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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2809818" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks, NWK! Hope everyone had a great holiday. I'm off work today with a stack of bills sitting on one side, and Call of Duty 2 and Battlestar Galactica season 2 on the other. Guess which side I'm starting first?* * * * * Chapter 520The surrounding buildings shook as the beetle charged down the street.  The avenue was barely wide enough to accommodate it, and as it came it tore awnings, overhanging eaves, and porches free from their moorings, leaving them as trampled wreckage in its wake.  The dwarves did not hesistate, using the power Cal had granted them as they lifted off and flew directly at the massive vermin.  The gnome remained behind, cloaking himself in greater invisibility almost as a reflex as he too rose into the air, careful to remain far from any structure that might threaten a collapse.  He saw a number of the huge flying forms alter their course and immediately dive toward the dwarves; giant wasps, he saw, as they drew nearer.  But even though he’d fought such creatures before, he’d never seen wasps this large; one could have carried off an elephant without straining itself. “Incoming from above!” he shouted in warning.  One of the wasps shifted its flight somewhat toward him, but even the good eyesight possessed by the vermin could not penentrate his invisibility.  Beorna and Arun met the beetle together, launching attacks upon its broad head from both sides as it charged.  Arun’s hammer smashed into its head with a resounding crack, but the beetle appeared more discomfited by the powerful slam that Beorna unleashed upon it with her two-handed blade.  That second hit cracked the bug’s thick hide, and it immediately twisted its head toward her, seizing her in its huge mandibles as it continued its headlong charge.  Hodge, who had been just a few seconds slower than the others in lifting up off the ground, was caught in that rush and was trampled beneath it, bouncing off its armored belly before being knocked roughly aside by a churning leg as thick as the trunk of an ancient oak.  Arun glanced off of the beetle’s top as it surged past him, but he quickly recovered and darted back toward its head, where Beorna was struggling to get free of the beetle’s powerful grip.Umbar was out of the immediate path of the beetle, the dwarf cleric having lifted up and to the side before calling upon the divine power of Moradin to strengthen him.  He lifted his hammer and started back toward the beetle, but was diverted as several of the gargantuan wasps dove at him.  The priest met the first pass with a raised shield and a powerful swing, but was knocked roughly aside by the second wasp, which slammed its stinger hard into his back.  The dwarf’s heavy armor saved him from being impaled, but as he spun around again a thin trail of blood trailed from the thin crack that the stinger had punched through the layered plates.  The dwarf lifted his hammer, looking for another target, but barely had time to get his shield up before a third wasp dove onto him, driving him down a full dozen feet with another powerful sting that hit his shield with enough force to dent the magical steel. Arun streaked through the air a few scant feet over the multicolored expanse of the beetle’s armored carapace, his hammer glimmering brightly in his hand.  He saw Beorna, struggling mightily in the beetle’s grip, its mandibles like the jaws of a steel trap as they crushed her within her armor.  Only the fact that she was clad in adamantine had kept her from being cut in half by those inexorable pincers, but even that protection could not preserve her indefinitely.  Seeing Arun, she groaned and called upon the power of Helm, drawing the god’s strength into her as she heaved at the crushing jaws.  Arun assisted her by delivering a precise strike that cracked one of the mandibles, loosening its grip enough for the templar to fall free.  She had dropped her sword when it had seized her, but she did not hesitate in drawing her long dirk, thrusting it with all her might into the underside of the beetle’s long head.  The beetle complained loudly at the assault upon it, releasing a high-pitched screech that echoed painfully in the helmets of the warriors.  But Arun, positioned now to inflict some serious damage, launched into a full attack upon it.  His hammer came down in a punishing series of blows, leaving the beetle’s head pocked with great oozing cracks.  But its sheer size ensured that it would take more than even Arun’s best to kill it.  Twisting its body in the middle of the street, its movement caving in the front of the house on the far side of the avenue, it reared up and caught up Arun against its jaws.  With its mandibles damaged from the attacks upon it, it failed to get a grip in the dwarf, but that did not hinder it from driving forward, the paladin struggling but failing to break free before it drove its head—and Arun with it—into the front of the building on the near side of the street.  The stone building was stoutly built.  It had been Lok’s smithy, until that moment; one of the first buildings to be constructed back when the village had been founded almost twenty years ago.  But as the massive beetle drove into it with its unwilling passenger, the entire front of the building vanished in a cloud of pulverized stone and mortar, followed by a crash like the sound of the world breaking.  “Arun!” Beorna cried, knowing that the paladin would not hear her.</blockquote>

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