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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 1455" data-attributes="member: 114">Late afternoon on Markday they return to the amphitheatre and pick up K’tan, then head off to the bookshop in West Hill. Crail scouts around the alleyway behind the bookshop and disables the lock on the rear door, to make sure that nobody is going to be leaving that way in a hurry. Then they meet up around the front again. The shop appears to have been doing its customary poor trade, and nobody is inside, so they enter. “Yesss?” intones the obsequious bookkeeper from behind his counter. “What can I do for you? Have you got that pretty witch with you again so I could SEE her? (snigger snigger)”. Disgusted by this foul pervert, Crail walks around the counter and tears down the curtain to the back room, revealing yet more bookshelves, a stairwell and a large cupboard.“Hey, what do you think you’re doing!” cries the bookkeeper - then Lysander steps up to him and picks him up by the throat “Tell us about the cabal, you scum” he says, menacingly. The bookkeeper isn’t intimidated. “I don’t know what you’re talking about” he replies, choking. “Wait” says Crail. “I can hear some strange, manic humming in here”. He opens the door and a horrific gibbering sound fills the room, as a mound of flesh covered all over with eyes and mouths spills out into the room in front of him! Steeling his nerves against the horrific sounds, he strikes at the creature to no avail. Three of its mouths launch out on tentacles and latch hold of him, sinking deep into his flesh. Three more lash out and grab Azrin too. In desperation, Azrin drinks two of the potions they found earlier - and he finds his feet levitate off the floor and his outline becomes blurred and shifting. Lysander takes a step into the room, and against the better judgement of his conscience casts the bookkeeper into the midst of the aberration, where he is engulfed. K’tan concentrates and the sound of a low hum builds rapidly into a crescendo of a shout and the open door next to the creature is shattered as if by a blow.Lysander moves in to the attack and calls upon Asura to bless his blade. Asura says "NO". DMs note: he should have listened to his conscience...Both Crail and Azrin feel themselves weaken as blood is drained from them by the awful sucking mouths. Worse, Azrin is tugged off his feet and enveloped into the centre of the heaving mass and feels a dozen more small mouths biting at him! Another soundless shout comes from K’tan and a portion of the doorframe is blown into splinters. The power is there, but his aim today is rotten. (DMs note: Concussion is a ranged touch attack which can affect objects in my campaign). In desperation Crail whips out the wand he got from one of the cabalists earlier and attempts to suss out how to use it - somehow he is successful, and the wand crackles with electricity - he swings at the creature and electricity lances into its amorphous form, felling it with the shocking grasp. As it collapses into a stinking pile of goo, Azrin floats up from its midst. Among the remains on the floor is a partially devoured and bloodless husk of the bookkeeper......Action hotting up a bit now, and Lysander has made a bad mistake in his actions here. While not quite going as far as stripping him of his Jazumaihood (aka Paladinhood), Asura is certainly withholding certain benefits and graces until atonement is made. Oh dear.</blockquote>

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