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The Kordovian Adventurers Guild
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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 7454640" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 49: SNOW WIGHT</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 14</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Castillan Ivenheart, elf bounder 14</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Darrien, half-elf ranger 14</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 14</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Gilbert Fung, human wizard 14</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 14</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Aithanar Ivenheart, elf fighter 3</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Ingebold Battershield, dwarven cleric 13 (Moradin)</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Jinkadoodle Dundernoggin, gnome illusionist 5</p><p></p><p>Game Session Date: 23 June 2018</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Ingebold woke with a scream strangled in her throat.</p><p></p><p>It took a moment for her to process the vision she'd just had - the dead world, the undead scourge covering every corner of the Oerth, the cold lands from which they'd originated, the black rock that had caused it all...a mere moment for her to realize there was a knowledge in her head, a perfect understanding of exactly where that black rock was at this very moment, and how little time remained until it struck the planet, and just how much was at stake....</p><p></p><p>The dwarven cleric threw her blankets and bedsheets aside and scrambled out of bed in her nightwear. Without bothering with a robe, she raced up the stairs of the northeastern tower of Battershield Keep to the room directly above hers, where she knew she'd find her Battle-Sister Finoula and likely the elf's timber wolf, Wrath, as well.</p><p></p><p>"Wake up!" demanded Ingebold, pounding on Finoula's door. "Round up the others and gather up yer gear! We need t' get on th' ship as soon's we can!"</p><p></p><p>"What's going on?" asked Finoula, still muzzy from being broken out of her night's reverie. But Ingebold was already stomping back down the stairs to go wake up Binkadink and his cousin Jinkadoodle in the bottom floor of the southwestern tower, so they in turn could awaken the adventurers in the two floors above them. Trusting that Ingebold wouldn't be so frantic if this wasn't something serious, Finoula raced upstairs to wake up Castillan and his brother Aithanar.</p><p></p><p>Ten minutes later, everyone was gathered up in the Battershield Keep courtyard in full gear. Ingebold looked worriedly at the back half of the keep, where her mother was no doubt hard at work in the kitchen. Her father, Aerik, was likely already on his way to the castle, judging from the sun, which was just rising over the treetops of the Vesve Forest to the east...best not to worry poor Helga just now....</p><p></p><p>"Ingebold? What's going on?" repeated Finoula.</p><p></p><p>"Yeah," grumbled Gilbert. "Why we up so early?"</p><p></p><p>Instead of responding, Ingebold turned to Jinkadoodle. "Do ye have th' carpet?" she asked.</p><p></p><p>"I do," replied the sleepy illusionist. He dropped the <em>carpet of teleportation</em> to the ground and unrolled it with a kick of his foot.</p><p></p><p>"Everyone up t' th' ship, then," commanded Ingebold. "I'll explain everythin' once we're in flight."</p><p></p><p>Binkadink, Finoula, and Darrien herded their respective animals on board the carpet with them, leading them to the room in the extradimensional hold of the dragonfly spelljammer ship that had been converted to animal pens. Aithanar went with them, getting them settled amidst all of the excitement. Ingebold prompted Jinkadoodle upstairs at once, following him as he took a seat at the ship's magic helm and raised the flying vessel from its parking orbit on a floating cloud. "Where to?" the gnome asked.</p><p></p><p>Ingebold's eyes glowed white, as her suddenly enhanced senses kicked into gear and she pinpointed the black rock's location as it hurtled through wildspace towards the Oerth. "That way," she said, pointing a finger off to the left where Jinkadoodle could see it. "We're headin' t' th' cold lands of th' north."</p><p></p><p>The others had followed Ingebold up from the secret hold and were now crowding around her, looking for answers. "I'll tell ye all what I know," the cleric promised.</p><p></p><p>"I had me a vision this mornin'. There's a hunk of black rock falling from th' sky. It'll impact shortly in th' coldlands, which is where we're headin'. Th' black rock is made o' somethin' called <em>calcimortum</em>, a stone from th' Negative Energy Plane. It's dangerous enough t' all living beings nearby, but worse yet, buried inside it's an evil skull directin' its path. We need t' destroy the skull an' th' <em>calcimortum</em> before a wave o' undead creatures spills out from th' arctic and covers th' whole globe. I seen it, in me vision, what it'll be like if'n we fail. We cannae let that happen--no matter what!"</p><p></p><p>She turned to Gilbert Fung. "We've several hours o' flight afore we get there - ye'd best prepare yer spells fer th' day, knowin' we'll be up against undead an' that we'll be fightin' in the frigid cold," she told the portly mage. Turning to Hagan, she said, "Ye dinnae need t' prepare yer spells, so ye'd be th' best one fer <em>teleportin'</em> somewheres to fetch cold weather gear fer them what be needin' it. I imagine there be shops in Greyhawk City what'll sell ye what we need, and then ye can <em>teleport</em> back t' th' ship long before we're ready t' land. In th' meantime, I'll be in me cabin, preparing me own spells. I'll be sure t' get a <em>heroes' feast</em> ready fer ye when ye get back with th' coats an' all." As Ingebold went to the seclusion of the cabin she shared with Finoula on board the dragonfly vessel, Hagan took a quick inventory among the adventurers who didn't already have cold weather gear, then cast his spell and disappeared from the ship.</p><p></p><p>"This not good," murmured Gilbert. "Fighting undead in ice and snow?" The wizard had a well-known dislike for undead creatures and had exchanged a small portion of his life-force to permanently alter his vision so it could magically detect those creatures of an undead nature. Still muttering to himself, he stomped back downstairs to the hidden hold to go prepare his own spells for the upcoming mission.</p><p></p><p>The next few hours were filled with anxiety. Hagan returned and passed out the cold weather gear he'd just purchased for himself, Gilbert, Castillan, Aithanar, and Jinkadoodle. Ingebold returned from her cabin and cast the <em>heroes' feast</em> spell to grant the heroes a few advantages in the combats to follow, but unlike the previous times she'd cast the spell, the meal thereafter was filled mostly with nervous silence.</p><p></p><p>"How much longer?" asked Jinkadoodle, nibbling some of the fruit and bread Ingebold had brought him from the table where she'd cast the spell, so he could enjoy the benefits of the magical feast as well as the others.</p><p></p><p>"It's just up ahead," Ingebold replied, squinting at the snow blowing sideways outside the viewports. "We've got a blizzard ahead o' us," she noted, and began the words to a <em>control weather</em> spell to lessen the arctic winds in the area where they'd be landing. She finished up the spell just as the ship arrived at its destination - a flat plane of snow just outside a valley perched in the shadow of a massive glacier.</p><p></p><p>"We can't go down there," said Jinkadoodle. "The winds are too strong - I'd likely crash us into the side of one of those ice cliffs." It was still difficult to see through the blowing snow, but the cleric's spells had lessened the blizzard, and the valley looked to be surrounded on most sides by either the glacier itself or nearly vertical cliffs of solid ice. A single path along the right-hand cliff wall into the valley looked safe enough to traverse - and a plume of steam rising up from the valley showed the rock's likely landing spot. </p><p></p><p>"Put 'er down here, then," Ingebold commanded. "We'll have t' walk from here on in."</p><p></p><p>Jinkadoodle landed the dragonfly ship on a flat field of snow; the blizzard all around the ship had lessened in its severity but not yet fully dissipated. As a result, as the adventurers donned their cold weather gear and disembarked from the spelljamming vessel there was a limit as to how far away they could see. But Ingebold's all-white eyes had a pinpoint fix upon the black rock from the Negative Energy Plane, which the cleric said had crash-landed in the arctic valley about an hour ago.</p><p></p><p>Following the determined dwarf, the group saw a pair of figures appear in the blowing snow before them. As they got nearer, the figures resolved into the forms of a pair of male frost giants, with ice-covered beards over their bluish skin. Each carried a greataxe and looked ready to use it. Hagan, ever the optimist, decided to try to parley with the pair. "Excuse us," he said, "but we wish to enter the valley below. We do not wish to fight you."</p><p></p><p>"That's good," grunted one of the giants. "We like it when our prey don't fight back!" And then both giants laughed at the remark, moving forward to attack the heroes. "Meat for the stewpot!" the other giant enthused.</p><p></p><p>As the heroes readied themselves for the attack, Finoula tried reason one more time, thinking perhaps if she spoke in their own language she'd have better luck. Using the Giant tongue, she briefly explained about the falling black rock and how it could be a danger to all in the area. All she got for her trouble was a chunk of ice thrown at her, striking her in the side and nearly toppling her over. At the same time, the other giant had lobbed a chunk of ice at Hagan, but the sorcerer got a warning from Wezhley - who was sitting perched on the half-orc's shoulder - and Hagan managed to avoid the incoming missile.</p><p></p><p>And then combat was on. Hagan began by casting a <em>delayed blast fireball</em> (without the delay) at a point equidistant between the incoming giants, blasting each with an explosion of flame that burned off the ice from their beards and hair. The half-orc then wisely backed up a few steps, getting out of the way of the front-line fighters eager to take on the giants in hand-to-hand combat.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink was the first of these. As Darrien shot an arrow at one of the giants, momentarily attracting his attention, the little gnome stepped up and skewered him through the gut, killing him instantly. Castillan came up behind Binkadink and shot his light crossbow at the other giant, but a gust of wintry wind sent the quarrel off course. Behind the bounder, Gilbert Fung cast a <em>mage armor</em> spell upon himself and his earth elemental familiar Mudpie to ready them for any upcoming melee combat (although the wizard greatly preferred staying out of melee range whenever possible).</p><p></p><p>Ingebold cast a <em>bless</em> spell upon the entire group; while they currently had but one foe left, the dwarf was sure that wouldn't necessarily be the case for long. Finoula stepped up to the remaining frost giant, flicking her <em>flaming whip of thorns</em> at his face - and act he didn't seem to appreciate in the least. He retaliated against the elf ranger with a powerful swing of his axe - and then, surprisingly, turned around and fled, calling for help.</p><p></p><p>Not wanting to allow the frost giant to fetch reinforcements, Hagan squinted into the blowing snow and calculated the distance between him and his foe, then cast a <em>wall of fire</em> right ahead of the fleeing frost giant; unable to slow his headlong rush, the giant ran directly into the fiery wall and was engulfed in flames. He gave a roar of pain and then fell forward, a charred corpse melting the snow beneath him.</p><p></p><p>But the <em>wall of fire</em> did more than just slay the second frost giant: it also lit up the area enough that the group could see the large structure directly past the flames. It was a house of wood, but one twenty feet tall - and yet still only one story tall, judging from the 12-foot-tall door that opened. Another frost giant stood in the doorway, squinting past the <em>wall of fire</em> to see who was responsible for the death of the charred corpse on the ground before him. "What's going on?" demanded <strong>Jarl Kjornenheim</strong>.</p><p></p><p>Finoula saw another opportunity for a peaceful solution. Calling on Hagan to drop his magical wall, she called out to the frost giant jarl in his own tongue. "Your men attacked us and we fought back, but we mean no harm to you or those of you dwelling here. We seek a black rock that fell from the sky, which means death and destruction for everyone in the area. We wish to find the rock and destroy it before it can cause anyone any harm."</p><p></p><p>Jarl Kjornenheim scanned the group before him and the bodies of his two men - if they took them out without apparently losing any of their own forces, they must be of considerable strength. The jarl could respect that. "Very well," he said. "You are welcome to step inside, out of the cold, and state your case. But we guard access to the valley - there's a tribe of yetis living there, and in this environment meat is meat and we depend upon them for food." He turned behind him and called to one of two figures in the back of the room. "Veornokkir, go drag the bodies of our men behind the house. With a look of distrust at the heroes, <strong>Ice Mage Veornokkir</strong> headed out the massive door to follow the orders of his leader.</p><p></p><p>The other figure stepped forward beside her husband the jarl and introduced herself as <strong>Bjilgarra</strong>. "Please accept the hospitality of our house," she said. Reluctantly, and with not much more trust than Ice Mage Veornokkir had demonstrated, the adventurers entered the frost giant dwelling. The front door - the only door visible in the house, and one that was nearly ten feet wide - was flanked outside by two ice sculptures of winter wolves, their snouts partially melted by the blast of heat Hagan's <em>wall of fire</em> had produced. Stepping inside the house, the group spread out, Gilbert and Mudpie making sure they didn't stray too far from the door - the wizard wanted to be able to make a quick exit if it became necessary.</p><p></p><p>Finoula repeated her tale of the black rock in the Giant language, while Ingebold looked on impatiently - she would rather they be on their way immediately, no matter what these frost giants thought about it. But Jarl Kjornenheim seemed unimpressed by the danger. "I fail to see how a rock that fell from the sky can hurt anyone in any case - if it was going to hurt anyone, surely it would be when it landed on them, not after the fact. And I have already sent two of my finest warriors, <strong>Fragnir</strong> and <strong>Gaarkenbral</strong>, to the valley to check out the falling rock in any case. They took our two winter wolves, <strong>Frostfang</strong> and <strong>Snowpelt</strong>, with them - they should be able to face any danger provided by a sky-rock."</p><p></p><p>"How long ago?" demanded Ingebold.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe an hour or so," replied the jarl. "But they should be back presently." Ingebold and Gilbert exchanged worried looks.</p><p></p><p>"I think maybe we go check for ourselves," suggested Gilbert. But then there was a scratching and a whining at the door, as something outside apparently tried to get in. The mage sprang away from the door, afraid at what they might find if they opened it. The rest of the group readied themselves for an attack, expecting undead forces trying to get in. At the jarl's nod of assent, Binkadink opened the door with his glaive ready for a counterattack if whatever was on the other side of the door wanted a fight.</p><p></p><p>But that turned out not to be the case. As the gnome pulled the door open, a pair of winter wolves came crashing into the room, only to slink beneath the massive wooden table directly beyond the door, to the blazing fire on the far side of the room. There they whimpered, their tails between their legs, as they looked fearfully at the front door.</p><p></p><p>"What's gotten into you?" demanded Jarl Kjornenheim, addressing his pets.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink stepped outside, noticing the blizzard had almost completely blown itself out, no doubt with a nudge from Ingebold's <em>control weather</em> spell. Looking toward the valley - and noting he could see much farther than he could before, now that the snow wasn't blowing sideways - he saw a trio of figures. Two were obviously frost giants, each with a greataxe slung over a broad shoulder, but also a shorter figure walking nonchalantly between them. This was a shaggy, white-furred ape-thing, which Binkadink recognized as a yeti - and which was somewhat odd, given that Jarl Kjornenheim had said the frost giants treated the snow-apes as prey. And then the little gnome noticed that one of the giants carried a large, black rock in his other arm.</p><p></p><p>"Uh, guys," he said. "I think we've got a problem here." Finoula, Darrien, and Hagan popped outside to get a look at what Binkadink was referring to; true to form, Gilbert moved deeper inside the shelter of the building, farther away from the approaching danger.</p><p></p><p>With the massive strength of his race, the lead frost giant hurled the black rock directly at the gnome. He missed, if he'd actually been targeting Binkadink, because it soon became apparent that all he had really needed to do was to drop the stone in the heroes' general vicinity: Binkadink, Finoula, Hagan and Wezhley, and even Castillan who was still inside the building, each felt a draining sensation as some of their life-force, their vitality, was absorbed by the rock.</p><p></p><p>The other frost giant had an ice chunk slightly larger than his fist in his hand and he threw it at Hagan, but again the half-orc dodged the incoming missile. Darrien shot a barrage of arrows from his <em>Arachnibow</em> at the first giant, and in lining up his shots he got a good look at his foe, noticing for the first time the undead flesh pulled tightly against the creature's skull. The trio moved too smoothly to be zombies; wights, then, perhaps?</p><p></p><p>Back in the frost giants' dwelling, three spectral forms rose up from the rear part of the huge room, behind the fire pit and the cowering winter wolves. These were yetis in wraith forms, having traveled with the trio outside but doing so beneath the ground, to avoid the light of the sun, feeble as it might be at this northern latitude. Sensing life above, though, they rose up to attack.</p><p></p><p>The howls of the wolves caught Jarl Kjornenheim's attention; he spun and raced to aid his frightened pets, greataxe in hand. Without worrying about whether his physical attack would even affect the wraiths he swung out with his axe, catching one of the spectral yetis in a hit that would have cut it in two had it still had a corporeal body. The yeti backed off, but whether that was because the blow had hurt it or out of simple instinct - it had been an incorporeal wraith for less than an hour, after all - was difficult to say.</p><p></p><p>Back outside, the yeti wight scrambled up and scratched at Finoula with a set of wicked claws, catching her in the shoulder. Once again, she felt the vitality being drained from her body and while she managed to pull away from the undead thing's grasp, she felt weaker as a result of the attack. So, rather than depend upon her weapons at hand, she reached up and touched her <em>lightning amulet</em>, activating it with a word and sending a bolt of lightning through the wight's body. She willed herself to re-form as an elf at the very greatest distance of the amulet's range, wanting to give herself some distance from her energy-sapping foes.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink charged the yeti with his magic glaive, putting all of his strength into the attack. He skewered the blade right through the wight's midsection and then ripped it out again. What spurted out of the wight's torso wasn't blood, but it was an indicator that its unnatural semblance of life had come to an abrupt end.</p><p></p><p>Inside the giants' house, Gilbert realized that the black rock was continuing to drain life energy from those around it, and that fighting off the undead was merely dealing with the side-effects; they needed to fight the root cause. The best way to do that was to get that rock out of the vicinity, but it looked too heavy for any of the heroes to move. For a moment he considered enlarging his earth elemental familiar and sending him in, but he knew that even Mudpie couldn't resist the energy-draining aspects of the stone; if anyone could resist the necromantic effects, it was probably Ingebold...especially since the cleric had gotten specific warnings about the chunk of <em>calcimortum</em> falling from the sky, and her eyes shone white when she had concentrated on its location. There was a connection there, to be sure.</p><p></p><p>"Ingebold!" cried Gilbert from across the room, drawing the cleric's attention to him. He climbed up onto the massive wooden table in the middle of the room and pulled out his <em>slingshot of rock shrinking</em>. It ought to work on a necromantic rock from the Negative Energy Plane as well as any terrestrial rock, he reasoned. "Take this and shrink the rock! Then send it out of our way!" The cleric climbed up onto a giant chair to fetch the weapon from the portly mage. "Aye, good idea!" she agreed.</p><p></p><p>But events conspired against that plan. With a sudden crack, the stone split open like an egg and fell to pieces where it stood. Revealed from its now-shattered prison, a black skull, seemingly carved from the same rock - or perhaps calcified into that form from untold eons on the Negative Energy Plane - floated in place in the air. In either case, it seemed to absorb light from all around it, appearing as the darkest black any of the assembled heroes could recall seeing, with spots of glistening light coming from its teeth, where various gems had been embedded, giving the demilich several points of color that seemed incongruous in its otherwise ebon form.</p><p></p><p>Gilbert missed the demilich's "hatching," however - he had turned to face the back of the room from his perch on the table and cast an <em>undeath to death</em> spell on the three yeti wraiths. Two of them discorporated immediately, their insubstantial forms dissipating into nothingness. But Castillan, close to the open front doorway, used his magic ring to <em>dimension door</em> to the back half of the room, hoping to take care of that third yeti wraith - and put plenty of distance between him and that floating, black skull. In any case, he lost his chance to slay the last wraith when the frost giant jarl did it for him, chopping through its insubstantial form in a way that managed to slay it as easily as if it had been alive.</p><p></p><p>But then another yeti wraith appeared from outside the frost giant dwelling, rising up from the body of the slain yeti wight. Apparently merely killing the wights raised by the life-draining <em>calcimortum</em> was not enough!</p><p></p><p>With howls of fear, Snowpelt and Frostfang raced across the back of the room to cower in the corner, tails tucked between their legs. Against any earthly prey they were vicious killers, but against floating undead they were terrified pups.</p><p></p><p>Seeing they were facing the demilich now, Ingebold knew she needed to cast <em>death ward</em> on as many of the group as she could - and she also realized, without any selfishness on her part, that she needed the protection the most - Moradin had guided her hand in choosing her spells this day, she knew, and she wouldn't let herself get taken out of the fight too soon. She said the words to the spell and felt a new level of protection settle over her. </p><p></p><p>While they were still somewhat clumped together, Hagan realized he could cast a <em>delayed blast fireball</em> that would catch both frost giant wights, the yeti wraith, and the demilich within its radius - but to do so, Binkadink would also be caught within the effect of the spell. Seeing the half-orc's hesitation, Binkadink cried out in encouragement, "Do it, Hagan! I can take it!"</p><p></p><p>He'd come to regret those words, for he had apparently forgotten about the <em>necklace of fireballs</em> he wore around his neck. Hagan cast the spell with no delay and all five figures were momentarily engulfed in flames - but then Binkadink's necklace exploded in a blast of fire that rivaled the half-orc's spell. By the time both explosions had run their course, Binkadink's face had been blackened by soot and the frost giant wights had had their beards partially singed off, and they yeti wraith had been slain. The winter wolf ice sculptures that had been painstakingly shaped by Ice Mage Veornokkir had been half-melted by the immense heat. But the little gnome still stood on his own two legs, and as for the demilich - it seemed not to have noticed either blast.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink took advantage of the momentary confusion brought on by the double blasts of fire energy to stab his glaive into the belly of one of the frost giant wights, then pull it to the side such that he nearly cut the undead thing into two. It fell to the ground in a mass of spilling organs and did not rise again. But then the demilich pivoted in place until it faced the gnome and its eye-holes blazed a fierce red, sending twin beams of hellish energy stabbing at the gnome - and in a flash, Binkadink's body fell face-first into the snow, crumbling into dust as he fell. A mere moment later, there was nothing but the gnome fighter's armor and weapons in a pile on the ground where he had just been standing. Had anybody been close enough to notice, they'd have seen one of the gems imbedded in the demilich's teeth blaze brightly as the gnome's soul was imprisoned within.</p><p></p><p>Spinning in place, the demilich floated into the frost giant building, causing those nearby to flee to the sides to let it pass by.</p><p></p><p>Outside, Finoula activated her amulet again to become a bolt of lightning that blasted back through the remaining frost giant wight, and then she resumed her elven form standing beside Binkadink's pile of armor. "Bink!" she cried, helpless to do anything about her gnome friend's death. Darrien peppered the wight with arrows to keep it focused away from his fellow ranger, then retreated back into the frost giant dwelling, while Ingebold cast a <em>death ward</em> spell upon her Battle-Sister.</p><p></p><p>And then, rising up from the body of the wight Binkadink had slain before being killed himself, appeared a frost giant wraith. This explained the presence of the yeti wraiths that had appeared in the back of the dwelling; apparently Fragnir and Gaarkenbral had slain a trio of yeti wights before becoming undead themselves. The frost giant wraith flew straight through the wall of the dwelling it once called home, and targeted the closest living being to it: Ingebold. But fortunately, the dwarven cleric saw it coming and avoided its strike.</p><p></p><p>The demilich flew over the table towards the back of the room, heading toward Jarl Kjornenheim. Gilbert cast a <em>solid fog</em> spell that covered the entire middle of the room, centered on the floating black skull, but also encompassing the jarl's wife, Bjilgarra, and Ice Mage Veornokkir. The frost giant jarl, with Castillan by his side, readied their weapons to strike at the demilich should it exit the hemisphere of solid fog cutting the room into three parts. Within moments, Veornokkir backed out of the fog, for he had been right up at the very edge of the spell's effect. He followed his jarl's lead in preparing to strike at the demilich should it exit the cloud near him.</p><p></p><p>But while the demilich found traveling through the magically-dense fog slow going, that didn't make it any less deadly. It opened its stone jaw and emitted an unearthly cry, a <em>wail of the banshee</em>, that instantly slew Ice Mage Veornokkir. It also slew Bjilgarra, but that wouldn't be apparent for some time, as she fell where she had been standing unseen in the cloud of <em>solid fog</em>.</p><p></p><p>Although he had several more powerful spells available, Hagan opted to cast a low-level <em>magic missile</em> at the frost giant wraith menacing Ingebold, for the simple reason that he knew for a fact its force energy would unerringly strike the insubstantial creature, whereas most other spells had a chance of passing through its wispy body without harm. Ingebold in turn cast a <em>death ward</em> spell upon the half-orc sorcerer, shielding him from the sort of attack that had just slain poor Binkadink.</p><p></p><p>Gilbert Fung had no idea exactly where the demilich was, but he knew it was still somewhere within the <em>solid fog</em> spell's area of effect. With that in mind, he cast an <em>Evard's black tentacles</em> spell right over his previous spell, thinking to have the black skull entwined and immobilized by the writhing tentacles. What he had failed to take into account, however, was the fact that the eponymous black tentacles were but 10 feet long, whereas the ceiling height of the frost giant dwelling was double that. Unseen within the area of effect of the <em>solid fog</em> spell, the ebon tentacles caught nothing up but Bjilgarra's corpse, while the demilich floated untouched above their reach.</p><p></p><p>Finoula used the last daily charge of her amulet to blast through the frost giant wraith as a bolt of lightning, landing high on the opposite wall and staying there courtesy of her <em>boots of spider climbing</em>. By that time, many of the heroes were looking much the worse for wear from their battles thus far, so Ingebold cast a <em>mass cure moderate wounds</em> that had the twofold benefits of healing her friends while dealing damage to her undead foes. Indeed, the sole remaining frost giant wight looked to be on its last legs by this point. But it was not the next to perish; Hagan took out the frost giant wraith with another <em>magic missile</em> spell.</p><p></p><p>Darrien decided to do what he could against the frost giant wight, shooting another small barrage of arrows into its chest. Nearby, Gilbert cast a <em>haste</em> spell that encompassed all of the heroes but himself, Mudpie, and Castillan - he had selfless decided affecting the more combat-oriented combatants would serve their side the most, and Castillan was skipped over simply because he was too far away, still trapped on the other side of the joint <em>solid fog</em>/<em>Evard's black tentacles</em> spells.</p><p></p><p>Still perched up high on the wall, Finoula slew the frost giant wight, who had entered the building in search of foes to slay (or drain into wights), with her <em>flaming whip of thorns</em>. With it no longer in the fight, that left only the demilich to deal with - and it was somewhere within Gilbert's double spell area of effect. The wizard assumed it was tightly grasped within the rigid embrace of several of his tentacles, and was surprised to see it wander out of the <em>solid fog</em> spell up by the ceiling. Its eye-holes flashed red, twin beams stabbed out at Hagan, and the half-orc's body would likely have crumbled to dust like Binkadink's had if he hadn't been specifically warded against such death effects by Ingebold's spell.</p><p></p><p>Ingebold struck out with a spell she'd been prompted - by Moradin? - to prepare that morning, and was surprised to see a simple <em>shatter</em> spell deal some damage to the jet-black skull where other, more powerful spells (like Hagan's <em>fireballs</em>) had failed.</p><p></p><p>By then, Gilbert had realized his mistake about targeting his <em>Evard's black tentacles</em> spell and corrected the error in a second casting of the spell, this time on the wall opposite Finoula, well within 10 feet of the floating skull. Rubbery, ebon appendages grew from the wall, several of them encompassing the demilich's form until it could no longer be seen. It used its <em>wail of the banshee</em> attack blindly, but this time there was nobody within range.</p><p></p><p>"What's going on over there?" asked Castillan. As the original <em>solid fog</em> spell was still up, the bounder and the frost giant jarl were still cut off from the action. Castillan knew he could use his ring to <em>dimension door</em> over to the front half of the room, but to do so blindly could end up with him reappearing in the same area where somebody else stood.</p><p></p><p>"I can't see anything!" admitted Jarl Kjornenheim. Then Castillan spotted a door to the right. "Where's this lead to?" he asked.</p><p></p><p>"The men's bunkroom," the jarl replied.</p><p></p><p>"Does it go all the way to the front?"</p><p></p><p>"As a matter of fact, yes."</p><p></p><p>"Then what are we waiting for?" demanded Castillan, pulling the door open and racing through the bunkroom, which stretched most of the house's length. There was another door at the front end of the room; Darrien stood in the open doorway there with his <em>Arachnibow</em> ready to fire at the demilich should it escape Gilbert's latest spell.</p><p></p><p>Jarl Kjornenheim raced behind Castillan, pushing Darrien out of the way to get to the front area of the room, looking for his wife (whose corpse was still stuck within the <em>solid fog</em>; he roared in fury when he called for Bjilgarra and there was no answer). The bounder took the opportunity of being out of the frost giant's view to pop open a trunk at the foot of the nearest bed, and was surprised to see it filled with gold coins, bits of jewelry, and ivory carvings. Impressed, he made a note to fill up Ingebold's <em>portable hole</em> with the contents of the giants' trunks once the fighting was over.</p><p></p><p>"It look like he stuck for good," observed Gilbert as the heroes took a moment to catch their breath and Ingebold administered healing as it was needed. "We ought to figure what we going to do when tentacles go away - that spell not last forever."</p><p></p><p>"I've got my <em>stonepiercer dagger</em>," observed Castillan. "If I get close enough to it, I bet I can deal it some hefty damage - the thing looks like it's made of stone, and the dagger does extra damage against stone creatures."</p><p></p><p>"It up by ceiling," pointed out Gilbert. "How you get up there to stab it?"</p><p></p><p>"Here," offered Finoula, dropping to the top of the wooden table and taking off her magical boots. "Take my <em>boots of spider climbing</em>." She and Castillan swapped boots; his magical <em>boots of elvenkind</em> reshaped themselves to fit the ranger's smaller feet. Gilbert then cast an <em>invisibility</em> spell on the bounder, so he could step up to the demilich on the ceiling without being seen. "You'll have to dismiss that tentacles spell of yours, though, if I'm going to be able to get close enough," pointed out Castillan.</p><p></p><p>As Ingebold, Finoula, and Hagan all had <em>death ward</em> spells cast upon them, they lined up in a row upon the wooden table, ready to attack once Gilbert dismissed the <em>Evard's black tentacles</em> spell. Jarl Kjornenheim stood by the wall, just outside the range of the spell effect, his axe raised and ready to strike out at the black skull.</p><p></p><p>"Everybody ready?" the heavyset wizard called out. The demilich was still hidden beneath a pile of writhing appendages, its exact location unable to be discerned.</p><p></p><p>"Wait a minute!" called an invisible Castillan. "Where's Binkadink?" The little gnome had been slain while the bounder was in the back half of the room, out of view of the demilich's dealings outside. Ingebold filled him in with a voice that broke in sadness. "We'll be avengin' him, don't ye doubt it," she promised.</p><p></p><p>Gilbert dismissed the vertical <em>Evard's black tentacles</em> spell and everyone attacked at once. Jarl Kjornenheim sent the head of his greataxe crashing down upon the suddenly-revealed demilich, barely even scratching its rocky surface. Hagan cast a <em>chain lightning</em> spell directly at the skull, to no discernable effect. Ingebold, her holy symbol of Moradin held before her, tried to turn the vile creature, and although she felt the biggest swell of positive energy flow through her that she'd ever felt before, the attempt did no more than Hagan's electrical attack spell. Finoula snapped her <em>flaming whip of thorns</em> at the demilich, and at least the fire seemed to have some small effect. Darrien, who had been lined up to attack the skull from a different direction than Castillan would be attacking from, sent a few arrows bouncing harmlessly from the skull's fossilized surface. Gilbert's attempted <em>dismissal</em> spell, with which he had hoped to send the calcified skull back to the Negative Energy Plane, had no effect whatsoever.</p><p></p><p>But Castillan suddenly popped into view as his <em>stonepiercer dagger</em> slid into the skull's stony surface like a hot knife into butter. The skull's eye sockets flashed red and a pair of rays blasted out, but fortunately for the bounder the demilich had targeted the biggest enemy first; Jarl Kjornenheim fell to the floor, his greataxe landing beside the pile of his armor as his body flaked away to nothingness. Another of the demilich's tooth-gems flared up as the frost giant's soul took up residence in its new home.</p><p></p><p>Freed from Gilbert's tentacles spell, the demilich wasted no time crossing the room as fast as it could. Finoula's whip struck out at it as it flew and Castillan tried stabbing with his dagger but wasn't quick enough. But that didn't stop the bounder for long; running across the ceiling, he followed the fleeing demilich's course, stabbing at it again with his magic dagger. He hit, but didn't deal anywhere near the amount of damage he'd done with his surprise attack while invisible.</p><p></p><p>Finoula could no longer run across the ceiling, but she ran the width of the giants' tabletop, snapping her whip at the floating skull. Ingebold ran up beside her Battle-Sister and cast another <em>shatter</em> spell at the undead skull, knowing in advance it was one of the handful of spells that could actually harm the demilich. Hagan tried a <em>magic missile</em>, emboldened by its effectiveness against the wraith, but no luck - the spell didn't faze the demilich in the least. Instead, its eyes flashed red again, and Castillan's body crumbled to dust, his weapons and armor falling with a crash to the floor as his soul was imprisoned inside a tooth-gem.</p><p></p><p>"We running out of spells!" Gilbert called frantically. Most of what they had left were not affecting the demilich, and they were now down two of their number. They had dealt the skull some damage, to be sure, but with their foe being seemingly carved from solid rock, it was difficult to ascertain exactly how much it had been hurt. Was it on its last legs, so to speak, or could it continue on like this indefinitely? There was no real way to tell.</p><p></p><p>On inspiration, Ingebold reached up beside the holy symbol of Moradin the Soul-Forger she wore around her neck, and touched the amulet she also wore. "Annavel," the cleric spoke across the planes. "I have need of ye this day!"</p><p></p><p>In a flash of light, Annavel the sword archon answered the summons. A celestial being with flaming swords for arms, she instinctively felt the evil of the floating demilich beside her and attacked without further prompting. Her sword-arms were infused with holy energy from the upper plane of Mount Celestia and the flying stone skull cried out in pain at their attack.</p><p></p><p>As the celestial dealt some definite damage against the demilich, the other heroes tried their best to do the same. Finoula continued using her <em>flaming whip of thorns</em>, and Gilbert tried casting an <em>undeath to death</em> spell directly upon the flying skull. Hagan, lacking anything else to try, took the opportunity to cast a <em>false life</em> spell upon himself and his familiar - it certainly couldn't hurt at this point!</p><p></p><p>But the demilich struck back at what it perceived as its greatest threat: Annavel the sword archon. With a hellish flash of red light, the angel's soul was absorbed into a gem on one of the demilich's teeth. "No!" cried out more than one of the heroes at once, for the sword archon had looked to be their best bet at defeating this nearly unbeatable foe.</p><p></p><p>And then the demilich did something that frightened the assembled heroes more than anything else it had done thus far: it wheeled in the air and started heading for the open door of the frost giant dwelling. Apparently being confronted by a force of mortals putting up this much of a fight was not the spearhead the undead creature had been looking for upon its arrival on this world; there were other creatures nearby he could transform into wights, and thus spread out, slowly at first, across the globe.</p><p></p><p>"Don't let it escape!" called Ingebold, fear in her voice. The prophetic dream she'd had this morning -- it was starting to come true!</p><p></p><p>Gilbert cast a <em>wall of force</em> to try to stop the demilich's movement, hoping it wouldn't see it in time and crash into it, perhaps buying the heroes a few more moments to come up with another plan of attack. But the demilich altered its course and elevated up above the spell's effect, its innate <em>true seeing</em> allowing it to see the boundaries of the invisible force-wall before it.</p><p></p><p>A flood of calm came over Ingebold just then; she knew exactly what she must do, for Moradin had placed the possibility in her head this morning when He had guided her spell selection. The dwarf's left hand unconsciously went to the pocket of her fur cloak while she held up Moradin's holy symbol in her right. "BEGONE, FOUL CREATURE!" she called, as a beam of holy light spilled from the Soul-Forger's symbol in her hand and struck the demilich, holding it in place. Ingebold's eyes blazed a pure white, just as they had when she was concentrating on the location of the chunk of <em>calcimortum</em> before it had fallen in the yeti valley. But the whiteness this time was brighter than ever before, and it started spreading beyond just her eyes. Ingebold's skin started glowing, and the cleric gave a scream of determination as her body, as immobile as the demilich she had pinned by her beam of holy energy, began dissolving into holy energy itself. Ingebold's scream was joined by one from the demilich, but the ebon skull's was caused by fear, not resolve.</p><p></p><p>The light blazed, causing the other heroes to shield their eyes. Then there was a dual crash, as two sets of objects fell to the ground just outside the front door of the frost giant home. One was the demilich, which shattered upon landing, becoming a thousand pieces of crumbling stone that dissolved away to nothingness; for a moment, it looked like a translucent Binkadink, Castillan, Jarl Kjornenheim, and Annavel could be seen, but then they were gone. The other crash was the armor, clothing, and held possessions of Ingebold Battershield - all but the holy symbol of Moradin, which had been melted away to nothingness itself by the surge of holy energy.</p><p></p><p>"Ingebold!" cried Finoula, rushing to where her Battle-Sister had fallen, and where she'd have expected to find her body. But other than her possessions, there was nothing there. The elven ranger dropped to her knees beside Ingebold's gear.</p><p></p><p>"What just happened?" Darrien asked, confused by the turn of events.</p><p></p><p>"I think...she killed it," Gilbert stated, the amazement in his voice evident by his having forgotten to speak in the pidgin-Common he normally affected. He poked around the pile of her equipment, looking for a clue of some type. He saw a piece of paper sticking out from an inner pocket of the cleric's cloak. Curious, he pulled it out and saw it to be two sheets of parchment, folded up. He unfolded them, saw the name on the first sheet, and handed them to Finoula. "This is for you," he said.</p><p></p><p>Finoula took the sheets and started reading them, tears streaking her face by the second page. She read the whole thing silently to herself on the first pass, then started over and read it aloud to the others a second time. She read:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>"She's gone," Finoula said, and now the tears flowed freely.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>The players had their PCs gather up the belongings of the dead heroes - Binkadink, Castillan, and Ingebold - and they decided they'll spend the 50,000 gp for two <em>true resurrection</em> spells for the first two slain heroes. They looted the giants' house and got 36,000 gp; Harry, bless his heart, offered up Hagan's cash reserves to help finance the difference. (That's pretty generous for an 11-year-old who mostly likes to have his PC blow stuff up.) And I made Vicki cry with Ingebold's letter at the end of the adventure.</p><p></p><p>Knowing full well that this could be Ingebold's last adventure, I made sure Vicki was running her at the beginning of the session, although I had already prepared her spells the night before (acting as Moradin's guiding hand, as it were). I also stepped in and had Ingebold cast the <em>control weather</em> spell before the dragonfly ship landed, as I'd had her prepare that for that very reason. But after that, I gave Vicki full reign as far as running Ingebold. And naturally, once Binkadink was slain by the demilich, Vicki turned Ingebold over to Logan so he'd have a PC to run for the rest of the session. Once things looked desperate enough, I took Logan aside and told him about the possibility of the one-shot "super-turning" and its potential consequences, and eventually he saw it as their only hope.</p><p></p><p>By the way, Jacob wasn't with us during this session - he's now 21 years old, in college, and has a girlfriend, and the lure of playing D&D with his family and mine isn't the powerful draw it used to be. He asked his dad, Dan, to run Castillan for him, with the warning, "Just don't get him killed." Heh heh heh - there are never any guarantees there, Jacob! So we might be seeing less and less of Jacob at the gaming table. He wants Dan to continue running Castillan as well as Gilbert, but I've offered up putting Castillan on a "behind the scenes" mission for awhile, and joining him back up with the group (at the same XP level) whenever Jacob wants to join us for a session. I even have an adventure planned (#60, as a matter of fact) [Later edit: I ended bumping it to #56 once Jacob started gaming with us again] that has Castillan being given a specific assignment that he brings the rest of the group to accomplish; I can simply have him working on it for the duration until he finally asks for help from the other PCs once the campaign gets to that point.</p><p></p><p>As an aside, I think this campaign will last a total of 80 adventures in all. We'll likely have about five adventures at each of the remaining levels, culminating in a party of 20th-level PCs. I don't have everything figured out just yet, but I do have the adventures written through #61, with broad ideas for the last half dozen or so.</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>T-Shirt Worn: My black "Walking Dead" T-shirt, with numerous zombies forming a skull silhouette.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 7454640, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 49: SNOW WIGHT[/b] PC Roster: [INDENT]Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 14 Castillan Ivenheart, elf bounder 14 Darrien, half-elf ranger 14 Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 14 Gilbert Fung, human wizard 14 Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 14[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Aithanar Ivenheart, elf fighter 3 Ingebold Battershield, dwarven cleric 13 (Moradin) Jinkadoodle Dundernoggin, gnome illusionist 5[/INDENT] Game Session Date: 23 June 2018 - - - Ingebold woke with a scream strangled in her throat. It took a moment for her to process the vision she'd just had - the dead world, the undead scourge covering every corner of the Oerth, the cold lands from which they'd originated, the black rock that had caused it all...a mere moment for her to realize there was a knowledge in her head, a perfect understanding of exactly where that black rock was at this very moment, and how little time remained until it struck the planet, and just how much was at stake.... The dwarven cleric threw her blankets and bedsheets aside and scrambled out of bed in her nightwear. Without bothering with a robe, she raced up the stairs of the northeastern tower of Battershield Keep to the room directly above hers, where she knew she'd find her Battle-Sister Finoula and likely the elf's timber wolf, Wrath, as well. "Wake up!" demanded Ingebold, pounding on Finoula's door. "Round up the others and gather up yer gear! We need t' get on th' ship as soon's we can!" "What's going on?" asked Finoula, still muzzy from being broken out of her night's reverie. But Ingebold was already stomping back down the stairs to go wake up Binkadink and his cousin Jinkadoodle in the bottom floor of the southwestern tower, so they in turn could awaken the adventurers in the two floors above them. Trusting that Ingebold wouldn't be so frantic if this wasn't something serious, Finoula raced upstairs to wake up Castillan and his brother Aithanar. Ten minutes later, everyone was gathered up in the Battershield Keep courtyard in full gear. Ingebold looked worriedly at the back half of the keep, where her mother was no doubt hard at work in the kitchen. Her father, Aerik, was likely already on his way to the castle, judging from the sun, which was just rising over the treetops of the Vesve Forest to the east...best not to worry poor Helga just now.... "Ingebold? What's going on?" repeated Finoula. "Yeah," grumbled Gilbert. "Why we up so early?" Instead of responding, Ingebold turned to Jinkadoodle. "Do ye have th' carpet?" she asked. "I do," replied the sleepy illusionist. He dropped the [i]carpet of teleportation[/i] to the ground and unrolled it with a kick of his foot. "Everyone up t' th' ship, then," commanded Ingebold. "I'll explain everythin' once we're in flight." Binkadink, Finoula, and Darrien herded their respective animals on board the carpet with them, leading them to the room in the extradimensional hold of the dragonfly spelljammer ship that had been converted to animal pens. Aithanar went with them, getting them settled amidst all of the excitement. Ingebold prompted Jinkadoodle upstairs at once, following him as he took a seat at the ship's magic helm and raised the flying vessel from its parking orbit on a floating cloud. "Where to?" the gnome asked. Ingebold's eyes glowed white, as her suddenly enhanced senses kicked into gear and she pinpointed the black rock's location as it hurtled through wildspace towards the Oerth. "That way," she said, pointing a finger off to the left where Jinkadoodle could see it. "We're headin' t' th' cold lands of th' north." The others had followed Ingebold up from the secret hold and were now crowding around her, looking for answers. "I'll tell ye all what I know," the cleric promised. "I had me a vision this mornin'. There's a hunk of black rock falling from th' sky. It'll impact shortly in th' coldlands, which is where we're headin'. Th' black rock is made o' somethin' called [i]calcimortum[/i], a stone from th' Negative Energy Plane. It's dangerous enough t' all living beings nearby, but worse yet, buried inside it's an evil skull directin' its path. We need t' destroy the skull an' th' [i]calcimortum[/i] before a wave o' undead creatures spills out from th' arctic and covers th' whole globe. I seen it, in me vision, what it'll be like if'n we fail. We cannae let that happen--no matter what!" She turned to Gilbert Fung. "We've several hours o' flight afore we get there - ye'd best prepare yer spells fer th' day, knowin' we'll be up against undead an' that we'll be fightin' in the frigid cold," she told the portly mage. Turning to Hagan, she said, "Ye dinnae need t' prepare yer spells, so ye'd be th' best one fer [i]teleportin'[/i] somewheres to fetch cold weather gear fer them what be needin' it. I imagine there be shops in Greyhawk City what'll sell ye what we need, and then ye can [i]teleport[/i] back t' th' ship long before we're ready t' land. In th' meantime, I'll be in me cabin, preparing me own spells. I'll be sure t' get a [i]heroes' feast[/i] ready fer ye when ye get back with th' coats an' all." As Ingebold went to the seclusion of the cabin she shared with Finoula on board the dragonfly vessel, Hagan took a quick inventory among the adventurers who didn't already have cold weather gear, then cast his spell and disappeared from the ship. "This not good," murmured Gilbert. "Fighting undead in ice and snow?" The wizard had a well-known dislike for undead creatures and had exchanged a small portion of his life-force to permanently alter his vision so it could magically detect those creatures of an undead nature. Still muttering to himself, he stomped back downstairs to the hidden hold to go prepare his own spells for the upcoming mission. The next few hours were filled with anxiety. Hagan returned and passed out the cold weather gear he'd just purchased for himself, Gilbert, Castillan, Aithanar, and Jinkadoodle. Ingebold returned from her cabin and cast the [i]heroes' feast[/i] spell to grant the heroes a few advantages in the combats to follow, but unlike the previous times she'd cast the spell, the meal thereafter was filled mostly with nervous silence. "How much longer?" asked Jinkadoodle, nibbling some of the fruit and bread Ingebold had brought him from the table where she'd cast the spell, so he could enjoy the benefits of the magical feast as well as the others. "It's just up ahead," Ingebold replied, squinting at the snow blowing sideways outside the viewports. "We've got a blizzard ahead o' us," she noted, and began the words to a [i]control weather[/i] spell to lessen the arctic winds in the area where they'd be landing. She finished up the spell just as the ship arrived at its destination - a flat plane of snow just outside a valley perched in the shadow of a massive glacier. "We can't go down there," said Jinkadoodle. "The winds are too strong - I'd likely crash us into the side of one of those ice cliffs." It was still difficult to see through the blowing snow, but the cleric's spells had lessened the blizzard, and the valley looked to be surrounded on most sides by either the glacier itself or nearly vertical cliffs of solid ice. A single path along the right-hand cliff wall into the valley looked safe enough to traverse - and a plume of steam rising up from the valley showed the rock's likely landing spot. "Put 'er down here, then," Ingebold commanded. "We'll have t' walk from here on in." Jinkadoodle landed the dragonfly ship on a flat field of snow; the blizzard all around the ship had lessened in its severity but not yet fully dissipated. As a result, as the adventurers donned their cold weather gear and disembarked from the spelljamming vessel there was a limit as to how far away they could see. But Ingebold's all-white eyes had a pinpoint fix upon the black rock from the Negative Energy Plane, which the cleric said had crash-landed in the arctic valley about an hour ago. Following the determined dwarf, the group saw a pair of figures appear in the blowing snow before them. As they got nearer, the figures resolved into the forms of a pair of male frost giants, with ice-covered beards over their bluish skin. Each carried a greataxe and looked ready to use it. Hagan, ever the optimist, decided to try to parley with the pair. "Excuse us," he said, "but we wish to enter the valley below. We do not wish to fight you." "That's good," grunted one of the giants. "We like it when our prey don't fight back!" And then both giants laughed at the remark, moving forward to attack the heroes. "Meat for the stewpot!" the other giant enthused. As the heroes readied themselves for the attack, Finoula tried reason one more time, thinking perhaps if she spoke in their own language she'd have better luck. Using the Giant tongue, she briefly explained about the falling black rock and how it could be a danger to all in the area. All she got for her trouble was a chunk of ice thrown at her, striking her in the side and nearly toppling her over. At the same time, the other giant had lobbed a chunk of ice at Hagan, but the sorcerer got a warning from Wezhley - who was sitting perched on the half-orc's shoulder - and Hagan managed to avoid the incoming missile. And then combat was on. Hagan began by casting a [i]delayed blast fireball[/i] (without the delay) at a point equidistant between the incoming giants, blasting each with an explosion of flame that burned off the ice from their beards and hair. The half-orc then wisely backed up a few steps, getting out of the way of the front-line fighters eager to take on the giants in hand-to-hand combat. Binkadink was the first of these. As Darrien shot an arrow at one of the giants, momentarily attracting his attention, the little gnome stepped up and skewered him through the gut, killing him instantly. Castillan came up behind Binkadink and shot his light crossbow at the other giant, but a gust of wintry wind sent the quarrel off course. Behind the bounder, Gilbert Fung cast a [i]mage armor[/i] spell upon himself and his earth elemental familiar Mudpie to ready them for any upcoming melee combat (although the wizard greatly preferred staying out of melee range whenever possible). Ingebold cast a [i]bless[/i] spell upon the entire group; while they currently had but one foe left, the dwarf was sure that wouldn't necessarily be the case for long. Finoula stepped up to the remaining frost giant, flicking her [i]flaming whip of thorns[/i] at his face - and act he didn't seem to appreciate in the least. He retaliated against the elf ranger with a powerful swing of his axe - and then, surprisingly, turned around and fled, calling for help. Not wanting to allow the frost giant to fetch reinforcements, Hagan squinted into the blowing snow and calculated the distance between him and his foe, then cast a [i]wall of fire[/i] right ahead of the fleeing frost giant; unable to slow his headlong rush, the giant ran directly into the fiery wall and was engulfed in flames. He gave a roar of pain and then fell forward, a charred corpse melting the snow beneath him. But the [i]wall of fire[/i] did more than just slay the second frost giant: it also lit up the area enough that the group could see the large structure directly past the flames. It was a house of wood, but one twenty feet tall - and yet still only one story tall, judging from the 12-foot-tall door that opened. Another frost giant stood in the doorway, squinting past the [i]wall of fire[/i] to see who was responsible for the death of the charred corpse on the ground before him. "What's going on?" demanded [b]Jarl Kjornenheim[/b]. Finoula saw another opportunity for a peaceful solution. Calling on Hagan to drop his magical wall, she called out to the frost giant jarl in his own tongue. "Your men attacked us and we fought back, but we mean no harm to you or those of you dwelling here. We seek a black rock that fell from the sky, which means death and destruction for everyone in the area. We wish to find the rock and destroy it before it can cause anyone any harm." Jarl Kjornenheim scanned the group before him and the bodies of his two men - if they took them out without apparently losing any of their own forces, they must be of considerable strength. The jarl could respect that. "Very well," he said. "You are welcome to step inside, out of the cold, and state your case. But we guard access to the valley - there's a tribe of yetis living there, and in this environment meat is meat and we depend upon them for food." He turned behind him and called to one of two figures in the back of the room. "Veornokkir, go drag the bodies of our men behind the house. With a look of distrust at the heroes, [b]Ice Mage Veornokkir[/b] headed out the massive door to follow the orders of his leader. The other figure stepped forward beside her husband the jarl and introduced herself as [b]Bjilgarra[/b]. "Please accept the hospitality of our house," she said. Reluctantly, and with not much more trust than Ice Mage Veornokkir had demonstrated, the adventurers entered the frost giant dwelling. The front door - the only door visible in the house, and one that was nearly ten feet wide - was flanked outside by two ice sculptures of winter wolves, their snouts partially melted by the blast of heat Hagan's [i]wall of fire[/i] had produced. Stepping inside the house, the group spread out, Gilbert and Mudpie making sure they didn't stray too far from the door - the wizard wanted to be able to make a quick exit if it became necessary. Finoula repeated her tale of the black rock in the Giant language, while Ingebold looked on impatiently - she would rather they be on their way immediately, no matter what these frost giants thought about it. But Jarl Kjornenheim seemed unimpressed by the danger. "I fail to see how a rock that fell from the sky can hurt anyone in any case - if it was going to hurt anyone, surely it would be when it landed on them, not after the fact. And I have already sent two of my finest warriors, [b]Fragnir[/b] and [b]Gaarkenbral[/b], to the valley to check out the falling rock in any case. They took our two winter wolves, [b]Frostfang[/b] and [b]Snowpelt[/b], with them - they should be able to face any danger provided by a sky-rock." "How long ago?" demanded Ingebold. "Maybe an hour or so," replied the jarl. "But they should be back presently." Ingebold and Gilbert exchanged worried looks. "I think maybe we go check for ourselves," suggested Gilbert. But then there was a scratching and a whining at the door, as something outside apparently tried to get in. The mage sprang away from the door, afraid at what they might find if they opened it. The rest of the group readied themselves for an attack, expecting undead forces trying to get in. At the jarl's nod of assent, Binkadink opened the door with his glaive ready for a counterattack if whatever was on the other side of the door wanted a fight. But that turned out not to be the case. As the gnome pulled the door open, a pair of winter wolves came crashing into the room, only to slink beneath the massive wooden table directly beyond the door, to the blazing fire on the far side of the room. There they whimpered, their tails between their legs, as they looked fearfully at the front door. "What's gotten into you?" demanded Jarl Kjornenheim, addressing his pets. Binkadink stepped outside, noticing the blizzard had almost completely blown itself out, no doubt with a nudge from Ingebold's [i]control weather[/i] spell. Looking toward the valley - and noting he could see much farther than he could before, now that the snow wasn't blowing sideways - he saw a trio of figures. Two were obviously frost giants, each with a greataxe slung over a broad shoulder, but also a shorter figure walking nonchalantly between them. This was a shaggy, white-furred ape-thing, which Binkadink recognized as a yeti - and which was somewhat odd, given that Jarl Kjornenheim had said the frost giants treated the snow-apes as prey. And then the little gnome noticed that one of the giants carried a large, black rock in his other arm. "Uh, guys," he said. "I think we've got a problem here." Finoula, Darrien, and Hagan popped outside to get a look at what Binkadink was referring to; true to form, Gilbert moved deeper inside the shelter of the building, farther away from the approaching danger. With the massive strength of his race, the lead frost giant hurled the black rock directly at the gnome. He missed, if he'd actually been targeting Binkadink, because it soon became apparent that all he had really needed to do was to drop the stone in the heroes' general vicinity: Binkadink, Finoula, Hagan and Wezhley, and even Castillan who was still inside the building, each felt a draining sensation as some of their life-force, their vitality, was absorbed by the rock. The other frost giant had an ice chunk slightly larger than his fist in his hand and he threw it at Hagan, but again the half-orc dodged the incoming missile. Darrien shot a barrage of arrows from his [i]Arachnibow[/i] at the first giant, and in lining up his shots he got a good look at his foe, noticing for the first time the undead flesh pulled tightly against the creature's skull. The trio moved too smoothly to be zombies; wights, then, perhaps? Back in the frost giants' dwelling, three spectral forms rose up from the rear part of the huge room, behind the fire pit and the cowering winter wolves. These were yetis in wraith forms, having traveled with the trio outside but doing so beneath the ground, to avoid the light of the sun, feeble as it might be at this northern latitude. Sensing life above, though, they rose up to attack. The howls of the wolves caught Jarl Kjornenheim's attention; he spun and raced to aid his frightened pets, greataxe in hand. Without worrying about whether his physical attack would even affect the wraiths he swung out with his axe, catching one of the spectral yetis in a hit that would have cut it in two had it still had a corporeal body. The yeti backed off, but whether that was because the blow had hurt it or out of simple instinct - it had been an incorporeal wraith for less than an hour, after all - was difficult to say. Back outside, the yeti wight scrambled up and scratched at Finoula with a set of wicked claws, catching her in the shoulder. Once again, she felt the vitality being drained from her body and while she managed to pull away from the undead thing's grasp, she felt weaker as a result of the attack. So, rather than depend upon her weapons at hand, she reached up and touched her [i]lightning amulet[/i], activating it with a word and sending a bolt of lightning through the wight's body. She willed herself to re-form as an elf at the very greatest distance of the amulet's range, wanting to give herself some distance from her energy-sapping foes. Binkadink charged the yeti with his magic glaive, putting all of his strength into the attack. He skewered the blade right through the wight's midsection and then ripped it out again. What spurted out of the wight's torso wasn't blood, but it was an indicator that its unnatural semblance of life had come to an abrupt end. Inside the giants' house, Gilbert realized that the black rock was continuing to drain life energy from those around it, and that fighting off the undead was merely dealing with the side-effects; they needed to fight the root cause. The best way to do that was to get that rock out of the vicinity, but it looked too heavy for any of the heroes to move. For a moment he considered enlarging his earth elemental familiar and sending him in, but he knew that even Mudpie couldn't resist the energy-draining aspects of the stone; if anyone could resist the necromantic effects, it was probably Ingebold...especially since the cleric had gotten specific warnings about the chunk of [i]calcimortum[/i] falling from the sky, and her eyes shone white when she had concentrated on its location. There was a connection there, to be sure. "Ingebold!" cried Gilbert from across the room, drawing the cleric's attention to him. He climbed up onto the massive wooden table in the middle of the room and pulled out his [i]slingshot of rock shrinking[/i]. It ought to work on a necromantic rock from the Negative Energy Plane as well as any terrestrial rock, he reasoned. "Take this and shrink the rock! Then send it out of our way!" The cleric climbed up onto a giant chair to fetch the weapon from the portly mage. "Aye, good idea!" she agreed. But events conspired against that plan. With a sudden crack, the stone split open like an egg and fell to pieces where it stood. Revealed from its now-shattered prison, a black skull, seemingly carved from the same rock - or perhaps calcified into that form from untold eons on the Negative Energy Plane - floated in place in the air. In either case, it seemed to absorb light from all around it, appearing as the darkest black any of the assembled heroes could recall seeing, with spots of glistening light coming from its teeth, where various gems had been embedded, giving the demilich several points of color that seemed incongruous in its otherwise ebon form. Gilbert missed the demilich's "hatching," however - he had turned to face the back of the room from his perch on the table and cast an [i]undeath to death[/i] spell on the three yeti wraiths. Two of them discorporated immediately, their insubstantial forms dissipating into nothingness. But Castillan, close to the open front doorway, used his magic ring to [i]dimension door[/i] to the back half of the room, hoping to take care of that third yeti wraith - and put plenty of distance between him and that floating, black skull. In any case, he lost his chance to slay the last wraith when the frost giant jarl did it for him, chopping through its insubstantial form in a way that managed to slay it as easily as if it had been alive. But then another yeti wraith appeared from outside the frost giant dwelling, rising up from the body of the slain yeti wight. Apparently merely killing the wights raised by the life-draining [i]calcimortum[/i] was not enough! With howls of fear, Snowpelt and Frostfang raced across the back of the room to cower in the corner, tails tucked between their legs. Against any earthly prey they were vicious killers, but against floating undead they were terrified pups. Seeing they were facing the demilich now, Ingebold knew she needed to cast [i]death ward[/i] on as many of the group as she could - and she also realized, without any selfishness on her part, that she needed the protection the most - Moradin had guided her hand in choosing her spells this day, she knew, and she wouldn't let herself get taken out of the fight too soon. She said the words to the spell and felt a new level of protection settle over her. While they were still somewhat clumped together, Hagan realized he could cast a [i]delayed blast fireball[/i] that would catch both frost giant wights, the yeti wraith, and the demilich within its radius - but to do so, Binkadink would also be caught within the effect of the spell. Seeing the half-orc's hesitation, Binkadink cried out in encouragement, "Do it, Hagan! I can take it!" He'd come to regret those words, for he had apparently forgotten about the [i]necklace of fireballs[/i] he wore around his neck. Hagan cast the spell with no delay and all five figures were momentarily engulfed in flames - but then Binkadink's necklace exploded in a blast of fire that rivaled the half-orc's spell. By the time both explosions had run their course, Binkadink's face had been blackened by soot and the frost giant wights had had their beards partially singed off, and they yeti wraith had been slain. The winter wolf ice sculptures that had been painstakingly shaped by Ice Mage Veornokkir had been half-melted by the immense heat. But the little gnome still stood on his own two legs, and as for the demilich - it seemed not to have noticed either blast. Binkadink took advantage of the momentary confusion brought on by the double blasts of fire energy to stab his glaive into the belly of one of the frost giant wights, then pull it to the side such that he nearly cut the undead thing into two. It fell to the ground in a mass of spilling organs and did not rise again. But then the demilich pivoted in place until it faced the gnome and its eye-holes blazed a fierce red, sending twin beams of hellish energy stabbing at the gnome - and in a flash, Binkadink's body fell face-first into the snow, crumbling into dust as he fell. A mere moment later, there was nothing but the gnome fighter's armor and weapons in a pile on the ground where he had just been standing. Had anybody been close enough to notice, they'd have seen one of the gems imbedded in the demilich's teeth blaze brightly as the gnome's soul was imprisoned within. Spinning in place, the demilich floated into the frost giant building, causing those nearby to flee to the sides to let it pass by. Outside, Finoula activated her amulet again to become a bolt of lightning that blasted back through the remaining frost giant wight, and then she resumed her elven form standing beside Binkadink's pile of armor. "Bink!" she cried, helpless to do anything about her gnome friend's death. Darrien peppered the wight with arrows to keep it focused away from his fellow ranger, then retreated back into the frost giant dwelling, while Ingebold cast a [i]death ward[/i] spell upon her Battle-Sister. And then, rising up from the body of the wight Binkadink had slain before being killed himself, appeared a frost giant wraith. This explained the presence of the yeti wraiths that had appeared in the back of the dwelling; apparently Fragnir and Gaarkenbral had slain a trio of yeti wights before becoming undead themselves. The frost giant wraith flew straight through the wall of the dwelling it once called home, and targeted the closest living being to it: Ingebold. But fortunately, the dwarven cleric saw it coming and avoided its strike. The demilich flew over the table towards the back of the room, heading toward Jarl Kjornenheim. Gilbert cast a [i]solid fog[/i] spell that covered the entire middle of the room, centered on the floating black skull, but also encompassing the jarl's wife, Bjilgarra, and Ice Mage Veornokkir. The frost giant jarl, with Castillan by his side, readied their weapons to strike at the demilich should it exit the hemisphere of solid fog cutting the room into three parts. Within moments, Veornokkir backed out of the fog, for he had been right up at the very edge of the spell's effect. He followed his jarl's lead in preparing to strike at the demilich should it exit the cloud near him. But while the demilich found traveling through the magically-dense fog slow going, that didn't make it any less deadly. It opened its stone jaw and emitted an unearthly cry, a [i]wail of the banshee[/i], that instantly slew Ice Mage Veornokkir. It also slew Bjilgarra, but that wouldn't be apparent for some time, as she fell where she had been standing unseen in the cloud of [i]solid fog[/i]. Although he had several more powerful spells available, Hagan opted to cast a low-level [i]magic missile[/i] at the frost giant wraith menacing Ingebold, for the simple reason that he knew for a fact its force energy would unerringly strike the insubstantial creature, whereas most other spells had a chance of passing through its wispy body without harm. Ingebold in turn cast a [i]death ward[/i] spell upon the half-orc sorcerer, shielding him from the sort of attack that had just slain poor Binkadink. Gilbert Fung had no idea exactly where the demilich was, but he knew it was still somewhere within the [i]solid fog[/i] spell's area of effect. With that in mind, he cast an [i]Evard's black tentacles[/i] spell right over his previous spell, thinking to have the black skull entwined and immobilized by the writhing tentacles. What he had failed to take into account, however, was the fact that the eponymous black tentacles were but 10 feet long, whereas the ceiling height of the frost giant dwelling was double that. Unseen within the area of effect of the [i]solid fog[/i] spell, the ebon tentacles caught nothing up but Bjilgarra's corpse, while the demilich floated untouched above their reach. Finoula used the last daily charge of her amulet to blast through the frost giant wraith as a bolt of lightning, landing high on the opposite wall and staying there courtesy of her [i]boots of spider climbing[/i]. By that time, many of the heroes were looking much the worse for wear from their battles thus far, so Ingebold cast a [i]mass cure moderate wounds[/i] that had the twofold benefits of healing her friends while dealing damage to her undead foes. Indeed, the sole remaining frost giant wight looked to be on its last legs by this point. But it was not the next to perish; Hagan took out the frost giant wraith with another [i]magic missile[/i] spell. Darrien decided to do what he could against the frost giant wight, shooting another small barrage of arrows into its chest. Nearby, Gilbert cast a [i]haste[/i] spell that encompassed all of the heroes but himself, Mudpie, and Castillan - he had selfless decided affecting the more combat-oriented combatants would serve their side the most, and Castillan was skipped over simply because he was too far away, still trapped on the other side of the joint [i]solid fog[/i]/[i]Evard's black tentacles[/i] spells. Still perched up high on the wall, Finoula slew the frost giant wight, who had entered the building in search of foes to slay (or drain into wights), with her [i]flaming whip of thorns[/i]. With it no longer in the fight, that left only the demilich to deal with - and it was somewhere within Gilbert's double spell area of effect. The wizard assumed it was tightly grasped within the rigid embrace of several of his tentacles, and was surprised to see it wander out of the [i]solid fog[/i] spell up by the ceiling. Its eye-holes flashed red, twin beams stabbed out at Hagan, and the half-orc's body would likely have crumbled to dust like Binkadink's had if he hadn't been specifically warded against such death effects by Ingebold's spell. Ingebold struck out with a spell she'd been prompted - by Moradin? - to prepare that morning, and was surprised to see a simple [i]shatter[/i] spell deal some damage to the jet-black skull where other, more powerful spells (like Hagan's [i]fireballs[/i]) had failed. By then, Gilbert had realized his mistake about targeting his [i]Evard's black tentacles[/i] spell and corrected the error in a second casting of the spell, this time on the wall opposite Finoula, well within 10 feet of the floating skull. Rubbery, ebon appendages grew from the wall, several of them encompassing the demilich's form until it could no longer be seen. It used its [i]wail of the banshee[/i] attack blindly, but this time there was nobody within range. "What's going on over there?" asked Castillan. As the original [i]solid fog[/i] spell was still up, the bounder and the frost giant jarl were still cut off from the action. Castillan knew he could use his ring to [i]dimension door[/i] over to the front half of the room, but to do so blindly could end up with him reappearing in the same area where somebody else stood. "I can't see anything!" admitted Jarl Kjornenheim. Then Castillan spotted a door to the right. "Where's this lead to?" he asked. "The men's bunkroom," the jarl replied. "Does it go all the way to the front?" "As a matter of fact, yes." "Then what are we waiting for?" demanded Castillan, pulling the door open and racing through the bunkroom, which stretched most of the house's length. There was another door at the front end of the room; Darrien stood in the open doorway there with his [i]Arachnibow[/i] ready to fire at the demilich should it escape Gilbert's latest spell. Jarl Kjornenheim raced behind Castillan, pushing Darrien out of the way to get to the front area of the room, looking for his wife (whose corpse was still stuck within the [i]solid fog[/i]; he roared in fury when he called for Bjilgarra and there was no answer). The bounder took the opportunity of being out of the frost giant's view to pop open a trunk at the foot of the nearest bed, and was surprised to see it filled with gold coins, bits of jewelry, and ivory carvings. Impressed, he made a note to fill up Ingebold's [i]portable hole[/i] with the contents of the giants' trunks once the fighting was over. "It look like he stuck for good," observed Gilbert as the heroes took a moment to catch their breath and Ingebold administered healing as it was needed. "We ought to figure what we going to do when tentacles go away - that spell not last forever." "I've got my [i]stonepiercer dagger[/i]," observed Castillan. "If I get close enough to it, I bet I can deal it some hefty damage - the thing looks like it's made of stone, and the dagger does extra damage against stone creatures." "It up by ceiling," pointed out Gilbert. "How you get up there to stab it?" "Here," offered Finoula, dropping to the top of the wooden table and taking off her magical boots. "Take my [i]boots of spider climbing[/i]." She and Castillan swapped boots; his magical [i]boots of elvenkind[/i] reshaped themselves to fit the ranger's smaller feet. Gilbert then cast an [i]invisibility[/i] spell on the bounder, so he could step up to the demilich on the ceiling without being seen. "You'll have to dismiss that tentacles spell of yours, though, if I'm going to be able to get close enough," pointed out Castillan. As Ingebold, Finoula, and Hagan all had [i]death ward[/i] spells cast upon them, they lined up in a row upon the wooden table, ready to attack once Gilbert dismissed the [i]Evard's black tentacles[/i] spell. Jarl Kjornenheim stood by the wall, just outside the range of the spell effect, his axe raised and ready to strike out at the black skull. "Everybody ready?" the heavyset wizard called out. The demilich was still hidden beneath a pile of writhing appendages, its exact location unable to be discerned. "Wait a minute!" called an invisible Castillan. "Where's Binkadink?" The little gnome had been slain while the bounder was in the back half of the room, out of view of the demilich's dealings outside. Ingebold filled him in with a voice that broke in sadness. "We'll be avengin' him, don't ye doubt it," she promised. Gilbert dismissed the vertical [i]Evard's black tentacles[/i] spell and everyone attacked at once. Jarl Kjornenheim sent the head of his greataxe crashing down upon the suddenly-revealed demilich, barely even scratching its rocky surface. Hagan cast a [i]chain lightning[/i] spell directly at the skull, to no discernable effect. Ingebold, her holy symbol of Moradin held before her, tried to turn the vile creature, and although she felt the biggest swell of positive energy flow through her that she'd ever felt before, the attempt did no more than Hagan's electrical attack spell. Finoula snapped her [i]flaming whip of thorns[/i] at the demilich, and at least the fire seemed to have some small effect. Darrien, who had been lined up to attack the skull from a different direction than Castillan would be attacking from, sent a few arrows bouncing harmlessly from the skull's fossilized surface. Gilbert's attempted [i]dismissal[/i] spell, with which he had hoped to send the calcified skull back to the Negative Energy Plane, had no effect whatsoever. But Castillan suddenly popped into view as his [i]stonepiercer dagger[/i] slid into the skull's stony surface like a hot knife into butter. The skull's eye sockets flashed red and a pair of rays blasted out, but fortunately for the bounder the demilich had targeted the biggest enemy first; Jarl Kjornenheim fell to the floor, his greataxe landing beside the pile of his armor as his body flaked away to nothingness. Another of the demilich's tooth-gems flared up as the frost giant's soul took up residence in its new home. Freed from Gilbert's tentacles spell, the demilich wasted no time crossing the room as fast as it could. Finoula's whip struck out at it as it flew and Castillan tried stabbing with his dagger but wasn't quick enough. But that didn't stop the bounder for long; running across the ceiling, he followed the fleeing demilich's course, stabbing at it again with his magic dagger. He hit, but didn't deal anywhere near the amount of damage he'd done with his surprise attack while invisible. Finoula could no longer run across the ceiling, but she ran the width of the giants' tabletop, snapping her whip at the floating skull. Ingebold ran up beside her Battle-Sister and cast another [i]shatter[/i] spell at the undead skull, knowing in advance it was one of the handful of spells that could actually harm the demilich. Hagan tried a [i]magic missile[/i], emboldened by its effectiveness against the wraith, but no luck - the spell didn't faze the demilich in the least. Instead, its eyes flashed red again, and Castillan's body crumbled to dust, his weapons and armor falling with a crash to the floor as his soul was imprisoned inside a tooth-gem. "We running out of spells!" Gilbert called frantically. Most of what they had left were not affecting the demilich, and they were now down two of their number. They had dealt the skull some damage, to be sure, but with their foe being seemingly carved from solid rock, it was difficult to ascertain exactly how much it had been hurt. Was it on its last legs, so to speak, or could it continue on like this indefinitely? There was no real way to tell. On inspiration, Ingebold reached up beside the holy symbol of Moradin the Soul-Forger she wore around her neck, and touched the amulet she also wore. "Annavel," the cleric spoke across the planes. "I have need of ye this day!" In a flash of light, Annavel the sword archon answered the summons. A celestial being with flaming swords for arms, she instinctively felt the evil of the floating demilich beside her and attacked without further prompting. Her sword-arms were infused with holy energy from the upper plane of Mount Celestia and the flying stone skull cried out in pain at their attack. As the celestial dealt some definite damage against the demilich, the other heroes tried their best to do the same. Finoula continued using her [i]flaming whip of thorns[/i], and Gilbert tried casting an [i]undeath to death[/i] spell directly upon the flying skull. Hagan, lacking anything else to try, took the opportunity to cast a [i]false life[/i] spell upon himself and his familiar - it certainly couldn't hurt at this point! But the demilich struck back at what it perceived as its greatest threat: Annavel the sword archon. With a hellish flash of red light, the angel's soul was absorbed into a gem on one of the demilich's teeth. "No!" cried out more than one of the heroes at once, for the sword archon had looked to be their best bet at defeating this nearly unbeatable foe. And then the demilich did something that frightened the assembled heroes more than anything else it had done thus far: it wheeled in the air and started heading for the open door of the frost giant dwelling. Apparently being confronted by a force of mortals putting up this much of a fight was not the spearhead the undead creature had been looking for upon its arrival on this world; there were other creatures nearby he could transform into wights, and thus spread out, slowly at first, across the globe. "Don't let it escape!" called Ingebold, fear in her voice. The prophetic dream she'd had this morning -- it was starting to come true! Gilbert cast a [i]wall of force[/i] to try to stop the demilich's movement, hoping it wouldn't see it in time and crash into it, perhaps buying the heroes a few more moments to come up with another plan of attack. But the demilich altered its course and elevated up above the spell's effect, its innate [i]true seeing[/i] allowing it to see the boundaries of the invisible force-wall before it. A flood of calm came over Ingebold just then; she knew exactly what she must do, for Moradin had placed the possibility in her head this morning when He had guided her spell selection. The dwarf's left hand unconsciously went to the pocket of her fur cloak while she held up Moradin's holy symbol in her right. "BEGONE, FOUL CREATURE!" she called, as a beam of holy light spilled from the Soul-Forger's symbol in her hand and struck the demilich, holding it in place. Ingebold's eyes blazed a pure white, just as they had when she was concentrating on the location of the chunk of [i]calcimortum[/i] before it had fallen in the yeti valley. But the whiteness this time was brighter than ever before, and it started spreading beyond just her eyes. Ingebold's skin started glowing, and the cleric gave a scream of determination as her body, as immobile as the demilich she had pinned by her beam of holy energy, began dissolving into holy energy itself. Ingebold's scream was joined by one from the demilich, but the ebon skull's was caused by fear, not resolve. The light blazed, causing the other heroes to shield their eyes. Then there was a dual crash, as two sets of objects fell to the ground just outside the front door of the frost giant home. One was the demilich, which shattered upon landing, becoming a thousand pieces of crumbling stone that dissolved away to nothingness; for a moment, it looked like a translucent Binkadink, Castillan, Jarl Kjornenheim, and Annavel could be seen, but then they were gone. The other crash was the armor, clothing, and held possessions of Ingebold Battershield - all but the holy symbol of Moradin, which had been melted away to nothingness itself by the surge of holy energy. "Ingebold!" cried Finoula, rushing to where her Battle-Sister had fallen, and where she'd have expected to find her body. But other than her possessions, there was nothing there. The elven ranger dropped to her knees beside Ingebold's gear. "What just happened?" Darrien asked, confused by the turn of events. "I think...she killed it," Gilbert stated, the amazement in his voice evident by his having forgotten to speak in the pidgin-Common he normally affected. He poked around the pile of her equipment, looking for a clue of some type. He saw a piece of paper sticking out from an inner pocket of the cleric's cloak. Curious, he pulled it out and saw it to be two sheets of parchment, folded up. He unfolded them, saw the name on the first sheet, and handed them to Finoula. "This is for you," he said. Finoula took the sheets and started reading them, tears streaking her face by the second page. She read the whole thing silently to herself on the first pass, then started over and read it aloud to the others a second time. She read: "She's gone," Finoula said, and now the tears flowed freely. - - - The players had their PCs gather up the belongings of the dead heroes - Binkadink, Castillan, and Ingebold - and they decided they'll spend the 50,000 gp for two [i]true resurrection[/i] spells for the first two slain heroes. They looted the giants' house and got 36,000 gp; Harry, bless his heart, offered up Hagan's cash reserves to help finance the difference. (That's pretty generous for an 11-year-old who mostly likes to have his PC blow stuff up.) And I made Vicki cry with Ingebold's letter at the end of the adventure. Knowing full well that this could be Ingebold's last adventure, I made sure Vicki was running her at the beginning of the session, although I had already prepared her spells the night before (acting as Moradin's guiding hand, as it were). I also stepped in and had Ingebold cast the [i]control weather[/i] spell before the dragonfly ship landed, as I'd had her prepare that for that very reason. But after that, I gave Vicki full reign as far as running Ingebold. And naturally, once Binkadink was slain by the demilich, Vicki turned Ingebold over to Logan so he'd have a PC to run for the rest of the session. Once things looked desperate enough, I took Logan aside and told him about the possibility of the one-shot "super-turning" and its potential consequences, and eventually he saw it as their only hope. By the way, Jacob wasn't with us during this session - he's now 21 years old, in college, and has a girlfriend, and the lure of playing D&D with his family and mine isn't the powerful draw it used to be. He asked his dad, Dan, to run Castillan for him, with the warning, "Just don't get him killed." Heh heh heh - there are never any guarantees there, Jacob! So we might be seeing less and less of Jacob at the gaming table. He wants Dan to continue running Castillan as well as Gilbert, but I've offered up putting Castillan on a "behind the scenes" mission for awhile, and joining him back up with the group (at the same XP level) whenever Jacob wants to join us for a session. I even have an adventure planned (#60, as a matter of fact) [Later edit: I ended bumping it to #56 once Jacob started gaming with us again] that has Castillan being given a specific assignment that he brings the rest of the group to accomplish; I can simply have him working on it for the duration until he finally asks for help from the other PCs once the campaign gets to that point. As an aside, I think this campaign will last a total of 80 adventures in all. We'll likely have about five adventures at each of the remaining levels, culminating in a party of 20th-level PCs. I don't have everything figured out just yet, but I do have the adventures written through #61, with broad ideas for the last half dozen or so. - - - T-Shirt Worn: My black "Walking Dead" T-shirt, with numerous zombies forming a skull silhouette. [/QUOTE]
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