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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Droid101" data-source="post: 1860606" data-attributes="member: 942">Blaze pushes open the huge metal doors with another quick boost of strength.  The inside of the fortress is much the same as the outside.  Bare iron halls, iron doors, iron floors.  It’s extremely noisy in there, the sound of hammers hitting steel reverberates, and the roar of a large fire seems to echo in the halls.The Heroes go into the first room they see.  A strange chain-covered humanoid and a smaller imp-looking creature seem to be torturing a lillend; a winged anel with a snake’s tail instead of legs.The Heroes rush in immediately.  The noise of the fortress masks their entrance, and they are able to sneak up and dispatch the creatures without much effort.  They free the lillend.“Thank you for your help,” the creature says.“You’re welcome, why were you here?” The Necromancer asks.“Those two monsters kidnapped me and brought me here to fulfill their evil fantasies,” she responds.“You’re free to go now, there should be an open path to the exit of the fortress,” Eltharion says.“Thank you,” and she flies off.The Heroes exit that room and proceed cautiously toward the next.This next room has hanging cloth here and there to give it a more closed in feel.  A voice is heard in their minds.We don’t want anything else, leave us.  A mind flayer steps out from behind a cloth.  It is startled when it actually sees the Heroes, and it steps back.  Another mind flayer is seen, and a minotaur steps forward in front of them.  Its eyes are glazed over, but it is at the ready.“We’re not here to fight you… do you know anything about any adamantium?” Eltharion asks.Imperagon is gathering it.  Using it to rebuild his puny weapon to use it to conquer.  His ideas are stale and we have no use for him.   The voice responds.“Man, this guy can’t keep any allies…” The Necrmancer chuckles.“We shall leave you then, we have no business with you,” Blaze says.  The illithid nods.  The Heroes leave.They go up a flight of stairs.  Two rooms up here have nobody in them, but are more heavily decorated.  The Heroes plunder an item or two.The next room they go in has several exotic weapons hanging from the walls, and the floor is covered in a thin wooden mat.  A black-skinned dwarf is sitting cross-legged in the center of the room.  As the Heroes enter, her head jerks up and she jumps to her feet immediately.  She has a shaved head.“I didn’t know there were dwarf females,” The Necromancer quips, and draws a grunt of disagreement from Ogrim.The dwarf takes up a fighting pose, so Eltharion, Grog, Ogrim and Blaze charge.  Bloodthorne is still rummaging through the other rooms.  The Necromancer watches with a wry smile.The duergar moves with exceptional speed, and as the Heroes close in, she takes up the ancient dwarven defensive stance.“Nice,” Ogrim notes, as he swings his axe at her.  She ducks.Her hands and legs fly out at every different angle.  She sweep kicks, tripping Grog, Ogrim, and Blaze; each of them hitting their head on the way down hard.  Two more attacks hit pressure points on Eltharion and Grog, and they are both stunned.“She’s winning!” The Necromancer calls out from behind them.Ogrim and Blaze hop up and strike at her again.  This time she is unable to dodge, and takes two axe cuts to her forearms.She launches another flurry, stunning and tripping Ogrim and Blaze.  Grog and Eltharion get feeling back in their extremities and strike her.  She parries best she can, but takes another couple of slashes.She concentrates for a moment, and some of her wounds seem to close up.“Damned duergar!” Ogrim grunts from the floor.  He doesn’t bother to get up, and swings his axe four times from his prone position.  The fourth cut brings her to one knee.And Grog finishes her with an overhead chop to the upper back.  She falls into a pool of her own blood.  The Heroes look at each other in disbelief.“She just took on all four of us,” Blaze says, rubbing the back of his head.“Not bad,” Eltharion says.Blaze heals everyone, and he’s out of spells.  They move on to the next room.  However, before they get to it, the door opens a fair blonde woman comes out, with light skin and beautiful eyes……and is summarily turned to stone.The party spins around to look at The Necromancer, who is still holding out his hand after casting flesh to stone.“Why’d you do that?” Eltharion asks.“Did you see her eyes?  Nobody that beautiful is going to be in an evil fortress in the middle of an evil plane without being a prisoner.  She had to have been evil,” The Necromancer reasons.  Everybody shrugs.  Ogrim pushes over the statue and watches it smash into hundreds of small shards of stone that scatter across the iron floor.The Heroes head back downstairs to see the last two rooms they didn’t visit.  They go in one and see piles of iron shrapnel all over the place.  In one pile a metal cat is laying.  As soon as the Heroes enter, it leaps up.  It seems larger than the others they fought.The Necromancer immediately casts forcecage and traps it inside an invisible box of force.“Good work, how long will that hold him?” Eltharion asks.“Probably for about 15 hours or more,” The Necromancer guesses.“Let’s go then,” Blaze goes to open the next door in here, but it is hot to the touch.  “Door’s hot.  Let’s go back to the other room first.”The Heroes head back to the last door on the first floor they haven’t been in.“I told you not to bother me, and I told you what would happen if you did!” a voice calls out as Blaze pushes the door open.  A huge blade cuts down and nearly severs Blaze’s arm, but he jumped back enough to lessen the damage.  A 15 foot tall fire giant is wielding a huge greatsword.  From behind him, two 10 foot long red lizards leap to the attack, each of them drawing a hit on Blaze.Blaze pulls out his axe and strikes at the giant, chopping down into its foot.  It jumps in pain, and growls all the louder.Eltharion and Ogrim take one lizard, and Bloodthorne and Grog take the other.  Blaze takes the giant alone.The giant hits Blaze a couple more times, and he feels his world spinning.  Several heavily bleeding injuries send him to one knee.The Necromancer sees his friend in need, and searches through his head for the proper spell to solve the situation.He casts magic jar on the giant.The Necromancer’s body falls limp, and the fire giant’s eyes take on The Necromancer’s evil gleam.Bloodthorne finishes off the first lizard with a precise strike to the back of the head, piercing its spinal column.  Eltharion and Ogrim have damaged the other lizard.  A huge greatsword from the fire giant finishes it.“Nekky, is that you?” Eltharion asks up at the fire giant.“Yes, and what did I tell you about that?” the fire giant’s deep voice takes on a few of The Necromancer’s sarcastic undertones.“Good job Nek,” Eltharion responds.Blaze is breathing heavily, but has bandaged up his wounds somewhat.“We need to make a tactial retreat.  I need to be able to heal myself if we’re going to face this Imperagon guy,” Blaze manages to say.“Okay, first, let me go through all the rooms we trashed, and hack everything to pieces in this fire giant body.  That way, Imperagon will think that this guy is the one who did it.  Maybe they’ll think he went crazy or something,” The Necromancer says.“Good plan, get to it,” Ogrim states.The fire giant runs down the hall, hacking at the walls, leaving huge greatsword gashes here and there.  The rest of the Heroes retreat out of the front of the fortress, carrying The Necromancer’s body with them.After about ten minutes, The Necromancer comes to.“Let’s get out of here, now, I’ll explain when we get back,” and with that, he casts teleport, and everyone is back at the formian complex.“So what happened?” Eltharion asks.“Okay, I went into all the rooms we searched and made it look like he did all the killing.  Then, I went to that one room with the hot door.  Since the thing was a fire giant, it could take the heat, so I went in.  It was extremely hot in there, like a furnace or something.  All the hammering is coming from there, as I saw tons of various creatures pounding away on anvils.  I killed a couple of guards, spiney looking creatures.“I went deep into the forge, and saw a foundry.  Four huge pillars of fire surrounding a huge floating scimitar.  Looked very ornate, but I didn’t mess with it.  I went back the other way, and wandered out of the forge to a new area.“That’s pretty much when the body of the giant died.  I was rushed by three things.  They were definitely preparing for the ambush.  One was a duergar with heavy plate armor.  One was like… an angel, but his wings were black.  He had a trumpet.  And one was like the devil Gryrtag, a pit fiend.  I was killed in almost literally a second.” The Necromancer takes a deep breath.“At least we know what we’re up against,” Ogrim states.“Let’s rest and get back there.  You saw the room, right?” Eltharion asks.“Yes,” The Necromancer responds.“Good, then you can teleport us in, so we can get the drop on them,” Eltharion says.“Time to sleep,” Blaze collapses onto a blanket, and falls asleep on the hard iron floor.Three on six, piece of cake, right?  Right???  See how many Heroes die, next time!!</blockquote>

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