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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 9759260" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 5: AN ORDINARY DAY IN ELSEWHEREPC Roster:  Amris Goodwitch, celestial elf witch (wizard) 2                     Avoroth Bleakborn, fiendish human cleric 2                     Gonkle Bu'Onk, fiendish orc fighter 2                     Wilbur Von Schattenwalde, shadow human druid 2Game Session Date: 17 September 2025 - - -It was a three-day trek due south back to the town of Elsewhere.  Halfway there, a voice spoke out of the empty air - a voice Avoroth recognized at once as the imp they'd discovered having a slap-fight with the quasit that had had the audacity to bite the Boccobian cleric and then flee before it could be slain for its effrontery."Hey, boss," the disembodied voice said from mid-air.  "I've been tracking that quasit, like you said.  It's been headed due south, and I've come across a trail of dead bodies - hobgoblins and goblins - it passed by on its way to this really strange town I never seen before.  I'd've entered the town, but I didn't like what little I saw of it.  There was a snake lady with six arms - I ain't messin' with no snake-lady with six arms!""An eminently practical attitude," Avoroth agreed, knowing full well the snake-lady in question was none other than the marilith Lady Kalistra, the leader in charge of combat training of the town's scout recruits.  "Do you happen to know whether the quasit made it to this strange town?""I gotta assume so, although I didn't actually see him enter.  He mostly stayed invisible.""Very well.  We shall go check out this 'strange town' and see if we can't find that damned quasit.  You have served me well...what did you say your name was?""Xylath," replied the invisible imp, likely giving a false name - but one that could be used perfectly well in a summon monster spell to specify this particular imp; Avoroth filed the name away for possible future use.  "You ever decide you need a familiar, just give me a call!"  Avoroth agreed he'd do just that and heard the flapping of batlike wings as the imp went about his way, off to seek redder pastures."Idiot," mumbled the cleric under his breath - as if he were a mere wizard, like Amris, fumbling around with his nose in a spellbook trying to figure out how to cast spells.  No, he was a cleric: a conduit through which the power of a god flowed!The rest of the trip was uneventful, and on the early morning of the third night of travel - they preferred hiking through the dark hours, as bright sunlight hurt Gonkle's weak, orcish eyes - they passed through the grain fields surrounding the town of Elsewhere.  The four scouts noted the three hellhound bodies had been removed since their last time passing through this area; no doubt they'd been added to someone's stewpot and their hides turned into leather.  "Waste not, want not" was the Elsewhere creed, for one never knew when they'd be spending the next year in an area of complete inhospitality, like the Negative Energy Plane or the endless deserts of some Abyssal layer.Once arriving at the town itself, they spoke to a guardsman about their findings.  "You'd best report to Father Solaire," recommended the guard.  "He'll want to know about your findings."Father Solaire, the solar who served as one of Elsewhere's four leaders, listened intently as the group of scouts told him of the barbed devil Grelthax the Vile and the dozen or so camps of fiendish humanoids he cycled through on a monthly patrol (giving him the approximate location of the one camp they knew about, far outside the arc of their assigned responsibility), as well as the location of the secret lair of the long-dead Vecnan lich and the walls of books that teleported back to their shelves when you tried to stuff them into an extradimensional space for transport.  "They'd make a decent start to a replacement library for the books the fire elementals destroyed," Avoroth pointed out."An excellent point," agreed Father Solaire, recalling the time, many shifts ago, when Elsewhere had been discovered on the Elemental Plane of Fire and had been attacked by a raiding party of local elementals.  The library, and several other of their buildings, had not fared too well before the elementals had been driven away or slain.  "You have done well, for being so new to the job.  Please, keep the black onyxes as a reward for your discoveries.  We'll send a team out to recover the books, and we'll warn the appropriate scout teams of the fiendish camps and the barbed devil.  In the meantime, please go see Angalvir the Blacksmith, as he'd like a field test of a new item he's created that might prove useful for future scout parties."  The group all knew Angalvir; he was an azer who had joined the plane-shifting town's members during that year on the Elemental Plane of Fire, and he made the majority of the armor and weapons used by the town guards and the scouts going out to explore each new plane.When they arrived at Angalvir's shop, things were not as they would have expected.  Usually, the sounds of the azer's hammer striking at the anvil could be heard from blocks away, but this time all was silent.  Once they were within sight of his shop, the reason for this uncustomary silence became readily apparent, for Angalvir was not stationed at his anvil: he was dangling a foot above the ground, gripping desperately onto an immovable rod hanging in mid-air.  Below him, a vast number of rats leaped and tried to catch hold of his boots or his pants in an effort to get in a bite or two.  The swarm of rats was made up of a variety of types, but the majority of them had a celestial appearance; not surprising, for the town had spent the last year parked on a celestial plane and any rats born in town then would have taken on that aspect during their gestation.  But celestial rats were just as hungry and fearsome as any normal rats, and these seemed determined to get to the dangling blacksmith.  Seeing the approaching group, he called out for help.Avoroth was the first to react.  He cast a bless spell on the group and moved forward, quarterstaff in hand, hoping to lure at least some of the rats away from the blacksmith by providing them with an alternate target.  Gonkle charged at the swarm of rats, crushing a swath of them under the head of his warhammer.  Surprised at the sudden attack, the rats in the immediate vicinity of those crushed to death started to flee, draining off about half of the overall number of rats in the blacksmith's open-air shop.Wilbur advanced next, but he was looking warily about, wondering if these were local rats that had just happened to target the azer blacksmith for their next meal or if they had been summoned by someone.  He cast a shillelagh spell on his runestaff and caught a bit of motion in the nearby alleyway; looking over that way, he saw a quartet of larger vermin: dire rats!  They were squeaking to each other, and the shadow druid couldn't help but notice each of them looked rather distinctive, with one obviously possessing a celestial heritage; one containing fiendish features; a third having traits from the Elemental Plane of Earth (for the jagged bits of stone piercing its furry body were quite a giveaway); and the last in all aspects seemingly no more than a normal dire rat.Tamaskan raced up beside her new druidic master and growled at the quartet, readying to attack any who might venture their way.  Amris came up behind the dire fell fox and cast a magic missile spell at the first dire rat she saw: the earth element one.  It leapt up in shock at the sudden blast of force energy and then, staggered by the magical assault, opened a hole in the street blow it and earth glided away.  Pivot, in the meantime, took to the air to see if there were any other threats in the immediate area.Over in the blacksmith's shop, the remaining rats split into two swarms, one heading for Avoroth and the other going for Gonkle.  Avoroth stepped back and slammed at the swarming rats with his new masterwork quarterstaff, crushing a skull or two and sweeping a slew of them away with the staff's tip.  Gonkle stood his ground as rats swarmed over his body, ignoring their numerous bites as he concentrated on crushing them with his hammer, but he found when rats are crawling over your face, it becomes rather difficult to focus - or target your hammer-blows.The fiendish dire rat charged at Amris, instinctively recognizing her as a celestial being and channeling smiting energy into its bite.  Fortunately for the witch, she was able to step aside at the last moment and the vile creature's jaws snapped shut on open air.  Then Pivot swooped down, raking his talons across the rat's back in defense of his mistress.  The celestial dire rat, in the meantime, went for Wilbur, while the ordinary-looking one snapped its jaws at Amris, catching her in the leg with its sharp incisors.  Amris yelped in surprise and fought off the pain, concentrating on the combat at hand.Wilbur spun in place and slammed his runestaff - currently empowered with his shillelagh spell - across the back of the ordinary-looking dire rat's neck, and while the blow was a solid one, the druid didn't feel as if the rat had quite felt the full effect; it was if it were somehow able to shrug off some of the impact.  This inherent resistance to physical damage, he realized, was quite common among extraplanar creatures, but the fact that this dire rat had no extraplanar features puzzled him.Tamaskan didn't worry about any of that; she simply bit down on the back of the celestial dire rat's neck and slew it, giving its corpse a shake for good measure before dropping it, lifeless, in the street.  The tip of her flaming tail set the creature's fur ablaze, and soon the smell of burning rat flesh permeated the local atmosphere.Amris skipped back a few steps, casting another magic missile spell at the fiendish dire rat as she did so, but still it refused to die.  Pivot channeled his own smiting energy into his claws and gave it another good rake, but that attack likewise wasn't enough to drop the Hellish rodent.  It went for Amris again, recognizing her as its natural foe.Gonkle, in the meantime, was now a standing mass of rat bites in orcish form; blood dripped down his body from literally dozens of gashes all over his exposed skin, but he didn't seem to notice, so intent was he in crushing his enemies.  Avoroth used his quarterstaff to the best of his abilities, but fighting off scores of individual creatures took some time, and the going was fairly slow.  But together, he and Gonkle slew enough of the rats that the remainder opted to flee with their lives rather than stick around and get slain themselves.  A few of the wiser (or hungrier) rats grabbed up a slain body of one of their brethren and dragged it off for future consumption, once it was safe to do so.The normal-looking dire rat snapped at Wilbur, but was unsuccessful in its attack - possibly because the shadow druid instinctively cloaked himself in darkness, making his actual position difficult to determine in the midst of heated combat.  But it seemed to react to its failure with an unnatural intelligence, far more than that of a simple, animalistic rat.  A sudden realization hit the druid: "It's a wererat!" he called to the others.  That explained why it didn't have any planar traits - but was it a local Elsewhere inhabitant, or someone wandering in from the fields of Hell?  Those were questions for later; for now, Wilbur slammed at the likely wererat with his spell-enhanced runestaff, but once again he missed.  Tamaskan slapped her flaming tail against the dire rat's back, but her fires failed to set the creature's fur ablaze at she had done with the celestial rodent.Amris backed off and, touching her familiar doll, activated a mage armor spell that affected both her and Pivot, despite her celestial owl having taken to the air once more.  Then Pivot dove down at the fiendish dire rat again, raking it with his talons.  With a hiss of pain, the fiendish rodent snapped at the owl, but failed to connect.  The likely wererat lunged for Amris, catching her off guard as it had looked to be concentrating on Wilbur, only to do a fake-out and go for her quite unexpectedly.  Once again, the witch felt a diseased pair of incisors bite down on her exposed leg and she cried out in pain.With the rat swarms dissipating before his eyes, and alerted by Amris's cry of pain, Avoroth spun about and headed over to see what trouble the others had gotten themselves into while he and Gonkle had been busy saving the town's preeminent blacksmith.  He readied a spell from his prepared inventory, eager to try out the power of Boccob's tome of knowledge that would allow him to convert the energy of the spell - a protection against evil spell he hadn't had time to cast yet - into pure, healing energy.  But since he had to pass by the suspected wererat to do so, he gave it a swat on its head with the end of his quarterstaff; it didn't seem to do much to the rodent, but Avoroth smirked at it just the same.Gonkle saw the fight against even bigger foes and raced over to join in the fun, wiping the blood from his eyes as he did so; some of the rats had bitten him in the forehead, and the wounds were making it hard for him to see.Wilbur once again swung his runestaff at the suspected wererat and missed, while Tamaskan made the killing bite against the fiendish dire rat while its attention was foolishly on Pivot, who flapped just out of the creature's reach.  But with it dead, the group could now focus their undivided attention on the wererat that had likely been leading the group of these other rodents, dire or otherwise.  Amris backed further away from combat and cast an acid splash spell at the wererat, striking it in the face for once.  (She hadn't had a great amount of success in the past with that spell, for whatever reason.)  Pivot, wounded by a lucky hit from the fiendish dire rat he'd been fighting, took to the higher elevations to look for other foes, but also to stay out of range of the one foe he knew about; he was sure he'd be healed up soon enough once this combat was over with, but until then it didn't look like he was going to be needed.With a blur of motion, the "wererat" lunged at Amris, no doubt seeing her as the most wounded and the easiest of the four to drop.  It altered shape as it moved, and while the team of scouts had expected it to take on either a humanoid or hybrid form, it surprised them all by resuming a form to which they were all already familiar: that of the quasit they'd met back at the cave against the cliff-side!  Its poisonous claws raked across Amris's breastbone, raking her with a set of parallel wounds while the venom dripping from its jagged talons siphoned off a bit of the witch's vitality, leaving her feeling sluggish and slow to react.By then, Avoroth had reached her side and placed his hand over her wounds, channeling his cure light wounds spell through his magical tome and closing them up.  She was still a bit woozy from the poison, but at least she didn't feel like she was about to fall over from a loss of consciousness.With a mighty roar, Gonkle swung his mighty warhammer - and made a mighty spectacle of himself as he missed completely, the hammer's head whizzing nearly a foot over the quasit's head.  But seeing they were up against the quasit - who Wilbur knew could fade away into invisibility on a whim - the druid cast a faerie fire spell, encompassing not only the small demon but also Avoroth, Amris, and Gonkle in a violet set of heatless flames.  But despite this, Tamaskan missed when trying to bite the quasit.Amris, feeling a bit better now that she'd had the worst of her wounds tended to, cast a touch of fatigue spell on her hand and managed to touch the quasit, transferring the spell's effect to him.  Sadly, despite her valiant efforts, the quasit shrugged off the magical weakness, but it spun in place and went for Avoroth, no doubt wanting to take out the cleric capable of healing all of the damage it inflicted with his curative magics.  (Little did he know the cleric of Boccob only had the ability to convert one more spell into a cure light wounds spell; after that, he was down to the comparatively weak cure minor wounds spells.)  But Avoroth just grinned evilly at the quasit; he was glad they'd all been wrong about this being a wererat they were fighting, for its sudden reappearance gave the Boccobian cleric an opportunity to slay the one foe who'd had the temerity to attack his person and then escape without the resulting corporal punishment such an attack deserved.  He ignored his Boccob's tome of knowledge and converted his last most powerful spell into an inflict light wounds spell, slapping the quasit in the face and discharging it into its Abyssal body.  It failed to slay the little demon, but that was all right, for Avoroth could see the spell energy had at least torn through its little body, causing it no small amount of pain.  And besides, it didn't entirely matter if the cleric killed it himself, as long as the quasit died for its unforgivable sins.Gonkle took care of that little detail with a swing of his keen falchion, cleaving the little demon in two along its waistline.Their battle over, Avoroth provided what healing spells he had remaining on those who needed them the most (Wilbur was able to contribute a cure light wounds spell of his own, applying it to his dire fell fox companion), and they returned to Angalvir's blacksmith shop.  The azer had deactivated the immovable rod and was busy kicking rat corpses out of his area and into the street, where no doubt the local dogs would soon take care of them.  But he beamed upon seeing the group, and thanked them profusely for his rescue.  He gave each of them an enhancement stone - the items to be "field tested" to which Father Solaire had referred; each gemstone could be magically adhered to either a nonmagical suit of armor or a nonmagical weapon, granting it a magical boost in power.  In addition, he insisted that anything in the shop could be theirs for half price.  Amris took him up on his offer by purchasing a magical dagger, attaching her enhancement stone to her longsword; now she had two magical weapons at hand!  Wilbur applied his to his runestaff and Gonkle attached his to his warhammer, while Avoroth opted to enhance his chain shirt; going for defense rather than offense (he'd rather let the underlings wade into battle if at all possible).  Plus, he already knew how he'd be spending the majority of his black onyx treasure from the lich's lair: on a wand of cure light wounds, freeing him up from having to worry about healing spells and opening up the much wider variety provided to him by his god.It was good to be back home! - - - We all leveled our PCs up to 3rd level at the end of this adventure, which means Dan and I got to pick new summonable creatures for our PCs' 2nd-level summon spells.  We generally pick two from each list and I do up those stats so they're ready at a moment's notice, rather than holding up the game while we look up the relevant stats and the DM jots them down.  (This doesn't mean we're only limited to those two creatures from the spell list; we can still summon anything from the list, but we try to pick the ones most likely to see game use.)  I went with a fiendish wolf and a fiendish Medium monstrous scorpion, while Dan had Wilbur opt for a shadow hippogriff and a Small earth elemental.  (Due to his Plane of Shadows heritage, any non-elemental he summons is imbued with the Shadow Creature template, just as Wilbur is himself.)  So now I'll go make tokens of all of those creatures (five of each, for when we get of a high enough level it's possible to summon five of the same creature with one casting of the spell), and have them at hand for when we play from now on.</blockquote>

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