The Age of Worms - Morrus' Campaign - Finished 6th August!!
- Thread starter Eccles
- Start date
Darmanicus
I'm Ray...of Enfeeblement
Eccles said:
Here, have a Nimby
Nice update
Eccles
Ragged idiot in a trilby.
My dear listeners, it is with a heavy heart that I recount this latest verse of our tale; a part of the tale filled with death, ignominy and defeat.
We begin our scene still within the room filled with the bodies of the undead. We had narrowly escaped a terrible loss by Endo’s quick thinking. Igmut, in his slime-like state, pooled near our feet before oozing around the room, puddling over the corpses and destroying evidence of our passage. I pointed out to him a few places where he should focus, and within short order the room looked as though it had been destroyed by some rampaging slime creature.
After a brief discussion, we decided that we were clearly facing a complex filled with the undead. With Endo’s selection of spells after the arena fight clearly weighted towards fighting living and breathing opponents, we agreed that we should retreat and take a moment to refresh ourselves. As the arena combats were scheduled not to take place the next day, we would have plenty of time to rest and return.
Trudging our way back through the complex, we met with no opponents. At the foot of the flooded shaft, we took a few minutes to clean ourselves off, before I passed my hat of disguise to Endo, and cast spells of invisibility on the others. Malachite warped the shape of the stone plug and we crept out. Once out, Igmut changed the shape of the stone back using a spell gifted to him by Kord.
Endo and I left last, visibly dressed as engineers through the power of illusion spells, but the large ‘Titan’s House’ was deserted. We all went to bed, greeting a pair of guards en route.
.oOo.
The next morning, we woke late to the sounds of training outside. The monks of the Crazy Eight team were leaping and tumbling around one another, striking at unseen foes in a dazzling series of movements. On the other side of the Coenoby, Auric slowly drew his sword and started a graceful kata. Igmut couldn’t resist standing near him and starting his own series of attacks, which he referred to as ‘shadow-gouging’; a series of vicious stabs and strikes to weak-points on his imagined enemies.
Gathering our equipment, we moved off as a group to the Titan’s House once again. Once there, Flynne inspected the area whilst covered by another of my spells of invisibility. We could see that there were a couple of guards in the room, as well as the wizard from Auric’s warband and another gladiator taking advantage of the quiet.
As Igmut started a prolongued prayer to Kord, Flynne crept into the room. Almost immediately, the wizard looked up, and we could see him exchanging words with Flynne, who was presumably invisible nearby. A while later, Flynne winked into existence a few feet from the wizard – I was confident that I had not stopped my spell, so it had presumably been subtly dispelled by the wizard.
Flynne waved me over, and I spoke to the wizard for a while. He had become fixated with a series of musical notes, and was interested in commissioning me to build them into an epic piece for his group. He also hinted that he had been considering hiring a bard, but that Auric had not agreed with him. We decided to meet that evening, and discuss the music which he apparently had considerable notes prepared within his rooms.
Once the wizard had left, I started to play a variation on the notes which the wizard had been discussing, and led two of the three others out of the chamber. The last was apparently distracted by some droppings deposited upon it by Endo’s pet raven. He and I agreed that we wouldn’t tell anyone he had left if he wanted to clean his tunic; it was an easy bargain, as it also gave us his word that we hadn’t left the cavern during the same time.
By the time this was done, and Endo was setting up his equipment to raise the plug again, Igmut had finished his communion with Kord. He had planned to ask his god about the worm creature we presumed Raknian had somehow created, but it seemed that his god was not forthcoming that day.
We opened the hole, dived through the water and returned to the room filled with partly-dissolved and stinking undead, with a single doorway on the other side.
.oOo.
We were preceded by Flynne down a short corridor, at the end of which was another door, around the edges of which flooded a sinister green light. Flynne cracked the door open and snuck a look; his report was that the scrolls lay atop an altar. They were ringed by green energy, and a beam shot out from the scrolls to vanish between 2 heavy-looking stone doors to the left side of the room. On the opposite side of the room from the doors knelt a horned and hooved figure, clearly meditating at the altar. The only other way out of the room was a single door on the far side from us.
I glimpsed the room over his shoulder, and could see through my Clair de Lunettes that the room was immensely powerfully lit with magical effects, stemming from both the altar and from the scrolls atop them.
Our hastily whispered conversation over whether to open a discussion with the figure was cut short as it began a loud prayer.
“Oh, Great Kyuss!” it began…
“Go, go, go!”
Endo hurled a spell into the room from the corridor, but absolutely nothing happened. Telling the others that the room was positively crammed with magic from wall to wall, I began to play my lute with the most inspirational tune I could think of. Unfortunately, it was a variation on the tune given to me by the wizard.
Sheba leapt away from me, hurtling towards the figure with her claws outstretched, but slammed straight into an invisible barrier which appeared to ring the tiefling. It turned slowly towards us, grinning its pointed teeth. Flynne’s arrow smashed through the barrier, hitting his shoulder and his eyes flared red with fury.
Igmut cast a spell and swelled up to massive proportions. Towering over us, he strode into the room, and the crashing from his armour fell silent as he crossed the threshold. The tiefling began to cast, but was abruptly interrupted by a wolverine, summoned by Malachite, which appeared right next to him; apparently within the area ringed by the tiefling’s protective barrier. The wolverine bit deeply, and the tiefling swore in abyssal, but continued the gestures of his spell uninterrupted.
A full 15 feet long, Igmut’s colossal spear stabbed downwards. The tiefling cursed audibly once again, but I couldn’t hear a thing from any of my comrades.
Abruptly, the tiefling was joined by a second figure – a Bearded Devil cackled as it burst into the room in a cloud which stank of sulphur. Cackling as well, the tiefling stepped forwards (getting stabbed by Igmut and bitten once again), before touching Igmut, whose skin started to crackle and blacken.
Endo cast a spell from his wand behind me; the black crackling ray fizzed briefly as it contacted the tiefling’s skin, but then failed completely.
Whilst Malachite finished his second spell and a large white winter-bear materialised inside the room, but it missed the tiefling.
Not so Flynne. His bow sang three times, and three arrows sank deeply into the flesh of the creature. It swayed, almost confused by what had happened, before crashing to the floor. As Igmut hacked the bearded devil into two pieces, the green energy flowing from the scrolls seemed to crackle and diminish in some way,
We peered through the crack in the door, through which energy was continuing to flood. The beam of green light lit a 25 foot long corridor, at the end of which was a room bathed in a strong green light. We couldn’t see what was taking place beyond the source of that light.
.oOo.
Beyond the small door to the north was a roughly square room, with a single green marble column in the centre. On the right wall was another door, and on the left lay a bed. At the foot of the bed was a chest, which Flynne immediately headed towards, whilst the rest of us became fixated by the slightly decaying elf-corpse which sat in the chair on the opposite side of the room. The female body looked up at us as we entered, and moaned faintly.
Igmut’s examination revealed that the elf had been murdered about a year ago; she was strangled by an assailant who had left a serpent-style ring mark in her neck. I strummed a few notes on my lute, and there was a flicker of recognition in the dull eyes, but she didn’t respond beyond that. We had found the bardic elf, sister to our manager, and the woman he was so desperate to rescue.
The trunk which Flynne was examining was made of darkwood and steel, and patterns around the outside showed a symbol of Kyuss on its lid. Around the edge was apocalyptic frieze of torture and desperation.
Flynne produced his picks and worked the lock open gingerly. When it had snapped open, he lifted the lid, but then vanished suddenly. All of his equipment dropped to the floor where he had been kneeling, and the lid slammed closed.
Rushing to look at the trunk, we could see a tiny naked figure of Flynne had suddenly appeared on the side of the chest. He appeared to be being torn to shreds by a horde of demons and the undead.
In quick succession, Igmut and then Malachite cast spells of dispelling, to no effect whatsoever. Only when Endo cast another spell did Flynne reappear, naked and screaming, clearly damaged severely by his time within the phenomenally evil chest.
We left the trunk well alone, and headed for the door. Down a short corridor was another large room.
.oOo.
From where we stood we could see another door on the far side, and a huge green and black checkered curtain along one wall. Almost immediately, Flynne entered the room and headed straight to a section of the wall on the right hand side, which slid part-way open at his touch.
We dashed in to look at what it was that he had discovered, and apmost silently the curtain dropped to the floor behind us. There was a terrible squelching sound, and then the room was filled with ice and terror.
.oOo.
Behind us squelched a lumpy misshapen heap of green and purple. It stank of acid and sulphur as its four tentacular arms writhed in runic and arcane motions. As we stared in horror at this devilish monstrosity, we noticed the eight-foot high skull-like symbol of Kyuss in mosaic on the wall behind it. As we looked at it, it pulsed subtly, and a wave of terror washed over us.
An instant later, the creature’s spell blasted over us in the form of a wave of freezing cold. Ice crystals formed over our skin, clothes and equipment, causing agonising pain in us all.
Reacting faster than any of the rest of us, Endo turned and started casting spells. His Ray of Enfeeblement missed the target, striking a couple of tiles off the mosaic wall behind what he called an “alkileth demon”. His second spell was one to inflict blindness, which struck square in where I supposed the creature’s eyes would be. However the spell took no effect whatsoever – I could see mystical static wreathing around it as the energies of Endo’s spell were absorbed and deflected.
The creature’s tentacles moved once again, and the room was filled with a noxious green gas, trapping all of us within the effect, and leaving Igmut, Flynne and myself retching and gasping for fresh air.
As Sheba and Igmut looked around desperately for an exit, having been terrified by the effect of the mosaic’s own magic, Malachite cast a spell and a roaring fire burst down on the creature from the heavens. It was barely even scorched by the enchanted fury, seemingly ignoring the fire completely, and taking only slight damage from the righteous wrath of nature which the spell encompassed.
Feeling bilious, I backed off down the corridor we had entered, being overtaken by a fleeing and panicked Sheba and then an equally panicked Igmut, who had by this stage been transmuted into the form of a large troll by Endo.
I could hear Endo casting once again in the room. Two more spells slammed at the creature, and both of them failed completely; thwarted once more by the creature’s innate resistance to magic. Endo then backed off down the corridor towards me. Malachite and Flynne remained in the room; I could dimly see Flynne retching and sheltering in the doorway on the far side of the room, whilst Malachite had found a small area of clear air near the demon.
Abruptly, my sight of them both was lost, as the room filled with ice and frost. A massive icy wall grew in an instant, blocking us away from our two comrades. Unable to help the two who were trapped, and still close to throwing up, I staggered towards Igmut, scrabbling at my belt pouch for a scroll and hoping that I might recover enough to use it.
Behind the wall of ice, I could hear more howling winds and demonic laughter, as another freezing spell of death was cast on either Flynne of Malachite.
I suddenly regained my ability to breathe properly, and dashed up to Igmut, reading the words off the scroll and removing the effect of the magical fear from him. He smiled grimly, and turned back up the corridor, his trollish feet pounding on the stone as I carried on up the corridor towards Sheba, who was unable to run too quickly as she was also retching and coughing as she went.
As I went, I gained more and more distance from the sounds of magic behind me. Black lightning flashed and crackled as tremendous powers were invoked by someone or something.
By the time I had read a second scroll and in Sheba’s footsteps, Igmut had used his trollish strength to smash his way through the wall of ice which bisected the room, and was hideously wounded, covered in a thick layer of ice and frost, and with a number of welts and injuries across his hide. Sheba was behind him, also badly hurt by the frost.
All I could think to do was to cast a spell to hasten both of them and also Endo and myself. I couldn’t see Malachite or Flynne within the room, but Sheba was slashing at the acid-secreting lump with an unrivalled frenzy. Unfortunately, her claws were unable to penetrate the creature’s preternaturally tough hide.
Igmut tried hard to wrestle the creature to the ground, but it proved too slippery and powerful for him to control completely; he couldn’t stop its tentacles from thrashing around and casting spells.
Endo’s spell from near me in the doorway came in the form of a green ray; it burst out and around the creature before dissolving once again in the face of the demon’s natural resistances to magic.
There was another burst of freezing cold from the creature, and Endo and I could see through the blasting cold as Igmut and Sheba were both frozen solid by the sheer cold. Their deaths were instantaneous.
Unable to see where Malachite and Flynne were, or even if they were still alive, and seeing that the demon was all but completely unharmed, Endo and I stared at one another in horror.
We begin our scene still within the room filled with the bodies of the undead. We had narrowly escaped a terrible loss by Endo’s quick thinking. Igmut, in his slime-like state, pooled near our feet before oozing around the room, puddling over the corpses and destroying evidence of our passage. I pointed out to him a few places where he should focus, and within short order the room looked as though it had been destroyed by some rampaging slime creature.
After a brief discussion, we decided that we were clearly facing a complex filled with the undead. With Endo’s selection of spells after the arena fight clearly weighted towards fighting living and breathing opponents, we agreed that we should retreat and take a moment to refresh ourselves. As the arena combats were scheduled not to take place the next day, we would have plenty of time to rest and return.
Trudging our way back through the complex, we met with no opponents. At the foot of the flooded shaft, we took a few minutes to clean ourselves off, before I passed my hat of disguise to Endo, and cast spells of invisibility on the others. Malachite warped the shape of the stone plug and we crept out. Once out, Igmut changed the shape of the stone back using a spell gifted to him by Kord.
Endo and I left last, visibly dressed as engineers through the power of illusion spells, but the large ‘Titan’s House’ was deserted. We all went to bed, greeting a pair of guards en route.
.oOo.
The next morning, we woke late to the sounds of training outside. The monks of the Crazy Eight team were leaping and tumbling around one another, striking at unseen foes in a dazzling series of movements. On the other side of the Coenoby, Auric slowly drew his sword and started a graceful kata. Igmut couldn’t resist standing near him and starting his own series of attacks, which he referred to as ‘shadow-gouging’; a series of vicious stabs and strikes to weak-points on his imagined enemies.
Gathering our equipment, we moved off as a group to the Titan’s House once again. Once there, Flynne inspected the area whilst covered by another of my spells of invisibility. We could see that there were a couple of guards in the room, as well as the wizard from Auric’s warband and another gladiator taking advantage of the quiet.
As Igmut started a prolongued prayer to Kord, Flynne crept into the room. Almost immediately, the wizard looked up, and we could see him exchanging words with Flynne, who was presumably invisible nearby. A while later, Flynne winked into existence a few feet from the wizard – I was confident that I had not stopped my spell, so it had presumably been subtly dispelled by the wizard.
Flynne waved me over, and I spoke to the wizard for a while. He had become fixated with a series of musical notes, and was interested in commissioning me to build them into an epic piece for his group. He also hinted that he had been considering hiring a bard, but that Auric had not agreed with him. We decided to meet that evening, and discuss the music which he apparently had considerable notes prepared within his rooms.
Once the wizard had left, I started to play a variation on the notes which the wizard had been discussing, and led two of the three others out of the chamber. The last was apparently distracted by some droppings deposited upon it by Endo’s pet raven. He and I agreed that we wouldn’t tell anyone he had left if he wanted to clean his tunic; it was an easy bargain, as it also gave us his word that we hadn’t left the cavern during the same time.
By the time this was done, and Endo was setting up his equipment to raise the plug again, Igmut had finished his communion with Kord. He had planned to ask his god about the worm creature we presumed Raknian had somehow created, but it seemed that his god was not forthcoming that day.
We opened the hole, dived through the water and returned to the room filled with partly-dissolved and stinking undead, with a single doorway on the other side.
.oOo.
We were preceded by Flynne down a short corridor, at the end of which was another door, around the edges of which flooded a sinister green light. Flynne cracked the door open and snuck a look; his report was that the scrolls lay atop an altar. They were ringed by green energy, and a beam shot out from the scrolls to vanish between 2 heavy-looking stone doors to the left side of the room. On the opposite side of the room from the doors knelt a horned and hooved figure, clearly meditating at the altar. The only other way out of the room was a single door on the far side from us.
I glimpsed the room over his shoulder, and could see through my Clair de Lunettes that the room was immensely powerfully lit with magical effects, stemming from both the altar and from the scrolls atop them.
Our hastily whispered conversation over whether to open a discussion with the figure was cut short as it began a loud prayer.
“Oh, Great Kyuss!” it began…
“Go, go, go!”
Endo hurled a spell into the room from the corridor, but absolutely nothing happened. Telling the others that the room was positively crammed with magic from wall to wall, I began to play my lute with the most inspirational tune I could think of. Unfortunately, it was a variation on the tune given to me by the wizard.
Sheba leapt away from me, hurtling towards the figure with her claws outstretched, but slammed straight into an invisible barrier which appeared to ring the tiefling. It turned slowly towards us, grinning its pointed teeth. Flynne’s arrow smashed through the barrier, hitting his shoulder and his eyes flared red with fury.
Igmut cast a spell and swelled up to massive proportions. Towering over us, he strode into the room, and the crashing from his armour fell silent as he crossed the threshold. The tiefling began to cast, but was abruptly interrupted by a wolverine, summoned by Malachite, which appeared right next to him; apparently within the area ringed by the tiefling’s protective barrier. The wolverine bit deeply, and the tiefling swore in abyssal, but continued the gestures of his spell uninterrupted.
A full 15 feet long, Igmut’s colossal spear stabbed downwards. The tiefling cursed audibly once again, but I couldn’t hear a thing from any of my comrades.
Abruptly, the tiefling was joined by a second figure – a Bearded Devil cackled as it burst into the room in a cloud which stank of sulphur. Cackling as well, the tiefling stepped forwards (getting stabbed by Igmut and bitten once again), before touching Igmut, whose skin started to crackle and blacken.
Endo cast a spell from his wand behind me; the black crackling ray fizzed briefly as it contacted the tiefling’s skin, but then failed completely.
Whilst Malachite finished his second spell and a large white winter-bear materialised inside the room, but it missed the tiefling.
Not so Flynne. His bow sang three times, and three arrows sank deeply into the flesh of the creature. It swayed, almost confused by what had happened, before crashing to the floor. As Igmut hacked the bearded devil into two pieces, the green energy flowing from the scrolls seemed to crackle and diminish in some way,
We peered through the crack in the door, through which energy was continuing to flood. The beam of green light lit a 25 foot long corridor, at the end of which was a room bathed in a strong green light. We couldn’t see what was taking place beyond the source of that light.
.oOo.
Beyond the small door to the north was a roughly square room, with a single green marble column in the centre. On the right wall was another door, and on the left lay a bed. At the foot of the bed was a chest, which Flynne immediately headed towards, whilst the rest of us became fixated by the slightly decaying elf-corpse which sat in the chair on the opposite side of the room. The female body looked up at us as we entered, and moaned faintly.
Igmut’s examination revealed that the elf had been murdered about a year ago; she was strangled by an assailant who had left a serpent-style ring mark in her neck. I strummed a few notes on my lute, and there was a flicker of recognition in the dull eyes, but she didn’t respond beyond that. We had found the bardic elf, sister to our manager, and the woman he was so desperate to rescue.
The trunk which Flynne was examining was made of darkwood and steel, and patterns around the outside showed a symbol of Kyuss on its lid. Around the edge was apocalyptic frieze of torture and desperation.
Flynne produced his picks and worked the lock open gingerly. When it had snapped open, he lifted the lid, but then vanished suddenly. All of his equipment dropped to the floor where he had been kneeling, and the lid slammed closed.
Rushing to look at the trunk, we could see a tiny naked figure of Flynne had suddenly appeared on the side of the chest. He appeared to be being torn to shreds by a horde of demons and the undead.
In quick succession, Igmut and then Malachite cast spells of dispelling, to no effect whatsoever. Only when Endo cast another spell did Flynne reappear, naked and screaming, clearly damaged severely by his time within the phenomenally evil chest.
We left the trunk well alone, and headed for the door. Down a short corridor was another large room.
.oOo.
From where we stood we could see another door on the far side, and a huge green and black checkered curtain along one wall. Almost immediately, Flynne entered the room and headed straight to a section of the wall on the right hand side, which slid part-way open at his touch.
We dashed in to look at what it was that he had discovered, and apmost silently the curtain dropped to the floor behind us. There was a terrible squelching sound, and then the room was filled with ice and terror.
.oOo.
Behind us squelched a lumpy misshapen heap of green and purple. It stank of acid and sulphur as its four tentacular arms writhed in runic and arcane motions. As we stared in horror at this devilish monstrosity, we noticed the eight-foot high skull-like symbol of Kyuss in mosaic on the wall behind it. As we looked at it, it pulsed subtly, and a wave of terror washed over us.
An instant later, the creature’s spell blasted over us in the form of a wave of freezing cold. Ice crystals formed over our skin, clothes and equipment, causing agonising pain in us all.
Reacting faster than any of the rest of us, Endo turned and started casting spells. His Ray of Enfeeblement missed the target, striking a couple of tiles off the mosaic wall behind what he called an “alkileth demon”. His second spell was one to inflict blindness, which struck square in where I supposed the creature’s eyes would be. However the spell took no effect whatsoever – I could see mystical static wreathing around it as the energies of Endo’s spell were absorbed and deflected.
The creature’s tentacles moved once again, and the room was filled with a noxious green gas, trapping all of us within the effect, and leaving Igmut, Flynne and myself retching and gasping for fresh air.
As Sheba and Igmut looked around desperately for an exit, having been terrified by the effect of the mosaic’s own magic, Malachite cast a spell and a roaring fire burst down on the creature from the heavens. It was barely even scorched by the enchanted fury, seemingly ignoring the fire completely, and taking only slight damage from the righteous wrath of nature which the spell encompassed.
Feeling bilious, I backed off down the corridor we had entered, being overtaken by a fleeing and panicked Sheba and then an equally panicked Igmut, who had by this stage been transmuted into the form of a large troll by Endo.
I could hear Endo casting once again in the room. Two more spells slammed at the creature, and both of them failed completely; thwarted once more by the creature’s innate resistance to magic. Endo then backed off down the corridor towards me. Malachite and Flynne remained in the room; I could dimly see Flynne retching and sheltering in the doorway on the far side of the room, whilst Malachite had found a small area of clear air near the demon.
Abruptly, my sight of them both was lost, as the room filled with ice and frost. A massive icy wall grew in an instant, blocking us away from our two comrades. Unable to help the two who were trapped, and still close to throwing up, I staggered towards Igmut, scrabbling at my belt pouch for a scroll and hoping that I might recover enough to use it.
Behind the wall of ice, I could hear more howling winds and demonic laughter, as another freezing spell of death was cast on either Flynne of Malachite.
I suddenly regained my ability to breathe properly, and dashed up to Igmut, reading the words off the scroll and removing the effect of the magical fear from him. He smiled grimly, and turned back up the corridor, his trollish feet pounding on the stone as I carried on up the corridor towards Sheba, who was unable to run too quickly as she was also retching and coughing as she went.
As I went, I gained more and more distance from the sounds of magic behind me. Black lightning flashed and crackled as tremendous powers were invoked by someone or something.
By the time I had read a second scroll and in Sheba’s footsteps, Igmut had used his trollish strength to smash his way through the wall of ice which bisected the room, and was hideously wounded, covered in a thick layer of ice and frost, and with a number of welts and injuries across his hide. Sheba was behind him, also badly hurt by the frost.
All I could think to do was to cast a spell to hasten both of them and also Endo and myself. I couldn’t see Malachite or Flynne within the room, but Sheba was slashing at the acid-secreting lump with an unrivalled frenzy. Unfortunately, her claws were unable to penetrate the creature’s preternaturally tough hide.
Igmut tried hard to wrestle the creature to the ground, but it proved too slippery and powerful for him to control completely; he couldn’t stop its tentacles from thrashing around and casting spells.
Endo’s spell from near me in the doorway came in the form of a green ray; it burst out and around the creature before dissolving once again in the face of the demon’s natural resistances to magic.
There was another burst of freezing cold from the creature, and Endo and I could see through the blasting cold as Igmut and Sheba were both frozen solid by the sheer cold. Their deaths were instantaneous.
Unable to see where Malachite and Flynne were, or even if they were still alive, and seeing that the demon was all but completely unharmed, Endo and I stared at one another in horror.
Darmanicus
I'm Ray...of Enfeeblement
Eccles said:
Indeed not but to be fair.......
- Endo's spells, or a fair few were geared for more undead, Not demons
- Demon has SR 24 I think we worked out, meaning 75% of everbody's spells were going to fail, (in fact every single one of Endo's spells failed).
- DR15/the party don't have it!!! Only Igmut had the power to hust it physically.
- And before you mention crits.......it was immune
- As it was to several elements or had at least insanely high resists.
Not good.
P.S. Almost forgot about the at will abilities of Cone of Cold, Wall of Ice and Teleport......and those were not everything in its arsenal.
Geez, it was a harsh night and it aint over yet
El Jeraldo
First Post
Wow...just...Wow! That was amazing. I typically play as some form of melee character and our DM is very role-play oriented with very few actual encounters for me to bash things. I totally would have been the fool swinging away with his sword or hands at that death blob and would have died in my headstrong stubbornness. I really feel for ya Igmut. Soldax gives you his best wishes from beyond the grave. (Level 7 fighter died valiantly at the hands of an Ogre with a few too many levels of barbarian)
-El Jeraldo
P.S. Please don't give up on me i love these write-up's and appreciate the hard work Eccles puts into making them amazing
-El Jeraldo
P.S. Please don't give up on me i love these write-up's and appreciate the hard work Eccles puts into making them amazing
Darmanicus
I'm Ray...of Enfeeblement
El Jeraldo said:
Don't worry we're not giving up mate
Undeadifying Igmut shouldn't be too much of a problem; in fact he'll probably be more intelligent as a result!
Eccles
Ragged idiot in a trilby.
As Endo and I stared in horror at the frozen corpses of Igmut and Sheba, the air near the purple demonic monstrosity rippled, and a 20 foot long crocodile suddenly materialised next to it snapping viciously.
“Malachite, over here!” Endo shouted out, whilst cancelling the spell of shapeshifting on Igmut. His lumpen trollish frame warped and shrank into a nearly as lumpy orcish one and he lay amidst the frost. With his mind now clear, Endo started to trawl through the loose parchments wedged at the back of his spellbook.
Hearing Endo’s shout, Malachite hurtled through the narrow gap in the ice wall. He was in the form of a cheetah and was practically a blur in the air as he passed me heading for Endo. He was followed, to my enormous relief, by Flynne’s running form, also leaving a smear of instantly frozen blood and flesh as he brushed past the wall on his way.
Diving past Flynne, I leapt through the narrow gap myself. I could feel my skin and the blood from my open wounds freezing in the intense cold around me before I dived towards Igmut and Sheba. Only 10 feet from the demon, I gestured and willed into existence the most powerful spell I could think of. Immediately, a glowing orange portal opened almost horizontally in the air beyond the two bodies. As I crashed into them, we rolled with the force of my momentum through the glowing doorway and emerged into the echoing chamber of the Titan’s House.
A moment later, a black slash appeared in the air a few feet away. It widened, and Malachite, Flynne and Endo stepped through. I could see the purple monstrosity in the background before Endo’s Dimension Door spell closed on it.
.oOo.
We stared at the bodies. After almost a full minute, Malachite turned away from the corpse of his longtime companion, assumed the form of a small bird, and shot away out of one of the small ventilation shafts into the town beyond. Flynne, Endo and I discussed matters, and buried Sheba under a heap of rubble before carrying Igmut’s corpse back to our lodge within the Coenoby, past a number of stares from other champions.
Once we had placed the frozen body onto a pallet, Endo sent his raven familiar flying away into the city to find our sponsor, Akame. We needed to discuss matters with him, and see what we could arrange to resuscitate our fallen comrade.
When he arrived, with the raven perched on his shoulder, we spent a long time discussing what we had seen. We explained that we were convinced that Raknian was in league with one or more necromancers, and that they had purchased the Apostolic Scrolls. We explained that there was likely to be an abomination launching an attack on the city within the next week, but all Raknian could ask was details about his sister.
When we could put off the issue no longer, we had to admit that we thought we had found Akame’s sister – or at least her body. When we admitted to him that she had been raised as an undead plaything, having clearly been throttled, he was understandably distraught. When I told him that I had seen a serpentine ring mark at her throat, he was quick to point out,
“That’s Raknian’s ring! I must kill him!”
“You can’t,” I replied. “You’d be killed in an instant, and would probably tip off his necromancer allies that something was awry. And they might disappear, taking the monster with them. You can avenge your sister, but not yet.”
After a great deal of pleading, he agreed that he would not try to kill Raknian that instant (although he didn’t promise not to throw himself at Raknian’s throat on the last day of the games). Instead, he agreed that we had to survive, and to that end he would help us obtain a scroll to bring Igmut back from the dead. However, he no longer had any resources to spend on such an item, and we therefore had to ransack our own equipment for expensive items which we could afford to sell.
Igmut’s recently found Gauntlet of Rust was swiftly sacrificed, and Flynne produced the Bronze Griffon from one of his bags (despite my being certain that the last time I’d seen it, it had been going back into Malachite’s backpack). Much money, and other items were deposited into Akame’s arms, and he struggled back out of the Coenoby.
Whilst he was leaving, Endo handed me a scroll, and then cast a familiar spell of polymorphing on me. I then also left in the form of a bird through one of the many ventilation shafts, leaving Flynne with an item salvaged from Igmut’s backpack whilst we were searching through it for saleable items. As I flew from our rooms, I could see the mystical oak tree already taking root in the chamber below.
Once out, I joined Akame, recovered all the items and then sold them myself; Akame having neither the talent nor the contacts to get the best price. Once the task was complete, I bought the most powerful scroll of recovery which I could find before I used Endo’s precious scroll of teleportation to return to the others.
Once there, I unrolled the precious scroll and held my breath for a long time as I tried to absorb its complexity. Trying hard not to let on how complicated this scroll was, I read the words, and a moment after I had finished, Igmut twitched, bellowed, and half-rolled, half-leapt off the pallet. Landing cat-like on the floor, he looked up at us; his face was completely cleansed of injuries, scars and even his acne – he looked strangely young as he stared around us in confusion.
Several hours later, Malachite simply stepped through the side of the oak tree in our lodge; one of his hands was resting on the neck of a suspiciously similar looking tiger, which growled at us all nervously, its tail twitching.
.oOo.
We were woken the following morning by a gong whose sound echoed throughout the Coenoby. We rose, sharpened our weapons and Malachite, Igmut and Endo prepared their minds and their spells for the forthcoming combat with the dwarves of Pitch Blade.
At noon, when the fight was to take place, we were separated, and each of us was led individually up to the large sandy arena. As we went, we were told that we would have no time to prepare for the fight beforehand, but that we could cast any spells we would want during the speeches to the audience.
We were led onto the sand, and spaced equally around the walls of the arena. Endo and I stood side by side facing Malachite and his new tiger companion on the far side. In each corner of the arena was one of the four dwarves, whilst Flynne and Igmut were both on their own with their backs to the other walls. The wall which Flynne had his back to was mounted with a series of plainly enchanted windmill blades, although their purpose remained unclear.
As the speeches drew to a close, we all sprang into action; the Pitch Blade dwarves began guzzling potions, and ignited their flaming broadswords. As the audience burst into applause at the speeches, Malachite changed his own form into an identical tiger, and he roared out spells of his own. Both he and his matching tiger compatriot swelled to colossal sizes and began to blur.
My own spellcasting time was spent turning both myself and Endo invisible, and hasting us both, as well as creating a couple of auditory illusions of us both casting spells in the event that we were to move away.
I was dimly aware of Igmut casting a panoply of spells upon himself, as he grew to giant proportions and began to positively glow with a number of holy auras, just in time for the gong to sound once again – the fight had begun!
The dwarves were sluggish in reacting to the sound of the gong, but Flynne reacted first – he dashed across the sand to where Endo and I still stood; he and I had been planning for this fight for a number of days. Meanwhile, some 50 feet to my right a towering Igmut crashed into a dwarf with his massive greatsword inflicting terrible damage.
As the blade struck home, there was a brief flash of light and the dwarf suddenly looked shocked and stunned. I wove magic, and turned Flynne invisible, using a more powerful and complex version of the spell that that which I had placed on Endo and myself.
At the same time, on the other side of the arena, the two tigers separated and each pounced on a different dwarf some 100 feet or more apart. Although a terrible amount of dwarven blood soaked into the sand, both of the Malachitehty warriors grimly clutched at their burning swords and bellowed oaths of vengeance on the tigers.
To my side, I could hear Endo casting spells before wings began beating near me and he flew away from me, but as his wingbeats faded I could hear the bellowing of the four dwarves. In fury, they each leapt towards a foe. As Flynne, Endo and I were all invisible, two of the raging dwarves hurtled towards the tiger to the left hand side of the far wall, each hacking at the beast twice, but each of them struck only a single blow. However each would was grievously deep and the tiger (I could no longer tell if this was Malachite or Sheba’s replacement), roared in pain and anger.
The other tiger was also struck once, and its blood spattered the walls and sand, but the greatest dwarven fury was reserved for Igmut. Whatever spell he had inflicted on the dwarf through his sword had not yet taken full effect, and it swung and struck with deadly fury. Igmut, however, did not seem in the slightest bit fazed by the dwarf’s anger and he struck back in kind with deadly accuracy – although without the additional inspiration and confidence granted by both my songs and Endo and Malachite’s magics then the injuries he inflicted were perhaps not as great as he might have wished. The dwarf, however, was staggered by the damage.
As I stepped away from the wall and began singing, the two tigers again clawed and bit at their dwarven foes, and behind me a tiny pixie materialised, chanting the words of a spell. One of the four dwarves stiffened, dropped its sword and began to fly towards its comrade, arms outstretched. A second spell from the pixie was flung at another dwarf, stripping it of some of the effects of the four potions I had seen it drink.
The dwarves struck out, hitting one of the tigers and missing the other, whilst the dwarf near Igmut suddenly stopped moving and began to dribble gently into the sand. Flynne, meanwhile, flickered suddenly in and out of sight, his fiery and icy arrows slamming into one dwarf fighting a badly-hurt tiger. One arrow tore out the dwarf’s throat whilst a second embedded itself deeply into its chest. The dwarf collapsed to the floor even as Flynne faded from sight.
In the far corner of the arena, Igmut continued to gleefully hack at the dribbling dwarf, which stared around itself with a slackjawed expression on its face. I briefly saw Igmut reverse his grip on his greatsword and attempt to slam the butt of his sword into the dwarf’s face, but he lost his grip on the heavy and unbalanced weapon; the hilt of the sword glanced off the dwarf’s shoulder plate.
I dashed across the sand to use a wand of curing on the tiger which was still engaged in fighting the dwarf (who was even now being aerially assaulted by his flying-but-dominated comrade).
At this point, however, the windmill-blades began to spin, and I was treated to the vision of the tiny pixie hurtling through the air past me, screaming imprecations at the designers of the arena as the gale-force winds sent him tumbling. I managed to just about keep my footing, whilst the tremendous winds did little more than ruffle the fur on the huge tiger, and didn’t significantly disturb Igmut’s 15 foot mass.
The tiger I was standing next to managed to claw and bite at the nearby dwarf, whilst the second tiger dashed the length of the arena to slam into the other (still stupefied) dwarf and tore him limb form limb. Between this bloody sight and where I stood, I could see Endo crash to the floor as he ceased his time as a pixie. He lay there, casting a spell which sapped away much of the strength from the surviving fighting dwarf, whose two blows were both thwarted thanks to the blur effect on the tiger.
The dominated dwarf snatched his still-fighting comrade by the shoulders and started trying to heave him skywards, at which point Igmut trampled through the heavy winds and slammed his spear into the dwarves, killing one, and driving the spear deeply into the belly of the other who was struggling to lift his comrade. The dwarf, although dominated, was then savaged by tigers and spear as he tried to fly away, before he finally managed to hurtle skywards and a voice echoed across the arena.
“Competitor is disqualified! Victory for the Rough Diamonds!”
As the windmill stopped, the wind died down and I realised that the crowd were screaming their approval. Letting the invisibility spells fade, I raised my arms to celebrate with them. Looking around, the only person who wasn’t celebrating was Raknian, who looked furious at our having defeated his house team.
We saw his fury up close, as he handed us our trophy (made of silver with a fighting dwarf etched rather ironically onto its surface), together with a large bag of gold.
We retired to cure our wounds, and prepare for our combat against the winners of the other teams. As the victorious other groups came down, we learned that the dragon had been defeated by the soldiers, whilst Auric and his band of three stone golems had made short work of the ‘Crazy Eight’ monks.
One of us would be fighting a monster (which we had already learned was a ‘frost salamander’), whilst the other two teams were slated to fight one another.
Igmut cast a spell of divination, asking Kord about what was to happen on the last day of the games. He later described to us all a terrible vision of a deep crevasse opening up in the centre of the arena as tens of thousands watched the spectacle.
“Malachite, over here!” Endo shouted out, whilst cancelling the spell of shapeshifting on Igmut. His lumpen trollish frame warped and shrank into a nearly as lumpy orcish one and he lay amidst the frost. With his mind now clear, Endo started to trawl through the loose parchments wedged at the back of his spellbook.
Hearing Endo’s shout, Malachite hurtled through the narrow gap in the ice wall. He was in the form of a cheetah and was practically a blur in the air as he passed me heading for Endo. He was followed, to my enormous relief, by Flynne’s running form, also leaving a smear of instantly frozen blood and flesh as he brushed past the wall on his way.
Diving past Flynne, I leapt through the narrow gap myself. I could feel my skin and the blood from my open wounds freezing in the intense cold around me before I dived towards Igmut and Sheba. Only 10 feet from the demon, I gestured and willed into existence the most powerful spell I could think of. Immediately, a glowing orange portal opened almost horizontally in the air beyond the two bodies. As I crashed into them, we rolled with the force of my momentum through the glowing doorway and emerged into the echoing chamber of the Titan’s House.
A moment later, a black slash appeared in the air a few feet away. It widened, and Malachite, Flynne and Endo stepped through. I could see the purple monstrosity in the background before Endo’s Dimension Door spell closed on it.
.oOo.
We stared at the bodies. After almost a full minute, Malachite turned away from the corpse of his longtime companion, assumed the form of a small bird, and shot away out of one of the small ventilation shafts into the town beyond. Flynne, Endo and I discussed matters, and buried Sheba under a heap of rubble before carrying Igmut’s corpse back to our lodge within the Coenoby, past a number of stares from other champions.
Once we had placed the frozen body onto a pallet, Endo sent his raven familiar flying away into the city to find our sponsor, Akame. We needed to discuss matters with him, and see what we could arrange to resuscitate our fallen comrade.
When he arrived, with the raven perched on his shoulder, we spent a long time discussing what we had seen. We explained that we were convinced that Raknian was in league with one or more necromancers, and that they had purchased the Apostolic Scrolls. We explained that there was likely to be an abomination launching an attack on the city within the next week, but all Raknian could ask was details about his sister.
When we could put off the issue no longer, we had to admit that we thought we had found Akame’s sister – or at least her body. When we admitted to him that she had been raised as an undead plaything, having clearly been throttled, he was understandably distraught. When I told him that I had seen a serpentine ring mark at her throat, he was quick to point out,
“That’s Raknian’s ring! I must kill him!”
“You can’t,” I replied. “You’d be killed in an instant, and would probably tip off his necromancer allies that something was awry. And they might disappear, taking the monster with them. You can avenge your sister, but not yet.”
After a great deal of pleading, he agreed that he would not try to kill Raknian that instant (although he didn’t promise not to throw himself at Raknian’s throat on the last day of the games). Instead, he agreed that we had to survive, and to that end he would help us obtain a scroll to bring Igmut back from the dead. However, he no longer had any resources to spend on such an item, and we therefore had to ransack our own equipment for expensive items which we could afford to sell.
Igmut’s recently found Gauntlet of Rust was swiftly sacrificed, and Flynne produced the Bronze Griffon from one of his bags (despite my being certain that the last time I’d seen it, it had been going back into Malachite’s backpack). Much money, and other items were deposited into Akame’s arms, and he struggled back out of the Coenoby.
Whilst he was leaving, Endo handed me a scroll, and then cast a familiar spell of polymorphing on me. I then also left in the form of a bird through one of the many ventilation shafts, leaving Flynne with an item salvaged from Igmut’s backpack whilst we were searching through it for saleable items. As I flew from our rooms, I could see the mystical oak tree already taking root in the chamber below.
Once out, I joined Akame, recovered all the items and then sold them myself; Akame having neither the talent nor the contacts to get the best price. Once the task was complete, I bought the most powerful scroll of recovery which I could find before I used Endo’s precious scroll of teleportation to return to the others.
Once there, I unrolled the precious scroll and held my breath for a long time as I tried to absorb its complexity. Trying hard not to let on how complicated this scroll was, I read the words, and a moment after I had finished, Igmut twitched, bellowed, and half-rolled, half-leapt off the pallet. Landing cat-like on the floor, he looked up at us; his face was completely cleansed of injuries, scars and even his acne – he looked strangely young as he stared around us in confusion.
Several hours later, Malachite simply stepped through the side of the oak tree in our lodge; one of his hands was resting on the neck of a suspiciously similar looking tiger, which growled at us all nervously, its tail twitching.
.oOo.
We were woken the following morning by a gong whose sound echoed throughout the Coenoby. We rose, sharpened our weapons and Malachite, Igmut and Endo prepared their minds and their spells for the forthcoming combat with the dwarves of Pitch Blade.
At noon, when the fight was to take place, we were separated, and each of us was led individually up to the large sandy arena. As we went, we were told that we would have no time to prepare for the fight beforehand, but that we could cast any spells we would want during the speeches to the audience.
We were led onto the sand, and spaced equally around the walls of the arena. Endo and I stood side by side facing Malachite and his new tiger companion on the far side. In each corner of the arena was one of the four dwarves, whilst Flynne and Igmut were both on their own with their backs to the other walls. The wall which Flynne had his back to was mounted with a series of plainly enchanted windmill blades, although their purpose remained unclear.
As the speeches drew to a close, we all sprang into action; the Pitch Blade dwarves began guzzling potions, and ignited their flaming broadswords. As the audience burst into applause at the speeches, Malachite changed his own form into an identical tiger, and he roared out spells of his own. Both he and his matching tiger compatriot swelled to colossal sizes and began to blur.
My own spellcasting time was spent turning both myself and Endo invisible, and hasting us both, as well as creating a couple of auditory illusions of us both casting spells in the event that we were to move away.
I was dimly aware of Igmut casting a panoply of spells upon himself, as he grew to giant proportions and began to positively glow with a number of holy auras, just in time for the gong to sound once again – the fight had begun!
The dwarves were sluggish in reacting to the sound of the gong, but Flynne reacted first – he dashed across the sand to where Endo and I still stood; he and I had been planning for this fight for a number of days. Meanwhile, some 50 feet to my right a towering Igmut crashed into a dwarf with his massive greatsword inflicting terrible damage.
As the blade struck home, there was a brief flash of light and the dwarf suddenly looked shocked and stunned. I wove magic, and turned Flynne invisible, using a more powerful and complex version of the spell that that which I had placed on Endo and myself.
At the same time, on the other side of the arena, the two tigers separated and each pounced on a different dwarf some 100 feet or more apart. Although a terrible amount of dwarven blood soaked into the sand, both of the Malachitehty warriors grimly clutched at their burning swords and bellowed oaths of vengeance on the tigers.
To my side, I could hear Endo casting spells before wings began beating near me and he flew away from me, but as his wingbeats faded I could hear the bellowing of the four dwarves. In fury, they each leapt towards a foe. As Flynne, Endo and I were all invisible, two of the raging dwarves hurtled towards the tiger to the left hand side of the far wall, each hacking at the beast twice, but each of them struck only a single blow. However each would was grievously deep and the tiger (I could no longer tell if this was Malachite or Sheba’s replacement), roared in pain and anger.
The other tiger was also struck once, and its blood spattered the walls and sand, but the greatest dwarven fury was reserved for Igmut. Whatever spell he had inflicted on the dwarf through his sword had not yet taken full effect, and it swung and struck with deadly fury. Igmut, however, did not seem in the slightest bit fazed by the dwarf’s anger and he struck back in kind with deadly accuracy – although without the additional inspiration and confidence granted by both my songs and Endo and Malachite’s magics then the injuries he inflicted were perhaps not as great as he might have wished. The dwarf, however, was staggered by the damage.
As I stepped away from the wall and began singing, the two tigers again clawed and bit at their dwarven foes, and behind me a tiny pixie materialised, chanting the words of a spell. One of the four dwarves stiffened, dropped its sword and began to fly towards its comrade, arms outstretched. A second spell from the pixie was flung at another dwarf, stripping it of some of the effects of the four potions I had seen it drink.
The dwarves struck out, hitting one of the tigers and missing the other, whilst the dwarf near Igmut suddenly stopped moving and began to dribble gently into the sand. Flynne, meanwhile, flickered suddenly in and out of sight, his fiery and icy arrows slamming into one dwarf fighting a badly-hurt tiger. One arrow tore out the dwarf’s throat whilst a second embedded itself deeply into its chest. The dwarf collapsed to the floor even as Flynne faded from sight.
In the far corner of the arena, Igmut continued to gleefully hack at the dribbling dwarf, which stared around itself with a slackjawed expression on its face. I briefly saw Igmut reverse his grip on his greatsword and attempt to slam the butt of his sword into the dwarf’s face, but he lost his grip on the heavy and unbalanced weapon; the hilt of the sword glanced off the dwarf’s shoulder plate.
I dashed across the sand to use a wand of curing on the tiger which was still engaged in fighting the dwarf (who was even now being aerially assaulted by his flying-but-dominated comrade).
At this point, however, the windmill-blades began to spin, and I was treated to the vision of the tiny pixie hurtling through the air past me, screaming imprecations at the designers of the arena as the gale-force winds sent him tumbling. I managed to just about keep my footing, whilst the tremendous winds did little more than ruffle the fur on the huge tiger, and didn’t significantly disturb Igmut’s 15 foot mass.
The tiger I was standing next to managed to claw and bite at the nearby dwarf, whilst the second tiger dashed the length of the arena to slam into the other (still stupefied) dwarf and tore him limb form limb. Between this bloody sight and where I stood, I could see Endo crash to the floor as he ceased his time as a pixie. He lay there, casting a spell which sapped away much of the strength from the surviving fighting dwarf, whose two blows were both thwarted thanks to the blur effect on the tiger.
The dominated dwarf snatched his still-fighting comrade by the shoulders and started trying to heave him skywards, at which point Igmut trampled through the heavy winds and slammed his spear into the dwarves, killing one, and driving the spear deeply into the belly of the other who was struggling to lift his comrade. The dwarf, although dominated, was then savaged by tigers and spear as he tried to fly away, before he finally managed to hurtle skywards and a voice echoed across the arena.
“Competitor is disqualified! Victory for the Rough Diamonds!”
As the windmill stopped, the wind died down and I realised that the crowd were screaming their approval. Letting the invisibility spells fade, I raised my arms to celebrate with them. Looking around, the only person who wasn’t celebrating was Raknian, who looked furious at our having defeated his house team.
We saw his fury up close, as he handed us our trophy (made of silver with a fighting dwarf etched rather ironically onto its surface), together with a large bag of gold.
We retired to cure our wounds, and prepare for our combat against the winners of the other teams. As the victorious other groups came down, we learned that the dragon had been defeated by the soldiers, whilst Auric and his band of three stone golems had made short work of the ‘Crazy Eight’ monks.
One of us would be fighting a monster (which we had already learned was a ‘frost salamander’), whilst the other two teams were slated to fight one another.
Igmut cast a spell of divination, asking Kord about what was to happen on the last day of the games. He later described to us all a terrible vision of a deep crevasse opening up in the centre of the arena as tens of thousands watched the spectacle.
Similar Threads
