carborundum
Adventurer
Sweet! We only usually get about three and a half hours, but we've got a weekend coming up soon. Can't wait to try out my new swordsage!
JollyDoc's Savage Tide-Updated 10/8!
Aracase
Explorer
Joe can expound on this more than I can, but the Wastrilith is CR17 in the Fiend Folio and for this encounter they gave it more hit dice, better saves, better BAB and let it cast TWO spells per round, one of those spells as a 20th level caster.Neverwinter Knight said:
At this point you might think "Wow if we survive this well get great xp." Unfortunately they lowered the CR of the monster to CR15 for this encounter. Joe was kind enough to as least give us xp for the CR17 version.
As we told Joe at the game, its fun to fight hard monsters we just wanted compensation for what we were fighting.
JollyDoc
Explorer
Yeah, I'm going to have to check the Paizo boards to see if anything's been posted about this issue, although in the past, the response has been that the CR's of FF monsters was overrated.
SUNDAY TEASER
_______________
The dungeon crawl continues with the battle of the Hezrou and Octurus is excited to show off his mad demon-slaying skills. Unfortunately, hezrou's stink...badly. Oh, and they can cast Blasphemy.
Expounding on the theme of Octurus is the new whipping boy, he stumbles into a pool of green slime, then becomes the food of choice for an ochre jelly...a big one.
Not to be left out, Sepoto decides to join Octurus for their next encounter, where they are locked in a room together...with four clay golems!! Oh, and did I mention that the totemic demon slayer gets blinded by his own party member in the midst of said melee??
A novel solution to the golem problem is concocted by the two Seekers in the group...a little trick they like to call The Oven...
SUNDAY TEASER
_______________
The dungeon crawl continues with the battle of the Hezrou and Octurus is excited to show off his mad demon-slaying skills. Unfortunately, hezrou's stink...badly. Oh, and they can cast Blasphemy.
Expounding on the theme of Octurus is the new whipping boy, he stumbles into a pool of green slime, then becomes the food of choice for an ochre jelly...a big one.
Not to be left out, Sepoto decides to join Octurus for their next encounter, where they are locked in a room together...with four clay golems!! Oh, and did I mention that the totemic demon slayer gets blinded by his own party member in the midst of said melee??
A novel solution to the golem problem is concocted by the two Seekers in the group...a little trick they like to call The Oven...
Neverwinter Knight
First Post
Sorry, but you have raised high expecations of doing the impossible...Aracase said:
JollyDoc
Explorer
BEWARE THE THING THEY CALL THE BLOB
___________________________________
Before any of the companions could move, the nearest demon hurled a wave of unholy power into their midst. Instantly, Tower Cleaver sagged, his tongue lolling and his eyes glazed over. To the surprise, and relief of the others, though the blasphemous spell had given them all a momentary feeling of nausea in the pits of their stomachs, it had passed just as quickly as it had come. But then the other two fiends struck. The power they unleashed was more like a hammer blow than a wave, and as it impacted, Sepoto, Marius, Cleaver and Mandi felt it like a physical jolt. For Mandi it was worst of all, for the sorceress wore the diabolic shape of a barbed devil, beings who were the mortal enemies of all things demonic and thus susceptible to the fiends’ unique form of chaotic magic.
“Kill them!” she rasped as she drew upon her own magic to temporarily slow the reflexes of the lumbering hezrous. Sepoto nodded, leaping into air and flying above the surface of the flooded chamber. As he soared towards one of the demons, he suddenly smelled the nauseating aroma of rotten fish mixed with raw sewage and sulfur. The stench made his gorge rise and he hesitated for a brief moment. Still, when he regained his composure and swung his chain, the weapon’s holy power crackling as it touched the fiend’s skin, the hezrou bellowed in pain, its flesh burning from the anathemous wound.
Octurus could feel his blood burning. This was what he had been bred for, what he had been waiting his whole life for. Drawing his twin scimitars, he surged through the water, moving through it easily, as if it were air. As he ran, a large tattoo of a deinonychus on his right bicep rippled and roared. At the last second, just before he reached the hezrou, he leaped high into the air, pouncing on the demon like a cat. The fiend swung at him, cuffing him roughly across the jaw, but the demon hunter never paused, not even when the nauseating reek of the Abyss filled his nostrils. His blades spun and slashed, one of them opening a horrible wound on the hezrou’s face from brow to chin. Under the devastating assault, the demon crumpled, sinking back into the murky water.
At that moment, the two remaining demons struck again, the impact of their magic hammering Sepoto and the still-dazed Tower Cleaver. Sepoto turned towards the pair, but Octurus was a half-step ahead of him. This time, however, as the Maztican warrior ran at the hezrous, the combined odor of their horrid stench overwhelmed him, causing him to wretch violently and uncontrollably. Just then, Tower Cleaver lumbered past Octurus, the second blast of demonic magic having shaken him from his stupor. Ignoring the foul aroma (honestly, it smelled no worse than his herd’s den back home), the minotaur slammed into the nearest demon, rocking it back on its heels with the force of the impact.
Suddenly, the air erupted in flames as Marius flicked his signature pea-sized mote of fire into the chamber. The inferno engulfed the two demons, crisping their moist flesh, but leaving them largely unharmed due to their Abyssal nature, having been bred among fires much hotter. What they were not prepared for, however, was the thin ray of blue light that Mandi sent at Cleaver’s opponent. As the ray struck, the demon stumbled, seemingly unable to control its own extremities, clumsily flailing them about in all directions. Frustrated, the creature furrowed its brow, and once again the surge of chaotic energy swept across the room, buffeting Cleaver and Sepoto once more.
“Cleaver, break right!” Sepoto shouted as he passed Octurus and flew towards the unengaged demon. As he struck, Tower Cleaver did as well, side-stepping his clumsy opponent and burying his axe into its thigh. The demon shrieked, a cry which went an octave higher when a glowing orb of shimmering force flew from Marius’s hand to strike it mid-groin. Almost reflexively, the demon loosed its own magic, and the wave of unholy power washed over Cleaver a second time, once more addling his thoughts and unfocusing his eyes. Marius saw all of this in an instant, saw the demon moving in for the kill, and he whipped a second orb of force towards it. This one struck the fiend full in the face, and when the explosive blast cleared, the decapitated demon toppled backward.
Sepoto darted towards his opponent in a series of quick feints. Try as it might, the hezrou could not lay hands on the goliath, even as more and more wounds opened in its own hide, bleeding profusely. In desperation, it used its innate magic one last time. The big crusader seemed to shrug off the pain, and launched himself at the fiend, slashing and ripping with his chain until the beast ceased its struggles and sank into a growing pool of blood.
_______________________________________________________________
Daelric tended to the wounds of his allies, and Octurus’s nausea passed quickly. Still, the Maztican was shame-faced at his weakness, despite the fact that he had almost single-handedly taken down one of the demons himself. Thus, as the company resumed its exploration of the catacombs, the demon hunter remained sullenly quiet.
They made their way down a flooded hall off the southwestern corner of the chamber, and soon found themselves in familiar territory. A passage to their left contained six cells, three on a side and closed by bronze gates. At the end of the hall was the abandoned torture chamber Sepoto and Tower Cleaver had fallen into when the floor above had collapsed. Proceeding past the area, the companions soon entered a long hall, its center section separated from the rest of the corridor by a raised area covered with pale fungus.
“It’s harmless,” Mandi said as they approached the platform. “Just cave lichen. Nothing to worry about.”
“I’ll lead on from here,” Octurus abruptly announced, the first words he’d spoken since the battle. Sepoto shrugged and motioned for him to proceed. The demon hunter nodded, and stepped back into the water on the far side of the raised area. Immediately, he felt a sickening, burning pain shoot through his feet. Stifling a cry, he leaped out of the water, back onto the riser. Looking down, he saw that his boots were coated in a sickly, green slime-like substance. Worse, it was dissolving the leather of his footwear and starting to eat its way through his flesh as well.
“Stand clear!” Marius shouted to the others. “Sorry my friend, but this is going to hurt you a lot more than it’ll hurt me!” He grinned savagely as flames poured from his outstretched fingers, immolating Octurus’s feet. The Maztican cried out in pain, but as the fire vanished, he saw that the slime had been incinerated, along with most of the skin on his feet. He glared angrily at Marius, who just shrugged.
“At least you’ve still got your feet,” the gnome said. “Which is more than you would have been able to say if I’d let the slime have you.”
As Daelric began mending Octurus’s burns, Mandi peered down the water-filled hall before them. Undoubtedly, the entire floor beneath the water was coated in the acidic slime. She could dimly make out, at the hall’s far end, a closed, wooden door.
“Alohamora,” she said as she brandished her wand. A moment later the door clicked open, and immediately the water in the passage began rushing that direction. Soon, they could see the floor, and Mandi had been correct; it was literally covered in the verdant fungi. Once more, Marius had a solution. Conjuring a large ball of flame, he sent it rolling down the passage, up and back repeatedly until every vestige of the saprophyte had been burned away.
Once the path was clear, the group proceeded on. Beyond the opened door, they found a small room that contained a stone desk carved in the likeness of an ancient Maztican head with a flattened top. The walls of the area were fitted with stone shelving, with many stacks of clay tablets piled on them. A cursory glimpse of the tablets revealed them to be ancient archives detailing the history and day-to-day life of lost Thanaclan.
“These would be of great value to my people,” Octurus observed.
“I’m sure,” Mandi said noncommittally. “Marius and I would like to study them as well. The Seekers are always looking for new sources of information about ancient cultures.” She left out the part ‘so they can loot them,’ but what the Maztican didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
The archive chamber was a dead-end, and so the Legionnaires backtracked to the chamber where they’d fought the hezrous, and took the northwest passage. This hall was also flooded, and it was slow going as the company slogged through the chest-high water. Marius rode comfortably on Tower Cleaver’s shoulders. Several two-foot wide tunnels opened along the walls of the corridor, some just over the water level, while others were near the ceiling. A powerful, bitter stench emanated from the holes. Just as the group passed between the small tunnels, a horizontal geyser of thick, yellowish slime erupted from several of them. As luck had it, the ooze landed directly atop Octurus, engulfing the Maztican in a thick cocoon and then constricting around him, squeezing the air from his lungs as its viscous body began digesting his skin.
“Don’t strike it!” Mandi yelled as she realized the nature of the ochre jelly. Such parasites were not uncommon in underground environments. They were deadly and tough to kill, since any weapon that struck them would cause them to split into two identical organisms! No, brute force would not avail them here. Magic was the only solution, but first things first. Chanting a spell, the sorceress deftly plucked Octurus from the clutches of the ooze, magically transporting him several yards back down the hall, along with herself and Daelric, while at the same time moving Tower Cleaver, Marius and Sepoto in the opposite direction. Once everyone was clear, she gave the word, and Marius loosed a barrage of scorching rays of fire at the jelly, while Daelric simultaneously called down a column of white-hot holy flame. Moving much more quickly than its form belied, the ooze dove beneath the water, leaving only a faint ripple in its wake.
“Damn!” Mandi cursed. She knew the thing could be headed in any direction, only to come up from beneath them again. She thrust her staff under the water, uttering its command word and sending a jet of ice up the long tunnel, hoping to catch the jelly in its blast. Meanwhile, at the far end of the hall, Sepoto, Tower Cleaver and Marius found themselves in a small, bare chamber with one door on the far side. Cleaver’s animal instincts had taken over and the minotaur only wanted to get as far away from the unseen, flesh-eating ooze as possible. Desperately, he began pounding on the door, only to find it stuck fast from years of swelling.
“Something just went past my leg!” Sepoto shouted from the entrance to the corridor.
“Hurry it up!” Marius called down to Cleaver, still beating on the door. The little gnome flicked another small ball of fire into the water near Sepoto, where it abruptly erupted into an explosion of steam and boiling water.
“Brace yourselves!” Mandi shouted from the far end of the hall. Seeing Cleaver’s difficulty with the door, she brandished her wand again, and with a casual flick of her wrist, opened the portal. Instantly, the water began rushing through the door. Mandi, Daelric and Octurus could feel its pull, but easily resisted it. Tower Cleaver and Sepoto, however, clung to the door frame for dear life as the deluge rushed past them like a raging river. Within the churning water, Sepoto saw the viscid form of the ooze tumble end over end through the doorway, down a short hall on the far side, and then down a steep flight of stairs.
Once all of the water had drained, the company regrouped, evaluating their choices. The hall beyond the door branched onto a second passage just before reaching the stairs. The stairs themselves were long, and descended into darkness. Somewhere down them, the ochre jelly might still be alive. It didn’t take much convincing for the majority to elect not to follow the ooze. Instead, they turned down the secondary passage, but stopped almost immediately when they nearly stumbled into a five-foot wide circular well that opened in the floor in front of them. Waves of heat, hot vapor and a loud bubbling sound emanated from within it. Carefully, the group edged past it and continued on.
The hallway turned sharply south and ended at another door. Beyond this, it continued south, seemingly taking them back the way they’d just come. After a hundred feet or more, it dead-ended in a room that was tiled with blue ceramic of various hues. Small puddles of water dotted the floor, and the walls were lined with ancient Maztican statuary…lithe human figures and fiendish beasts with snake-like bodies and multiple arms. The statues were badly deteriorated, in some cases scarcely recognizable beyond a vague body shape. There were twelve statues in all, each standing nearly ten-feet in height. A stone trapdoor was set in the middle of the ceiling, although any means of reaching it had long since rotted away.
Sepoto and Octurus were the first to enter the room, and no sooner had they done so than a bronze portcullis slammed down behind them, sealing them in the chamber, separated from their companions. An instant later, four of the more misshapen statues lurched to life and lumbered towards the two warriors. Sepoto struck out at the nearest one as it approached, sending clay bits flying like terra cotta. Octurus leaped towards the same one, his scimitars dancing and slicing, yet each of his blows was turned, as if he’d struck a stone wall.
“Golems!” Mandi shouted from the other side of the portcullis. “The same kind we faced in the Temple of Celestial Winds!”
Realizing the brutal, unhealable wounds the constructs could inflict, Mandi acted fast, spitting out the words to a spell and filling the air in the chamber with glittering motes of dust. The effect was immediate. Two of the golems began swinging about wildly, blinded by the magic. Unfortunately, Octurus also clutched at his eyes as the blinding motes stole his own vision.
“Cleaver! The gate!” Mandi commanded. The big minotaur happily obliged, raising his axe above him and smashing it down at the portcullis. The bronze bars buckled and snapped beneath the force of his swing.
“Get out now!” Mandi shouted to Octurus and Sepoto.
Octurus heard the direction of the sorceress’s voice, and immediately somersaulted towards it, his instincts guiding him where his eyes could not. Sepoto was close behind, making a fighting retreat and holding the behemoths at bay with vicious slashes of his chain.
“Now, Marius!” Mandi called. In response, the warmage conjured a rolling cloud of fire which engulfed everything in the chamber. No sooner had the spell manifested, than Mandi added her own magic, sealing off the room with an invisible, and impenetrable, wall of pure force.
For several minutes, the Legionnaires waited as Marius’s spell burned itself out. Occasionally, a large fist would emerge from the fog bank to pound impotently on the unseen barrier, but in time, even this ceased. Finally, the fire fog dissipated and the companions gathered at the force wall and peered into the chamber. The four golems stood inert, their once rough, clay hides now heat-glazed ceramic.
___________________________________
Before any of the companions could move, the nearest demon hurled a wave of unholy power into their midst. Instantly, Tower Cleaver sagged, his tongue lolling and his eyes glazed over. To the surprise, and relief of the others, though the blasphemous spell had given them all a momentary feeling of nausea in the pits of their stomachs, it had passed just as quickly as it had come. But then the other two fiends struck. The power they unleashed was more like a hammer blow than a wave, and as it impacted, Sepoto, Marius, Cleaver and Mandi felt it like a physical jolt. For Mandi it was worst of all, for the sorceress wore the diabolic shape of a barbed devil, beings who were the mortal enemies of all things demonic and thus susceptible to the fiends’ unique form of chaotic magic.
“Kill them!” she rasped as she drew upon her own magic to temporarily slow the reflexes of the lumbering hezrous. Sepoto nodded, leaping into air and flying above the surface of the flooded chamber. As he soared towards one of the demons, he suddenly smelled the nauseating aroma of rotten fish mixed with raw sewage and sulfur. The stench made his gorge rise and he hesitated for a brief moment. Still, when he regained his composure and swung his chain, the weapon’s holy power crackling as it touched the fiend’s skin, the hezrou bellowed in pain, its flesh burning from the anathemous wound.
Octurus could feel his blood burning. This was what he had been bred for, what he had been waiting his whole life for. Drawing his twin scimitars, he surged through the water, moving through it easily, as if it were air. As he ran, a large tattoo of a deinonychus on his right bicep rippled and roared. At the last second, just before he reached the hezrou, he leaped high into the air, pouncing on the demon like a cat. The fiend swung at him, cuffing him roughly across the jaw, but the demon hunter never paused, not even when the nauseating reek of the Abyss filled his nostrils. His blades spun and slashed, one of them opening a horrible wound on the hezrou’s face from brow to chin. Under the devastating assault, the demon crumpled, sinking back into the murky water.
At that moment, the two remaining demons struck again, the impact of their magic hammering Sepoto and the still-dazed Tower Cleaver. Sepoto turned towards the pair, but Octurus was a half-step ahead of him. This time, however, as the Maztican warrior ran at the hezrous, the combined odor of their horrid stench overwhelmed him, causing him to wretch violently and uncontrollably. Just then, Tower Cleaver lumbered past Octurus, the second blast of demonic magic having shaken him from his stupor. Ignoring the foul aroma (honestly, it smelled no worse than his herd’s den back home), the minotaur slammed into the nearest demon, rocking it back on its heels with the force of the impact.
Suddenly, the air erupted in flames as Marius flicked his signature pea-sized mote of fire into the chamber. The inferno engulfed the two demons, crisping their moist flesh, but leaving them largely unharmed due to their Abyssal nature, having been bred among fires much hotter. What they were not prepared for, however, was the thin ray of blue light that Mandi sent at Cleaver’s opponent. As the ray struck, the demon stumbled, seemingly unable to control its own extremities, clumsily flailing them about in all directions. Frustrated, the creature furrowed its brow, and once again the surge of chaotic energy swept across the room, buffeting Cleaver and Sepoto once more.
“Cleaver, break right!” Sepoto shouted as he passed Octurus and flew towards the unengaged demon. As he struck, Tower Cleaver did as well, side-stepping his clumsy opponent and burying his axe into its thigh. The demon shrieked, a cry which went an octave higher when a glowing orb of shimmering force flew from Marius’s hand to strike it mid-groin. Almost reflexively, the demon loosed its own magic, and the wave of unholy power washed over Cleaver a second time, once more addling his thoughts and unfocusing his eyes. Marius saw all of this in an instant, saw the demon moving in for the kill, and he whipped a second orb of force towards it. This one struck the fiend full in the face, and when the explosive blast cleared, the decapitated demon toppled backward.
Sepoto darted towards his opponent in a series of quick feints. Try as it might, the hezrou could not lay hands on the goliath, even as more and more wounds opened in its own hide, bleeding profusely. In desperation, it used its innate magic one last time. The big crusader seemed to shrug off the pain, and launched himself at the fiend, slashing and ripping with his chain until the beast ceased its struggles and sank into a growing pool of blood.
_______________________________________________________________
Daelric tended to the wounds of his allies, and Octurus’s nausea passed quickly. Still, the Maztican was shame-faced at his weakness, despite the fact that he had almost single-handedly taken down one of the demons himself. Thus, as the company resumed its exploration of the catacombs, the demon hunter remained sullenly quiet.
They made their way down a flooded hall off the southwestern corner of the chamber, and soon found themselves in familiar territory. A passage to their left contained six cells, three on a side and closed by bronze gates. At the end of the hall was the abandoned torture chamber Sepoto and Tower Cleaver had fallen into when the floor above had collapsed. Proceeding past the area, the companions soon entered a long hall, its center section separated from the rest of the corridor by a raised area covered with pale fungus.
“It’s harmless,” Mandi said as they approached the platform. “Just cave lichen. Nothing to worry about.”
“I’ll lead on from here,” Octurus abruptly announced, the first words he’d spoken since the battle. Sepoto shrugged and motioned for him to proceed. The demon hunter nodded, and stepped back into the water on the far side of the raised area. Immediately, he felt a sickening, burning pain shoot through his feet. Stifling a cry, he leaped out of the water, back onto the riser. Looking down, he saw that his boots were coated in a sickly, green slime-like substance. Worse, it was dissolving the leather of his footwear and starting to eat its way through his flesh as well.
“Stand clear!” Marius shouted to the others. “Sorry my friend, but this is going to hurt you a lot more than it’ll hurt me!” He grinned savagely as flames poured from his outstretched fingers, immolating Octurus’s feet. The Maztican cried out in pain, but as the fire vanished, he saw that the slime had been incinerated, along with most of the skin on his feet. He glared angrily at Marius, who just shrugged.
“At least you’ve still got your feet,” the gnome said. “Which is more than you would have been able to say if I’d let the slime have you.”
As Daelric began mending Octurus’s burns, Mandi peered down the water-filled hall before them. Undoubtedly, the entire floor beneath the water was coated in the acidic slime. She could dimly make out, at the hall’s far end, a closed, wooden door.
“Alohamora,” she said as she brandished her wand. A moment later the door clicked open, and immediately the water in the passage began rushing that direction. Soon, they could see the floor, and Mandi had been correct; it was literally covered in the verdant fungi. Once more, Marius had a solution. Conjuring a large ball of flame, he sent it rolling down the passage, up and back repeatedly until every vestige of the saprophyte had been burned away.
Once the path was clear, the group proceeded on. Beyond the opened door, they found a small room that contained a stone desk carved in the likeness of an ancient Maztican head with a flattened top. The walls of the area were fitted with stone shelving, with many stacks of clay tablets piled on them. A cursory glimpse of the tablets revealed them to be ancient archives detailing the history and day-to-day life of lost Thanaclan.
“These would be of great value to my people,” Octurus observed.
“I’m sure,” Mandi said noncommittally. “Marius and I would like to study them as well. The Seekers are always looking for new sources of information about ancient cultures.” She left out the part ‘so they can loot them,’ but what the Maztican didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
The archive chamber was a dead-end, and so the Legionnaires backtracked to the chamber where they’d fought the hezrous, and took the northwest passage. This hall was also flooded, and it was slow going as the company slogged through the chest-high water. Marius rode comfortably on Tower Cleaver’s shoulders. Several two-foot wide tunnels opened along the walls of the corridor, some just over the water level, while others were near the ceiling. A powerful, bitter stench emanated from the holes. Just as the group passed between the small tunnels, a horizontal geyser of thick, yellowish slime erupted from several of them. As luck had it, the ooze landed directly atop Octurus, engulfing the Maztican in a thick cocoon and then constricting around him, squeezing the air from his lungs as its viscous body began digesting his skin.
“Don’t strike it!” Mandi yelled as she realized the nature of the ochre jelly. Such parasites were not uncommon in underground environments. They were deadly and tough to kill, since any weapon that struck them would cause them to split into two identical organisms! No, brute force would not avail them here. Magic was the only solution, but first things first. Chanting a spell, the sorceress deftly plucked Octurus from the clutches of the ooze, magically transporting him several yards back down the hall, along with herself and Daelric, while at the same time moving Tower Cleaver, Marius and Sepoto in the opposite direction. Once everyone was clear, she gave the word, and Marius loosed a barrage of scorching rays of fire at the jelly, while Daelric simultaneously called down a column of white-hot holy flame. Moving much more quickly than its form belied, the ooze dove beneath the water, leaving only a faint ripple in its wake.
“Damn!” Mandi cursed. She knew the thing could be headed in any direction, only to come up from beneath them again. She thrust her staff under the water, uttering its command word and sending a jet of ice up the long tunnel, hoping to catch the jelly in its blast. Meanwhile, at the far end of the hall, Sepoto, Tower Cleaver and Marius found themselves in a small, bare chamber with one door on the far side. Cleaver’s animal instincts had taken over and the minotaur only wanted to get as far away from the unseen, flesh-eating ooze as possible. Desperately, he began pounding on the door, only to find it stuck fast from years of swelling.
“Something just went past my leg!” Sepoto shouted from the entrance to the corridor.
“Hurry it up!” Marius called down to Cleaver, still beating on the door. The little gnome flicked another small ball of fire into the water near Sepoto, where it abruptly erupted into an explosion of steam and boiling water.
“Brace yourselves!” Mandi shouted from the far end of the hall. Seeing Cleaver’s difficulty with the door, she brandished her wand again, and with a casual flick of her wrist, opened the portal. Instantly, the water began rushing through the door. Mandi, Daelric and Octurus could feel its pull, but easily resisted it. Tower Cleaver and Sepoto, however, clung to the door frame for dear life as the deluge rushed past them like a raging river. Within the churning water, Sepoto saw the viscid form of the ooze tumble end over end through the doorway, down a short hall on the far side, and then down a steep flight of stairs.
Once all of the water had drained, the company regrouped, evaluating their choices. The hall beyond the door branched onto a second passage just before reaching the stairs. The stairs themselves were long, and descended into darkness. Somewhere down them, the ochre jelly might still be alive. It didn’t take much convincing for the majority to elect not to follow the ooze. Instead, they turned down the secondary passage, but stopped almost immediately when they nearly stumbled into a five-foot wide circular well that opened in the floor in front of them. Waves of heat, hot vapor and a loud bubbling sound emanated from within it. Carefully, the group edged past it and continued on.
The hallway turned sharply south and ended at another door. Beyond this, it continued south, seemingly taking them back the way they’d just come. After a hundred feet or more, it dead-ended in a room that was tiled with blue ceramic of various hues. Small puddles of water dotted the floor, and the walls were lined with ancient Maztican statuary…lithe human figures and fiendish beasts with snake-like bodies and multiple arms. The statues were badly deteriorated, in some cases scarcely recognizable beyond a vague body shape. There were twelve statues in all, each standing nearly ten-feet in height. A stone trapdoor was set in the middle of the ceiling, although any means of reaching it had long since rotted away.
Sepoto and Octurus were the first to enter the room, and no sooner had they done so than a bronze portcullis slammed down behind them, sealing them in the chamber, separated from their companions. An instant later, four of the more misshapen statues lurched to life and lumbered towards the two warriors. Sepoto struck out at the nearest one as it approached, sending clay bits flying like terra cotta. Octurus leaped towards the same one, his scimitars dancing and slicing, yet each of his blows was turned, as if he’d struck a stone wall.
“Golems!” Mandi shouted from the other side of the portcullis. “The same kind we faced in the Temple of Celestial Winds!”
Realizing the brutal, unhealable wounds the constructs could inflict, Mandi acted fast, spitting out the words to a spell and filling the air in the chamber with glittering motes of dust. The effect was immediate. Two of the golems began swinging about wildly, blinded by the magic. Unfortunately, Octurus also clutched at his eyes as the blinding motes stole his own vision.
“Cleaver! The gate!” Mandi commanded. The big minotaur happily obliged, raising his axe above him and smashing it down at the portcullis. The bronze bars buckled and snapped beneath the force of his swing.
“Get out now!” Mandi shouted to Octurus and Sepoto.
Octurus heard the direction of the sorceress’s voice, and immediately somersaulted towards it, his instincts guiding him where his eyes could not. Sepoto was close behind, making a fighting retreat and holding the behemoths at bay with vicious slashes of his chain.
“Now, Marius!” Mandi called. In response, the warmage conjured a rolling cloud of fire which engulfed everything in the chamber. No sooner had the spell manifested, than Mandi added her own magic, sealing off the room with an invisible, and impenetrable, wall of pure force.
For several minutes, the Legionnaires waited as Marius’s spell burned itself out. Occasionally, a large fist would emerge from the fog bank to pound impotently on the unseen barrier, but in time, even this ceased. Finally, the fire fog dissipated and the companions gathered at the force wall and peered into the chamber. The four golems stood inert, their once rough, clay hides now heat-glazed ceramic.
Awesome! Incendiary Cloud is such a great spell, but it needs a little support to truly shine. Nice work on the golems.
Oh, and poor Octurus seems to be the new party whipping-boy. Samson was remarkably resilient in that role, hopefully Octurus does a little better and manages to come through alive.
Oh, and poor Octurus seems to be the new party whipping-boy. Samson was remarkably resilient in that role, hopefully Octurus does a little better and manages to come through alive.
JollyDoc
Explorer
Schmoe said:
Believe it or not, this was actually an energy substitued acid fog! The warmage is versatile, you have to hand it to him. Octurus is a damage dealing machine. He could give Tower Cleaver a run for his money in that department, especially since he threatens with a 15 or higher. The problems is his hit points, constitution and saves. He's quick and hard to hit, and deadly in a one-on-one fight, but if he ever gets tagged by the right combo, he's not long for the world. Witness the assault by the dread wraith, which was only seconds away from transforming Octurus into a wraith as well. Likewise the ochre jelly. If Mandi had not saved him, it was going to pull him through one of those little two-foot wide holes to digest at its leisure. Ever see the remake of the Blob?
carborundum
Adventurer
Nice work guys! Nice to see the tried-and-trusted lock ém in and burn em up tactics. Not so nice - green slime UNDER the water! Nasty nasty
Thanks for another great (and early) update JD!
Thanks for another great (and early) update JD!
JollyDoc
Explorer
SUNDAY NIGHT TEASER
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Whoa momma! What a session we had last night, friends and neighbors! The Legion continued their exploration of the temple, beating down a few kopru blow-hards here and there, but still they wanted to keep going just a little further before they rested...and you know what happened next! Oh yeah! The crew stumbled straight in to the Big Daddy's lair!
What transpired then was truly epic, constant readers! It was a battle for the ages as the Legion took on Khala the Two-headed and a few of his close companions! Who lived? Who died? Who ran like a little girl? Who saved the day? Tune in for our next update for the answers to those questions and more in an episode I like to call, "Never Leave a Man Behind" !!!!!!
___________________
Whoa momma! What a session we had last night, friends and neighbors! The Legion continued their exploration of the temple, beating down a few kopru blow-hards here and there, but still they wanted to keep going just a little further before they rested...and you know what happened next! Oh yeah! The crew stumbled straight in to the Big Daddy's lair!
What transpired then was truly epic, constant readers! It was a battle for the ages as the Legion took on Khala the Two-headed and a few of his close companions! Who lived? Who died? Who ran like a little girl? Who saved the day? Tune in for our next update for the answers to those questions and more in an episode I like to call, "Never Leave a Man Behind" !!!!!!
Neverwinter Knight
First Post
If this does not deserve the header Sunday Night Teaser, I don't know what.
But JollyDoc, would you have made it any easier on them, if they had tried to rest?![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
My guesses:
Who lived? Sepoto (he always does, too versatile)
Who died? Octurus (low hp, one-shot-wonder)
Who ran like a little girl? Tower Cleaver (smelly cow has crappy save )
Who saved the day? Mandy (she always does - maybe she now has a two-headed goldfish)
But JollyDoc, would you have made it any easier on them, if they had tried to rest?
My guesses:
Who lived? Sepoto (he always does, too versatile)
Who died? Octurus (low hp, one-shot-wonder)
Who ran like a little girl? Tower Cleaver (smelly cow has crappy save
) Who saved the day? Mandy (she always does - maybe she now has a two-headed goldfish)
