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!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 2817302" data-attributes="member: 1210">So many things that are normally taken for granted... can’t be.  Normally, you know where you are, and why; you know how you got there.  You probably have a pretty good idea of what day of the week it is, and the date as well.Our heroes have been plunged into a state of utter cluelessness.The mossy burn is flickering and dying, and the tentacled horrors surrounding the four of them are converging quickly.  They move with almost feline grace, but the slick ochre skin and unnatural looking hair put the lie to that thought immediately.  Whatever these things are, they are not cats of any sort.Ah, but predators- yes, they are predators. The tentacles writhing beneath their mouths squirm like slimy serpents.  Even as Naomi initiates energy retort, one of the monsters unleashes some form of psionic attack at her.  She cries out, but shrugs it off.  “Watch out!” she shouts a warning.  “They’ve got some kind of mind powers!”Nara just has time to cast divine power before one of the strange creatures leaps at her.  It tears into her with its claws, the tentacles wiggling around her face.  She grunts in disgust as it tries to grapple her, but she manages to throw it off as it brings a rear leg up to rake her.  Erasmuz, meanwhile, manages to cast both mage armor and spiritual weapon while the other weird monsters maintain their distance, attempting psionic attacks.  Nara struggles with the only one in close, and quickly manages to drive it back a pace; but then a second one springs in, tearing into Erasmuz.  The bald little halfling squeals as he is assaulted, and then monster deals a devastating bite to his jaw, breaking it.  He shrieks in pain.  Focusing through the agony, he directs his spiritual weapon into action on his aggressor, and it begins to poke away at the creature. Martini keeps up a steady stream of arrows at one of the other ones, which keeps attempting to break his mind.  Martini grits his teeth, plucking another arrow from the quiver at his back and fitting it to the string in one smooth, meditative motion.  He realizes suddenly that he is somewhat injured- from what, he cannot say.  What happened to us? he wonders wildly.  Why can’t I remember??  Regardless of his confusion, Martini manages to bring down one of the strange aberrations at last.Naomi combats her foe with a combination of telepathic assaults and pyromancy.  Her flaming sphere rapidly proves its worth, but the creatures have strong wills and are not easily defeated in mental combat.  She seems to have achieved a momentary standoff with it.  She watches in dismay, however, as one of the others springs on Martini, grappling him.  The archer struggles to throw it off, but it rakes at him, tearing open bloody furrows in his body.Nara, on the other hand, has managed to hold her own in a bloody claw-vs.-mace battle, and now her opponent withdraws down one of the passages.  “It’s getting away!” she cries, but a glance at her comrades reveals how badly they need her help now: both Martini and Erasmuz are held by the beasts, which are intent on slaying them!But even as she rushes towards them, Martini manages to squirm free of the monster holding him, and he steps back and resumes fire at it.  Two more arrows are enough: it collapses.  That leaves only the one on Erasmuz.  Naomi steps in and inflicts a recall agony on the beast.  It springs away, perhaps realizing that the tide has turned, and flees down a tunnel with extraordinary speed. Our heroes draw together.  Any thought of pursuit is destroyed by the monsters’ fleetness.  They begin to discuss their situation.“The last thing I remember is the false Promised Land, and that’s foggy,” Naomi says. “Your beard is different,” Nara tells Martini.  The party looks it over (he himself uses a mirror, naturally).  Indeed, his beard is a different style than it used to be.“My arrows are different, too,” he notes after an inspection.Everyone else begins examining him- or herself as well.  They all find an interesting array of subtle changes, such as Martini’s beard and arrows, new scars and the like.  When Naomi looks for new tattoos on her body, she is shocked and appalled.  “This is disgusting,” she complains. Her left forearm now sports a unicorn.“Do I have any new tattoos?” wonders Martini.  He pulls off his tunic- and he, too, finds a tattoo of a unicorn on his left forearm.“It looks like my work,” Naomi mutters, unable to believe her eyes.  Why the hell would I get a unicorn tattooed on me? she asks herself.  What the hell happened to me- to us?“Where are the others?” asks Nara.  Nobody has an answer.  “Where are we?” she expands, but nobody knows that either.  “Let’s explore,” suggests Martini.  “I don’t want to just stay here in case those things come back.”The party agrees with his reasoning, and so they head out.  Before long they come into a chamber with a huge corpse in it- some kind of subterranean giant, perhaps?  A carrion crawler is hanging out on it, no doubt grazing.  Our heroes quickly put an end to that.  Continuing along, they spill out into a large chamber with-Horror.A huge cage, full of docile-looking halflings, dominates the chamber.  But off to one side are a pair of stocks, and in those stocks are two more shaven-headed halflings.  Standing before them are a pair of mauve-skinned, tentacle faced humanoid creatures: the dreaded mind flayers.  Running about the chamber like great cats are the two creatures that fled from the party’s first encounter with them.  Our heroes’ blood runs cold, but not merely because of the illithids before them. One of the figures in the stocks- is clearly a shaven-headed Jawbreaker.Mind blasts burst out the party.Next Time: Mind flayers and halflings and mind blasts, oh my!</blockquote>

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