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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 3970837" data-attributes="member: 1210">To Rescue Belmondo!The group assembles: Sybele, Alcar, Blazier, Wankerman, Gerontius, Chakar, Bahgerah, JJ and Baron Lillamere. As they gather, they are hailed as heroes by passersby, and Alcar heals a blind baby. Such is the life of epic heroes. “I know that we can’t go right to Alcar, but I can superior teleport us to the closest possible place,” Baron Lillamere suggest. The others concur, and the elven baron casts his spell. The party vanishes from Brelana (their final stop on the ‘gathering’ part of things) only to reappear on a small island within ten miles of Belmondo. It is desolate, almost lifeless, with only a few small shrubs on it. Our heroes will probably never see it again. They leave it behind immediately, using various methods to take to the air, Alcar leading the way. Before long, Gerontius spies something immense beneath the waves, glinting of metal. “Look zere!” he calls. “Zere is something underwater!”Let’s see what it is, Alcar sends over the telepathic bond that the champions of Chaos share. (Bahgerah is the only person present who is not on the link, since he just joined the party.) The angel prays to his new god, Bless, and the water begins to froth. In only a few moments, it seems to drain away, deeper, deeper... to reveal a terrible, terrible thing.***Years AgoHorbin was on a great big ship made out of metal, along with his companions, Clambake, Krunkshank, Sith and Bolfol. The clockwork master Titus was on board, as well, trying to master the ship. There were no other living things on the vessel, at least as far as Horbin knew, but the bugs were everywhere. They were made of different metals, mostly copper, but some of other materials. Each had a dark violet crystal set in its head. All of them were frozen, immobile, inert. They were the size of a medium dog. At least, at first.The ship was fascinating to explore. They had found a control panel and briefly tampered with it, but then subsequently left alone.  One thing that had caught the party’s eyes was a single crystal control rod in the control chamber that was unlike the rest. It had two prongs coming out of it rather than being shaped like a long needle. It’s about the biggest adventure they could find on board; yet for quite some time, nobody could find anywhere to plug it in.Then one day, while exploring the bowels of the vessel, Sith, Bolfol and Horbin found a strange panel with two adjacent depressions in it. Shaped differently from most of the plugs on the ship, they looked tailored to the mysterious two pronged crystal control rod. Could the mystery be solved at last? The three adventurers clambered up ladders, crawled through small passages, and walked through metal hallways, finally reaching the control panel. There, on the floor in a heap of other unused control rods, was the two-pronged plug. The three adventurers, demonstrating their collective wisdom- for even Horbin was then young and impetuous- took the mysterious two-pronged crystal control rod back down to the chamber with the panel with the plug it looked like was made for it. The walls of the room were lined with a strange copper-colored metal. Bolfol, Sith and Horbin clustered around the panel. Sith held the plug, and gingerly inserted it.Immediately, there was a distant but LOUD noise. And lights went on.Lots of them. The orcish necromancer tried to pull it out, but the rod, once inserted, seemed to be pretty set on staying put. So he buffed himself with a bull’s strength and tried again, to no avail.Then there was the sound of hatches opening everywhere and sudden activity... The bugs had animated.The party burst into action. A door sealed them in with a hiss. Over a dozen of the little bugs began pouring in to the chamber with them. Most were copper but one was gold and several others were silver. There was the smell of ozone as the gold one fired a bolt of coruscating lightning into the three adventurers. The two silver bugs began firing little missiles at Horbin. The party stuck, whirled, smashed; Sith destroyed the gold construct with the chain he had taken from the mistress of chains that the party fought previously. A silver bug popped a spinning saw blade on Horbin, but he adeptly parried it and struck back. In less than a minute the clockwork bugs in the area with them were destroyed.But the lights were on, everywhere, and the noises! It sounded like something exploded somewhere, and the ship felt like it was... shrinking. And the thought of fighting all the hundreds or thousands of clockwork bugs they had seen made the heroes’ stomachs shrink. The three moved as quickly as they could back towards the main deck, and they went only a hundred feet before encountering a marching line of scores of the copper horrors. But the bugs ignored them, so rather than attacking them and perhaps drawing attention, the three characters simply beat feet.On the deck, all was chaos. It was all kinds of foggy, but clearly the water level had risen significantly relative to the deck in just the few moments since the rod was plugged in. The ship was sinking. And let’s not forget about the bugs, swarming all over! And what blew up, anyway? But hey, at times like this, what’s an adventurer to do? Outnumbered thousands to three, with drowning coming up soon- and boy, won’t that huge, huge, ship make some kind of whirlpool or something when it goes down?- Horbin cast water walk on everyone he could find. And water breathing. Sith cast fly so he didn’t even need to worry about it. As they left the ship, they could feel a strange warmth at their backs. There were strange hissing and popping noises behind them. I wonder if I’ll ever know what that was all about, Horbin thinks.****The water, lowered by Alcar’s spell, drains away to reveal what the steelship that Horbin rode so long ago has become. Gleaming metal tubes and plates twist together to form a huge city of steel, chrome and copper. There are no buildings; it is all a building. Thin avenues filled with marching copper horrors performing menial tasks have been revealed by the control water’s effects. Strange protrusions like stubby towers dot the upper surface of the place. Grills, chimneys and hatches are all over. Clockwork horrors swarm like bugs everywhere, many of them adapted to somewhat different forms. The mark of Belmondo, thinks Alcar grimly. He remembers all too well how, years ago during the first major incursion of the horrors, Master Control arranged for Belmondo the Enhanced to be captured and kept inside a great clockwork horror as big an immensely large dragon. Master Control mined Belmondo’s brain for inspiration, and only a daring rescue operation freed the dwarven prostheticist.  And yet, can Master Control and his clockwork horrors be expecting them? It scarcely seems possible- but as soon as our heroes arrive, swarms of horrors so small that they are barely visible to the naked eye begin to attack immediately. Dozens of clockwork horrors begin firing spring-loaded darts or rays of lethal energy at our heroes. Who, let us recall, are far from helpless. Baron Lillamere shape changes into a gigantic red dragon and incinerates hundreds of clockwork horrors in a single blast of white-hot flame. Unfortunately, he singes Sybele’s legs (she has already flown close in to the surface of the immense metal construction). She yelps in pain and shoots him a telepathic dirty look. Gerontius, Wankerman and Chakar all fly down to the surface of the underwater city of horrors to enter melee combat immediately, while Blazier destroys another several score horrors with a well-placed fireball. Alcar takes a deep breath and joins in the area destruction action with a maximized empowered flame strike. He, too, catches Sybele in the corner with it! “God dammit!” she cries. “Sorry, don’t worry,” I’ll heal you in a minute, Alcar says, switching between speech and telepathy mid-sentence. They knew that we were coming somehow, Lillamere opines over the link. Master Control must have some kind of device on us or something. Maybe something tiny, like those swarms he uses.Meanwhile, Sybele is beset by many horrors. They are starting to try to climb over her and drag her down, so she gives a mighty shake, throwing them off of her, and then leaps about 25’ away with a mighty jump! Most of the horrors- the copper and silver ones, anyway- are fleeing into the interior of the city via various ducts and hatches, but a few gold ones are emerging instead to engage the party. Lillamere stops that with a wall of force.But all this is distraction. Sybele is doing the real work.Belmondo is shielded from magical or psionic divination or location. Our heroes have already attempted to find him with spells. Now another approach is required. Sybele is a warrior of Chaos; she has been changed by its touch, in many ways. The most obvious, of course, is her size (she stands over 7’ high). More subtly, but in this case infinitely more useful, is the Chaos change in her nose. For her sense of smell is highly developed- as good, likely, as a shark’s.Sybele puts her head next to a wide duct leading straight down into the metal intestines of the metal structure below them and takes a huge sniff.I smell dwarf! she announces. Without any hesitation, she leaps down into the duct. Alcar flaps after her a moment later, delivering his promised heal spell.Lightning and rays of worse energies crackle at our heroes from some of the stubby towers nearby. The smell of ozone fills the air. The adventurers dodge through the air and duck behind cover on the ground. Meanwhile, Blaze picks off the gold horrors that try to get around Lillamere’s wall of force.Lillamere himself uses his shape change in what might be the most effective way he possibly could, given the setting. He turns into a rust monster.***HellGlaisig, the Hidden Minister, raises his glass. The red liquid within the crystal gleams in the light of the hellfire lamps burning the souls of the damned. “To the demons,” he chuckles.There is an ironic fivefold rumble from the end of the table. Tiamat wheezes laughter from her white head.An entire wall of Lucifer’s ancient palace works as a scrying device. At the present, it shows a terrifying battle between demons and devils raging across the Fourth Hell. The devils are pressing deep into the Hells, and the diabolic legions- mighty as they are- are in disarray, between the recent loss of Asmodeus and Bel and the great defeat in the War of Ethics. Glaisig takes a deep drink from his cup. His eyes narrow as he watches a mighty pit fiend torn asunder by a mightier goristro demon. The legions of Hell are maintaining their front, and reinforcements are mustering, but they can only stay the huge horde of demons for so long. It would seem logical that the cabal at the head of the Nine Hells would take this news with dismay. And yet they do not. Indeed, only the victory of Chaos- the demon hordes- over most of the Hells can ensure Lucifer’s forthcoming transcendence. ***“First of all, thank you all for responding to my ad. I know it is unusual for someone asking for a simple messenger to insist that he or she be weapons-trained and ready to fight if need be, but the message that I would have you all carry might anger some. It might frighten others. It might well provoke men to fighting, or to running away. You need to be prepared for that, just in case.“Some of you may have heard of me before. I hope so, anyway, because it will make what I’m about to tell you easier to believe. First of all, I’d like to establish my credentials. I’d like whichever of you thinks you’re a competent or better swordsman to attack me- all at once. Strike to kill. I promise that I won’t hurt you; I’ll be gentle. But I want to show you that I mean what I say when I say that I’m the foremost swordsman of my age. Come on! What’s wrong? Don’t you think I mean it? Hold on, you- two of you aren’t enough. All of you. Look, you’ve all already received a handful of gold; here. This is enough that I’ve paid you all 100 gold without you having to do anything. Now attack me! “Good! Nice blow, but not good enough! Hah! You see? Took me all of three seconds to get you all beaten down. Anyone seen anything like that before?“Now then: I want you all to be my heralds. You have seen my skill at arms, let me tell you a little more. I have battled against Emperor Prayzose.... and he is dead. I will be the Emperor now.“You all are to spread the word, everywhere you go. Let those you encounter hear my name: Emperor Thrush. Let them all know that I will rule justly and fairly, with wise advisors and an ear to the church- but I will rule. There are already powerful people who support me, and I already have a new High Priest in mind. Yes, sir, this is going to be a successful reign! “Spread the word, boys! Thrush is the new Emperor!”Next Time: Deep into the horror city in search of Belmondo!*As originally told <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=18750" target="_blank">here.</a></blockquote>

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