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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 3846538" data-attributes="member: 1210">Mounted on a beast that looks like liquid, white-hot fire, Pasha Amhari Ifroobil, pretender to the throne of the Prince of Elemental Evil Fire, arrives. Twenty efreeti rangers accompany him on his hunt. He will not be denied his prize. He will not! Their fingers will join those of other worthy hunts around his neck.With a fierce shout of joy he draws Stormthrower, his bow that is bane against elves, dwarves and humans. As his mighty mount rears and lunges, the Pasha begins to open a gate to the Material Plane, where he will attack and kill his predecessor’s destroyers! Then, surely, all the evil fire creatures will acknowledge him. “Today we hunt mortals!” he cries. There is a collective shout of glee from his hunters. “We will take them- those who slew Imix! For Elemental Fire! For Elemental Evil! For Amhari Ifroobil!!” The hunters roar their approval again.There is a blaze of oily cold from the other side, and the gate stabilizes. The accursed Material Plane! With a snarl, Amhari Ifroobil shouts, “After me, my hunters!! To the mortal plane!” He kicks the beast of Sustarre in the flanks and it leaps through the opening between worlds with the speed of a flame.Strewn before the efreeti is wreckage. The shattered remains of a powerful fortress, and not far away- the ones the Pasha seeks. Then he sees Pan Lo and his eyes widen. “CHARGE!!!” roars Amhari Ifroobil.***In the sky far above the tumbled ruin of the Bastion of Order, an omega horror circles. Its sensors and radiocrystal brain have a solid grip of the situation, and it is in constant contact with Master Control via radio. Thus, when the appropriate moment finally comes- signified by an electric command from Master Control- the omega horror, a sleek egg of black metal destruction, unsheathes its weapons and goes to work. Missiles launch, plumes of fire pushing their destructive payloads towards their targets. The horror cycles up its two laser cannons, as well; they have the range to reach across the mile of distance separating the machine from our heroes. The missiles speed through the clouds. A few seconds after launching the first volley, the horror launches a second. Simultaneously, Master Control mobilizes a concerted attack by the millions of tiny horrors so small that they are barely visible to the naked eye. They begin to swarm towards our heroes. But the first volley of missiles gets there first, exploding and spraying shrapnel and flames all over the party. They scream in pain and surprise, and then the omega horror’s laser blasts open up on Wankerman. He yells in pain and surprise, scrambling for a potion of cure serious wounds.The horror’s scanners alert to a sudden change in the situation. Thermal anomoly... planar anomoly... gate detected... It alerts Master Control, who immediately discards the arrival of the Pasha as irrelevent. Then the horror begins diving in towards the party, needing to close the distance to bring the remainder of its weapons to bear.***As the black metal machine fires blasts at Gerontius and screams through the air towards them, the band of efreeti begin to close the distance as well. Our heroes are suddenly under a pretty severe assault. More missiles blast in and explode around them. Even if they don’t hit directly, they still do enormous damage in a pretty large range...Wankerman, badly wounded from fire, gulps his potion, then cries out, “If anyone has any healing, I could sure use it!” He grips his spear and prepares to attack.Baron Lillamere cries, “Wait! It isn’t healing, but this might help anyway!” He casts protection from fire on the xaositecht, and then launches a seeker missiles spell as a rebuttal against the omega horror. Then, suddenly, tiny little pinpricks of pain start swarming all over him- him, and several others in the party! Chakar sprints away, trying to avoid keeping the party in ‘fireball formation’, and then the battle turns into sheer chaos, between the swarm, the explosions of the missiles and the blasts from the horror, the fireballs from the pasha and from party members, and the swirl of bodies and blades as everything engages at once. Graz’zt scrambles away from the main body of the combat and to one of the portals. Did we already get this one? he asks over the permanent psychic link that the party shares. When Baron Lillamere responds in the affirmative, he points at another one of the portals. What about that one?No, Lillamere replies.Veil/Graz’zt thinks, I’m teleporting over to it- She vanishes.Wait- Lillamere curses aloud. Graz’zt/Veil has been caught in the greater anticipate teleport!Gerontius flips through the air, tumbles and twists, and finally ends up, somehow, with a knife in the pasha’s wrist. With a startled laugh, Ifroobil frowns at the hot blood dripping from the wound. Gerontius tumbles back away (thanks to Marius’ double actions), but then frowns in dismay as the wound starts to stitch itself shut.Lillamere is frowning, too; his seeker missiles stop short against some kind of force field around the horror. The omega horror is concentrating its fire against Gerontius, who is taking a fair amount of punishment. Though the missiles have stopped, the omega horror is firing multiple different extremely destructive weapons. The harried little halfling can only dodge and flip so much. Then Amhari Ifroobil and his white-hot steed charge Gerontius in a blazing comet of incandescent flame and hellfire. Nothing Gerontius has done has prepared him for this- this blazing blast exploding all around him. He screams. Just then, Pan Lo emerges from one of the portals and sees the Pasha. His eyes narrow to slits. For the first time since the party met him, he seems inflamed.“You there!” he cries. “You owe me my staff!” Pan Lo leaps across nearly the entire ruin of the Bastion of Order, then rushes the rest of the way to him. Amhari Ifroobil looks startled, and a little bit distressed, to see him.Gerontius feints at the burning mount, distracts it, and stabs it in the eye- to little effect. It is an elemental, he realizes, it has no vital organs for me to attack! Well, the same is not true of the efreeti. With that, he turns his attentions to Ifroobil, and a few cuts later, he has inflicted several severe cuts and stab wounds. “Foolish mortal!” the would-be Archomental of Evil Fire sneers. “I will slay you and make a dice cup from your skull!”We’re letting ourselves get distracted, he realizes- and sends over the mental link. The keys! Focus on getting the keys! With that, the baron steps through another of the portals. Suddenly Sybele howls in pain and drops to the ground. Blood is everywhere!“Honey!” Thrush shouts aloud.“Oh my god,” croaks Mabrack. “Her foot!”To be precise, her foot is gone. Shot clean off, with almost surgical precision, with a medium-sized arrow.“Someone shot her foot off with an arrow,” Thrush says in disbelief.Screaming, howling in pain, Sybele shouts over the mental link, It’s the leshay!Next Time: Everything pretty much happens at once.</blockquote>

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