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: 1249022" data-attributes="member: 1210">Prelude to the Tomb of HorrorsAs our heroes proceed forward, a strange figure emerges from the ethereal mists.  Bowing, she calls, “Hold, friends!  Perhaps our paths lead in the same direction.”  She’s gaunt, yellow of skin, with loose grey-white robes around her.  Several members of the party recognize her as a githzerai.Cautiously, our heroes draw her story from her.  She introduces herself as Verzavi, and she has been waiting for an opportunity to enter this place herself- the demons looked like they’d be too much for her to handle on her own, so she was waiting for the opportunity to slip by them.  She’s somewhat aloof and evasive, but she offers to help the party with their quest (about which they are equally evasive, initially) if they’ll later help her with hers.  “What do you do?” Malford asks.  “Are you a monk?”“I am an Arcanopath*,” she says.  “I kill casters.”“Not all of them, I hope,” Malford laughs.“All of them that oppose me,” Verzavi responds emotionlessly.Our heroes advance, finding a heavy concentration of ominous-looking negative energy swirling around in the ether.  There seems to be some sort of globe of ethereal matter that was home to the demons; it’s a good spot to rematerialize, since the negative energy seems to get intense just past that area.  Malford veils the group as a cadre of glabrezu and himself as the marilith, and they return to their own plane.  They find themselves in a long, wide hallway of earth and stone, lit by thousands of candles.  One side has three large passages leading from it; the other, only a single one.“What are you doing?  Get back to your posts!  You know what the master will do to you!” calls a gruff voice, and our heroes turn.  A balor.  “Uh, I need more slaves.  This fool-“ Malford jabs a finger at the nearest ‘glabrezu’- “ate my human!”  Someone here has mastered a balor, Malford thinks grimly.“Hey, you aren’t demons!” the balor rumbles.  Then it roars, letting out a tremendous bellow, hoping to alert nearby allies, and prepares to summon demonic aid.***Alas, though they don’t yet know it, our heroes have also already triggered a silent alarm spell.  Elsewhere, within the Black Academy, Ferranifer, the Mistress of the Academy, snaps her head up.  Her dark sapphire eyes narrow and a sneer walks across her ruby lips.  It’s not often someone is foolish enough to challenge her here, in the center of her web.  Whoever it is will die.  If they’re worth anything, that will be just the start.Ferranifer calls for the Dim Triad and starts casting her preparatory spells. ***Three pairs of eyes open simultaneously to the mental command of their mistress.  Absalom, Blaesing and Harrow emerge in mist form from their coffins and rush to her side.  It will be only a few moments until battle is joined, and the thirst for blood is upon them.***Azekia gives a loud shout and flies in to engage the balor.  Her sword sings as she strikes the demon a solid blow.  The rest of the party is starting to move in, including the githzerai- she seems fast- but before anyone else can reach him, Nazzgarr the balor calls for aid from the last of four nalfeshnee brothers that he’s enslaved over the aeons.  There’s a terrible blast of brimstone as the immense creature appears with a roar, a 20’ tall monstrosity that looks like a cross between a boar and an ape.  Its beer gut is covered in rotting shaggy hair, and tiny wings flutter behind it.  Its legs are gangly and bowed.  With a grin, Nazzgarr thrusts his hand at Azekia, and her sword flies from her grasp!  She gasps as it lands over sixty feet from her!  Now laughing, the balor steps towards the solar, bringing out his flame-shaped sword.  The nalfeshnee steps in to flank, a black unholy aura bursting into existence around it.  The demons and the angel start blasting at each other with spell-like abilities, but the demons can’t seem to hurt the solar and the balor keeps shrugging off Azekia’s attempts to finish him off!  Nazzgarr is making as much noise as he can, but suddenly the noise he emits- well, it stops being loud and starts being... silent.  He roars again, frustrated, as Sybele uses her control sound ability to try to stop the monster from attracting any undue attention.  It requires she concentrate on it, but she figures it’s worth a try.She is, of course, too late.  Something’s coming down a nearby hall.  It is slow, but it will be there soon.**Our heroes, for the most part, rush to the attack!  There’s a telepathic consensus that they should try to take out the nalfeshnee first and let Azekai deal with the balor.  Orbius tries to get Angelfire to retrieve her sword as he goes by, but he- she, dammit, she- ignores the suggestion, starting to change forms.  Thrush charges the gigantic boar-ape demon.  It bites at him as he comes in, tearing at his shoulder, but he’s tough enough to take it with a grin.  His sword inflicts a tremendous blow on the thing.  Angelfire is still moving in, polymorphed into a troll.  With the Deleter on, he- no, she- can’t use her hands in battle.  A bite is better than nothing, though.  Lester blasts the demons with a horrid wilting and both hiss in pain, but it’s clear that the solar is their main target.  Rex blasts the nalfeshnee with a wand of lance of disruption, but fails to penetrate its spell resistance.With a growl, the huge nalfeshnee waves a negligent paw at our heroes, trying to dispel some of their defenses.  To its surprise, it meets total and utter failure.  It frowns, but before it can do much else Thrush unleashes some of that old-fashioned fury he’s so good at.  Even though his weapon doesn’t seem to be able to fully penetrate its defenses, he still inflicts significant damage, carving into its belly, which sprays a thick, honey-like blood full of rotten chunks of fat all over him.  The boar-thing roars and lashes back at him, clawing his forearms badly and biting his shoulder again.  But now Ulla in stone golem form, Payton, Rex and Lester are all piling on it!  Blades and fists fly; bubbling, fatty blood spews forth.  The demon groans in pain.  Orbius grabs up Azekia’s sword and starts dragging it towards the fight.  “Azekia!” he cries, using his free hand to pull out his trump of Lester.  “I have your blade!”  Angelfire glances back for an instant-“Orbius, something’s coming out of the passage behind you!” he cries.  Azekia looks pressed.  She’s flanked by demons and disarmed; but she’s far from helpless.  She pronounces a Power Word at the nalfeshnee, but fails to penetrate its spell resistance!  It lives, despite being badly wounded.  Glaring in Orbius’ direction, the fat demon tries to feeblemind the Eye, but the divine oracle’s tremendous strength of will throws it off.  Nazzgarr, meanwhile, makes a gesture at the solar and tries to implode her.  There’s a rippling in space around her, but her faith in the Light saves her, staving off complete destruction!  The balor turns his destructive power on the approaching Lester, trying- and failing- to implode him as well, then gestures and smashes him away into the wall telekinetically.  Orbius manages to establish trump contact with the L as he picks himself up.  As Lester’s eyes focus on Orbius he gasps.  “Behind you!” he cries.Behind the eye is a horrible undead creature like none he’s ever seen.  It’s the head of a giant, rotting and bloated, with a yawning mouth that looks like it's just waiting to gobble Orbius up.  From its neck emerge a host of tendrils of flesh and vein, and a disgusting ichor trails behind it.  And as Orbius reaches out for Lester’s hand, crying, “Pull me through!!”- the crawling head wails like a banshee.*A prestige class from Dragon magazine (not sure which number off hand- has the githzerai monk on the cover).  This is Angelfire’s new cohort.  The party is ridiculously full of powerful npcs at this point- Patyn (based off Sir Malachite in Piratecat’s campaign), Thrush, Azekia, Orbius, Verzavi, am I missing anyone right now??  Sheesh.  Fortunately, I usually let pcs play their cohorts, cutting down on the amount of extra work I have to do... especially in a complicated battle like this.**Natural 20 on a Listen check the first round.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Even adjusted for distance, it got a 15- more than enough to hear the roaring balor.Next Time: Our heroes in an EL 24 fight!  Watch them fight a balor, a crawling head, a nalfeshnee, Ferranifer, Absalom, Blaesing, Harrow, Instructor Ngise and Academician Drake all at once!!!</blockquote>

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