's been an interruption at one of the other ritual locations. We're being put on hold for now. Someone will send us word when we're ready to start up again."

"Oh? Okay," agreed Villock, not spending a moment wondering why he'd never seen Dez before or why she wasn't wearing a cult robe. "Should we just stay here, then?"

"Yes, that would be best," Dez replied. Then, wondering how the necromancer and his eight zombies had made it to the storeroom unseen, she asked her charmed victim, who happily explained about the secret door in the storeroom leading to the sewers, and how they had entered in that fashion without Brody being any the wiser. All it took was a bribe of 50 gold pieces - a considerable amount of money in this part of the city - from one of the cultist thugs to convince Brody not to let anybody into the storeroom from ten bells until two bells to ensure the privacy required to set up for and perform the Incabulos Ritual.

"We're not sure how long the delay will last," said Dez. "Maybe we'd better get the zombies back into the sewers, just in case."

"Good idea," Villock replied to his new best friend and trusted ally. He activated a secret door, opening up a section of the back wall and sending his eight undead shambling through. Rale, still invisible, silently reported their status to the others over the telepathic bond.

By then, Telgrane had teleported his carpet of flying to the Styes and found Chalkan by the method they had worked out. He landed in the street by the half-elf, and Skrawk followed his fellow kenku's strategy by immediately climbing the nearest building to get himself a rooftop perch from which to line up shots with his bow. Then Telgrane took matters into his own hands again and let fly with a spell.

This time it wasn't another meteor swarm spell, despite that having been put to such good use at the hedge maze. Instead, he let fly with a prismatic spray. All of the dire rats but one, who happened to be shielded from Telgrane's view by the jutting corner of a building, were affected. Some were immediately petrified; others were burned to a crisp or electrified, and the various stenches of the Styes now suddenly included the scent of burning rat. But the spellcaster in filthy robes with the enormous neck-goiter, a cancer mage named Scorbius Vlotch, felt his mental faculties cloud up by an insanity effect, and he blindly struck out at the sole remaining dire rat that he had intended to infuse with the virulence disease and set free to cause havoc in the city.

Chalkan and the two kenkus peppered the cancer mage with arrows, and at that stage it was quite literally like shooting a fish in a barrel, for the stupefied spellcaster could do little in the way of retaliation or even of defending himself. He fell to the muck of the alleyway, dead.

By this time, Rale and Dez had determined they had pretty much taken down this ritual node already and that it might be best to keep Villock alive for now, just in case. Dez convinced the necromancer to hide in the sewers with his eight zombies and remain there until she came back with further word from the other cult leaders. Villock took to these new instructions as readily as he had his previous ones. "I hope to see you soon!" he smiled to Dez as he closed the secret door to the sewers, leaving her and the still-invisible Rale in the storeroom.

"You think they'll stay there?" asked Dez.

"No reason they shouldn't," decided Rale. "Without any orders to the contrary they should just stand out there in the sewers until somebody gives 'em new instructions. In the meantime," he said over the link, "how are you doing, Delphyne?"

"Just arriving now," replied the arch-witch. "This broom was only built to hold one, you know." As she landed on the lawn behind the carriage house, Streetweasel leapt off the broom and stalked his way over to the building. There was a side door and the large double doors in front through which the carriage would likely enter and exit, all closed shut. Oddly, unlike the other ritual locations, there didn't seem to be anyone on guard duty. But then, this was a carriage house on a noble's estate, and the noble likely had no idea his property was being used to hold such a dangerous ritual.

Delphyne cast a spell and became invisible, making her way over to the side door. Streetweasel slowly twisted the knob, somewhat surprised to see it was unlocked. Cautiously opening the door but a crack, the two peeked inside.

As expected, there was an elegant carriage parked in the middle of the structure, of a size to require two horses to pull it. However, a circle of magical glyphs surrounded the vehicle, and standing inside the circle was a voluptuous elf maiden in a low-cut gown. There were four cultist thugs in the building as well, two at each door, but they seemed engrossed in watching the elf's every movement rather than paying attention to keeping the entrances secured. Delphyne just rolled her eyes at how easily men could be distracted by noticeable cleavage - and make no mistake about it, Mhorgaine's cleavage was more than noticeable; it practically demanded attention, if only to make one try to figure out how to explain the apparent ability to defy gravity.

On Dez's whispered signal, Streetweasel kicked in the side door, sending one of the guards stationed there sprawling and sinking his short sword deep into the side of the other one. He then stepped back out of the doorway, allowing Delphyne to cast an incendiary cloud spell in the center of the building, returning to visibility as she did so. The spell's effects blanketed the entirety of the room, covering all five figures in burning embers. The thugs' robes caught fire almost immediately, and they were dead within seconds thereafter.

Mhorgaine, however, was made of tougher stuff. She dismissed Delphyne's spell with a greater dispel magic spell of her own, then glared at the witch standing in the doorway who would dare try to thwart her plans. Delphyne threw a disintegrate spell at the elf as she raced around the carriage to confront the arch-witch, but the spell missed its target and took out the back half of the carriage instead. Before Delphyne could react, Mhorgaine had closed the distance between the two. Then, despite having ten levels of cleric spells from which to draw, she did something for which Delphyne was totally unprepared.

She slapped her, hard, across the face.

Delphyne's cheek felt the slap instantly, but it took a moment for her to register the deep cold that emanated from that brief contact. Only as she started toppling to the floor, unable to move a muscle in her entire body, did the reality of her situation truly strike home.

"Guys!" she cried desperately over the telepathic bond. "I'm paralyzed! I'm fighting a lich!"

"We've got to help her!" said Rale over the link. "Telgrane, can you get there?"

"No!" admitted the archmage. "I've used up all of my teleport spells, and I--wait a minute! Hang on Delphyne!" And with that, for the second time in as many adventures, the archmage cast a limited wish to undo the effects of a paralytic attack on one of his companions; this time, he managed to do so from all the way across the city.

The spell worked; Delphyne rose to her feet and checked her mental inventory for the best spell with which to down her opponent. Mhorgaine, having turned away from her paralyzed foe to regain her position in the magic circle, heard the rustle of Delphyne's robes and spun around, astonished. "I'm not sure how you managed to escape my paralyzation," she snarled at her foe, "but it won't do you any good!" She cast an eternity of torture spell at Delphyne, overcoming the inherent spell resistance her robes of the arch-witch provided. Delphyne immediately felt a draining sensation encompass her body and her mind. "I think I need some help here, guys!" she called over the link.

"We can't get to you in time!" warned Telgrane, for once unable to see a way to come to her aid.

"Does anybody have a means of teleporting?" asked Rale.

"I do, for what it's worth!" replied Delphyne, doubled over in pain from the elf lich's most recent attack. "Should I fall back?" She saw Mhorgaine smiling wickedly as she closed the distance between them once again, no doubt ready to paralyze her once again with her undead touch.

"Bink!" suddenly cried Rale. "Everybody: bink back to HQ! We'll all meet up, and then Delphyne can teleport all of us back to fight the lich!"

It was an excellent idea. Of course, it meant leaving all of Rale's followers behind, wherever they happened to be, but at that point Streetweasel was the only one in any danger of combat and he had already wisely backed off from the carriage house, realizing he was far out of his league and his death wasn't going to help the situation any. Plus, his current mission had been merely to direct Delphyne to the proper carriage house; having done that, his next priority was to keep himself alive and in Rale's continued employ.

At the carriage house, Mhorgaine was momentarily puzzled to see her enemy suddenly disappear from view, but supposed she had merely fled via a teleport spell - and a silent one at that, for the lich had heard no verbal components being uttered. She then had only enough time to silently wonder how soon the noontime bell would ring and whether the other ritual locations were similarly under attack, before Delphyne returned as suddenly as she had left. Only this time, she wasn't alone.

The adventurers materialized just outside the carriage house, although Rale appeared invisible once again, having activated another daily charge from his rod of thievery. He was the first to enter, taking the long way around the interior of the carriage house to get behind Mhorgaine. It was a pity she had no internal organs to pierce and wouldn't be vulnerable to the extra damage he could inflict upon a foe when he attacked with surprise, but he had recently upgraded his short sword of speed to become an undead bane, and was eager to at least get that advantage over his undead foe.

Thunderwolf and Chalkan entered next, each sending an arrow flying at the voluptuous elf. Not surprisingly, they each struck and rebounded off, leaving no marks on the illusory "flesh" covering her skeleton. Telgrane entered, and his enhanced vision revealed Mhorgaine's true form: a completely skeletal being, no shred of actual skin remaining on her time-worn body. He cast a disintegrate spell at the lich, and while it rebounded off of her innate spell resistance, that wasn't all he had brought to the fight, for an arc of embers leapt from the open tinder box at his hip, and Infernia blazed forth in her full nine-foot-tall form.

Mhorgaine snarled her defiance at the intrusion, especially as among the sounds of battle she could hear the noontime bells starting to chime throughout the city. She was weakened considerably when a meteor swarm, its area of effect altered to avoid the adventurers (even the invisible Rale, whom Telgrane could see just fine with his magically enhanced vision through the twin gouts of flame from his eye sockets), slammed into her undead body and set it ablaze. Infernia knocked her about with a pair of slams, and the two archers continued a barrage of sonically-enhanced arrows. Rale finally got into position behind her and stabbed for all he was worth. The attack didn't do as much damage as it would have done against a living foe, but it was enough: with a final scream of fury, Mhorgaine dropped to the ground in a pile of bones, her illusion of being a living elf winking out at the moment of her destruction.

Delphyne snorted in disdain. "I knew they had to be fake," she replied to no one in particular.

Clean-up after stopping the Incabulos Ritual was fairly simple. Returning to the storeroom under Brody's Tavern, Rale and Dez opened the secret door and found Villock still standing there patiently with his eight zombie servitors. "I'm afraid the ritual has been rescheduled," Dez announced. "We're all to meet back at our secret headquarters and decide when our next best opportunity will be." Then she asked Villock where the secret headquarters was located, and the charmed necromancer happily explained its location. After a brief series of questions revealed that the adventurers had met up with all of the cult's current members, Rale decided they didn't need the necromancer any more and finally got to back-stab someone. Despite Villock's undead left arm, his internal organs were still quite living and subject to immediate failure when appropriately perforated with a rapier of puncturing. Villock died at once, and the eight zombies didn't survive for very much longer after that.

And, as the adventurers had hoped, a thorough search of the cult's headquarters revealed Mhorgaine's phylactery. Having fought their fair share of liches lately, they were well aware that a fight with a lich wasn't truly over until its phylactery was destroyed.

"That reminds me," piped up Telgrane. "We never did find any phylacteries in that Vecna Library, did we? I wonder if any of those undead spellcasters we fought in there are going to come back looking for us?"

"Well, if they do, we'll be ready for them," promised Thunderwolf, striking a tough-guy pose with his hand on the hilt of Xanthros. He was enjoying this adventurer's life!

- - -

We were originally scheduled to play this adventure on the first day of the new year, but a bout of holiday flu at the Richards household took care of those plans.

This adventure was an experiment on my part. They always warn that splitting the party is one of the worst things you can do; that naturally got me wondering if writing an adventure where the adventurers were more or less forced to split up and run concurrent solo adventures would be doable. The fact that the PCs are high enough in level to always have a Rary's telepathic bond spell active and that several of the spellcasters could teleport helped me decide that this was an idea worth trying. Plus, it gave me an opportunity to bring some of Rale's followers into the spotlight; he had taken the Leadership feat some time ago but had really only been able to benefit from Dez thus far.

When I built the five ritual leaders, I tried making them roughly the same CRs as the PCs, but as always, with the exception of Thunderwolf and Telgrane (whose players only have those PCs to run), I had no idea who would be going on this adventure. So I had enemies running from CR 12 (Villock) to CR 20 (Mhorgaine), and I threw in Mange as a non-spellcaster to ensure not everybody would be up against someone who could cast spells because while I knew Thunderwolf would be going through this adventure, there was also the possibility of Galrich and Aerik going through it. (I wasn't as worried about Rale, as he'd have Dez by his side.)

Of course, I also allowed the PCs to decide who was going to deploy to each location, so that was also left up to chance. I had already assigned each ritual leader and their minions to the five locations, so when the players each decided where their PC was going to go they also were deciding which enemy they'd be facing (although they were unaware of that part of the deal). Logan lucked out by having Telgrane initially face Mange, a 16th-level wererat rogue with no way of countering the spells the archmage could fling down at him. In fact, this adventure inadvertently turned out to be a bit of a "Telgrane in the limelight" adventure, as he ended up fighting the enemies at four of the five ritual locations. (The fact that Villock and Scorbius Vlotch both rolled a "1" on their very first saving throws, effectively neutering them at the very start of their respective battles, didn't help them to last for very long either.)

The one thing I would have changed in hindsight was the travel times to the ritual locations. I had done up a little chart showing the difference in rounds it would take the PCs to reach the ritual locations, depending on their mode of transportation. Once the PCs made their choices, Thunderwolf was the first to arrive at his ritual node, then Telgrane a round after that, but then there were another three rounds before Chalkan and Rale got to their respective locations, and it would have been another six rounds after that before Delphyne got to finally meet up with Mhorgaine. Once the other four PCs were in combat, several of them had already resolved their ritual nodes while Delphyne and Streetweasel were still traveling to the carriage house. I opted to shorten her trip by four rounds so that Vicki would have something to do before all the rest of the action was over with. In hindsight, I probably should either have had each PC arrive at their respective ritual location at the same time, or else maybe staggered them by a round each based on initiative order. But I had wanted their travel decisions to have some consequences, so that's why I had written it the way I did.

In any case, while there were some concerns about each PC's ability to take out their individual enemy, the players all liked it. (Dan loved the concept from the get-go, right after "Shifty-Eyes" Marcus had dropped the plot hook on the group. I think he liked the fact that this was something different than anything we'd done before, as he had also liked the "fight enemies in your HQ while in your pajamas" aspect of "Vandergrotten's Vengeance" and the whole concept of fighting while using figurine proxies in "Rescue from Afar.")

After this adventure, we also went through roughly the first half of the adventure that follows. We're trying to get this campaign over before Jacob goes away to college in the fall. The last adventure in this campaign will be #100, so we've decided to extend our adventure sessions from about 5 hours to about 6 (or possibly even a bit more). Part of that means me always bringing the adventure that follows whatever adventure we have scheduled for that session.

ADVENTURE 90: THE SOUL CANNON

PC Roster:
Thunderwolf had come to a sad realization: his boots were no longer worth fixing up. They had been admirable companions throughout his many adventures, but they had long since seen their best days. They were still incredibly comfortable - at least in good weather - but there was a split along the bottom, just above the sole, that let in water when it got wet. Also, the tread on both boots had long since been worn smooth and flat, making them a bit on the treacherous side while trying to maintain one's balance on slippery surfaces.

And so, with a heavy heart, Thunderwolf set off to the marketplace to find himself a pair of new boots.

As was his custom, he wore his armor and brought all of his gear; he was an official adventurer in his uncle's Adventurers Guild, and the young fighter saw no reason not to let everyone know that just by looking at him.

As Thunderwolf examined the boots for sale at one of the booths of the outdoor market, he was vaguely aware of some commotion behind him. This was brought to his full attention by the first screams of the merchants and customers in the stalls he had just passed in making his way to the boot-seller's booth. Spinning around, he saw an amazing sight: an enormous giant, bearded and with long hair flowing down his back, scooping up paralyzed customers and stuffing them into an enormous leather sack he had opened for just that very purpose. Those he grabbed up were more than just paralyzed with fright: they maintained their current positions as the giant lifted them from the ground and dropped them into his sack.

Thunderwolf grabbed the bow from his shoulder and set an arrow to the bowstring, aiming at the giant - who easily stood 20 feet tall, nearly four times the size of a normal man - as he made his way through the screaming hordes of people fleeing toward him. He let fly with his first arrow and had another in place before he noticed that he recognized the victim being placed into the giant's bag: surely that was Brother Altamaic the Calm, of the Church Library of Boccob! Altamaic was a friend of the Guild, and had provided useful information to the group for many of their adventures. Steadying his aim so as not to hit the paralyzed cleric, Thunderwolf let loose with his second arrow, striking the giant in the shoulder.

The giant, for his part, barely seemed to notice he now had two arrows sticking into his shoulder and chest, so focused was he on gathering up his frozen victims. Thunderwolf stepped up onto an abandoned merchant's table and continued with his barrage of arrows. The giant finally snarled in irritation, his focus diverted now that he had apparently finished filling up his bag with victims. A massive hand plucked out Thunderwolf's wooden shafts from his body and tossed them to the ground. Then a few guttural syllables spilled from the giant's lips, and in a split second he was gone.

Mere seconds behind him Thunderwolf was gone, too - he was sprinting down the street toward the Adventurers Guild, to apprise his companions of the situation at hand.

- - -

"...and that's what happened," finished Thunderwolf, still catching his breath after his long run back from the market.

"We need to find out where the giant took his victims," replied Delphyne, heading up the stairs to her room. "I'll go get my crystal ball." She returned shortly with the item in question. Passing her hand over it, she concentrated on Brother Altamaic - fortunately, an individual with which she was very familiar. The crystal sphere swirled with mists, then darkened.

"It appears as if he's still inside the bag," she explained.

"Try pulling your focus back a bit," suggested Telgrane, looking over the witch's shoulder with eyes that literally blazed in interest. Delphyne concentrated, and the image in the crystal ball pulled back, revealing a giant in a cavern of some sort, facing a misshapen troll of nearly his same stature. The giant was walking as he talked - unfortunately, the witch's scrying device wasn't built to pick up sounds as well as sights - and then the entire image broke up into gray static.

"It looks like he entered an area that's shielded from scrying," Delphyne explained to the group that had gathered around them.

"Did you get enough to be able to teleport us all there?" asked Cal, gathering up his gear.

"Yes, I'm pretty sure I did," replied the witch. Chalkan stepped forward to join the others, who were already standing around Delphyne. She said the words to a greater teleport spell, and the five adventurers were suddenly no longer in their shared living quarters in the Greyhawk Adventurers Guild, but standing in a shallow cave. A biting wind blew in at their backs; looking out the cave's entrance, Chalkan noticed they were situated near the top of a mountain. "Yikes!" he said, kicking a stone off the ledge and watching as it tumbled down the mountain's slope. "It's a long way down."

"Are we sure this is the right cave?" asked Cal, looking around at the small dwelling. While the cave opening was easily tall enough to allow the 20-foot giant to stand inside, it didn't go very deep. Telgrane popped open the top of his tinder box, allowing Infernia to manifest in the cave interior. The flames of her body illuminated the back of the cave, which had been covered in shadows.

"It looks like this is our way in," said Telgrane, pointing to a seam in the back wall of the cave. It appeared as if a large opening in the back wall was blocked by a large stone slab, placed in such a way as to appear to be a section of the wall itself. Apparently the upright slab had been put in place as a giant-sized front door, to keep out those of mere human size, who doubtlessly would be unable to move such a massive obstacle.

But few humans were not only clerics of Kord, the God of Strength, but also had that god's blood flowing through their veins. Cal, however, was one such. "Give me some room," he commanded, stowing his weapon, rolling up his sleeves, and preparing himself for the ordeal at hand. The other spellcasters, sensing that combat was likely once they penetrated the trolls' lair, began casting their standard bevy of spells: a Rary's telepathic bond for their minds, stoneskins for their bodies, and flame arrows for the archers' ammunition. Cal cast the spells divine power and enlarge person upon himself, making his body closer in size to that of the trolls and the giant who normally used this hidden entrance, set his stance, channeled forth his deific strength, and pushed for all he was worth. With a grinding sound of stone on stone, the slab was pushed away from its position, allowing the group of heroes enough room to squeeze into the larger cavern beyond.

They were met by a mountain troll, whose enormous goggling eyes demonstrated his disbelief that such puny humans could get past their main defense. In fact, while he was technically on guard duty, he had pretty much depended upon the stone slab to do his job for him while he grabbed a few winks. But now, fully awakened, he grabbed up his massive greatclub in an equally massive fist and headed for the foolish intruders, calling behind him for the others who shared his living quarters to rise themselves out of their slumber and see who had just shown up at their door.

Turning back at the threat, the first mountain troll was taken aback when his face exploded into a gout of fire, courtesy of a meteor swarm that flew from the tips of Telgrane's fingers. Infernia stepped up and finished off the troll before he even had time to realize how truly outclassed he was.

The other three trolls took the lesson to heart, though. Instead of sauntering over to their prey, they grabbed up their greatclubs are raced to the enemy before they could get off any more of those deadly fire spells. That was the plan, anyway; instead, the front-most of the trio suddenly found himself in a confusion of twisting passageways, courtesy of Telgrane's first use of the maze spell. The troll's limited intelligence ensured he'd be lost in the extradimensional labyrinth for quite some time, effectively taking him out of the fight.

The remaining pair of mountain trolls were peppered with flaming arrows from Chalkan and Thunderwolf as they approached Cal, not all that eager to tangle with Infernia, who was still standing over the first of their fallen troop. Suddenly, an elder fire elemental sprang up as if from the very ground. In the back of the group, Telgrane smiled to himself and commanded his summoned fire elemental to take down the trolls. The flaming shape obeyed without question.

Cal swung his hammer in a mighty arc, crashing it down upon a troll's knee. He grinned at the sound of shattering bone, even though he knew the creature's regenerative powers would reknit its sundered bones soon enough - if it lived that long. But in a fight with three spellcasters capable of casting flame-based spells and two fire elementals, the fight was pretty much predetermined. Despite their superior size, before long the cavern was littered with the flaming bodies of three mountain trolls. The group opted not to wait around for the fourth troll to find its way out of the extradimensional maze in which it was imprisoned.

The north side of the cave contained a corner of smooth walls, upon which was a troll-sized door. A brief examination showed it to be locked; Telgrane's enhanced vision discovered it to be warded with an arcane lock spell as well. He offered to remove it with a dispel magic spell, but Cal moved him aside. "Save your spell," he advised, kicking his way through the solid wooden door while still enjoying the advantages of his overly-large size.

Just beyond the door was a thick fog, obscuring vision for more than five feet. Telgrane studied the magical auras emanating from the fog and announced they weren't harmful, merely making it harder to see. Delphyne took the opportunity to forge ahead, bumping into a giant-sized stairwell of carved stone leading up. Straining to climb each oversized step, she took a moment and cast a dispel magic to get rid of the fog, but was unable to overcome the spell's inherent tenacity. Telgrane offered to give it a shot, using not a dispel magic but a limited wish to gain the same effect. His spell worked, better than he would ever know, for he hadn't merely dispelled an obscuring mist spell but a guards and wards spell covering the entire complex upstairs. Unbeknownst to the group, arcane locks on doors upstairs faded away, gusts of wind covering other giant-sized stairwells petered out, and directional-thwarting illusions winked out as well.

The fact that his guards and wards spell had just been defeated went by completely unnoticed by the storm giant Ryzo Skywatcher, as he had made himself immune to the effects in any case. Instead, he carried his massive leather bag of paralyzed humans up to the highest level of his dwelling, where he would perhaps this time singlehandedly save the world from destruction.

Back downstairs on the lowest level, Telgrane passed on what he saw to the others with his enhanced vision. "It looks like I not only got rid of the fog, but also the anti-scrying effect," he said. "I think everything past the door was at one time shielded from scrying attempts - that's why we saw the giant's image vanish in Delphyne's crystal ball."

Making their way up the giant stairwell, the passageway came to an abrupt end. Delphyne looked up, just in time to see a gargoyle shriek down at her from the vertical shaft directly above her head. She shrieked in return, instinctively ducking under the gargoyle's swiping claws despite her stoneskin protection. Chalkan and Thunderwolf stepped up to shoot the creature with their arrows, and it fell to the floor beside the astonished arch-witch.

"There's another one!" Cal cried, looking up the shaft as everyone else was looking down at the body of the slain gargoyle, whose rocky body had shattered upon impact with the stone floor. He struck out at it with his hammer, his enhanced reach bridging the gap between the flying creature and Cal's companions just below it. Had the gargoyle any ribs to snap the hammer-blow would surely have shattered them; instead, fragments of stone and grit went flying from the creature's stone chest, and it rebounded off the far side of the wall, dazed by the massive blow. It attempted to retreat back up the shaft the way it had come, but Delphyne finished it off with a well-placed magic missile barrage. She and the others stepped back out of the way to give it room to impact on the floor next to its counterpart.

The vertical shaft seemed to just end at the top, but the top proved to be a hinged passage into the living quarters above, which was scaled to a 20-foot-tall humanoid. The group flew up the shaft on their drow floatdisks and Chalkan cautiously lifted the trap door enough to peer around. Seeing no one around, he opened the hatch all the way and the group alighted into what appeared to be the storm giant's living quarters. Chalkan closed the trap door behind him, and the group explored, discovering a dining room, living room, bedroom, and bathroom - all scaled to giant size. They also found, hidden behind a curtain, a series of twelve cubical prison cells, five feet on a side. A set of oversized keys hung on a wall, marked with the numbers 1 through 12 in the Giant script. Seeing the cages were all empty, Cal decided to prevent their further use by pitching the set of keys down the 60-foot shaft beneath the toilet (inadvertently hitting an otyugh on the noggin in the process). Then there was nothing left to check out but the set of stairs leading further up.

The next level contained a landing with a large door and another set of stairs going even higher to an upper level. Chalkan opted to try the door first, and found an unusual "L" shaped room just beyond. The longest wall contained a massive stone door which pivoted along its center, but the majority of the space around the corner was taken up by an enormous nest made up of branches and even entire small trees. Screeching its anger at the intrusion was a dire griffon, Stormcloud, the storm giant's riding mount. Chalkan got out a shot with his bow as the screeching beast reached out and bit him on the shoulder with a wickedly sharp beak.

Delphyne tried befriending the dire griffon with a charm monster spell, but the creature, already in combat with Chalkan, managed to shrug off the spell's effects. After determining over the mental link with Delphyne that was her last such spell, Cal stepped forward, still about 12 feet tall due to his enlarge person spell, and whacked the dire griffon on the side of its head with his warhammer. Telgrane followed up with a shaped meteor swarm, and together the group brought the griffon to its final breath.

Telgrane and Infernia were positioned the closest to the stairs leading further upward, so they were the first to enter the final room. This was an elaborate observatory, complete with a massive telescope sized to a storm giant as was the rest of the complex thus far, but with the addition of a ring of seven human-sized tables at its base, upon which could be strapped unwilling victims. Ryzo stood on the telescope platform at the top of a short series of giant-sized steps, peering through the lens out into the heavens. His leather bag lay flat and empty on the floor below, and as Telgrane stepped into view, he saw the body of Brother Altamaic on the last table, fading from view as his body was broken down into its particulate matter and dispersed.

"Damn!" cried Ryzo, peering through the scope in annoyance. "No effect again--the targeting must still be a bit off." Then he looked down and noticed Telgrane and Infernia, both of whom had been caught up in one of the magical traps tied into the observatory: a confusion effect affecting only non-giants upon their first entry into the room. "Well, this is a treat!" the giant exclaimed. "Ammunition that delivers itself!"

By this time, Telgrane had managed to warn the others about nature of the soul cannon and the confusion trap waiting for them upon their entry into the observatory, and the group lined up along the set of stairs, with Cal just around the corner, having checked out the pivoting stone door in the room. (As he had suspected, it led to a stone platform jutting out from the mountain's top, making the massive stone door the monstrous equivalent of a "doggy door" allowing Ryko's pet dire griffon a means of entry into and exit from his nesting area.)

Delphyne cast a dispel magic spell on the spell effect and reported her success over the telepathic bond. Ryzo, looking over the wall to see the heroes lined up below, cast a quickened chain lightning spell upon all but Cal (still around the corner at the bottom of the stairs and thus unknown to the storm giant), and followed up with a command word spoken in the guttural Giant language. An invisible glyph on the ceiling of the observatory flashed and pulsed with power, and the group - still reeling from the blast of electricity that had arced out to hit them all - now found themselves fighting off the effects of a symbol of stunning. The others managed to shrug off the effects of the symbol, but Thunderwolf and Chalkan were unable to resist as a giant-sized version of unseen servant plucked them up from their spots and levitated them over to the first two tables along the base of the telescope. Upon hitting the tables, shackles closed around their wrists and ankles, binding them securely in place even after the effects of their stunning would wear off.

Delphyne rushed up the stairs, a spell on her lips. She had wanted to rescue her two companions, but now it seemed like the more important task at hand was to disable the soul cannon before the giant turned Chalkan and Thunderwolf into ammunition for his infernal device. She let fly with her readied spell - and the front half of the soul cannon disintegrated into nothingness.

None of the group had ever seen the face of a violet-skinned storm giant blanch into paleness before, but that was exactly what happened. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" he shrieked. "FOOLISH WOMAN--YOU HAVE JUST DESTROYED ANY CHANCE I HAD OF SINGLEHANDEDLY SAVING THIS PLANET FROM DESTRUCTION!"

"What?" demanded Delphyne.

"There's an asteroid heading this way! I give it no more than three days until impact!" screamed Ryzo Skywatcher. "I was trying to shoot it from the sky with the soul cannon--BUT NOW YOU'VE DOOMED US ALL!" With a shriek of incoherent rage, he grabbed up his greatsword and leaped from his observatory platform, swinging the blade down and piercing the witch's body. Delphyne collapsed, unconscious and life fading fast, into a pool of her own blood.

"Before I die with the rest of this planet, I'll see all of you dead by my hand!" roared Ryzo, wheeling to face the nearest hero, the archmage Telgrane.

"Cal!" screamed Telgrane as he stepped forward and sent a sonic meteor swarm blasting into the giant's face. Infernia followed her master into battle, swatting at the enraged giant with her fists of solid flame. Behind her, the cleric of Kord bound up the steps and cast a mass heal spell, closing up all of the wounds he and his companions had obtained thus far, and bringing Delphyne from the brink of joining her grandmother in death. An unexpected side effect of the spell, forgotten by Cal as he concentrated mainly on saving the witch's life, was Thunderwolf and Chalkan being suddenly snapped out of the stunning effect to which they had succumbed earlier. They struggled to extricate themselves from the bindings keeping them in place on the tables.

"You know, there are other ways to deal with an incoming asteroid," chided Telgrane as he blasted the storm giant with another spell. "Why didn't you just tell us what was going on?"

"I'M NOT IN THE HABIT OF DISCUSSING THINGS WITH MY AMMUNITION!" roared Ryzo, mere seconds before his life was cut short by yet another combat spell. As he fell, lifeless, to the floor, his last words were "I was going to save the world...."

Delphyne looked guiltily at the others as she removed the bonds from the two archers. "Was he telling the truth?" she asked. "Are we going to get hit by an asteroid?" She hated the thought that she may have prevented the storm giant from keeping all of Oerth safe, but then she chided herself for her feelings of guilt: Telgrane was right, there were other ways to deal with a threat like that without resorting to slaying innocents.

"Let's find out," replied Cal. "See if you can channel the asteroid in your crystal ball."

Obviously, Delphyne had never seen the asteroid that was on a collision course with Oerth, but there weren't likely to be many such places on which to scry.... Closing her eyes and concentrating, she passed her hands over her crystal ball. The others gathered around her to peer at the image forming in the glass sphere. An oblong rock turned slowly along an unseen axis as it grew inexorably closer, closer....

"Can you zoom in?" asked Cal. "There's a cloud or something floating out from the back." Delphyne complied, and the magical sensor closed in on the far side of the asteroid. The group gasped as one: the "cloud" was a group of wraiths, floating along the back side of the slowly-rotating asteroid, keeping its mass between them and the hated beams of light from the sun. It was difficult to say with certainty, but there were easily scores of the undead, if not hundreds.

"If that thing crashes into the planet..." began Chalkan.

"...Not only will its impact cause untold destruction," finished Telgrane, "but those wraiths will spread out, creating more of their kind."

"So what can we do?" asked Delphyne.

Telgrane and Cal looked at each other. "We need Dr. Greymantle," the archmage decided.

- - -

The Planar Scout carried a full complement as it soared up out of the confines of Oerth's atmosphere. Protected as it was by Greymantle's powerful shield, it was perfectly safe for the group to step outside onto the vessel's outer surface as Pilot steered them towards their goal.

"I've checked its flight path," confirmed Dr. Graymantle. "It will indeed strike the planet in a little over two days' time - unless we give it a little nudge before then."

"What about the wraiths?" asked Delphyne. "Won't they be a problem?"

"They won't be able to penetrate the shields," replied Dr. Graymantle. "It's a force effect - impenetrable even by the incorporeal."

"It's a shame about Brother Altamaic," observed Thunderwolf. "Should we offer to pay to have him resurrected?"

"I don't think that will be necessary," replied Cal with a smirk. "Look!"

The others looked to where he was pointing, at the asteroid directly ahead. There, running across its slowly-rotating surface in great leaps and bounds, was none other than Brother Altamaic, red-faced and panting with effort. But it was obvious what he was doing: keeping himself in line with the sun as the asteroid completed its slow rotation, and thus keeping himself safe from the light-hating wraiths who likewise were maneuvering to keep themselves aligned with the asteroid's dark side.

"How's he even alive?" asked Chalkan in disbelief.

"It would appear he had a attune form spell handy," said Telgrane. "Furthermore, I would surmise that the 'soul cannon' was not a weapon after all. It was likely a transport device, turning a body into a ray of energy, and then converting it back once it arrived at its destination."

"Then where are the rest of the group who were captured with him?" Chalkan pressed.

"I believe that's them over there," replied Dr. Graymantle, pointing toward the cloud of wraiths flitting about the rear of the asteroid. "Tell me, Telgrane, does that asteroid look to you to be a solid chunk of calcimortum?"

"Of course!" replied the young archmage. "A chunk of calcimortum from the Negative Energy Plane comes hurtling this way; the idiot storm giant tries blasting away at it with the soul cannon, sending his victims onto the rock, which leeches them of their life energy and converts them into unliving wraiths."

"I concur," replied Dr. Graymantle.

"We really gotta make sure that blasted rock doesn't hit the planet," piped up Pinwhistle.

"Agreed," replied the elderly archmage. "Have Pilot maneuver the vessel underneath the asteroid and let's start nudging it out of harm's way." The warforged clanked across the Planar Scout's surface to comply.

"How could the storm giant not know his own soul cannon didn't work like he thought it did?" pressed Chalkan, trying to sort things out in his mind.

"I don't imagine he built it, but rather found it," replied Telgrane. "I didn't have time to look it over very closely before it was partially destroyed" - and here he looked over at Delphyne, who rolled her eyes sheepishly - "but I'd be willing to bet it was of arcane giant design."

"So where's the arcane giant who built the soul cannon?" pressed Thunderwolf.

"Who knows?" replied Telgrane. "He had access to a device which could transport him anywhere he could see through his telescope. For all we know, he's living happily on one of Oerth's moons."

"We still need to rescue poor Altamaic," Delphyne reminded the group.

That turned out to be easy enough. A sending spell informed the cleric of Boccob of the group's plans; after shifting the asteroid's orbit sufficiently to ensure it wouldn't impact the planet, the Planar Scout backed off and Brother Altamaic jumped for all he was worth. It was enough to catapult the cleric of Boccob out of the asteroid's weak gravity and into space. Then the Planar Scout matched his trajectory, Pilot shut off the shield long enough to get the cleric onto the vessel's surface, and then, shield once more in place, the stone ship headed back to the hangar behind Dr. Graymantle's small manor on the outskirts of Greyhawk City.

"We might have just saved the world again," smirked Thunderwolf as a somewhat frazzled Brother Altamaic stepped inside the extradimensional confines of the Planar Scout, looking around in awe.

"And more importantly: you owe us a drink," added Cal, grinning.

"Deal," agreed Brother Altamaic.

ADVENTURE 91: EXPEDITION TO EARTH

PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
"We're lookin' to hire on some experienced adventurin' types," remarked the dwarf, Bertrun Stonepick. "They'd be there to take care of any monsters in the area, and they'd hang around long enough for us to get our venture started. Pay is half o' what we recover in the time it takes us to get established – prolly a week or less. Whaddaya say?"

Farthingale was practically beside himself with joy at the prospect of sending a group of his adventurers as bodyguards to a dwarven mining expedition - especially once he learned that the miners would be doing their explorations on the Elemental Plane of Earth, where there was literally an infinite supply of wealth. Once the base camp was set up and the area cleared of any local threats, Farthingale envisioned a rotating stock of his adventurers performing guard duties - it would give the newer recruits valuable experience on the Elemental Planes, and if he could convince the miners to pay the Guild a percentage of the value of their weekly take...Farthingale's mind boggled at the amount of funds he could be bringing into his Guild on a weekly basis.

Bertrun, for his part, couldn't believe his own luck. Realizing his dwarves were the best there were to be had when it came to mining operations, he also realized they had limited combat experience when it came to battling the various monsters one might expect to find on the Elemental Planes. He was hoping to arrange for some professional monster fighters, and here he was being offered up the services of the renowned Wing Three. The fact that several of their members had the holy symbol of Moradin radiating from their foreheads just made it all the more obvious that this turn of events had been blessed by the Forgefather himself.

Quickly agreeing to the dwarf's proposal, Farthingale ironed out the rest of the details with Bertrun. The dwarves would provide food, drink, and shelter to the adventurers during their stay on the Elemental Plane of Earth, and Bertrun said they were capable of getting everyone to the Elemental Plane on their own. The adventurers would be responsible for providing their own weapons and armor, and would need to foot the bill for any needed resurrections for any members slain during the course of their duties. Any dwarven miners slain would remain dead, due to their own stoic religious beliefs. (After all, if Moradin wanted them to remain alive, he wouldn't have let them die in the first place, now would he? Plus, the dwarves believed they'd be allowed to work in Moradin’s own mines in the afterlife, and they didn't wish to be denied that possibility.)

So, agreements made and the deal sealed with a solemn handshake, Bertrun took his leave of the Guild after advising the adventurers to meet him and his mining crew at the top of a specific hilltop at the outskirts of Greyhawk City at midnight that very night. That would give the heroes the rest of the day to make any needed preparations before they all headed out to the Elemental Plane of Earth, where untold riches awaited those with the willingness and the know-how to make their fortunes.

- - -

Just before midnight, the assembled group met up at the designated hilltop. Thunderwolf and Telgrane were there, of course, as they were currently without "bink partners." Infernia was coming with her master, but she had been advised that she would likely be spending the majority of the time in her tinder box, for the miners were leery of open flames, which could ignite pockets of flammable gas. (They weren't particularly pleased about the archmage's flame-gouting eye sockets, either, but were tactful enough not to say anything.) The fire elemental understood their concerns, but wasn't about to let her master go into danger without her.

Joining the two were Galrich and Aerik, the former choosing to go specifically so his bodyguard could spend some time with his own people for a bit. Cal chose to come along so that the group would have a ready source of healing, for although Bertrun said the dwarves had some healing potions and antitoxins, long experience had taught him there was no substitute for a high-powered cleric. Finally, Feron joined the group specifically because she thought her ability to assume the form of an earth elemental was likely to be a valuable asset to the team on this mission.

Climbing up to the top of the designated hill, they saw four metal poles marking off the corners of a square some 40 feet on a side. Bertrun had warned the group not to disturb the poles, so they refrained from touching them and stayed well back from the square outline they formed. It was a clear night, with the light from Oerth's twin moons providing enough illumination for the group to see by - even the humans.

Within minutes of their arrival, however, dark clouds came sweeping across the sky, blocking the light of the moons and the stars. Brief but intense flashes of lightning caused a strobe effect along the bottom of the clouds. There was a quick, violent outburst of thunder, and suddenly there stood a squat, 60-foot tower at the top of the hill where none had stood before.

A door opened along the base of the tower. "Hello!" greeted Bertrun to the group. "Are ye ready t' go?"

Telgrane marveled over the tower's construction. The entire structure was made of smooth, black stone, with a stout wooden door at the bottom and two more up at the highest level, providing access to the ramparts that ringed the tower. Two more dwarves, apparently on guard duty, looked down from behind the wall ringing the ramparts.

Aerik was giving the tower an appraising eye as well. "It's not dwarven construction," he noted. "But it's pretty close to dwarven standards." This was high praise indeed from a dwarf!

Bertrun gave the adventurers a quick tour of the tower, which would be not only their transport to the Elemental Plane of Earth but also their home for the next week or so. The ground level held the small infirmary, storage space for the miners' tools, and the largest section was reserved for the gems and ores they hoped to unearth once they got their operation going. This large storage area currently held deep trays of Underdark lichens and fungus, of a type that performed the same functions as surface plants: converting the dwarves' exhaled gases back into breathable oxygen. The dwarves didn't plan on setting up camp in an enclosed air pocket on the Elemental Plane of Earth just to use up all of the breathable air while they were there.

Access to the upper levels was through a 5-foot hole in the center of the floors and ceilings of the levels above, to which were attached ladders. There were six levels in all: the second level held the eating, drinking, and lounging facilities, as well as the latrines; levels three and four were identical, each holding a dozen small bedrooms for the dwarves; level five was where the adventurers would be sleeping, for the eight bedrooms there were each larger than those on the floors below; finally, the top floor held the map room, weapons storage area (crossbows and ammunition for the guards on the ramparts), access to the ramparts ringing the upper level, and, most importantly, the control room from which the tower could be piloted to the Elemental Plane of Earth.

Telgrane gave this last room his full attention, observing the magical auras emanating from the controls and the runes inscribed on the wall. As expected, he picked up auras of conjuration magic, of the type signifying teleportation effects. The controls seemed very simple: there was a receptacle into which fit a tuning fork attuned to the Elemental Plane of Earth (of the same type typically used in the casting of plane shift spell, Telgrane noted), and a single activation lever. The archmage was pleased to see that there was another tuning fork stored in a drawer of the console, this one attuned to the Material Plane.

After the tour of the tower was complete, Bertrun asked again if the heroes were ready to travel. Telgrane opted to remain with Bertrun in the control room to observe the operation in progress, and Thunderwolf took up position out on the ramparts with a pair of dwarves on guard duty, while the rest of the group chose to wait downstairs on the ground level with the eager dwarves.

Bertrun activated the tuning fork and pulled down on the lever. There was an instant of transition, when the tower disappeared from the top of the hill on the outskirts of Greyhawk City and instantaneously appeared in a vast cavern somewhere on the Elemental Plane of Earth. The tower's arrival was evident to all of its passengers, for their apparent weight instantly doubled. Bertrun hurried down the ladders to join his fellow miners, with Telgrane right behind him.

"Shall we?" asked Bertrun when he got to the tower's main door.

"One moment, please," replied Cal, casting an attune form spell on the adventuring group, hoping in doing so their bodies would seem to resume their normal weights. Alas, the spell had no effect upon the increased gravitational pull of the Elemental Plane. "Bummer," remarked Feron.

"Hrrm. Off we go, then," replied Cal.

Bertrun opened the tower door and the adventurers ventured outside, taking up defensive postures around the base of the tower. The dwarven miners started gathering up trays of fungus and lichen, loading them onto wheelbarrows and carting them outside.

The tower had landed in the midst of a vast cavern of unknown size. Faint patches of illumination like feeble stars dotted the cavern walls in the distance, the effects of phosphorescent crystals embedded in the stone that made up the majority of the Elemental Plane. "It's beautiful," remarked Feron.

But the tower's sudden arrival had not gone unnoticed. A large, stocky creature, built like a terrestrial rhinoceros but with twice the number of legs and a row of four horns down the length of its face, started trotting in the direction of the tower, building up speed once the black stone building started ejecting soft-skinned creatures who spread out in all directions.

One of the dwarves up on the tower's ramparts, a swarthy fellow by the name of Strungle Geode, was the first to spot the motion in the relative darkness of the vast cavern. He called down a warning, and once the elemental creature entered the sphere of radiance cast by Cal's everburning torch, Thunderwolf and Strungle were able to target it with their longbow and crossbow, respectively, from the ramparts above. The eight-legged rock creature ignored the shafts from above, lowered its head, and went barreling into Aerik and Galrich. Aerik tried to shield his liege from the creature, but was gored with the beast's longest horn and flipped casually to the side; Galrich was trampled underfoot as the elemental rhino-thing ran right over him. But the half-orc barbarian got in a good series of whacks with his greataxe, and between the half-orc, his dwarven bodyguard, and the bowmen up above the creature was soon put down. After it was slain, one of the miners gave it a brief examination and opined the creature's eyes - made of cloudy-white gemstones - would likely fetch about a hundred pieces of gold back home due to their rarity if nothing else, and this was incentive enough to pry them out of the rocky beast's face and store them away.

The fungus and lichens were set up without further incident, then Bertrun announced that was enough excitement for their initial night on the Elemental Plane. Despite there being no way to mark the passage of time on the Elemental Plane - in that manner it was very much like the Underdark back home - the dwarves preferred acting as a unified group rather than splitting up into various shifts. Bertrun assigned watch patrols from among his miners, preferring to allow the heroes - especially the spellcasters - to get uninterrupted sleep so they could better do their bodyguarding duties the next "day." The heroes each picked a room on the fifth level, bid everyone their good nights, and went to bed.

- - -

The next "morning," Cal began what would become a tradition during their stay on the Elemental Plane of Earth: disregarding the dried food the dwarves had brought along, he cast enough heroes' feast spells to cover everyone, miner and hero alike. Meal finished, Bertrun announced the first task of the morning was to set up the magical poles that would allow the tower to "home in" on this particular location, much as the ones situated at the top of the hill outside Greyhawk City ensured the tower would manifest there instead of at a random point on the Material Plane. "After all," explained Bertrun, "we want to be able to show up right back here after we bring our first load back home."

"Where did you get this tower and the equipment used to direct its travel?" asked Cal.

"Believe it or not, we found it in one of our mines," replied Bertrun.

"What?" replied Cal in disbelief. "You don't even know who made all this?"

"That's not so different in how we acquired the Daern's dollhouse," pointed out Telgrane. "If you recall, we found it in Kazmira's saddlebags that time we went searching for Rale's replacement sword."

"Hrrm," harrumphed Cal, not entirely satisfied with the explanation, and wondering if the tower's original owners would ever come looking for its current whereabouts.

Situating the poles turned out to be a very exacting business, for each needed to be equidistant from its nearest two neighbors, forming a perfect square. The dwarves had out their measuring ropes and were making marks on the ground with chalk, while the heroes spread out and flanked the tower as they had done last "night" during the placement of the fungus and lichen beds.

Seeing no immediate danger, Telgrane started crafting a summoning circle on the cavern's stony floor, creating within it a magic circle to imprison the creatures he planned to summon there. Once complete, he summoned a trio of earth mephits, then used a planar binding spell to compel them to extended service.

"What do you wish of us, flesh-thing?" demanded the largest of the mephits.

"Fly about this cavern," replied Telgrane, "and explore its contents. I wish to know if there are any creatures about, as well as the general layout of the cavern structure. Pay special attention to any gems or ores you might discover." Their orders received and understood, the three mephits split up and flew away in three different directions.

It took nearly an hour before the meticulous dwarves were satisfied with their calculations, and a burly dwarf named Kurg Deepdelver started hammering in the first of the metal poles. Each time the dwarf hit the pole with his hammer, the sound resonated around the vast cavern. It didn't take more than half a dozen strikes before the vibrations caused by the hammering attracted the attention of a local denizen. There was a slight trembling of the ground near Cal's feet, and then the stone started melting and flowing away, allowing a reddish head to rise up from the ground, followed by a length of neck or body. Cal had seen thoqquas before when he fought the self-styled "Magma Mage," but this creature was much larger, at least the size of a purple worm.

The magma worm never entirely left the stone floor of the tower's cavern. An unknown length of its thick body rose up, and the front end split open in several sections, exposing rings of teeth eager to gobble up these exotic treats. But Cal's hammer of frost and Telgrane's polar ray took the fight out of the flame-covered beast; before Galrich and Aerik could even race over to the magma worm, its lifeless body had slid backwards into the hole from which it had popped out of the ground. The danger over, the dwarves returned to their work, but it was evident they were impressed with the competence of their bodyguards.

Once all of the poles were hammered in place, Bertrun was ready to start exploring; it was at this time one of the mephits returned with a report for Telgrane. "There's a dragon lairing not far away," it said. "It's sound asleep, but I recognize the snoring. We've heard rumors before that there's a shadow dragon lairing nearby, name of Malauthavincix - odds are it's him. Anyway, I didn't enter the lair, for fear of waking the thing."

"Good call," replied Telgrane, turning to face Cal. "What do you think? Should we go take care of it now?"

"Let's save that for the first thing tomorrow, when we're all fresh and full-up on spells. In the meantime, how about we start our explorations in the opposite direction?" suggested the cleric of Kord. The dwarves all readily agreed.

- - -

Standing just outside the dragon's cavern, the group could tell they were in the right place by the deep snoring coming from within. However, entry wouldn't be that easy, considering the 20-foot-wide entry cave was blocked by a series of stalactites and stalagmites, grown together so tightly that a human-sized creature couldn't pass between them.

"So how'd the dragon get in there?" Thunderwolf wanted to know.

"There's undoubtedly another entrance," Cal responded.

"Or," opined Telgrane, "Malauthavincix could have sealed this entrance up before going into hibernation. A series of stone shape spells would certainly do it."

Feron was peering inside the cavern, peeking between the columns. There was scant illumination within, just the feeble light from a few of the phosphorescent stones embedded in the cavern's walls, but she saw a 25-foot-tall cliff ahead, with dark openings at the top obscured by complete shadow. A pile of scattered bones - previous meals, no doubt - lie in a tangle just ahead, while the floor ramped upwards along both sides. The snoring reverberated throughout the cavern; even Feron's half-elven ears couldn't exactly pinpoint the source.

"He's probably in the back, behind one of the openings at the top of the cliff-face," she guessed.

"How do we want to get inside?" asked Thunderwolf.

"I have an idea," replied the druid, casting a soften earth and stone spell on the stone columns. Then, at her direction, the warriors carved chunks of the columns away, the stone having attained the softness of clay. The group cleared away a 10-foot-wide section in the center of the cavern's opening. Then Cal and Galrich took the lead, the others right behind them, everyone cognizant of the need for silence.

That didn't last for very long. A few steps in, the floor beneath the lead two heroes gave way underneath them. Cal and Galrich each leaped to the sides, as a slab of stone tipped forward and into the 20-foot pit it had covered. It went crashing to the bottom of the cliff; the dragon's snoring broke rhythm for a moment but then took up its regular pace, the dragon evidently having slept through the racket.

"That was lucky," whispered Thunderwolf.

Stepping around the now-open pit, the group advanced further - but no further than another 10 feet or so, when a glyph of warding hidden among the smaller stalactites on the ceiling was triggered, sending a wave of sonic energy screaming down at Cal and Galrich. Once again, the dragon's snoring only broke rhythm for a moment, then resumed its course.

"I can't believe that thing's still asleep," remarked Feron, suspecting a ruse.

"Me neither," admitted Cal, pulling out his gem of seeing and slowly scanning the cavern.

Off to his right was another series of close-set stone columns, but these had enough room between them for a human to squeeze through. There was also adequate reason to want to, for stacked against the far corner of the smaller cavern beyond was a glowing sword and a small pile of coins. However, Cal's magical gem showed the floor between to be an illusion over a pit, some 60 feet deep. "Nice try," he said to himself.

Scanning in an arc to his left, he saw the shadow dragon standing hidden in the shadows at the top of one of two openings along the cliff-side, just as Feron had surmised. And despite the continued sounds of its snoring, it was standing on all fours, looking down at the group with disdain; the "snoring" was merely the result of a ghost sound spell Malauthavincix had cast immediately upon the hidden alarm spell triggering when the heroes first entered his cave.

"He's right there!" said Cal, pointing up at the ledge. His warning was too late for the group to be able to scatter, however - almost immediately, the shadow dragon's breath weapon went cascading over the assembled group, a wave of negative energy that would normally have drained the heroes of some of their very essence. In this case, however, the dark energy flowed across the heroes' bodies with absolutely no effect, courtesy of the death ward spells covering each and every one of the adventurers. Cal had insisted that he and Feron prepare enough such spells that morning to cover the entire group before they took on the shadow dragon; fortunately, they had encountered a shadow dragon before, just outside the Maze of Fools, and knew how debilitating their breath weapons could be.

Malauthavincix was momentarily taken aback by the complete lack of response from the heroes after he sent his cone of negative energy their way. Rather than staggering under its impact, they instead scattered, with Galrich running to the left to race up the ramp leading to the back area where the shadow dragon stood, and Aerik scrambling to keep up. Aerik wielded his liege's flaming longbow and sent an arrow heading towards the dragon as he ran. Still in the back of the cavern, Thunderwolf followed suit with arrows of his own, enhanced by Telgrane earlier to deal sonic and cold damage as well. Cal raced off to the ramp on the right, apparently planning on trapping the dragon in a pincer maneuver between him and Galrich. He cast a daylight spell on the side of the cliff wall on his way, hoping to prevent the dragon from using any of its shadow-based abilities.

Malauthavincix responded with an unholy blight spell that caught most of the heroes in its area of effect, although Galrich had already advanced too far around the corner to be affected. In response, Telgrane cast a dimensional anchor on Malauthavincix, preventing him from using dimension door to escape. That certainly got the shadow dragon worried a bit, for he didn't like the way this fight was transpiring: the intruders were immune to his breath weapon and had already prevented his normal means of escape. The final straw was the second sunbeam spell cast by Feron; while the first one was harmlessly deflected, the second casting overcame the dragon's inherent ability to resist the effects of spells, robbing the noble creature of his sight. With a roar of fury, Malauthavincix raced forward to where his other senses told him the half-orc was advancing towards him - he sensed by this time that he wouldn't be making it through the end of this fight and was determined to take at least one of his slayers with him - but it was no use. He managed to bite Galrich only once before he was brought down, and most of the damage he had tried to inflict upon the barbarian was absorbed by Galrich's stoneskin spell. Prevented from attaining even his small victory, death was a mercy to Malauthavincix.

Using drow floatdisks to lower themselves down through the illusory floor, the group gathered up the bulk of the dragon's treasure. Besides the coins and sword above, there were chunks of solid silver and a wide variety of gems, many of them diamonds ranging in size from a child's marble to a baby's fist. One gem in particular was distinctive in its size and coloration: it had a diameter of about 8 inches, and was roughly spherical with a great number of individual facets; depending upon which way you held it in the light, the gemstone looked either tan, brown, or a light green. There was also a polished human skull wearing a minor circlet of blasting; the group took the circlet but left the skull behind. All of the treasure was brought into the Daern's dollhouse, then the heroes returned to the towers to report their success to the dwarven miners, who had opted to stay inside while their bodyguards were otherwise occupied. The group had to return to the dragon's cave to show the inquisitive miners the corpse of the shadow dragon, and then the miners returned to the business of finishing their mapping of the entire cave system and determining the best spot to begin their digging operation, a project that took the group the rest of the day.

- - -

Departing the tower the next morning, the heroes took the lead to ensure there was no danger as the miners gathered up their tools behind them. No immediate dangers were apparent; Aerik called up to the two miners on guard duty along he ramparts of the tower to see if they saw anything and got a reply indicating that things looked safe from up there as well.

"Hmmm," muttered Aerik to himself. "That's funny."

"What?" asked Galrich.

"Look up there," the dwarf responded, pointing to the cavern ceiling above them. "The 'stars' is all gone from that area." As one, the heroes looked up to where Aerik was pointing. Sure enough, there was now a "bald spot" among the "starscape" of phosphorescent gems sprinkling the vast cavern ceiling, directly overhead.

"So did something eat the glowing crystals?" asked Cal. "Or is there something up there?" He turned to Telgrane, who peered at the black spot with his arcane-enhanced vision. "I'm not sure..." he admitted, pulling out his carpet of flying and sending it rising. "I'll go check it out." Galrich, Aerik, and Thunderwolf followed suit on their floatdisks. But the problem resolved itself as the foursome rose up to higher elevations, for with a plop! an elder black pudding dropped onto the roof of the tower, then began oozing its way towards one of the guards on duty up there.

"Get inside! Both of you!" commanded Telgrane. Thunderwolf shot an arrow into the creature's flank as it made its way to the nearest dwarf, who ran back inside and slammed the wooden door behind him. But a wooden door was not much of a barrier to the elder ooze, who dissolved it with but a moment's touch. "Run!" screamed the terrified miner, racing to the ladder and sliding down it, the other dwarf right behind him, following suit.

"We don't want that thing getting inside the tower!" yelled Cal.

"I'm on it!" replied Telgrane. Despite the fact that the view was blocked by the amorphous, protoplasmic body even now oozing its way through the open doorway, Telgrane steadied his mind, visualized the space within, and set up a wall of force spell across the entire room within, just in front of the opening on the floor leading down to the lower levels. Unable to proceed any further, the elder black pudding began backing its way out of the tower, but it was taken down by a barrage of ranged spells, the final being an implosion spell from Cal that caused the creature to be sucked into nothingness.

Telgrane then decided to show off in front of the easily-impressed miners by casting a limited wish spell to cause the acid-dissolved wooden door to become whole once more.

- - -

Later that same day, the miners were discussing in earnest where best to begin digging. There were two main competitors for the best mining spot. While the adventurers could see nothing special about the two locations, apparently the miners' experiences told them about what might be found behind different rock walls. As the miners were discussing it among themselves, a strange creature popped up from the solid stone floor. "What is that I smell?" it asked in a voice like cascading gravel. It was built like a barrel, with three stout legs below it, three arms rising up equidistant from the triple jaws at the top of its head, and three opal-like eyes spaced around the equator of its squat torso. "It's a little like gold, and a little like silver, but not quite either."

Thunderwolf and Aerik raised their bows and were ready to shoot the beast, but Cal held up a hand and waved them off. "Everybody check their coin purses," he advised. Doing as the cleric asked, Thunderwolf discovered a few platinum pieces in with his pieces of gold. On Cal's urging, he threw them towards the hungry xorn, who gobbled them up with his three-jawed mouth. "Delicious!" it exclaimed. "Got any more?"

This began a new friendship between the elder xorn, his family, and the miners and heroes. The visitors discovered these strange natives had a taste for iron, electrum, and platinum - pitons proved to be a popular treat. In exchange for the metallic foodstuffs, the xorns agreed to lead the dwarves to the most plentiful of veins of gems and ores in the cavern. The dwarves had successfully identified a vein of silver and a section of stone behind which would be found a wide cache of diamonds, but the xorn also led them to a place they had apparently missed. Behind a different section of the vast cavern's walls was hidden a cache of psiodium, a strange gem found only on the Elemental Plane of Earth, which had a magical affinity with spells and effects dealing with mental energy. Believing its rarity on the Material Plane made it the best bet for riches, the dwarves happily began digging through the wall to unearth the psiodium crystals, which were then taken back by the wheelbarrow-load to the tower and stored in the metal trays awaiting their return to Oerth.

- - -

The next few days were relatively uneventful; the heroes had little to do but watch out for dangers that never surfaced. With the xorn family as local advisers and watchdogs, the miners were in good hands, and the riches they amassed in the bottom of their tower increased. After the third such day of relative safety, the heroes said their good nights to the dwarves and climbed up to their individual rooms up on the fifth level. The miners soon followed to their own bunks on the third and forth levels, save for the two dwarves taking the first shift of guard duty up on the ramparts.

Hours passed in silence.

Then, once everyone but the guards were in the deepest stages of their individual slumbers, Xuvok deemed the time was right to strike. Gathering up his three fellow illithids and their two quaggoth slaves, he cast his protective spells on the assembled group and used dimension door to send them all up to the fifth floor. There they spread out, each positioning themselves outside the door of the target they had been assigned.

The savage quaggoths stood outside the doors of the rooms which held Thunderwolf and Aerik. The mind flayers Vendorp, Shendrax, and Quentilliak positioned themselves to attack Galrich, Cal, and Feron. Xuvok himself, the leader of this expedition, placed his hand on the knob to Telgrane's room, the only room likely to hold two foes. Upon their leader's mental signal, the attack force simultaneously opened the doors to the heroes' rooms and attacked in the manner best suited to their individual makeups.

The four illithids each started combat with a mind blast. For Cal and Feron, all that did was awaken them and announce that there was trouble at hand, as they were able to successfully shrug off the blasts' effects. Galrich, not surprisingly, wasn't as fortunate; his much simpler mind took a pounding from the mind blast and he lay insensate in his bed, stunned beyond the ability to take any actions.

Xuvok followed his plans, but was surprised to see not only Telgrane asleep in his bed, but Infernia standing over him, watching him sleep. The mind blast had no effect on either of them, Telgrane no doubt because of his staggering intellect and Infernia due to the simple fact that elementals cannot be stunned. They can, however, be angered, as Xuvok learned when she turned on him and started wailing away with her flaming limbs.

Aerik and Thunderwolf, meanwhile, were awakened by the savage teeth and claws of beastmen biting and tearing at them. They both managed to wrest themselves out of the quaggoths' grasps, grabbing up their nearby weapons and fighting back.

The spellcasters, once awakened, were fighting back as well. Telgrane began with a sunburst spell, striking out at the middle of the room at the center of the level, shaping the spell to affect as many of the intruders as possible while avoiding the outer walls of the bedrooms, since he knew all of the beds on this level were against the wall and thus his fellow adventurers would thus likely be out of the range. The attackers were indeed all encompassed by the spell, and three mind flayers and one of the quaggoths were immediately struck blind. That made a big difference to Thunderwolf, who had no problems at all cutting down a blind quaggoth with Xanthros. Vendorp, realizing he'd taken care of the half-orc with his initial assault, felt his way along the wall to go help Quintilliak, who was having some difficulties with the female for some reason.

Xuvok, through the telepathic link he held with the rest of his forces, realized this assault was not going at all as planned. He needed to get rid of this damned elemental, for one thing - it was preventing him from getting to the wizard, who was the real threat. He snatched up a tuning fork from his belt and attempted to cast a plane shift spell on Infernia, intent on shunting her to the Elemental Plane of Water. Fortunately for Infernia, she was able to resist the transition, for a trip to that particular Elemental Plane would have ensured her death within mere seconds.

Xuvok began to panic as he felt ally after ally dying over the mental link he shared with them. There went the other quaggoth, cut in twain by the dwarf's axe; there went Vendorp and Quintilliak, brought down by a spell cast by the half-elf; there went Shendrax, slain by a spell from the overly-muscled cleric. How had things gotten to this state? It was a beautiful plan: the crafting of the tower; the planting it where it would be found by the dwarven miners; the implanted suggestion to their unwitting mind-thrall, Bertrun Stonepick, to mine the Elemental Plane of Earth for riches. Even the nightly raids on the security detail, where Xuvok would dimension door to the ramparts, mind blast a guard, and allow whichever of the illithids was due for a meal to slip a ring of regeneration onto the stunned dwarf's finger, crack open his skull and devour the tasty brain within, wait for the removed organ to regenerate, clean the place up with prestidigitation spells, and then use a modify memory spell on the hapless meal to make him forget everything that had just occurred. The tower's ground floor storage areas were filled with riches, including the psiodium which the illithids had found to increase the power of their mind blasts. But he hadn't counted on the miners deciding to hire bodyguards, and that had turned out to be the illithids' downfall.

All alone now in his thoughts, his companions all slain, Xuvok succumbed fully to panic. Breaking away from Infernia's embrace, he fled to the hole in the floor at the center of the fifth floor and allowed his innate ability to levitate to bring him down the vertical shaft.

However, Cal had cast a mass heal on all of the heroes, which, as well as sealing up all of their wounds, also awakened Galrich from the stunning he'd received at the hands of an illithid mind blast. He roared up out of bed, naked, grabbing up his vorpal greataxe and looking about for an enemy to fight.

"Don't let him get away!" called out Telgrane, staggering out of his room, Infernia right behind him.

With a glance to his left to see that his liege was awake and well, Aerik saw his options and made use of the best weapon he had at hand. With a dwarven war-cry, he leaped into the hole in the floor, rolling into a ball on his way down. He cannonballed directly onto Xuvok's head, sending the two of them hurtling down the rest of the 50-foot drop. They landed on the ground floor, Aerik's fall fortunately broken to some degree by the crippled body of the illithid monstrosity beneath him.

"Out of the way!" called Galrich as he followed suit, plummeting down to the ground floor some 50 feet below him. Aerik just had time to roll to the side before his liege and future king landed directly onto Xuvok, swiping down with his axe immediately after landing. To the dwarven bodyguard's surprise, the illithid's severed head went flopping along the floor by him, tentacles swaying in a loop as they passed. Galrich stood above his headless foe, roaring in triumph as he waved his vorpal weapon above his head.

Five stories above him, the others peered down the central shaft to ensure the threat had been defeated.

"Oh, for pity's sake," called down Feron, "put on some pants!"

- - -

The mining expedition would go on, but not quite in the manner in which originally envisioned. Cal cast a speak with dead spell upon one of the slain mind flayers and learned their whole plot. The tower itself had no way to travel through the planes; this had been accomplished by a brain golem on a hidden level of the tower below the ground floor, where the four illithids and their two quaggoth slaves had stayed during the entire expedition, until they decided to put an end to the heroes that very night. The "control room" was just there for show; all actual planeshifting was done by the brain golem. And that meant that the tower would never again move from its current location, for although Cal could cast a plane shift spell, he wouldn't be able to bring the entire tower with him - he couldn't even bring all 24 of the dwarven miners with him at once. Likewise, the magical rods were useless to him, as he couldn't "home in" on their signal.

Still, all was not lost. The miners loaded all of their unearthed treasure into the Daern's dollhouse, and Cal's plane shift spell got them at least to somewhere in the jungles of Hepmonaland, from where a greater teleport spell cast by Telgrane was able to get them all back to Greyhawk City. They'd have to do something similar to get the next batch of miners and bodyguards to somewhere on the endless Elemental Plane of Earth, then to the tower's specific cavern. That meant that they'd need a powerful Guild spellcaster on each leg of the journey, and the Wing Three adventurers would need to train their eventual replacements.

But all of that was in the future. For now, it was nice to be back home, split the riches as agreed upon with the dwarven miners, and hit the baths. After a week on the Elemental Plane of Earth, even Aerik and Galrich were willing to get cleaned up.

- - -

We played this adventure over two sessions. I had picked up some black poster board some months ago and built the planeshifting tower to scale with the D&D miniatures we use for the PCs.

The odd-looking gem discovered in Malauthavincix's hoard will shortly (two adventures from now) be discovered to be the Elemental Earth Stone, which will affect several upcoming adventures. But in the meantime, after finishing up "Expedition to Earth," we started up the next adventure, "The Curse of Aberoth," in which Telgrane gets paid back for having killed one of the liches in "Eye of Vecna."

ADVENTURE 92: THE CURSE OF ABEROTH

PC Roster:
"I'm afraid we cannot accept your money," said the elven restaurant owner as he ushered the heroes into the open-air seating section of the walled garden behind the building. "Not for the heroes of the Cathedral of Correleon!" Like many of the elves in Greyhawk City, he felt a deep debt of gratitude toward the heroes who had prevented a drow attack on the cathedral many months ago that would have killed off the majority of the elven population in the city.

"Here is some chilled wine while you make your selections," he said, passing menus among the party of five and then distributing glasses of a dark, red wine. Sure enough, the glasses had been chilled with a prestidigitation spell.

"This is very nice," said Feron, sipping the elven vintage as she looked over the menu.

"I could get used to this," admitted Rale, mentally calculating how many times he could swing by for some free food before he wore out his welcome.

Alas, the quiet outing did not last for very long. The five heroes hadn't even decided upon their meals when a sudden disruption caused the other customers to scream, leap out of their chairs, and flee for the exits. Looking up from their menus, they saw the reason for the commotion: a skeleton had suddenly appeared in the middle of the walled garden. It stood in a half-crouched position as if ready to pounce and slowly scanned the area. Then, locking eyes with Telgrane - a rather curious turn of phrase, come to think of it, given that neither the skeleton nor the archmage had eyes in the classical sense anymore - it raced toward its prey, arms outstretched.

The heroes were without their traditional armor but they had long since learned never to go anywhere without at least some form of protection. Thunderwolf leaped up from his chair, grabbing for his bow and pulling an arrow from the quiver on his back. Chalkan followed suit, and the two sent arrows flying somewhat ineffectually bouncing off the skeleton's bones. The undead creature seemed to have specifically targeted Telgrane, despite the fact that he was seated at the far side of the table and there were closer heroes it could have attacked. Instead, it leaped up onto the table and launched itself at the surprised archmage, who barely had time to cast a spell in his own defense. But with his archmage training, he managed to cast a fireball at nearly point-blank range and still manage to shape its area of effect to avoid hitting his friends in the blast. The skeleton took the fiery explosion smack-dab in the middle of its grinning skull and collapsed into a pile of bones on the far side of the table from Telgrane, who had finally managed to extricate himself from his chair in the meantime.

"What was that all about?" wondered Feron, sending her eagle, Felix, to reconnoiter the area in case there was someone nearby who had summoned the skeleton and sent it after the heroes. The proud bird leaped from the back of Feron's chair and took wing.

"No idea -- but I don't think it's over yet," replied Rale. "Look!"

The rogue was pointing down at the skeleton's remains, now a pile of loose bones. They started bouncing around on the garden floor as if a tremor preceding an earthquake were starting up. But there was no earthquake; only the bones were affected. They bounced higher and higher, and then suddenly sprung up fully from the ground, forming two complete skeletons. They crouched, skulls scanning for the enemy -- and then simultaneously focused on Telgrane. With an eerie mirroring of motion, they leaped to attack the archmage.

Telgrane opted not to reply with another spell; instead, he flipped open the tinder box he wore at his belt. A series of embers arced out of the metal box, hitting the garden floor and bursting into flame, coalescing into a 9-foot-tall female humanoid form with twin horns curving up from her brow. Infernia looked at the approaching skeletons and pushed Telgrane behind her protectively. "I will defeat them, Master!" she promised.

Rale, meanwhile, opted to try to figure out why this was occurring. And the best way to do that, he reasoned, was to ensure he was an unnoticed observer. Activating one of the powers of his rod of thievery, he cloaked himself in invisibility and stepped aside. Regretting his inability to strike undead beings in the same manner as he could living foes, he nonetheless armed himself with his favorite short sword.

Infernia's flaming fists pounded one of the skeletons into so many bone fragments, and Rale nervously waited to see if the pile would rise up again as two separate skeletons. But fortunately it did no such thing. Thunderwolf and Chalkan continued their arrow barrages at the remaining skeleton, doing little overall damage. Feron was without her normal dragonscale armor and had none of her weapons, but that hardly meant she was unarmed or unable to assist in a combat. Wildshaping into an air elemental, she reached over and grabbed up the skeleton, flinging it up over her head and smashing it down onto the floor, where it shattered into hundreds of fragments.

Now that both skeletons had been destroyed, the bone fragments of each started bouncing. This time, knowing ahead of time what was going to happen, the heroes could see that with each bounce, the shattered bones merged back together, healing up the damage they had sustained, all the while drawing closer together with each bounce. And then, all at once, the bones bounced back into full skeletons -- only now there were four of them.

"I do not understand this, Master!" complained Infernia.

"We'll figure it out!" promised Telgrane.

"I think I can contain them," announced Feron, casting a wall of fire spell in such a way to completely encircle the four animated skeletons while they were still somewhat close together, with the heat energy of the flames aimed inwards. The heroes tensed, waiting to see what would happen. They didn't have long to wait, for the four skeletons leaped through the flames with no regard for their own safety, each of them making a bee-line towards Telgrane.

"What did you do to these guys to tick them off so bad?" asked Thunderwolf, dropping his bow and unsheathing Xanthros, hoping his enchanted blade would have better effect on these tougher-than-normal skeletons.

"No idea, but I appreciate you guys keeping them away from me!" Telgrane said, backing up to the restaurant wall. Then, seeing the incoming skeletons scurrying around the protective ring of allies to get to him, he followed Feron's lead and cast a wall of fire in a half-circle around himself, with the heat energy of the flames aimed outwards, away from himself, hopefully causing the skeletons to have second thoughts before piercing the wall to get to him.

"Hey!" complained Chalkan, as the heat from Telgrane's wall of fire started burning his shirt. The group had become accustomed to Telgrane shaping his spells so as to avoid his allies; it had been quite some time since he'd forgotten to do so.

"Sorry!" called out Telgrane from inside his protective arc of fire.

Rale activated his winged boots and flew up to the restaurant roof, the better to see if anyone nearby was paying special attention to this ruckus in the back garden of an elven restaurant. He also pulled out a scroll of magic circle against evil and activated it by reciting the arcane words inscribed upon it, thinking that if these skeletons were indeed summoned creatures, he could keep them from getting to Telgrane if he was within range. To that end, he moved along the roof until he was standing just behind and above Telgrane, hopefully safe in his fiery cocoon on the ground below.

Infernia and Feron swatted the approaching skeletons, but they couldn't prevent two of them from piercing Telgrane's protective wall of fire, even if it meant their own destruction immediately thereafter. But one of the reasons they were so determined to get within visual distance with the archmage became apparent, as a familiar greenish glow suffused Telgrane's body. "Dimensional anchor!" exclaimed Telgrane, recognizing the spell's effects. It had never even occurred to him to "bink" back to Headquarters; now that option was apparently out of reach, for he had neglected to prepare any dispel magic spells that morning.

Feron bashed the last of the quartet of skeletons into smithereens, and once again the bone-bouncing began, just outside the confines of Telgrane's wall of fire spell, so as the eight skeletons rose up half of them were already taking damage. Each looked straight into the solid sheets of vertical flames as if they could see the archmage hidden within. Then, suddenly, they switched tactics.

Four of the skeletons broke ranks and approached the restaurant wall, two on either side of the semicircular wall of flames. The first in line steadied itself against the wall, while the other behind it ran up its back and pulled itself up onto the roof. Rale soon found himself flanked by two skeletons who apparently didn't even realize he was there. He stepped back nonetheless, since it was apparent his magic circle against evil wasn't doing anything to keep them at bay.

Infernia continued bashing away at the skeletons even now approaching her master, and Thunderwolf and Chalkan continued with their weapon attacks. But Feron decided to call in for some reinforcements; casting the words to a summoning spell, two massive earth elementals rose up out of the garden floor and began smashing those skeletons remaining. Neither skeleton on the ground was able to take the pounding of more than one set of clublike fists before being scattered into so many bone fragments, but by that time, the two skeletons that had made it to the roof had just about completed their mission. The first leapt down at Telgrane, grappling him with its bony fists and then, to the archmage's consternation, with the bones of its rib cage, which opened up like a Venus flytrap to engulf him.

"I will save you, Master!" called out Infernia, stooping over to pick up both Telgrane and the skeleton that had wrapped itself almost completely around him. She pulled him toward her, out of the encompassing wall of fire, but then a strange thing happened: she had no sooner pulled him through the flames than he disappeared from her grasp, passing forward through the restaurant wall and falling back into his original position. As one of his last actions, Telgrane tried plunging himself and his undead attacker off to the side, only to find himself passing through the upright plane of fire to his left and falling back into place by passing through the flames to his right. Some sort of recursion field, he thought to himself, as the skeleton continued binding him tighter with its own bones.

Just as the first skeleton had Telgrane just about completely immobilized, the second one leapt down and joined the grapple, engulfing the archmage from the other side. Telgrane felt nothing; he was caught in a stasislike effect that not only completely immobilized him but also cut him off mentally from his familiar.

"MASTER!" called out Infernia in shock as she no longer felt Telgrane's presence over the mental link they shared.

The twin skeletons then mentally deactivated the dimensional anchor effect upon their prey and teleported away. When Infernia pushed her head back into the wall of fire, Telgrane was gone.

- - -

Back at Headquarters, the five heroes rapidly explained to the others what had happened while gathering up their armor and the rest of their adventuring gear. Delphyne offered to use her crystal ball to scry upon Telgrane, while Cal cast a discern location to try to locate the missing archmage. "He's hundreds of miles from here," the cleric announced, puzzled, just as Delphyne said, "I'm getting something."

The others gathered around the witch to peer into the crystal ball. Telgrane, still bound in the bones of the two skeletons intertwined around him, stood at the top of a flattened pyramid in an underground cavern, before another undead figure whose robes declared him to likely be a lich. The lich was speaking from a carved throne, but Delphyne's scrying device had no audio features and the heroes had no idea what was being said. But the lich had apparently given a command, for the two skeletons and their immobilized prey instantly vanished from sight, teleporting away. The image in the crystal ball followed Telgrane for a brief moment, just enough for the heroes to see the skeletons climbing up onto a table among a group of half-dissected corpses, before breaking up into static.

"That other room's likely shielded from scrying," Delphyne explained.

"We'll need to teleport over there," reasoned Rale. "Delphyne, do you have that spell at hand? You can return immediately."

The arch-witch readily agreed. "Where shall I take us? To the lich, or to Telgrane?" she asked.

"To Telgrane," replied Rale immediately, already taking charge of the rescue operation. "We'll deal with the lich after we've made sure Telgrane's okay."

The standard preparing-for-battle spells were cast (all but Rary's telepathic bond, which Telgrane habitually cast upon the group). Delphyne then cast a greater teleport spell and the assembled group found themselves at the base of the pyramid, among scattered bones, with the lich looking down at them from his throne. All around them a loud alarm blared, announcing their sudden intrusion.

"I said take us to Telgrane!" groused Rale.

"I did!" argued Delphyne. "There must be a teleport redirect effect in here!"

There was no further time for arguments, for the bones all started bouncing. "Oh, no!" cried out the heroes in unison, imagining a virtual army of the skeletal kidnappers manifesting from the numerous bones scattered along all sides of the pyramid. But that wasn't what happened. After a few initial bounces, the bones all started falling upwards, taking their respective positions until they had formed a pair of massive, snakelike creatures made entirely of the disparate bones of a great number of different types of creatures.

Delphyne recognized them at once. "Boneyards!" she cried. "But much bigger than the ones we've seen before!"

But that was all there was time to say before gravity suddenly reversed itself underneath their feet. The heroes went flying 40 feet into the air before slamming painfully into the ceiling. At least most of them did; Delphyne grabbed her broom of flying from its sheath on her back, and while she didn't manage to sit upon it like normal, she was at least able to hang onto it with one hand while she hung, upside down, about halfway between floor and ceiling. Rale, wearing his winged boots, managed to flip himself over in midair and prevent himself from crashing into the cavern ceiling, hovering in place while he tried to keep an eye on the two advancing boneyards. The reverse gravity was affecting them as well, but their serpentine bodies were so long they managed to coil from floor to ceiling and back again; it didn't seem to matter to them which way was currently up.

As Thunderwolf and Chalkan pulled out their drow floatdisks, Feron wildshaped back into air elemental form, the better to maneuver in this strange new environment. And as the heroes reoriented themselves to the shifting gravity, the boneyards struck.

The first snapped at Thunderwolf, mere seconds after he had gotten onto his floatdisk. Teeth made of sharpened splinters of arm-bones dug into his flesh, but he managed to twist out of the creature's mouth without falling off his transport disk.

The other made its way towards Delphyne, who was pulling herself up onto her broom. "Bink away!" cried Rale, fearing for the witch's safety -- especially after she was simply supposed to have transported the rest of them here and returned to backup duty at Guild Headquarters. Delphyne started the words to a spell, but was quickly engulfed by the boneyard before she could finish its casting. She felt the massive creature's makeshift teeth sink deep into her flesh, and then she felt an even greater pain as her own bones were shattered all over her body and forcibly ripped through her flesh to merge with the undead monstrosity that was killing her. As her final action, she frantically tried activating the Guild ring which would "bink" her back home, but for whatever reason it had no effect. In a single moment, Delphyne the arch-witch had been slain; her broom dropped from bloody, boneless hands to fall to the ceiling above.

Infernia had no bones and thus had nothing to worry about the boneyards' horrific attack, but could still be slain by them. However, she recognized them for what they were: mere bodyguards. She was after the one behind her Master's kidnapping (and possibly death, although the fire elemental didn't want to think about that possibility), and the lich looked like her best bet. She raced along the ceiling, and then at the point directly above the base of the pyramid, leaped "up" - from her point of view, in any case, as she was upside down - and twisted her body as gravity shifted in mid-leap, landing unsteadily upon the platform in front of the lich. "What have you done with my Master?" she demanded as she regained her balance and equilibrium.

Chalkan maneuvered his floatdisk out of the snapping jaws of the boneyard that had slain Delphyne and sent a scorching ray down at the lich. All three of his rays struck true, visibly blasting into the undead spellcaster's body to horrific effect.

Thunderwolf, however, was being chewed up by the other boneyard, and although he had been able to resist having his bones crushed and absorbed into the monstrosity, it was likely only a matter of time. Feron saw the truth of the matter and went flying over to aid him, lest he end up sharing Delphyne's sad fate. She snatched up the young fighter in an arm made of rapidly-spinning air, then dragged him away from the hungry boneyard. Rale, in the meantime, had flown down to the pyramid's flat top and attacked the lich with his sword, recently upgraded to an undead bane weapon. The lich staggered back from the rogue's blows, and then the blast of energy from Infernia's circlet of blasting sent him flying backwards into oblivion. He toppled from the pyramid, slid down its smooth wall, and fell onto the floor, where the reverse gravity effect which ringed the pyramid began to take effect. However, he only made it about 10 feet up before his skeletal body was subsumed into the serpentine form of one of the massive boneyards.

"We need to get out of here!" Rale yelled, giving the platform a quick but thorough investigation, for he had seen there were no visible doors along the base of the pyramid. "Aha!" he cried, finding a hidden lever along one of the armrests on the lich's throne. He activated it, and the throne, along with the central section of the pyramid's top, began sinking into the structure.

"In here! Quick!" called out the rogue, seeing a stone plate begin to slide into place above them, forming a new ceiling as they submerged. Chalkan and Infernia were already in place; Feron, with Thunderwolf tucked under her arm, soon followed suit. The platform continued to sink, the ceiling slid into place, and the heroes were no longer within reach of the hungry boneyards.

"We're going to have to deal with them after we rescue Telgrane," observed Thunderwolf. "We'll need to gather up Delphyne's things." He knew from past experience that the more powerful Guild spellcasters could resurrect Delphyne even without part of her body to work with, but he knew she'd want her broom, her magical robes, and the rest of her gear.

"One thing at a time," replied Rale.

A set of stairs beckoned down into darkness. Rale led the way, followed by Infernia, whose eagerness to find her Master - if only his body - provided the rogue with a convenient, mobile source of illumination. The first chamber beyond the stairs, which Rale envisioned to be just below the level of the pyramid's floor in the cavern above, was a wide hallway interspersed with six niches spaced equally along the eastern and western walls. Inside each niche was an immobile skeleton, but with wet-looking viscera wrapped around its middle and along each arm; another strand wound up through its lower jaw and protruded like some obscene tongue.

"Ranged attackers," commanded Rale, stepping back up the stairway while Thunderwolf and Chalkan stepped forward, bows at the ready. Without entering the room, they each let fly at two of the undead forms in the back of the room. Feron, at the same time, cast a wall of fire along the east side of the room, blasting the three niches and their undead inhabitants with cleansing fire.

The response was immediate; the three mohrgs to the east staggered through the flames, while the others stepped out of their niches to the west and raced to attack the heroes. But the adventurers had backed up to the narrow stairs and the mohrgs were forced to fight them one at a time. Under such conditions, they didn't last long. The last one had attacked Infernia, who had moved up to the front of the line of heroes, and while it clawed at her and sent its hideous tongue her way to try to paralyze her - something which was quite impossible to a being comprised entirely of flames - it burned itself to oblivion at the touch of the flames of her body.

"Heh," snickered Rale, finding humor in the situation despite their grim task and the toll it had taken thus far. "Stupid bugger licked himself to death."

They moved on. Ahead was an arcane library, guarded by two sets of full plate armor that Rale was certain would animate if they passed. Seeing no other ways out of the library, he took a passageway to the west, leaving the library for later. The passageway ahead opened into a diamond shape, with three other passageways extending out from there. Rale insisted upon checking it out carefully, looking for traps, while Infernia seethed impatiently just behind him. Feron, still in air elemental form, took the opportunity to peek down the other hallways. To the south was an "X" shape of niches, each holding the flayed form of a human without any skin remaining, corded muscles exposed in the dim illumination from Infernia's fiery body. To the north was a circular room, the floor of which was inscribed with a familiar summoning circle. To the east was a much larger room; from what she could see of it, it looked to the druid to contain tables to the south and an otherwise open space to the north.

"He must be in there!" exclaimed Infernia, stepping forward in her eagerness, only to be stopped by Rale's outstretched (and quickly singed) hand.

"Careful!" he replied, sucking his burned fingers. "I don't think there's a floor in the middle of that diamond."

"Do not be ridiculous," replied Infernia. "I can see it right there."

"Illusion," responded Rale. "I think it's one of those illusory wall spells, only cast sideways over an open pit."

"Then I will step around it," announced Infernia, hugging the walls as she made her way into the room she believed her Master to be in. Feron took the opportunity to cast a firestorm spell, engulfing all of the skinless blasphemes and anything inside the room Infernia was headed towards. After all, the druid reasoned, the fire would not harm Infernia, and if Telgrane was really in there he'd be unaffected as well.

Infernia stepped into the room, and for a moment she was afraid her Master was in there, for a skeleton engulfed in flames staggered towards her. At first, she thought it might just be due to the lingering remains of Feron's spell, but then she saw the flames were actually emanating from the bones of the skeleton, with fire leaping from the skull's empty eye sockets. "Master?" the fire elemental whimpered, barely noticing the other hulking form in the northern corner of the room, even now bearing down upon her. This was a humanoid figure with spikes protruding from its back and knuckles; fresh corpses hung from its back, each impaled in place by several spikes.

Chalkan stepped forward to block the corridor from the advancing blasphemes, for Feron's attack spell had awakened them from their apathy. However, while he peppered the first one with arrows as it approached, the blaspheme struck out, dazing the adventurer while sapping him of some of his strength. The others failed to notice that Chalkan merely stood there, taking repeated blows from the creatures he was attempting to hold off, and hardly even moving while they repeatedly attacked him.

The cadaver collector struck out without mercy, dropping Infernia with a pair of well-placed blows from its spike-covered fists while she was still distracted by the blazing skeleton that might very well have once been her Master. The fire elemental fell backwards upon the floor of the short hallway leading into the room, the flames of her body diminishing in size as her life-essence began leaving her body. In moments, she'd be nothing but embers; a few seconds more, and she'd be unliving ash.

Rale stepped into the room over Infernia, and was stabbed by a series of the cadaver collector's knuckle-spikes for his trouble. Feron dropped a series of lightning strikes onto the massive thing before it could add Rale to the corpse collection on its back, and saw Telgrane sit up from a table in the back. He brushed off a collection of dusty bones from him as he did so; Feron's earlier firestorm spell had completely destroyed the two curse skeletons that had engulfed the archmage, releasing him from their stasis. As he sat up dizzily from his ordeal, the mental link with his familiar snapped back into place, and he instantly became aware of her impending death. Without a second thought, he cast a limited wish draining himself of some of his vitality in exchange for Infernia's flames blazing forth in full force once again.

Infernia sat up and gave a cry of exultation. Almost as an afterthought, she smashed the burning bones skeleton on her way to engulf her beloved Master in a flaming bear hug. Before succumbing to Infernia's fiery embrace, Telgrane cast a shaped meteor swarm spell that took out the cadaver collector before it could add Rale to the pile of corpses on its back.

Thunderwolf had in the meantime noticed Chalkan's dire predicament, and was sending a series of arrows plunging into the chest of the closest blaspheme to the still-dazed half-elf. Then Telgrane stepped out of the room in which the lich Aberoth created his various forms of undead, and cast his second spell since being abducted from the elven restaurant in what seemed to him to be mere seconds ago. The blasphemes exploded immediately into flames, staggered to the ground, and burned into blackened husks.

"Good to have you back," replied Rale, adding, "Watch out for the floor there." Telgrane looked down at the floor, saw through the illusory wall with his arcane vision, and responded, "Yes, I see. There's a gelatinous cube down there in the pit. Quite nasty."

The group caught Telgrane up to speed on what had transpired since his abduction. He, in turn, passed on what he had deduced about the lich responsible for having him abducted. "Remember that fight in the Vecna Library?" he asked. "One of the liches cursed me as his body burned to ashes in one of my wall of fire spells. We never did find his lair or his phylactery. I believe this was his 'curse' -- capturing me, no doubt to turn me into some sort of undead being for the effrontery of having destroyed him earlier. I'd be willing to bet he'd have turned me into a 'blazing bones' skeleton, too, no doubt to see what difference starting out with a half-fire elemental might make."

There were still two areas the group hadn't explored yet: the arcane library and whatever extended down the corridor beyond where the blasphemes had stood in their niches. They chose the latter, walking past the burned blasphemes to another circular room, this one much smaller and holding only a stone statue depicting Vecna, God of Secrets, against the far wall. One of his eyes blazed with the light of a glowing gemstone.

"Let me check this out," said Rale, stepping forward into the room once he had given the floor, walls, and ceiling a quick perusal to see if there were any traps waiting for him. As soon as he stepped into the room, a beam of light shot out from the gem in Vecna's eye, piercing the rogue and preventing him from stepping further into the room. Rale also felt the telltale tingling sensation that experience had told him was an attempt to drain him of his life energy. But this was having no such effect, for one of Rale's preparations before willingly entering the crypt of a lich had been to read the contents of a death ward spell, preventing his life energy from being drained.

"Is that all you got?" he yelled at the unmoving statue, gathering his will to fight against the force that was preventing him from moving forward. It took all of his strength, but he finally managed to fight his way forward enough to snag the gem out of Vecna's eye socket, at which time the beam extinguished and the rogue found he could move normally again.

"Who'd like to do the honors?" Rale asked, flipping the gem to the others.

"I would!" replied Infernia enthusiastically, snatching the gem from the air. Rale smiled and tossed her the hammer he used to pound in pitons. She grabbed it up, dropped the gemstone phylactery to the stone floor, and smashed down viciously with the hammer. It may have only been her imagination, but she thought she may have heard a scream of "Nooooooo!" as the phylactery shattered and Aberoth's sentience dissipated into the ether, his soul being sent onto whatever afterlife he'd successfully avoided for centuries.

"NOBODY harms my Master!" she said down at the shattered crystal, her blazing eyes squinting in anger.

- - -

The rest of the adventure was mostly clean-up in nature. The two suits of armor were death knights, but they were taken down easily at range with spells. The PCs grabbed up the contents of Aberoth's library, intending to pass them on to the Church of Boccob. In doing so, they found two fake books, one containing several vials of silversheen and oils of timelessness, the other a small fortune in gems. We just hand-waved the slaying of the boneyards, once Telgrane was revived and would be able to throw several 9th-level spells at them. They also figured out how the curse skeletons (and Aberoth) were able to teleport out of the crypt when all other attempts at teleportation were doomed to failure: they had magical gems inside their skulls which "pierced" the teleport-redirect that sent anyone directly to the base of the pyramid, despite their intentions. So, pilfering one of the gems, they were able to teleport home.

Delphyne was later restored via true resurrection -- it's an expensive spell, but the players hate losing levels of hard-earned experience, and at this stage of the campaign the 25,000 gp cost is mostly negligible. But Vicki was very upset that Delphyne had been slain, especially after she had agreed just to be their transportation and then return back to HQ as a "ready reserve" member. Of course, I knew that once they arrived they'd be caught up in the reverse gravity/boneyard trap, and that she wouldn't be able to leave until the PCs figured out the effects of the magical gemstones that allowed them to teleport out of the crypt, but I held my tongue. I did NOT expect her to be slain so quickly, but we've always been a "let the dice fall where they may" type of gaming group.

When I originally wrote this adventure, I had no idea which PC would be targeted, as we hadn't played through "Eye of Vecna" yet and I wasn't sure which PC would be responsible for Aberoth's death. Once I learned it was Telgrane, though, I added the blazing bones skeleton in Aberoth's undead lab, specifically to screw with the players, who would (hopefully) worry that that was indeed Telgrane's new undead form. It turns out I did indeed make Logan very nervous; he was afraid Telgrane would go the way of Akari and he'd have no high-level PCs to run for the rest of the campaign. In the meantime, he ran Infernia as a replacement PC for the bulk of this adventure, and discovered she's pretty bad-ass for someone with only 43 hit points at the equivalent of 19th level. (But he's still much happier running both Telgrane and Infernia than just Infernia.)

We played this adventure over two gaming sessions: at the end of the first session, taking us up to Telgrane's actual abduction; and then yesterday we finished it up and started our next adventure. It was a short session, as Jacob had signed up for a "Magic: the Gathering" tournament that required him to leave at 4:45 PM. (Our gaming sessions start at noon.) So we marked down the locations of the PCs and their enemies, and we'll pick it up the next time we play, right now scheduled for 11 April 15.