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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 1698887" data-attributes="member: 1210">4 pm, 9/28/368 O.L.G., inside Angelfire Mountain, ascendingTromping up through Bile Mountain, our heroes continue to explore.  <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forums/showpost.php?p=584173&postcount=35" target="_blank">They almost cleared the entire place out once before;</a> now only a few surviving monsters remain to oppose them, and most of them are no real challenge.  A disgusting stink lingers in the passages and rooms; yellow stains are all over, and the walls are perforated with small holes eaten away by the bile over the centuries.Lester can’t help but keep glancing at his wings.  Overnight they have changed.  Instead of the old, threatening, bat-style wings, they are now almost... angelic.  It’s a wonder.  How could something like this have happened?  Is it a sign?  Are the angels of Heaven finally starting to accept him??Edmund is a little annoyed.  He hasn’t even gotten to swing his sword yet.  He shakes his head.  Why am I even here? he wonders idly, then shrugs.  At least there’s a few coins to be made.Suddenly there’s a sound from ahead- a loud snarling sound, the scraping of Thrush’s sword through flesh, something cries out...“I’ll let you handle this,” Edmund says sardonically.  He leans back against a wall and crosses his arms over his chest.  “If you need anything, let me know.”The party has come to a chamber with a staircase leading up, but a terrible creature stands snarling before them, guarding the stairway.  It is a pale dead whitish-grey, obviously undead, with a long, snaky neck.  Its ears are bat like; its large black eyes stare ahead hatefully.  Cracked dirty claws emerge from its hands and leathery bat-wings beat the air behind its back.  Thrush stands before it, having already chopped down its minions.  Sir Maxwell rushes in, striking at the creature and smashing a hammer into it.  There’s a crunching sound, but the creature remains standing.  It retreats up the stairs, followed by Sybele, Lester and Maxwell, with Orbius in hot pursuit.I’ve seen these before, here in Bile Mountain, Orbius realizes.  His mind flicks through the enormous knowledge of undead that he’s accumulated over the years and recognizes it as an aag- a terribly powerful monster full of venom and negative energy.  “Careful!” he calls after the others, “These things are dangerous!”As it flees, the aag’s arm is blown off by a puncture from Orbius, and a succession of deadly magical vapors explode from his time stop, surrounding the creature and billowing through the hole at the top of the stairs!  It grunts, then starts making passes through the air with its hand and snarling out some sort of profane utterances.It’s too slow, however.  Lester has already thrown a spell of his own, and a sunburst flashes through the chamber.  There are cries and screams as almost everyone is blinded, but the aag is destroyed utterly.  For just an instant, however, the L (or, as he now prefers, the Angel of Adventure) catches a glimpse of several more of the creatures outlined by the burst.  He blinks the spots away, still able to see- four more of them!  And a hand materializing between him and one of them... the L recognizes it as a Bigby’s interposing hand.“Incoming!” he shouts, and then gives a yell of pain as one of them spits a gob of bile that bursts wetly over the group.  He can hear Orbius, blinded, screaming for him.  With a grunt of dismay, Lester thinks, To hell with it, and tosses another sunburst into the room.  This one destroys the aag sorcerer who created the hand.  Then a quickened pass through earth and stone and he is ready to sink into- “Dammit!” he curses, as he glares at the stained rock of the walls.  He could move into it, but then he’d be exposed to the bile.  To hell with it, he thinks again firmly, and drops into the stone, moving into a better tactical position.Sir Maxwell, meanwhile, swiftly moves in and engages one of the aags; but he is utterly unable to penetrate its defenses.  The aag sneers at him, spittle spraying from its mealy grey mouth.  It seems utterly contemptuous of his best efforts, and Sir Maxwell Norrington is not accustomed to being treated with contempt- much less by the undead!“Garnet!” he cries, and swings again- a mighty blow, nearly the best he could possibly manage- to no avail!  Maxwell gapes at the aag.  How tough are these things??*The aag laughs at him.  “Analin,” it rumbles.  “That is the name of your killer.”  It smiles and lunges forward, slashes with its claws, biting, buffeting the paladin with its wings.  Maxwell grunts and groans as the blows deal telling damage- and on top of the physical damage, he feels the scald of venom entering him from the bite.  Negative energy courses through each blow, dealing terrible physical damage as well as draining his energy.  Sir Maxwell gasps and withers before its assault, suffering terribly.Suddenly- inexplicably- the blindness lifts.**  Sybele blinks twice and moves into a firing position, but as she does Analin takes a bite out of her, his long snaky neck letting him reach her a surprising distance away.  She fires a psionic shot at one of the other aags, hitting it.  This one, she notes with dismay, is wearing full plate armor.  It grins in her direction, clicking its claws together, but turns to a closer target- Lester.  Even blinded, it manages to strike home with two claws.  Lester groans and shudders as the energy drain hits him.Kagera springs in and out of the melee, kicking and striking, but she can’t seem to hurt Analin.  None of them can!  And all of these aags are terrible tough... She whirls away again, moving so quickly that the enemy can’t strike back at her.***Jezebel has been enhancing the group as much as possible, and Thrush, rendered greater invisible by her, finally clambers into the room just as Lester unleashes a blaze of divine flame and a tremendous series of electrical bolts.  He lays about him but the aags are much tougher than he had expected and he misses.  He draws his sword back into a guard position and makes a mental note to go for more accuracy and less strength to the blows on his next sequence of attacks.  He grins fiercely; this might be a good fight at last.Indeed.  Our heroes beat down the armored aag quickly, but they can’t even scratch the sneering Analin, and he drops Thrush in mere moments.  “Honey!” cries Sybele.  The terrible aag seems possessed of incredible, near-deific power.The elemental blasts, powerful sorceries of Orbius and incredible skill at arms of our heroes slowly wear on one of the other aags.  Three down, two to go thinks Sybele, but Analin still hasn’t been touched.  Even the sunbursts didn’t harm him!The party slowly hacks the last one other than Analin down, and then its them against the seemingly untouchable aag.  It glances around at its fallen companions, at Thrush’s bleeding form, at our wounded heroes.  It chuckles and spits a huge gob of phlegm at Sir Maxwell’s feet. The party and the aag rush together.  Seeker missiles from Orbius manage to deal some damage at last, but it heals in seconds and things are back where they started, except that Lester and Sir Maxwell have a few more wounds.  The paladin lunges again, and the aag catches the blow with his forearm, sneering and ignoring the force behind it.  Maxwell gives a yell of frustration.  Analin relieves him of the burden of his frustration by beating him unconscious, smacking him across the head with a wing buffet.  The knight of the chalice crumples to the ground.Orbius and Lester are now concentrating their spell power on Analin, and though some of their magic gets through, the creature is clearly too powerful to overcome with damage before it overcomes them with its terrible claws and bite and wings.  Orbius is staying below, firing what spells he can without actually being in its presence.  Thanks to the extra eye he placed earlier on the Angel of Adventure, he can still see up there.  Lester, cursing more colorfully than he has in several months, pulls the old flesh to stone trick out and tries that one- and to his amazement, it appears to succeed!He draws back.  “I... I think I got him,” he gasps.  He’s bloodied and badly wounded.  A few potions, and everyone’s conscious again.  “Wow, those guys were tough,” groans Kagera.  “I could hardly hit them- and not at all on the toughest guy!”“None of us could hurt him,” Sybele agrees.  She shakes her head.  That was a close one.  “We can’t forget how dangerous the Bile Lords and their servants are,” Thrush says in a hushed voice.  “Trust me on this, I know.”The party starts searching the bodies, and almost immediately a grim Orbius has bad news for him.“That statue?”  He gestures at Analin’s form.  “It’s an illusion.”***5 pm, 9/28/368 O.L.G., inside Angelfire Mountain, uppermost levelAnalin stands easily before the Bile Lord Zurtneg.  He is not cowed; he is no servant to a mere Bile Lord.  He serves their King directly.  “You were correct,” he rumbles at Zurtneg.  “The adventurers are back.  Several of them match the description you gave.”Zurtneg studies the aag for a moment, his expression inscrutable.  Then he nods as if to himself and issues a sending.Release the bile stirges, he orders.Next Time: Our heroes face hundreds and hundreds of bile breathing stirges!*In Analin’s case, AC 59.**Thank Orbius and his limited wish.***In other words, Spring Attacking.</blockquote>

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