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: 1606074" data-attributes="member: 1210">The Granite HeartThere aren’t many people on Cydra who have seen a dragon and lived.  Almost all of our heroes are, in fact, among that select few. Fewer people still have fought a dragon and triumphed, yet most of our heroes have done that too.Still, it’s never something to take lightly.  Dragons, after all, are gods.  They have clerics.  At least, the so-called “true” dragons do.***Lester can’t move at all.  He strives mightily to shift the stone crushing and suffocating him, but his mightiest effort fails.  ***In the cave, the Granite Heart’s dragon guardian storms forward towards Sir Maxwell.  Thanks to Orbius’ mass mirror image, the dragon targets a false version of him; but the knight knows that he cannot count on that lasting.  People scatter in fear as the dragon charges; Thrush, who had been scrambling to remove rocks from the rubble atop Lester, abandons the L in his fear.  More elementals, large and huge, pour forward out of the darkness.Of everyone, Drelvin is the calmest. He remembers his first dragon, almost 200 years ago.  Gnarichlor, the Green.  What a tough battle that was! Then there was that weird cross between a blue and a shadow that the party fought a while back.  Seemed to recognize at least some of them, too.  Hmm.And then there was the brine dragon, in Moil!  This will be four!Drelvin proceeds to loose arrow after arrow at the dragon with a speed virtually unrivaled on Cydra.  One of his arrows hits the dragon right in the face and several teeth shatter.  Two more sink into its body.  It roars in displeasure, glaring at the archer.Then it roars again, as a small hole is blasted through it by Orbius’ puncture and Horbin’s solar spells.  Maxwell steps up and engages it with his great silver hammer, smashing into its foreleg with righteous anger.  The dragon tears into Maxwell with a claw, rending his chest.  Blood spatters, but Maxwell does not falter.  Instead he channels, drawing upon the divine might of Garnet, and smites it.  Several of his blows hit, dealing terrific damage to the monster.  A few of the elementals are still up, still attacking the party members scattered by the dragon’s fearsome presence, and the cowering heroes are unable to effectively counterattack!  Horbin moves to defend them, the power of Dexter flowing through him.  Orbius uses a time stop, casts a wall of force to protect his position, and summons a huge elemental.  As soon as things start moving again, Orbius commands, “Dig Lester out from under this rubble!”The elemental gets to work.Sir Maxwell and the dragon slash and hack at each other brutally.  Blood is flying everywhere.  More arrows are in the air, constantly streaming from Drelvin to the dragon.  Horbin is dispatching elementals left and right, having enlarged himself to heroic proportions via righteous might.  In a single flurry of motion he dispatches five elementals!The mass of elementals is thinning; the dragon and Maxwell are both weakening.  Finally, the paladin lands a final blow and strikes the creature down!  After that it’s all a matter of mopping up; with Orbius casting disintegrates, Horbin all righteoused up and Drelvin firing at such speed that his bow is merely a blur, it takes only a few seconds.  After the obligatory few moments of healing, the party moves forward and approaches the Granite Heart itself.The Granite Heart is a tremendous stone, probably 100’ in height, which resembles nothing so much as a heart.  It seems to have somehow grown up and out of the ground, where it balances precariously on segment no bigger than a dozen feet around.Nervously, Lester wonders aloud, “Now what?”“Let’s see if there’s an entrance.”  Orbius starts examining the Heart.***Emotionless, the Judge of Worlds regards Cydra from without.  It is hard to describe such a perspective- one that encompasses such a vast area that it is truly all-encompassing.  Cydra is a world that favors Law.  Forinthian dominance has assured that for thousands of years.  They have traveled far and managed to bring order everywhere they have gone- at least, to some degree.This is proper.Unfortunately, there are ancient and terrible forces of Chaos that have awakened.  Things are decaying quickly.  Law is breaking apart; Chaos is infecting the nations and lawmakers, those who should keep order.The Judge of Worlds can see right to the heart of the matter.  He has awaked for a reason.  There is a great danger.  He must attend to it.First he casts his mind into a strange place he has never been before.  He can sense a powerful... entity.  A Lawful mind.  Something different from anything he has known before.  He seeks to contact it.  When he succeeds, he makes contact with something far more dangerous than he could possibly expect.  And it’s a something that’s more than willing to aid his cause.  But it is something that the Judge of Worlds, in his epic wisdom, does not trust.  Never in a million years has he encountered something like this.  Never has he conceived of such a thing- an intangible intellect, formless, able to ride the waves of what it calls the realm of radio.  And in response to this touching of minds, in a thousand somewheres, billions of somethings awaken at the same instant.***A search of the Granite Heart reveals no sign of an entryway of any kind.  It’s strongly magical, though, and Horbin suggests a simple dispel attempt.  “Maybe he’s just hanging out in there,” mutters Lester.“All right, get ready,” Horbin tells the group, then casts a greater dispel magic at the Heart.  And suddenly a great rocky form bursts out, huge and ominous- Ogremoch, the Elemental Prince of Evil Earth.“Let’s get it on!” cries Lester.Next Time: The party’s confrontation with Ogremoch![/i]</blockquote>

Verification