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: 1289067" data-attributes="member: 1210">The Chapel of Evil; plus, a footnote on electrum drelvinsThe altar is made of a weird, opalescent blue material.  It glows from within with a pale blue light.  As Rex touches it, the altar fires a sudden intense blast of lightning through him, catching Angelfire and Thrush as well.  The smell of ozone fills the air and the altar starts glowing an angry bluish-red, with a growing, scintillating aura.  Our heroes, staggered by the lightning bolt, hesitate- and the altar blows itself apart, sending chunks of the weird opalescent material flying at them with explosive force!  When it’s over almost everyone is smarting from their wounds, but being heroic* our heroes just continue their search.  There’s not much left of the altar; the dais is now scarred and, in some places, embedded with smoking pieces of the altar.The pews, Drelvin and Rex discover, have hinged seats.  The rearmost pair of pews- the first ones they check- contain about 8000 sp between them.“A lot of change,” Drelvin says ironically.  Nobody takes any of it.“Let’s check the rest of the pews!”  Rex looks greedily at the other three pairs of benches.  “Maybe there’s some gold or platinum!”  He opens up the next pew and finds electrum.“That’s unconventional,” comments Patyn.“Hey, are there any drelvins in there?”** The archer starts digging through the coins excitedly.  Several other party members join in on the fun, but nobody finds a drelvin.  They do, however, find some odd electrum coins with an undead ram’s head on it.“Orcus,” Patyn states.“Orcus?” Thrush asks.  “Who’s that?”“Demon prince of undead,” Patyn snarls.  “But he’s dead.”“What?” exclaims Drelvin.  “I’ve heard of Orcus, but not that he was dead!  How’d he die?”“It was quite some time ago, actually.  He was slain by the Drow goddess Kirianselee.”“Well, who would put Orcus on their currency?” “Maybe,” suggests Angelfire, “the academy back there.”  She gestures vaguely, since she doesn’t know which direction the Black Academy lies in.  Patyn shakes his head.  “No, they don’t mint coins.”  He fingers the electrum with Orcus’ face upon it thoughtfully.  “I don’t know where they’d put his visage on their coins.  Somewhere where they worship him...”The party examines the silver coins but finds none with Orcus’ face upon them.  With a shrug, Rex opens the next hinged seat.  “Gold!” he cries gleefully.  The party scoops it up.  “I’m guessing that means there’s platinum in the next one!” Rex says, hurrying over.  He throws open the seat-There’s a hissing sound as olive-colored gas sprays out at a prodigious rate.  “Aargh!” Rex cries, and the party feels a weakness start to steal over their limbs.  Rex throws the seat shut and the group retreats to the room’s far corner for a few moments while the gas dissipates.“Maybe the other one,” Rex mutters, approaching the other pew of the foremost pair.“Wait, it’s bound to be another trap!” Thrush calls, but too late: Rex opens the pew up and more gas sprays out.  With another strangled cry, the dragon disciple heaves the pew shut then hurries to the far corner with the others.Someone mutters something about “worse than Lester,” but Rex ignores it.  He’s wondering if that platinum is underneath the gas...?  Is it worth it?  “How about the arch?” Ulla asks.“I don’t know about that,” Drelvin puts in quickly.  “Let’s check out some more mundane places first.”  The group nods in agreement and they search for secret doors.  Drelvin finds something interesting: a circle scribed in the stone.  “I’m an elf,” he comments with a wry smile, “we’re good at finding things.”  The party pokes and prods the circle to no effect.  Reasoning that it must do something, they try to put something over it.  First the press a coin to it (it’s about the right size) but to no effect.  They try one of the Orcus coins (many of the party took some in case they prove necessary for something or other), but this doesn’t do the trick either.  Gems don’t cause any reaction.“How about a ring?” suggests Sybele.  It seems as though a ring would fit just right.  “Why don’t we put that sucky ring of protection we found in?” suggests Drelvin.They do.  The ring slides neatly into the circle in the stone and, with a great grinding sound, the massive block of stone begins to sink into the floor, revealing a passage behind it!  The block only descends a few inches, however; before grinding to a halt and closing again.  The ring is crushed to powder.“Crap,” says Thrush helpfully.“Perhaps a different ring?” suggests Ulla.“I bet we have to use that ring of wizardry we found in the box,” Drelvin remarks.  The party digests this for a moment.“It seems logical,” groans Angelfire.  “Whatever we need to get through is basically a key, right?  And they key should be in this place somewhere, right?”“We should get Sybele and Azekia first,” Ulla says, and turns into a bat to fly back and tell them to join the rest of the party.  Azekia and Sybele have been having a nice time chatting.  While they waited Azekia performed an augury and determined that moving through the arch in the hall of spheres would be a very baneful sort of thing to do.  Both the angel and Sybele are glad to move on.  Azekia polymorphs into a smaller form for the trip and Sybele manages to get through as well.***Then the group proceeds to insert the ring into the circle; and the stone block slowly, slowly, grinds downward, revealing a dark passage beyond it.  There’s a faint stink in the air, barely noticeable and impossible to identify.  Behind the block the passage runs out onto a landing, which then descends in a broad stairway to the right.  Cautiously our heroes head downwards...*The smallest number of total hp in the party is 104.  The highest is 314.  (That’s Lester.)**Of course, electrum has fallen out of favor as a medium of exchange, but there are still old coins found here and there.  Their value tends to fluctuate more widely than conventional coins, however, since electrum is not a natural metal and the coins are not generally minted any longer.  Different realms put different coins out, of course.  About a decade ago, the electrum pieces of Malford’s new Dorhausian nation were called “drelvins” and had Drelvin’s form holding his bow on one face of the coin.  When Drelvin lost a powerful bow devoted to the Queen he fell out of favor and they stopped minting drelvins.***Now how she got through I honestly don’t remember and don’t have in my notes.  I want to say that someone reduced her, but I don’t know who that would’ve been... Maybe Drelvin’s sword?  I dunno.Next Time: Have I mentioned the trap that did 30d6 points of damage in one round?</blockquote>

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