Horbin and Thrush gaze with awe, and not a little trepidation, at the hundreds of miles of missing ocean and island where the northwestern tip of Pesh used to be.
“Well,” says Thrush. “Well, well. What do you make of it, Horbin?”
The bishop of western Dorhaus purses his lips. “I’ve never seen, or even heard of, anything like this before. Clearly, it’s the work of the Bile Lords.”
”Probably of their King,” Thrush opines, “and maybe their Queen of Guts.”
And the others aren’t responding over the telepathic link, Horbin adds over that self-same link. Which means that either they’re dead, or, more likely, cut off inside of Bile Mountain.
Yeah, Thrush agrees, but where is the mountain? I’d guess it went with the rest of northwestern Pesh, wherever it is.
Horbin studies the scene intently. How do we find it? Our best guess is that the effect that seals Bile Mountain from divinations and teleportation is some kind of epic magic. We probably can’t counter it.
“I don’t like being helpless,” Thrush says aloud. “I’m worried about Sybele- and the rest of our friends.”
Horbin sighs. “You aren’t the only one,” he answers.
***
The next wave comes from above. Enraged by Alcar’s taunting, the King of Bile has dispensed with the niceties of luring the party deeper into his lair. Instead, he takes a few moments to assemble a deadly strike team. With Tearless beholders in the lead, disintegrating a new passage from near the top of Bile Mountain to near the bottom, a massive strike force begins their passage down. A cadre of Axons, Axels and Axars- the Bile Lords’ deadly nimblewright servitors- is the bulk of the first wave, but not far behind are a group of strange outsiders captured on the plane of Concordant Opposition- creatures called concordant killers, who have been subverted, corrupted and converted into gutlings to serve the terrible Queen. Moving through the tainted stone walls like ghosts, a group of bile-tainted maulgoths hurries to joint the fight as well.
When they arrive, the hammer falls.
But if they are the hammer, our heroes are the anvil- able to take the blow, absorb it, and reply with a mighty outpouring of weapons, spells and fists. Jibber Junior scatters the concordant killers with a psionic sonic cone, while Alcar triggers a long-dormant greater contingency that Orbius placed on him, gaining the benefits of an extended Marius’ double actions. He uses a miracle to ape a Marius’ deconstruction, shattering an Axis, but one of the Axars quickly casts reconstruction, bringing it back instantly! Simultaneously, dozens of deadly eye rays fire and find their mark in various members of the party, dealing withering damage, while Gerontius finds himself abruptly bathed in an antimagic cone that significantly reduces his prowess.
Then the maulgoths come, quite literally, out of the walls, lashing with tentacles that can inflict telling wounds- if only they connect. Even with his magic suppressed, Gerontius manages to flip and tumble away, while Chakar simply steps aside, twists away and vaults over the maulgoths to twist another Axon across his hip and hurl it away. Then Gerontius tumbles back in and begins showing the bilestone maulgoths just how good he is with his daggers.
Baron Lillamere creates a crushing fist of spite that begins pounding down, while Gerontius manages at last to get out of the antimagic and begins taking nimblewrights apart with amazing facility.
Meanwhile, one of the concordant gutlings creates a wall of force to trap Sybele away from the others. It is a wasted efforts, however, as a disintegrate from her brings it down, and then she leaps up and over, crashing down on an Axis and one of the concordant gutlings. With a gleeful laugh, she lays about her with her sword before jumping away and pulling her bow back out. Arrows sing, landing in beholder after beholder.
The adventurers turn their focus to these exceptionally deadly beholders. Corrupted by pure evil, with their intestines dangling behind them as they float along, these ghastly- and somehow identical- beholders are the most dangerous threat present. In less than thirty seconds, many of the nimblewrights have fallen, as have three of the concordant killers. JJ takes a moment to temporal accelerate and speed up one of the beholder-made shafts in the ceiling to see if there are more things coming.
Oh yes there are.
No time passes for the others; JJ is in one place, then in another. But his voice sounds over the din of combat via the telepathic link, loud and clear to all of them: Bile Lords! And other things! More stuff is coming!
Lillamere curses as he unleashes a pair of disintegrates on one of the beholders, destroying it. “Dammit, Alcar!”
“Good!” Alcar roars. “COME ON OUT, YOU BASTARDS!! AND BRING ANGELFIRE WHILE YOU’RE AT IT!!!!”*
The maulgoths prove able to heal themselves if given even an instant’s respite, and our heroes are forced to do a little healing on themselves as well. Still, at least for the moment, the advantage is theirs.
But how long can we keep this up? wonders Blaze to himself. I’m using up spells quickly, and so is everyone else. Will we run out of resources before the Bile Lords run out of monsters to throw at us? He curses as one of his spells fails to penetrate one of the beholders’ spell resistance. It is a very valid question, he realizes- especially when not every spell can find its way home on its target. He casts another pair of useless spells and screams profanity in frustration.
Chakar leaps at one of the beholders, trying to grapple it, but it slaps him away with its telekinesis ray. He rolls to his feet- as a death ray stabs at him. Fortunately, he is death warded, but the next beam is a slow ray that negates the haste spell running on him.
On the other hand, one of the maulgoths dies from Gerontius’ lingering damage. The party takes heart- those things have proven to be quite tough! Wankerman slays the second maulgoth! Now the party renews its focus on the beholders, whose eye rays are so dangerous, and Lillamere destroys another of them with a volley of disintegrates. Now only one tearless beholder remains- along with two concordant gutlings and several of the nimblewrights.
JJ is chagrined to find his electric stun has no effect on the beholder or the concordant gutling that he hits.
Then Sybele changes the battlefield. The enemy has laid down several walls of force to control the battle; she counters with a very powerful psionic variant of disintegrate that she has recently discovered: dangerous disintegrate. It obliterates a huge sphere, destroying a large hemispherical area from around the entire group! The remaining enemies are blasted with psionic power. A shocking volume of stone and debris simply vanishes, leaving only a fine yellowish powder as a residue in a 30’ radius.
Inoke slams a sweeping strike into one of the gutlings and the last beholder with immense force, and both of them fall to the blow! Lillamere, meanwhile, shape changes into an amethyst dragon and breathes a blast of force at the last remaining gutling, then hits it with a disintegrate and blasts its jaw off! Wankerman follows this up with a bullywug breakdance, but unfortunately, he misses. Finally, JJ blasts it with a crystal shard and destroys it!
Alcar, meanwhile, finishes off the last of the constructs.
There is a moment of silence as our heroes try to catch their breath.
They only have six seconds.
Next Time: The second wave!
*For those of you who have not been reading the epic story hour since the early threads, Angelfire was a templar of Coila who was in the party a couple of years ago. He/she changed sex more times than any other single pc, and was a kick-ass falchion wielding psychic warrior/cleric/templar. Last seen in the tpk when the party was slain by the Bile Lords, Angelfire was the one pc that Horbin was unable to resurrect. This was because she was already an undead gutling. Alcar and Angelfire hated each other, and almost killed in each other in Bile Mountain several times.