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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ant" data-source="post: 3536704" data-attributes="member: 17627">Bas Dreams of Genie - Part OneAnd time unfreezes for our intrepid group, beginning with a recap. They had gathered in an intersection to compare wounds and notes, when a giant lizard-man trundles down the corridor that they had used to get here. It lets out a bellow and hefts a huge mace. Initiative rolls leaves Mailcon goings last as usual and Tyrant and the Lizard Man charging towards each other. Bas mutters about not feeling well but follows Tyrant’s charge up the hall.An immovable object/unstoppable force collision occurs. The Lizard man with the reach weapon swishes his mace past Tyrants head as he ducks under then up for a near disembowelling critical slash with his sword against the monster’s belly (those 20's are on the dice for a reason, after all).Unfortunately the heavy mace's back swing connects with the side of Bas' head. It caves in with a sickening thud and the half orc collapses to the ground. The corridor turns into a long tunnel with a bright light at the far end, which Bas starts moving towards.Meanwhile Mailcon watches Bas charge up the corridor then looks at the Cure Light Wounds wand in his hand. He shrugs, puts it away, draws his scimitar and joins the melee.With his Monsterous Humanoid favoured enemy advantage, Mailcon finishes the job that Tyrant began with a skilful scimitar slash. With a pitiful roar the creature collapses to the floor and Tyrant administers a coup de grace. In the sudden silence Mailcon just notices that there appears to be an orc ducking back into the shadows from whence the Lizard-man had appeared. He points it out to Tyrant, who takes a guard position with his bow while Mailcon checks out Bas.In the meantime, Bas realises that he can hear the voices of all of his parents as he gets close to the light but, before he can say anything, something pulls him backwards down the tunnel. He awakens to find Mailcon leaning over him with that weird little stick that he has. The Druid taps him again with it then puts it away. Bas gets up, feeling much better. Mailcon congratulates him on taking care of the Lizard-man for them. Bas is puzzled as the last thing he can remember was a smack to the head. When he sees the corpse on the ground, he decides it must be true and starts to do a little celebratory boogie.While this is happening, Mailcon overhears the bunch of orcs arguing about who goes first (they appear to be playing a version of rock-scissors-paper). He and Tyrant prepare themselves as eventually they hear their leader shout at them to get going. Suddenly 3 club wielding berserk ninja orcs (or whatever they are. They have headbands!) come charging around the corner and down the hall. Behind them a forth orc follows, carrying a massive axe. Tyrant peppers one with arrows before dropping his bow and swapping to his longsword. Mailcon and Logan readies themselves while Bas's initiative roll indicates that he is still distracted by the music in his head.  One orc fails to charge due to a Lizard-man corpse being between Tyrant and itself. One charges into Mailcon the other smacks Bas from behind. Logan slips between Bas and Tyrant and attacks the orc that is threatening Bas.Mailcon hears an orcish voice yell "Arggh, my man-parts" and glances over at Logan's target. He winces and wonders if perhaps that using the word 'nads' as the command word for attack was such a good idea. But he hasn't time to think too much about it as his own opponent lashes out at him. He dodges easily and slips into a Zen-like Favoured Enemy state. His scimitar weaves smoothly through the air when he steps forward to strike, then back again, flicking blood of the end of the blade to clean it. His orc target looks at him with a stunned expression then falls into several bits due to Mailcon's critical.Bas is angered for being struck and he swings around and buries his axe in the head of the orc that is currently being savaged by a wolverine. At the same time Tyrant takes care of his target and moves to get the final orc that appears to be their leader. The orc strikes first though and breaks ribs through Tyrant's breastplate armour with its axe blow. Mailcon also almost gets knocked down by the severe damage the orc deals him.It’s the last thing the orc does however, as Bas is overjoyed at another target and demonstrates his glee with a great axe critical. 47 points of damage relieves the creature of the burden of life.In the aftermath, Mailcon again needs the rapidly depleting wand to heal himself and then he heals Tyrant when the armoured warrior requests it. At that point he discovers the unhealed warrior had more hit points than the Druid has at max-health. The incredulous Druid demands to know why he needed healing so badly. The only reply was: “But I feel better now.”They do the ‘rob the corpse’ bit, with the treasure being added to the running total and then ignored as usual. After that, Mailcon decides that with only 15 minutes or less of Spider Climb left that they should continue on.So they head for the pits that Bas had so cleverly found. Tyrant muses that they would have found the trap if certain gnomish thief that he once knew had been with them.Mailcon thinks for a moment and realises that Gnomes are quite magically close to nature. "Could you summon a gnome with Summon Nature's Ally?"he wonders.The living conciousness of nature that the Druid worships replies to this thought with the statement: "Only if it is a garden gnome".Mailcon bows to the wisdom of the living world and turns his thoughts to crossing the pit. He carries his wolverine buddy across the pits by climbing along the walls. One the far side he comes up with an overly elaborate plan that involves using a rope to help Tyrant and Bas to climb down one side of the pits then up the other. With a great deal of effort they eventually get to the other side and continue on with their journey. Mailcon takes to the ceiling to scout out for traps.The get to a corner that turns to the left and see a passageway that extends for 200ft or so (they can see that far as all the walls glow with a soft light). Mailcon wanders down the passageway ceiling, examining the floor quite carefully until he spots the signs of a 10ft wide trapdoor. He mentions it to the others and starts looking at the other side to see if he can see a second pit trap. Tyrant's yell and crash alerts Mailcon to the fact that he had already found the second pit. It was the first one that he missed (charming DM trick). He climbs down onto the ledge separating the 2 pits. In the meantime Bas figures out that he has enough Jump ranks to bunny hop the 10ft gap without any significant issue with failure. So he hops over and helps Mailcon lift Tyrant out with a rope. Bas hops over the second pit and Mailcon goes and retrieves his animal companion. On the far side Mailcon twigs to the fact that the pit is 10ft wide and 20ft deep, therefore they tie a rope to Tyrant and brace themselves on the assumption that Tyrant won't fall more than 10ft and then they can pull him up. Mailcon makes a nifty Handle Animal roll so that Logan assists them holding the rope. Tyrant makes the leap and crashes through the trap door. He swings down into the side of the pit. Mailcon and Logan brace themselves and holds him. Bas's roll indicates that he starts to help then lets go to scratch his itchy arm. A grumbling Mailcon and Logan helps Tyrant up and then they decide how to deal with any more traps. Mailcon realises he's the lightest of the 3 of them so gets them to tie a rope to him and to follow him with a distance for 5ft. The idea is that he'd trigger any pits and they could haul him up when he did (note the blithe assumption that the next trap won't be an explosion or something else). So off they go and sure enough it works. Mailcon falls into a pit and is hauled back. He then lugs Logan over that pit, as well as the assumed 2nd pit. Bas bunny hops again and they use the rope trick to pull Tyrant across. Again Logan successfully helps hold their armour plated friend, and again Bas is distracted and lets go. Despite this, they manage to avoid either dropping Tyrant into the pit or falling into one themselves. Once Tyrant is safely across Mailcon turns to Bas and tries to use Handle Animal on him, on the assumption that it worked on the wolverine. Alas, the half orc proves immune to training and it is yet another hard haul to get Tyrant across the last pit.Eventually they reach the corner of the passageway to find it turns again to the left and again disappears into the distance. They carefully make their way down the tunnel and are slightly relieved not to trigger any more traps. They find yet another passage leading to the left but it turns out to be much shorter and ends at a room with an iron chest in the middle and a door at the far end. Mailcon figures he has about a minute left of his Spider Climb so takes to the ceiling. He crawls over to the chest. He can't see anything from this angle and gives up by dropping down next to it. The others wander into the room after him. Bas and Tyrant decide to look very closely at the chest, so Mailcon and Logan wanders over to look at the far door. He finds that it is a strong metal bound door with a key hole in it. While looking at this he hears a foomp and there is a flash of ruddy light from behind him. They turn to see Tyrant lying on the floor from where his Reflexive dodge landed him. Bas is standing in front of the now open chest and is smoking slightly. He also hasn't got any eyebrows. Tyrant gets up gingerly and looks in the chest. Mailcon and Logan look at each other and they agree that one of them should go over there. Taking a leaf from the orc's game book they play rock paper scissor to see who would go. Despite the fact that the wolverine doesn't have any hands Mailcon somehow loses and so wanders over to the chest. While this was happening, Tyrant had noticed there was a key in the bottom of the chest (framed between the ashes of a pair of eyebrows) and carefully managed to lift the key on the tip of his longsword. Mailcon walks up, says 'Hey cool. Thanks', grabs the key and wanders back to the door. Tyrant follows him. Bas stays behind to try and put his eyebrows back on.Mailcon determines the door swings inwards, so he swings it such that it'll be between him and whatever comes through. Tyrant takes station on the other side. Mailcon opens the door and in runs two propeller tailed armadillo with tentacles. Tyrant whacks the first one with his longsword, drawing attention to himself. The second one sniffs around, spies the iron chest and dashes over to it. Mailcon shouts 'nads' and points at it. Logan runs over to bite it on the arse. Mailcon also uses his levels of experience (and knowledge skills) to remember these things are known as 'Rust Monsters'. He also recalls that he is carrying around a wooden longsword and, shouting out a warning to the others, throws it to Tyrant. Tyrant flourishes it with a 'ha!'. The rust monster responds by waving a tentacle and slapping him on the chest. There is a plink followed by a soft sound, as though sand was pouring off a ledge. Tyrant looks down to see his magical breastplate form a small pile of rust at his feet. He shouts out 'bastard!" as the rust monster begins to lap up the rust.  Bas looks up at him and asks "What?"Meanwhile, the second one is running around the iron chest, rusting it and trying to eat the remains. Bas pulls out an arrow and, seeing that it made of iron, bites of the arrow head off before firing at it. Mailcon also pulls out his sling and wacks it with sling stones. Between the sling stones, wolverine bites and the occasional blunt arrow, eventually the beast squeals and dies.Tyrant is also dealing with his opponent but has to throw away his iron bound shield in the process. That only delays the inevitable and Tyrant is disappointed to find that he fails to slay it before it eats his shield. During the fight, he has time to notice Bas biting off the heads of his arrows. "Why," he asks, "are you doing that? Just shoot them with the heads on it'll.... oh never mind". He goes back to killing his shield eater.While all this was going on, a third, somewhat bigger rust monster had entered the room, pausing to rust the back of the door and slurp it up before entering the fray. ("Wait a minute. Hold up. What stopped them from rusting the door before we opened it?""Good question""Oh. Right")Anyway, it rushes in and looks for the tastiest source of iron left in the room. Sensing Bas's great axe it rushes over to him, but luckily it is distracted by the pile of arrow heads on the ground and stops to rustify and eat them first.("Rustify?""Hey. I'm a pseudo-medieval tree hugging druid with a religious intolerance to worked metals. What do I know about oxidisation?""I thought that hippies were all over the theory of free radical production""Only in so far as them being oppressed the Man. That fascist bastard""Hello? Yes?""Not you Bas""Hey. Don't want to interrupt or anything, but anyone interested in the adventure going on?""Oppressor!"Note: These conversations may or may not have occurred on the night. The author reserves the right to have more conversations going on inside his head than on the outside at the time).By this time, but Bas and Tyrant move in to deal with the great threat. Mailcon, on the other hand, has decided that they are no threat and he and Logan have gone to check out the passageway behind the door. The corridor turns out to be about 30 foot long and ends at a wall that is somewhat cracked and rubble strewn. With the sounds of battle still coming from the room behind him he carefully checks out the end wall. Here he discovers there is the faint outline of a door in the wall, and searching around he finds what appears to be the doors catch. He digs his fingers in and then asks Logan if he should open the door or not. The wolverine nods, and takes a step backwards. Mailcon pulls open the door and the remaining bits of wall falls away to reveal the continuation of the passageway. It runs for another 30 odd feet before ending at an energy barrier. There is also a level in the wall. Mailcon nods to himself and goes back to find someone to pull the lever for him.Back in the room the battle is finally over. Tyrant has remembered the armour from the orc leader in the sack he has been lugging around and has put it on. Mailcon tells them of what he has found so they trudge up the hall to the barrier. The barrier is mostly transparent so they can see what appears to be a semi circular room beyond the door. They rig up a rope technique to pull the lever and the barrier blinks out. When it does, they hear an unearthly howl that sounds like it is receding into the distance. To be concluded....------</blockquote>

Verification