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: 1263460" data-attributes="member: 1210">The Great Green FaceScrambling over chunks of fallen ceiling, the party moves into the surviving portion of the passage.  The walls are painted with bizzarre images of all kinds- jackal-headed beings, demonic figures, all sorts of strange things.  As soon as she enters the passage, however, Azekia's find the path fails.  "Crap," mutters Sybele.  Cautiously, the solar leads the group forward.  Almost immediately she triggers a hidden pit trap, nimbly stepping back and avoiding falling in.  Grimly, she spreads her wings and begins a slow flight down the hall.  The rest of the group uses a variety of means, from Sybele's spider climb to Patyn's necklace of levitation to Ulla's turning into a bat, to avoid travelling along the floor.  Cautiously, weapons out and ready, they move down the painted hallway.  It seems eerily empty and abandoned; a thick layer of dust is everywhere.At the end of the hallway, the group finds two interesting features.  TThe first, directly ahead of them, is an archway full of mist.  Any view of what's past the mist is obscured by the thick vapors.  Along the left hand wall is a huge green face with an utterly black mouth.  Azekia points at it.  "That is what my vision indicated... but we were destroyed when we attempted to pass through it!"A few moments discussion and a little experimentation- the face seems to disintegrate objects stuck into it- lead Orbius to cast a legend lore, and after about ten minutes he reports a snatch of verse:The face of the fiend does more than devour,With the least of my form 'tis the gap to power."It was delivered," the Eye remarks, "in a distinct, sepulcheral voice- but not Felenga's.""You know, Malford, if you were to remove the geas for me again-" Lester starts, but Azekia interrupts him angrily."You are a shirker!  You are a powerful force for good yet you squander your potential, trying to weasel out of your agreements!"  Her face is full of wrath.  "With great power comes great responsibility, Lester.  You must realize that!  You are in need of correction!""What?  I fight for good!  And besides, it's Malford's geas to help-""To help break curses," Malford states flatly.  "I think I was misled to some extent about the nature of the geas on you, and I'm certainly not going to help you squirm free again after you willingly took it back."Lester grumbles to himself while the solar frowns and shakes a finger at him.  The party puzzles over the riddle for a few moments, then decides to experiment with the arch of mist.  When Lester approaches it to stick something in and see if it will be disintegrated too, three of the arch's stones start glowing.  One glows blue, one orange and the third yellow.  Nothing else obvious happens, so the group continues fooling around with the arch.  They seem to be able to poke the end of something in and have it come out unscathed, so Orbius makes trump contact with Lester and the elementalist bravely steps through the arch- only to find himself back near the entrance to the frescoed hall!  Quickly, he flies back to the party."We must have to do something to the stones first," Orbius reasons, and they start touching each of the stones in various combinations and then sending the L through with an ally.  Eventually, Lester and Azekia go through the mist and find themselves somewhere else- a frustratingly small room, about a 10' cube.  The two of them are crammed in uncomfortably close, and the solar can smell the strong odor of adventurer sweat clinging to Lester's afro and robes.  Three levers are in the wall."I still have trump contact," Orbius reports to the rest of the party.  "There isn't much here," the L tells his cohort.  "Definitely too small to rest in, and there are no exits.  Pull us back through to you and we'll see if we can find something else, some secret door or something."But then they discover that they can't pull Lester back through.  Orbius can touch him, and it's apparent that the L could pull Orbius to him, but not the other way around."So it's further in or leave Lester behind," Sybele says.Our heroes mull this over for a moment.  "Well, we can't just leave him behind!" Thrush exclaims."I suppose you're right," Rex sighs.  "Lester, start experimenting with those levers," Orbius suggests.  "Maybe one of them does something.""Or some combination of them," Lester groans.It turns out that the levers will move in any direction.  He and Azekia take turns throwing them into different configurations.  At first nothing happens.  Then, when the L throws them all downward, a great pit opens below them and the two tumble down, down....Next Time: Continuing their exploration of the Tomb of Horrors, how will our heroes fare??</blockquote>

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