Hi everyone.
Updates are likely to be even fewer and farther between than usual for the next couple of months. We're "crunching" on BioShock at work, which means late nights every night and leaving me even less time than usual to work on the Story Hour. I'm still chipping away, 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, but it's pretty grim.
Regarding the recent question about Bostock: once Grey Wolf had used him to inflict certain damage thresholds, I'd look for the next dramatically-appropriate moment to bring out his next "upgrade."
And here's a very short update, but hey, it's an update!
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 269
Rumbler
The enormous Elemental swings a massive arm like a battering ram. Kibi feels all the breath knocked out of him as a fist the size of a kitchen table lifts him bodily off the ground. Some twenty feet back he lands with a heavy thud on the stone floor. For a moment he lies there, dazed, blinking.
A second fist swings ponderously through the air, clipping the ground and breaking off bits of stone before connecting with Ernie. The halfling goes flying through the air to land with a clang near one wall of the cavern.
Dranko looks up in a panic. “What do we do? What do we do?!”
“Holy crap!” is Aravis’s less-than-helpful response. “I don’t know.”
To buy some time he casts maze. The Elemental vanishes. Dranko’s panic spreads to the others. Is there any way out of here?
“Craaaaaaaan-chuuuuuuuss?!” calls Ernie. All of the Company is wondering: if the huge stone guardian is a servant of Cranchus, why is it attacking them? And if it’s not -- well, still, why is it attacking them? Why would it hate Earth Mages, who normally share a strong affinity with its kind? Has it already killed Cranchus?
The Company spreads out, searching desperately for a hidden exit from the cavern but not finding one. And less than thirty seconds later there’s a whoosh and a pop and the colossal Elemental reappears in a cacophony of grinding stone.
Ernie looks up and pleads. “Please, we don’t mean you any harm!”
The Elemental looks down and grumbles ominously.
“Should I attack it?” asks Yoba urgently. “What’s the plan?”
“Wait!” exclaims Kibi,” who still feels like his teeth are shaking from the Elemental’s fist. “I’ll drop a wall.” And he does so, placing a wall of force between himself and the Elemental. It’s not much given the sizes involved, but he puts it 30’ off the ground, 30’ high, and makes it 50’ long. Kibi knows the creature can trivially get around the wall, but it will buy them an extra few seconds to think of something.
“What are we doing?” says Dranko, echoing Yoba’s thoughts. “Are we attacking?”
“Well, he doesn’t like me much...” says Kibi.
Dranko sights and lashes with his whip. The Elemental is easy to hit – it makes the broad side of a barn look small by comparison – but its natural resistance to damage minimizes the effect of Dranko’s weapon. A few small chunks of stone are knocked out of its ankle.
“Back, back you fiend!” he cries out.
Grey Wolf’s attack is more effective. He launches an acid orb at the Elemental dissolving a nice-sized piece of its leg. Morningstar follows up with a flame strike that leaves scorched, smoking rocks behind. Snokas fires some arrows from a distance but they plink harmlessly off its body.
Yoba grits her teeth and charges, knowing what will happen. Sure enough the Elemental clobbers well before she gets close enough to swing, sending her flying backwards. Lying on the ground she groans, “I’ve gotten its attention...”
There’s now an increasing body of evidence that spells are the way to go against this behemoth. Ernie casts flame strike and Aravis casts cone of cold. The Elemental has not felt pain such as this for as long as it can remember. For a second time it brings its fist down on Kibi, but it comes up short, blocked by the top of the wall of force. It grumbles for a second, pondering, and then sinks bodily into the ground. Everyone prepares their responses for when it next emerges, which includes Kibi casting Otto’s irresistible dance from a scroll.
The Elemental emerges from the floor on the far side of the cavern, leaving the Company out of reach of its powerful fists. But there’s method to its madness – it bends down until its head is at ground level, opens its mouth, and breaths an avalanche of boulders that rolls beneath the wall of force and smashes through the ranks of the party. Dranko is able to dodge, and Aravis avoids damage by using his ring of evasion. Everyone else is battered, with Ernie and Kibi taking a particularly severe pounding.
More spells fly at the Elemental: a darkbeam from Morningstar, a sonic orb from Grey Wolf and a prismatic spray from Aravis. (This last one strikes the creature with two beams, one doing acid damage, and the other – ha ha – turning it to stone.) The stone beast roars and rumbles like a living earthquake. Is it starting to look unsteady, or is the Company just imagining it?
Ernie heals himself, and Dranko heals Kibi. Dranko and Snokas then both take up positions between the Elemental and Kibi.
“It’s like I cast wall of half-orcs,” mutters Kibi.
The Elemental swings, and Dranko goes flying backward. Its second swing is aimed unerringly at Kibi, but somehow Snokas manages to whisk him out of harm’s way, absorbing the blow in the dwarf’s stead. It’s a particularly gruesome attack, smashing Snokas backward and off his feet with a sound of crunching bones.
Kibi winces. “I take back everything bad I ever said about half-orcs!”
EARTH MAGE! The roar is so loud that small stones fall from the ceiling from the very sound of it.
Morningstar casts a powerful mass cure, while Aravis and Grey Wolf both nail the Elemental with cones of cold. Now it’s abundantly clear that the Elemental is riddled with cracks, with large chunks broken off or frozen or dissolved. Are they close to defeating it?
A huge humanoid figure appears in the cavern, standing forty feet tall. It looks like a cross between a dwarf and an Earth Elemental. It looks down upon the assembled company and its voice booms out.
“WHO DARES APPROACH MY DOM... WELL, BLESS MY BEARD!”
Kibi looks up at the giant dwarf. “Why is your elemental so angry with me? Just because I’m an Earth Mage?”
The huge dwarf raises an eyebrow.
“WHO ARE YOU?”
“If you’d answer sending spells, you’d know,” mutters Dranko.
“My name is Kibilhathur Bimson,” says Kibi. “What’s yours? And if that elemental is a friend of yours, could you ask him to stop attacking us?”
“RUMBLER! BACK IN THE GROUND!”
The enormous Elemental sinks into the rocky cavern floor.
“Excuse me,” pipes up Ernie. “We need you to fix the Eyes of Moirel.”
“WERE YOU FOLLOWED?”
“Yeah,” admits Ernie. “But we killed the guy.”
“WAIT THERE.”
The dwarf vanishes. A moment later, at the base of the strangely flat side of the cavern, a small doorway appears as if created with stone shape. Out comes the dwarf, still tall for its race, standing almost five feet high. It seems made of stone as much as flesh.
“How do you do?” asks Kibi, approaching him.
“I do well,” says the dwarf. “Kibilhathur Bimson, my name is Cranchus, but I’m guessing you know that. You’d better come inside.”
Seeing the two dwarves facing one another, the Company can see that the family resemblance is unmistakable.
...to be continued...
