NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JollyDoc" data-source="post: 4052048" data-attributes="member: 9546">What Mandi could not know at that moment was that the water was far from ordinary.  It was in fact a spring from the river Styx, the River of Death whose very touch could cause insanity.  As it was, when Daelric, Marius, Cleaver and Shami-Amourae had been struck by it, they had only suffered mild amnesia, forgetting everything that had happened in the previous eight hours.  As Daelric pondered Mandi’s reply, his mind could not grasp their meaning.  The last thing he remembered was being aboard the Sea Wyvern.  They had been discussing the logistics of traveling to Pazunia to speak with someone named Red Shroud.  Now he was standing at the edge of a pit, alone, with water pouring from the sky and Mandi was babbling something about having the former Queen of Succubi in tow.  To make matters worse, four more retrievers clambered out of the rift in the sky and dropped slowly to the ground.  Each of them carried a hooded howdah on its back, and within these rode bar-lgura demons, each of them clutching a longbow.  Shami-Amourae was far from clear on the events around her as well.  She remembered the eternity of Shattered Night, tortured by the silent whispers in her head, and then she was free, lying on the ground beside her former prison, water from the sky pouring down around her, a flying elf woman hovering above her babbling something about salvation.  Hesitantly, the succubus held out her hand, and the elf seized it and began rising rapidly into the air.Marius sat up in the rising pool of water, totally confused.  Was that Mandi hovering above him, not to mention Octurus and Tower Cleaver standing nearby?  He’d been in Broken Reach just a few moments ago, preparing to attend Red Shroud’s court where he knew his former adventuring companions would soon be arriving.  Now he was at the bottom of a well with three of those same companions, and he was being told to flee for his life before he drowned.  What kind of sorcery was this?  Still, self-preservation was indeed an instinct the gnome mage possessed, and he pushed all other concerns aside, instead weaving a flight spell about himself and rising aloft with Mandi.  Octurus, meanwhile quaffed another potion which would carry him to safety, watching a bewildered looking Tower Cleaver do the same.  The demon hunter had avoided the touch of the Styx, just as Mandi had, but as he began to rise, the perilous waters lapped around his legs and his mind grew foggy.  High above now, Mandi also felt the spray of the fall against her skin, and in that instant, she thought she’d gone mad.  She found herself floating in mid-air, above a tree canopy that grew out of deep shaft below her.  A succubus clung to her left hand, while above she could see monstrous spiders with demonic riders scuttling around the lip of the well.  ‘What in the Hell’s is going on here?’ she called telepathically, assuming her companions would be linked to her, as they usually were.‘What happened to the Sea Wyvern?’For a moment there was no reply, then she heard Octurus’s voice first:  ‘I was just about to ask the same thing.’Then Cleaver’s:‘Moo?’Then Marius…Marius?  What was that coward doing here?‘I wish someone would explain it all to me too!’Last, Daelric:‘Umm…I’ll tell you what you just told me,’ the cleric replied.  ‘You said Sepoto’d been banished and you had Shami-Amourae.  You should we should get out of her fast.’‘Sepoto banished?’ Mandi wondered.  What did that mean?  Shami-Amourae?  She looked down at the succubus again, whose own eyes looked as bewildered as her own.  ‘Never mind’ she barked back through the link.  ‘We’ll figure this out later!  For now, kill anything that gets in your way and get the Hell out of here!’Mandi and Shami-Amourae cleared the lip of the well first, a spell on the sorceress’s lips and fire in her hand as she blasted one of the retrievers out of existence, sending its rider tumbling to the ground.“I’m certain you’re acquainted with these constructs,” she said to the succubus as they landed several dozen yards away from the nearest retriever.  “So if you’re wondering whether or not you can trust me, and whether you might just be better off on your own, remember that they can track you down anywhere in the universe.  They’re here for you, not us, so it would be in your own best interest to stick around for awhile.”With that, Mandi spoke the words to another dweomer, transforming her body into that of a massive pit fiend, and stepped between Shami-Amourae and the bar-lgura, who were already drawing their bows.“Nice look, sweetie,” the succubus smirked, “but I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself.”She turned towards the unmounted demon, still climbing to his feet, puckered her lips and blew a sultry kiss in his direction.  The bar-lgura went rigid for a moment, and then, when Shami-Amourae crooked a finger at him with a come-hither smile, he came, like a well-heeled hound.Octurus and Marius were the next pair out of the pit, just in time to witness Mandi avasculate a bar-lgura, trapping its mount in the disgusting web of blood vessels.“I hate it when she does that,” Octurus grumbled.At that moment, a brilliant flare of light illuminated the courtyard as Daelric appeared, wreathed in holy fire, and hurled it at one of rider/mount pairs.  He was rewarded for his bravery by a sizzling bolt of electricity in his back as another retriever unleashed the deadly power of its eyes.  Its rider relied on more mundane weapons, but the pair of arrows that sprouted from the priest’s thigh seemed just as effective.The battle raged on, with spells flying as well as arrows and energy bolts.  Shami-Amourae thinned the field further by luring a second bar-lgura to her side, while a one-two combo of disintegration rays and scimitars, courtesy of Octurus and Marius, neutralized its mount.  The demon hunter then triggered one of his many tattoos, pouncing on a second retriever and reducing it to pieces in a matter of seconds.  Mandi took down the last retriever with her bare hands, the pit fiend’s claws ripping through the spider demon’s thick carapace as if it were rice paper.  The last two bar-lgura refused to flee and continued to pepper the Legionnaires with arrows, knowing full well what reward failure would bring them.  In the end, their fate was only slightly improved as they died quickly at the swords and claws of Mandi and Octurus.The water from the rift had filled the Well of Debased Eros by that time, and was overflowing into the courtyard and the surrounding ground, quickly forming a small lake.  Mandi quickly turned to Shami-Amourae and told her tale a second time, though for both of them, it was the only time they remembered.  When she’d finished, Shami-Amourae placed one hand on her shapely hip and quirked her mouth in an evil smile.“There is nothing I desire more than to see my former lover and my sister, his whore, suffer for their betrayal of me.”Mandi held her tongue from stating that the succubus had brought their wrath upon herself by betraying Demogorgon in the first place.“So I will tell you something that might be of importance to you,” Shami-Amourae continued, “but then I’m leaving, and you are on your own.”Mandi nodded her understanding, and the succubus began to speak at length.“Demogorgon is his own worst enemy.  He is, in many ways, two creatures that share the same body.  Aameul, his left head, is the more charismatic and calculating, while Hethradiah, his right head, is more impulsive and feral.  Each views the other as inferior, and each believes the other incapable of outfoxing itself.  It’s really rather cute, after a fashion.  It certainly makes it easy to manipulate him, by playing Aameul off of Hethradiah, and vice versa.Both of his heads have long sought ways to achieve dominance over the other.  Even before they betrayed me, Aameul and Hethradiah had hatched independent plans to take control.  Aameul’s was to murder Hethradiah and use the life energy of the Bastion of Unborn Souls to cauterize the wound.  I always had my doubts as to whether that would work, and ultimately, Aameul’s plans were foiled by a band of meddlesome adventurers.  Hethradiah’s plan is much more insidious.  He intended to seed dozens of Material Plane cities with madness…he called it a savage tide.  The resulting eruption of insanity could then be siphoned into Gaping Maw, where he could use the energy to absorb Aameul.  In effect, Aameul wanted to shed his unwanted half, while Hethradiah wants to absorb it.  A much stronger plan.  I always did like him better.If you seek to oppose him, take warning:  Demogorgon is not one to be trifled with…even I wasn’t able to deceive him for long.  What hope do you think you have?  No…if you want to even have a chance at stopping him, you need to distract him.  That is Demogorgon’s weakness.  Each situation he faces brings two reactions, not one.  And when faced with multiple dangers across multiple fronts, these reactions can paralyze him.  I’ve seen it before, on a small scale as he’s been forced to deal with uprisings and invasions.  I quiver to think how he’d react to something on a larger scale…say, perhaps, an invasion of Gaping Maw by the armies of multiple enemies at once?In any event, I need to be away from this place, to go into hiding before he tries for me again.  I have much to rebuild.  I’ve no interest in tangling with Demogorgon again soon.  Perhaps ever.  But if you feel suicidal, I’d suggest consulting someone who knows more than I do about the Abyss.  Someone like that tart, Iggwilv, perhaps?”Shami-Amourae then turned on her heel, walking towards the edge of the courtyard, her bar-lgura slaves in tow.  When she reached the marble path, she turned back, her eyes on Marius.“Perhaps you want to accompany me, aid me in rebuilding my empire?  Ah, but I see you already bear the mark of another.  Some other time, perhaps?”Then they simply vanished.  No sooner had this happened, than another, more sinister form appeared in the growing lake of the redirected River Styx.  Emerging from the mist and vapor churned up from the turbid, dark waters, was a long skiff, propelled along by a gaunt figure.  As the skiff and its occupant approached, an almost palpable aura of menace preceded him…______________________________________________________________Sepoto sat in a tavern in one of the small hamlets of Ten Towns, located in far northern region of Faerun called Icewind Dale.  Across from him sat a heavily muscled, blonde-haired barbarian.  An impressive looking warhammer leaned against the table.“So,” the goliath said, lifting his tankard, “you were telling me about this drow and his scimitars…”</blockquote>

Verification