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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Don't get too excited about this. What follows really is a Deus Ex Machina on my part; I never expected the party would escape this trap on their own. As my players correctly noted afterward, this was a short "cut-scene" designed to give them a couple moments of panic, and to show the scary divinatory powers of the Black Circle.Nail said:
I guess it also taught the moral lesson of "don't piss off the locals," as you'll see when I write the next post. (Not sure when that will be, by the way; I want to collect some recollections from my players before I write it...)
-Sagiro
Zaruthustran
The tingling means it’s working!
Hi Sagiro. I just sent you an email to your "velendo" address. Please be on the lookout for it; be aware that some pesky mail clients flag all mail from "@amazon.com" as spam. 
-z
-z
RangerWickett
Legend
Sagiro said:
Or in Dranko's case, piss at the locals.
Lord Pendragon
First Post
Sagiro said:
Not sure as in maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after, or maybe next week, maybe the week after?
energy_One
First Post
Lord Pendragon said:
Yes. After all, Sagiro has to please his devoted fans. His devoted, inspiring fans. His devoted, inspiring fans with pitchforks.
(Sagiro rocks... socks... er.... um... or something else... more... rockable.)
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LightPhoenix
First Post
Tiefling said:
Tae Kwon Do Jesus!!!
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Hey everyone,
Sorry for the long delay. I've actually been writing lots of run summaries recently, but they've been about the most recent three runs. The Story Hour posted here is now six runs behind where we are in real life. To put it another way: the last Story Hour detailed run #143. I've finished the write-ups for runs #147, #148 and #149, but I won't be posting them for a while yet, since I still have to write up runs #145 and #146.
But enough teasing and excuses. I just finished writing up the run #144 -- the rumble in the jungle. Here it is!
-Sagiro
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 179
There comes the sound of a large object crashing through tree branches, and a large boulder lands in the midst of the assembled forces with a loud thud. This elicits some chaos in the ranks. While the man continues to chant, his female counterpart gives him a venomous “I told you so” glare before shouting new orders. She runs back toward the far edge of the clearing, and the Company hears the sounds of even more soldiers than they can see in the torchlight. The woman leads a dozen or so others into the jungle, toward the sound of the roar.
A second boulder soars over the heads of the Company in the trap; crossbowmen scatter away before regrouping. The Black Circle caster keeps up his chanting, though his eyes are darting nervously. The heat has continued to rise inside the trap; sweat is dripping down the party’s faces. Ernie thinks that in a few more seconds he will start baking alive in his plate mail.
A third boulder crashes through the trees and comes whistling toward them. It strikes one of the squatting black statues that surround the circle trap, smashing it into fragments. Inside the trap a harmless red light flashes and fades; the air quickly cools. A suppressed telepathic bond between several party members springs back to life. Step, his sword drawn, pokes it forward through the circle’s edge. No force wall stops it.
“We’re in business,” he says.
The battle that follows is fantastically chaotic, even by the established standards of such things. Morningstar opens up with a flame strike on the head of the Black Circle leader, which leaves him smoking but not as damaged as she’d hoped. Grey Wolf and Dranko activate improved invisibility from magic items. Kay fires off arrows at the leader, after which Step and Grey Wolf charge forward at him. The shocked Black Circle leader, now bleeding from several wounds, takes a step back, casts a spell, and flies straight up. Aravis chugs a potion of flying and gives chase.
A hail of arrows pelts the Company, most pinging off armor but many finding their marks. Ernie casts castigate and gives the nearest cluster of bowmen a magical tongue-lashing.
“Look at what you’re doing! Serving an icky evil God, firing arrows at good people! You should be ashamed of yourselves!”
The archers cringe in pain, most of them deafened. All of them look sheepish.
Snokas moves out to engage the mass of enemy soldiery. He finds himself in melee with one of the fellows dual-wielding rapiers. Before Snokas knows what’s happening, he’s bleeding from three deep cuts. His own weapons didn’t strike once. His foe smiles knowingly.
Dranko charges invisibly out into the ranks, hoping to take out one of the large demon-ish looking creatures in the back. He snaps his whip and the creature bellows with rage. It shifts its bulky form around to face in Dranko’s direction. It cannot see the half-orc, but it cocks its head carefully. Is it listening for him? Smelling? Using some other beastly sense? Somehow it pinpoints him, but instead of attacking with its enormous lobster-like claws, it folds its arms and glares in Dranko’s direction. Dranko feels a cold shudder go through his body, and a bit of his life force drains away.
The roaring of some huge beast continues out in the jungle. It’s clearly speech of some kind, though not in a language anyone in the Company knows. Whatever it is, it sounds angry.
The Black Circle leader blasts the flying Aravis with an empowered acid bolt, before flying off into the darkness. Aravis considers giving chase, but instead directs a sonic chain lightning down into the melee. Many enemy combatants are blasted.
The chaos increases, and the battle slowly turns against the Company. On the one hand, the good guys do pretty well against the enemy rank and file. Step, Flicker and Kay are more than a match for the soldiers armed with scimitars, Grey Wolf takes flight and pelts the archers with fireballs and lightning bolts. Kibi casts a confusion which has a number of the bad guys attacking each other or wandering around aimlessly. Then he follows it up with a fireball targeting another group of enemies. Aravis flies down beneath the trees at the edge of the clearing and casts a fireball of his own into the melee. Dranko manages to evade the friendly fire while his monstrous adversary does not, and he finishes off his foe with his whip. Morningstar has deterred attackers with a chill shield that’s dealt out some serious damage on its own.
But the fighters with the rapiers are exceedingly skillful, with an uncanny ability to inflict critical wounds. A handful of surviving archers continues to whittle away at the Company. Morningstar and Ernie are kept busy applying healing, but the injuries to their friends are piling up faster than they can deal with.
It gets worse. Out from the jungle steps an enormous giant, eighteen feet tall, wielding a frighteningly large morningstar. It’s shouting with rage. Kibi activates his Ioun Stone of tongues to hear what it’s saying.
“…teach you to invade my jungle, setting fires and chopping wood from living trees! I’ll smear you all into paste! I’ll pulverize you! I’ll crush you to powder! I’ll…”
Kibi gets the idea. And Step gets the giant’s morningstar, right in the chest. Whoooof! He goes reeling backward.
“Hey Mr. Giant!” calls Kibi. “We don’t want to hurt you or your jungle! We’re not with those other people!”
“Liar!” shouts the giant. “Didn’t I just watch you throw magical fire around? You little people are all in league… and you’ll all get what you deserve... a pounding!”
Oh well.
Then it gets even worse! Aravis, crouching behind a tree at the edge of the clearing, and just having healed some of his wounds with a potion, is struck in the back by a searing light from inside the jungle. He wheels around and thinks he catches a glimpse of someone ducking behind a tree some fifty feet away. He can’t see very well; the only light is the ambient glow from the torches still burning out in the clearing.
Kay, Grey Wolf and Step rush over to Aravis to administer aid. Aravis chugs another healing potion, clinging to life.
There’s a rushed consensus over the telepathic bond. Things were grim enough before the giant showed up and (presumably) the female Black Circle cleric came back. Now it’s time to flee!
Ernie shouts “come to the center!” in Charagan common before casting obscuring mist. Most of the Company (and a few enemies) are enveloped in thick magical fog. Morningstar’s intent is to cast a pair of wind walk spells to allow a speedy evacuation, covered by the mist. But the four over by Aravis are unable to join the others; from the jungle comes a command in Kivian Common: “Sleep!”
Aravis and Step drop into a deep slumber.
“Hide from me, will you?” bellows the giant. The Company huddled in the mist hears the sound of the giant’s weapon slamming into the ground about fifteen feet away, accompanied by the dying scream of an enemy soldier.
“We’ve got to carry them out of here,” says Grey Wolf. “Kay, you get Aravis, and I’ll carry Step. Edghar, Ernie’s got the right idea. Covering fog, please.”
Grey Wolf’s monkey familiar grabs the horn of fog from his master's belt, carried for just such an emergency as this. He blows on it, sounding a low fog-horn-like note and filling the air with mist.
“Meet back at the hut,” thinks Morningstar over the telepathic bond. She casts her wind walks, and the majority of the party leaves the scene at top speed. As the other group gets set to fly away, the black circle leader reveals himself nearby by casting a last empowered acid bolt in their direction, into the expanding fog cloud. It just misses Kay and Aravis but sears the flesh of Step and Grey Wolf.
“God damn it!” cries Grey Wolf. “We’re leaving already!” They fly up, out of the fog and through the treetops, into the night sky. Below them they see the towering jungle giant lifting its morningstar from the flattened corpse of the second demonic-looking monster. It turns on the mage who had just cast the acid bolt and lets out a furious shriek.
And that’s the last they see of their Black Circle foes. The Company has escaped the trap. But as they fly away, they hear the sound of the Black Circle mage shouting after them, panic in his voice:
"You don't understand! You must not be allowed to live! The universe cannot abide your presence!"
…to be continued…
Sorry for the long delay. I've actually been writing lots of run summaries recently, but they've been about the most recent three runs. The Story Hour posted here is now six runs behind where we are in real life. To put it another way: the last Story Hour detailed run #143. I've finished the write-ups for runs #147, #148 and #149, but I won't be posting them for a while yet, since I still have to write up runs #145 and #146.
But enough teasing and excuses. I just finished writing up the run #144 -- the rumble in the jungle. Here it is!
-Sagiro
Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 179
There comes the sound of a large object crashing through tree branches, and a large boulder lands in the midst of the assembled forces with a loud thud. This elicits some chaos in the ranks. While the man continues to chant, his female counterpart gives him a venomous “I told you so” glare before shouting new orders. She runs back toward the far edge of the clearing, and the Company hears the sounds of even more soldiers than they can see in the torchlight. The woman leads a dozen or so others into the jungle, toward the sound of the roar.
A second boulder soars over the heads of the Company in the trap; crossbowmen scatter away before regrouping. The Black Circle caster keeps up his chanting, though his eyes are darting nervously. The heat has continued to rise inside the trap; sweat is dripping down the party’s faces. Ernie thinks that in a few more seconds he will start baking alive in his plate mail.
A third boulder crashes through the trees and comes whistling toward them. It strikes one of the squatting black statues that surround the circle trap, smashing it into fragments. Inside the trap a harmless red light flashes and fades; the air quickly cools. A suppressed telepathic bond between several party members springs back to life. Step, his sword drawn, pokes it forward through the circle’s edge. No force wall stops it.
“We’re in business,” he says.
The battle that follows is fantastically chaotic, even by the established standards of such things. Morningstar opens up with a flame strike on the head of the Black Circle leader, which leaves him smoking but not as damaged as she’d hoped. Grey Wolf and Dranko activate improved invisibility from magic items. Kay fires off arrows at the leader, after which Step and Grey Wolf charge forward at him. The shocked Black Circle leader, now bleeding from several wounds, takes a step back, casts a spell, and flies straight up. Aravis chugs a potion of flying and gives chase.
A hail of arrows pelts the Company, most pinging off armor but many finding their marks. Ernie casts castigate and gives the nearest cluster of bowmen a magical tongue-lashing.
“Look at what you’re doing! Serving an icky evil God, firing arrows at good people! You should be ashamed of yourselves!”
The archers cringe in pain, most of them deafened. All of them look sheepish.
Snokas moves out to engage the mass of enemy soldiery. He finds himself in melee with one of the fellows dual-wielding rapiers. Before Snokas knows what’s happening, he’s bleeding from three deep cuts. His own weapons didn’t strike once. His foe smiles knowingly.
Dranko charges invisibly out into the ranks, hoping to take out one of the large demon-ish looking creatures in the back. He snaps his whip and the creature bellows with rage. It shifts its bulky form around to face in Dranko’s direction. It cannot see the half-orc, but it cocks its head carefully. Is it listening for him? Smelling? Using some other beastly sense? Somehow it pinpoints him, but instead of attacking with its enormous lobster-like claws, it folds its arms and glares in Dranko’s direction. Dranko feels a cold shudder go through his body, and a bit of his life force drains away.
The roaring of some huge beast continues out in the jungle. It’s clearly speech of some kind, though not in a language anyone in the Company knows. Whatever it is, it sounds angry.
The Black Circle leader blasts the flying Aravis with an empowered acid bolt, before flying off into the darkness. Aravis considers giving chase, but instead directs a sonic chain lightning down into the melee. Many enemy combatants are blasted.
The chaos increases, and the battle slowly turns against the Company. On the one hand, the good guys do pretty well against the enemy rank and file. Step, Flicker and Kay are more than a match for the soldiers armed with scimitars, Grey Wolf takes flight and pelts the archers with fireballs and lightning bolts. Kibi casts a confusion which has a number of the bad guys attacking each other or wandering around aimlessly. Then he follows it up with a fireball targeting another group of enemies. Aravis flies down beneath the trees at the edge of the clearing and casts a fireball of his own into the melee. Dranko manages to evade the friendly fire while his monstrous adversary does not, and he finishes off his foe with his whip. Morningstar has deterred attackers with a chill shield that’s dealt out some serious damage on its own.
But the fighters with the rapiers are exceedingly skillful, with an uncanny ability to inflict critical wounds. A handful of surviving archers continues to whittle away at the Company. Morningstar and Ernie are kept busy applying healing, but the injuries to their friends are piling up faster than they can deal with.
It gets worse. Out from the jungle steps an enormous giant, eighteen feet tall, wielding a frighteningly large morningstar. It’s shouting with rage. Kibi activates his Ioun Stone of tongues to hear what it’s saying.
“…teach you to invade my jungle, setting fires and chopping wood from living trees! I’ll smear you all into paste! I’ll pulverize you! I’ll crush you to powder! I’ll…”
Kibi gets the idea. And Step gets the giant’s morningstar, right in the chest. Whoooof! He goes reeling backward.
“Hey Mr. Giant!” calls Kibi. “We don’t want to hurt you or your jungle! We’re not with those other people!”
“Liar!” shouts the giant. “Didn’t I just watch you throw magical fire around? You little people are all in league… and you’ll all get what you deserve... a pounding!”
Oh well.
Then it gets even worse! Aravis, crouching behind a tree at the edge of the clearing, and just having healed some of his wounds with a potion, is struck in the back by a searing light from inside the jungle. He wheels around and thinks he catches a glimpse of someone ducking behind a tree some fifty feet away. He can’t see very well; the only light is the ambient glow from the torches still burning out in the clearing.
Kay, Grey Wolf and Step rush over to Aravis to administer aid. Aravis chugs another healing potion, clinging to life.
There’s a rushed consensus over the telepathic bond. Things were grim enough before the giant showed up and (presumably) the female Black Circle cleric came back. Now it’s time to flee!
Ernie shouts “come to the center!” in Charagan common before casting obscuring mist. Most of the Company (and a few enemies) are enveloped in thick magical fog. Morningstar’s intent is to cast a pair of wind walk spells to allow a speedy evacuation, covered by the mist. But the four over by Aravis are unable to join the others; from the jungle comes a command in Kivian Common: “Sleep!”
Aravis and Step drop into a deep slumber.
“Hide from me, will you?” bellows the giant. The Company huddled in the mist hears the sound of the giant’s weapon slamming into the ground about fifteen feet away, accompanied by the dying scream of an enemy soldier.
“We’ve got to carry them out of here,” says Grey Wolf. “Kay, you get Aravis, and I’ll carry Step. Edghar, Ernie’s got the right idea. Covering fog, please.”
Grey Wolf’s monkey familiar grabs the horn of fog from his master's belt, carried for just such an emergency as this. He blows on it, sounding a low fog-horn-like note and filling the air with mist.
“Meet back at the hut,” thinks Morningstar over the telepathic bond. She casts her wind walks, and the majority of the party leaves the scene at top speed. As the other group gets set to fly away, the black circle leader reveals himself nearby by casting a last empowered acid bolt in their direction, into the expanding fog cloud. It just misses Kay and Aravis but sears the flesh of Step and Grey Wolf.
“God damn it!” cries Grey Wolf. “We’re leaving already!” They fly up, out of the fog and through the treetops, into the night sky. Below them they see the towering jungle giant lifting its morningstar from the flattened corpse of the second demonic-looking monster. It turns on the mage who had just cast the acid bolt and lets out a furious shriek.
And that’s the last they see of their Black Circle foes. The Company has escaped the trap. But as they fly away, they hear the sound of the Black Circle mage shouting after them, panic in his voice:
"You don't understand! You must not be allowed to live! The universe cannot abide your presence!"
…to be continued…
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