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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ormazd" data-source="post: 5952694" data-attributes="member: 24334">Fiona:the ritual to change van back into a living being was going to take merrick 4 hours, so we settled in to wait. i didn't want to miss a thing so i parked myself nearby but i was so excited it was hard to sit still. which turned out to be okay because 2 cloaked devily creatures appeared, with shadow swords. they attacked merrick and lumi -- merrick was so close to finishing the ritual, he couldn't stop to defend himself properly and was hurt bad right away. lumi immediately took up a position to defend both merrick and van, but the devils (plus 2 more) appeared and disappeared making it hard to give them what for. and the stupid wraith that's been dogging our steps chose that moment to show up again! in a clever move to help merrick complete the ritual, alain put a globe around him, protecting him from further attacks. the damn creatures were really hard to hurt -- i know i gave one of them everything i had and it hardly seemed to matter! karuna and alain were hitting several creatures at once, but we definitely noticed the difference with merrick out of the fight. alain even got behind me in what karuna called the ancient "Crouching Wizard Hidden Halfling" move. finally we drove the wraith and the 2 remaining devils off (wish we could have killed that damn thing), merrick finished the ritual, and it worked! it was amazing to see van's ickyness fade and everyone was so pleased to see him weeping with joy (he looks fierce, but he's really a softie). once he'd regained his composure, and really, we all needed a breather, we continued investigating. we'd untrapped a door and were moving down yet another hallway when a battered halfling (i forget his name) came running towards us yelling for help. we followed him back to a room where the party of halflings and gnomes were battling several skeletons (some of them not human) and mages. the room had a pyramid platform with a glowing rune circle and machinery in the center. unfortunately we weren't in time to save everyone, though we did get all the bad guys. maybe nothing else will need killing for the next 5 minutes so we can sort things out and take a body count.Van:I can't even begin to describe how it feels to be alive again. It's like waking from a dreamless sleep; No, more like taking a warm bath after two months of hard travel. It's indescribable. To no longer feel like a monster. To no longer be a monster. And the memories! They aren't flooding back, as I had hoped they might, but more return every day. I can smell the dank of Idvard's empty keep. I remember the worn, weathered texture of the terrible scepter that ended it all.And most of all, Zofia. Beautiful, wicked, wonderful Zofi: Her nightblack tresses and pale skin, contrasted in candlelight.She's out there, somewhere. Hell, I guess. And, unless Kazyk was lying, she's suffering, all because of me. I don't know how I will get there, but I will, and I'll get her out. I owe her that much. If that I could make the trade again, my life for hers, but I know now that a devil's bargain is worse than death, and having been dead, I can assure you that that is no small statement.But now, when I sleep, I dream of strange, uneasy things: of a grey realm, surrounded by multicolored dragons and dragon kin, on two legs, four, and sometimes more.---While the gnome/halfling mechanic troupe worked on fixing the castle's elaborate system of pumps and machinery, we decided to check out the bottom of the lift shaft. Apparently once the pressure built up the lift would become operational once more.We approached the lift, and to no-one's surprise, the door was shut tight. The knight Lumi struggled to pull it open, but could not find purchase. When the pint-sized Merrick offered to assist, we all had a good chuckle--and then he managed to jimmy the door open while Lumi gaped.The comedy was short lived, however, as barbed (no, toothed) tentacles reached out from the darkness of the elevator and wrapped around the smiling halfling. The lift was inhabited by some sort of foul, shrieking creature with a gaping maw in its chest (which, along with the aforementioned tentacles, made for quite a sight). Quarters were tight as we entered the lift--dodging the thing's flailing limbs--and battered it with steel and spells.Lumi was grabbed, and felt her life-force being drained away, but broke free before it got out of hand. Finally, Fiona shot the thing through the gullet and it fell dead--or re-dead, as we realized that it, like many of the denizens of this accursed place, had been turned undead by some dark malevolence. The walls thrummed as the machinery inside them built up pressure. In the center of the lift there was a control lever, which could be slid into eight possible positions labeled A to H.We dragged the corpse back to the tinkers, and made final preparations to ride the lift upward. Earlier, Fiona, with a subtlety only she can muster, had filched a scrap of paper from a halfling upon which was inscribed "D G A", and part of another letter, which we determined must be related to the lift controls. And so, as we all gathered in the lift, under the assumption that it would lead us to different floors (a poor assumption, as it turned out), we decided to start by shifting it to D, then G, and so on, and assuming everything went well, just wing it from there.Things did not go well. What we didn't know is that the lift advanced in stages, ascending for a short while and then stopping before ascending again. Between each rise, there was a short interval which, perhaps, a rider with the proper sequence of letters might avoid the traps. However, we didn't expect the lift to begin moving again so soon and weren't able to shift it properly, regardless of having the first few bits of the sequence.We were paralyzed by a strange force. Followed by a horrible metallic grinding noise (spikes protruding beneath us). Then, as that effect wore off, fire elementals appeared from above, bathing us in flame. We fought them bravely and fiddled with the control lever, hoping to get lucky, and succeeded in doing so, extinguishing the fire.The lift advanced again, and another horrid, incorporeal creature attacked us. It lashed out at everyone nearby and Lumi valiantly defended them, striking it again and again. One of the halflings--not ours, theirs--was horribly killed by the thing. Karuna was pummeled, but gained his resolve and spent the rest of the fight nimbly deflecting its attacks. Van unleashed powerful bolts of pure force which cut through its ghostly defenses. Finally Lumi finished it off.At the next stop, a shower of spears sent everyone diving to the floor. And visible above us, a translucent wall of force apparently blocked all passage. Hoping that one setting or another would turn off the wall, Van clunked the control level from one notch to the next, and fortunately hit the right setting to prevent the floor of the lift from dropping out. Then the lift became translucent and hazy, as if made of clouds, which revealed the spikes far below. Shimmering light surrounded us as we rose up and up toward that oh-so-impenetrable wall of force. Some of the group began making preparations to evacuate/hang off of the bottom of the lift while Van tried another setting. As a last ditch effort, Fiona shoved him aside, and mustering all of her thieving and trap-disabling experience, dismantled the control lever, wedged it in the mechanism and used it as an improvised pressure point to somehow break the wall of force, allowing the lift (and everyone on/under it) to rise unscathed. Not far above, across the span of the shaft there loomed a shimmering silver curtain, which Merrick identified as a passage to or through the Astral plane.The lift went up, through the shimmering surface, and came to a stop revealing two doors. We had survived the ordeal!</blockquote>

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