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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 2866960" data-attributes="member: 1210">9/5/371 O.L.G., 10 a.m., near Bile Mountain, PeshHalf a mile from the base of Bile Mountain, our heroes arrive in a burst of teleportative magic.  They spend a few moments casting a thick layer of buffing and protective magic on themselves.  To anyone able to see magical auras, they would glimmer and gleam and glow.  Cloaked by abjurations, enhanced by spells and psionics, wrapped in magical enhancements, they begin moving towards the entrance to the mountain.  Following the river to it, they enter the great passage that runs to the heart of the mountain.  As they pass out of daylight and into darkness, the stink of Bile Mountain begins to slowly build around them.  “What’s our next move?” wonders Thrush. As they walk, the party begins discussing that very question (mostly telepathically).  Thrush insists that they should clean out each level before moving on; Lester proposes heading straight for the top.  On the whole, the group agrees with Thrush, and so the party continues its methodical approach, flying and climbing stairs up towards the area in which they fought Tamult. “I wonder if they’ve brought him back already,” muses Orbius.  “Probably,” Lester says grumpily.  “And if not, they sure will have by the time we’re done with this level.”“We killed him once,” Chakar replies, “we can kill him again.  And the next time we meet him, he won’t have his wonderful equipment.”“Speaking of wonderful equipment,” Orbius says to Gerontius, “what are you planning on doing with that ring of wizardry?  I would like to offer to buy it off of you.”“Perhaps,” the halfling responds, “you could make me a suitable magic item in trade, eh?”Orbius strokes his chin.  As the two of them begin negotiating, Lillamere sends out another group of prying eyes out ahead of the party to make sure that nothing has moved to block their advance in the ten days since last they came to Bile Mountain.  Indeed- nothing has.  Not yet.  They’ve had a week, though, he muses.  We waited too long.  We gave them too much time to prepare for us.  The party takes a moment to debate where to go.  “There are some crawling heads up that way,” says Lillamere, gesturing to indicate the direction he means.  “Crawling heads!” exclaims Alcar.  “Let’s destroy them!  They are undead abominations.”The party agrees that, since they will have to destroy them sooner or later, it might as well be sooner, and so they advance down the hall that Baron Lillamere has indicated.  A gaping opening on their right leads to a chamber that does, indeed house a quartet of undead, giant heads, crawling along a base of ribbons of raw muscle and tendrils of viscera.  They are destroyed in an instant by an empowered, maximized holy blast from Alcar.  The explosion of holy energy is sufficient to annihilate them all before they even have a chance to act!“That’s right, have some Galador!” snaps Alcar. The party bemusedly searches the chamber.  They find two gold teeth in the crawling heads’ collective mouths, a single silver hoop earring carved into an oriental-style dragon of some kind (apparently of cloud giant make) dangling from a half-rotten ear and a huge tiger eye gem that replaced a lost eye for one of the heads.  None of it is magical.  “All right,” Chakar says, “what now?”“We should perform a thorough search,” says Gerontius.  “We have only taken the obvious.  Zere may be secret doors or hidden things that we have missed in the rooms we have so far examined.”They all agree that this seems like a good idea, and soon they have turned up not one, but two secret doors.  The first- in the room in which the party fought the rubble swarm- leads to a room that Horbin blushes to remember.  It is full of old-looking but comfortable cushions.  The tingle of an enchantment slides off of the mind blanks that everyone is wearing.  “Oh yeah,” mutters Horbin.  “Uh, there’s nothing in there.”“There’s magic,” Orbius says.“Yeah,” Horbin nods.  “It’s an effect of the room.  It promotes, um, lasciviousness.  We’ve searched it before.”Sybele pipes up, “Isn’t that when you and, um, the fiery priestess of the time goddess, you know-”“Yeah, yeah,” Horbin interrupts, “whatever.”  He looks embarrassed.  “Besides, that is nothing compared to the whale incident.”*The second secret door, which is in the hallway outside, leads to a 25’ square chamber.  A single massive stone table with two braziers holding unburnt incense is faced by a huge stone chair.  In the center of the table is a crystal orb seated in a cushion of velvet.  Orbius glances at it with his permanent detect magic and there is a pop and crackle.  Suddenly Orbius staggers back as magical feedback surges into his brain.    “I think it’s a trap,” he winces.  “That thing has a feedback spell laid into it.”“Let’s just leave it alone, then,” Inoke suggests, and the party agrees.  They take a moment- once again- to decide what path they will take next.  After a moment’s quick discussion, they realize that they seem to have explored the entire place except for one door.  “Well,” Inoke says wryly, “that makes our decision easy.”So the party throws open the final door.  Beyond it is a hallway that runs about 20’ before coming to a four-way intersection.  The party advances to the intersection and looks each direction.  Directly ahead, five feet past the intersection, is a door.  To the right, the hallway stretches off into the darkness.  Chakar’s darkvision can just make out some rubble towards the limits of his range.  Left, the hall is broken and descends into a pool of bile and a large mound of rubble that blocks passage.“What do you guys think?” asks Inoke.“Left...”  Sybele frowns.  “We usually go left first, but left is blocked in this case.”“We could probably blast or dig through it pretty easily,” Lester opines.“It might take a lot of our resources, though,” Baron Lillamere replies.  “Let’s get back to this area.”“Yeah, if we can’t get through it, it stands to reason that anything on the other side can’t come through to us either.  Let’s take out the stuff that will be behind us.”  Thrush smiles.  “You know, more and more I’m looking forward to killing the Bile Lords again.”The party opens the door first.  It leads to a room holding a broad pool of bile in it.  “Ick,” says Sonja bleakly.  There are no exits, no obvious treasure, and no monsters.  Our heroes close the door and decide to search it thoroughly later. To the right, down the long passage, our heroes find the rubble that Chakar saw.  It is the broken remains of a think door.  “I think we were here before,” mutters Horbin.  Beyond the broken door is a cell block.  “Watch out!” says Orbius suddenly.  All of the cell doors are flung open from within, and terrible creatures begin springing forth.  Clearly undead, their skin is cloaked in the pallor of death.  Long, snake-like necks extend above powerful, bat-winged bodies.“Aags!” cries Inoke. One of the cells issues forth more than one aag, until there are a total of ten in the room!  The undead rush forward, screeching and laughing horrifically.  But then Lester pulls out the wand of days, taken way back in the City That Waits, Moil.  With a grin, he shouts, “How do you like this, aags??”  A blaze of brilliant solar radiance emits from the wand, and four of the aags shriek and die in an instant.  Thrush, Gerontius and Inoke begin pounding the aags, while Alcar unloads a quickened empowered flame strike.  He shouts a quick thanks to Lester and Orbius; they have loaned him a couple of metamagic rods, with which his powers are even greater than before.  He grins in satisfaction as three of the aags burn to ash.  ***Heaven“It is done,” breathes the artisan angel Ainon.“Well done, my brother,” nods the Archangel Gabriel.  “His features are perfect.”“I am honored to be of service,” Ainon answers, “though I am very sorry that it had to be for such a reason.”“The aleax must have its features chiseled to match the offender.  It is a part of how things are done.”“Of course, of course.  I only feel sorrow that there is an offender at all.”“Ahh,” Gabriel replies, “I take your meaning now.”  He sighs.  “Yes, I do too.  He showed such potential, for a mortal.  Given time and patience, he could have been a great angel.  But he has fallen very low in my eyes now.  He has killed agents of the Light, paladins even!  And worse...”“Worse?” prods Ainon.Gabriel sighs.  “He is casting spells, but Galador has not been granting him them.”Next Time: The Headless Guardians!*Horbin once had an adventure involving a whale’s marital aids, in which he had to help the whale, er “prepare” itself for donning the marital aid.  The full story is <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=317764#post317764" target="_blank">here.</a></blockquote>

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