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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1738291" data-attributes="member: 9626">The Nightmare Prince: Final TrialsAs the party came within minutes of finding Galeron, he found himself facing interrogation at the hands of Khaspar one last time.  “Now, my dear priest.  You have admittedly impressed me with your resolve so far.  You have endured pain, you have witnessed the death of your best friend, you have seen the depths of despair and depravity that my very presence causes, and you have even beheld the form of my goddess, living and present on this very world, yet you stay strong.  However, remember that I am the master of fear.  I have seen into your very nightmares.  You fear letting down your church, and failing to live up to its expectations, do you not?  You tremble at the thought that they would judge you unworthy, and expel you.  You would have no where to go, a living failure, unable to deal with the scorn and shame of your life, wouldn’t you?  I could make that happen, but I could do far worse as well.  As you know, I can infect beings with my mechanical insects, and after days or even weeks of agonizing pain, the creature dies, only to rise up again as a cyborg under my total command.  Normally, the process deforms the creature horribly, making them a pariah in society forevermore.  However, I can make alterations, and ensure that the victim’s mechanical parts are hidden.  I could do that to you, making you my absolute slave, and from there, who knows?  I could force you to, say, return to your church, and kill everyone in it?  Or how about we just butcher a village or two on the way back?  Well, not the entire church and village.  We need at least a few survivors to escape, and tell everyone about the former priest who turned to evil, committed all these atrocities, and laughed while doing it.  I assume that might get you excommunicated.  In fact, I’d assume they’d label you far worse than a mere heretic.  They’d call you a villain, a monster, and a traitor of the highest order.  Your evil would be written in books and told in tales for centuries to come.  In time, you might even become a legend, and as mythology is want to do, your story would be exaggerated with each telling.  You might even be described as a demonic lord in a future, or some sort of foul half-fiendish monster, whose power and evil are second only to that of your master, me.”Galeron pondered all this.  His choices were hard but clear.  Either willing betray his church, or his body will be used as a living puppet, and he will be forced to betray every value he has and be vilified by the forces he regards as his heroes and by the organization he has vowed his life to serve.  It was his greatest nightmare, and he came very close to surrender…But then he began to think about the one person that would know the truth about him no matter what Khaspar forced him to do: his goddess.  She would surely know that he sacrificed his life, his honor, and everything he held dear to protect his home.  Using what little strength he had left, he looked straight at Khaspar, and spit in his face.  Khaspar, as expected, was not pleased.  “Very well.”  He looked to his bard minion, and said, “Prepare the machine.  The swarms take too long to make the transformation, and aren’t precise enough for my desire.  My personal transformation machine, however, is far more advanced.  Delay the other prisoner’s transformation for now, until we can finish things here.”  With that, Galeron was taken to his prison, for what was likely to be the last time.Meanwhile, Galeron’s last hope was drawing ever closer.  They now found themselves in a library, and honestly, except for the strange metal screens that were blocking all the book shelves, it looked reasonably normal, at least at first.  The only really unusual part of the room was a strange diorama located right in the middle.  Viett quietly told the others that it looked like a planetary model, except it wasn’t for any planets he ever heard of.  However, about the time the party noticed the diorama, the library’s guards noticed them!  A panicked scholarly-looking cultist ran to the edge of the room, while a far, far more violent-looking cultist roared and charged at the party.  From behind a bookshelf, a stone dragon rose up and roared, making Tal groan as he recognized the creature.  Finally, the room was enveloped in a cacophony of screams, as the Lipido that ran from the earlier stairway fight return for vengeance!Roryn roared and met his equally enraged opponent head on, while Nathee moved to get behind him.  Tal, however, remembered what disasters Book Wyrms can become if left alone, and he yelled to the party to help him destroy it.  He launched a sonic orb at the creature, followed almost immediately by a magic missile by Veran and a disintegration ray by Viett.  This did quite a bit of damage to the beast, yet it still lived for now.  Sigmund, as usual, fled to the corner while the fight progressed.Robin and Alkurvas moved to engage the Lipido, when suddenly, the sun of the diorama lit up, shining light on the planetary spheres around it.  Remarkably, all of the spheres were transparent, and when the sun’s light shone into them, a beam of colored light flew out from the planets.  Some of the beams were blocked by other planets, but the others flew out from the diorama and into the combat around them!  One of them, which shone through a dark planet, struck Robin, draining him of some of his health.  Another struck the enraged Roryn, and since it went through what was apparently an ice world, it seemed to freeze Roryn!Meanwhile, the monsters struck back.  The enraged cultists suddenly got even angrier, until he entered a battle frenzy, and began to tear Roryn apart.  The dragon moved up to engage the party, but made the mistake of taking some time to summon a book around it first.  A wizard appeared out of it, and tried slowing Tal down, but he was able to resist the simple magic of the book-based simulacrum.  The Lipido had more luck, and grabbed Robin with its many hook arms.Roryn and Nathee futilely continued to attack the frenzied cultist, but though it looked like the wounds they did could have killed a normal being, the cultist didn’t even seem to notice!  Meanwhile, Tal and the others “magic”-using party members finished off the dragon, and began to focus on the Lipido.  However, they dared not get too close, for that fight was right in the area of the sun’s rays, and the planets were constantly rotating, threatening the party with new rays and potentially new traps every few seconds.  Alkurvas was a little more daring, and nimbly evaded the beam as he moved in close to aid Robin.  Soon, they had finished the distracted creature once and for all, and before Robin could be harmed too badly by the creature.The same couldn’t be said by poor Roryn.  Eventually, Tal and Viett joined in on the fight against the frenzied cultist, but even though they managed to strip the flesh from his bones at places, something was still making him fight.  Finally, Viett fired a disintegration beam at the warrior, which caught him by surprise, and reduced him to nothing but dust (thank you, 3.0.)  The party then turned on the surviving scholar, only to initially lose track of where he was!  They searched the library frantically, while dodging around the beams of the sun trap’s rays, until they found a lever, which deactivated the sun when pulled.  Meanwhile, Tal managed to find the scholar, who was hiding under a magical field of invisibility near the lever, but couldn’t fool the senses of Tal’s familiar violet.  The desperate sage tried to attack the party with illusionary magic disguised as more powerful spells, but he was cut down with ease.  From here, the party explored the rest of the library and beyond it.  To the south, there was nothing more than a hallway with two more bedrooms, leaving only one more door in the room that led north.  The party steeled themselves and healed as best they could, for they could sense that Galeron’s captors were beyond this door, but they had only minutes to spare.</blockquote>

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