AviLazar said:
Heh Shil we got them fooled into thinking someone dies. It's great raising their spirits and then when the updates come out bring the hammer crashing down upon it. I told you the entire group could agree on one thing - other people's misery
Sidekick said:
OUTRAGE!! That this thread should stay unbumped or loved for so long.
Fie Fie on us all.
A plague on all our houses!!! (and all that jazz)
You know what they say about no accounting for taste.
Anywho Shil, liking the updates, keep em coming. Who dies who dies who dies.
I need to know.
Pity I use the swashbuckling cards, since otherwise I could have had a separate answer for each of those "who dies." Oh well, I guess we'll settle for the one.
So this can be a bump
For the Indians winning the Cricket World Cup (‘cause the Black Caps ain’t gonna).
I'll settle for India in the semis. And though I don't expect the Black Caps to win either, they've got to get props for being the only team with a guy talking about amputating a finger to play in the Cup. Oram's nuts!
And, without further ado, here we go...
* * * * * *
Nameless, who can see the dozen magical auras layering their enemy’s form, shouts, “Concentrate on him!” As he speaks, he’s already casting, and another cloud of mist, far thicker than the one outside the chamber, its vapors emitting an acrid scent, envelops the trolls. “Lots of magic on him –
dispel it!”
As Korm hurries to comply, he identifies the enemy, “It’s that Children of Winter druid, Cainan,” and then adds to Cainan, “Seriously, dude – what happened to your face?” Luna, with a growling chuckle at the comment, also complies.
To the surprise of the two druids, as their
dispels hit Cainan, two of the tumors on his neck explode with a sickening sound, spraying more yellow pus across his form. Nameless, seeing all of the auras still intact, confirms, “No effect!” Gareth, quickly casting a protective spell for the group from the rear, pauses for a second. “What the hell? He has
tumors of counterspelling?!”
As Cainan smiles lopsidedly, Six mutters, “Time to do it the old-fashioned way” and leaps forward, chain whirling, planning to reach, strike and move by Cainan. Instead, there’s a thump, as if he ran into an invisible wall, as he is still about ten feet from the target, the unexpected impact sending the speeding warforged tumbling off at an angle and almost off his feet. There is a small bonus for Six. Even as he spins off balance, Cainan gestures and a powerful
arc of lightning lashes through the area he had just occupied. Not so luckily for his companions, the
arc extends from Korm at one end, through Nameless, to Luna at the other, leaving all of them wounded. The bear, every hair standing on end, snarls angrily with an expression that says, “Hey – that’s
my spell!”
“What the hell?” repeats Gareth again, completing his spell, causing a momentary flash of silvery flame to envelop and strengthen his allies and himself. “How’d he do that to Six? Nameless –
summon something!”
“Stop blithering and get your shiny ass in here!” retorts Nameless as he rises into the air, but he does
summon a large stag beetle. The creature rears over Cainan, tentacles waving and slams down, only to bounce harmlessly off another invisible barrier. Nameless scowls and hurls a volley of
magic missiles in an instant, slamming into Cainan and inflicting damage for the first time. A frost-tipped arrow from Six, who has backed off to try a different tack, follows and sinks into his shoulder.
The confident smirk disappears off Cainan’s face and he snarls in anger, quickly
dispelling the
acid fog around the trolls. Ignoring Korm, who tries to move in from a different direction and is repelled by the invisible barrier, the diseased druid turns to the stag beetle and reaches out towards it. As he does so, Luna’s column of flame envelops Cainan and the closest troll, but neither of them is more than scorched, the pre-cast resistance spells absorbing the bulk of the damage. Cainan touches his target and the huge creature shudders as its carapace cracks around his hand, its life energy flowing into him and healing a number of his wounds.
“Oh, come on!” complains Gareth, and then his eyes go wide as Cainan gestures in his direction. Immediately, the fluid in the two pools closest to him rises in a wave, splashing down on him. Gareth staggers under the impact, and watches in mounting alarm as the fluid comes together and rises higher and higher, forming a cubical whole that soon towers over him. As the newly formed gelatinous ooze, the size of the one they had seen eating away at the tunnel wall, slithers forward at him, he barely throws himself out of the way.*
The now freed trolls rush forward, but not before Nameless unleashes an empowered
fireball, modifying the spell with the power of his ring even as he places it perfectly so as to strike only his foes. Instead of flame, the spell explodes with a burst of acid. Though the liquid splashes harmlessly off the trolls, evidently immune to acid, it overcomes the limited resistance of Cainan, melting his putrid flesh down to the bone. The diseased druid screams in agony, exacerbated by the following volley of
magic missiles.
“Now you die, mage!” says Cainan. He rips his fingers through one of the tumors of his arm and hurls a lump of pus. The yellow lump expands into a stony mass and flies through the air to smash Nameless in the chest, cracking ribs as it hits. Somehow, Nameless manages to stay aloft**, but Cainan follows up with an equally nauseating attack. He spits a stream of saliva, which magically shoots forward to smash Nameless over the heart. Without a word, the alienist falls out of the air and lands with a crunch by the wall***.
As Cainan smiles in triumph, the pseudonatural beetle rushes forward and slams into him, almost taking him off his feet. Three fire elementals, summoned by Luna, also appear around and hammer him with painful blows, even if the flame doesn’t hurt him. Already badly wounded by Nameless’ spells, Cainan hurriedly shouts to the trolls, “Kill them,” and casts another spell. A green cocoon, just like the ones Luna and Korm so regularly use, englobes him. The elementals turn to aid Luna, followed, after a few seconds of futile scratching, by the beetle.
With Cainan temporarily out of the battle, things swiftly go much better for the Angels. Though they are powerful and have been modified by Cainan’s arts and magic to not be lethally hurt by any attack, the trolls find their defenses slowly being overcome by the sheer volume of damage the Angels can put out, and their enemies are as resistant as them. One troll, having missed Six**** with a lashing tentacle, vomits a cone of acidic slime over its enemies, but their magical protections nullify the effect. The other lashes its tentacle around Luna and begins to slowly squeeze the breath out of the huge bear, but despite the constriction Luna continues to bite and claw at it, and its focus on her lets Korm and her elementals smash away at it. Against the far wall, Gareth hacks away at the giant ooze, its gelatinous form offering no resistance to his blade. The mindless creature lashes out with a pseudopod and grabs him, but the Endless Blade promptly shrinks into a shortsword, letting him continue to shred the creature.
The troll not wrestling Luna is the first to go down, literally and figuratively. Six, calling on an ability that he has discovered his harness grants him, suddenly expands and grows to twice his height and bulk, his equipment magically expanding as well. The now twenty foot long spiked chain spins out and around the troll’s back leg as it advances, and the giant warforged pulls it off its feet. Seizing the opportunity, Korm turns and smashes his blade over and over into its head, and it collapses into unconsciousness. Behind him, Luna bites down on the head of the one squeezing her, and it too slowly crumbles to the ground. Gareth’s foe too slowly breaks up and falls apart, leaving him covered in sticky goop but still on his feet. “Damn right!” says the Endless Blade, expanding back into a greatsword. “Now let’s get that ugly
er in the globe!”
As it is speaking, the
cocoon falls apart and Cainan steps out, with all his wounds healed. As he looks around, his confident look fades at the sight of all his allies lying on the ground. With a disappointed snarl, Cainan reaches a hand up to his face, places three fingers into the mixture of fluid trickling from his nostril and one of the burst tumors on his head, and flicks it at the Angels. The mixture of phlegm and pus elongates into three dart-like bolts, sinking into Korm’s and Luna’s flesh. Already critically wounded by the troll she had been fighting, Luna somehow remains conscious***** and manages to cast a
cocoon of her own before she collapses.
Korm, comparatively much less hurt, rushes forward, but again bounces off an invisible barrier. He shakes his head in confusion, wondering how the beetle and elementals could reach Cainan and he couldn’t, and then understanding dawns. “
Anti-life shell!” Cainan smiles gleefully at the realization on Korm’s face, but then the smile disappears, as the big orc bends backwards and then uncoils, hurling his sword forward with all his power. The meteoric blade slashes through the air and slashes into Cainan’s chest, punching him off his feet and slamming him into the wall. As he screams in agony and bounces off, the sword disappears, reappearing in Korm’s hand, who says, “Laugh that off!”
Even as Cainan staggers, Six steps forward and his chain whirls out. With its huge reach, the size of the
shell is immaterial, and it lashes around Cainan’s leg. With a flick of the wrist, Six deposits him on the floor and then whirls to slash down on him. And again. Cainan screams again, as his flesh is flayed off by the chain’s barbs, blood and pus pooling around him. Desperately, he rolls over and climbs onto Nameless’ unconscious form, which had landed near him. “Stay back!” Cainan screams, clapping his hands onto Nameless’ head. “Attack me and your friend dies!” He shouts a command and the liquid fountains out of the remaining two pools, again forming its way into a giant ooze, but not attacking yet.
The Angels pause for a moment, unsure what to do next. Then Gareth, stepping closer, says, “And if you kill him, you die. Let him go.” Cainan shakes his head, spraying varicolored fluid over Nameless’ face. “Leave here and I will release him.”
“We cannot leave him with you. And we cannot let you continue what you are doing,” persists Gareth. “Surrender now.” As he is speaking, Luna’s
cocoon falls apart and she charges out. “Wait!” shouts Korm. “He’s got Nameless!”
Luna skids to a stop, snarling her anger and confusion. Luckily, one of the nearby trolls regains consciousness and sits up, only for a huge paw to smash it down. Unfortunately, with no similar distractions and no way for her to command them while in bear form, her
summoned elementals are not similarly dissuaded and rush forward at Cainan. A warning shout lets Six know what’s happening, and he whirls, chain swinging out to knock the elementals down or away. “Luna, somebody – stop them!” he shouts.
Unfortunately, there is one remaining attacker, who has been steadily heading across the battlefield towards Cainan, and now finding a clear path, charges. As the Angels shout futile orders, the pseudonatural beetle barrels down on Cainan as he crouches on its summoner’s body. It’s ironic and – for Nameless – deadly. As it pounds towards him, Cainan screams and reflexively casts the spell he had ready. Under his hands, the alienist’s body convulses and then goes slack.
The beetle’s mandibles snap shut only inches above his head, and with his last bargaining piece gone, Cainan desperately backs away, babbling, “I … I have much lore to give you if you let me go!” His desperate eyes glare around, and under the diseased, pus-ridden cover his visage pales, as the expressions he sees on the Angels’ faces. As Cainan opens his mouth to shriek another plea, Korm growls and hurls his sword again. Quickly as it flies through the air, Six’s chain leaps out beside it, and both disappear into an inferno of fire and divine energy that blasts down where Cainan lies.
A few seconds later, the surviving Angels stand silent and stock-still in the middle of what was so recently a raging battlefield. Nobody spares a glance for the mutilated corpse of their recent enemy, all eyes remaining focused on the form lying beside it. There is no blood on this figure, besides that which dripped from its killer, but there is no doubt about its state. What beholders, mind flayers, dragons and rakshasas could not do has finally occurred. Death has finally come for one of the Guardian Angels.
* * * * *
Gareth looks up from Nameless’ corpse and says, “What should we do? Take him back and cremate him?”
Luna, who has transformed back to shifter form, gives him a withering look. “Are you nuts? I’ll
reincarnate him once we gather the reagents I need.” She smiles, though it lacks the usual humor. “Maybe he’ll come back as a shifter.”
“Let’s just hope he comes back,” says Korm darkly. “And with all the strange things that have happened with him, hopefully he won’t come back
wrong. Anyway, we have to try.”
“Nameless did say that if this happened we should try to bring him back. We all did,” points out Six. He produces the
portable hole, lowers himself in, and has the others hand him in Nameless’ corpse, which he carefully wraps in an extra robe and places within.
Then, the remaining Angels search Cainan, his troll servitors and the general area. To their mild disappointment, neither the trolls nor Cainan actually have any equipment on them. The former are completely naked and Cainan has nothing besides a robe that has definitely seen better days and a belt with pouches that hold spellcasting materials, and what seem to be alchemical supplies, ointments and unguents. None of them are magical. What is magical, however, are two of the largest tumors remaining on his neck and head. More precisely, something within each of them.
Gareth pulls out the Endless Blade, which instantly resizes into a very thin dagger, and begins to carve into the tumors. The surface of the first tumor is quite hard, but with a magic weapon and Gareth's strength, he easily cuts into it. There’s a nauseating sound halfway between a pop and a squelch as the tumor explodes/deflates, sending a small spray of thick yellow fluid, shot through with red, across Gareth’s gauntlet, while a strong whiff of corruption (exceeding that which already exists in the area) envelops the group.
After a little digging, Gareth locates a hard object at the core of the tumor and manages to pry it out. It’s like a very large and incredibly hard raisin, and has what seem to be small tendrils extending into the diseased flesh around it. Six notices, without much pleasure, that the tendrils slightly resemble those that he was shown as extending from his harness into himself.
Gareth repeats the process and digs out a second magical ‘raisin’ from the other tumor that detected of magic. While he is doing so, a couple of the others check the two people who are inside one of the pools (now empty since the fluid in it emerged to form the second ooze, which was dispatched right after Cainan was) and the two bugbears. All four seem to be unconscious and examination reveals that the web-like cocoons around them extend into their bodies in multiple places. Wherever the tendrils enter, the flesh around them has turned soft and, in some places, oozelike. They’re evidently well into the process of turning into the half-ooze creatures the group fought.
“It may be too late for them, but we should place them in the
hole and see if the Archierophant can help them. If not, then we should burn their bodies and consecrate their remains.”
The Angels also check the two corridors, which lead to separate rooms. One is covered in slime and holds half a dozen more semi-complete cocoons, which seem to be very slowly growing out of the slime. The other chamber, presumably a bedchamber for Cainan, holds a single cocoon with indentations that would fit his body. One side of the chamber is taken up with stone shelves, which hold a collection of stone jars and boxes. Most have significantly baroque decorations, which a couple of them recognize as similar to or the same as the Dhakaani art they saw at Yarkuun Draal. The jars and boxes hold a collection of more ointments and unguents, as well as some alchemical fluids, samples of ooze, and some particularly nauseating organs preserved in ooze.
The only real thing of interest in the room is one part of a wall, which is covered in writing, apparently created through the method of etching words into the stone with acid. The text is apparently Cainan's ramblings about how he met someone who he normally only identifies as “her” or “she” in the depths of the undercity far below Sharn, how she wanted information about the city above and in return gave him knowledge about disease and oozes, how she wanted to keep him with her but he fled when he had the chance, and how he’d been planning to capture and experiment with his new knowledge on the indigents of the area before releasing the plague into Sharn. There is also significant paranoid rambling about how he thinks she is watching him. There is only one place where he uses a name for her – Calderus.
Having ensured that there are no exits to the place that they have missed, the Angels make their way back, pausing to destroy the last remaining ooze. Naturally, the primary subject of discussion along the way is bringing Nameless back before his soul can be permanently seized upon by Dolurrh. Just as naturally, this being Nameless, his companions are completely wrong about where he currently is.
* * * * *
Nameless opens his eyes to the sharp throbbing of a painful headache and looks around. The last thing he remembers was being in the battle in the Mud Caves, and seeing Cainan hurling a spell in his direction. The scene in front of him is very different.
Purplish-pink clouds float above and below, in the dark nothingness that surrounds him. The air around him feels syrupy and thick, palpable to the touch. Other ... things ... are present, both near and far. A few dozen feet away, a shape rotates slowly past. As if rotates, it continually changes from one geometric form to the next, sometimes lingering within one while it has already taken on another, so that it forms a four sided triangle or an octagonal cube. From off to his left and above, a stream of azure globules stream by, breaking up into fist-sized blue ticks as they fall.
About five hundred feet to Nameless’ right, what seems like a thin translucent curtain hangs in the air, stretching off in every direction. Another curtain is visible a foot behind it, and three more curtains can be seen at varying distances. A stream of what looks like white milk flows vertically upwards between two of the curtains and then turns at right angles to flow through one and then end abruptly ten feet beyond. Far below, near the limits of Nameless’ vision, the furthest of the curtains dips into a forest of tentacled vegetation lined with orange moss, which seems to float on a giant amoebic sea, through which huge gelatinous worms wiggle. The sea roils and a gigantic shape slowly emerges, an immense central mass topped with myriad multi-sized eyes ringed with tentacles, which slowly drifts along the curtains, its bulk extending through them. Considering the distance, Nameless estimates it is probably the size of a small village.
As he takes in the various sights, Nameless suddenly has the complete certainty - though he’s not sure why - that he is dead. But he is not on Dolurrh, where the souls of the deceased supposedly go. This is Xoriat.
Then, a voice behind Nameless says, “Hello, Nameless. Or should I call you Edgar?” The voice is familiar, and so is the form he finds floating, as he is, ten feet behind him.
It is himself.
* A swashbuckling card let him auto-succeed on the check. Otherwise, Gareth would have been grappled and effectively out of the fight.
** Another card let Nameless reuse Gareth’s and succeed on a save to avoid being stunned for 1d4 rds. Ironically, if he hadn’t used it and been stunned, Cainan would have gone after someone else and Nameless would probably have survived.
*** Dropped below -10 and kept alive via our house rule.
**** I rolled a 2. If that had hit, Six would probably have been grappled, as Luna was. That might have swung the fight too.
***** One more swashbuckling card. They got a really good set this time.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
