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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JollyDoc" data-source="post: 4148669" data-attributes="member: 9546">WAT DAGONThe interdiction field was destroyed.  Orcus’s armies besieged Lemoriax and they would soon by joined by Gwynharwyf’s eladrins.  Orcus himself, if Quah-Nomag was to be believed, was battling Demogorgon at Abysm at that moment.  Nothing stood between the Legionnaires and the Master Pearl at Wat Dagon…or so they thought.As they traveled the winds once more, a bleak landscape opened beneath them.  A turgid sea of dark water frothed along the desolate shoreline under a roiling sky of green clouds and alien moons.  Built upon the shore, seemingly on the verge of falling into the water, was an ominous edifice that appeared to be a walled temple compound, though its once-vibrant walls were cracked and grimed from eons of exposure to the acrid sea wind.  Tall, conical domes rose above the building, surrounding a vast stone dome at the center.  Swirling eddies of vapor and twisting clouds spiraled along the stony surface of the structure, giving the entire edifice a blurry façade, almost as if it were nothing more than a mirage.  An ancient road wound across the wet, muddy beach that fronted Wat Dagon, crossing a narrow stream via a broken footbridge some hundred yards or more from the temple.  An area closer to the building had been fenced off by stone walls, like some large corral, and a sizeable tent stood along the roadside as it approached the front gates.As the six companions swooped in low for a closer look, it was the sharp eyes of Octurus that first spotted furtive movement in the misty fog along the stream bank.  “I never expected the approach to be completely unguarded,” Mandi replied when the Maztican pointed out the skulkers below.  “We’ll land back near the tree line.  From there, I can transport us inside that enclosure, where we’ll at least have some temporary cover.  We may have to fight our way from that point to the main gates, but it will be better than crossing the entire killing field.”Moments later, the misty, insubstantial forms of the Legionnaires slowly solidified within the cover of the dense jungle foliage.  Then Mandi concentrated, fixing the image of the corral in her mind as her companions linked hands around her.  An instant later, she opened her eyes again, seeing the trampled dirt of the enclosure, and the high walls rising about them.“Moo!”  Cleaver let out an involuntary bleat before clapping his hand over his mouth.  For a moment, his instinctive bovine fear of enclosed pens got the best of him.“Shush!”  Mandi hissed, but it was too late.  Guttural voices began shouting in alarm on the other side of the wall, and the sorceress knew their cover had been blown.“Damn it!” she cursed as magic coursed through her hands and a beam of searing green light struck one of the walls, reducing it to dust.  On the far side, a group of gargoyle-like nabassu demons was clustered.  As soon as they saw the invaders, two of them clasped their hands together and bowed their heads.  With a rush of noise that sounded like a giant sucking in its breath, the air rippled on both sides of the corral, and two, huge, four-armed glabrezus winked into existence, summoned by the nabassus.  Instinctively, the towering demons attacked, summoning their own magic with arms sweeping high.  Suddenly, vertigo seized the Legionnaires as the direction of gravity was inverted, and they all found themselves suspended some thirty feet above the ground, bobbing like corks.  All about them, the battlefield was alive with movement.  No fewer than four nabassus stood near the pen, while further away, three creatures that looked like demonic flies the size of horses were joined by two more of their kind.  Still further, near the stream, four creatures that looked like the rotted corpses of troglodytes unlimbered long bows and knocked arrows.“I’m taking out one of the glabrezus,” Sepoto growled.  “Who’s with me?”  Abruptly, the goliath sprouted wings from his back, courtesy of a minor trinket he’d picked up on his last trip thru Tashluta.  “I am,” Octurus said, quickly quaffing an elixir to imbue himself with the power of flight.“Count me in,” Mandi added, her elven form shifting to that of an infernal pit fiend.“On me then!” the crusader roared, raising his chain and charging towards the nearest demon.  Mandi passed him, leaping on the glabrezu like a cat and sinking her sharpened fangs into its neck.  As it reeled back, Octurus was there, his blades disemboweling the fiend.  As its life-force left it, the glabrezu quietly vanished.  Mandi looked back towards her companions still trapped within the antigravity field.  Focusing again, she snatched each of them transiently into the Astral Plane, bringing them back several yards from where they had started, safely on the ground again.  At that moment, the large tent across the road from the corral suddenly shredded as a massive, frog-like hezrou demon erupted from it.  He was dressed in full plate armor, and the leather cloak he wore suddenly billowed out into two, massive, bat-like wings.  He howled in challenge, and charged towards Tower Cleaver, joined by the remaining glabrezu as well as one of the nabassus and a fly-like chasme demon.  Cleaver braced himself for the attack, but before his foes could reach him, his axe swung like a scythe, slashing across all four of the demons.  The chasme fairly exploded as the axe blade cleaved it in two.  Then, with a mighty back swing, the minotaur decapitated both the glabrezu and the nabassu.  The hezrou, Captain Urbala by name, stood stunned and bloodied.  His amphibious eyes went wide as he saw the barbarian bearing down on him, and he threw up his arms defensively, but he might as well have been trying to stop the sky from falling.  By the time Cleaver was done, there wasn’t much left that was recognizable.Meanwhile, Octurus had taken a second chasme out of the fight, while Marius had lobbed a fireball at another pair, as well as several of the undead archers.  Sepoto was engaged with another of the nabassu, as Daelric quickly took shelter behind him.  Cleaver, axe dripping and no opponents within reach, spied the group scattered by Marius’s conflagration.  Snorting and roaring, the minotaur charged through the mud, hurling bodies aside like cordwood as he struck.  Two of the archers and the two chasme did not rise again.Though outnumbered initially, the Legionnaires quickly turned the tables on their foes, and the battle became rapidly one-sided.  Only the three remaining nabassu put up any real fight, and still it was a feeble effort.  Within a few minutes, the battlefield was quiet once more, save for the surf endlessly pounding the beach and the ephemeral walls of Wat Dagon.___________________________________________________________________Ulu-Thurg, Demogorgon’s Master of Assassins, watched the battle unfold with keen interest.  It didn’t surprise him at all that the demons had been defeated so easily.  After all, had not the mortals just done the impossible by slaying Arendagrost?  No, brute force was not the answer.  He’d been biding his time for just about long enough.  It would soon be time to spring his trap.</blockquote>

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