the Jester
Legend
Glaisig's Distraction
8/8/371 O.L.G., Var: Twenty-Nine Days Ago
Inoke is walking towards the castle, whistling to himself, after a visit to Sigil. He is full, having just eaten a nice meal served up at the party’s favorite local watering hole, which Lester had long ago introduced them to.
Then he feels a metaphysical sensation like the brushing of lips across his ear. He recognizes it and composes his mind: someone is issuing him a sending.
The words come, and he instantly recognizes the voice: Prayzose, God-Emperor of Forinthia, Arrow of Law and descendant of Dexter. One of the party’s adversaries, if not actual enemies.
Inoke, it’s Prayzose. I would like to meet with you. If you agree, open your mind to me and I will bring you here.
Inoke hesitates for an instant. Prayzose could be trying to trick him, to get him to lower his guard. Yet- Prayzose is an honorable man, a sometimes ally, and is staunchly both Lawful and, perhaps more importantly, Good.
He makes his decision. Okay, Inoke replies, his words carried back to the God-Emperor by the spell, give me ten minutes.
Quickly, Inoke initiates many defensive psionic powers. Then he writes a brief letter to Horbin the Holy, dispatching it via messenger to be delivered if he fails to return shortly. Then he breathes deeply, stills his mind and waits.
The touch of Prayzose’s powerful mind on his is gentle, probing; and a moment later the warrior feels a sudden psychic snap of power, and he is elsewhere.
This must be the Imperial Palace, thinks Inoke in wonder.
The hall he is in has two rows of pillar, lined in gilt, running down its long axis. Off to either side are couches, writing tables, ottomans and other comfortable furnishings. The walls are painted with frescoes depicting the glory of Galador and Forinthia, the power and magnificent of past emperors and high priests, the presence and virtues of the saints and scenes of the fields of Heaven. Prayzose stands before him, his body sheathed in a gentle glow. A friendly smile is on his face. “I wasn’t sure that you would be willing to come,” he says. “Welcome.” The Emperor’s elite guards stand at various points around the room.
“Thank you,” Inoke answers warily. No one is moving to threaten him, but he feels very out of place. He is all too aware that Prayzose has many allies that would love to see the warmind and his friends destroyed. He decides to get right to the point. “Did you want something in particular?”
“Yes, I want to make you an offer. Please,” the God-Emperor hurries, before Inoke can interject, “hear me out. I am not going to ask you to do anything against your morals.”
“I will not betray my friends,” Inoke growls.
“I will not ask you to. Please, hear me out.”
Inoke nods. “Very well.”
Prayzose begins walking towards a door. “Please, join me for dinner. We can talk privately while we eat.” Reluctantly, suspiciously, Inoke follows him.
Dinner is lovely, with many courses. Many of the items served, surprisingly enough, are of the sort that Inoke might have eaten at home on the Parrot Isles. He glances at Prayzose with respect. The man knows how to make an impression, certainly. And he has proven his moral integrity in the past. Still, the warmind is very suspicious.
True to his word, Prayzose dismisses his servants and keeps only a handful of his most trusted guards around him while they eat. There are a few minutes of small talk as the meal begins. Inoke has just begun to wonder when the man will get to the point, and then Emperor Prayzose looks Inoke in the eye and, with a smile, says, “Well, let’s get down to it, shall we?
“The reason I asked you here, Inoke, is to talk about the state of affairs between you and your friends and the forces of Law. You are Lawful yourself; surely you can recognize the benefits of an orderly, peaceful society. Your friends and you, by fighting Law, are preventing the formation of such a society. With organization, we can build roads; by working together, we can use those roads to send food from an area with a surplus to an area suffering from famine. We can work together to defend humanity from both monsters and evil men. We can protect society as a whole, whereas in an anarchy, with every man and woman working alone for his or her own benefit, there will be rape, murder and theft running rampant. You and I both have an interest in preventing that. We both care about people. We both want to protect the weak.”
Inoke replies, “You say that you would work together with me to protect people from monsters and evil men, but you work with evil men. And worse! Look at the creatures you have allied with as an Arrow of Law- Dekrasode, Marius, even Asmodeus!”
“Yes.” Prayzose nods. “There must be a balance on the councils of Law. They predated me as Arrows. When they approached me, Asmodeus made a very cunning appeal to me. I could become an Arrow, and attempt to balance the forces of Law towards Good- for, bear in mind, there were three evil Arrows, and no good ones appointed as yet- or I could pass up the opportunity and allow them to perhaps appoint another evil one. And surely you understand, I cannot support Chaos.”
Reluctantly, Inoke nods.
“I am making that same proposal to you,” Prayzose continues. “Inoke, you have slain Asmodeus. You have worked against the Arrows in the past, but I believe that you are a reasonable man, and you can see how positive of an influence you could be. I want you to become the seventh Arrow of Law.”
Inoke’s jaw drops.
After a moment, he says, “I told you, I will not betray my friends.”
“I am not asking you to. Bring them over to us if you can, but I do not think you can. But I will not ask you to fight them.” His blue eyes bore into Inoke’s, and the warmind realizes just how charismatic Prayzose is.* “I give you my word on that, and violating that would not be very Lawful of me, would it?”
“True... but desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“If we use the tactics of Chaos against itself, we will win no battle for Law,” Prayzose predicts.
Inoke nods. “Very well, I believe you. But why should I accept your offer? I admit it has a certain appeal...”
“Do not accept it for what it gives you; accept it for what you can do with it. Together, we can win the Great War of Ethics. We can end this destructive conflict. We can institute a great peace, and ensure that everyone is equal. We can eliminate poverty and starvation. I hope for a reign of Law and Good, and that means peace, hope and plenty.”
“Who are the Arrows?” asks Inoke.
“Myself, Marius, Dekrasode, Cluma, Lord Alyth and the Judge of Worlds. And, of course, Asmodeus was one of us, until you slew him.” He smiles. “For which, frankly, I thank you.”
Inoke smirks. “You’re welcome. I struck the blow.”
Prayzose nods. “I know. As I said, thank you.”
“Why me?”
“Because you are mighty enough to take his place. Because you are a strong force of Law, despite your opposition to it. And because I believe that you can be trusted to do the right thing.”
His words are very persuasive, Inoke thinks. But he is conflicted. There is no way that the others would understand, if I said yes... but we could do so much good! Aargh!
“What are the consequences,” Inoke wonders, “of there being only six Arrows?”
“None, really,” Prayzose shrugs. “Only since my appointment has the roster of the Arrows been full. Before that, it had been thousands of years.”
“I need a little time to think about this,” Inoke says.
“Of course,” Prayzose replies. “But you must answer before I send you home.”
“If I refuse, will you attack me?” inquires Inoke frankly.
“Of course not!” Prayzose exclaims. “I promise you, I brought you here only to talk. I did not poison your food, I am not tampering with your mind, and I am not using any magic. I want to persuade you, Inoke, because I am on the right side, and you should be too. I hope to show you that I’m right, and to persuade you to join me, but I have no intention of forcing you in any way. And if you do not agree with me, that together we can do much for our people, for all of the people, and if you decline, whoever takes your place will be probably less good and less capable than you- then decline my offer. But I hope you can see how much sense it makes, how much good we can do together. You must do what you feel is right.”
The warmind nods. He schisms, splitting his mind in two, and begins talking it over with himself: It’s the right thing to do.
But my friends will hate me!
The Mace of St. John would say that there is no choice.
This could be a trick.
It’s Prayzose- he’s not going to try to trick us when he invites us over for dinner and diplomacy. He might feed us some misinformation, but I doubt whether he’d out-and-out lie, either.
If I do this, my friends will never forgive me.
Maybe not. But is friendship more important than what is right?
Maybe they’ll understand in time. If I ever have a chance to explain it to them...
Well, Prayzose promised that he wouldn’t try to get us to fight them.
I don’t want to fight them, but they might attack me. We might not have a choice.
Prayzose is right: I must do what I feel is right.
“You have posed a difficult choice for me,” Inoke sighs. “It is a difficult decision. But I accept.”
Prayzose smiles broadly. “Excellent!” he cries. “Then we will invest you as soon as possible!”
“When is that?”
“Seven times seven days,” Prayzose answers. “Next month, on the 27th.”
***
Now- the ruins of the Bastion of Law
Lillamere casts Marius’ double actions and Mordenkainen’s disjunction in quick succession. To his shock, the Arrows of Law are unaffected by the disjunction!
“What the hell?” he exclaims.
Marius grins. “It worked!” he crows, and then suddenly there are three great whirling glittering masses of temporal sand blasting out towards our heroes.
“Chronal repeaters!” cries Alcar.
Graz’zt/Veil gestures at our Marius, trying to trap the soul on him, but the chronomancer is prepared with spell turning. Graz’zt suddenly finds himself trying to trap his own soul- or is it Veil’s? For a moment, the split-minded being struggles with confusion. The six-fingered hand spiked to the boss of his/her shield writhes angrily. But then Veil throws it off, momentarily remembering who she is, and Graz’zt’s spell resistance throws off the magical attack.
The chronal repeater sweep in. One slashes at JJ with its forceful wind and cutting blasts of sand from the plane of Time. The son of Jibber screeches and cowers, letting his stoneskin do the bulk of his defensive work for him. Another of the repeaters crashes into Baron Lillamere with such force that the sorcerer is knocked back and stunned! The Judge of Worlds begins attacking the hapless argent savant, slamming him with spear-arms and opening up with slugthrowers. Blow after blow lands, and blood flies as Lillamere gets hammered again and again!
Gerontius cries out as another attack swarm engulfs him- tiny clockwork horrors, mere specks to the eye, yet packing considerable electrical power! His hair stands on end as they shock and bite him, and bloody pinpricks sprout all over his body. “Yowch!” he cries.
Blazier launches a fireball and takes out one of the guards that has accompanied Prayzose. But the Arrows have the advantage, clearly, and begin to press it.
Let’s get out of here, guys! Sybele screams over the telepathic link. Aloud, to the Arrows of Law, she cries, “Those big bad apocalypse guys are free! Worry about them, not us!” Then she bends reality to ape a plane shift, and our heroes vanish, reappearing in the midst of a rainbow on Limbo.
“You really like Limbo, don’t you?” JJ asks. He grins; he really likes Limbo, too.
After all, his For that matter, so does Wankerman, who has spend plenty of time here in his days with the Xaositechts. Sybele just grins.
What now? asks Thrush over the link.
Darkhold! suggest Gerontius.
Look! Wankerman points. In the distance, slender metal needles riding columns of fire are approaching. More of Master Control’s missiles!
“Let’s go!” cries Baron Lillamere, who has recovered from being stunned. The party clusters around, and they superior teleport to just outside where they previously found the entrance to Darkhold.
It’s not there.
Our heroes take a few quick moments to try to look for it, but Thrush shouts a warning: “More missiles!”
How the hell are they finding us? wonders Lester. Aren’t we all mind blanked?
They must have something on us, Lillamere realizes as the party plane shifts back to Cydra. I bet they have some kind of ultra tiny device that they have planted on us or something- maybe something those swarms of tiny horrors carried or something!**
The party glances around. They are on a rocky coast, with waves crashing in only about ten feet below them on the beach. Where to now? asks Gerontius telepathically.
Back to the Bastion! JJ cries enthusiastically. Hopefully, the Arrows have had enough time to start pursuing us, and they haven’t left anything there to oppose us!
Chakar snorts. I call that wishful thinking, he sends wryly over the link.
More missiles! shouts Alcar telepathically. This time, while the party spends a moment or two adding more buffs to their current ones, Lester flies up and lets the missiles hit him to buy the party a few moments. The elementalist grits his teeth and cries out as shrapnel and flames engulf him, but he is perhaps the toughest mortal alive,*** and he comes back brushing off bits of metal and patting out small fires from his body.
Then another superior teleport brings the party back to the Pool of Law.
Wishful thinking indeed.
The Arrows are there; their guardians and servants are there. Inoke is there. Prayzose, the Judge, Marius- they have all waited.
And, unfortunately for them, our heroes have the total drop on them.****
Lester hurls a piece of an obelisk of Na’Rat into the Pool of Law with perfect accuracy. Strange, multihued smoke starts to rise. The Pool begins to churn and bubble and swirl.
Orbius speaks a word, and a contingency goes off, triggering an instantaneous contact other plane. He asks only two questions:
With whom am I speaking? He sees an image of a black sword and a black shield.
Will the piece of the obelisk destroy the Pool of Law? Yes? There is a faintly uncertain tone to the answer.
We’d best be sure, the Eye tells JJ telepathically. JJ cackles with glee as he springs towards the pool, the strap-on phallus of Chaos that Froth crafted him tied firmly round his waist. His mind flexes and an energy wave sweeps over the enemy, damaging all of them.
And then, seeing that this is it, this is the final conflict, that there will be no more running and dodging and plane shifting away, Alcar shouts, “GLAISIG, GLAISIG, GLAISIG!!!”
There is a huge explosion of flame and brimstone. A great blast of furnace-like heat puffs up from everywhere, and suddenly a gargantuan form seems to grow up from the ground. There is an earth-splitting roar voiced from multiple throats. A thick smell, reptilian yet not a reptile, fills the air.
“Oh my gods,” breathes Blazier, “Glaisig’s distraction is Tiamat!!”
Next Time: The next post FINISHES THE BATTLE AT LAST!!!
*To answer that question, I will say “45.”
**This, by the way, was a damn fine guess.
***Unwounded Lester has over 500 hp, and he has fast healing as well.
****In one of the worst bits of dice luck I have ever had, both Marius and Prayzose fumbled their initiative rolls.
8/8/371 O.L.G., Var: Twenty-Nine Days Ago
Inoke is walking towards the castle, whistling to himself, after a visit to Sigil. He is full, having just eaten a nice meal served up at the party’s favorite local watering hole, which Lester had long ago introduced them to.
Then he feels a metaphysical sensation like the brushing of lips across his ear. He recognizes it and composes his mind: someone is issuing him a sending.
The words come, and he instantly recognizes the voice: Prayzose, God-Emperor of Forinthia, Arrow of Law and descendant of Dexter. One of the party’s adversaries, if not actual enemies.
Inoke, it’s Prayzose. I would like to meet with you. If you agree, open your mind to me and I will bring you here.
Inoke hesitates for an instant. Prayzose could be trying to trick him, to get him to lower his guard. Yet- Prayzose is an honorable man, a sometimes ally, and is staunchly both Lawful and, perhaps more importantly, Good.
He makes his decision. Okay, Inoke replies, his words carried back to the God-Emperor by the spell, give me ten minutes.
Quickly, Inoke initiates many defensive psionic powers. Then he writes a brief letter to Horbin the Holy, dispatching it via messenger to be delivered if he fails to return shortly. Then he breathes deeply, stills his mind and waits.
The touch of Prayzose’s powerful mind on his is gentle, probing; and a moment later the warrior feels a sudden psychic snap of power, and he is elsewhere.
This must be the Imperial Palace, thinks Inoke in wonder.
The hall he is in has two rows of pillar, lined in gilt, running down its long axis. Off to either side are couches, writing tables, ottomans and other comfortable furnishings. The walls are painted with frescoes depicting the glory of Galador and Forinthia, the power and magnificent of past emperors and high priests, the presence and virtues of the saints and scenes of the fields of Heaven. Prayzose stands before him, his body sheathed in a gentle glow. A friendly smile is on his face. “I wasn’t sure that you would be willing to come,” he says. “Welcome.” The Emperor’s elite guards stand at various points around the room.
“Thank you,” Inoke answers warily. No one is moving to threaten him, but he feels very out of place. He is all too aware that Prayzose has many allies that would love to see the warmind and his friends destroyed. He decides to get right to the point. “Did you want something in particular?”
“Yes, I want to make you an offer. Please,” the God-Emperor hurries, before Inoke can interject, “hear me out. I am not going to ask you to do anything against your morals.”
“I will not betray my friends,” Inoke growls.
“I will not ask you to. Please, hear me out.”
Inoke nods. “Very well.”
Prayzose begins walking towards a door. “Please, join me for dinner. We can talk privately while we eat.” Reluctantly, suspiciously, Inoke follows him.
Dinner is lovely, with many courses. Many of the items served, surprisingly enough, are of the sort that Inoke might have eaten at home on the Parrot Isles. He glances at Prayzose with respect. The man knows how to make an impression, certainly. And he has proven his moral integrity in the past. Still, the warmind is very suspicious.
True to his word, Prayzose dismisses his servants and keeps only a handful of his most trusted guards around him while they eat. There are a few minutes of small talk as the meal begins. Inoke has just begun to wonder when the man will get to the point, and then Emperor Prayzose looks Inoke in the eye and, with a smile, says, “Well, let’s get down to it, shall we?
“The reason I asked you here, Inoke, is to talk about the state of affairs between you and your friends and the forces of Law. You are Lawful yourself; surely you can recognize the benefits of an orderly, peaceful society. Your friends and you, by fighting Law, are preventing the formation of such a society. With organization, we can build roads; by working together, we can use those roads to send food from an area with a surplus to an area suffering from famine. We can work together to defend humanity from both monsters and evil men. We can protect society as a whole, whereas in an anarchy, with every man and woman working alone for his or her own benefit, there will be rape, murder and theft running rampant. You and I both have an interest in preventing that. We both care about people. We both want to protect the weak.”
Inoke replies, “You say that you would work together with me to protect people from monsters and evil men, but you work with evil men. And worse! Look at the creatures you have allied with as an Arrow of Law- Dekrasode, Marius, even Asmodeus!”
“Yes.” Prayzose nods. “There must be a balance on the councils of Law. They predated me as Arrows. When they approached me, Asmodeus made a very cunning appeal to me. I could become an Arrow, and attempt to balance the forces of Law towards Good- for, bear in mind, there were three evil Arrows, and no good ones appointed as yet- or I could pass up the opportunity and allow them to perhaps appoint another evil one. And surely you understand, I cannot support Chaos.”
Reluctantly, Inoke nods.
“I am making that same proposal to you,” Prayzose continues. “Inoke, you have slain Asmodeus. You have worked against the Arrows in the past, but I believe that you are a reasonable man, and you can see how positive of an influence you could be. I want you to become the seventh Arrow of Law.”
Inoke’s jaw drops.
After a moment, he says, “I told you, I will not betray my friends.”
“I am not asking you to. Bring them over to us if you can, but I do not think you can. But I will not ask you to fight them.” His blue eyes bore into Inoke’s, and the warmind realizes just how charismatic Prayzose is.* “I give you my word on that, and violating that would not be very Lawful of me, would it?”
“True... but desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“If we use the tactics of Chaos against itself, we will win no battle for Law,” Prayzose predicts.
Inoke nods. “Very well, I believe you. But why should I accept your offer? I admit it has a certain appeal...”
“Do not accept it for what it gives you; accept it for what you can do with it. Together, we can win the Great War of Ethics. We can end this destructive conflict. We can institute a great peace, and ensure that everyone is equal. We can eliminate poverty and starvation. I hope for a reign of Law and Good, and that means peace, hope and plenty.”
“Who are the Arrows?” asks Inoke.
“Myself, Marius, Dekrasode, Cluma, Lord Alyth and the Judge of Worlds. And, of course, Asmodeus was one of us, until you slew him.” He smiles. “For which, frankly, I thank you.”
Inoke smirks. “You’re welcome. I struck the blow.”
Prayzose nods. “I know. As I said, thank you.”
“Why me?”
“Because you are mighty enough to take his place. Because you are a strong force of Law, despite your opposition to it. And because I believe that you can be trusted to do the right thing.”
His words are very persuasive, Inoke thinks. But he is conflicted. There is no way that the others would understand, if I said yes... but we could do so much good! Aargh!
“What are the consequences,” Inoke wonders, “of there being only six Arrows?”
“None, really,” Prayzose shrugs. “Only since my appointment has the roster of the Arrows been full. Before that, it had been thousands of years.”
“I need a little time to think about this,” Inoke says.
“Of course,” Prayzose replies. “But you must answer before I send you home.”
“If I refuse, will you attack me?” inquires Inoke frankly.
“Of course not!” Prayzose exclaims. “I promise you, I brought you here only to talk. I did not poison your food, I am not tampering with your mind, and I am not using any magic. I want to persuade you, Inoke, because I am on the right side, and you should be too. I hope to show you that I’m right, and to persuade you to join me, but I have no intention of forcing you in any way. And if you do not agree with me, that together we can do much for our people, for all of the people, and if you decline, whoever takes your place will be probably less good and less capable than you- then decline my offer. But I hope you can see how much sense it makes, how much good we can do together. You must do what you feel is right.”
The warmind nods. He schisms, splitting his mind in two, and begins talking it over with himself: It’s the right thing to do.
But my friends will hate me!
The Mace of St. John would say that there is no choice.
This could be a trick.
It’s Prayzose- he’s not going to try to trick us when he invites us over for dinner and diplomacy. He might feed us some misinformation, but I doubt whether he’d out-and-out lie, either.
If I do this, my friends will never forgive me.
Maybe not. But is friendship more important than what is right?
Maybe they’ll understand in time. If I ever have a chance to explain it to them...
Well, Prayzose promised that he wouldn’t try to get us to fight them.
I don’t want to fight them, but they might attack me. We might not have a choice.
Prayzose is right: I must do what I feel is right.
“You have posed a difficult choice for me,” Inoke sighs. “It is a difficult decision. But I accept.”
Prayzose smiles broadly. “Excellent!” he cries. “Then we will invest you as soon as possible!”
“When is that?”
“Seven times seven days,” Prayzose answers. “Next month, on the 27th.”
***
Now- the ruins of the Bastion of Law
Lillamere casts Marius’ double actions and Mordenkainen’s disjunction in quick succession. To his shock, the Arrows of Law are unaffected by the disjunction!
“What the hell?” he exclaims.
Marius grins. “It worked!” he crows, and then suddenly there are three great whirling glittering masses of temporal sand blasting out towards our heroes.
“Chronal repeaters!” cries Alcar.
Graz’zt/Veil gestures at our Marius, trying to trap the soul on him, but the chronomancer is prepared with spell turning. Graz’zt suddenly finds himself trying to trap his own soul- or is it Veil’s? For a moment, the split-minded being struggles with confusion. The six-fingered hand spiked to the boss of his/her shield writhes angrily. But then Veil throws it off, momentarily remembering who she is, and Graz’zt’s spell resistance throws off the magical attack.
The chronal repeater sweep in. One slashes at JJ with its forceful wind and cutting blasts of sand from the plane of Time. The son of Jibber screeches and cowers, letting his stoneskin do the bulk of his defensive work for him. Another of the repeaters crashes into Baron Lillamere with such force that the sorcerer is knocked back and stunned! The Judge of Worlds begins attacking the hapless argent savant, slamming him with spear-arms and opening up with slugthrowers. Blow after blow lands, and blood flies as Lillamere gets hammered again and again!
Gerontius cries out as another attack swarm engulfs him- tiny clockwork horrors, mere specks to the eye, yet packing considerable electrical power! His hair stands on end as they shock and bite him, and bloody pinpricks sprout all over his body. “Yowch!” he cries.
Blazier launches a fireball and takes out one of the guards that has accompanied Prayzose. But the Arrows have the advantage, clearly, and begin to press it.
Let’s get out of here, guys! Sybele screams over the telepathic link. Aloud, to the Arrows of Law, she cries, “Those big bad apocalypse guys are free! Worry about them, not us!” Then she bends reality to ape a plane shift, and our heroes vanish, reappearing in the midst of a rainbow on Limbo.
“You really like Limbo, don’t you?” JJ asks. He grins; he really likes Limbo, too.
After all, his For that matter, so does Wankerman, who has spend plenty of time here in his days with the Xaositechts. Sybele just grins.
What now? asks Thrush over the link.
Darkhold! suggest Gerontius.
Look! Wankerman points. In the distance, slender metal needles riding columns of fire are approaching. More of Master Control’s missiles!
“Let’s go!” cries Baron Lillamere, who has recovered from being stunned. The party clusters around, and they superior teleport to just outside where they previously found the entrance to Darkhold.
It’s not there.
Our heroes take a few quick moments to try to look for it, but Thrush shouts a warning: “More missiles!”
How the hell are they finding us? wonders Lester. Aren’t we all mind blanked?
They must have something on us, Lillamere realizes as the party plane shifts back to Cydra. I bet they have some kind of ultra tiny device that they have planted on us or something- maybe something those swarms of tiny horrors carried or something!**
The party glances around. They are on a rocky coast, with waves crashing in only about ten feet below them on the beach. Where to now? asks Gerontius telepathically.
Back to the Bastion! JJ cries enthusiastically. Hopefully, the Arrows have had enough time to start pursuing us, and they haven’t left anything there to oppose us!
Chakar snorts. I call that wishful thinking, he sends wryly over the link.
More missiles! shouts Alcar telepathically. This time, while the party spends a moment or two adding more buffs to their current ones, Lester flies up and lets the missiles hit him to buy the party a few moments. The elementalist grits his teeth and cries out as shrapnel and flames engulf him, but he is perhaps the toughest mortal alive,*** and he comes back brushing off bits of metal and patting out small fires from his body.
Then another superior teleport brings the party back to the Pool of Law.
Wishful thinking indeed.
The Arrows are there; their guardians and servants are there. Inoke is there. Prayzose, the Judge, Marius- they have all waited.
And, unfortunately for them, our heroes have the total drop on them.****
Lester hurls a piece of an obelisk of Na’Rat into the Pool of Law with perfect accuracy. Strange, multihued smoke starts to rise. The Pool begins to churn and bubble and swirl.
Orbius speaks a word, and a contingency goes off, triggering an instantaneous contact other plane. He asks only two questions:
With whom am I speaking? He sees an image of a black sword and a black shield.
Will the piece of the obelisk destroy the Pool of Law? Yes? There is a faintly uncertain tone to the answer.
We’d best be sure, the Eye tells JJ telepathically. JJ cackles with glee as he springs towards the pool, the strap-on phallus of Chaos that Froth crafted him tied firmly round his waist. His mind flexes and an energy wave sweeps over the enemy, damaging all of them.
And then, seeing that this is it, this is the final conflict, that there will be no more running and dodging and plane shifting away, Alcar shouts, “GLAISIG, GLAISIG, GLAISIG!!!”
There is a huge explosion of flame and brimstone. A great blast of furnace-like heat puffs up from everywhere, and suddenly a gargantuan form seems to grow up from the ground. There is an earth-splitting roar voiced from multiple throats. A thick smell, reptilian yet not a reptile, fills the air.
“Oh my gods,” breathes Blazier, “Glaisig’s distraction is Tiamat!!”
Next Time: The next post FINISHES THE BATTLE AT LAST!!!
*To answer that question, I will say “45.”
**This, by the way, was a damn fine guess.
***Unwounded Lester has over 500 hp, and he has fast healing as well.
****In one of the worst bits of dice luck I have ever had, both Marius and Prayzose fumbled their initiative rolls.
