Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3962659" data-attributes="member: 143">Saracek's power, while considerable for level 2 of the dungeon (where he's originally found; remember the group bypassed him on their first visit), is now barely enough to qualify him for "minion" status. But Maphistal is a whole other ball park.* * * * * Chapter 323THE RIGHT HAND OF ORCUS“Oh, hell, not him again,” Dar said.  As it had before, in the third temple of Orcus, the voice of the demon sounded in their minds, blasting away even their own thoughts as each word pounded at their consciousness.  “I told you that your souls would be the instrument for the end of your world.  Your pathetic attempts to resist have merely delayed the inevitable; everything that you have done has been to further the will of my Master.”Dar, quivering with rage, tore himself free of the demon’s compulsion.  “You can tell your freaking Master that we’re coming for him next, once we kill his dog!”The demon’s voice came again, a crashing wave that blasted down upon them with the sheer force of its will. “Your companions, they already serve the Great Lord.  Now, it is time for you to join them.”Several things happened at once.  Maphistal gestured, and a trio of hezrou demons materialized in front of it, slavering and eager for destruction.  Saracek and its undead minions surged forward, only to stop as Allera erected a repulsion field around them.  But the three-headed abyssal hound, Revirax, shrugged through both that and the hold monster spell that Letellia tried to place upon it.  Behind it the mind flayer tried to seize control of Dar’s mind, but was unsuccessful against the protection of Allera’s holy aura.  Varo finished his own summoning, and three fiendish girallons appeared in an arc facing their enemies.  The one on the left found itself adjacent to the giant hound, and it lashed out with a claw, ignoring the fact that the creature had to outweigh it by a factor of at least three.  The girallon’s attack had almost no effect, but it drew Revirax’s fury upon it.  Two of the creature’s heads snapped down onto it, seizing an arm and its shoulder.  With a shake of its body the arm came off in a bloody mess, and as the ape flailed with futility it caught its throat in its third set of jaws, and put an end to it.  The hezrous quickly joined the fracas, two of them firing off a chaos hammer and an unholy blight while the last charged forward to face the second girallon.  The toad-demon and fiendish ape met in a violent flurry of clawing and biting that ended with both of them tumbling to the ground, ensnared in a deadly grapple.  On the other flank, four of the ju-ju zombies had mustered the will to penetrate Allera’s barrier, driven by some vestige of the hatred that had motivated them in life.  Varo’s third girallon intercepted them before they could get to the healer and sorceress.  The creature eschewed subtlety, seizing one of the undead clerics and lifting it above its head before hurling it violently across the room.  The zombie struck the far wall with enough force to shatter bones, but it merely shrugged and staggered back to its feet.  The other three zombies lashed out at it with their weapons, delivering powerful blows that left ugly bruises on the girallon’s legs and torso. Dar stepped up to Revirax as the slain girallon dissolved in a slick of black smoke.  The hound sensed him coming and shot out a bloody head to seize him before he could draw near enough to strike.  The fighter dodged under the snapping jaws, taking a blow across his back that staggered but did not stop him.  Once inside its reach, he brought Valor up in a blur, cutting across its neck.  The hound’s flesh was like boiled leather, but the axiomatic blade bit deep, and blood splashed all over the fighter from the terrible wound.  A terrible roar echoed from all three of the hound’s heads, and it reared it, bringing all three heads to bear.  A gout of flame filled the angled corner of the room, engulfing all of the companions.  The protections they’d surrounded themselves with offered some defense, but all of them were burned to some extent by the flames.  Dar lunged forward to strike the hound before it could recover, but Maphistal struck first, uttering a word of blasphemy.The demon’s fell power echoed through the chamber.  Allera and Dar each felt strength sluicing from their bodies, and Letellia groaned and toppled over, paralyzed.  Only Varo was not affected, and the girallons, which drank in the evil of such magic like mother’s milk.  Varo raised his divine focus and presented it boldly at the demon.  A second icon, a silver torch, dangled from his wrist, along with a small device that was not fully distinguishable.  “In the name of the gods of man, BEGONE!”Maphistal’s laughter echoed through their minds.  “You are going to have to do better than that, human.”The demon’s allies redoubled their attacks.  The mind flayer shifted position and unleashed a mind blast that tore into the defenders.  Revirax and one of the hezrous were caught in the cone of mental power, but the hound was a powerful, hoary old beast, and it was not affected.  The hezrou and the girallon it was wrestling were both stunned, but the other two toad-demons eagerly leapt in to take advantage, seizing the dazed ape and tearing it to pieces with their claws and teeth.  The companions withstood the mind blast, but with Dar it was a narrow thing.  Clutching his head, weakened by the blasphemy, his assault on the hound was feeble, managing only one successful hit that opened little more than a flesh wound in its meaty shoulder.  The hound’s counterattack was anything but feeble. Dar cried out as the hound’s two uninjured heads converged on him.  One set of jaws crushed down on his right arm, pinning Valor and savaging the limb through his protective greaves and leather.  But even as the bone of his forearm was crushed through the pressure, the hound’s other head engulfed his shoulder.  The dragonhide scales held, but the ribs beneath could not, and blood exploded from the fighter’s lips as shards of bone pierced his lung.“Pathetic,” Maphistal said, pointing at Allera and calling upon its magic once more.  Before the demon’s power the healer’s spells collapsed like fragile glass beneath an iron boot.  Her holy aura winked out, and more significantly her repulsion field collapsed.  Undead and demons surged forward, eager to bring the battle to a rapid end.</blockquote>

Verification