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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 2112943" data-attributes="member: 1210">Making Yet Another Enemy“Dexter’s nadlies,” swears Horbin, “that thing was tough.”Lillamere shudders, covered in stomach goop, which the water all around them is washing him clean of.  “Yeah,” he answers, then, “Hey, where’s Veil?”“I have her, sort of,” Inoke says unhappily.  The ooze formerly known as Veil is kind of oozing around in his air bubble.  “But she’s... messy.”Horbin sighs.  “I hope, if we can recover her, she learns her lesson about tampering with Chaos.  It’s dangerous.”The party returns to Var to recuperate, where the ooze is placed in a large sack.  “Hundred fifty pounds of ooze,” grumbles Inoke, lugging it over his shoulder.  “Dammit, Veil!”***9/8/370 O.L.G., 1 p.m., the Halls of Healing, Var“I must leave you for the time being,” Proto states.  “I have been called in for refitting.”*Our heroes have gathered in preparation of returning to the strange Miloxi-era ruin they have been exploring.  Proto’s abrupt announcement stuns them.“Refitting?” asks Sybele.  “That sounds... painful.”Seethe mutters under his breath.  In his opinion, the warforged is an abomination.  It is unnatural; just as well if it’s gone for good.“I will be deactivated while the actual work is done,” Proto responds.  “A flaw in my programming must be corrected.”“I thought you were going to help me?” Inoke queries.  “After all, if we’re going to help you, you need to help us too.”“I will aid you- but first, I must be refitted.  Otherwise critical flaws in my behavior could result.”Inoke frowns, but seems to accept Proto’s apologetic departure.  Then our heroes return to the business at hand, distributing the yellow, rubbery suits they found as well as the harder ceramic suits with dials in the chest.  Gerontius cuts one down to his size; the others eye is askance.  Will it still function?  Time will tell. Suddenly Horbin stiffens.  “Hold up,” he says, “I’m receiving a sending.”“Is it Proto already?” asks Sybele.  Seethe frowns darkly.“No, it’s Lester!” Horbin exclaims excitedly.  “He’ll be here in a minute...”“Oh, man, I hope he doesn’t hate me for killing Drelvin,” Inoke groans, a worried look on his face.And then, there they are: two long-absent friends, Lester the Elementalist and Orbius Visionary.  Lester appears as a dark-skinned half-elf, a bushy afro with a single white streak through it topping him like a comic hat.  Dark-lensed glasses are perched on his face.  Great feathery wings flex from his back, and he wears sigils and signs of the four elements.  Orbius is a human, obviously a scholar and a wizard even at first glance.  From his neck hangs the sign of Boccob, an open eye over a book.  Boccob is one of the so-called ‘new gods’ that have come only recently to Cydra.  Orbius is called, among other things, ‘the Eye of Boccob.’“It’s go to see you, my friends!” Lester cries.  “I knew we’d meet again in the ends!”  Horbin, Sybele and Jezebel rush to greet them.  Laughing, they all embrace.  Jezebel and Orbius join in a long, drawn-out kiss.“Orbius Visionary, the diviner!” breathes Lillamere.  “I’ve heard of him!  He’s supposed to be one of the best!”And, of course, everyone has heard of Lester: the L, the self-proclaimed Angel of Adventure.  Turning to Lillamere, Lester remarks, “Wow, Drelvin, you look handsome today!”Lillamere sighs.  “I’m not Drelvin.  I’m his nephew, Lillamere.”  And, heavily, he adds: “Drelvin is dead.”“And I killed him,” announces Inoke.  “It was an accident, but I did.”  He sounds miserable.  “I was out of my mind at the time.  So if you’ve got a problem with me because of it, I don’t know what to tell you.”“We understand,” Orbius says immediately.  “Magical compulsions happen.  Why, Lester’s killed adventuring companions a time or two while magically compelled himself!”  The Eye of Boccob shrugs.  “These things happen.  You can’t always help it.”“That’s... very enlightened,” Inoke replies slowly.  Maybe these two won’t be so bad after all.  After he met Hobbes at Drelvin’s funeral, he’d thought he would have trouble with all of Drelvin’s old friends.  Maybe not.The rest of the necessary introductions are made, and our heroes are back to square one in making their plan of attack.  But that’s okay, as it rapidly becomes apparent that the brilliant mind of Orbius and the long experience of Lester will be valuable tools while planning.  “I’m not completely loaded for bear, but if we’re adventuring I don’t care!” declares Lester, and Orbius nods in agreement.“We’ll be fine- no need to rest a day or anything.  Lester’s always ready for adventure.”So Lillamere greater teleports to the site of the battle with the Ur-Fish.  Its humungous carcass hangs in the water, drifting lazily in the current.  Dozens of small fishies are there, nibbling on the carcass, but Seethe scares them away when he approaches wild shaped into a dire shark.  Then the party begins heading up the slope they were ascending when the Ur-Fish attacked them.“I’m growing more powerful in the ways of Chaos,” Sybele comments as they advance.  “Hey, if we run into trouble I’m going to do something kind of dangerous.”  She grins.“What do you mean?” Lillamere asks.“Well...”  She pauses, then smiles again.  “I can initiate a wild zone around myself now.””What’s that?” Lillamere asks, but Orbius has the answer.“It’s a zone within which magic will go wild.  Your spells may not work properly, or at all.  Anything can happen when you use magic in a wild zone.”“Wow,” says Sybele, “I just know I can do it.  I didn’t know what it would do.”***Thousands of years ago the Miloxi Empire spread out over hundreds of thousands of miles, using portal technology and ancient forms of magic relying on radiocrystal and radiation.  They grew great in power but, as is often the case with such races, hubris brought them low.  What caused the end?  Nobody knows, these days, but whatever it was destroyed their empire and wiped out most traces of it in only a few centuries.     Long years ago, a small group of tabaxi fled the Miloxi settlements, trying to set up a small independent nation.  They called their settlement Thixil Testa, which was Miloxi for Free Minds.  Led by a powerful psionic tabaxi half-rakshasa named Virri Mosswistrow, who had overcome his own innate tendency to evil, the tabaxi of Thixil Testa built a small radiocrystal power plant to provide them with the niceties of life.      But something went wrong.  The reactor’s crystal core was defective, mined from local radiocrystal deposits that were flawed and imperfect.  Soon it was generating more power, and more radiation, than intended; and as his people began to die, Virri Mosswistrow girded himself and traveled deep within the power plant to try to prevent disaster.  He succeeded, damping down the radiation levels enough that his people could flee in safety, but sealing the area behind him as he descended with a field of force.Time passed; years and years, and then decades, centuries, millennia.   Mirri remains in his prison, trying to prevent radiation from leaking out and poisoning the outside world.  Seismic shifting has already opened several passages to the outside world, which distresses him to no end; and he does what he can to seal them off, but once there’s a hole, there’s a hole, and it becomes damage control instead of prevention. Mirri the Mad, the genie of the bottle would have called him.  For who would stay down here for so long if he was not mad?He hears them again, now, the intruders that killed the Ur-Fish.  That spoke volumes about them.  Virri knew all too well what kind of a threat the Ur-Fish was.  His own lair was through an 80’ long passage too narrow for the Ur-Fish to come through.  Even so, Virri often wondered if the monstrous fish could force its way into his lair if it had really wanted to?  The thing had been both exceptionally arrogant and exceptionally dangerous.Nonetheless, while he might not exactly mourn the Ur-Fish’s death, it did make him profoundly uneasy.  As the noises come closer, he lays out his immovable rods and then begins casting spells, beginning with shield and see invisibility.  Then- curse them!- he can hear them coming down the stairs, and he sees them enter his room: grotesque, almost hairless humanoids showing a range of stature and dress.  One of them, the largest-looking one- probably female, based on the mammaries, and wielding a bow- shouts something he can’t understand in its primitive, gutteral language: “Zits teh raksasha!  Vatch oot, I’m using me new powwer!”  She rushes forward at Virri- and right into his immovable rods!  “Urk,” she adds, and he understands that just fine.I wonder if that affects psionics, Inoke thinks, and manifests schism.  Everything goes as it should; grinning, he moves up.  Another one teleports next to Virri.  This one has wings and a sword in its hand.  Well, that’s nothing a repulsion won’t fix.  Virri casts his spell- and suddenly he can’t breathe.  He can’t move.  He can’t anything.  The adventurers move in around him, poking and prodding him; he hangs limp in the water.  He wishes he could yowl and scream and bite, but he can’t.  He can’t do anything.  They talk about him for a little while, strip him, take all his gear.  He wants to howl.  He wants to kill.  He wants to die.  He starts to wonder if, maybe, he is dead.  Eventually the adventurers leave him behind, still immobilized, and leave.  He lays there, never blinking, for several more hours.  He knows that if he isn’t dead, he’s going to have to move very quickly to get out alive.  When at last he feels his limbs loosen and movement returns, he keeps his wits about him and swims as fast as he is able to the nearest air.  It’s in a higher-radiation zone, but it’s better than drowning.Those bastards, he thinks bitterly.  All those mostly hairless apes are the same.  Some day I’ll pay them back.  Some day, somehow.  But for now... I can’t stand up to those adventurers now that they have all my gear.  I can’t even safely stay here.His heart heavy, Virri gives up his millenia of guardianship over Thixil Testa for the outside at last.    Next Time: Our heroes fight golems again and more!*Hey Angel of Adventure, look at that!  An in-game justification for those two missing levels!</blockquote>

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