Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 563909" data-attributes="member: 1210">Battle for the Formian Hive (pt. 2)The strange singing slaad Jibber does something that gives our heroes a little help, yelping and thrusting his hands wildly before him; there’s a swirl of random colors and a strange smell, and a large green slaad appears.  It surveys the scene and clearly recognizes formians, growling in a strange-sounding way, and unleashes the power of chaos on a group of combatants, blasting the lawful ones- including Sheva- with a hammer of chaotic force.  The two slaadi then wade into the battle, their claws slashing, their bites snapping all around.  Lester tosses a fireball to incinerate some of the bugs, then creates a bank of acid fog and starts dragging one of the downed wasps towards it.  He’s intercepted by another formian and he strikes it down in a clap of chaotic energy.  Sheva’s doing well, slicing the outsider bugs handily; she seems to have grown a second pair of arms and is wielding both of her greatswords at the same time.  Orbius dispels the domination on Angel, but also dispels some of her defensive effects.  Angel, free of the mind control, glares around for a moment, attacks one of the formians, and then disappears.Then the death knight arrives, charging in on a barded nightmare, giving off sulphurous fumes and the stench of corruption.  It wears a gaudy tabard and wields a lance, charging through the air to charge Lester, but the undead knight’s lance slaps in its grasp and it misses.  Quickly, Sheva hastes herself with Chronovestis, one of her swords, and then tears into the nightmare with both greatswords.  The nightmare screams and drops, and the death knight cries out in anger as it does.  The terrible undead creature lands on its feet, whips out a greatsword and makes three devastating attacks on Lester.  The blows smash through the L’s defenses each time, and though they cut open terrible wounds he stands fast in toe-to-toe battle with the creature.  It fires a blast of terrible abyssal flame at him and Lester cries out in pain, then grits his teeth and swings Felix Optima at the undead monster again, his bat-wings flapping as he flies above it.Orbius is shouting something about teleporting to confront the queen, but he’s also still casting attack spells.  Zeebo keeps moving about, hasting one person, enlarging the next, and things are starting to look good on the bug front when another wave tops the wall.  Some of the formians from the first wave are still standing and are of a different, much hardier and more dangerous strain than the simple warrior formians.  These ones are quicker, stronger, and deadlier.Horbin and the troll are clashing in brutal battle, and Horbin brings the troll down in a pair of tremendous blows that snap its head almost off.  Still, he knows it’s bound to be regenerating... He glances at Lester’s acid cloud.  Sybele and one of the slaadi are already hauling the twitching, regenerating wasp-devils to the roiling cloud of vapor and throwing them in.  There are dead formians everywhere.Lester strikes another blow, driving the death knight to one knee.  The elementalist’s wings are flapping violently as he charges in, and the death knight raises his sword, but Felix Optima Maxima slices in, slashing open the unholy creature’s helm and splitting its skull.  An ominous clap of chaotic sound echoes over the field of battle as the death knight falls.  Lester draws a shaky breath and flies over towards the formian near Sheva.  “Down, Law-abider!” he cries, and Felix Optima bites again with a clap of chaotic thunder.Again the taskmaster formians try to dominate a number of our heroes, and for a moment they struggle back and forth against the party’s slippery minds and dispel magics, but then all the bugs are engaged and they cannot so easily seize the group’s minds.  Sybele falls back, whipping out her bow again and taking shots at the closest bugs.  She can smell the stale waxy smell of their hive, and she doesn’t like it at all.  Meanwhile, Jibber and the hook horror engage in a terrible bout of hand to hand combat, and finally the hooked beast falls to Jibber’s large claws.  Those who glance in the singing slaad’s direction can see his wounds healing moment by moment.Orbius summons a huge earth elemental.  It rises up, striking at the remaining enemies, and then the wizard creates a magical telepathic link between himself, Lester, Sheva and Sybele.  “We’re teleporting in to attack the queen!” shouts Orbius.  “Come on!”  Sheva and Lester cluster close to him.Suddenly Sybele turns and starts firing shots at Zeebo.  Clearly, she’d dominated.  “Oh crap,” says Zeebo, as Sybele draws another arrow.  There are already two burning shafts in him.  Sheva tosses a dispel magic at the archer, but it fails; Lester tries to turn Sybele to stone, but she throws off the effect of his powerful magic.  Orbius overcomes the power of the domination with a dispel magic of his own, breaking the taskmaster’s hold on Sybele.“Hold them here!” Lester shouts to Zeebo and Horbin as Orbius casts a spell.  “We’re going to go kill the queen!”  And then Orbius, the L and Sheva vanish.“Uh, okay,” says a very nonplussed Horbin.  The remaining formian defenders are moving in...Next Time: All right, I guess it's next time we get to the queen... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  And where'd Angel go anyway?  Everything you ever needed to know about the timeslip ability!</blockquote>

Verification