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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Delemental" data-source="post: 3479242" data-attributes="member: 5203">DreamquestEventually the winds died down, and everyone tumbled to a standstill.  They picked themselves up and dusted off the hot, dry sleep-sand that surrounded them.  They were in a vast desert, featureless except for a few tall trees with human hands at the ends of the branches, gently waving in the breeze.  Although all still shaken by their recent experience, somehow their presence in this strange dimension gave them a sense of strength, as if they weren’t just themselves, but a purer, more idealized version of themselves.  They felt healthy and refreshed, and Kyle, Lanara and Tolly noticed that their spell energy, which had been nearly depleted in the battle with Meeranda, was restored to its full potential.“Where are we now?” Lanara asked, pouring sand out of her boot.“Does it matter?” grumbled Kyle.“He’s right,” Osborn said.  “If we are in the Dream Realm, then it’s not that important where we are, just how we get back home.”“Wait,” said Autumn suddenly, “where’s Arrie?”They looked around, and saw that the warrior was nowhere to be seen.  Instead, one of Aran’s dromites greeted their gaze – they recognized him as Tek, the dromite who often assisted Aran at his home.  It wore a two-bladed sword made of crystal across its back.Autumn ran over and grabbed the dromite by its shoulders.  “Where is my sister?”Tek looked at her calmly, its mandibles twitching slightly.  “Your clutch-mate is with my clutch-mates.  They are trapped in the Nightmare.”“How do they get out?” Autumn asked.“They do not.  We must retrieve them.”“If we go there, will we get trapped as well?”“Does it matter?” Tolly asked.“No, but I want to know,” Autumn replied.“Come on!” said Lanara.  “Let’s go!  It’ll make a great story.”  Kyle rolled his eyes behind her.Autumn turned her attention back to Tek.  “Do you know the way?”Tek looked around for a while, studying the near-featureless terrain.  “This way,” it said, pointing in what looked like a random direction.“I do have discern location prepared,” Tolly said.  “We could find Arrie easily.”“Save it,” Kyle said.  “Let the dromite lead us first.  If we get lost, then you can use the spell.  It’s pointless to waste resources that aren’t needed.”The Legacy walked through the desert, following Tek across the landscape.  Occasionally strange creatures would be seen in the distance, or flying overhead.Lanara glanced down at Osborn, who was astride Rupert, and did a double take.  “Where did you get that?” she asked.  She pointed to a prominent holy symbol of Ladta hanging at Osborn’s belt.“It happened during the sandstorm,” he said.  “I felt Ladta’s presence in my mind, and she offered me the chance to become one of her priests.  I accepted, and this symbol formed out of the sands.”“So, does this mean you’re going to become another stick-up-your-butt cleric like Tolly?”“Gods, no!  Ladtan clerics are much more relaxed than Ardarans.  We don’t even have sticks.”“Well, good,” Lanara said, “especially since as far as we know, Ladtan priests may be the only kind left when we get back.”“Ardara is not dead,” Tolly said to them both.  “I still feel her presence, though it is not the same as it was.”“Unless it’s just your own mind projecting the ideal of Ardara into the Dream Realm,” Kyle said, “and all you’re feeling is a lingering memory of a subconscious longing.”With no real response to this sobering thought, they continued on in silence.They traveled for some amount of time; they found it was impossible to determine time or distance here.  Eventually, Tek stopped the party, and pointed up to a bank of clouds.  “The Nightmare Realm is there,” it said.“How do we get up there?” Lanara asked.  “Fly?”Tek shook its head.  “Dream does not work that way.  You must all travel the same path or become lost, and the method is as important as the destination.  We must build a fire, and then ascend the smoke.”Tolly looked around at the flat desert surrounding them.  “There’s not much here to burn.”Tek’s antennae twitched, and he focused on the sand at their feet.  Slowly, the sand shifted, and swirled, and rose up from the ground.  The sand changed into the form of a large wooden armoire; the party recognized it as an armoire that they’d seen inside Aran’s manor.  Lanara opened it, and saw that it was full of clothing, though it was all very oddly shaped and colored.“This is the object in which the master keeps his…” the dromite seemed to struggle for the word, “cloth drapings.”“Odd taste,” Lanara commented, holding up a shirt with uneven sleeves and over a hundred buttons on the front.“It’s probably Tek’s perception of what human clothing is,” Kyle said.  “The armoire was created through his own force of will.”They quickly set about smashing the armoire to kindling and building a fire from the wood and cloth inside.  Osborn soaked the pile in oil, and Kyle ignited it with a quick spell.  Soon they had a roaring fire going, and smoke curled high up into the sky.  As they watched, the smoke began to form into a narrow, winding staircase.Tek looked around at the group, and pointed at Tolly.  “You falling would be unpleasant.  Let us go last.”They began to climb up the smoke ladder.  Osborn, Lanara, and Autumn had little trouble with the climb, and were soon far up in the sky.  Tolly, near the back, was most of the way up when his foot slipped off the edge and he fell, though thanks to his ring of feather falling his descent was slowed.  Autumn, hearing his cry, immediately spread her wings and swooped down, catching the priest and helping him back to the staircase.  Kyle, looking down as Autumn smiled at something he said to her, watched them slowly loop around toward the stair, and then he turned and began walking again, choosing his footing carefully.There was only one other mishap when Kupa, the copper dragon, slipped off the stairs, but he recovered in midair and swooped back to the staircase easily.  Soon enough, they all went into the clouds overhead.  At first the clouds seemed light and wispy, but as they climbed the sky grew dark, as though night were falling, and soon it felt as though they were ascending into the heart of a violent thunderhead.Suddenly, everything around them changed, as quickly as if transitioning from one kind of dream to another.  They all found themselves in a tunnel, leading off into the distance.  The walls were made of stone, but it looked as though it had been shaped or carved to resemble a living creature’s gullet or intestinal tract.  Although there was no visible source of light anywhere, none of them had any problems seeing.“I don’t believe I care for this realm,” Tolly muttered.  He felt uneasy here, even though his inquisitorial training had rendered him immune to the effects of fear.  Looking around, he could see the same apprehension on the faces of the others.“We go this way,” Tek said, pointing down the corridor.  “The way will be guarded by nightmares.”  Strangely, as soon as Tek said it, they all knew this was true, even though there was no sign of anything living other than themselves.They walked along the corridor until they emerged into a large, spherical chamber.  A number of passageways exactly like the one they were in led off from the chamber in all directions; left, right, up, down.  When they stepped out into the chamber, they learned that regardless of where they stood, gravity always pulled them toward the floor.  Osborn was able to walk up and stand directly over Tolly without discomfort.  The only inexplicable part was that they’d all known, before even coming into the room, that this was exactly how it would work.Tek pointed to one of the passageways.  “That one shows signs of being used.  Our clutch-mates are beyond.” Tek’s antennae quivered.  “We will have to face the First Guardian before we can proceed.”“Why?” Autumn asked.  “If this is a dream realm, why not just think up a shortcut and get to Arrie and the other dromites?  Why couldn’t they just think up their own escape?”“Because this isn’t a realm of Thoughts,” Lanara said.  “It’s a realm of Ideals.  It’s not just the reflection of the dreams that we all have when we’re asleep, but of our deepest conceptions of who we are and how the world works.  That’s why we all feel more… well, more perfect here.  We aren’t just ourselves, we’re idealized versions of ourselves.  But part of our self-concept is that of being heroes.  And everyone knows that what heroes do is face increasing adversity in order to gain their reward.  So unfortunately, as much as I’d like an easy solution, I think that we will have to face this First Guardian, and then one more powerful after than, and another after that, and so on until we’ve ‘earned’ the right to free Arrie and the others.  Whatever we end up facing, it’s likely that it will be drawn out of our own worst fears and insecurities.”            “Wow,” Osborn said.  “That’s the kind of thing I’d expect Kyle to say.”            “I have my moments,” Lanara said with a grin.  “In a lot of ways, dream-logic and story-logic are very similar.”            They proceeded down the corridor, which seemed identical to the one they had entered from.  However, they saw that it ended in a large chamber, featureless except for the creature at the far wall.  It appeared to be a mass of six large, white, snake-like creatures emerging from a pit of blackness in the wall; despite the multiple heads, they sensed that it was a single creature.  The eyeless creature seemed to be waiting patiently for them to enter the chamber.            “Very courteous of it,” Lanara said.            “We could just blast it from back here,” Autumn suggested, “but somehow I think that might be breaking the rules.”            They took a moment to prepare themselves, and then entered the chamber.  The serpent heads lashed out as the party drew closer.  Both Osborn and Kyle assaulted the creature with spells; Osborn with a fireball from a wand, and Kyle with arcs of lightning.  Both spells rolled off the creature harmlessly, deflected by its resistance to magic.  Spells from Tolly and Lanara also failed to affect the snake-beast.  Autumn and Tek rushed in, weapons drawn, and succeeded where their companions had faltered, drawing streams of black ichor from the creature.  In response, the heads snapped out at the dromite and the aasimar.  Autumn was able to escape the creature, its many jaws closing around her displaced image, but Tek was lifted high into the air as the snaky appendages wrapped around it.            As Autumn continued to hack at the creature, and Osborn moved to get a better angle, Kyle moved beside Tolly and tried to bolster the spell the priest was casting, using his deep understanding of metamagic to boost the spell’s power.  Kyle scowled as his mental exercises failed to have the desired effect, though the bear’s roar* spell that Tolly was casting still went off, tearing at the creature with sonic energy.  A blast of acid from Kupa also caused it to recoil.  But it was Autumn and her greataxe that felt the brunt of the creature’s wrath, as several of the heads dropped Tek and enveloped the sentinel.  But this proved a fatal miscalculation, for the dromite leapt to the attack, its double-bladed sword whirling.  Tek seemed well trained in how to combat such strange monstrosities, as every blow seemed to cause it great pain.  Between Tek’s ferocity, and the many daggers that Osborn threw, the last heads soon collapsed.  From the center of the blackness in the center of the twitching mass, they all saw a huge, fanged maw screaming in rage and pain, and then suddenly it dissolved, the creature dissipating into shadow.            Tolly quickly went around with a healing wand, taking care of injuries.  He healed Autumn first, and then tapped Tek, closing up the few wounds it had.  Tek looked curiously at the wand.            “It is a stick,” it said.            “It is a blessed stick,” Tolly explained.  Tek shook its head.            “Crystal is so nuch easier to empower,” it said.            As the darkness lifted, it revealed an enormous set of unadorned iron doors in the far wall.  The doors opened, and suddenly everyone was pulled forward rapidly through it.  They found themselves in a room, exactly like the one they had been in moments ago, standing in the exact spots they’d been in when the snake-creature had attacked.“How original,” Lanara said.            The air at the back of the room shimmered, and a creature appeared.  This time, instead of multiple snake-like heads, the creature resembled a black, rubbery tree made of flesh.  Thick, stringy fungus was draped all over the creature, and about a dozen ‘branches’ swayed menacingly, each tipped with a single large eye.  Three fanged maws slavered in the tree’s trunk, and its roots were a writhing mass of tentacles.            “Somebody out there is having some pretty messed up nightmares,” Autumn said.            “Probably a druid,” Kyle said, as he quickly cast a spell to boost his wife’s reflexes.  She took immediate advantage, rushing forward and landing a devastating blow against the nightmare tree.            The branches shook, and beams of energy shot from the various eyes.  The entire party was engulfed in cascading bolts of lightning that arced and sizzled between them.  Another eye ray struck Kyle, who was knocked senseless. Yet another ray intercepted the resonating bolt spell that Lanara was casting at the tree, reflecting it back at the bard.  Lanara cried out in pain as her own spell struck her.  Tolly and Kupa rushed in, flailing against the waving branches, but the thick, wiry fungus draping the tree proved difficult to penetrate.            Autumn continued to chop at the tree, but she noticed that the head of her greataxe would sometime become insubstantial when she brought it close to the tree, causing it to pass through the nightmare with little effect.  Still, some blows did land true, so she persisted.  Lanara’s bardic music bolstered their efforts as Autumn, Tolly, Tek and Kupa continued their assault.  More eye rays shot out among the party, including another blast of lightning directed at the copper dragon, but a timely warning shouted by Lanara helped him avoid the bolt.  Osborn’s daggers began piercing some of the deadly eyes, giving them all a reprieve.  Finally, a solid blow from Tolly’s hammer succeeded in splitting the trunk, and with a horrific screech and a spray of sap-like blood, the creature began to dissipate.            As the creature dissolved, Kyle came out of his stupor.  He looked at the rapidly decomposing tree, and sighed.  “Naturally,” he muttered.            “What was that?” Lanara asked him.            “Never mind.”            Another iron door appeared behind the tree, and as before they found themselves pulled forward as the doors swung open.  This time, however, they found themselves falling through what felt like an infinite void.  After some immeasurable amount of time, they felt their feet come to rest on a solid surface, although they could still see nothing but inky blackness beneath their feet.  They came to rest in a rough circle, and in the center of that circle rose a shuddering, glistening cone of jelly and slime.  It was striated with veins of green and black, and a pair of burning red eyes floated in the mass.  Glistening pseudopods extended in all directions, waving menacingly at the party.  As soon as it appeared, they were all struck by a wave of pure maleficent power.            Weapons were drawn, and spells were cast.  Kyle looked around, took a firm grip on his staff… and then stepped back, leaning on the staff, and watched, a resigned expression on his face.            The others were too busy to comment on this.  The slime-beast flung a wad of greenish slime at Tek, which covered the dromite and rapidly began eating through its armor, clothing, and carapaced flesh.  Fortunately, Tek was able to summon up some of his innate psionic power, and froze the slime with a cold ray emanating from its antenna.            Autumn blasted the slime creature with searing light from her eyes, while Kupa breathed a cloud of gas at it that would slow its responses - but the beast seemed largely unconcerned by these efforts.  Osborn drew from his newly discovered faith to place a protective ward on himself, while Tolly took a more offensive approach and tried to imprison the beast, though the powerful spell had no effect, other than to draw the creature’s attention.  Four thick pseudopods, dripping with acid, slammed into Tolly from several angles.  The acid burned his flesh and his armor at the same time, and within seconds his plate mail fell away from his body in a jumbled heap of slag.  A few daggers thrown by Osborn were similarly eaten away to nothing.            Autumn and Tek joined Tolly at close quarters, while Lanara tried fruitlessly to blast it with her spells.  The slime creature’s magical protection proved as formidable as its physical defenses, and their efforts produced little noticeable effect.            Away from the scene of battle, Kyle surveyed the situation.  He sighed, and cast a quick spell, which seemed to have no effect.  But in that same instant of time, Tolly suddenly realized that his visible image had shifted and blurred, and Lanara suddenly realized that the dimension door spell in her ring of spell storing had somehow been replaced with an assay resistance spell.  Both used the sudden change to their advantage, with Lanara now able to pierce some of the creature’s magical resistance to hit it with a resonating bolt, and Tolly was able to move into the fray and draw some of its fire.            The creature focused its rage on Kupa, as the copper dragon was both immune to the acidic fluids dripping from its pseudopods, and had managed to do significant damage with its teeth and claws.  A pair of solid blows knocked the dragon aside, and for good measure it sent a glob of green slime at the dragon as well.  Other tentacles struck Autumn and Tek, and they both watched in disbelief as their armor dissolved into nothing.            Another flurry of daggers struck the creature, and tore a hole in the glistening mass.  Osborn saw a familiar hand suddenly protrude out from the wound, reaching and grasping.            “Arrie’s inside of it!” he shouted.            Hearing this, Autumn renewed her efforts, her jaw set in vicious determination as her axe bit into the creature.  But as the axe slid into the acidic flesh, it began to warp and melt, and soon the sentinel was left with nothing but a sizzling metal stick in her hands.  Another slap from a tentacle caught her on the head, and dissolved the magical tiara she wore as a symbol of her rulership of Vargex.  Weaponless and armorless, she was forced to withdraw.            Tolly, now seriously wounded, paused long enough to throw his own maul to Autumn before healing his wounds, and then rushing over to heal the badly injured Kupa, whose scaled flesh had been eaten away by the green slime.  Kyle reached out as Autumn went by and made her invisible, offering her some form of protection against the slime-beast’s attacks.            The creature was now dividing its attention between the three most dangerous opponents; Tek, Osborn, and Kupa.  The dragon was knocked off his feet and sent sprawling, and then picked up in two pseudopods like a rag doll.  Tek, whose crystalline sword appeared immune to the creature’s acid, used it to slice gobbets of ooze off the creature, while Osborn’s daggers were doing the same, although every blade he threw dissolved into nothingness.  Another resonating bolt from Lanara caused the creature to recoil enough to give Autumn an opening to move in and strike.  Unfortunately, when the maul connected the creature’s gelatinous body simply yielded to the blunt instrument, doing nothing except coating the maul in acid, which quickly ate it away to slag.            “Damn it!” Autumn cursed, as she drew an ordinary dagger.            The creature focused on keeping Osborn and Kupa off balance, so they couldn’t bring their full abilities to bear.  A third successful resonating bolt from Lanara managed to tear enough of the creature away that one of Tek’s clutch-mates suddenly popped out, landing in a puddle of goo near Tek’s feet.            “Brothers!” Tek cried out, attacking the creature with renewed vigor, “I will free you!”            Tolly cast a spell to detect thought patterns, hoping to pinpoint where exactly in the creature he would find Arrie and the other dromites.  He briefly touched the intellect of the slime-creature; just enough to know that continuing to examine it would lead to madness.  He was about to pray for divine intervention to help rescue his friend, when suddenly a mucus-covered Ariadne appeared where Kyle had been standing moments before.  Looking at the creature, Tolly saw a blue-robed arm emerging from its far side, close to where Autumn was fighting.            Fortunately, another series of attacks by Osborn and Tek managed to finally bring the creature down, and it exploded in a cascade of translucent slime and ichor.  Kyle and the other dromites emerged from the pile, the wizard’s robes hanging in tatters around him and his buckler little more than a few slivers of wood.            “That was foolish,” Arrie said to Kyle.  “What were you thinking?”            “Indeed,” Tolly added, “jumping into the midst of that monstrosity was rash.”            Kyle stared at the both of them.  “Very well,” he said, “next time I’ll let you stay inside the acidic slime beast and die.”  He turned and walked away, leaving Arrie to reunite with her sister and Tolly to tend to the wounded.            “Where’s Aran?” Arrie asked.            “We don’t know.” Autumn replied.  “We lost him in the storm.”            “We should probably find him,” Lanara suggested.“No,” Autumn said, “I need to find my god and protect him.”Tek turned to face the aasimar. “We will search for the master,” it said.  “And now that you are together again, you can find your way out of the Dream Realm.”            “Let me try to find Aran first,” Tolly offered.  He sat down and performed the ritual for a discern location spell, but when he finished, Tolly frowned.  “Nothing,” he said.  “Which means he is either dead, or something very powerful is blocking the divination.”            “Aran himself is pretty powerful,” Arrie said.  “He may be blocking your spell himself**.  I suggest we not worry about Aran, and let the dromites take up the search while we return to our world.  We have important things to do there.”  Several of them nodded their heads at this, Kyle being a notable exception.            “I’m sure that Tek will contact us or other allies if they need help,” Arrie said.  Tek nodded its agreement.            “Okay then,” Lanara said, “let’s get out of here.  I’m ready to wake up.” -----------------* The actual spell name is lion's roar, from Spell Compendium, but since Ardara's totem animal is a bear, I figured this would be the version he received.** Although the description of discern location says that only deific level intervention can block it, in this game certain epic-level effects can do it as well.  So this could simply be Aran protecting himself with an epic version of psionic mind blank.  Of course, he could also be dead, or have been captured by other epic-level psions who are capable of masking his location.  Only time will tell...Next time: Back to the really real world, to see how bad we've screwed things up!</blockquote>

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