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Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
Everett said:
The best way is to read this post on p32
http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=2020971&postcount=1262
It contains a flashback and dramatic action both!
Ian the Mad
First Post
The answer seems to be that they're malefic denizens of the Far Realm and have a distinct distaste for "alien" (which is to say, everything not from the Far Realm) matter of all sorts. Het Branoi is apparently a web of planar slices constructed in the Far Realm. I can imagine that having their territory invaded in such a manner would render them a might tetchy.
Alternately, they are intensely alien beings and just feel like taking things apart for the heck of it.
Also, while I'm breaking lurk here, I may as well congratulate you on having an extremely fine Story Hour, Sagiro. My proverbial hat is off to you.
Alternately, they are intensely alien beings and just feel like taking things apart for the heck of it.
Also, while I'm breaking lurk here, I may as well congratulate you on having an extremely fine Story Hour, Sagiro. My proverbial hat is off to you.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Ian, it's always nice to hear from someone who's enjoying the story! Your first theory is pretty much on the mark.
Once I started writing this session in earnest, I realized that I am going to have to detail a lot of combat actions. There are plenty of individual moments that will want retelling, and which will make no sense without a pretty full context, comabt-wise. I'm still not going to detail what every character did on every turn, but it looks like most of the interesting stuff will end up in there somewhere. I'm breaking up the combat into multiple posts, of which this is the first. No promises about when I'll get to the next one, since it looks like a busy weekend coming up. But I'll do what I can.
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 250
Tentacular Spectacular
“This looks like an intestine!”
Dranko gulps and looks at down at Ernie. “No, it doesn’t. This is worse.”
“And Dranko would know,” adds Flicker.
Aravis’s greater arcane sight has flicked on like a switch. The cavern is flooded with a mix of strong Earth magic and even stronger... something. Whatever you call the magic of the Cleaners and their realm, this place is full of it.
To the crowd of prime-dwellers, there is a tiny glimmer of hope that despite the horrors of their situation, it’ll be a straightforward matter of dealing enough damage to the Trunk to reach the Eye at its center. The many tentacles around the perimeter of the cavern seem to be disabled by the bright sunlight of Step’s demise, leaving only the two tentacle-mass creatures, and the immobile Trunk. They have a clear numerical advantage.
The Company spreads out into the space. Most of the clerics release spiritual weapons that go streaking toward the Trunk, and Kibi unleashes a prismatic spray followed up with a quickened coldfire catching all three enemies in the blasts. Wild magic surges through his body and the coldfire is spontaneously twinned, a pair of loud blasts echoing through the cave and searing the flesh of the Trunk and its two Masses. In the wake of the spells many of the smaller tentacles are seared away. Two turn to stone and break off near the floor.
The glimmer of hope grows. Protected by the heroes’ feast, illuminated by Step’s dazzling aftermath, and numbering over a dozen stalwart adventurers, maybe they can just overwhelm these unnatural things and be done with Het Branoi.
Alas, no.
From the ground three bodies rise, each at the end of its own wall-anchored tentacle. Each body is like the weight at the end of a long whip, jerking through the air like a spasmodic puppet.
There is a headless human-ish body wearing platemail and holding a greatsword. The end of its tentacle is wrapped around the corpse, and its tip sticks up through the neck like a grotesque parody of a head. The tentacle whips and swings until the body is hovering in front of Kibi, and the body launches a full attack. Most of the damage is absorbed by a stoneskin, but Kibi still stumbles back in the face of this new threat.
There is a dead troll being held up aloft by its ankle. This creature is dangled over Snokas, whom it savages with tooth and claw.
And there is a body with no legs, a tentacle wrapped tightly around its torso. It was once an elven woman by the look of it, and now it is lifted high into the air, seventy feet off the ground by its controlling tentacle. From its lofty vantage the former sorceress casts a powerful sonic chain lightning into the midst of the Company, centered on Grey Wolf. The booming sound of the spell reverberates around the cavern, shaking small bits of rock loose from a few jagged stalactites.
The two Masses are still near the Trunk, so Aravis takes advantage, catching all three in an empowered cone of cold. The Mass’s tentacles flap wildly, ice forming and snapping off of them. The Trunk quivers slightly, but endures. One of the Masses turns to... face? Aravis and waves its four largest tentacles at him. He watches as strange runes carved upon them start to glow a sickly green, and then feels a revolting sensation rise in his gut. But whatever it was trying to do to him, he fights off the effect.
The combat is joined in earnest then, a furious maelstrom of steel and magic. Snokas fights off one of the animated bodies with his pick, while Cashbox Jack and Yoba attack the Mass. The sorcerer Ox follows Aravis’s lead; he flies up to get an angle that won’t catch his friends and casts his own empowered cone of cold, again blasting the Trunk and the two Masses.
While Dranko rushes to heal the grievously wounded Grey Wolf, Flicker joins Jack in carving up the nearest Mass.
The second Mass lurches toward Snokas. Its four major tentacles glow with green runes, but like Aravis, Snokas is able to resist the effect. Everyone is just as happy not to know what it’s trying to do. But then it physically slaps Snokas with those tentacles, and in addition to tearing into his flesh, their alien touch drains away some of his intellect.
The Company has little time to ponder this new development, as a fourth body rises from the ground. This one is wrapped entirely around the body’s legs and torso, leaving only its arms and minotaur’s head exposed. The arms of the body wave about, and Ox’s fly spell is dispelled. He feather falls forty feet to the ground, swearing all the while.
Kiro targets the body that cast the sonic chain lightning with a flame strike, and Morningstar follows this up with a massive firestorm that burns every enemy in the cavern with black flames. For an encore she casts a quickened searing darkness at the body of the sorceress. The animated corpse is burned off its tentacle and drops seventy feet to the ground, a development that is met with much cheering among the heroes.
The cheering is short lived. A fifth body is lifted up into the air by a new tentacle. This body is a powerfully-built dwarf, and in place of a torn-off right arm, a mass of smaller tentacles grips its war axe. It ignores the fact that Dranko is invisible, and delivers three vicious cuts with the axe, each inflicting extra sonic damage with the sound of thunderclaps.
Tentacles using magic items thinks Dranko, grimacing in pain. Not fair!
He gets a close up look at the half-decayed face of the dwarf, with small tentacles spilling from its mouth and an old wound in its cheek. Then Sagiro is by his side, puncturing the creature with his rapier.
Grey Wolf surveys the battlefield, every detail of which is still sunlit and distinct.
“The main tentacle?” he thinks over the telepathic bond.
His fellow arcanists agree. Grey Wolf casts his iron storm so that it encompasses both of the Masses and a good portion of the Trunk.
The combat rages on, weapons and spells flashing. Kibi can still feel the earth magic flooding him, coursing up his arms with every spell he casts. His empowered chain lightning is sucked into the ironstorm, burning away chunks of his enemies. Aravis does likewise. Most of the melee types trade damage with the revolting tentacle-animated bodies. The Masses, when not trying their yet-to-succeed glowing-green-rune attack, flail away with tentacles that drain points from random ability scores. Beneath them, black ichor is pooling from Company-inflicted wounds.
Ernie flies right up to the Trunk, dodging the waving tentacles that protrude from its length. He can see that the Trunk is quite damaged in places, but that the blue glow is still deep inside of it. One thing that surprises him is that it’s not covered with crystal, like most things are that are possessed by Eyes of Moirel.
This is the canary that entrapped the cat, he thinks. The Eye cannot possess it.
Through the mottled brown-and-clear flesh, Ernie can see that the blue glow is larger than he is, a rough rectangular shape that wavers and warbles at its edges. But there’s something else that grabs his attention, something that he immediately transmits over the mind link. He can also see that high up, near the ceiling, the Trunk is giving birth. It seems to be squeezing a third Mass out of itself; its tentacles writhe and flap as they become exposed to the cavern’s sunlight.
Down below, one of the Masses waves its four rune-covered tentacles at Aravis, who had just delivered yet another chain lightning into the ironstorm. This time, he is unable to resist the attack. There is a massive pain in his side... and a foot-thick, ten-foot-long brown tentacle erupts from his abdomen. Aravis goes white as a sheet, as his body is jerked around by the powerful flailing of the tentacle. Adding injurious insult, the tentacle sprouting from his side slaps Aravis painfully in the head. For good measure, the Mass squishes forward and smashes him with all four of its own tentacles. Bruised and battered, and with some of his constitution drained away by the touch of his enemy, Aravis drops to his knees, hovering on the ragged edge of consciousness.
...to be continued...
Once I started writing this session in earnest, I realized that I am going to have to detail a lot of combat actions. There are plenty of individual moments that will want retelling, and which will make no sense without a pretty full context, comabt-wise. I'm still not going to detail what every character did on every turn, but it looks like most of the interesting stuff will end up in there somewhere. I'm breaking up the combat into multiple posts, of which this is the first. No promises about when I'll get to the next one, since it looks like a busy weekend coming up. But I'll do what I can.
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 250
Tentacular Spectacular
“This looks like an intestine!”
Dranko gulps and looks at down at Ernie. “No, it doesn’t. This is worse.”
“And Dranko would know,” adds Flicker.
Aravis’s greater arcane sight has flicked on like a switch. The cavern is flooded with a mix of strong Earth magic and even stronger... something. Whatever you call the magic of the Cleaners and their realm, this place is full of it.
To the crowd of prime-dwellers, there is a tiny glimmer of hope that despite the horrors of their situation, it’ll be a straightforward matter of dealing enough damage to the Trunk to reach the Eye at its center. The many tentacles around the perimeter of the cavern seem to be disabled by the bright sunlight of Step’s demise, leaving only the two tentacle-mass creatures, and the immobile Trunk. They have a clear numerical advantage.
The Company spreads out into the space. Most of the clerics release spiritual weapons that go streaking toward the Trunk, and Kibi unleashes a prismatic spray followed up with a quickened coldfire catching all three enemies in the blasts. Wild magic surges through his body and the coldfire is spontaneously twinned, a pair of loud blasts echoing through the cave and searing the flesh of the Trunk and its two Masses. In the wake of the spells many of the smaller tentacles are seared away. Two turn to stone and break off near the floor.
The glimmer of hope grows. Protected by the heroes’ feast, illuminated by Step’s dazzling aftermath, and numbering over a dozen stalwart adventurers, maybe they can just overwhelm these unnatural things and be done with Het Branoi.
Alas, no.
From the ground three bodies rise, each at the end of its own wall-anchored tentacle. Each body is like the weight at the end of a long whip, jerking through the air like a spasmodic puppet.
There is a headless human-ish body wearing platemail and holding a greatsword. The end of its tentacle is wrapped around the corpse, and its tip sticks up through the neck like a grotesque parody of a head. The tentacle whips and swings until the body is hovering in front of Kibi, and the body launches a full attack. Most of the damage is absorbed by a stoneskin, but Kibi still stumbles back in the face of this new threat.
There is a dead troll being held up aloft by its ankle. This creature is dangled over Snokas, whom it savages with tooth and claw.
And there is a body with no legs, a tentacle wrapped tightly around its torso. It was once an elven woman by the look of it, and now it is lifted high into the air, seventy feet off the ground by its controlling tentacle. From its lofty vantage the former sorceress casts a powerful sonic chain lightning into the midst of the Company, centered on Grey Wolf. The booming sound of the spell reverberates around the cavern, shaking small bits of rock loose from a few jagged stalactites.
The two Masses are still near the Trunk, so Aravis takes advantage, catching all three in an empowered cone of cold. The Mass’s tentacles flap wildly, ice forming and snapping off of them. The Trunk quivers slightly, but endures. One of the Masses turns to... face? Aravis and waves its four largest tentacles at him. He watches as strange runes carved upon them start to glow a sickly green, and then feels a revolting sensation rise in his gut. But whatever it was trying to do to him, he fights off the effect.
The combat is joined in earnest then, a furious maelstrom of steel and magic. Snokas fights off one of the animated bodies with his pick, while Cashbox Jack and Yoba attack the Mass. The sorcerer Ox follows Aravis’s lead; he flies up to get an angle that won’t catch his friends and casts his own empowered cone of cold, again blasting the Trunk and the two Masses.
While Dranko rushes to heal the grievously wounded Grey Wolf, Flicker joins Jack in carving up the nearest Mass.
The second Mass lurches toward Snokas. Its four major tentacles glow with green runes, but like Aravis, Snokas is able to resist the effect. Everyone is just as happy not to know what it’s trying to do. But then it physically slaps Snokas with those tentacles, and in addition to tearing into his flesh, their alien touch drains away some of his intellect.
The Company has little time to ponder this new development, as a fourth body rises from the ground. This one is wrapped entirely around the body’s legs and torso, leaving only its arms and minotaur’s head exposed. The arms of the body wave about, and Ox’s fly spell is dispelled. He feather falls forty feet to the ground, swearing all the while.
Kiro targets the body that cast the sonic chain lightning with a flame strike, and Morningstar follows this up with a massive firestorm that burns every enemy in the cavern with black flames. For an encore she casts a quickened searing darkness at the body of the sorceress. The animated corpse is burned off its tentacle and drops seventy feet to the ground, a development that is met with much cheering among the heroes.
The cheering is short lived. A fifth body is lifted up into the air by a new tentacle. This body is a powerfully-built dwarf, and in place of a torn-off right arm, a mass of smaller tentacles grips its war axe. It ignores the fact that Dranko is invisible, and delivers three vicious cuts with the axe, each inflicting extra sonic damage with the sound of thunderclaps.
Tentacles using magic items thinks Dranko, grimacing in pain. Not fair!
He gets a close up look at the half-decayed face of the dwarf, with small tentacles spilling from its mouth and an old wound in its cheek. Then Sagiro is by his side, puncturing the creature with his rapier.
Grey Wolf surveys the battlefield, every detail of which is still sunlit and distinct.
“The main tentacle?” he thinks over the telepathic bond.
His fellow arcanists agree. Grey Wolf casts his iron storm so that it encompasses both of the Masses and a good portion of the Trunk.
The combat rages on, weapons and spells flashing. Kibi can still feel the earth magic flooding him, coursing up his arms with every spell he casts. His empowered chain lightning is sucked into the ironstorm, burning away chunks of his enemies. Aravis does likewise. Most of the melee types trade damage with the revolting tentacle-animated bodies. The Masses, when not trying their yet-to-succeed glowing-green-rune attack, flail away with tentacles that drain points from random ability scores. Beneath them, black ichor is pooling from Company-inflicted wounds.
Ernie flies right up to the Trunk, dodging the waving tentacles that protrude from its length. He can see that the Trunk is quite damaged in places, but that the blue glow is still deep inside of it. One thing that surprises him is that it’s not covered with crystal, like most things are that are possessed by Eyes of Moirel.
This is the canary that entrapped the cat, he thinks. The Eye cannot possess it.
Through the mottled brown-and-clear flesh, Ernie can see that the blue glow is larger than he is, a rough rectangular shape that wavers and warbles at its edges. But there’s something else that grabs his attention, something that he immediately transmits over the mind link. He can also see that high up, near the ceiling, the Trunk is giving birth. It seems to be squeezing a third Mass out of itself; its tentacles writhe and flap as they become exposed to the cavern’s sunlight.
Down below, one of the Masses waves its four rune-covered tentacles at Aravis, who had just delivered yet another chain lightning into the ironstorm. This time, he is unable to resist the attack. There is a massive pain in his side... and a foot-thick, ten-foot-long brown tentacle erupts from his abdomen. Aravis goes white as a sheet, as his body is jerked around by the powerful flailing of the tentacle. Adding injurious insult, the tentacle sprouting from his side slaps Aravis painfully in the head. For good measure, the Mass squishes forward and smashes him with all four of its own tentacles. Bruised and battered, and with some of his constitution drained away by the touch of his enemy, Aravis drops to his knees, hovering on the ragged edge of consciousness.
...to be continued...
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