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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 2817730" data-attributes="member: 8530">Chapter Five, “Fallen Heroes”, August 5th, 1018 3:00 P.M. Vallessa tells the others what she saw. Cassie decides that another crown-induced fireball is in order, and climbs up onto Maggie behind Vallessa. They fly up and over Vallessa’s house. Cassie spots half-a-dozen human adventurer-types mixed in with the hobgoblins, and centers the fireball on the apparent leader, a short stocky human fighter who is nearly as wide as he is tall. While all this is going on, Aradyn and his Pegasus are just rounding the top of the crater on his return when he sees Cassie’s fireball go off. The fireball drops two-dozen hobgoblins and three of the humans. Two of the humans fall, the leader and an apparent magic-user, are able to get back up. The leader points to the flying Pegasus, and orders the remaining hobgoblins to charge in that direction up the street. Vallessa sees Mark and Lono in the alley below, waiving at her, and points to an area immediately north of her house for them to meet her at. She lands Maggie, then exchanges her passenger of Cassie with Lono, who draws his bow. They take to the skies again, going high enough to be out of the range of most enemy spells, and start shooting down into the crowds. The leader is the only human that they can now see, and he becomes their main target. Aradyn flies in right below her, adding his bow to the air assault on the monsters. The human leader orders his troops off the main street, and they run through the back door of the nearest building, Vallessa’s house. Just as Vallessa and Lono begin to tell Aradyn what has happened, both of the pegasi and their riders are engulfed in a large fireball. Aradyn’s mount is hurt by the fireball, but not nearly as bad as Vallessa’s. Maggie has trouble remaining aloft with two riders, and begins a controlled descent back to the library. Lono is unconscious, and nearly dead, and Vallessa grabs hold of him to keep him from falling. They fly through the skylight opening and into the room, where Furynick and Dennismore are waiting. Lono is immediately given a healing potion to prevent him from dying. Aradyn looks around, spotting an enemy magic-user levitating about 100 feet away from him. The mage turns invisible, and Aradyn starts firing where he suspects the mage is. Another fireball then swallows up him and his mount. His Pegasus is very badly hurt, and they start to drop quickly to the library. They barely manage to get through the skylight opening and into the Library, hitting the floor hard. Aradyn lands in a tumbling roll to minimize the damage to him. The Pegasus Maggie immediately goes over to comfort Aradyn’s Pegasus, who is also her father. She establishes a “healing link” keep the older pegasus from loosing consciousness. She also attempts to telepathically contact her mother, Fiona’s Pegasus, but it is too many miles away for the signal to reach. The now conscious Lono tells the others that there is a strange group of adventurers staying down at the tavern, including a half-ogre, and he now suspects they may also be part of this attack. Alton casts a much-needed cure onto Aradyn’s Pegasus. Vallessa and Maggie take flight again to scout around, only to have Vallessa fall victim to a Hold Person from the now descending levitated mage, who had been watching the skylight for movement. Maggie manages to successfully land back with the others without dislodging her passenger. Outside of Vallessa’s home, both Mark and Cassie manage to save from another Hold Person spell, as a large group of hobgoblins break down the front door of Vallessa’s home, and charge towards them, weapons drawn. Mark draws his sword as the monsters close to twenty feet away, while Cassie looks the other direction, seeing an enemy cleric leaning out of one of the windows and casting a spell at them. Cassie saves from the spell, and lets loose with a Magic Missile of her own, hitting the cleric and having him retreat back into the building. The hobgoblins are now ten feet from Mark, and he moves in to meet them. Approximately fifteen have exited the building at this point. Cassie has time to draw a scroll, and targets the one currently emerging from the doorway with a Chain Lightning spell. This obliterates him, with the lightning then striking out behind him into the next dozen hobgoblins, dropping them all. The remaining dozen hobgoblins still within the building fail their morale, and run away in the opposite direction, ignoring the three non-hobgoblin leaders in the building who had ordered them out into the street. This still leaves Mark with about a dozen opponents charging down on him, but stops further reinforcements. Before Cassie can get off another spell, she gets struck in the back of her head by a throwing circle with a razor sharp edge. The circle is lodged and caught on the metal crown in her hair, so she chooses to leave it there. Meanwhile, Mark has thrown a few sweeping blows into his opponents, dropping three of them. Those inside the library hear the renewed sounds of battle outside, and all but Lono exit by the most expedient route, the nearest window. The barely conscious Lono opts to stay behind with the two wounded pegasi. Aradyn and Vallessa move into position to fire arrows, Dennismore heads towards the building across the street, Alton turns invisible, and Furynick charges forward to assist Mark. A mage who Vallessa had chased away from the initial assault on Cassie now appears around the corner of the library, and casts a hold on the group, catching Dennismore and Furynick. Inside the library, Lono spots another man sneaking around in the shadows of the next room. As Lono draws his bow to target the man he gets backstabbed into unconsciousness, as his foe was merely a decoy distraction for a higher-level thief to move into position. Both pegasi are then stabbed by this thief, using a poison that puts both animals into a state of suspended animation. Out on the street, Aradyn breaks Furynick out of the hold. Mark continues to cut down his foes, getting struck a few times in the process. A monk jumps down from the roof, striking Cassie with a karate chop as he lands. She grabs a poisoned dagger on her belt, stabbing him. The dagger is filled with Medusa Poison, which turns him into a stone statue. “Don’t ever mess with my hair,” she yells. She then gets struck in the back with a longsword, Cassie falls, as a woman says “He didn’t, I did." The woman starts to drag Cassie’s body away from Mark’s hobgoblin battle, turning her into the unsuspecting targets of both Aradyn and Vallessa who are now in line-of-sight, and anxious to protect Cassie. They quickly manage to convert the enemy woman from being a living fighter/thief to becoming a non-living pincushion for arrows. Back in the library, the lower-level thief turns invisible, and is ordered out of the library his superior. He is given the last dose of the suspended animation poison, and told to strike one of the party with it. Being a coward at heart, he chooses the already held Dennismore as the target. A wall of darkness now erupts in the middle of the street where Alton and Furynick are, which also cuts off the field of vision to where Mark and Cassie are for both archers. Aradyn and Vallessa, searching for another target, managing to spot the mage who cast the Darkness, as he is standing atop the roof of Vallessa’s home. They also recognize him as the same mage who had fireballed them both in the air. He becomes their sole target, falling onto the rooftop after being hit by three arrows. Shielded by the Darkness, the enemy thief successfully stabs Dennismore with the poison, and turns invisible again before being seen. He returns towards the library. The enemy leader moves towards Mark, as Mark drops all but two of the remaining hobgoblins (who both start running away). The leader appears to be half-human, half-dwarf, and is carrying a large two-handed sword. He stares oddly at Mark, and says “Hmmm, a half-elvan fighter, I don’t suppose you would happen to be Narg?” Mark replies, “No,” and charges the man. An enemy dwarven fighter emerges from the building and moves in with his leader towards Mark. Another member of the enemy party, apparently a druid, also exits the building about fifteen feet back. Fury and Alton move forward out of the darkness. Aradyn moves around the darkness spell and Vallessa heads over towards Dennismore to break him out of the hold. After several unsuccessful attempts to break him out, she gives up, and heads back towards where the smoldering jeep is. Alton is now up to the Jeep, and seeing an enemy cleric moving forward along the wall of the building, casts a Heat Metal spell on him. It is successful but also causes Alton to now be visible. Aradyn also sees this cleric, and fires arrows into the man. Furynick decides to assist Mark, who is taking a beating at the hands of the two enemy fighters. The enemy cleric gets hit by more arrows from the two archers, and draws a wand from his belt. Vallessa pulls back behind the corner to the building to keep from being the wand's target, so he waves it towards Furynick and Alton, striking the two with a Cone of Cold. Aradyn now sees the magician who had retreated earlier peering out of a doorway across the street, and fires an arrow to force the man back inside. He continues to watch in this direction occasionally while still firing at the Cleric (i.e., like a pitcher monitoring the base runner while still focusing on the batter). The Cleric uses his wand again, this time to erect a large Wall of Ice starting at the corner of the building by the Jeep and extending out thirty feet into the street and forty feet high, to keep the two archers from firing at him. This does not deter Aradyn, who calculates the geometry for lobbing an arrow very high in the air, to then fall and still hit the cleric. He is successful with this. Meanwhile, the two enemy thieves decide to put into action the same strategy that worked on Lono, with the lower-level thief climbing up to the library roof to go distract Aradyn while the magically obscured higher-level thief heads around the front of the building to get into position for a backstab. Furynick takes on the dwarf fighter fighting Mark, leaving Mark to fight the powerful enemy leader. As they fight, the leader says “So you’re not Narg, but you are tough, and you dispatched the hobgoblins easily. That would mean a Ranger….would I perhaps be fighting Mark?” Mark does not respond. Meanwhile, on the roof of Vallessa's home, the fallen mage consumes a healing potion as he extracts the arrows from his body. As the cleric prepares to use the wand again Alton gets fed up, and draws his U.S. military issue handgun, firing four shots into the enemy. Two shots miss completely (one taking out a remaining hobgoblin), a third grazes the armor doing no damage, but the forth strike the man right in the center of the chest, dropping him. The cleric falls unconscious, and is mortally wounded at this point. Alton fires the remaining two bullets in the gun at the enemy druid. One bullet strikes the man’s shoulder, forcing him to retreat back into Vallessa’s home. The druid’s retreat makes the cleric’s death inevitable, as the druid was the only one who might have been able to save him from both the chest wound and the Heat Metal spell on the cleric’s armor which is just starting up at this point. Mark finally succumbs to the blows from his attacker, who now concentrates on Furynick. Aradyn spots the lower-level thief on the roof, and fires an arrow up at him. Aradyn does not hear the other thief move up behind him. The thief backstabs him for thirty points of damage, dropping him. The enemy magic user on the roof fires Magic Missiles into Alton, dropping him. Vallessa targets the mage on her roof, hitting him twice with arrows and dropping him. Vallessa then falls victim to Magic Missiles from the mage that Aradyn had been keeping at bay. Furynick is the last to fall, under the combined onslaught of the two enemy fighters.</blockquote>

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