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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Broccli_Head" data-source="post: 1194515" data-attributes="member: 105">bonus!Still Inside the Colossus, near Deadsnows, Early Fall, 1378, Year of the CauldronAfter a friendly interrogation, the HotVR&SL, learned the following: his name was Glick, the Colossus was a magical artifact found in the Anarouch desert by a Red Wizard named Xentarich; Glym and the rest of the gnomes had been hired by the wizard to help run the golem (How could a gnome pass up such an opportunity?); and most importantly that the main control center was in the head of the construct, nearly a hundred feet above them. The heroes secured the other two gnomes and took Glick with them to the ladder. “What’s up there?” asked the cleric“Control center for the body,” replied Glick. Grim nodded and stealthily climbed the ladder. He saw a pair of cloven hooves and looked up. A huge fiery warhammer came swinging towards him from the minotaur to whom those hooves had belonged. At the last second, Grim twisted to one side, catching the hammer on his left shoulder instead of his brain pan.  Losing his grip on the ladder due to the pain and force of the blow, he came crashing to the ground. Benito! Make with the healing! he sent to the cleric of Ilmater. To the others… “Big…big…man-bull…minotaur…”Ellysidell then climbed the later, seeing if he could get in a strike without sticking his head in the opening. It was not possible. Ariod changed into a ghost and ascended about 10 paces from the ladder. His head surfaced among a control panel laden with switches and levers. In the room he saw the burly minotaur and three other armored human--two men and one woman—armed and ready to defend the entrance in the floor. The bull-man turned towards him and he shot back down. From above, the heroes heard a resounding SMASH.  After a few moments of indecisiveness by the normally quick-to-action heroes and a botched summoning by Ariod, a flask of alchemist’s fire exploded on Ellysidell. He screamed in rage and finished the rest of his climb up the ladder swinging at the first target he saw. Golden-fire bit deep into the minotaur’s side and the creature bellowed, retaliating with several crushing hits from his hammer and finishing with a gore from its horns that left a bleeding gash in Ellysidell’s chest.  Someone else sliced into him with a sword, but the wild elf, seeing red, ignored the pain and yelled just as intensely as the minotaur he faced. With the way clear, Aris leaped from the floor through the hole and tumbled past another adversary guarding the entrance, slashing him with Blue Destiny as he passed. Reaching his feet he spun as two arrows flew towards him. One missed wide. The other, Aris deflected just before it hit his neck.  Kyros followed, running up the walls to face the same mercenary and then with a powerful stab of his magical greatsword, ended his life. Ivan and Grim followed taking on the other bad guys, and Ariod floated through the floor again changing into the trumpet archon form he had used before, and manifesting a great club to wield against the enemy. Two more mercenaries revealed themselves with ineffectual stabs at Ivan and Ariod. Ellysidell growled and stared at the minotaur as it frothed at the mouth. He spun and faked a slash at the beast’s abdomen, at the last second turned his falchion at an upward angle catching the minotaur in it’s thick neck and separating it from its shoulders. His weapon then continued striking a metal pipe and lodging itself there. The bouncing minotaur head drained the morale of the other fighters, but since there was no where to run, the continued to fight desperately. However, they were once again no match for the heroes. Blades slashed and cut and a club pounded, and soon the mercenaries’ bodies littered the floor.   “Alright Glick, your worth is ever increasing, and I am sure if you continue to show your loyalty, I have a position for you when this is all over. How do we continue up?”Glick stared at the genasi and then at the priest, sighed and went to the control board, somehow still intact after the wild elf and minotaur had smashed a section or two. He asked, “Can I stay down here?”Benito gave him a stern look, and the gnome reluctantly walked over to stand next to the cleric as a section of the floor began to move mechanically up. The heroes crowded on board, with Ariod floating above them.  The platform grinded to a halt, and unlike the floors below, this one was not broken by iron bulkheads. Instead four glass cylinders, about evenly spaced away from the platform, dominated the room. Each held a prisoner of some sort. A reptilian creature lay twisted in the glass jar at 315 degrees . Counter-clockwise an elven maiden lay hung in suspension and then a naked human male. Finally, at 45 degrees some horrific, twisted black blob writhed inside. The cylinders dissolved a few breaths after the elevator stopped. The gnome engineer fell to his knees and began screaming, “This is not good! We’re all gonna die!”Grim took off towards the elven maiden, and caught her before she hit the ground. Ellysidell followed. Aris and Ivan went to check out the dinosaur which was dead and dessicated. Kyros cautiously approached the naked man who began yelling in tandem with the gnome. He swung his greatsword smacking the man on the side of head to quickly subdue him. Unphased by the hit, the man lunged at Kyros and tried to bite him. The psychic warrior saw the crazed look in his eyes and felt an unnatural heat emanating from the feral human as the normal looking teeth just barely missed his face. Benito watched as Ariod changed again into a trumpet archon and charged the chaotic, amorphous beast. He heard the elven maiden add to the cacophony of screams and then Ariod cry out in horror and pain as a tentacle from the blob lashed out and struck him. Benito saw him drop his items drop to the floor and transform into a formless mass of flesh.  Benito blinked, speechless as the chaos reigned around him…</blockquote>

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