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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 6551028" data-attributes="member: 1210">So the moment had come. The party began their attack run, their spelljamming vessel speeding them through the Astral Sea at the corpse covered with corpses. As they did so, the meteor defenses activated. Propelled by magical engines, half a dozen house-sized rocks, painted silver to better blend in against the astral background, began to accelerate toward the incoming ship. When they had gotten halfway there, the more observant members of the group spied the closest incoming meteor, but there was little they could do to avoid or outrun it. Helplessly, they watched as it sped closer- and then smashed into their ship to devastating effect. The impact threw many of the heroes and their allies prone, killed many of the minions and badly damaged the ship.The group had assigned an apprentice wizard from the Delphinate to pilot for them; but the impact snapped his neck, so Professor Bolivar, the dakon scientist, scrambled into the helm, shaking with fear, and took over. "I won't be able to monitor my instruments and pilot at the same time!" he warned the pcs. (Bolivar is a specialist in temporal mechanics, and he had constructed an apparatus to monitor the temporal shenanigans going on.) One thing at a time, Bolivar- first, to get to the corpse before the next meteor. The pcs got really lucky here. There was a very good chance that two more of the meteors would hit before they got to the body, but Bolivar's piloting check was a natural 20, so he managed to maneuver the spelljammer in under the left armpit of Tenebrous, the party and their npcs tossed rope ladders over the side, and down they went! Bolivar and a few members of the group stayed on board, withdrawing the vessel to an adequate distance and letting Bolivar get to his instruments (the meteor defenses didn't target retreating vessels, only incoming ones). Now they were on the body, which seemed to be shaking apart. Cracks formed. Thunderous booms echoed through the astral void. Violent seismic-like events kept shaking them, killing more of their minions and throwing many from their feet- but, so far, there was no true opposition. Meanwhile, Mulmeer brought the rest of their strike force through to the corpse from Maltar's sanctuary, and Dianthus, the party's pixie vampire, used one of her soaring rake abilities to imbue a large group of the strike force with flying, letting most of them avoid the seismic dangers. Bodies were everywhere, ghastly piles of dead fanatics and seekers of Fray's kind of immortality. Mulmeer found a pile of snow, indicating that his speculation about simulacra was likely correct. But there was still no sign of life. Then, at last, one of our heroes spied a black vapor that was emitting from the mouth of the great stony corpse- a mouth that was well over a hundred feet across. As they approached, a blast of acid came out from the shadows, and the pcs found the first batch of defenders that were still alive (but how??)- some of Fray's minions. But powerful ones (they were more of the lvl 28 minion brutes mentioned above). A brief skirmish, then the heroes and their army were through, the blasted and hacked corpses of their foes left behind them. They flew down the vast mouth and into the throat of Tenebrous, where an open portal to a demiplane answered the "how are these guys still alive" conundrum- they had been on a different plane when the ritual had been completed! And then a mass of Fray's personal guards attacked, rushing forward from within the portal, along with many more of the minions. Fray herself stayed in the demiplane; the portal was such that attacks could pass through it, so she slung spells from it while her guards formed an impenetrable front line, bogging down the pcs' fire titan and sword saint allies and beginning to hack them to pieces. Worse yet, the personal guards were almost impossible for the pcs or their allies to hit. (AC 46; each has an aura that gives adjacent allies +2 to AC and Reflex, +1 per additional adjacent personal guard- so, at least initially, some of them were sporting an AC of 49 or 50!) Meanwhile, the minions made good use of their acid bolts, which did damage to adjacent creatures upon hitting; in these crowded confines, with all these targets, splash damage was almost inevitable. The body continued to break and crumble as the pcs made a heroic effort to storm the demiplane. Shifty managed to pull a very good trick, using a power gained from his paragon path (a custom one, Gnomish Illuminatus) to pull the unseen strings. Even though it missed Fray, it was extremely effective ("Miss: The target is dominated until the start of your next turn"), especially since Fray's growing mastery of time was now giving her three turns per round. Though he could have forced her to attack her allies, Shifty made a much more cunning choice. One of the group's greatest fears was Fray's robes of the archmagi (which allow her to maximize her damage once per day at the cost of half her full hps) mixed with her archaic (which is to say, 20d6) fireball. They had tasted its sting before. So Shifty had her take her robes off with her first turn; then, on her second, toss them out the demiplane's portal; and on her third turn, pass her staff to him. Then he used an exodus knife to carve a small demiplane-within-the-demiplane and jumped in, hoping to get her to waste time coming after the staff.Instead, Fray teleported past the pcs trying to bring her down, fled the demiplane and regained her robes. THings were ugly, but Dirk the Daring, the party's dragonborn warlord, was amazing. He kept the fire titans on their feet much longer that I would've believed possible, which in turn helped keep Fray's personal guard tied down in their line. The place was shaking about every round, huge chunks of rubble crushing people on both sides, and then it got worse- for Orcus arrived, announced by his aura of death.Dianthus flew up to him and tried to persuade him to simply go, but Orcus announced, "You are a devil and I am a demon- and YOU WILL DIE!!"And he was right. He touched her with the Wand of Orcus, and with a shriek, Dianthus died. (My version of Orcus' death touch with his wand, on a hit: "Take damage equal to your maximum hit points and lose three healing surges. If you don't have 3 surges, you die.")</blockquote>

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