NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 1086472" data-attributes="member: 1210">The HalfbreedWhere were we?  Ah, yes.  Our heroes are on Acheron, being attacked by what appears to be a very powerful shadow dragon.  The dragon, one Sautix, is flying away with Malford.  Behind him our heroes are routing the dragon’s kobold servitors, though one spellcaster is proving fairly tenacious.  Things don’t look too bad, other than the bit about Malford- but he’s blinking, so he gets free of the dragon’s mouth quite easily, taunting the dragon wickedly as he does so.  Then he casts a vampiric touch and siphons some of the creature’s energy, then tumbles away.  Where have I seen this thing before? he wonders.  Who is its father?  I’ve never met a shadow dragon before!  Behind him, Horbin, in flying pursuit of the dragon, casts destruction, but to no avail.  The dragon shrugs it off.  Thrush, meanwhile, is caught by the kobold sorcerer’s spell even as he drops the last kobold on the airboat our heroes are traveling on.  He turns to Sybele and cries, “Sybele!  We must hooble the driplewaple, mungle morsh!”  Angelfire, meanwhile, is moving through the kobolds that Sybele stunned with her mind blast, cutting them almost in two with his falchion.  His eyes blaze angrily as he does so, kobold blood splattering all up and down his body.  Then, eyeing the catapult that hasn’t yet been fired- the stunned kobolds were ready, but hadn’t yet had their shot- he smiles grimly, swings it in line to fire at the dragon, and cuts the rope, releasing the shot.  It flies wide, exploding off the dragon’s side.  Arrows are whizzing out at his dwindling shape, missing it; however, he’s turning to come in for another pass, casting bull’s strength on himself first.  It isn’t over yet, and still only Malford has managed to hurt Sautix.  Steadying himself in the air, Horbin casts lower resistance at the monster, now flying back towards them.Then Sautix breathes again, another cone of shadowy negative energy, and our heroes groan in agony as they suffer another round of negative levels.**Twisting to avoid the shadowy breath, Malford reaches the airboat, but once there he’s surprised to find himself the victim of a sudden savage full attack from Thrush.  Fortunately, he’s both blinking and displaced, so only one blow hits- but it’s still quite a blow!*  Thrush cries, “Malford!  Warfle de bliglig!  Ulmor, rigo pa!”  Noting this, and deducing that Thrush is likely confused, Angelfire targets a dispel magic from a wand at the hapless warrior, and in an instant he shakes his head and comes back to himself.  “Sorry!” he calls to Malford, realizing what he’d just done.Sybele moves forward and hurls her new blade, Snakebite, which has the throwing property.  It whizzes out, smacks the dragon but fails to penetrate his hide, and falls.  Snakebite, alas, does not have the returning property, and it vanishes into the dark sky below them in an instant.  Sybele gives a cry of dismay, and the dragon laughs heartily.  Malford manages to penetrate Sautix’ spell resistance with a phantasmal killer, but the dragon sneers at the puny magic.  Then, opening his mouth in a huge grin, Sautix breathes again- but this time, it’s a bolt of lightning, arcing out into Angelfire***, which he follows immediately with a charge and a bite, tearing along his ribs and side!  An arrow of acid shoots into the beast from Malford, scoring a hit, but Sautix seems almost as strong as ever and turns contemptuously to face his foe.And then  Horbin cries a strange word, a word of such primal Chaos that it causes the very fabric of reality to quiver, and it seems to echo for a moment before the surprised-looking dragon; then he is gone, banished back to his home plane.  “Thank Dexter!” Horbin cries, and whatever god you name, that sentiment’s pretty well shared.  Our heroes gather together, shaken, and do what healing they can.  “We’ve got to go get my sword!”  Sybele insists, but she’s reassured by Malford that if they wait until they have a chance to recover from the negative levels, they’ll be in much better shape.  “What if we run into trouble?” Horbin points out.  “We’re in no shape to deal with anything right now.”  Sybele reluctantly accedes, and they turn to the flying V the dragon had been towing by a great chain.  With some experimentation, they determine that it can be pulled by Sybele, and with great satisfaction they determine to keep it.  Malford declares that he’ll use it for the defense of Var, and everyone agrees to the wisdom of that proposal.  They also find a great deal of loot, which includes many minor magic weapons and armor, a few wands of invisibility and fireball, and a pair of very interesting longspears (graven with the names Dragon-Tongue and Broken Wheel).  Maxxor, the tenacious kobold sorcerer, had among his things a wand of enervation, bracers of armor +4, and a number of scroll with interesting spells on them, including lightning bolt, protective shock, chain lightning, circle of death, globe of invulnerability, dispel exhaustion, horrible wound, teleport, summon monster VII, and the infamous puncture.  He also has a minor spellbook of first-level spells.Sybele puts away her dorje of identify, happy once again to have it.“A lot of this stuff can probably go into the arsenal,” God-King Malford muses.  The party agrees; with a few exceptions, they don’t really want the minor weapons.  After a short division of spoils (Sybele and Thrush take the two long-spears), Horbin casts a gate spell and the party maneuvers the war machine through it.  Horbin and Malford take a quick trip to Var to dispose of the items they don’t need or want with them.  While there, they run into Gorlon Gallad, on of Malford’s ‘agents’, who’s shown a lot of promise in his operations over the last year or two.  Malford invites him along, and he joins the party****.  While they finish their preparations for their return to the rest of the group on Acheron, they run across a sheepish Telemundo, who offers his apologies for his earlier foolishness and sweet-talks his way back in as well after offering his assurance that he won’t start trouble.  Then Horbin conjures another gate and the four head back to Acheron.After introducing Gorlon around, Malford watches warily as the aged Telemundo approaches Angel.  “Look, I just wanted to say, no hard feelings about earlier, okay?” the sorcerer grumbles, offering his hand to the Coilite.  Angelfire takes his hand, gives his a good hard squeeze, and smiles.“Don’t cross me, or I’ll kill you,” he warns, releasing Telemundo’s hand.  And he smiles... *47 hp of damage.**Now ranging from 7-10 each.  Yikes!***At this moment, Malford’s player said, “Can you apply the half-dragon template to a dragon?”  (Yes you can, they talk about it in I think it’s Savage Species.)****Gorlon Gallad is a bard 9/ranger 7, and his player’s an old friend of most of the group’s.  It’s good to have him- here’s hoping he can play regularly!Next Time: Against the Inevitable!  Also, I'll be posting Lester's stats in the Rogues' Gallery thread sometime soon- his player finally emailed them to me!</blockquote>

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