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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hunter" data-source="post: 1194474" data-attributes="member: 14845">About a week goes by after this and with only a few kobolds deserting nothing much transpires around the wizard. Beginning once again with his laboratory work, cauldrons are lit, beakers bubble, chemicals and powders are admisnistered, desolved, mixed together and made once more into chemical powder. All in all everything seems to be going according to plan…Yessss-muses the wizard-with a fiendish grin.Later after a hard days work, the wizard within his laboratory sitting relaxed in his high backed chair picks a thin strip of fried meat from off his lead plate. He rarely eats being bone thin and wiry, but when he does he savors each morsel. Biting into the greasy cooked meat, he mutters to himself-‘Just like…hmmm….just like bacon…’Just then the kobolds arrive with more loot garnered from the ruined burned out surface of the Temple, for the wizard’s inspection. Prostrating themselves accordingly they each hold objects up to the wizard to inspect.Wizard-‘No, no that’s junk! Throw it away!-(kobold takes broken bowl and tosses it against wall)-‘No you fool! Not in here! Take it away and dump it! Idiot!’-‘Take the shields and armor to chamber 4! Can you remember where chamber 4 is?  Dullard! Just then another kobold appears in the shadows of one of the passage ways. Silhouetted by watch torches placed further down the tunnel-(about 40’ down).Wizard-‘Come in Hadzuel, you have something to report?!’Not knowing of the wizards familiar nestled strategically upon the ceiling of the passage he is in, kobold scout Hadzuel is in awe once again of the wizard’s seemingly limitless precognitive abilities.Hadzuel-in low guttered sub serving voice-‘Great one, your eye sees all!’Wizard-‘ Yes Hadzuel, come forth and tell me what you need to report. Have you sighted something?’Hadzuel-Prostrating him self before wizard-‘No intruders have been sighted my lord! However, we have found our traitorous cousins who deserted earlier!’-and he spits in vile exclamation and emotion toward his former brethren. Wizard-‘ What do you mean found them? You reported to me that they had fled these tunnels’Hadzuel-on knees holding out arms in idol prayer fashion-‘ Yes your greatness and so they did. We found there bodies inside one of the ruins of the surface towers.’Wizard-‘ There bodies? What? –afflicted by curiousity from these events-Bring there corpses  to me at once!’.Soon the bodies are brought forth to the mage. Casual glance of the bodies shows that they had been lying there for some days. For rodents had been at work on these carcasses. So much so that it is hard to a identify the cause of death. After much examination the wizard notices that the killing blow was caused by a large bite mark to the neck. Whatever it was that killed these kobolds bit them to kill them. If it was an animal then why leave their corpses for the rats? Yet try as he might with measuring tools and such the wizard could not find any more bite marks that matched the bite radius of the killing blow. Curious. Very curious indeed. Perhaps these kobolds did not desert after all?The wizard commands the kobolds to double their guards and to be on the lookout for an animal approximately the same size as they and maybe much larger. He would attend to this anomaly but at the moment it was…feeding time.A cell door is opened in the prison section. Feral eyes glowing with infravision prod spears into the room. The human, the fighter has been chosen first.Fighter-curled up and waking from troubled sleep-‘what, what who’s there? What do you want now?’A low hiss is muttered in return using halting common-‘Come forth now!’----‘Disobey and die now!’Slowly the half-crazed half-hopeless fighter clad in rags and feces with filthy food stained shaggy beard is brought out of his cell and into the passages beyond. Stumbling and swaying, still weak from lack of exercise but showing slightly more girth from eating 6 meals a day for 7 days he walks along arms swaying at his side...hopelessly.Down,down, down through the passages of the dungeon he walks, his will to resist his torturers broken until he comes to a chamber with a very large tunnel leading away.There he spies his captors for the first time under glaring torch light; The gaunt bone colored wizard staring at him with glaring eyes, Umblach the kobold chief, and his Shaman Witch kobold: Enku.Before him is the large tunnel leading away. A strange slighty luminescent fog cloud-(cast by the wizard) obscures where the tunnel leads to.Wizard-‘ You spoke once of dying with sword in hand my friend, no? Would you like to have that opportunity now? Yes?’Fighter-nodding, his will shattered by his torturers-‘Yes thank you master, it is the way of my people bless you ,thank you!’Wizard-‘Good yes, That is a great tradition your people have. I commend you and your people and grant you that opportunity now. Beyond this passage is the sword you seek. Take it, face whatever is beyond and you will be free. There is a tunnel to the outside further down. Face this last task and you will be free!’Nodding submissively the fighter pauses…Suddenly taking his right elbow and crashing it into the snout of  his kobold guard knocking him out completely!Grabbing the kobold’s blade the fighter glares at his captors.Fighter-‘Perhaps I’ll go to my gods now! Sword in hand with as many of you to come with me!’The wizard gestures-‘I think not’ and pointing his index finger at the fighter a neon blue beam of light shoots out from it striking the fighter square in the head. Losing all strength from the beam of light the fighter is overwhelmed by the kobold guards. Wrestling and pummeling him to the ground in a swarm of horns, tails and scales.Wizard-‘Bind the fool, and roll him down the passage way!’Soon it is done and as the fighter regains conciousness he finds him self in a vast cavern covered by a soft glowing mist. Wizard-calling from down the passage-‘I will restore your strength now, unfortunately you forfeit your sword and stay bound! Haha see you in hell my friend Bwaahahah!’Turning around with his shoulders to get a better look the fighter soon realizes he is not alone. Before him, but beyond the misty fog cloud, a huge shadow grows closer. Then long trunk like necks erupt from the mist as 8 huge hydra heads appear like  a host of snakes. Glaring up in abject fear, the fighter mutters a prayer to his war god as two heads descend upon him. The other six however look for different prey.Confused by the mist, the wizard looking through his familiar, which is on the ceiling of the hydra chamber, is unable to see what is going on, until they are upon him. Out of the large tunnel leading to the hydras lair six heads appear from out of the fog cloud! –(earlier cast there by the wizard).Hissing loudly like the bellow of a giant thunder storm, complete pandemonium sets in to the wizard and his kobolds. Immediately the hydra’s heads strike into the throng of yelping leaping and all together routed kobold bodyguards of Chieftain Umblach. Kobold blood flies everywhere as with a hiss and a bite the heads of the hydra engorge themselves. Partly severing legs, heads, mid sections and what not, the chamber becomes a slaughterhouse. With the hydra heads licking, gulping and biting everything they can reach.The wizard frantically casts a spell, and bolts of pure force encapsulated with bluish light strike into the hydra heads. Blowing reptilian flesh from out of its skulls the hydra screams in agony. All eight heads,begin frantically thrashing into the walls, ceiling, floors and fallen kobolds in a chaotic melee.Perhaps because the recent fire has compromised the structural integrity of the dungeon, or maybe due to the intense strength of the beast alone, some of the ceiling begins to give way. From beyond within the hydra’s lair disaster results! The wizard’s familiar the wolf spider who was keeping watch earlier, falls from the ceiling!Landing on the ground in typical spider like fashion it is unhurt from the fall.However some debris from the roof lands on the spider injuring it. (about 1 hp of damage).The wizard’s eyes bulge out of their sockets and he grabs his chest.Wizard-‘ Uuunnnhhhh My my… Heart!!!’.Falling over onto the ground before the blood bath and the two kobold leaders.Kobold Shaman Enku-‘Leave him Umblach now is the time for our  tribes freedom! The chieftain Umblach hesitates for a moment. Things have been good with the mage by and large but no one likes to be ruled either. Not even kobolds.   Umblach’s choice is made for him as Enku is suddenly whisked into the air by the serpentine tongue of a ravenous hydra head.Taking the mage by the arm he drags him away from the chamber just in time as the Hydra heads were just finishing off his bodyguard retinue. Fortunately the Hydra appears to only be able to stick his heads into the chamber. The tunnel leading to his lair being too narrow for it to enter it’s wide body.Temporarily stunned by the sudden trauma of the symbiotic relationship he shares with his spider familiar, the wizard rises to his feet.Wizard-‘Unhhh, Miscalculated the size and length of the tunnel with that of the hydra. The High Priest must have used that chamber as a feeding platform for the behemoth…You did well in aiding me Umblach…A most wise decision indeed.’ Says the wizard with a knowing glance at the kobold chieftain as if he heard and knew what was said earlier in the heat of the disaster. Umblach prostrates himself before the mage once again. Tales of the wizard’s uncanny precognition do not go unheeded by the chieftain.Umblach-‘Yes master, always to serve thee! You who see all!’Properly served, the wizard is satisfied and he and the chieftain return back to the laboratory.After the melee the wizard attempts to reestablish his rapport with his familiar. Seeking shelter the spider ran for its life. By complete coincidence it hides in the alcove with the four large chests.Four large chests! Not the three he originally had thought he’d seen. There’s even more treasure in there than he first guessed. At first greed takes over the wizard’s mind and he thinks of just sending one bolt of lightning after another into the beast until it dies. But no that might start it to thrashing about, and that could cause another possible cave in once again. Burying the alcove, the treasure and his spider. His  precious familiar! His friend! Struck by the rock it is no longer invisible and with this creature’s senses he could possibly be in grave danger. If he moved out of the alcove. The risk is too great to chance. A fireball is most certainly out of the question. Both the treasure and his familiar would be jeopardized by the intense heat generated. No the wizard thinks, there is only one sure way of dispatching with that serpent quickly and cleanly without causing too much collateral damage. His invention. His greatest alchemical work.If only he can finish his experiment he muses, as he lightly touches the metallic cylinder resting in one area of his laboratory. Gliding his fingers across its blue black surface. ‘Then we shall see’-he thinks-‘Yes alchemy will have the last laugh in this situation…’ the wizard smiles.To make matters worse, before the wizard  can continue his alchemical work he is interrupted by the concerned report of the exceptionally bright scout captain kobold Hadzuel.Prostrated before the wizard Hadzuel reports-‘O’ great wizard, bad news this time! Patrols 3 and 7 have vanished! Without a trace! After failing to report in once there patrol duration was completed, search parties were organized and have since found nothing! Great Umblach is doubling the guard even as we speak. He requires your great eye to view all! See all!’Unfortunately for the wizard his ‘great eye’ is hiding inside the treasure alcove of the hydra’s lair. The wizard thinks-‘Something definitely took out those patrols, they were definitely not desertions. Couldn’t be zombies we boarded up most of them in ruined chambers. Even if they broke out other patrols would have heard the commotion or the kobold’s bodies would have been found.’ ‘No something else is afoot within these ruins’-he thinks. Possibly some kind of large predator. In that case it must be caught or destroyed. However not one to make quick or rash decisions the mage thinks that descretion is the best option here. He plans and so….</blockquote>

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