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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 325271" data-attributes="member: 114">They reach the clearing around the meeting stones as the shadows are drawing longer along the ground. If one was imaginative you could almost visualise claws of shadow reaching out from the stones towards you.While K’tan and Anne-Marie keep a watch from the edge of the clearing, Trajan and Arilyn move forward to investigate the ring of standing stones. As they are creeping up towards the edge of the ring, Arilyn thinks she hears a faint snatch of Archaic being spoken off in the woods to the far side...Without further warning, a pillar of fire descends down from the heavens, engulfing Trajan and Arilyn. They both throw themselves to the side, Trajan rolls to his feet again while Arilyn stays down. Trajan’s eyes narrow as he sees six shadows glide out from the meeting stones themselves, and bear down upon him.Meanwhile, Anne-Marie has spotted a figure gesturing in the woods around the other side of the clearing. She leaps into action, running pell-mell through the trees at the edge of the clearing, each step springing several strides in her magic boots. She covers 180ft in less than six seconds, and arrives to see Henwen, the deranged woman from the graveyard, smiling cruelly. Henwen completes some syllables and lashes out with a hand dripping with black ichor - it sprays over Anne-Maries shoulder and she shudders as poison eats away at her. Unperturbed, she strikes forwards with the new rapier from Saithnar, running Henwen right though the ribs! The evil shaman gasps...Trajan doesn’t want to take any chances with the shadows, and calls upon Asura to disperse them. With the added force of presence granted him by Saithnars circlet, the power of Asura flows through him and blows like a wind through the shadows, dispersing their incorporeal substance into nothing. “Good job too” whispers the badly wounded Arilyn lying by his feet.K’tan has started jogging across the clearing to help Anne-Marie in her fight when suddenly he is faced by four more shadows which had been hidden in the dappled light of the clearing. As they reach out one of them strikes true and, not being a strong fellow, he feels fully half his strength drain away. He is very robust against ordinary attacks, but these undead can quickly kill him if he is not careful!Henwen knows she is badly wounded, so her outline blurs and she changes form to a Black Bear, incidentally healing some of her wounds. In recent weeks Anne-Marie has seen undead wights, fiends from the pits of hell and dragons that freeze the flesh off your bones. A bear just isn’t that frightening any more. She steps in close to the bear and thrusts her rapier up, under its chin and piercing into Henwen-bears brain. Stepping lightly back, she watches dispassionately as the bear collapses onto the ground, and returns to its normal raggedy human form.At the same time, K’tan is rescued from the shadows by Trajan, who once again calls upon the power of Asura, and once again the shadows are swept away as if by a divine wind. Trajan then turns to Arilyn, kneels down, and the healing power of Asura flows through his hands and across her wounds, healing the worst of the burns she experienced. K’tan helps Anne-Marie take appropriate herbs, and she is able to resist the secondary effects of the nasty poison which she had been infected with.Searching around, they find little here other than the evidence of non-human skeletons in the long grass - if anyone was betrayed here, it wasn’t human villagers. Henwen has a long black staff, with a black-painted skull on one end. They are not sure what it is for, but are certain that it is of evil design and nature, so they break the staff and leave the portions here.Just then, a haunting melody floats across the clearing. A song follows, in a strange language but one which is hauntingly familiar. As one, the company is transfixed, enraptured by the beauty of the sound...to be continued.DMnote: I had expected this encounter to be somewhat more challenging than it turned out to be... the PC's dice suddenly found favour with them! Anne-Marie struck two blows, both critical hits for triple damage. The first one nearly crippled Henwen, she recovered some hit points via the wildshape and then the second one took her straight out. Then Trajan goes and rolls a 20 on his first turning attempt and a 20 on his second, dispersing all the shadows.  [edit] Doh! I just realised that since he doesn't have double the shadows HD in *class levels* they should have been turned rather than destroyed. Doh! [/edit] </blockquote>

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