the Jester
Legend
The Seventh Arrow of Law Revealed!!
Marius the Chronomancer is one of the most dangerous Arrows of Law. Our heroes have been both looking forward to facing him (for, on the whole, they have a longstanding antipathy with him) and dreading it (for fear of his power).
Now, suddenly, there are six of him all around them.
Over the telepathic bond, Orbius says the words that everyone has feared: They’re simulacra!
The worst possibility before them is that Marius has somehow co-opted his super powered simulacra and gotten six of them to join him in wiping the party out. Orbius shudders as he considers the implications of their arrival.
Nothing good, he thinks, is going to come of this.
Of all the party members, the one who reacts the quickest is Zyltha, but her reaction is subtle. She readies a tonguetwister to disrupt the first spell that a Marius tries to cast. She has never fought him before, but she certainly has heard enough from her friends to realize the danger that he represents.
“You fools!” one of the Marii cries. “You have brought ruin upon yourselves and all you hold dear! As soon as you arrived, we began to attack your homes and loved ones! Var, Brelana, your halfling friends- all of them! And you!” He points an accusing finger at Sybele. “You have doomed Jezebel!”
“Uh-oh,” she stammers in reply.
That one is not a simulacrum, Orbius amends telepathically.
Uh-oh, Sybele groans again. My daughter.
With that, the taunting Marius begins casting a spell. Zyltha uses her tonguetwister to try to trip him up, but he sneers and unleashes a green ray at Blazier, utterly disintegrating him!* The sorcerer is blasted into a few flakes of dust!
Oh crap, someone says over the link, but Marius has barely started, as he unleashes a prismatic spray that hits Mabrack, Orbius, Pan Lo, Wankerman and one of the other Marii. Most of them are struck by one beam or another, but Pan Lo evades the one that lances towards him, and Zyltha and Mabrack manage to resist the effects of the rays seeking them. Then a volley of quickened magic missiles blasts into Zyltha. Then he fires another disintegrate, this time at Zyltha, but she twists out of the way and he misses. The green blast hits the wall behind her, blowing a hole in it.
“Dexter’s eyes!” swears Thrush. “We have to stop these guys fast!” He steps up and, thanks to the elasticity Orbius early cast upon him, he manages to unleash a full attack on one of the Marius simulacra, and in a shower of snow he slays it. He isn’t called the foremost swordsman of his age for nothing, and he cleaves into another, damaging it pretty badly.
Orbius smiles ironically as he casts Marius’ deconstruction at one of the undamaged simulacra. It’s almost poetic, using Marius’ own custom spells against him; but Orbius’ smile vanishes when the deconstruction rebounds off the simulacrum’s spell turning.
Then, the five simulacra pull out scrolls of Mordenkainen’s disjunction and read them. As soon as the quickest simulacrum completes its reading, the other scrolls, as well as all of the simulacra themselves, are instantly disjoined and destroyed. There is a splattering of snow, and then there is only one mocking Marius. In fact, Marius, Chakar, Sybele and Thrush are outside of the area of the Mordenkainen’s disjunction, but everyone else feels the powerful anti-magic wash over them. Orbius and Lester both have contingencies in place, and antimagic fields spring into being about them. As for the others, most of their items survive, but suddenly all of their buffs and preparatory magic is gone.
As Lester and Mabrack move in grimly towards Marius, with Mabrack returning to his normal size as he enters the field surrounding Lester,, a secret door opens and a group of Galadorian clerics step through from behind the party. Meanwhile, Chakar ponders for only a moment. This fight is useless, he realizes. Our goal is to despoil the pool of Law within this place. We must not waste our time with this battle. We must seek this pool! He springs to a nearby door and opens it.
Beyond it, a serene-looking fellow sits cross-legged in mid-air. He wears a simple cloak and slippers, with a coarse cap on his head.
Chakar charges in, striking with a pain touch, and hits. The levitating monk opens his eyes and puts his legs down on the ground, then bows to Chakar. Chakar bows back. They fall into fighting stances.
“I am Ah-Koon, Guardian of the Chair,” announces Chakar’s foe.
“I am Chakar Clanguard,” the dwarven monk replies.
They dance.
***
Nearby
Veil laughs, a throaty laugh, as he examines the dark skin of his six-fingered hands. It is a simple matter to free himself of the shackles, now; they were not expecting to have to hold him.
The door out. Before he opens it, he summons Zurgle. Surprised to see his master here, and acutely uncomfortable at being in the Bastion of Order, the balor bows deeply. “My Lord! How may I serve?” he rumbles
Veil sneers. “Open that door. But carefully. Be ready.”
The balor grins nastily. Of course, My Lord, it grates telepathically.
Of course! Veil thinks. The telepathic bond! I can tell the others what I’ve discovered... but should I? She pauses for a moment, thinking. He’ll know if I tell them over the link. And what will happen once they know who the seventh Arrow will be? It might even drive them to despair...
Then he reasserts himself, and Veil draws his wavy-bladed, acid-dripping sword from the darkness of his essence. The door flies open, and a strange, perfectly symmetrical blob with various geometric shapes marching in perfect lines within it. This, though Veil does not know it, is the Wrath of Law.
***
Nearer Still
One of the Galadorian clerics who just arrived, Gerontius realizes with a chill, is Prayzose. “Hey guys, watch out!” he cries. But he’s worried about his people- and using a stone of sending, he issues a warning and a “how are things?” to the ambitious halfling leader that the party had met previously.
Marius is sidestepping away, using disintegrates and quickened magic missiles to good effect. A quadruple helping of order’s wrath comes from Prayzose’s accompanying priests, while the Emperor and High Priest of Galador himself casts some kind of epic spell on Sybele that her mind blank protects her against. “Surrender!” he cries. “I do not want to have to slay you!”
And then a firestorm followed by a quickened empowered blade barrier come down, just to make a point. And the point, truly, is made.
“What about our homes?” cries Alcar. I need time to issue a sending to my temple on Gorel, he thinks.
***
The Halls of Healing, Var
“What the hell was that?” Horbin exclaims aloud, looking up.
Horbin! suddenly comes over the telepathic bond, and the bishop’s blood runs cold. Look out! They’re going to attack Var!
“Oh no,” Horbin whispers, walking to the window, full of trepidation.
Fires are burning in Var. There are troops- many troops- in the city. Forinthian troops. Worse yet, there are gleaming metal insects: clockwork horrors. They are moving in a long wedge like ants. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. Rage kindles in Horbin’s heart. “No!” he cries. He hurries from his office, heading towards the outside, but as he reaches the foyer an acolyte intercepts him. “My lord, there are wounded! They are being told to come here for healing!”
Horbin’s fists clench. He has been maneuvered quite nicely. I can’t fight Forinthian soldiers, he agonizes. I can’t let this stand! He issues a sending to Prayzose: What are you doing? Call your dogs off! This cannot stand!
The reply makes him grim. Tell your friends to surrender, and they- and Var- will be spared.
“The wounded, my lord?”
“Show me to them,” Horbin groans.
***
The Bastion of Order
Ah-Koon is amazing. He seems to slide all over the battlefield, moving without hindrance much further than even seems possible. His blows come lightning-fast and his technique is fabulous. He has many tricks up his sleeve, from rapid stunning to freezing the lifeblood. Technically, he’s better in his style than Chakar is in his. But Chakar is not alone; Alcar and Wankerman back him up in his battle. Alcar breaks off, though, to face Prayzose. And Pan Lo? Pan Lo critiques his every move. “Come on, now, Chakar, you move like an old woman! You can do better than that! You call that a flurry of blows? You must demonstrate more discipline if I am to train you!”
Alcar frowns. “I won’t fight you,” he declares to Prayzose. Instead, he casts a miracle, and Prayzose and his retinue vanish.
“That probably won’t keep him gone for more than a few seconds,” warns the Angel of Food.
Baron Lillamere orders Hyliss to Brelana to check out the situation. His cohort greater teleports away to his death and Lillamere turns his attention to the task at hand, but a glance at his friends reveals that their morale is starting to crumble. Prayzose! And Marius! If there is a worse possible combination, Lillamere can’t think of what it might be!
Wankerman manages to pull a bullywug breakdance on Ah-Koon, finishing him off. “The next time my apprentice is in a duel, do not interfere!” barks Pan Lo.
Chakar is wasting no time, springing for the door that Prayzose and his allies came out of. Looking into the chamber, he recoils from a symbol of insanity, but his mind blank (thankfully, he was outside of the disjunction and he still has it!) protects him. He abundant steps through the wall- and finds himself fighting madly against a strange perfect ooze. And he is fighting beside a balor and Graz’zt.
Chakar is thoroughly nonplussed, moreso when the demon prince winks at him. But the Wrath of Law is powerful enough to stand up to them all, at least for the moment.
Veil reaches a decision. I have to tell them, she realizes. They have a right to know. And he’s going to know that they know sooner or later anyway.[/i]
Over the telepathic bond, which (unbeknownst to Veil) only a few of our present heroes now share (along with Horbin and Inoke) thanks to the disjunction, Veil cries out, The Seventh Arrow is INOKE!!!
Next Time: What now???
*This was the first action of the game. Critical hit on a quickened disintegrate with a failed saving throw. In our epic game, one of the table rules is that if you don’t roll all the dice on a given roll at once, I’ll make fun of you (after all, this is an EPIC game, right??) Ouch. I had to roll 80d6. Poor Blaze.
Marius the Chronomancer is one of the most dangerous Arrows of Law. Our heroes have been both looking forward to facing him (for, on the whole, they have a longstanding antipathy with him) and dreading it (for fear of his power).
Now, suddenly, there are six of him all around them.
Over the telepathic bond, Orbius says the words that everyone has feared: They’re simulacra!
The worst possibility before them is that Marius has somehow co-opted his super powered simulacra and gotten six of them to join him in wiping the party out. Orbius shudders as he considers the implications of their arrival.
Nothing good, he thinks, is going to come of this.
Of all the party members, the one who reacts the quickest is Zyltha, but her reaction is subtle. She readies a tonguetwister to disrupt the first spell that a Marius tries to cast. She has never fought him before, but she certainly has heard enough from her friends to realize the danger that he represents.
“You fools!” one of the Marii cries. “You have brought ruin upon yourselves and all you hold dear! As soon as you arrived, we began to attack your homes and loved ones! Var, Brelana, your halfling friends- all of them! And you!” He points an accusing finger at Sybele. “You have doomed Jezebel!”
“Uh-oh,” she stammers in reply.
That one is not a simulacrum, Orbius amends telepathically.
Uh-oh, Sybele groans again. My daughter.
With that, the taunting Marius begins casting a spell. Zyltha uses her tonguetwister to try to trip him up, but he sneers and unleashes a green ray at Blazier, utterly disintegrating him!* The sorcerer is blasted into a few flakes of dust!
Oh crap, someone says over the link, but Marius has barely started, as he unleashes a prismatic spray that hits Mabrack, Orbius, Pan Lo, Wankerman and one of the other Marii. Most of them are struck by one beam or another, but Pan Lo evades the one that lances towards him, and Zyltha and Mabrack manage to resist the effects of the rays seeking them. Then a volley of quickened magic missiles blasts into Zyltha. Then he fires another disintegrate, this time at Zyltha, but she twists out of the way and he misses. The green blast hits the wall behind her, blowing a hole in it.
“Dexter’s eyes!” swears Thrush. “We have to stop these guys fast!” He steps up and, thanks to the elasticity Orbius early cast upon him, he manages to unleash a full attack on one of the Marius simulacra, and in a shower of snow he slays it. He isn’t called the foremost swordsman of his age for nothing, and he cleaves into another, damaging it pretty badly.
Orbius smiles ironically as he casts Marius’ deconstruction at one of the undamaged simulacra. It’s almost poetic, using Marius’ own custom spells against him; but Orbius’ smile vanishes when the deconstruction rebounds off the simulacrum’s spell turning.
Then, the five simulacra pull out scrolls of Mordenkainen’s disjunction and read them. As soon as the quickest simulacrum completes its reading, the other scrolls, as well as all of the simulacra themselves, are instantly disjoined and destroyed. There is a splattering of snow, and then there is only one mocking Marius. In fact, Marius, Chakar, Sybele and Thrush are outside of the area of the Mordenkainen’s disjunction, but everyone else feels the powerful anti-magic wash over them. Orbius and Lester both have contingencies in place, and antimagic fields spring into being about them. As for the others, most of their items survive, but suddenly all of their buffs and preparatory magic is gone.
As Lester and Mabrack move in grimly towards Marius, with Mabrack returning to his normal size as he enters the field surrounding Lester,, a secret door opens and a group of Galadorian clerics step through from behind the party. Meanwhile, Chakar ponders for only a moment. This fight is useless, he realizes. Our goal is to despoil the pool of Law within this place. We must not waste our time with this battle. We must seek this pool! He springs to a nearby door and opens it.
Beyond it, a serene-looking fellow sits cross-legged in mid-air. He wears a simple cloak and slippers, with a coarse cap on his head.
Chakar charges in, striking with a pain touch, and hits. The levitating monk opens his eyes and puts his legs down on the ground, then bows to Chakar. Chakar bows back. They fall into fighting stances.
“I am Ah-Koon, Guardian of the Chair,” announces Chakar’s foe.
“I am Chakar Clanguard,” the dwarven monk replies.
They dance.
***
Nearby
Veil laughs, a throaty laugh, as he examines the dark skin of his six-fingered hands. It is a simple matter to free himself of the shackles, now; they were not expecting to have to hold him.
The door out. Before he opens it, he summons Zurgle. Surprised to see his master here, and acutely uncomfortable at being in the Bastion of Order, the balor bows deeply. “My Lord! How may I serve?” he rumbles
Veil sneers. “Open that door. But carefully. Be ready.”
The balor grins nastily. Of course, My Lord, it grates telepathically.
Of course! Veil thinks. The telepathic bond! I can tell the others what I’ve discovered... but should I? She pauses for a moment, thinking. He’ll know if I tell them over the link. And what will happen once they know who the seventh Arrow will be? It might even drive them to despair...
Then he reasserts himself, and Veil draws his wavy-bladed, acid-dripping sword from the darkness of his essence. The door flies open, and a strange, perfectly symmetrical blob with various geometric shapes marching in perfect lines within it. This, though Veil does not know it, is the Wrath of Law.
***
Nearer Still
One of the Galadorian clerics who just arrived, Gerontius realizes with a chill, is Prayzose. “Hey guys, watch out!” he cries. But he’s worried about his people- and using a stone of sending, he issues a warning and a “how are things?” to the ambitious halfling leader that the party had met previously.
Marius is sidestepping away, using disintegrates and quickened magic missiles to good effect. A quadruple helping of order’s wrath comes from Prayzose’s accompanying priests, while the Emperor and High Priest of Galador himself casts some kind of epic spell on Sybele that her mind blank protects her against. “Surrender!” he cries. “I do not want to have to slay you!”
And then a firestorm followed by a quickened empowered blade barrier come down, just to make a point. And the point, truly, is made.
“What about our homes?” cries Alcar. I need time to issue a sending to my temple on Gorel, he thinks.
***
The Halls of Healing, Var
“What the hell was that?” Horbin exclaims aloud, looking up.
Horbin! suddenly comes over the telepathic bond, and the bishop’s blood runs cold. Look out! They’re going to attack Var!
“Oh no,” Horbin whispers, walking to the window, full of trepidation.
Fires are burning in Var. There are troops- many troops- in the city. Forinthian troops. Worse yet, there are gleaming metal insects: clockwork horrors. They are moving in a long wedge like ants. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. Rage kindles in Horbin’s heart. “No!” he cries. He hurries from his office, heading towards the outside, but as he reaches the foyer an acolyte intercepts him. “My lord, there are wounded! They are being told to come here for healing!”
Horbin’s fists clench. He has been maneuvered quite nicely. I can’t fight Forinthian soldiers, he agonizes. I can’t let this stand! He issues a sending to Prayzose: What are you doing? Call your dogs off! This cannot stand!
The reply makes him grim. Tell your friends to surrender, and they- and Var- will be spared.
“The wounded, my lord?”
“Show me to them,” Horbin groans.
***
The Bastion of Order
Ah-Koon is amazing. He seems to slide all over the battlefield, moving without hindrance much further than even seems possible. His blows come lightning-fast and his technique is fabulous. He has many tricks up his sleeve, from rapid stunning to freezing the lifeblood. Technically, he’s better in his style than Chakar is in his. But Chakar is not alone; Alcar and Wankerman back him up in his battle. Alcar breaks off, though, to face Prayzose. And Pan Lo? Pan Lo critiques his every move. “Come on, now, Chakar, you move like an old woman! You can do better than that! You call that a flurry of blows? You must demonstrate more discipline if I am to train you!”
Alcar frowns. “I won’t fight you,” he declares to Prayzose. Instead, he casts a miracle, and Prayzose and his retinue vanish.
“That probably won’t keep him gone for more than a few seconds,” warns the Angel of Food.
Baron Lillamere orders Hyliss to Brelana to check out the situation. His cohort greater teleports away to his death and Lillamere turns his attention to the task at hand, but a glance at his friends reveals that their morale is starting to crumble. Prayzose! And Marius! If there is a worse possible combination, Lillamere can’t think of what it might be!
Wankerman manages to pull a bullywug breakdance on Ah-Koon, finishing him off. “The next time my apprentice is in a duel, do not interfere!” barks Pan Lo.
Chakar is wasting no time, springing for the door that Prayzose and his allies came out of. Looking into the chamber, he recoils from a symbol of insanity, but his mind blank (thankfully, he was outside of the disjunction and he still has it!) protects him. He abundant steps through the wall- and finds himself fighting madly against a strange perfect ooze. And he is fighting beside a balor and Graz’zt.
Chakar is thoroughly nonplussed, moreso when the demon prince winks at him. But the Wrath of Law is powerful enough to stand up to them all, at least for the moment.
Veil reaches a decision. I have to tell them, she realizes. They have a right to know. And he’s going to know that they know sooner or later anyway.[/i]
Over the telepathic bond, which (unbeknownst to Veil) only a few of our present heroes now share (along with Horbin and Inoke) thanks to the disjunction, Veil cries out, The Seventh Arrow is INOKE!!!
Next Time: What now???
*This was the first action of the game. Critical hit on a quickened disintegrate with a failed saving throw. In our epic game, one of the table rules is that if you don’t roll all the dice on a given roll at once, I’ll make fun of you (after all, this is an EPIC game, right??) Ouch. I had to roll 80d6. Poor Blaze.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
