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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Chef BBQ" data-source="post: 1261024" data-attributes="member: 1844">Bathtubs of the Rich and Titany (run of 11-11-03)As our intrepid band of adventurers stands around the stilled crystal, Borin takes a step back, slips and lands flat on his elvish back.  Kel picks him up and carries him down.  He is unhurt, except for his ego.  Kel returns to the top, and he and Caerwyn carry the unconscious body with the spider tattoo down from the pyramid.  They search is while Lucre and Caerwyn once again debate the finer points of Titan worship.  Can only evil people worship evil gods?  Borin and Kel jump in occasionally, but the others stay uncomfortably silent.  These are issues into which small town folk rarely delve, and issues that are very close to the heart of people like Marja and Lucre who seem to carry Titan touches.On the man’s body they find a heavy key, two scrolls (dimension door, fireball and iceball), a non-magic spider signet ring, magic bracers, another heat-resistance ring, which Kel takes, and another magic ring.  Lucre puts it on, feels a weight in his hand and almost drops a dagger that has appeared there.  “That’s pretty cool,” pipes up Terry.  Lucre hands the ring to her, but she gives it to Kira since Terry already has a magic dagger.  They also find 50 platinum pieces. There is one more area of this fiery space that they have not explored.  They debate resting or going on.  As they talk they, they clear debris in the room where the ceiling collapsed to open the corridor.  Kalina turns into a bird and flies ahead to investigate.  She finds a large reception room that has been trashed.  It is bordered by 10 flaming pillars.  Bookshelves have been toppled, and tapestries have been torn from the walls.  She comes back and turning back into human form, reports what she’s seen.  The group decides to investigate now rather than sleep on it.At the back of the room they find two archways, on the left and right, and ahead a set of stairs that lead up to a large marble tub.  The walls around it are mirrors. Bloody footprints lead from one archway across the room and into the other.  There is a desk with scattered papers.  Kira deciphers some of the text and finds a coded reference to a spider.  She gathers up the papers to delve into later.Lucre reaches into the tub and finds the stopper and pulls.  The water slowly drains out the bottom.  At the bottom of the tub they find a gold-plated ducky bath toy.  “Who baths in a reception room?” asks Marja, but Fang’s low growl interrupts any possible responses.  He smells something wrong – evil and dead.  Kel casts bless.  Borin, Marja, Caerwyn and Fang all perk as they hear a voice, “Because I command it, you #$@& things!”  Kel aids Borin and Kalina casts resistance on him and Caerwyn.  They approach the stone chamber through the archway on the left side.In the stone chamber, on two wooden platforms covered in silver runes stand two large humanoid figures clothed in chains, faces covered leaving slots for two burning eyes to see.  Between the two figures stands a man, the man they saw when they first entered this strange place.  His eyes are rolled back in his head and he is yelling.  Behind him they see a pool of blood where the bloody footprints end.“I command you to find and destroy the man with the spider tattoo!” he shrieks, and ads as an afterthough, “And them too,” pointing to the group. “But we have the man with the spider tattoo,” sputters Kalina.  The room turns silent until Kira sprints across the floor and stabs the man with her new dagger.  He drops to his knees.  “I think I found something important,” she calls, “like a kidney.”  The man crouches and continues to attempt to wake the two figures.A low growling sound murmurs from the front of the room.  The two creatures start to move.  “Released already.  Waiting.”  They moan, and whipping their chains around they smear the kneeling man across the floor.  Terri moves in next to Kira, sliding across the floor on the slippery remains.  Borin rages and attacks.  Kalina casts cold snap and frost covers the chains, but disappears.  Kel hits with a power attack, but doesn’t think his great sword penetrates as deeply as it should have.  He calls that he thinks they have some sort of resistance.  Marja casts a lightening bolt from a scroll, but they resist it too.  “Don’t spend a scroll,” Kalina calls out.  “Use your ice knives.  Are you out?”  “No,” Marja replies, “but I don’t think cold is having any affect on them.”With chains in each of their hands the creatures strike.  The first one comes down hard on Marja and Borin who both manage to avert the full force of the blow.  The second brings his right-hand chain down on Kira’s shoulder, then failing to notice Terri, he brings the left-hand chain down on Kira again hitting her in the leg.  The sound of something hard hitting the floor echoes in the room.  “Holy toast!  That was my knee cap, you creep,” hollers Kira as she stabs hard and pierces the beast’s flesh.  Terri moves unnoticed to flank and attacks, but barely breaks the skin.Borin jumps up howling in rage and swings his axe across the legs of the creature in front of him.  He completely severs the chains at the knees, and the creature falls and is still.  Lucre tumbles lithely into the second creature’s space and attacks with the citadel, but misses.  Caerwyn chuckles to Borin, “You look like an elf, but he prances like one.”  Kel jumps in and stabs aiming right through a link in the chain mail and feels something snap.  Marja sends four magic missiles crashing against the creature’s chest.  Caerwyn saunters over, swings and hits.  The beast responds by swinging back with his chains, but misses.Fang again registers distress over the smell of something dead and evil.“What!” cries Lucre in indignation, “I’m not good enough a target for you?  Come here, chain monkey.”Kira follows Kel’s lead and sticks her dagger in between links.  She twists and hears another snap.  The creature falls.Borin wastes no time following Fang into the adjoining room.  The bloody footprints move across this room as well and out another archway.  He sees flickering lights and moves closer to see a man-like form covered in gray scales tossing books into a fire.  The others rush in behind Borin.  Kel tries to turn it, but it just looks at him and snarls.Caerwyn jumps up from next to the dead chain beast and runs at top speed, right into the wall.  He stands up sheepishly.  “I couldn’t make the turn into the doorway.”Fang asks Kalina why the dead guy is moving.  “He’s dead,” Kalina voices for the group.  “So why’s he moving?” asks Lucre.The creature turns his eyes on Kel who feels his heart stop.  He feels the emptiness of life, the loss of dying too soon, but just as the hopelessness seems to be gripping him, Kel shakes it off.  He turns to face the creature and sees it slap Kalina knocking her backwards.  Borin bull rushes the creature.  It hits him as he approaches, but he still succeeds in pushing it into the magma.Lucre’s voice calls from the next room.  “The creatures are healing!”  Quickly, before either can revive, the group haul the heavy figures across the floor and topple them into the bubbling lava too.  They all sigh. In a quick search of the room Kira finds 50 gp, several magic tomes and 2 small black beads radiating magic.Terri spots a small door and checks it for traps.  She doesn’t find any, but she reminds everyone that she didn’t find any on the trunks either.  Caerwyn pushes the door open and walks through.  Marja is about to make a quip about learning not to hit walls, until she sees over his should.  It looks like a glass factory blew up in there.  There is a rainbow colored smear on the floor and dust in the air.  Marja reaches into her pack and pulls out her book on arcana.  “That’s disappearance dust,” she says.  They find nothing else in the room.Back in the large chamber Terri searches the bathtub trying to discern it’s use.  She echo’s Marja’s earlier question,” Who puts a bathtub in a room with a dining table?”  After close inspection of a soap ring she concludes that the tub is just a bathtub.  “These people are freaks,” she concludes, but pockets the gold-plated ducky.  They also find an old spell book that they pocket to take back to Lord Beltray.As they walk back through all the rooms on their way to the portal, they once again pass by the giant statue of Fulcus.  Caerwyn insists that they knock it down.  Marja is exhausted and depleted of just about everything but a few clean spells.  She moans that it isn’t necessary, but Caerwyn is as unmovable as the statue appears to be.  Kalina hands Lucre her avalanche swing.  Using his dwarvish stone sense he hits in once.  The giant statue rocks slightly.  Lucre adjusts his aim and again sends the tiny pebble across the magma watching it grow as it approaches.  It hits with a crash.  They all stand in silence as tiny cracks appear where the bolder struck, and then suddenly the cracks grow, and the statue crumbles into the flaming sea below.At last they all stagger out of the portal and into the cool evening air.  The breeze is light, and there is no sulfur smell.</blockquote>

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