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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3324777" data-attributes="member: 143">Let the week'o'beatdown commence...  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Here's a quote from the module:Will this prediction be borne out? Stay tuned!* * * * * Chapter 97IT’S ONThe huge wolverine, its eyes blazing red, let out an angry bellow and started lumbering forward toward the row of acolytes.  A fireball shot past it, exploding into a bright sphere of flame near the edge of the pentagram.  Several of the acolytes caught within the blast screamed and fell, their skin reduced to blackened char.  A split second later, a perfectly structured grid of cascading blue energy materialized in the center of the room, sizzling as it impacted the protective auras of the pentagram and the Sphere of Souls.  Valus’s order’s wrath killed two more acolytes and seriously injured a pair of senior priests.  The vrock shrieked as the spell cut brightly glowing lines across its torso, but the blue energy fizzled as it hit the glabrezu, and likewise Gudmund simply shrugged off the worst of the spell. An arrow went flying at the high priest, bringing with it a silence spell.  But this time Varo’s tactic failed to have an effect, as the missile glanced off the powerful cleric’s magical armor, and caromed off past the altar into the back of the room, where it could have no effect upon the battle.  Other arrows went flying toward other targets; one pierced a heavily burned priest’s arm, while another bounced off the armored carapace of the glabrezu, doing no damage. In the wake of the dire wolverine’s charge, a trio of fiendish apes loped forward into the room, looking for foes to tear apart with their claws.  Behind them came the companions, led by Dar, with Valor shining with blue light in his hand. The cult forces had suffered heavy damage in the initial volley of spells; only three acolytes of the initial ten remained standing, mostly due to luck in where they’d been standing in the room.  The four senior priests were still on their feet but likewise showed heavy wounds; they stood next to three bound, limp forms laid within the pattern of runes that formed part of the inlaid magical circle in the floor.  Beyond that it was difficult to see clearly, due to the shifting field of wild, radiant energies that shone from a bright object atop the room’s central altar.  The high priest was a man-sized blur, flanked by a pair of fiends straight from the darkest pits of the Abyss.  There was another figure in the room as well, a bulbous humanoid thing several times the size of a man, but it could not be clearly distinguished through the blur effect thrown off by the Sphere. Gudmund lifted his arms and called to Orcus, evoking a blade barrier that split the room in two, separating most of the cult forces from the invaders.   The three surviving acolytes were left on the far side of the wall of blades with the companions, fodder to delay the attackers.  They accepted that role with aplomb, rushing forward to engage Varo’s summoned creatures. They did not fare well.  The huge wolverine merely lifted a claw and crushed one of the cultists beneath it, barely breaking its stride.  The apes hopped forward and fell upon the other two with similar relish, tearing them apart with their muscled arms.  The acolytes died messily, calling upon their god. The blade barrier formed a shimmering wall across the room, their enemies just vague shapes behind it.  Shay and Malerase continued to fire their bows, but the arrows were deflected by the swirling blades of the magical wall, having no effect. “Zosimos!” Varo shouted.  “Can you bring down the barrier?”The wizard, sheltered by a bevy of mirror images and a magical shield, shrugged.  “Why bother?  My attacks are not foiled by such.”  To prove his point, he summoned an ice storm that came blasting down on the far side of the blade barrier, the huge hailstones blasting into the priests and their fiendish allies. “Damn it, we need to engage them before they can buff up!  Just do it!” Varo yelled.The wizard shrugged, and began casting again. Dar and Talen had rushed forward to join the summoned creatures at the edge of the barrier.  The fiendish monsters hesitated, but for a moment, it looked like Dar wasn’t going to stop.  Finally, though, he drew up short, his face twisted with frustration. “We’ve got to get through this!” “Let the wizard bring it down!” Talen returned.  He saw something through the blades, and pointed with his sword.  “Something’s coming through!”  Dar saw it too, and drew back into a ready position as the hulking form approached the barrier from the other side.  It stepped through Gudmund’s wall, but the magical blades passed through it as though it wasn’t even there.  It was a hulking, humanoid monstrosity, a construct of living clay that stood well over eight feet tall.  The dire wolverine slashed at it with a claw as it came forward, but the creature’s sharp talons sliced through its clay body with absolutely no effect upon it.  The golem countered with a powerful smash that hit the creature in the shoulder; Dar and Talen could hear its bones cracking from ten paces away. Dar let out a yell and charged at it, with Talen moving to flank it from the other side.  But the golem’s reach was considerable, and it brought a huge fist around that smacked hard into Dar’s shoulder, spinning him half around, driving him to his knees.  As the fighter shook his head to clear it, Varo’s otherplanar creatures surged forward to join the attack.  Before they could reach it, however, they shimmered and vanished, dispelled back to whence they came.  Dar looked up in alarm as the clay golem lumbered forward, its huge fists coming up to finish what it had started.</blockquote>

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