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Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)
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Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
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Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 141b
Kibi decides that this is the perfect place for his newly-learned confusion spell. He casts it down into the pit, targeting an area that encompasses the priests in the center of the lower circle. Unfortunately, the spell is blocked by some kind of force barrier covering the pit like a lid, which glows as it blocks the magic of Kibi’s spell. Damn!
Kay strikes out at the enemy fighter, but without sight, her swings go wide despite the helpful whispers of Oa Lyanna. The halfling wizard then casts another spell near the entry door, catching the slow-footed Once Certain Step. A large rectangle of wispy white fog appears around him, and Step feels it seeping into his mind, addling his thoughts. He shakes his head and exits the fog cloud (which stays hanging in the air around the door), and even though he finds it hard to concentrate, he moves over in position to attack the bespectacled cleric the following round.
Dranko flies across the room until he’s directly above Mokad (and above the two magic hemispheres.) He takes careful aim and snaps his magical whip down hard on Mokad’s arm. Mokad is still in the process of casting some full-round spell with a staff, but now his arm is jerked out of its pattern, and there is a brief, dim flash. Whatever he was casting has clearly been disrupted!
>> …and a good thing, too! Mokad was about to finishing casting a Summon Monster VI that would have added a Barbezu to the fight.
His spell ruined, Mokad looks up and sees Dranko (now visible) hovering above him. Dranko flips him off and grins. Mokad glares back – and casts a targeted dispel magic. Suddenly Dranko is stripped of almost all of his spells: the fly, cat’s grace, bless and bull’s strength are all gone, and only his endurance remains. And with the fly spell gone, Dranko drops five feet, hits the downward curve of the white hemisphere (now revealed as an anti-life shell), and slides down to land on his feet at the hemisphere’s base.
Back nearer to the room’s entrance, Morningstar casts chill seeds (the Ellish version of fire seeds) and flips a frozen acorn at the cleric. Whoom! There is a blast of frozen energy, and the cleric’s expression goes from smug to concerned. In return, he casts circle of doom, dealing out inflicted damage to several nearby party-members. Then he points at Morningstar and casts searing light. A beam of bright energy springs from his fingers – and just misses, shooting past Morningstar’s ear. Whew!
Kibi, still flying overhead, decides to ready himself for the cleric’s next move. Specifically, he readies a fireball on the condition of the cleric making any move to cast another spell. Meanwhile Ernie draws Beryn Sur and swings at the cleric, landing a damaging blow. Still the enemy is standing. Flicker is still running (while avoiding the blue force lines) over to where Kay and the enemy fighter are exchanging blows.
Kay takes a full round of blind swings at her foe, and with Oa Lyanna continuing to whisper advice ("she’s feinting right… sword up…now, swing low!…) manages to land a couple of hits. But the armored woman is protected by her own stoneskin that absorbs almost all of the damage. The halfling woman casts another spell across the room that has no immediate or obvious effect. But a moment later it becomes clear what she did; One Certain Step strides forward to where Ernie is battling the bespectacled cleric, and hacks at Ernie with his greatsword! Ernie wheels in surprise, and when he sees Step finishing his back-swing, he angrily shouts "what were you thinking?!" But then he sees the terrible sight of Step’s face, contorted in horror and shame, as he struggles futilely against a dominate person spell. His mind, dulled by the mind fog, is unable to overcome the halfling woman’s control. Ernie realizes what has happened, and casts magic circle against evil on the paladin. Step feels the enemy wizard's mind forcibly denied control by Ernie’s spell.
Dranko, standing 10 feet from Mokad, smirks and says "If the Black Circle is all about knowledge, how come you didn’t know to wear water-proof clothes today?" Then he sets the decanter of endless water on "geyser" and sprays Mokad with it. It knocks Mokad down, but the Black Circle cleric manages to stand again, and concentrate enough to hit Dranko with an enervation spell. Dranko feels the negative levels settle like evil gravity on his soul, and two of his few remaining spells vanish from his mind.
Flicker glugs a healing potion and keeps running, almost reaching the enemy fighter, who is in the process of butchering Kay even through the stoneskin. Her glinting broadsword is moving almost too fast to see, and an inordinate number of her hits are criticals. After another flurry of swings, Kay is badly wounded, and her stoneskin left with but a single point of protection.
The bespectacled cleric begins to cast another spell, but never gets a chance to finish. Kibi, flying above him, sees the casting begin and nails him with a fireball from Aravis’s wand. When the flames clear, the foe has fallen, the lenses of his glasses melted into slag. There is much rejoicing.
One thing that has puzzled the party is a phrase from the last letter from Califax, that the ritual must take place "beneath the open noon sky, and yet not beneath the direct watch of the sun." That particular puzzle is now answered, as a loud grinding noise comes from somewhere above. The party glances up to the dark ceiling in the center of the room, and sees now that, above the circular pit in the floor, is a cylindrical hole in the ceiling, extending upward a good forty feet. And at its top, at ground level, two sliding panels are slowly retracting, exposing the 20-odd Black Circle priests in the pit to the twilight afternoon sky above Kallor.
And the World Spheres move closer, so close now that they’re surely less than a minute away from touching. The black energy is flowing up the side of the pit like a solid wave, and the beat of the loud thrumming, timed to the pulsing of the huge black circle beneath the Spheres, gets faster and faster…
…to be continued…
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 141b
Kibi decides that this is the perfect place for his newly-learned confusion spell. He casts it down into the pit, targeting an area that encompasses the priests in the center of the lower circle. Unfortunately, the spell is blocked by some kind of force barrier covering the pit like a lid, which glows as it blocks the magic of Kibi’s spell. Damn!
Kay strikes out at the enemy fighter, but without sight, her swings go wide despite the helpful whispers of Oa Lyanna. The halfling wizard then casts another spell near the entry door, catching the slow-footed Once Certain Step. A large rectangle of wispy white fog appears around him, and Step feels it seeping into his mind, addling his thoughts. He shakes his head and exits the fog cloud (which stays hanging in the air around the door), and even though he finds it hard to concentrate, he moves over in position to attack the bespectacled cleric the following round.
Dranko flies across the room until he’s directly above Mokad (and above the two magic hemispheres.) He takes careful aim and snaps his magical whip down hard on Mokad’s arm. Mokad is still in the process of casting some full-round spell with a staff, but now his arm is jerked out of its pattern, and there is a brief, dim flash. Whatever he was casting has clearly been disrupted!
>> …and a good thing, too! Mokad was about to finishing casting a Summon Monster VI that would have added a Barbezu to the fight.
His spell ruined, Mokad looks up and sees Dranko (now visible) hovering above him. Dranko flips him off and grins. Mokad glares back – and casts a targeted dispel magic. Suddenly Dranko is stripped of almost all of his spells: the fly, cat’s grace, bless and bull’s strength are all gone, and only his endurance remains. And with the fly spell gone, Dranko drops five feet, hits the downward curve of the white hemisphere (now revealed as an anti-life shell), and slides down to land on his feet at the hemisphere’s base.
Back nearer to the room’s entrance, Morningstar casts chill seeds (the Ellish version of fire seeds) and flips a frozen acorn at the cleric. Whoom! There is a blast of frozen energy, and the cleric’s expression goes from smug to concerned. In return, he casts circle of doom, dealing out inflicted damage to several nearby party-members. Then he points at Morningstar and casts searing light. A beam of bright energy springs from his fingers – and just misses, shooting past Morningstar’s ear. Whew!
Kibi, still flying overhead, decides to ready himself for the cleric’s next move. Specifically, he readies a fireball on the condition of the cleric making any move to cast another spell. Meanwhile Ernie draws Beryn Sur and swings at the cleric, landing a damaging blow. Still the enemy is standing. Flicker is still running (while avoiding the blue force lines) over to where Kay and the enemy fighter are exchanging blows.
Kay takes a full round of blind swings at her foe, and with Oa Lyanna continuing to whisper advice ("she’s feinting right… sword up…now, swing low!…) manages to land a couple of hits. But the armored woman is protected by her own stoneskin that absorbs almost all of the damage. The halfling woman casts another spell across the room that has no immediate or obvious effect. But a moment later it becomes clear what she did; One Certain Step strides forward to where Ernie is battling the bespectacled cleric, and hacks at Ernie with his greatsword! Ernie wheels in surprise, and when he sees Step finishing his back-swing, he angrily shouts "what were you thinking?!" But then he sees the terrible sight of Step’s face, contorted in horror and shame, as he struggles futilely against a dominate person spell. His mind, dulled by the mind fog, is unable to overcome the halfling woman’s control. Ernie realizes what has happened, and casts magic circle against evil on the paladin. Step feels the enemy wizard's mind forcibly denied control by Ernie’s spell.
Dranko, standing 10 feet from Mokad, smirks and says "If the Black Circle is all about knowledge, how come you didn’t know to wear water-proof clothes today?" Then he sets the decanter of endless water on "geyser" and sprays Mokad with it. It knocks Mokad down, but the Black Circle cleric manages to stand again, and concentrate enough to hit Dranko with an enervation spell. Dranko feels the negative levels settle like evil gravity on his soul, and two of his few remaining spells vanish from his mind.
Flicker glugs a healing potion and keeps running, almost reaching the enemy fighter, who is in the process of butchering Kay even through the stoneskin. Her glinting broadsword is moving almost too fast to see, and an inordinate number of her hits are criticals. After another flurry of swings, Kay is badly wounded, and her stoneskin left with but a single point of protection.
The bespectacled cleric begins to cast another spell, but never gets a chance to finish. Kibi, flying above him, sees the casting begin and nails him with a fireball from Aravis’s wand. When the flames clear, the foe has fallen, the lenses of his glasses melted into slag. There is much rejoicing.
One thing that has puzzled the party is a phrase from the last letter from Califax, that the ritual must take place "beneath the open noon sky, and yet not beneath the direct watch of the sun." That particular puzzle is now answered, as a loud grinding noise comes from somewhere above. The party glances up to the dark ceiling in the center of the room, and sees now that, above the circular pit in the floor, is a cylindrical hole in the ceiling, extending upward a good forty feet. And at its top, at ground level, two sliding panels are slowly retracting, exposing the 20-odd Black Circle priests in the pit to the twilight afternoon sky above Kallor.
And the World Spheres move closer, so close now that they’re surely less than a minute away from touching. The black energy is flowing up the side of the pit like a solid wave, and the beat of the loud thrumming, timed to the pulsing of the huge black circle beneath the Spheres, gets faster and faster…
…to be continued…
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 141c
Aravis’s body is still out in the hallway, and his mind is still voyaging in the Crosser’s Maze. He sees Grey Wolf represented by a bright patch of energy, suspended between the two massive planes that are practically overlapping. For several rounds he has tried to find and manipulate the dark energy the Black Circle priests are using, to no avail. He has also seen thousands of dots of light hovering between the planes – all of them planar travelers on the verge of crossing over at the completion of the ritual. Strangely, only about two dozen are likely to come out in this particular vicinity.
Realizing that he’s not doing any good outside, Aravis drops out of the Maze. When his head clears a few seconds later, Grey Wolf comes flying down the stairs, streaking toward him. Both of the wizards take a round to cast haste (Aravis via his boots of speed), and then enter the fray. Both are able to shake off the effects of the mind fog right inside the door.
Ernie sees that Kay won’t last much longer, and pulls out one of his more potent magic items: a heal scroll. He starts to read it, but the power of the spell proves too much for his abilities, and he is unable to manifest its effect. He utters a vicious oath: "Gosh darn it all to heck!"
Kay, realizing that Ernie’s attempt to heal her has failed, disengages from her foe, flying up and away toward the center of the room. Morningstar shouts that she should fly towards her, so that she can cure her blindness. Meanwhile, Flicker is finally flanking the enemy fighter (with Thriss providing the flanking opportunity). He manages to hit with a damaging sneak attack, much of which penetrates the stoneskin. The woman wheels to face the new half-sized threat, smiles contemptuously, and launches another dizzying series of attacks with her bastard sword. Blood flies everywhere, and Flicker drops to the ground unconscious. Ernie shouts in alarm. "Flicker’s down!" Step, shaking his head clear, runs forward toward the woman.
Dranko readies his decanter, to spray it directly on whichever of the two enemy spell-casters tries to cast. That turns out to be the halfling woman, who is knocked down by the blast of water. But she is still able to stand back up and concentrate enough to cast another spell: a slow spell, aimed at Dranko. The half-orc feels his muscles slowing down, and the world around him seems to speed up slightly. But Dranko doesn’t stay slowed for long. Morningstar blankets the area with a dispel magic, and while it fails to penetrate the enemies within the minor globe of invulnerability, it does get rid of the slow spell.
Mokad casts another spell on himself, and his body shimmers. Immediately after that, Kibi arrives, flying directly over the heads of Mokad and the enemy halfling. He thinks he remembers reading about the minor globe spell, and has some recollection that powerful spells can blow through its protective bubble. He pulls a scroll of cone of cold out and reads it, hoping for a better outcome than Ernie's. He finishes the spell, and a blast of frost covers his foes. When it clears, both of them are covered with ice, though Mokad seems more annoyed than injured. The halfling looks worse for the wear. "Should have worn warmer clothes, too," Dranko suggests.
But Mokad is no longer looking at Dranko. He is looking over Dranko’s shoulder, looking at Grey Wolf, who has just flown into the room. Mokad’s brow furrows in worry. Grey Wolf wastes no time; he casts lightning bolt at the fighter who has just felled Flicker. The electricity strikes the woman, but much of it is drawn into the breastplate with the lightning bolt design on the front, and she takes little damage. But there’s no time to worry about such things. With his haste allowing him more movement, Grey Wolf flies over to the World Spheres and positions his body so that it touches both of the great globes. There is a terrible jolt, and the ever-present churning in his guts becomes overwhelming. He drops unconscious and falls to the ground, no longer touching either of the Spheres. Edghar, to whom Grey Wolf has given orders to feed him the poison pellet as a last resort, also blacks out. And now the edges of the Spheres are actually touching, and still moving toward perfect alignment. Each of the Spheres has a black core, and these have not yet met, but their merging seems inevitable. And well does the Company remember the words of prophecy that the Eyes of Moirel spoke to Grey Wolf through Skorg: "Stand in shadow. Stand ‘twixt the shadows. When the sky is revealed and the arcs touch your frame, the window will open. Your flame must be extinguished before the cores converge on your soul."
...to be continued...
Aravis’s body is still out in the hallway, and his mind is still voyaging in the Crosser’s Maze. He sees Grey Wolf represented by a bright patch of energy, suspended between the two massive planes that are practically overlapping. For several rounds he has tried to find and manipulate the dark energy the Black Circle priests are using, to no avail. He has also seen thousands of dots of light hovering between the planes – all of them planar travelers on the verge of crossing over at the completion of the ritual. Strangely, only about two dozen are likely to come out in this particular vicinity.
Realizing that he’s not doing any good outside, Aravis drops out of the Maze. When his head clears a few seconds later, Grey Wolf comes flying down the stairs, streaking toward him. Both of the wizards take a round to cast haste (Aravis via his boots of speed), and then enter the fray. Both are able to shake off the effects of the mind fog right inside the door.
Ernie sees that Kay won’t last much longer, and pulls out one of his more potent magic items: a heal scroll. He starts to read it, but the power of the spell proves too much for his abilities, and he is unable to manifest its effect. He utters a vicious oath: "Gosh darn it all to heck!"
Kay, realizing that Ernie’s attempt to heal her has failed, disengages from her foe, flying up and away toward the center of the room. Morningstar shouts that she should fly towards her, so that she can cure her blindness. Meanwhile, Flicker is finally flanking the enemy fighter (with Thriss providing the flanking opportunity). He manages to hit with a damaging sneak attack, much of which penetrates the stoneskin. The woman wheels to face the new half-sized threat, smiles contemptuously, and launches another dizzying series of attacks with her bastard sword. Blood flies everywhere, and Flicker drops to the ground unconscious. Ernie shouts in alarm. "Flicker’s down!" Step, shaking his head clear, runs forward toward the woman.
Dranko readies his decanter, to spray it directly on whichever of the two enemy spell-casters tries to cast. That turns out to be the halfling woman, who is knocked down by the blast of water. But she is still able to stand back up and concentrate enough to cast another spell: a slow spell, aimed at Dranko. The half-orc feels his muscles slowing down, and the world around him seems to speed up slightly. But Dranko doesn’t stay slowed for long. Morningstar blankets the area with a dispel magic, and while it fails to penetrate the enemies within the minor globe of invulnerability, it does get rid of the slow spell.
Mokad casts another spell on himself, and his body shimmers. Immediately after that, Kibi arrives, flying directly over the heads of Mokad and the enemy halfling. He thinks he remembers reading about the minor globe spell, and has some recollection that powerful spells can blow through its protective bubble. He pulls a scroll of cone of cold out and reads it, hoping for a better outcome than Ernie's. He finishes the spell, and a blast of frost covers his foes. When it clears, both of them are covered with ice, though Mokad seems more annoyed than injured. The halfling looks worse for the wear. "Should have worn warmer clothes, too," Dranko suggests.
But Mokad is no longer looking at Dranko. He is looking over Dranko’s shoulder, looking at Grey Wolf, who has just flown into the room. Mokad’s brow furrows in worry. Grey Wolf wastes no time; he casts lightning bolt at the fighter who has just felled Flicker. The electricity strikes the woman, but much of it is drawn into the breastplate with the lightning bolt design on the front, and she takes little damage. But there’s no time to worry about such things. With his haste allowing him more movement, Grey Wolf flies over to the World Spheres and positions his body so that it touches both of the great globes. There is a terrible jolt, and the ever-present churning in his guts becomes overwhelming. He drops unconscious and falls to the ground, no longer touching either of the Spheres. Edghar, to whom Grey Wolf has given orders to feed him the poison pellet as a last resort, also blacks out. And now the edges of the Spheres are actually touching, and still moving toward perfect alignment. Each of the Spheres has a black core, and these have not yet met, but their merging seems inevitable. And well does the Company remember the words of prophecy that the Eyes of Moirel spoke to Grey Wolf through Skorg: "Stand in shadow. Stand ‘twixt the shadows. When the sky is revealed and the arcs touch your frame, the window will open. Your flame must be extinguished before the cores converge on your soul."
...to be continued...
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Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 141d
Kibi, with no spells left that can penetrate the minor globe, decides to try out his Dwarven throwing axe. He’s not much good with weapons, let alone thrown weapons, but the axe flies true, hitting the flinching Mokad and drawing blood. Kibi is psyched. On the other side of the battlefield, Ernie scoops up Flicker’s body and flies with it to safety – but is nearly killed himself by the enemy fighter’s attack of opportunity. Then the woman in the breastplate steps forward to meet the approaching Step, shrugging off Thriss’ attacks. Step meets her advance and swings his greatsword, but his swing is mostly blocked by the stoneskin.
Morningstar, having seen Kibi’s success in overpowering the enemy defenses, calls a flame strike down on Mokad and the halfling. Mokad seems mostly uninjured by the blast, but the halfling collapses in a smoking heap. Another one down! Dranko catches a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, just above pit in which the two dozen Black Circle priests continue their ritual. "I think the force barrier may have just gone down!" he calls.
Aravis decides to test the theory before wasting serious firepower. He runs over to the nearest segment of the low circular wall and casts magic missile from his wand, aimed down at one of the priests. The missiles strike the very-much-intact force barrier and are harmlessly deflected. "Nope!" Aravis calls. "Still up!" At least this use of the wand gets rid of his snaky hair. In fact, it gets rid of his hair altogether. For once, Pewter is happy to be bald.
Kay lands near Morningstar, and while waiting to have her blindness cured, uses the healing power of her warhammer to undo some of the damage done by her adversary. And then the cavalry arrives. Four priestesses of Ell and eight of Cobb’s guards come running into the room, where they look around in awe at the enormous chamber. Fortunately they were warned by Grey Wolf to avoid the lines of blue energy!
The woman in the breastplate turns to Step, with a confident sneer that seems to say "next." And she backs up the look, slashing at Step and landing four heavy and well-placed blows. The paladin falls into a pool of his own blood. Aravis sees Step fall, and pegs the fighter with a sonic bolt (a lightning bolt spell that does sonic damage rather than electricity). Then he casts dimension door, appearing next to the unconscious Grey Wolf.
Dranko whips Mokad again, and then tries to prevent his enemy from seeing Grey Wolf over his shoulder. But Mokad sees, and it’s clearly dawning on him just what a danger Grey Wolf’s presence here represents. He casts a horizontal blade barrier at shin height, over where Grey Wolf's body lies. Aravis leaps backward, avoiding the whirling blades, but Grey Wolf, just regaining consciousness, is brutally slashed. He grabs Edghar and runs as fast as he can out of the blade barrier feeling the magic slice his legs.
Morningstar finally casts remove blindness on Kay, and shouts orders to her priestesses to either help Step or shoot ranged weapons at Mokad. Kay, finally able to see, shoots arrows at the enemy fighter. Kibi turns from Mokad and shoots the fighter with another fireball from Aravis’s wand. The woman is still standing, and strides forward, eager to engage a new opponent. Ernie stabilizes the unconscious and bleeding Flicker before flying back to see if Step is still alive.
Aravis is not pleased with Mokad and his blade barrier. Fuming, he levels his staff of earth and stone and casts passwall, opening up a pit beneath Mokad’s feet. Mokad totters, lunges, falls into the 10-foot-deep pit, but just catches himself, hanging onto the lip by his fingers. Aravis then turns and casts a second passwall, diagonally and downward toward the large pit in the center of the room. He hopes to bypass the force "lid" and create an opening into the lower ritual chamber. But the passwall is thwarted by another force wall; it seems that the entire space must be so shielded.
Dranko, smiling, cracks his whip at Mokad’s exposed hands – and Mokad drops into the bottom of the pit. The anti-life shell and minor globe still shield him. But they don’t protect him from Kibi, who flies back over his pit and again flings his dwarven axe downward. Still aided by Dranko’s bless spell, Kibi scores a direct critical hit, slicing deep into Mokad’s chest! Mokad looks up, realizes the predicament he’s in, and casts a small wall of stone. It creates a horizontal barrier about half-way up the pit, covering about two-thirds of the opening. He steps back underneath it, shielded now from everyone’s line-of-sight, but still with an escape hatch should he want it.
Grey Wolf, lying on the floor, drinks a healing potion but doesn’t stand up yet, not wanting to make a target of himself. Morningstar, seeing the enemy fighter still moving forward, decides enough is enough. She nails her with one final searing darkness, and the woman in the breastplate screams before finally falling dead to the ground.
Only Mokad now stands among their enemies, not counting the Black Circle priests in the pit below. Those have not looked up, not taken any notice at all of any of the fight going on above their heads. And the black energy still continues to flow, drawing the World Spheres ever closer to convergence.
begin April Fools False Content
Suddenly there is a tremendous tearing sound. The World Spheres have lurched forward, and as the party looks on in horror, they meet directly above the large black circle on the ground, the cores overlapping in their center. Grey Wolf is still alive, and not in the proper place! He feels the churning in his guts become a terrible burning, and as the party watches helplessly, his body and soul are burned away as the Black Circle ritual reaches its terrible finale. There is a deep shadow around him, followed by a sickening greenish glow, and then he is gone, with only a black vapor marking his passing.
And all around them in the room, enemy soldiers begin to appear. One after another, dressed in spiked black armor, they step forward across the planar boundary from Volpos to Abernia. In only a few seconds the room is full of them, all wielding cruel, curved swords. And then one last soldier appears, towering above them, red plate armor covering his body, a blood-red helm covering his face.
"We are here!," he exults. "We have returned to Abernia, and this time we shall not be driven out."
The Company realizes they are doomed, but some of them must get out to warn the Spire. Kay, Kibi and Ernie, who are still flying, flee through the hole opened to the sky above the large pit. Behind them they hear the sounds of battle, as the black-armored soldiers move in and overpower those remaining in the room. For Dranko, Morningstar, Step and Flicker, the adventure has come to an untimely end. And the others, fleeing through the air, see below in Kallor that every street is filled with black-armored soldiers, and even the countryside beyond is swarming with the enemy. Some of the buildings in the southern parts of the city are already burning.
Naradawk Skewn has come to Charagan at last.
end April Fools False Content
Kibi, with no spells left that can penetrate the minor globe, decides to try out his Dwarven throwing axe. He’s not much good with weapons, let alone thrown weapons, but the axe flies true, hitting the flinching Mokad and drawing blood. Kibi is psyched. On the other side of the battlefield, Ernie scoops up Flicker’s body and flies with it to safety – but is nearly killed himself by the enemy fighter’s attack of opportunity. Then the woman in the breastplate steps forward to meet the approaching Step, shrugging off Thriss’ attacks. Step meets her advance and swings his greatsword, but his swing is mostly blocked by the stoneskin.
Morningstar, having seen Kibi’s success in overpowering the enemy defenses, calls a flame strike down on Mokad and the halfling. Mokad seems mostly uninjured by the blast, but the halfling collapses in a smoking heap. Another one down! Dranko catches a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, just above pit in which the two dozen Black Circle priests continue their ritual. "I think the force barrier may have just gone down!" he calls.
Aravis decides to test the theory before wasting serious firepower. He runs over to the nearest segment of the low circular wall and casts magic missile from his wand, aimed down at one of the priests. The missiles strike the very-much-intact force barrier and are harmlessly deflected. "Nope!" Aravis calls. "Still up!" At least this use of the wand gets rid of his snaky hair. In fact, it gets rid of his hair altogether. For once, Pewter is happy to be bald.
Kay lands near Morningstar, and while waiting to have her blindness cured, uses the healing power of her warhammer to undo some of the damage done by her adversary. And then the cavalry arrives. Four priestesses of Ell and eight of Cobb’s guards come running into the room, where they look around in awe at the enormous chamber. Fortunately they were warned by Grey Wolf to avoid the lines of blue energy!
The woman in the breastplate turns to Step, with a confident sneer that seems to say "next." And she backs up the look, slashing at Step and landing four heavy and well-placed blows. The paladin falls into a pool of his own blood. Aravis sees Step fall, and pegs the fighter with a sonic bolt (a lightning bolt spell that does sonic damage rather than electricity). Then he casts dimension door, appearing next to the unconscious Grey Wolf.
Dranko whips Mokad again, and then tries to prevent his enemy from seeing Grey Wolf over his shoulder. But Mokad sees, and it’s clearly dawning on him just what a danger Grey Wolf’s presence here represents. He casts a horizontal blade barrier at shin height, over where Grey Wolf's body lies. Aravis leaps backward, avoiding the whirling blades, but Grey Wolf, just regaining consciousness, is brutally slashed. He grabs Edghar and runs as fast as he can out of the blade barrier feeling the magic slice his legs.
Morningstar finally casts remove blindness on Kay, and shouts orders to her priestesses to either help Step or shoot ranged weapons at Mokad. Kay, finally able to see, shoots arrows at the enemy fighter. Kibi turns from Mokad and shoots the fighter with another fireball from Aravis’s wand. The woman is still standing, and strides forward, eager to engage a new opponent. Ernie stabilizes the unconscious and bleeding Flicker before flying back to see if Step is still alive.
Aravis is not pleased with Mokad and his blade barrier. Fuming, he levels his staff of earth and stone and casts passwall, opening up a pit beneath Mokad’s feet. Mokad totters, lunges, falls into the 10-foot-deep pit, but just catches himself, hanging onto the lip by his fingers. Aravis then turns and casts a second passwall, diagonally and downward toward the large pit in the center of the room. He hopes to bypass the force "lid" and create an opening into the lower ritual chamber. But the passwall is thwarted by another force wall; it seems that the entire space must be so shielded.
Dranko, smiling, cracks his whip at Mokad’s exposed hands – and Mokad drops into the bottom of the pit. The anti-life shell and minor globe still shield him. But they don’t protect him from Kibi, who flies back over his pit and again flings his dwarven axe downward. Still aided by Dranko’s bless spell, Kibi scores a direct critical hit, slicing deep into Mokad’s chest! Mokad looks up, realizes the predicament he’s in, and casts a small wall of stone. It creates a horizontal barrier about half-way up the pit, covering about two-thirds of the opening. He steps back underneath it, shielded now from everyone’s line-of-sight, but still with an escape hatch should he want it.
Grey Wolf, lying on the floor, drinks a healing potion but doesn’t stand up yet, not wanting to make a target of himself. Morningstar, seeing the enemy fighter still moving forward, decides enough is enough. She nails her with one final searing darkness, and the woman in the breastplate screams before finally falling dead to the ground.
Only Mokad now stands among their enemies, not counting the Black Circle priests in the pit below. Those have not looked up, not taken any notice at all of any of the fight going on above their heads. And the black energy still continues to flow, drawing the World Spheres ever closer to convergence.
begin April Fools False Content
Suddenly there is a tremendous tearing sound. The World Spheres have lurched forward, and as the party looks on in horror, they meet directly above the large black circle on the ground, the cores overlapping in their center. Grey Wolf is still alive, and not in the proper place! He feels the churning in his guts become a terrible burning, and as the party watches helplessly, his body and soul are burned away as the Black Circle ritual reaches its terrible finale. There is a deep shadow around him, followed by a sickening greenish glow, and then he is gone, with only a black vapor marking his passing.
And all around them in the room, enemy soldiers begin to appear. One after another, dressed in spiked black armor, they step forward across the planar boundary from Volpos to Abernia. In only a few seconds the room is full of them, all wielding cruel, curved swords. And then one last soldier appears, towering above them, red plate armor covering his body, a blood-red helm covering his face.
"We are here!," he exults. "We have returned to Abernia, and this time we shall not be driven out."
The Company realizes they are doomed, but some of them must get out to warn the Spire. Kay, Kibi and Ernie, who are still flying, flee through the hole opened to the sky above the large pit. Behind them they hear the sounds of battle, as the black-armored soldiers move in and overpower those remaining in the room. For Dranko, Morningstar, Step and Flicker, the adventure has come to an untimely end. And the others, fleeing through the air, see below in Kallor that every street is filled with black-armored soldiers, and even the countryside beyond is swarming with the enemy. Some of the buildings in the southern parts of the city are already burning.
Naradawk Skewn has come to Charagan at last.
end April Fools False Content
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Swack-Iron
First Post
I've been here since Day One. Sagiro's and PC's have been my favorites. I check the boards every day to see if they've updated. Other than the regular news on the front page, this is the most important part of these boards to me.
I fell for this one hook, line and sinker.
So Sagiro, it's a testament to your writing and storytelling skills how well you pulled this one off. And it's a testament to your rat-bastardness that, due to the amazing coincidence of having the telling of the culmination of your entire campaign fall on April Fool's, you pull the wool over all our eyes.
And as someone else mentioned, the only way you can make it up to all of us is to post the *real* ending post-haste!!!
I fell for this one hook, line and sinker.
So Sagiro, it's a testament to your writing and storytelling skills how well you pulled this one off. And it's a testament to your rat-bastardness that, due to the amazing coincidence of having the telling of the culmination of your entire campaign fall on April Fool's, you pull the wool over all our eyes.
And as someone else mentioned, the only way you can make it up to all of us is to post the *real* ending post-haste!!!
Old Fezziwig
Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin.
*looks curiously at fish hook embedded in paw, thus not noticing the net that lands on him from behind*
Let this be a lesson to lions — 5 a.m. wake-ups on 1 April leave us open to trickery. Well done, Sagiro.
tKL
Let this be a lesson to lions — 5 a.m. wake-ups on 1 April leave us open to trickery. Well done, Sagiro.
tKL
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 141e
Ernie lands by Step and sees that the paladin will almost certainly live until the priestesses of Ell reach him. He flies back toward the others, healing himself as he goes with a charge from a healing wand. As he does this, he sees a group of a dozen enemy soldiers come rushing into the chamber, dressed in the varying uniforms of local Silent Quarter house guards. The front two of them go charging directly across the nearest blue energy line, and vanish. The others stop short, and start to go around.
Kibi notices their approach, and lays down a spike stones covering the entire area around the door. The advancing enemy soldiers come to a halt, many of them hopping in pain. Dranko summons Iglat, the small fire elemental from his mace, and it drops into the pit to plague Mokad. There is no indication of what happens to him.
Wanting to inflict some personal pain against his enemies, Grey Wolf casts an ironstorm around the enemy guards, who are already immobilized by the spike stones. Some try to flee, and drop from spike damage. Others stay put, and start to take damage from the whirling iron filings.
The other members of the Company stay just outside the two protective spheres still shielding Mokad, wondering what he’s doing down below the wall of stone. Then Aravis uses a wand to cast levitate on Grey Wolf, lifting him back up so that his body intersects both Spheres. Once again Grey Wolf tries mightily to stay conscious, but the pain is too great and he (and Edgar) both black out. Aravis makes sure he stays floating the in the air; Grey Wolf’s body hangs limply between the two World Spheres, Edghar on his chest.
And Aravis goes into the Maze again, right there in the very shadow of the World Spheres, hoping to see something that will spare the necessity of killing Grey Wolf. He sees something very curious. At this close range, he can see Grey Wolf’s body suspended at the center of the two planes. And around him, binding him to both worlds, is a latticework of crystal webbing. There’s a rainbow of color: white, orange, red, blue, yellow… and a purple and green color both the same shade as the Company’s two Eyes of Moirel. Realizing that the worst he can do is kill a man already destined to die, Aravis tries focusing the energy of the Maze through Ernie, intending to burn away the crystal webs and unbind Grey Wolf from the two planes.
Ernie feels a strange tugging at his soul, as if something is trying to suck the life-force out of him. He realizes that it cannot succeed unless he wills it, and thinking it’s probably some Black Circle magic, he doesn’t cooperate. But when he runs over to where Aravis has fallen to his knees, he sees that Aravis has entered the Maze. Ernie recalls Aravis’s report of how he thinks the Maze works, that its power has to be drawn and focused through living beings, and realizes that the pull on his being is probably Aravis. He shouts out that suspicion to the others, and then gives in to the pull.
He suddenly feels a great chill down to his very core, and in the Maze, Aravis is able to direct the raw elemental energy at the crystal webbing. Some of it flakes away, but it is not enough. Realizing it will take all the power he can get, he reaches out to the others in the room, trying to draw on their energy as well. He only spares Morningstar and Kibi, since they are the ones tasked with killing the suspended Grey Wolf before the cores of the World Spheres meet.
After Ernie’s shouted speculation about what’s happening, the others also voluntarily give up their life force. Morningstar shouts to the priestesses and soldiers that they should do the same. (The four priestesses all do; of Cobb’s men, some do, but about half are too frightened.) Aravis, deep in the Maze, suddenly finds a flood of power at his disposal. He channels it all at the crystal webbing, which starts to break away in large chunks. Those outside contributing to Aravis’s efforts feel life and warmth sucked out of them, stolen away to fuel the Maze. The Spheres get closer and closer, the cores practically touching now. Black energy is spilling across the floor in a solid wave beneath Aravis…
…and in the depths of the Crosser’s Maze, the webs break apart entirely; no longer is the bloodline of Moirel bound into the connection between Volpos and Abernia. Grey Wolf snaps awake, hovering in the air. For the first time in a long, long time, he feels no churning, no discomfort, no sensation of his body or soul connected to the planes. He flies up and away from the World Spheres, leaving Morningstar and Kibi (poised to kill him) confused about what to do now.
The cores of the Spheres meet, and their huge volumes ripple with black energy. The cores glow an impossibly luminous black. Around the room, two dozen forms start to take shape – black-armored warriors all, except for one. A huge soldier in familiar red plate starts to coalesce in the room, a huge sword in his hand.
The Spheres linger at perfect conjunction for a sliver of time, but there is no descendant of Moirel to keep them bound together, and they slide out of phase, each heading to where the other had started.
The black energy surges back away from the Spheres, back down into the pit where the two dozen Black Circle worshippers still stand. There is a moment of massive magical feedback, and with a sickening rending sound, the pit is suddenly filled with a damp red mist. Blood splatters against the underside of the force ceiling. One of the soldiers, whom Morningstar had told to keep an eye on the ritual pit, turns away in sudden disgust and vomits on the floor. The black-armored soldiers and their red-armored leader are suddenly frozen, and just as they fade away, the Company watches as their bodies are also torn silently apart. Much cheering follows.
Aravis stops channeling the life force of his comrades, and instead tries to see if he can draw Mokad into the Maze, as Solomea Pirenne had done to the Company months earlier. But the strain finally overwhelms him, and his mind is ejected from the Maze. He sits upright, and sees most of the Company standing near Mokad’s pit, still outside the anti-life shield. Morningstar has cast a mind fog down in the pit, and Kibi, once the minor globe had vanished, had shot another fireball down into it, but there’s no proof that Mokad is even still down there. Just in case, Grey Wolf walks over to the edge of the anti-life shell and calls down to Mokad: "No army for you today… so sorry!"
So Aravis, foggy from being in the Maze for so long and able to do little else, dismisses the passwall. Ordinarily this would harmlessly eject anyone inside the pit out of the opening… but Mokad has created a wall of stone sealing off most of the pit halfway up!
Wham! Mokad is ejected, but no so harmlessly, as his body slams into the wall of stone and then flips around it, before landing shakily on his feet at ground level. His body is bruised, and one of his legs looks broken. But still alive, and defiant to the last, Mokad immediately flies, up over the center of the room and toward the open ceiling high above.
The Company hits him with everything they have. Dranko fires off the searing light from his whip, but Mokad had cast spell resistance while down in the pit, and the spell fails to affect him. Aravis, still hasted, nails him with a sonic bolt that gets through the spell resistance, but the cone of cold that follows doesn’t seem to have any effect. Morningstar and Ernie cast searing darkness and searing light, but like Dranko’s they fail to penetrate the spell resistance. Grey Wolf casts a final lightning bolt, which singes Mokad but still doesn’t bring him down.
It comes down, then, to Kay, who is flying in pursuit. She just catches up to him before he can fly off into the twilight of Kallor.
Very quietly, she whipsers "This is for you, grandpa."
And then she takes a last desperate swing with her war hammer.
Crunch!
Mokad’s body plummets seventy feet, from the top of the shaft to the force-wall ceiling of the ritual pit below. There is a satisfying thud. Then the force-wall gives way, and Mokad’s body falls the remaining fifteen feet, into the inch of gore covering the floor.
Dranko climbs down the wall, and stands over Mokad’s lifeless body. A grim expression on his face, he takes out a piece of the Blood Gargoyle, carried around since the devastation of Ghant years before. Fulfilling a promise he has made to himself many times since, he opens Mokad’s mouth and stuffs the chunk of red stone inside.
The thrumming of the Spheres has stopped, as has all flow of black energy between the circles on the floor. The Company, exhausted, bleeding, and drained of life energy, looks around in wonder.
The Black Circle has failed, its devotees gruesomely slain, and its grand designs in ruins.
Victory!
…to be continued…
Ernie lands by Step and sees that the paladin will almost certainly live until the priestesses of Ell reach him. He flies back toward the others, healing himself as he goes with a charge from a healing wand. As he does this, he sees a group of a dozen enemy soldiers come rushing into the chamber, dressed in the varying uniforms of local Silent Quarter house guards. The front two of them go charging directly across the nearest blue energy line, and vanish. The others stop short, and start to go around.
Kibi notices their approach, and lays down a spike stones covering the entire area around the door. The advancing enemy soldiers come to a halt, many of them hopping in pain. Dranko summons Iglat, the small fire elemental from his mace, and it drops into the pit to plague Mokad. There is no indication of what happens to him.
Wanting to inflict some personal pain against his enemies, Grey Wolf casts an ironstorm around the enemy guards, who are already immobilized by the spike stones. Some try to flee, and drop from spike damage. Others stay put, and start to take damage from the whirling iron filings.
The other members of the Company stay just outside the two protective spheres still shielding Mokad, wondering what he’s doing down below the wall of stone. Then Aravis uses a wand to cast levitate on Grey Wolf, lifting him back up so that his body intersects both Spheres. Once again Grey Wolf tries mightily to stay conscious, but the pain is too great and he (and Edgar) both black out. Aravis makes sure he stays floating the in the air; Grey Wolf’s body hangs limply between the two World Spheres, Edghar on his chest.
And Aravis goes into the Maze again, right there in the very shadow of the World Spheres, hoping to see something that will spare the necessity of killing Grey Wolf. He sees something very curious. At this close range, he can see Grey Wolf’s body suspended at the center of the two planes. And around him, binding him to both worlds, is a latticework of crystal webbing. There’s a rainbow of color: white, orange, red, blue, yellow… and a purple and green color both the same shade as the Company’s two Eyes of Moirel. Realizing that the worst he can do is kill a man already destined to die, Aravis tries focusing the energy of the Maze through Ernie, intending to burn away the crystal webs and unbind Grey Wolf from the two planes.
Ernie feels a strange tugging at his soul, as if something is trying to suck the life-force out of him. He realizes that it cannot succeed unless he wills it, and thinking it’s probably some Black Circle magic, he doesn’t cooperate. But when he runs over to where Aravis has fallen to his knees, he sees that Aravis has entered the Maze. Ernie recalls Aravis’s report of how he thinks the Maze works, that its power has to be drawn and focused through living beings, and realizes that the pull on his being is probably Aravis. He shouts out that suspicion to the others, and then gives in to the pull.
He suddenly feels a great chill down to his very core, and in the Maze, Aravis is able to direct the raw elemental energy at the crystal webbing. Some of it flakes away, but it is not enough. Realizing it will take all the power he can get, he reaches out to the others in the room, trying to draw on their energy as well. He only spares Morningstar and Kibi, since they are the ones tasked with killing the suspended Grey Wolf before the cores of the World Spheres meet.
After Ernie’s shouted speculation about what’s happening, the others also voluntarily give up their life force. Morningstar shouts to the priestesses and soldiers that they should do the same. (The four priestesses all do; of Cobb’s men, some do, but about half are too frightened.) Aravis, deep in the Maze, suddenly finds a flood of power at his disposal. He channels it all at the crystal webbing, which starts to break away in large chunks. Those outside contributing to Aravis’s efforts feel life and warmth sucked out of them, stolen away to fuel the Maze. The Spheres get closer and closer, the cores practically touching now. Black energy is spilling across the floor in a solid wave beneath Aravis…
…and in the depths of the Crosser’s Maze, the webs break apart entirely; no longer is the bloodline of Moirel bound into the connection between Volpos and Abernia. Grey Wolf snaps awake, hovering in the air. For the first time in a long, long time, he feels no churning, no discomfort, no sensation of his body or soul connected to the planes. He flies up and away from the World Spheres, leaving Morningstar and Kibi (poised to kill him) confused about what to do now.
The cores of the Spheres meet, and their huge volumes ripple with black energy. The cores glow an impossibly luminous black. Around the room, two dozen forms start to take shape – black-armored warriors all, except for one. A huge soldier in familiar red plate starts to coalesce in the room, a huge sword in his hand.
The Spheres linger at perfect conjunction for a sliver of time, but there is no descendant of Moirel to keep them bound together, and they slide out of phase, each heading to where the other had started.
The black energy surges back away from the Spheres, back down into the pit where the two dozen Black Circle worshippers still stand. There is a moment of massive magical feedback, and with a sickening rending sound, the pit is suddenly filled with a damp red mist. Blood splatters against the underside of the force ceiling. One of the soldiers, whom Morningstar had told to keep an eye on the ritual pit, turns away in sudden disgust and vomits on the floor. The black-armored soldiers and their red-armored leader are suddenly frozen, and just as they fade away, the Company watches as their bodies are also torn silently apart. Much cheering follows.
Aravis stops channeling the life force of his comrades, and instead tries to see if he can draw Mokad into the Maze, as Solomea Pirenne had done to the Company months earlier. But the strain finally overwhelms him, and his mind is ejected from the Maze. He sits upright, and sees most of the Company standing near Mokad’s pit, still outside the anti-life shield. Morningstar has cast a mind fog down in the pit, and Kibi, once the minor globe had vanished, had shot another fireball down into it, but there’s no proof that Mokad is even still down there. Just in case, Grey Wolf walks over to the edge of the anti-life shell and calls down to Mokad: "No army for you today… so sorry!"
So Aravis, foggy from being in the Maze for so long and able to do little else, dismisses the passwall. Ordinarily this would harmlessly eject anyone inside the pit out of the opening… but Mokad has created a wall of stone sealing off most of the pit halfway up!
Wham! Mokad is ejected, but no so harmlessly, as his body slams into the wall of stone and then flips around it, before landing shakily on his feet at ground level. His body is bruised, and one of his legs looks broken. But still alive, and defiant to the last, Mokad immediately flies, up over the center of the room and toward the open ceiling high above.
The Company hits him with everything they have. Dranko fires off the searing light from his whip, but Mokad had cast spell resistance while down in the pit, and the spell fails to affect him. Aravis, still hasted, nails him with a sonic bolt that gets through the spell resistance, but the cone of cold that follows doesn’t seem to have any effect. Morningstar and Ernie cast searing darkness and searing light, but like Dranko’s they fail to penetrate the spell resistance. Grey Wolf casts a final lightning bolt, which singes Mokad but still doesn’t bring him down.
It comes down, then, to Kay, who is flying in pursuit. She just catches up to him before he can fly off into the twilight of Kallor.
Very quietly, she whipsers "This is for you, grandpa."
And then she takes a last desperate swing with her war hammer.
Crunch!
Mokad’s body plummets seventy feet, from the top of the shaft to the force-wall ceiling of the ritual pit below. There is a satisfying thud. Then the force-wall gives way, and Mokad’s body falls the remaining fifteen feet, into the inch of gore covering the floor.
Dranko climbs down the wall, and stands over Mokad’s lifeless body. A grim expression on his face, he takes out a piece of the Blood Gargoyle, carried around since the devastation of Ghant years before. Fulfilling a promise he has made to himself many times since, he opens Mokad’s mouth and stuffs the chunk of red stone inside.
The thrumming of the Spheres has stopped, as has all flow of black energy between the circles on the floor. The Company, exhausted, bleeding, and drained of life energy, looks around in wonder.
The Black Circle has failed, its devotees gruesomely slain, and its grand designs in ruins.
Victory!
…to be continued…
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