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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 2847216" data-attributes="member: 1210">Gerontius flips his slim body through the air wildly, whipping back and forth to avoid the gouts of vile yellow acid spewing from the bile beast.  The disgusting fluid- mixed with foul chunks of unidentifiable matter- splashes all around him, but he avoids all of it!  The halfling’s daggers slash and stab at the monster’s vitals as he misdirects it again and again, catching it off guard with feint after feint.  Blood, steaming and stinking of filth, fountains all over the invisible blade.  He darts one way and then another, the wounds pumping massive amounts of blood and dealing terrific lingering damage.*  As Thrush lumbers in with a yell, hacking at the monster, Gerontius takes yet another opportunistic strike.The monster doesn’t even slow down.  Nor does it flinch when Lester’s flame strike roars down on it with scorching power.  Clearly enraged, the monster screams and turns on Gerontius.  Arrows and seeker missiles begins pelting the monster, but it is fast and tough enough to avoid the majority of the missiles.  Only one of the seeker missiles hits its target.  Zyltha’s voice starts to ring out over the battle, heartening our heroes and reminding Horbin of Ten Buck Tom, waiting in Var.  And he’s got another elixir of true resurrection, just in case, the cleric- now Bishop Horbin of Western Dorhaus- thinks to himself, flashing momentarily back to the party’s last trip into Bile Mountain- the trip that killed them all.  Then he casts destruction, which the horrid beast resists.  Still, he can see that it is damaged by the spell, and he smiles grimly to himself.  Surely it can’t take that much more of this, he thinks. But again the bile beast rushes uncaringly towards Gerontius, clawing and biting at him.  Both Thrush and Lester slice at it with their swords as it moves past them, but it doesn’t seem to care.  Gerontius is still protected by mirror images, but three of them fall in a single flurry of attacks.  The halfling squeaks as both of its claws come a hair’s breadth from the real him.Our heroes pour it on.  Gerontius keeps feinting, tricking it again and again and leaving it pricked in all its tender places.**  Wankerman leaps in, using the Bullywug Breakdance technique, and sticks his spear deep into the creature’s neck.  Blood fountains out and sprays steaming all over him.  Thrush and Lester, flanking, hack and cut their way into the creature.  More blood sprays all over the place as it shakes itself and roars in anger and rage.  It still won’t die!  Our heroes continue to pound it as it rips and tears at them, dealing wound after wound; and then, finally, Lester stabs his sword in through its eye and penetrates its brain, killing the monster at last!  Our heroes draw back as the light in its eyes slowly dies.  The monster gurgles and blood and bile vomit from it, and then then a terrible stink (worse than that pervading the room itself) wafts over the chamber as the beast fouls itself.  It is over.  The thing is finally dead.“Dexter’s nadlies, but that took a lot of punishment,” Horbin swears, gasping for breath. Alcar nods.  “That was... impressive.”  He turns and tells Lester, “You should think about joining my summer league team.”Our heroes examine the chamber quickly.  The main features of the area are the pool that the bile beast lived in- a stinking deep depression filled with bile- and a staircase leading up higher into the mountain, closer to its blighted heart.  The group debates, both aloud and over their telepathic bond, whether to ascend immediately or finish searching the lowest level of the mountain.  Lester, naturally enough, is a proponent of rushing straight to the top.  Thrush and Horbin disagree, Thrush especially arguing that the party should clear out everything on a level before moving on.  “We don’t want to get trapped in here,” he reiterates again and again.  “If we leave something behind us, it might well try to cut off our retreat.”“We can take care of anything that tries,” Lester insists.“What if we’re already wounded, and it’s the Bile King and Queen of Guts?  We don’t want to get trapped in here.  I’ve been through that before.  I won’t go through it again.”“Enemies behind you are worse than enemies before you,” nods Chakar.“What about our old friend, the priestess- or priest, depending on the week- of the goddess of time and stuff?” wonders Sybele.  “He got left behind in there!”“She’s probably been turned undead or something by the Bile Lords,” Lester opines.“I hope so,” Alcar says, “because I want to kick her ass.  She is not on my summer league team.”“Who are you talking about?” Sonja asks.Sybele (who is unable to remember names thanks to the touch of Chaos) is referring to Angelfire.  Angelfire was a member of the party for years, journeying with Sybele since way back at Firestorm Peak.  Angel (her original name) changed gender about 3 times during her career (spending most of that time female).  “She was a priestess of Coila, and a psychic warrior, and a templar of her goddess,” Lester explains.  “She was pretty powerful...”“But pretty evil,” Bishop Horbin adds.  “If she is undead, she’ll be tough.”The discussion moves on, and eventually everyone agrees to clear out the mountain right- to take care of each level entirely before moving to the next.  That decided, they turn to the question of what to do next.I say we go take down the mithral golems, Lester proposes.  They’ve got to be worth a ton of money if we can sell the metal in Sigil or something.Good point, Inoke agrees. “Argh!” Horbin exclaims.  “I just realized that, among the many items I lost in here was a golembane scarab that I bought after the first time we encountered golems in this damned mountain!”“Maybe we’ll find it again,” Chakar replies, clapping the cleric on the shoulder.“I hope so,” Horbin grumbles.“So should we go after the golems then?” Sybele pipes up.  “And didn’t you say there’s something else in there too, some kind of eyeball thing?”“I’m looking at it right now, through my arcane eye,” Orbius affirms.  “It’s a weird pillar of flesh.  It’s almost like the eyes are melting out of it and floating off.  And there are more that are returning.”  He frowns.  “I wonder what it is.  Obviously some kind of watcher, but...”  He trails off, frowning to himself.  Sounds good! Lester enthuses.  The party heads back to the entry room and then down a hall.  After about 40’ or so, it turns sharply to the right.  To the left is the door that, according to their divinations, leads to the weird pillar of flesh.  Before the party opens the door, the L casts pass through earth and stone and slips under the ground, into the contaminated rock of the mountain.  Even the bile shield doesn’t stop a sick, greasy feeling from settling on his body.  He moves forward through the stone for a ways, and then moves up to emerge in a room beyond- the chamber with the fleshy pillar in it!Immediately he casts a flesh to stone on it, and to his amazement, it turns into craggy rock!  Then the three great mithral golems fall on him, their great fists pummeling.  “Yelp!  A little help!”  Lester calls out.  The others, meanwhile, throw open the door, and the combat is joined from the other side.  It is brief and vicious, and when it is done the golems lie strewn in pieces on the ground.“Let’s take some now,” urges Gerontius.  “It might not be here when we return for it!”  The party opens up their bags of holding, but unfortunately they discover that they cannot reach into them.  The opening is an opaque, seemingly impenetrable grey field.  They still manage to haul some of the mithral, but they are all too aware that they will need a better way to carry most of it out. “What about the creature?” asks Horbin.“I can destroy it,” offers Chakar.No!  I should put it in the abandoned water temple dungeon at the Temple of Elemental Good, Lester declares over the permanent telepathic link the party shares.  I’ll put it with the gibbering garden. The party agrees amusedly to Lester’s suggestion, then decides to go hunting the ooze Lillamere’s prying eyes saw earlier.  “We should be careful,” warns Thrush, “in case its touch can destroy our weapons.”  There is a general grumble of agreement.  If only they knew just how bad it could be for their weapons...When they arrive at the door to the chamber the ooze is alleged to be in, the party pauses for a moment to prepare.  Or at least, most of them do.  Alcar boldly opens the door and moves through, and Chakar grunts a curse and follows the impetuous angel.  They find that about two-thirds of the walls have great areas dissolved away.  Not too far away is a disgusting sac of bile- a bile ooze.Immediately it sprays out a huge cone of caustic acid, catching Alcar in a foul spew as he moves towards it.  The Angel of Food’s eyes widen and he cries out in dismay as the caustic fluid begins smoking.  His eyes widen in shock.His armor is dissolving and falling to pieces.Next Time: The bile ooze!*Which is to say, one of Gerontius’ epic feats is Lingering Damage. <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=":)" />**Gerontius did about 350 hp of damage this round, according to the game notes.  When the creature was still standing afterwards, the players were a little surprised.  They had already inflicted a lot of damage on it the round before- prolly about 300-400 hp as well.  I’m not certain, but I believe this monster was the first 1000+ hp enemy the party has faced. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /></blockquote>

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