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: 2199154" data-attributes="member: 1210">Things Heat UpExpect a second update, which will include AoA's part, later today.  We're getting very close to a super-special gaming event that took myself and and another dm about 4 months to set up. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  That said, here's the first of today's updates:3/23/371 O.L.G., 11 p.m. the Temple of Elemental Good“Oohh, Lester... ooh...” The woman he’s making love to moves beneath him, soft and warm, and the L is near a state of bliss he hasn’t experienced in months.  Somewhere, in some remote corner of his mind, he’s glad the group took tonight to unwind and party here in the Temple of Elemental Good.  He can only hope his friends have had as much luck with the ladies as he has.Then suddenly there’s a glaive thrusting into his back.  His lovemaking session ends in a splatter of blood and gore, the woman under him is screaming, he’s actually been thrown off of her; and with a shock Lester realizes that he’s just been nearly killed.  Only his immense fortitude has saved him.*  But the grinning bearded devil (Where the hell did he come from, and how did he find me? wonders Lester) thrusts at him again and leaves him stunned and even closer to the edge.There is a Rary’s telepathic bond up between many of the party members, ‘just in case someone needs to yell for help’ (as Orbius likes to say).HELP!! Lester screams over the link.  ASSASSIN!!The diabolical assassin closes in.  The grin on his face grows even wider as Lester reels, half-drunk from the night’s partying.  This will finish him.***When Lester’s telepathic cry for help reaches him, Orbius’ super-powerful intellect instantly recognizes one thing that outweighs all the rest: Time is of the essence.  So he casts a time stop, then superior teleports to Lester’s side.  The frozen tableau that greets him is horrific.  There is blood everywhere.  The nude form of the girl is frozen in the midst of an attempt to scramble out of her bed, which is splattered crimson.  Her mouth is open in a terrified scream.Lester is lying on the floor, several very deep, very precise wounds running through his body.  He is nearly dead.  I’m just in time, thinks Orbius.Advancing on the L is a bearded devil of terrible aspect, wearing a loose-fitting dark uniform.  Orbius’ long studies of the planes allow him to identify the fiend immediately.Zavael.  Supposedly Asmodeus’ chief assassin- but the fact that he is known as such means that he isn’t really the true chief assassin.  Still... this is quite a statement of intent.  A declaration of war, if the scrystrikes weren’t already, and probably calculated to send a message.  He wants to be sure we know who is after us.  Well, we know, Asmodeus- we know.Grimly, Orbius positions himself and times it just right.  He puts a wall of force between Zavael and Lester, then positions himself next to Lester and the girl and readies a greater teleport.  As time starts to flow again, the girl’s screams begin and Lester is groaning in pain; but then they’re gone before Zavael can react.In Var, at Horbin’s Halls of Healing, Lester roars in anger.  He has been put over the edge into his berserker state, something that has only happened a few times.  It is a fearsome sight; the muscles of his neck tense up, his hands ball into fists, behind his sunglasses his eyes go red.  His face turns downright purple as he screams a howl of frustration, for his enemy is nowhere to be seen.Shortly he calms down.  ***6 p.m., the Three Rubies tavern, Var“We are going to have to do something about Asmodeus,” groans Lillamere.  He takes a sip of his wine.  “We can’t fight our way past armies of pit fiends to face him!” Lester exclaims.  He is no longer injured.“Maybe we could sneak past?” Gerontius wonders.  “Maybe you could, but I doubt whether all of us could,” Horbin opines.  “We are talking about Asmodeus here.”There seems to be no good solution to our heroes’ problems.***3/24/371 O.L.G., 11 a.m., outside the Temple of Elemental GoodWhen our heroes return to the Temple of Elemental Good, there are two worms composed of stormclouds in the sky, entertwined together.  It is clear that they are mating.  How ironic, thinks Lester over the telepathic bond.“They look like those thunder worm thingies,” Inoke says.  He frowns.  “They were tough.”“We can take ‘em!  Let’s so blast ‘em!” Lester says enthusiastically.“No, hold on a second,” says Gerontius.  “It was tough last time.  It could unleash a sonic boom that almost killed me.  This time there are two of them- and Horbin stayed back in Var.”“We can probably destroy them at range,” Orbius replies reassuringly.“Oh, man, okay- but they’re going to kill me,” the halfling moans.But his fears prove unfounded.  Our heroes ward themselves against sonic and electrical damage and then take to the air, moving well away from innocents at the temple complex before beginning a long-range assault.  Orbius fires a delayed blast fireball, then gets two volleys of seeker missiles into the air, which begin moving towards their targets at high speed.  Lester casts a new spell he has developed, wrath of the elements, which pounds the worms with mutliple energy effects, followed by a fire storm and a horrid wilting.  Lillamere keeps firing punctures and missing.  Meanwhile the worms have broken off their mating ritual and begun speeding through the sky towards our heroes.  Inoke and Gerontius move up to defend the less physical casters, and as another volley of spells explodes into the onrushing worms, Inoke cries out, “Gerontius, they’re here!”  Then he lays into the first one, dealing immense damage.  Each of the worms, upon coming close enough, emits a sonic boom of incredible intensity.  Though our heroes are protected from sonic attacks, the first blast tears through their protections and the second one leaves them staggered and several almost dead.But Inoke’s overwhelming force finishes his worm off, and then the other one is enveloping him.  Within it, Inoke feels electricity and waves of sound pound into him, and he’s glowing like red-hot iron from his energy adaptation, but so far he’s not actually being hurt significantly.  Meteor swarms, flame strikes, another delayed blast fireball- the arcane onslaught continues.  Those seeker missiles that miss once swoop in again for another pass.  Orbius blasts the surviving worm with a maximized disintigrate aided by a quickened true strike, and Inoke strikes a final blow at it from within.  The worm is destroyed.“I’d hate to think what would have happened if they had made more thunder worms,” Sybele comments.***After making sure that Lester’s lover from the other night is okay, the party greater teleports to Tirchond, then goes through a portal in a certain dwarven merchant’s attic and into Sigil.  Here they hope they can find a solution to their problems.  Orbius casts a sending to Little Alex, and the party waits for about twenty minutes until the tout arrives.  He rustles up accomodations for them.  As they make themselves at home, a gentle knock at the door reveals Glaisig, the fiend who came to them and granted their wish after they hatched the phoenix egg.“What do you want?” Horbin demands, hostility dripping from his voice.“Peace, Horbin the Holy,” the devil soothes, shutting the door behind him softly.  “I come to aid you with a problem you have.”“Oh, I doubt that.  At least, not without a serious price.”“There is no price.  Your interests coincide with those of my master.”“Oh?  And who is your master exactly?  Asmodeus?”“No.”  Glaisig seems laconically amused.  “Asmodeus in not my master.  I serve his predecessor.”“Who is that?” asks Horbin.  “How about a name?”Glaisig nods.  “Very well.“I serve Lucifer.”Next Time: What does Glaisig want?  A piece of the Simulacrum puzzle!  *Read that as “412 hp total.”</blockquote>

Verification