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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LordVyreth" data-source="post: 1954167" data-attributes="member: 9626">TIE's Trap: TIE's Final TrapIt was about this time that the party was given another present by TIE, and a welcome one at that.  It was a block of purest gold, similar to the copper they received earlier, though this was slightly smaller.  Even stranger, it looked like about 1/3 of it had been cleanly cut off, as if TIE reduced the reward it felt they earned.  It didn’t matter really, since between it and the reward from the pirates the party had easily earned over a million gold on this trip, but still they wondered what happened to the rest of the money…Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, one of the strangest but most powerful inhabitants of this plane received a very strange gift.  His name was Xalem Goodspotter, and despite a history of fighting off hordes of demons, sending Moltens and other great undead monstrosities to their final peace, and holding back entire armies of Salamanders, he carried no weapon, or any magical items or gear of any sort for that matter.  In fact, even if he had a weapon, he would refuse to use it, for he had also made a vow to do no harm to any living being.  For example, as he was on his way to meet some of the new local heroes, on the instruction of the higher powers he regularly communed with, a solid gold plate appeared out of no where in front of him, with a message addressed to him by someone named TIE, telling him he can do what he wanted with it. After confirming that the gold wasn’t recently lost or stolen and was indeed his, he took the gold, which was worth a couple hundred thousand gold and could supply the average adventurer with unimaginable artifacts, and used it to begin construction on a new building.  “Wow,” he thought, “Imagine how great this orphanage is going to be!”At the same time, another, ever stranger figure was wandering the city in search of the heroes.  Her name was Bath Qol, and she was an astral deva from the plane of Mount Celestia, or at least an apprentice astal deva who was nearing her final ascension to the ranks of the celestials.  However, before she could reach this point, her superiors had called her in for a special assignment.  “Bath, I’m afraid things have gotten worse on the Forbidden Plane,” he explained ominously, as he gestured at a globe indicating the party’s home world!  “It pertains to one of our own, or at least he belonged to our order millennia ago.  However, things have greatly changed since then.  He succumbed to the temptation of an evil god, and it corrupted him into an evil, twisted shell of his original form.  When this god’s power was lost, my former compatriot was lost as well, trapped in the labyrinthine outer planes.  However, the god is regaining its power, and my companion has been allowed to return.  I know little of his current plans, just that he is again traveling on the surface of this plane.  He must be stopped.  Now, normally I would send one of my own to do it, but because we’re talking about the Forbidden Plane here…” he hesitated, as if afraid to continue.Bath merely nodded.  “I understand. You can’t send one of your own, because who go to this plane are not likely to return.  I am not afraid to do my duty!” she shouted.  “Shall I leave immediately?”The superior angel shook his head.  “No, not alone.  Instead, you should seek help.  A party of heroes from that very plane has somehow managed to temporarily escape it, but are planning to return soon.  Their virtue has been confirmed, and we know that they are fighting the forces of evil on this plane as we speak.  You are to find them on the plane of Pyroddessy, and try to join them on their quest, until you can find our fallen enemy.”“And what should I do then?” Bath eagerly asked. “Well, I want you to assassinate him,” the solar replied.“I see…” Bath replied, with some hesitation.  It was rare that her superiors were so direct about such subjects.  They must really hate this fallen guy, she thought.And so, she was in the same city as heroes, seeking them out, when a block of gold appeared before her as well.  After reading the personalized message to her, she eagerly took it, and continued her journey.  She did have one other unusual meeting before she reached the party, however.A strange, white, metal box on wheels was roaring towards her.  It was huge, larger than the largest horse by quite a bit, in fact, but it has a very strange, pleasant call.  It was almost like it was singing as it moved, and it wasn’t moving very fast.  The box stopped next to her, and her opinion of the box’s hostility changed when she saw that it had apparently swallowed a minotaur!However, before she could attack the strange metal beast, the minotaur leaned out of the creature through some sort of glass eye socket, and in a fearless and cheerful voice said, “Ah, hello there!  You look like you’d like some ice cream!”This puzzled Bath to no end, but the minotaur was neither hostile nor apparently being harmed by the box-beast, so maybe they had some sort of symbiotic relationship.  She graciously accepted, despite not knowing what ice cream was, and the minotaur reached into the back of the creature and pulled out a strange globe of some cold frozen liquid on top of a brown cone.  Despite the fact that she might have been eating food the box creature had already eaten and that her kind don’t ever need to eat, she gave the ice cream a try.It was the best thing she’d ever tasted.  This wasn’t hard, admittedly, since she never ate food before, but it was still very good.  She turned to thank the minotaur and box beast, but before she could, the minotaur simply nodded, and the box beast rolled off and disappeared without a trace.The material planes are very strange, she thought as she walked to the inn the heroes were supposed to be staying at, while eating her ice cream.Eventually, both Xalem and Bath found the party, and after the initial confusion, both were eager to join the party, Xalem to spread his message of peace and love to other planes, and Bath to defeat her enemy.  There were some rough patches at first, especially when the naïve proudly declared herself to be an assassin to a mostly good party, but once that misunderstanding was worked out, the group accepted to duo, and then prepared to deal with TIE.  All of them (except for Xalem, of course,) purchased new magical items, and meanwhile explained the situation to their new allies.  Finally, mere seconds after they finished re-supplying, they once again were involuntarily forced form the plane, and in a new dimension.  It appeared that the only physical land in the entire dimension was a cylinder made of a strange metal, and set on its side, so the party was standing on the curved part.  After wandering for a few seconds, they quickly discovered that the entire curved part had its own specific gravity, letting them circumnavigate it safely.  Suddenly, a woman appeared before them.  She had dark brown skin, black hair, and was wearing a form of simple leather armor, which looked like it was designed for neither protection nor physical appeal, but just to make wearer comfortable.  But the most notable item the woman had was what looked like a whip that appeared to be made out of pure energy, just like the dragon form that TIE previously took had for a tale, suggesting that this was just another one of TIE’s forms.“Well, it’s about time you’re ready,” she commented as she appeared.  “It took you weeks to finish getting your equipment improved.”“Yeah, we get it, TIE.  Now, do you have anything of value to say to us or not?” Tal gruffly replied, upset that this game of hers cost him two of his friends.TIE looked hurt.  “Of course I have information for you.  And this was more than just a game, you realize.  I had to make sure you were prepared and worthy for what’s about to happen.  The task that you may be forced to do to save your world has never been done before in the long history of this dimension.”“But what is it?” Danae, who had never met TIE before, asked in a way that barely contained the millions of other questions she’d like to ask a creature of this power.“Oh, but I’m afraid I can’t say yet.  You see, there’s still one more test you must accomplish,” she said, as she rose into the air and drew her weapon.Robin and Tal nodded to each other, grimly.  They saw this coming.  “Same conditions as last time,” Tal asked.  “We don’t have to physically defeat you; we just have to weaken your shield enough to make you feel like we earned it, right?”“That’s right,” TIE replied, and Xalem sighed with relief.  “However, at this point, your group is so strong that such a fight would be a little unbalanced.  After all, six against one is hardly fair.  So I decided to bring along just a bit more support.”  As she said this, the whip’s end extended and formed a circle in the air, creating a portal.  Out of it, a massive creature crashed onto the cylinder.  The strange beast was about sixty feet tall, and it had a humanoid upper body, though its hands were closer to cat-like claws.  In addition, it had the head of an alligator, horns like some great elk or stag, and its lower body was like the body of a gigantic wolf.  The whole thing was like some sort of colossal, bestial, abominable centaur.  “This is an Instant Murdean, a particularly nasty creature from another dimension that I visited.  It was a terrifying beast there, similar to a creature from your realm that you call a Tarrasque, though they’re not unique creatures there and they are just a little bit weaker.  I’ve trained this one to assist me in combat, and you’ll have to deal with it as well as me this time!”Wong was the first to react to the dual threat.  He charged right towards the instant, tumbled expertly out of range of its snapping teeth, and pummeled its massive legs with far more force than one can expect from such a small warrior.  Meanwhile, however, TIE was almost as quick, and she spiraled her whip before slamming it into the ground.  From where it struck, waves of energy flew at the party, slamming into any of them too slow to dodge between the waves.  Xalem starting healing those who were struck by the waves, while Tal released a ray of disintegration at the giant Instant.  It shrieked as the ray created a gaping hole in its flesh, but the wound was still too small for a great beast to worry much about it.However, it was ready to retaliate.  It looked at the tiny figure punching at its legs and with incredible quickness for its size, it snatched him up in his gigantic reptilian jaws.  He began to struggle in a desperate attempt to escape the creature’s jaws while the rest of the party moved to help him.  Bath flew up to begin slashing at the creature’s massive torso with her own great sword, while Robin fired at him with magically acid-coated arrows, and Danae blasted both him and TIE with a chained bolt of lightning.  However, while all the physical attacks hurt it a little, the energy damage seemed to do more harm than good.  The acid did nothing to it and the lightning barely affected it, but the attacks apparently caused its horns, hooves, and claws to glow with electrical energy and drip acid, as if the energy got transferred to its attacks.  Meanwhile, TIE cracked her whip towards Robin, but instead of actually striking him with it, she instead wrapped it around his legs, and with no effort, raised her hand and sent Robin flying skyward!  She slammed him into the ground a few times, and then sent him flying at the airborne Bath!  Because she was too focused on the Murdean, she didn’t see her own ally being hurled towards her as a missile, and Robin slammed right into her.  Fortunately, she was quick enough to react to grab his hair before he fell back to the ground, since he didn’t get the chance to activate his magical wings yet.Meanwhile, the Murdean managed to pin Wong against the top of its mouth long enough to gulp him down, then turned its attention to Bath.  Her thick angelically armored skin, regular armor, and incredibly agility let her avoid some of the attacks, but a few managed to penetrate and give her a number of wounds.  The rest of the party continued to slash at or fire upon the creature, save Danae, who realized this would a good time to fight defensively and created a barrier of scintillating colors around her.  Meanwhile, after trying to fire at the Murdean while being held up by his hair in vain, and after hearing Bath threaten to drop him if he didn’t start flying under his own power, Robin activated his wings and got out of Bath’s way.  Meanwhile, inside the Murdean, Wong realized that this was not an ideal position to fight in, and used his ki abilities to alter his position in reality again.  This time, he decided to appear in the one place that the Murdean can’t bite him from, on the top of his head!  However, the Murdean was too busy to realize its meal just dislocated himself out of its stomach.  With a roar, it decided to trample Tal, Xalem, and Danae, who were all still on the ground and easily clumped together.  Of course, while this was a reasonably good tactic to crush the fairly weak Tal and Xalem, Danae’s prismatic sphere wasn’t a very wise thing to run over, but the Murdean didn’t appear smart enough to know that.  It stepped on Tal and Xalem, wounding both of them, but when it stepped on Danae’s sphere, ribbons of fire, acid, and electricity coursed through him, and at the same time it gave a gurgling, insane cry as the sphere shredded his sanity instantly.  Of course, all of this proved to be irrelevant an instant later (no pun intended,) as the creature vanished, forcing it to run madly throughout the Plane of Shadow until TIE bothered to pick it up.This was quite the victory for everybody in the party, save for Wong, who was still on the creature’s head.  His excited woops as he struggled to hold onto the running creature was replaced by a scream of terror as the creature vanished underneath him, and plummeted into and right through the sphere!  Fortunately, his training as a monk made him well-prepared for such an effect.  His agility let him avoid the flames and other energies that emitted as he neared it, his body has long since resisted any form of poison that could infect him, and he was able to turn his body and mind into a fortress, blocking off the other effects, and letting him land safely (if you ignore the damage a 60 foot causes,) inside the sphere.With their first threat dealt with, the party could focus on TIE herself, but even this was by no means an easy task.  For one thing, she was still in the air, and had been firing incredibly powerful orbs of energy out of her whip ever since she flung Robin into Bath.  In addition, the whip was proving a powerful defensive tool, as Robin soon learned.  It twirled around her constantly, and she was using it to block and even completely reflect his arrows.  At the same time, while she didn’t seem to have any resistance to magic, she was fast enough to completely evade the fireballs and other large spells that Tal was hurling at her.  Only Bath, with her strong melee attacks that struck her force field like thunderbolts, was doing any serious damage to her.  Wong used his ki powers to become immaterial, letting him safely pass under the sphere to help his new friend, while Xalem desperately tried to keep up with healing everybody.Danae, meanwhile, decided to try her most powerful offensive spell on her threat.  She carefully stepped out of the sphere, and while preparing to dash back in as soon as she was done, she hurled four flaming meteors at TIE.  They all went straight at her, and one was a perfect shot, but when TIE began to catch even these with her whip, the horror of what she just did struck Danae.  As did the perfectly fired meteor, which TIE caught and hurled back at her with equal accuracy!  The meteor struck and exploded right on Danae’s head, sending her flying and leaving her sprawled on the ground, slowly bleeding and dying!Xalem was horrified at how things were going, until he had an idea.  What if he could disrupt TIE’s powers, even if it meant sacrificing some of their power?  He dashed under TIE, and then created a field around the area that nullified all magic!  However, his plan’s follow was soon revealed, for while it looked like TIE’s power was slightly disrupted, she was still able to fly, project her force field, and attack with almost as much strength!  However, his friends in the area, including the magically Robin, were not so lucky.  Robin became the second party member to plummet screaming to the ground this fight as a weakened Bath nonetheless pressed on against TIE.Robin quickly dashed out of the field, and began to fire again at TIE again, even though the arrows were once again deflected.  Desperate to at least contribute something to the fight, Robin decided to draw her fire, and began taunting TIE.  TIE, however, just smiled at him and asked, “You think you’re so smart, do you?”Robin, not sure where this was leading, reluctantly replied, “Yeah, I guess so.”“Well, let’s see how smart you are,” TIE said, and fired a portal at him out of her whip.  Unable to dodge out of the way of the instantaneous attack, Robin found himself sucked into a strange labyrinth.  He began to explore this strange land while the fight raged on without him.Finally realizing his mistake, Xalem cancelled his own field, and left to tend to the dying Danae, letting Wong activate his own flying magic, and he joined a renewed Bath in attacking TIE in close combat.  Finally, their combined strength satisfied TIE, who suddenly announced a few attacks later, “Okay, that’s it.  You have proved your worth.  This battle is over.  Let me take you to more pleasant accommodations.”So saying, she created a portal, and stepped through it.  After a healed Danae retrieved Robin from his maze plane, the rest of the party followed, and found themselves in TIE’s familiar home.  She began to explain her motives for bringing the party to her a second time.“For me to explain what’s been going on, I have to tell you a little bit about the history of your dimension.  In my millions of years of studying the multiverse, I learned that there is only one true constant.  All things must, sooner or later, end.  Sometimes it ends in an apocalyptic battle, sometimes in a beautiful utopia, and sometimes things just run out of energy and fall apart, but ever world, universe, and plane must inevitably end at some point.  It has been my goal to correct this problem, but I don’t even know if it’s possibly to correct it.  However, one attempt to correct it is important in this case.  Eons ago, about when I first found your plane, I tried a new tactic to solve it.  You see, I discovered that most of these endings involve creatures growing in power until they end up destroying the world in a climactic battle or ascend into a higher being, giving them absolute control over a plane and the ability to shape it into its own personal paradise.  However, if I created a system that lets relatively low-powered creatures completely destroy the power structure every few hundred or thousand years, things will never be locked into one final fate like this.“That was my plan when I created an artifact known as the Quill of Destiny.  Every time things get to hectic in this plane, it calls a few moderately powerful heroes and villains, and lets them reorganize the world.  As a result, your world has been in existence for countless years, and has hosted everything from magical empires to psionic, alien worlds, to technological super-civilizations.  It has included humans, artificial creatures, demons, angels, other outside beings, and other creatures far weirder.  It’s a brutal system in ways, since entire civilizations have been lost to time, but at least your world has lived on.“Or, at least it has so far.  Even the Quill is imperfect, and keeping it powered for so long is starting to weaken it.  This loss of control is manifesting right now, in the form of Bas.  Normally, the lost civilizations have largely been just that.  However, from her crater, Bas has been able to discover and gain access to the powers of many different times, mixing powers that should not be mixed.  If she is not stopped, her rise to power could disrupt the flow of power the Quill has bestowed upon your world!“However, if I tried to intervene to stop her, I would be putting my power into the mix, disrupting things further.  I can only help indirectly, by aiding those who can stop her, including you.”“How can you do that?” Danae asked.TIE smiled.  “What, a solid block of gold isn’t considered helping?  But I can do more than that as well.  The most important thing I can do to help is give you these.”  As she said that, she produced a number of strange talismans, which bore a strange marking resembling a wolf with a long, monkey-like tail.  “What are these?” Robin asked.“These are device that you will soon need to gain the power you need.  Let me explain.  There’s a natural limit to what level of power mortals can gain, which varies from dimension to dimension.  In your dimension, the power limit is relatively low, and while fighting powerful creatures from other dimensions would eventually let you break that limit, it’s too long and risky a process, and requires me to intervene to unbalance things further.  The other way to break the limit is through divine power.  Gods can break it, obviously, as can avatars, the most powerful servants of gods, and creatures with a spark of the divine within them, like dragons and many of our planar monsters.  Your gods, sadly, only have the power to make their own specific avatars break that limit.  However, I can grant you the power you’ll need to reach this limit, which I believe your kind calls the “Epic” limit.  In addition, I’ll give you one more boon.  I believe you still lack knowledge on where exactly Bas is, is that correct?”After seeing their glum nods, TIE continued, “As I thought.  Well, I can’t help you there directly, but I can give you an item that lets you find one of her most powerful servants, the Strife Masters, at any time, even when they’re within the fields of divine protection.  Of course, I recommend you use it to wait until they’re on the move, since if they’re in a place that’s protected, they could either be with Bas, or they could be in their sect’s temple or some other place that Bas has a personal interest in.  Once you catch one on the move, you can capture him or her, and force the information about Bas out of him or her.  All I need is to know which one you want to track.”After some discussion and a quick explanation for Bath and Xalem about who the Strife Masters are, Tal responds to TIE, “I think we’ll go with the Blade of Minds.  We killed the Nightmare Prince and essentially eliminated the Lady of Blood, and we don’t know their replacements yet.  And we’d rather not go after Phellus Mune at the moment.  Plus, the Blade of Minds is supposed to be the only Strife Master who isn’t evil.  She might be easier to persuade than the others.”TIE nodded, and produced a strange magical device.  “And now, if you’re ready, I can take you back to my home on your world.  You can go home from there, or visit Dragovigis if you wish.  After all, you might want to hurry.”Tal had to choke back a sob after hearing the name of the city he unintentionally betrayed, but Danae had bigger concerns.  “Um, wait, why should we hurry?”“Well, because it’s currently being attacked by Bas’ forces,” TIE said, almost casually.  “They’ll probably have the place destroyed in a matter of hours.”OOC Notes:  That fight with TIE was a lot better, in my opinion, than the last one.  The defense-heavy TIE lasted a lot longer than the more offense-based dragon form.  This was also a big exposition-heavy game, especially with two character introductions.  I especially liked Bath’s, who some of you might recognize as being loosely based on Flonne from the PS2 game Disgaea.  The Minotaur Driving An Ice Cream Truck, however, is my own creation, and one of my favorite running jokes!</blockquote>

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