The Headsman’s Whore, continued.
Two of the towering fire spirits converge on Dabus’ lion, entwining it with snake-like coils of flame. The lion bursts afire, is crushed, and then disappears.
Heydricus leaps on the insecticore, slicing into one of its back legs with his characteristic ferocity, but the beast is simply too large to dispatch quickly. Underneath its belly, Dabus invokes his
feat of strength, and breaks free. He is instantly set upon by the fire elementals and golems.
Gwendolyn responds admirably, considering her inexperience with this sort of all-out mayhem, and casts a
prismatic spray across her foes’ line. Two of the fire elementals are instantly transformed into stone, and fall to the deck, shattering into a hundred finely-sculpted flames. The last elemental is whisked away to another plane, never to return.
- Metagame note: Gwendolyn the hero? The insecticore made its save against the prismatic spray by the feelers of it’s chinny, chin chin, doing so only by the grace of the protection from good emanating from the deck of the Headsman’s Whore.
Heydricus slices into the bug-like monstrosity one more time for good measure, then uses the last remaining token on his
bracelet of friends to call Prisantha out from under the beast, and to his side. Prisantha takes a quick assessment of the situation and
dispels the fear effect that has seized Elijah.
The insecticore turns its attention on Dabus, and nearly slices him in two with one of its massive pincers, but is partially foiled by Dabus’
circlet of minor displacement. Dabus turns to the creature and stabs through its exoskeleton, drawing a thick, ochre fluid to the surface. Tritherion must surely have His hand on His cleric, as Dabus’ circlet seems to also confound the golems attempting to smash him with their heavy limbs.
- Metagame Note: Whatever my dice may think of the other Liberators, they apparently love Dabus. Dabus’ 20% miss chance allowed him to avoid no less than eight blows (including two confirmed critical hits) over the first five rounds of the fight!
Several gnoll archers begin to muster along the top of the aftcastle, and Gwendolyn responds by sealing the back portion of the vessel behind a
wall of force. Just as she completes her spell, Gwendolyn notices that Sunifarel has poked his head out of the double-doors in the aftcastle. The elven wizard points a finger at her, but his
magic missiles are deflected harmlessly by the unseen
wall. Sunifarel curses and slams the door shut.
Freed from her magical fright, Elijah attacks two of the remaining golems, and is slammed by them in response. At the other end of the deck, Dabus passes inside the insecticore’s reach, and runs it through its multi-chambered heart with his
holy spear. The creature shudders once, and its writhing heads fall to the deck, acidic drool dribbling from between metallic teeth. Dabus reverses his spear, and punctures one of the stone golems, severing an arm.
Heydricus readies his
wand of fireballs, and evokes a firey burst about the head of the massive zombie. The creature wheezes its displeasure through the hole in its chest, but does not seem to be greatly harmed.
At that moment, a second insecticore emerges from what must be a hole in the roof of the aftcastle. The thing buzzes its wings, but runs into the
wall of force, and all three heads cast about looking for the source of the obstacle, as its wings beat frantically to give it enough elevation to rise above the
wall. Gwendolyn flies well above her
wall, and directs a
disintegrate beam at the monstrosity, but the spell merely burns a hole through one of its necks, instead of evaporating it outright.
The golems fighting Elijah surround her, and after a flurry of metallic and stony blows, she cries out for healing. Dabus rushes to her side, and between the two of them one of the golems is destroyed.
Prisantha follows her cohort’s
disintegration ray and notices the insecticore at the other end of the ship. She targets it with a
hold monster, and the flying creature collapses upon the gnoll archers, immoblilzed.
At this point, Regda is able to crawl out from under the insecticore corpse, and she pulls Jespo free. The wily conjurer surrounds the collosus at the prow with a field of
black tentacles, and the inky tendrils lash out and begin to constrict every part of the zombie that can be seized upon. The zombie rips one tentacle from the ground with a childlike glee, and begins using it to smash the other pseudopods, but its efforts are a lost cause. Within moments, the things have immobilized the zombie, and begin to destroy its structural integrity. One massive severed arm falls to the deck, its meat
squeezed from the bone.
At that moment, Prisantha is struck in the back by a crossbow bolt. Lucius has emerged, mere feet from where he disappeared, and as he shoots the Enchantress, he mutters, “Here’s for what the Temple should have given you.” Unfortunately for all that is Eeeevil, the bolt fails to penetrate Prisantha’s
protection from arrows spell, and the best result the virulent deathtounge poison can achieve is staining Prisantha’s new adventuring gown.
Elijah is struck again by a golem, and badly hurt, she backs away from the fighting, returning to the spot she had cowered in just a few moments earlier. She drinks a
healing potion, but even as she does so, she notices over the lip of the flask several figures massed together within one of the circular openings in the aftcastle wall.
The Boneshadow have finally come out to play, and they are no more than ten feet from her.
At the fore of the opening, a huge human covered head to toe in spiked black plate armor sits astride a horse seemingly composed of night-smoke and the promise of pain. “May I?” he asks.
Without waiting for a reply, the man kicks a pair of
ghost touch spurs into the flank of his spectral mount, and overruns Elijah’s position, beheading her with one clean stroke, his mount clearing the bulwark with a prodigious leap, then hovering just beyond the vessel. Lord Dorag, at your service.
On the other side of the deck, Jespo turns on the former Hero of the Temple, and with a sneer that seems to say “It should have been you, Lucius,” envelops the cadaverous assassin in an
acidic fog. “Take that, you fiend!” Jespo crows. Unlike the barbaric giants of last Spring, Lucius does not do him the courtesy of screaming.
Trapped within the
acid fog, the entity that calls itself Lucius makes a decision. “You will never have this body,” it hisses, and slowly climbs through the spitting acidic fog until it reaches the bulwark railing. Then, in a final act of spite, it throws itself off the rail, falling to the ground, where it is caught in the bone-studded wheels of the
Headsman’s Whore and ground into a fine, bloodless paste.
As Jespo watches this scene, an unattended iron golem tromps over to his position, and attempts to pulverize the frail conjurer. Regda has other ideas, however, and nobly intervenes, taking the blows meant for Jespo. She is no helpless meat-shield, however, and she begins an exchange of ideas with the towering construct. The golem argues its position that a grievous head-wound might improve her looks, whereas she counters that one cannot smash into pulp what one cannot strike, and puts forth her own contention that a well-enchanted sword is sharp enough to work its way through even iron, provided it is swung with enough conviction. The golem’s left arm agrees with her, and drops heavily to the deck.
Unfortunately for Regda, she is not entirely up to the intellectual challenge, and the other arm proves a most convincing orator in its own right. Regda is soon wobbling on unsteady legs, her helm driven into her scalp with enough force to cause a rivulet of blood to run down her face and into her armor.
Left alone to face the four other golems by Elijah’s retreat, it is only through the intervention of
minor displacement that Dabus is able to avoid their pummeling fists. The golems have no such protections, however, and Dabus punishes them with multiple thrusts of his spear. Heydricus flies over to join him, and the two stalwarts of Tritherion Liberate the animus-spirits trapped within the golems with a ferocious onslaught.
As the golems are collapsing into piles of inanimate stone and iron, a familiar buzzing is heard from the prow, and a third insecticore, this one even larger than the previous two, crawls over the bulwark, whipping its scorpion-tail back and forth.
But Dabus’
true seeing is not fooled, and he shouts, “it is an illusion!”
At Dabus’ cry, a formerly unseen gnome curses loudly from his position next to Elijah’s rolling head, and puts on a comically exaggerated frown that might even be cute, were it not located directly beneath a pair of the cruelest eyes anyone present has ever had the misfortune of looking into. “You die last,” the gnome promises Dabus. “And after I’ve forced your soul back into your broken body for all eternity, you’ll
die forever.” Gleed the Halfman is not the sort of gnome who makes promises lightly.
As Gleed hisses his threat, a hidden halfling rogue steps out from behind the gnome, and targets Gwendolyn with a trio of arrows, launched in a sneak attack. Gwendolyn’s
stoneskin helps her resist the damage somewhat, and certainly saves her life, but she is pierced cruelly, and cries out, fumbling in her pouch for healing potions.
Prisantha will not have her new best friend killed on their first adventure, and she sweeps the battlefield with a
horrid wilting, centered on the foul gnome. Dabus turns to the diminuative tyrant as well, leveling his spear, but before he can charge, a massive purple worm emerges from the center hole in the aftcastle, and lashes forward, opening its four-part maw wide, revealing rows of jagged teeth and nearly swallowing Dabus whole. But the thing strikes the spot where Dabus appears to be, and instead of sweeping the cleric into its mouth, it strikes him a glancing blow. Puffing forth a frustrated gout of dust from its blow-holes, the thing contracts back into its hole, and is gone.
Prisantha is suddenly frozen in place, a victim of an empowered
hold person coming from the gnome. Jespo, torn by Regda’s plight, but helpless against the magic-immune golem, decides to come to Prisantha’s aid, but his
dispel magic is not strong enough to undo Gleed’s binding.
Heydricus has taken note of Regda’s wounds, and
flies to her side, flanking the golem, and finishing it off with one mighty blow. That settled, he favors the horse-faced warrior with his most dashing grin, and uses his wand to set off a
fireball directly in front of the gnome, setting the little wizard on fire, and sending him running aimlessly about the deck.
“I’ve got your ‘forever’,” Heydricus says. And to the halfling he adds, “you can suck fire too, Griswald.” Heydricus, it can be seen, knows his Boneshadow by heart.
Gwendolyn takes a cue from Heydricus and levels a
lightning bolt at Griswald. But the nimble halfling evades both spell effects with a laugh. His enthused expression would seem appropriate on a child making its first visit to the Magical Menagerie, but on an adventurer locked in combat to the death, it seems entirely misplaced and psychotic.
An elven archer emerges from the opening, and follows Griswald’s gaze to where Gwendolyn hovers in mid-air, dripping blood in a forty-foot stream, where it is greedily soaked up by the deck. The archer speaks a repetitive mantra under his breath, and releases a trio of arrows at Gwendolyn, undoing her recent
healing. Gwendolyn gasps with perhaps her first-ever taste of true mortal fear, and begins to descend to the deck and Dabus’ side, beseeching him with her eyes to
do something about all this blood.
Dabus, however, is more concerned with Prisantha at the moment, and he invokes Tritherion’s Heart to undo the Enchantment that holds her still. Tritherion despises confinement, after all, and with a flash of light, Prisantha is free.
Dorag nods at some unspoken command, and rears his ghostly stallion about, then charges towards Gwendolyn, clearly intent on giving her the same make-over he just gave Elijah. “Onsies and twosies, old ones or breeding, Dorag the Butcher leaves all the girls bleeding,” the gigantic brute sings to himself inside his horned helm.
But Dorag cannot
see invisible, and does not realize that his low-flying path will take him directly past both Heydricus and Dabus. Heydricus points to Dorag’s mount, and Dabus nods. The mount’s momentum adds velocity to Heydricus’ massive swing, and just after the burly sorcerer rips a four-foot long gash in the creature’s flank, Dabus
stops its forward momentum on the end of his spear, his heels digging in to the deck of the
Headsman’s Whore. Dorag pitches forward over his mount’s head, and sprawls at the feet of Prisantha, Jespo and Regda.
Prisantha seizes the opportunity to
suggest that Dorag might wish to put down his sword and relax for a few moments—it’s been a hard day.
“Dorag finished killing women for stupid gnome,” Dorag agrees, raising his visor and grinning stupidly through a mouthful of broken teeth. “Maybe make you slave now.”
“You are so mighty, Dorag,” Jespo coos. “Perhaps a demonstration of your strength is in order. You should go to the prow, and destroy those
black tentacles with your bare hands.” This second
suggestion is as effective as the first, and within moments, the Butcher of Molag has picked a fist-fight with a field of writhing, pseudonatural pythons.
Dabus, satisfied that the wizards to his rear are safe, turns to the wizardess directly in front of him. He
heals Gwendolyn, Tritherion’s grace restoring her instantly to perfect wellness and health.
“There,” he says warmly. “You should be . . .” his words trail off as he notices the sudden slackness of Gwendolyn’s fetching features.
Delaying for the
heal spell, Keak the archer just
feebleminded her.
“Damnit!” Dabus curses, frustration plain on his honest face.
“Killer” Keak laughs at Dabus’ rage, and takes cover within his hole, just as Gwendolyn is shot three more times by the halfling, who had found a new hiding spot in the general confusion. The wizardess slumps in Dabus’ arms, slipping into shock.
“You . . . f-ckers . . .
f-ck!” Dabus sets Gwendolyn down, and tears off his cloak, murder in his eyes.
But he will have to be faster than Heydricus if he wants to kill this halfling, and he is not. Heydricus reaches the Halfling’s position with an
expeditious charge and skewers the tiny sociopath, raising the impaled body over his head, then smashing it to the deck with a victorious yell.
Dabus readies a
flame strike, and promises himself that if that smear twitches,
it’s going to get it.
At this point, Regda has joined Heydricus’ side in front of Keak’s opening, and as she does so, “Killer” Keak steps out from his hiding place, with his hands in the air. “Okay, hey, how is everybody? Are we all calm, here?” he asks amiably. “Look, I’m surrendering.” He removes his sword-belt and quiver. As he regards the murderous expressions of the Liberators, he begins to speak more quickly. “I know a lot of you are upset, and you should be. But the fight’s over, you won. I’m the guy who knows things about a lot of things, and let’s face it,
speak with dead pretty much sucks. What do you say?”
As Dabus turns to Gwendolyn, and restores her with a second
heal, Keak says, “Oh good—you got that? I was just about to take that off her.”
Heydricus glares at the man, but Prisantha uses her
message spell to whisper that she, for one, thinks he might be more useful alive than dead.
For the first time since they
charmed Zinvellon’s assassin in the Temple of Elemental Evil, the Liberators of Tenh take a prisoner.
