Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Mara manages to keep consciousness. She watches in pain as Nolin activates his new psionic ring and breaths a gout of fire down upon the creature. He swoops over to the injured paladin and casts healing circle. As he does so, he’s silhouetted against the flickering light of burning, wriggling, undead flesh; it would make a wonderful portrait. The warm energy of Nolin’s spell flows through Mara, and she feels the bone arrow dissolve.
Malachite pulls his way through a sea of ghoulish limbs, ignoring their imploring wails and clutching fingers. Undead flesh pressing in at him on all sides, he sees Velendo’s horrified face. He reaches out… stretches as much as he can… and his fingers barely latch on to Velendo’s paralyzed forearm. As he does so, he activates his new cape of the mountebank acquired from the Dockside Royals, and both he and Velendo vanish.
With a flash of colored smoke, the two Defenders appear 50 feet away, right next to Mara. They’re covered with slime and saliva that seeped from dozens of gaping mouths, but they’re alive.
“Who can remove paralysis?” asks Malachite, gasping.
“I can!” calls Tao. She is still standing on the necropede surrounded by partially dismembered ghouls, balancing there precariously as she tries to pull her sword free of the beast’s spine. She thinks she hit something important; it’s quivering and squirming. She dimension doors over to Velendo, pausing for a few seconds until her head clears.
Meanwhile, everyone who can fly or levitate has risen into the air, trying desperately to identify the archer who shot Mara. One armored dwarf with a rotting bow is a possibility, and he’s quickly taken out of action by Agar, but even the levitating TomTom can’t see anyone else standing out in the chaotic tangle of undead.
Then the giant worm thrashes, screams with a hundred voices. A ragged split forms across the gray jelly of its back. Sections of undead flesh shear off of the body with a nightmarish sound of "shlupurplurp". Some dissolve into cloudy sludge that sinks into the upturned soil, but many more – too many – regaining their previous ghoulish forms. Now there are almost 200 ghouls on the battlefield, clawing their way out from the dissolving corpse like maggots from a burning corpse. They turn towards the Defenders, the closest source of warm, fresh, tasty meat.
Malachite releases another positive energy burst, blasting scores of them out of existence. Mara turns undead and watches as her faith disintegrates half a dozen that are running towards her. Nolin drops two flame strikes in perfect synchrony, and Agar’s tentacular fire elemental wades into a company of ghouls and begins to lay waste.
Once again the ground vibrates. Mara’s tree token has sprouted, and with the sound of a hundred summers compressed into six seconds, a 60 ft. tall oak tree springs up from the burrowed hole. The tree blocks the opening and flings almost twenty ghouls high into the air. Gravity then takes its normal course, with splattering results. Mara grins, and Raevynn - still hunting for the archer - almost cheers.
With a prayer, Tao cures Velendo’s paralyzation, and gleefully wades back into the battle. There isn't much for her to do, though, other than mopping up. Within twelve seconds, more than a hundred and fifty of the undead on the battlefield have been completely and utterly destroyed.
"Not too bad," someone says.
Then an elf stands up from the charred shadows of a dozen blasted ghouls. She is not terribly tall; her armor is made from the skin of a flayed elf, and her bone bow is as big as she is. She looks around, almost as if she knows Hundle’s Crossing herself. TomTom's keen ears catch a fragment of a muttered remark: "It's good to be home."
And then, with a terrible smile on her sunken face, she licks a handful of bone arrows with her long, forked tongue... and sends all four arrows – Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! - hurtling through the air at Malachite.
to be continued….
Malachite pulls his way through a sea of ghoulish limbs, ignoring their imploring wails and clutching fingers. Undead flesh pressing in at him on all sides, he sees Velendo’s horrified face. He reaches out… stretches as much as he can… and his fingers barely latch on to Velendo’s paralyzed forearm. As he does so, he activates his new cape of the mountebank acquired from the Dockside Royals, and both he and Velendo vanish.
With a flash of colored smoke, the two Defenders appear 50 feet away, right next to Mara. They’re covered with slime and saliva that seeped from dozens of gaping mouths, but they’re alive.
“Who can remove paralysis?” asks Malachite, gasping.
“I can!” calls Tao. She is still standing on the necropede surrounded by partially dismembered ghouls, balancing there precariously as she tries to pull her sword free of the beast’s spine. She thinks she hit something important; it’s quivering and squirming. She dimension doors over to Velendo, pausing for a few seconds until her head clears.
Meanwhile, everyone who can fly or levitate has risen into the air, trying desperately to identify the archer who shot Mara. One armored dwarf with a rotting bow is a possibility, and he’s quickly taken out of action by Agar, but even the levitating TomTom can’t see anyone else standing out in the chaotic tangle of undead.
Then the giant worm thrashes, screams with a hundred voices. A ragged split forms across the gray jelly of its back. Sections of undead flesh shear off of the body with a nightmarish sound of "shlupurplurp". Some dissolve into cloudy sludge that sinks into the upturned soil, but many more – too many – regaining their previous ghoulish forms. Now there are almost 200 ghouls on the battlefield, clawing their way out from the dissolving corpse like maggots from a burning corpse. They turn towards the Defenders, the closest source of warm, fresh, tasty meat.
Malachite releases another positive energy burst, blasting scores of them out of existence. Mara turns undead and watches as her faith disintegrates half a dozen that are running towards her. Nolin drops two flame strikes in perfect synchrony, and Agar’s tentacular fire elemental wades into a company of ghouls and begins to lay waste.
Once again the ground vibrates. Mara’s tree token has sprouted, and with the sound of a hundred summers compressed into six seconds, a 60 ft. tall oak tree springs up from the burrowed hole. The tree blocks the opening and flings almost twenty ghouls high into the air. Gravity then takes its normal course, with splattering results. Mara grins, and Raevynn - still hunting for the archer - almost cheers.
With a prayer, Tao cures Velendo’s paralyzation, and gleefully wades back into the battle. There isn't much for her to do, though, other than mopping up. Within twelve seconds, more than a hundred and fifty of the undead on the battlefield have been completely and utterly destroyed.
"Not too bad," someone says.
Then an elf stands up from the charred shadows of a dozen blasted ghouls. She is not terribly tall; her armor is made from the skin of a flayed elf, and her bone bow is as big as she is. She looks around, almost as if she knows Hundle’s Crossing herself. TomTom's keen ears catch a fragment of a muttered remark: "It's good to be home."
And then, with a terrible smile on her sunken face, she licks a handful of bone arrows with her long, forked tongue... and sends all four arrows – Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! - hurtling through the air at Malachite.
to be continued….
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I think it's good for the players when their ideas and abilities trump something that the DM dreamed up; they're heroes, damn it, and if they're creative they deserve to reap the (usually positive) consequences.
