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: 2893525" data-attributes="member: 1210">Revenge on Bile Mountain (pt. 4)The battle with the vomit hounds is swift and brutal.  Once again the party is lucky to gain the initiative on them, and a preliminary volley of attacks leaves the deadly monsters wounded.  But then they burst their kennel apart with ease and spring to the attack, three of them focusing on Thrush.  The third belches a spray of acid at the party, catching Hyliss, Wankerman, Sybele and Gerontius in the area.  The halfling springs nimbly aside, evading the acid entirely, but the others scream in pain as the deadly liquid sears and melts their flesh.  Worse yet, their protections from acid only seem partially effective against this foul liquid!*Thrush, Alcar, Gerontius, Chakar, Wankerman, Inoke and Hyliss all engage the vomit hounds in melee (although Hyliss does so via far strike).  Meanwhile, Lillamere fires off puncture and disintegrate spells with abandon.  Horbin unleashes a flurry of various powerful prayers at the creatures- destruction, harm, greater command and more.  Sybele fires arrows and crystal shards at the one of the beasts.  Finally, Thrush manages to decapitate one of the hounds, and the party cheers.  The battle intensifies, with screams and yowls, blasts of acid, more powerful spells and psionics detonating throughout the room.  Then Inoke manages to line up a psionic lion’s charge on two of the monsters (using his sweeping strike ability), and pounds into them!  Another one falls.  The tide has turned.  Whirling his mace, Inoke smashes another one down, killing it.  Sybele and Gerontius finish the last of the hounds.“Sheesh!” exclaims Horbin.  “Those things aren’t pushovers.”  He and Alcar begin healing the rest of the party.***The Alcarite temple on GorelBlazing with golden auras, the aleax descends on angelic wings to the main temple of Alcar on Gorel.  The elven priests who follow Alcar’s heterodox (or heretical, depending on whom you ask) teachings scurry forth, at first assuming that it is Alcar himself.“Welcome back, Father Alcar!” exclaims one.The aleax looks at him and smiles beatifically.  “I am on a mission for Galador,” it intones.  “I may not speak of the details.  Tell me- where do you think I am most likely to have been over the last few days?”“What?”  The elven priest looks puzzled.  “My lord, I do not understand...”“Have faith,” the aleax says simply.  It smiles, and the golden aura around it intensifies, filling the elves around with religious awe.“Yes,” the priest whispers.  “Var?  Possibly in Var, on Dorhaus.”The aleax nods.  “That rings true.  Thank you.”  He utters a prayer and casts bless over Alcar’s flock and then spreads his wide wings and lifts himself aloft again.  Tirelessly, the aleax begins winging its way west, across thousands of miles of ocean, towards Dorhaus.Behind it, the elven priests gather, murmuring in wonder and confusion.***Bile Mountain“All right,” says Baron Lillamere.  “Now where?”Two other doors lead from the kennel room.  Sybele gestures at the leftmost one.  Opening it reveals a hallway about 20’ long, ending in a door.  Boldly advancing, Alcar opens the door.A large room stretches before the party.  “Undead!” shouts Alcar, and Zyltha starts singing.  Thrush pushes past the Angel of Food and takes in the sight of another crawling head the size of an elephant and about a half-dozen armored humanoid undead with their eyes and mouths sewn shut.“Deathbringers!” curses Lester.  “Chemnu brought one of them against us before!”  He fires a quickened meteor swarm and an empowered meteor swarm (using his metamagic rods), and all six of the deathbringers are blown to pieces!  He grins and turns to see Inoke, Alcar, Sybele and Thrush cut the crawling head down.“That was easy,” remarks Horbin in surprise.*“We are ze most powerful adventurers on all of Cydra,” Gerontius chuckles.The party strips the deathbringers’ weapons and armor; although it is heavy and bulky, there are plenty of party members to help carry the load (since access to their extradimensional carrying devices is cut off within Bile Mountain).  Then they turn to the single exit from this chamber: a passageway that leads to another door.  The party assembles around this door and Alcar opens it.  The circular room that is revealed is full of decadent-looking, but spoiled, cushions.  It is warm and moist.  And within the chamber are horrifying creatures.  There are four ostentatiously-dressed illithids, garbed in rich-looking planar silks.  And next to them are hideous larger creatures, scuttling on crab-like legs.  Tentacles writhe.  Sharp teeth line a tremendous, slavering maw.Sybele shrieks.  She has met one of these before, long, long ago, in the depths of Firestorm Peak... but it was much smaller.**  There is a terrible sense of wrongness about the things.Alcar casts holy blast into the room and then slams the door shut.  “Let’s get ready,” he says.  “Let’s make sure everyone is protected with mind blanks or something.”“What are those things?” wonders Lillamere.“They are called brain collectors, or neh-thalggu.”  Orbius looks grim.  “They collect brains.”“Who still needs a mind blank?” inquires Lillamere.  As they converse, the party is preparing with a variety of buffing spells and psionics.  Once they are ready, Alcar throws the door open again.  The illithids and neh-thalggu are waiting for them.But they are not prepared for our heroes’ firepower.  Again the battle lasts only an instant.  Another holy blast from Alcar, followed by a sunburst from Baron Lillamere, and they are dead.“Yeah!” exclaims Lester.  “We rock!”Another large door leads out.  The party throws it open.  A 15’ wide passage leads off into the darkness.  As the party starts down it, they hear a moaning, spine-chilling scream come from up ahead.  Weapons drawn, our heroes move forward into a wide, exitless chamber.  At first glance, it appears to be a chamber full of death, with some sort of half-decayed, vaguely humanoid body slumped between what appear to be huge reptilian corpses.  A weird humanoid with bright green skin hangs asleep in the air, slowly rotating over the whole scene. It is about 10’ tall, hanging motionless in the air.  It has bright green skin and an elongated head shaped something like a teardrop.  Its eyes are enormous and bulging, but are shut.  Beneath their lids the great eyes twitch madly, apparently dreaming deeply.  The creature is obviously asleep.  As soon as our heroes set eyes upon it, they feel a wave of desire for sleep wash over them.  All of them resist it, and Horbin frowns.  “What is this thing?”Then the sleeping humanoid lets out another scream.  The sound is blood-curdling- and, again, our heroes feel a desire for sleep.  “Maybe we should kill it,” suggests Thrush.  “I think we should also make sure that these things are dead,” Inoke says, gesturing at the large monsters on the ground. “Good point.”  Chakar and Thrush move forward to start ensuring that there won’t be any unexpected complications from the creatures on the ground when an unexpected complication arises from the creatures on the ground. The rotting thing that they assumed was a corpse rises up, and it is horrible to behold.  It has the look of an aborted fetus, tainted by the hatred of the universe itself.  Suddenly a staggering amount of negative energy is pouring out, filling the air around them.  Lester runs the dreaming screamer through.The undead fetus chortles with glee as the huge, dinosaur-like creatures that our heroes had initially taken for dead stir and rise.  Prismatic sprays of color begin shimmering along a ridge along their backs.  “Uh-oh,” says Orbius.Next Time: Our heroes battle a hideous threat!*Less than one round.  Yikes.**Not yet told in any of my story hours, this was from when she was prolly about 6th level.</blockquote>

Verification