Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)
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Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
My life's not any less busy, but I fear that going any longer without updating will lose me what little continuity and audience I may have left. I'm nearly finished crunching at work (Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich is in late Beta as we speak), but my schedule is still pretty packed what with doing work on our house (which includes pestering the $#@! contractors every day) in preparation for my impending fatherhood. (6 weeks 'til the due date!)
Gulp.
Super-abbreviated catchup summary: The Company is in Het Branoi, a maze of interconnected worlds and world-pieces, in search of an Eye of Moirel. Having already passed through several of these planar "slices," they are now traveling through a bit of Limbo, en route to a monastery called "Monk's Rest" where they hope to learn something about the nature of Het Branoi itself.
They need the Eye of Moirel because (as you may recall) the evil Sharshun somehow contrived to rewrite history so that their Emperor, Naloric Skewn, has conquered all of Charagan. The Company believes that the Eye of Moirel in Het Branoi (together with the two Eyes of Moirel already in their possession) is needed to set things right.
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 220
Softeners
Quickly the Company unties the ropes that have heretofore connected them in a loose web. They peer at the approaching spheroid, getting a decent view every few seconds as nearby flashes of elemental energy light it up. The things crawling on the rock are quadruped, not humanoid. Dranko has the sharpest eyes and gets the best look – they look a bit like lions, between five and ten feet long, and covered with… spiky fur? They’re not slaadi, whatever they may be. Dranko estimates it’ll be about thirty seconds before the boulder makes contact with their hangar.
With a battle now seeming imminent, the party fires off preparatory spells: magic circles vs. chaos, bless,, a fire shield for Morningstar, and a stoneskin for Step, among others. Aravis casts haste and fly on himself. Morningstar casts speak with animals and Dranko casts comprehend languages in the hopes of hearing something useful.
The rock rotates slowly as it moves through space, revealing more of the creatures; Dranko ups his estimate of their number to fifteen. They’re crouching and milling about on the surface of the boulder like anxious pack animals, though they stay on its curve without effort, adjusting their gravity with ease. Dranko sees that what he thought was spiky fur is a ruff of quills like a mane, and that most of things’ bodies are hairless. Their jaws are full of sharp, jagged teeth.
In the final ten seconds before impact the Company suddenly starts to argue about whether it would be better to dissolve their hangar entirely for more maneuverability, or keep (and strengthen) it for more protection. They don’t come to a consensus, but Kibi’s will wins out, and he hardens the rock around them in anticipation of the…
BOOM! There’s a crunching stone-on-stone impact as the creatures’ boulder slams into the center of the hangar’s roof. Now the party can hear growling and snarls, unintelligible even to the translation spells. Dranko looks out one end of the hangar and sees the near curve of the boulder. (He also gets hit in the face with a cold splash of ambient water, which he ignores.) Two or three of the creatures are moving down it towards him, so with some deft manipulations of gravity he gets himself up onto the hangar’s roof and then onto the boulder himself. He lashes out with his whip and curls the end around one of the nearest creature’s mane-quills, then bends it back until it snaps out of the thing’s neck. Blood spews out of the wound and forms into floating red-black globules. The monster glares at him, then opens its jaws, which seem to unhinge and gape unnaturally wide. It makes a horrible growling noise, and then it and the two creatures near it lunge to attack. Before Dranko can react all three have scored painful bites, and now it’s his own blood that fills the air with spheroid droplets.
“Holy crap!” exclaims Dranko.
The other beasts start to move from their boulder onto and into the hangar. One comes in from other side long the ceiling, then drops down and takes a bite out of Step. Three more scramble in right behind it and spot Ernie, the smallest and therefore (to their animal minds) easiest target. They gnaw at him, but two of the three are foiled by his plate mail.
“Bad chaos doggies!” chides Ernie. “Down!”
A fourth Chaos Doggy skitters in along the ceiling, and bites at Morningstar’s head from above. It only succeeds in scorching itself on Morningstar’s fire shield and yelping in dismay. The general din of the monsters is horrible, a cacophony of yowling, growling, and snarling mixed with a low guttural roar.
Flicker jumps into the fray, flanks one of the monsters with Ernie, and proceeds to carve. Despite dishing out prodigious damage Flicker doesn’t kill it, though blood sprays out of two gaping wounds and fills the air around it with a floating reddish mist. Ernie steps back and tries to cast a flame strike, while imagining a gravity that would cause it to strike sideways relative to himself. Alas, it’s a bit too much for Ernie to get his head around and the spell fails to go off at all, resulting in no damage but plenty of un-Ernie-like swearing. Step hacks a monster with his sword, Snokas pierces another with his pick, and Morningstar pegs one with a searing darkness; now the blood in the air is starting to become a real distraction, and for all the damage the party has dealt, none of the monsters has died. Grey Wolf casts assassin’s senses on himself; his eyes glow red. Bostock approves.
Up above, more of the quilled creatures come at Dranko from around the curve of the boarding boulder. This time he’s ready, dodging and weaving while effecting subtle changes to his personal gravity. Wide leonine jaws snap fruitlessly.
Just as the Company is getting fully set against the monsters inside the hangar, a large section of rock ceiling ripples and turns to air. Four more Chaos Doggies scramble down through the hole, dropping into their midst and launching attacks against Kibi, Aravis and Ernie. Aravis wrestles a bleeding arm out of a snarling maw, glares, and introduces the lot of them to a sonic chain lightning. Air and stone vibrate as the sonic boom blasts through the hangar. The monster previously sliced up by Flicker breaks into bits, and there is a great howling of pain and anger from the pack. Broken-off quills start to float through the air, mixed in with the general gore. Kibi follows this up with an empowered lightning bolt, after which he backs away up the near wall (adjusting his personal gravity on the fly).
Above on the boulder Dranko activates his vest (becoming improvedly invisible) and taunts the Chaos Doggies. His plan backfires, as the creatures don’t stick around to fight an invisible opponent. Instead, most of them abandon him, hopping down onto the hangar to join the general melee, and Dranko is afforded only a single whip-snap of opportunity as they leave him behind. He shouts after them in frustration.
“No! Come back! Stay here! God DAMN IT!”
They drop down into the hole they’ve made in the hangar roof. One delivers a vicious bite upon Morningstar, then pulls back yelping as it burns its tongue on her fire shield. Two more lunge at Ernie, and not only do they deliver nasty bites, but also they leave behind long barbed quills sticking into the halfling’s flesh.
The Company continues to battle through an increasingly opaque cloud of blood droplets, smashed quills, and mixed-race viscera. The creatures are surprisingly tough and enjoy an annoying facility with the local gravity. Two more learn the hard way that biting Morningstar is a painful experience. Grey Wolf has unsheathed Bostock for close-quarters swordplay, and the glowing blue blade utters encouragement into his mind. When his first swing goes over his foe’s head, the sword hisses: “No! Lower! Swing lower!” Grey Wolf’s next swing cuts a bloody gash in the lion-thing’s neck, and as blood pours out in a weightless stream, Bostock flares with a sapphire light. “Thank you!” it says to Grey Wolf. “I am much closer now! Keep using me. I must be free! I can almost remember who I am. And I am still in your debt.”
Grey Wolf feels the sword become lighter and more potent in his hand – it’s magic increases, and now enjoys the abilities of a Defender weapon. He doesn’t have much time to enjoy it, though, as a hole is torn open in the hangar floor and more chaos-lions start snapping at his legs from below. They tear the flesh from his shins and one leaves a quill sticking from his leg. Others renew their assault, and Aravis finds himself in dire straights. He flees straight upward, out of the hole his enemies have made.
The fight rages on, with both sides slowly getting whittled down. Morningstar kills a chaos-lion with a searing darkness, and Kibi blasts another two to bits with a powerful second lightning bolt. (So powerful, in fact, that it turns patches of the stone floor into pure electricity, which spiral downward in little whorls to join the maelstrom.) The beasts then crowd around Ernie, snarling and snapping; he practically disappears beneath the pile of them. There’s a loud clattering of teeth, claws and quills grinding against plate mail, and Ernie is left a bleeding pincushion. Other monsters keep Snokas and Grey Wolf occupied with frenzied attacks. Dranko on the boarding-rock finds only one monster left, sniffing around suspiciously. Dranko vents his anger on it, lashing out with a full round of whip sneak attacks and tearing chunks of the monster’s body away. As its jawbone twirls into the chaos and gets broadsided by a small passing boulder, Dranko heaves out a sigh.
“This makes me long for the pastoral splendor of the Abyss,” he says plaintively.
Ernie manages to heal himself with a heal scroll in his quickscroll tube, which gives him enough time to slay a chaos-doggie with a searing light. Step heals up Grey Wolf, while Snokas eviscerates another beast with his picks. Flicker, standing sideways on the wall in order to flank, kills yet another with his short sword.
It’s a grinding, ugly battle that continues on for another ten seconds or more. Morningstar does her best to keep everyone healed up, the wizards maneuver to find optimal firing paths for lightning bolts and cones of sonic and chain lightnings. Step, Flicker, Ernie, Snokas and Grey Wolf just keep hacking away, through a chunky mist so thick now that every weapon-swing leaves a trail of parted gore.
At least it seems over. All of the chaos-lions are slain, their bodies drifting and bouncing off the walls. Most of the Company stands in the hangar, bleeding from wounds, punctured with quills and panting for breath. Kibi and Morningstar concentrate on shoring up the structure. Only Dranko isn’t with them. He has killed a second beast with his whip, and is pursuing a third who is now fleeing around the curve of the boarding boulder. But something makes him pull up short. His shoulders sag for a moment, and then he starts running back to the others.
The rest are doing their best to push the floating chaos-lion bodies back into the Chaos when Dranko comes swinging back into the hangar. “It’s not over yet,” he announces grimly. “There are Slaad on that rock. At least six or seven – I don’t think they saw me, since I just saw the tops of their heads. I think we’d better heal up now, while we can.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” says Morningstar, shaking her head. “Those lion-things were just to soften us up.”
...to be continued...
Gulp.
Super-abbreviated catchup summary: The Company is in Het Branoi, a maze of interconnected worlds and world-pieces, in search of an Eye of Moirel. Having already passed through several of these planar "slices," they are now traveling through a bit of Limbo, en route to a monastery called "Monk's Rest" where they hope to learn something about the nature of Het Branoi itself.
They need the Eye of Moirel because (as you may recall) the evil Sharshun somehow contrived to rewrite history so that their Emperor, Naloric Skewn, has conquered all of Charagan. The Company believes that the Eye of Moirel in Het Branoi (together with the two Eyes of Moirel already in their possession) is needed to set things right.
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 220
Softeners
Quickly the Company unties the ropes that have heretofore connected them in a loose web. They peer at the approaching spheroid, getting a decent view every few seconds as nearby flashes of elemental energy light it up. The things crawling on the rock are quadruped, not humanoid. Dranko has the sharpest eyes and gets the best look – they look a bit like lions, between five and ten feet long, and covered with… spiky fur? They’re not slaadi, whatever they may be. Dranko estimates it’ll be about thirty seconds before the boulder makes contact with their hangar.
With a battle now seeming imminent, the party fires off preparatory spells: magic circles vs. chaos, bless,, a fire shield for Morningstar, and a stoneskin for Step, among others. Aravis casts haste and fly on himself. Morningstar casts speak with animals and Dranko casts comprehend languages in the hopes of hearing something useful.
The rock rotates slowly as it moves through space, revealing more of the creatures; Dranko ups his estimate of their number to fifteen. They’re crouching and milling about on the surface of the boulder like anxious pack animals, though they stay on its curve without effort, adjusting their gravity with ease. Dranko sees that what he thought was spiky fur is a ruff of quills like a mane, and that most of things’ bodies are hairless. Their jaws are full of sharp, jagged teeth.
In the final ten seconds before impact the Company suddenly starts to argue about whether it would be better to dissolve their hangar entirely for more maneuverability, or keep (and strengthen) it for more protection. They don’t come to a consensus, but Kibi’s will wins out, and he hardens the rock around them in anticipation of the…
BOOM! There’s a crunching stone-on-stone impact as the creatures’ boulder slams into the center of the hangar’s roof. Now the party can hear growling and snarls, unintelligible even to the translation spells. Dranko looks out one end of the hangar and sees the near curve of the boulder. (He also gets hit in the face with a cold splash of ambient water, which he ignores.) Two or three of the creatures are moving down it towards him, so with some deft manipulations of gravity he gets himself up onto the hangar’s roof and then onto the boulder himself. He lashes out with his whip and curls the end around one of the nearest creature’s mane-quills, then bends it back until it snaps out of the thing’s neck. Blood spews out of the wound and forms into floating red-black globules. The monster glares at him, then opens its jaws, which seem to unhinge and gape unnaturally wide. It makes a horrible growling noise, and then it and the two creatures near it lunge to attack. Before Dranko can react all three have scored painful bites, and now it’s his own blood that fills the air with spheroid droplets.
“Holy crap!” exclaims Dranko.
The other beasts start to move from their boulder onto and into the hangar. One comes in from other side long the ceiling, then drops down and takes a bite out of Step. Three more scramble in right behind it and spot Ernie, the smallest and therefore (to their animal minds) easiest target. They gnaw at him, but two of the three are foiled by his plate mail.
“Bad chaos doggies!” chides Ernie. “Down!”
A fourth Chaos Doggy skitters in along the ceiling, and bites at Morningstar’s head from above. It only succeeds in scorching itself on Morningstar’s fire shield and yelping in dismay. The general din of the monsters is horrible, a cacophony of yowling, growling, and snarling mixed with a low guttural roar.
Flicker jumps into the fray, flanks one of the monsters with Ernie, and proceeds to carve. Despite dishing out prodigious damage Flicker doesn’t kill it, though blood sprays out of two gaping wounds and fills the air around it with a floating reddish mist. Ernie steps back and tries to cast a flame strike, while imagining a gravity that would cause it to strike sideways relative to himself. Alas, it’s a bit too much for Ernie to get his head around and the spell fails to go off at all, resulting in no damage but plenty of un-Ernie-like swearing. Step hacks a monster with his sword, Snokas pierces another with his pick, and Morningstar pegs one with a searing darkness; now the blood in the air is starting to become a real distraction, and for all the damage the party has dealt, none of the monsters has died. Grey Wolf casts assassin’s senses on himself; his eyes glow red. Bostock approves.
Up above, more of the quilled creatures come at Dranko from around the curve of the boarding boulder. This time he’s ready, dodging and weaving while effecting subtle changes to his personal gravity. Wide leonine jaws snap fruitlessly.
Just as the Company is getting fully set against the monsters inside the hangar, a large section of rock ceiling ripples and turns to air. Four more Chaos Doggies scramble down through the hole, dropping into their midst and launching attacks against Kibi, Aravis and Ernie. Aravis wrestles a bleeding arm out of a snarling maw, glares, and introduces the lot of them to a sonic chain lightning. Air and stone vibrate as the sonic boom blasts through the hangar. The monster previously sliced up by Flicker breaks into bits, and there is a great howling of pain and anger from the pack. Broken-off quills start to float through the air, mixed in with the general gore. Kibi follows this up with an empowered lightning bolt, after which he backs away up the near wall (adjusting his personal gravity on the fly).
Above on the boulder Dranko activates his vest (becoming improvedly invisible) and taunts the Chaos Doggies. His plan backfires, as the creatures don’t stick around to fight an invisible opponent. Instead, most of them abandon him, hopping down onto the hangar to join the general melee, and Dranko is afforded only a single whip-snap of opportunity as they leave him behind. He shouts after them in frustration.
“No! Come back! Stay here! God DAMN IT!”
They drop down into the hole they’ve made in the hangar roof. One delivers a vicious bite upon Morningstar, then pulls back yelping as it burns its tongue on her fire shield. Two more lunge at Ernie, and not only do they deliver nasty bites, but also they leave behind long barbed quills sticking into the halfling’s flesh.
The Company continues to battle through an increasingly opaque cloud of blood droplets, smashed quills, and mixed-race viscera. The creatures are surprisingly tough and enjoy an annoying facility with the local gravity. Two more learn the hard way that biting Morningstar is a painful experience. Grey Wolf has unsheathed Bostock for close-quarters swordplay, and the glowing blue blade utters encouragement into his mind. When his first swing goes over his foe’s head, the sword hisses: “No! Lower! Swing lower!” Grey Wolf’s next swing cuts a bloody gash in the lion-thing’s neck, and as blood pours out in a weightless stream, Bostock flares with a sapphire light. “Thank you!” it says to Grey Wolf. “I am much closer now! Keep using me. I must be free! I can almost remember who I am. And I am still in your debt.”
Grey Wolf feels the sword become lighter and more potent in his hand – it’s magic increases, and now enjoys the abilities of a Defender weapon. He doesn’t have much time to enjoy it, though, as a hole is torn open in the hangar floor and more chaos-lions start snapping at his legs from below. They tear the flesh from his shins and one leaves a quill sticking from his leg. Others renew their assault, and Aravis finds himself in dire straights. He flees straight upward, out of the hole his enemies have made.
The fight rages on, with both sides slowly getting whittled down. Morningstar kills a chaos-lion with a searing darkness, and Kibi blasts another two to bits with a powerful second lightning bolt. (So powerful, in fact, that it turns patches of the stone floor into pure electricity, which spiral downward in little whorls to join the maelstrom.) The beasts then crowd around Ernie, snarling and snapping; he practically disappears beneath the pile of them. There’s a loud clattering of teeth, claws and quills grinding against plate mail, and Ernie is left a bleeding pincushion. Other monsters keep Snokas and Grey Wolf occupied with frenzied attacks. Dranko on the boarding-rock finds only one monster left, sniffing around suspiciously. Dranko vents his anger on it, lashing out with a full round of whip sneak attacks and tearing chunks of the monster’s body away. As its jawbone twirls into the chaos and gets broadsided by a small passing boulder, Dranko heaves out a sigh.
“This makes me long for the pastoral splendor of the Abyss,” he says plaintively.
Ernie manages to heal himself with a heal scroll in his quickscroll tube, which gives him enough time to slay a chaos-doggie with a searing light. Step heals up Grey Wolf, while Snokas eviscerates another beast with his picks. Flicker, standing sideways on the wall in order to flank, kills yet another with his short sword.
It’s a grinding, ugly battle that continues on for another ten seconds or more. Morningstar does her best to keep everyone healed up, the wizards maneuver to find optimal firing paths for lightning bolts and cones of sonic and chain lightnings. Step, Flicker, Ernie, Snokas and Grey Wolf just keep hacking away, through a chunky mist so thick now that every weapon-swing leaves a trail of parted gore.
At least it seems over. All of the chaos-lions are slain, their bodies drifting and bouncing off the walls. Most of the Company stands in the hangar, bleeding from wounds, punctured with quills and panting for breath. Kibi and Morningstar concentrate on shoring up the structure. Only Dranko isn’t with them. He has killed a second beast with his whip, and is pursuing a third who is now fleeing around the curve of the boarding boulder. But something makes him pull up short. His shoulders sag for a moment, and then he starts running back to the others.
The rest are doing their best to push the floating chaos-lion bodies back into the Chaos when Dranko comes swinging back into the hangar. “It’s not over yet,” he announces grimly. “There are Slaad on that rock. At least six or seven – I don’t think they saw me, since I just saw the tops of their heads. I think we’d better heal up now, while we can.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” says Morningstar, shaking her head. “Those lion-things were just to soften us up.”
...to be continued...
Graywolf-ELM
Explorer
nemmerle said:
If you are going to do that, go all the way. Badger in Multimedia
<ducks the reprisal>
GW
Mishihari Lord
First Post
Graywolf-ELM said:
Thanks a lot! That song will haunt my dreams.
Sagiro:
Thanks for the update!
KidCthulhu
First Post
I should mention the exta sucky thing about the chaos doggies. Every quills they left in the flesh was something like -2 to your Dex. They were big quills, and we were getting turned into pincushions. Stupid chaos doggies. No biscuiit.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Sounds like Howlers from the MM. In a big enough pack I imagine the attrition effect of the quills could be pretty alarming. Was the blood floating in the air flavour for the write-up, or did Sagiro start giving concealment from baddie body chunks?
Cheers
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