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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 232078" data-attributes="member: 150">Spire 5. Whether 'tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows . . .Spire 5. Whether 'tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows . . . The group shuffled into a vacant room, barricaded the door, and tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible for the night. At one point, they heard heavy plodding footsteps moving about in the hall, but after that it was quiet. When morning came, they found that Eli and Irk were beginning to stink a bit, but the three gems set in the Jackal-head helmet of teleportation were glowing again. Pah donned the helmet, the picked up the bodies and held hands, and Pah thought really hard about the Dragoon Barracks.And "poof" they were home. Gotta love Teleportation when it works.Of course, things seemed a bit different in the barracks. There were a couple of dozen young, pimply boys, dressed in Dragoon Tabards, marching around, sparring, and training with a couple of muskets, all under the watchful eye of Pavel. Once the initial shock of seeing the party appear in the middle of the parade ground wore off, most of the young recruits were very excited to finally meet the Heroes of Spittlemarch, the Dyvers Dragoons . . . and who were those other two, the half-elves . . . anyway, Pavel drove the youngsters back and took the party into Solen's lab, where they could have a private talk. The long and the short of the situation: Solen was alive, but off on some mission or errand of his own. Pavel had been left behind, and was trying to train some replacement troops. He was appalled to hear that Nikolai was presumed lost, with the Mystery Machine and the rest of the dragoons, but got used to the title of Dragoon Acting Captain pretty quickly. The party started to pool their resources, and managed to put together enough money and loot to pay for a true resurrection scroll to cast on Irk. Eli, they decided, could wait a bit, while they returned to the spire to raise a bit more cash. (Eli's player was going to miss this session)Pavel went off to talk to his contacts about the scroll, and the rest of the surviving members of the party mucked around with re-equipping for a return to the spire.A few hours later, Pavel returned. Later in the day, Irk walked out of the little Dragoon shrine Pavel had erected in the party's absence, and started putting his armor back on. He took the helmet from Pah, the five members of the party that were returning joined hands, and they teleported back into the Spire.Irk chose the sarcophagus room as his target for the teleportation - t was a room in which they had spent a fair amount of time. They had been gone for all of about 12 hours - not enough time for much to have changed in the spire, at least, not on the levels they entered.They began to make their way down the spire again, clearing a few specters out of some rooms as they worked their way around. They discovered a couple of embalming rooms, filled with jars of organs stored in viscous fluid. "Hey Irk," Uri said. "C'mere. Look. This one's a <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />!"Irk stared at Uri."That's funny," said Uri, holding up the jar. Irk stared hard at Uri. Uri pouted and put the jar back on the shelfUlric wondered aloud whether the organs might be worth something if sold back in Dyvers."I say we let the goo out," said Pah.The party ignored her, talking about what organs might be worth money."I say we destroy them," said Pah, but instead the party decided th keep them, just in case. They yanked Pah's bag of holding away from her, and started stuffing jars into the sack. "Those are all sealed, right?" she asked. Once the jars were stashed Irk handed the bag back to Pah, who took it back with a hurt look. Then they moved on.At one point they came to a door covered in runes of protection. A voice called out to them from behind the door. "Hey, you guys, can you hear me? You gotta help me. Get me outta here.""Why are you in there." "They put me in here. Come on, you gotta let me out."The group stood around in front of the door - Uri was trying to make some sense of the wards on the door, while Ulric and Crys explained that the voice they were hearing was not one of their former party members. While they were debating, they heard heavy footsteps coming from an area they had not investigated. While they bumbled around, trying to figure out what to do about the impending arrival of the heavy-footed something, the voice beyond the door said "Oh, yeah, look out for Mr. Stitches."Mr. Stitches came around the corner - a massive half-dragon flesh golem. And the party rolled into action.Ulric went all bearish and tried to face down the Golem, while the spellcasters in the party tried to cast spells on the beast that seemed to just wash off Mr. Stitches like oily rain. Irk, however, had a different plan.He had picked up a pair of winged boots in one of the minor encounters earlier, and used them to fly around behind the beast, where he swooped in bare-handed and grabbed on to Mr. Stitch's Stubby tail. And thought long and hard about the bit of corridor where Ulric had fallen through the floor into the nasty chute trap.And "Piff" they were gone. Ulric, Chrys, Pah, Uri and Minimonk were all relieved to have Mr. Stitches gone, until they noticed that Irk was gone with him.Irk and Mr. Stitches appeared over the trap. Mr. Stitches failed many saves in a row - failed to hit with his opportunity attack to try to stop Irk from grabbing him (not technically a save), failed to resist being teleported, failed to avoid falling down the pit, and then tumbled down the chute, taking little cuts from the razors on the way down. The trap door closed below Irk's hovering boots. Then Irk chugged his way back to the party, who were standing around outside the warded door, trying to figure out what to do next. Irk told them what he had done. Ulric, still in bear form, had an indea, and started to mime something to the party, scratching out a crude map on the floor."What is it, boy?" asked Uri, "Is little Timmy in the well?"But Irk got the point, and turned around and went back up the spire on his own, flying up to the very top where he could look down at the ground below. There, pacing back and forth at the base of the spire, was Mr. Stitches. Irk grabbed a boulder (Player: the feat is called throw anything, right?") and tried to drop it on Mr. Stitches from 300 ' up. The rock missed. Mr. Stitches looked up at Irk, and made some obscene gestures at him. Irk grabbed another boulder, missing again.Mr. Stitches looked up at Irk again, scowling at his distant assailant, while Irk grabbed a third rock. Then, suddenly, Mr. Stitches shift his gaze to something over Irk's shoulder, and smiled a toothy, evil smile.Irk, rock in hand, looked over his shoulder. There was the Vampire Archer, perched on top of a bit of broken battlement, bow in hand. He fired and arrow at Irk, which buried itself and it's bit of stored cold energy, in Irk's thigh. Irk was faced with a choice, holding a rock, faced with the archer and the enemy below, but he was never one to give up on a plan easily. He turned back to the edge and tossed his rock at Mr. Stitches again, missing for the third time.The archer fired three shots in rapid succession, each one taking Irk in the back. He slumped against the battlement.After a while, the rest of the party wondered what had happened to Irk, and found him at the top of the spire, alone, dead. Again.The good news? The helmet was still there.Until next time:-rg</blockquote>

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