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: 1303393" data-attributes="member: 1210">The Dark ShadowAzekia the Solar gives out a shocked cry of rage as the twisted remains of her heavenly blade clang to the ground.  The Dark Shadow chuckles as it sees the look on her face.  Angelfire’s screams echo in the background.“Dexter’s nadlies!” swears Drelvin, whipping Shastruth from his sheath and pointing him forward.  The sorcerer sword unleashes a burst of magic missiles at the darkness, but the missiles fail to harm the monstrous thing before him.*Then Patyn unleashes a positive energy burst.  Brilliant white energy swells from within the hunter of the dead, flashing out to sear the dark shadow badly.  The thing seems to momentarily cringe back from the blast, and the hunter of the dead uses his cloak to dimension door to behind the monster, into a flanking position with Azekia.  Arrows and flaming missiles are flying at the party’s adversary, but it’s still holding its own.  “Watch out, the hallway’s swinging back up!” cries Ulla.  Suddenly Patyn is in a position to be crushed.  Azekia grimaces.  “I wish we have time to finish this fight before the hall squishes any of us!” she cries.  Then she grunts as the dark shadow touches her, sending a shock through her celestial body- pure negative energy boiled in hate smashes at her essence!  Patyn, just on the other side of it, aims a few blows at the shadow, but his blade slices through it ineffectively, as if it were air.Then Verzavi and Angelfire are lunging in, the lava on the Coilite finally pulled free or cooled enough to be bearable, and then Rex springs in, slashing, darting, retreating; and Ulla, now in stone golem form, stomps forward, slapping at it with her powerful arms.  The whole group is piling on it.  Suddenly the situation has changed badly.  The shadow fights terrifically, but another positive energy burst blasts it into oblivion.Quickly, the group retreats into the part of the hall that didn’t swing down.  After a moment’s discussion, the group decides to attack the hinge.  It’s hidden out of sight below the hall itself, so our heroes are forced to dig (Ulla turns into an umber hulk).  It takes only a few moments to reach it, and then a few more moments to destroy it.  As they break apart one side of the hinge, the strain on the other slowly bends the stone, and breaking it apart at that point becomes an easy matter.  The trapped section of hallway falls into the immense pool of lava below, landing with a tremendous splash of glowing molten rock and quickly sinking below the surface.  Warmth wafts up to the party from the great lava pool.“We should search around in here,” Rex says.  “You’ve got the wings,” Thrush replies wryly.Indeed he does.  Rex takes a flight around the chamber.  Giving it as thorough of a go-over as he can, he doesn’t find anything of note- no obvious exits or features, except for the pool of lava.  He returns to the group and informs them of his lack of finding.“Too bad I don’t have the wings,” Drelvin comments.  “We elves are good at finding secret stuff.”  Rex rolls his eyes.The group stops for a moment to discuss their next move.“Where haven’t we been?” Drelvin starts.“There are those other two arches,” Ulla suggests.“But going through them would be baneful,” Azekia says sternly.  “I performed an augury on each one.  I do not think there is a benefit to be had from them, only sorrow.”“Where else?” persists Drelvin.“There’s the crawlway into the side of that pit that Lester found,” says Sybele.  “And there might be more hidden exits from the room with the circles.”  “Why are we here again?” Thrush asks.“Felenga’s phylactery,” three people tell him together.  “Is it here?”“No,” Orbius explains.  “We have to figure out how to go through the mouth safely.  I think it’s there.”The fighter laughs for a long moment before subsiding.  “It just never ends, does it?” he chuckles.  “Where else can we go?” Drelvin asks again.  “Have we searched everywhere else?  What about all the pits?  We already found one secret door in a pit.”“And we haven’t yet searched the pits before the lava trap,” Angelfire points out.“Well, let’s do that first and then head back to the hall of circles,” Drelvin suggests, and the group agrees.  A search of the pits turns up a secret door.  “Well, great!  Let’s go that way instead!”  Drelvin grins.  Nothing like defying death on a daily basis.  At least he still has both legs for now. The secret door leads to a passage wide enough to walk two abreast.  The group moves through it and finds that the passage ends in what at first glance appears to be a blank wall, but even a cursory search finds a handle.  The wall slides to the side and the party finds themselves at a descending staircase.  Down they go- down a 10’ wide stair of narrow steps, dusty and cracked with time.  The stairs descend about 30’ and lead to a 20’ long hallway.  At the end, cascading to the right, is another downward stair.“I notice a trend,” Thrush remarks.Down our heroes go, and then to another hall; but this one is filled with webs.“Er, webs, hrm,” mutters Drelvin.  The party hesitates.  “We could probably burn them off,” suggests Ulla.“Why don’t we search these hallways first,” Rex suggests.  “There are secret doors everywhere in this place.  Maybe there’s another way through there.”“Why now?  We found one before.”  Cheerily, Drelvin pulls out the cusp and starts looking around while the rest begin a more mundane search.  Indeed, as he looks up the top stairs that lead back to the pit, the archer immediately calls out, “Over here!  I found one!”The group hustles over to him and ascends the stairs about halfway.  It takes only a few moments to figure out how the secret door opens (it pushes out), and then our heroes are advancing down another dusty hallway unseen by living eyes for who knows how long.  Soon it leads them to another door.  Everyone hesitates.  Drelvin looks it over with his gem but sees nothing out of the ordinary.  “Who wants to open it?” Ulla asks frankly.Pause for a moment.“Oh, fine,” Thrush sighs, and throws the door open.Before the group is what appears to be a large laboratory or workroom of some kind.  The walls are lined with shelves cluttered with jars.  A large desk and stool, two workbenches and two large tables fill up a great deal of space, but the room is huge.  There are clay pots and urns, linen wrappings strewn about, dried herbs that have almost disintegrated over time, bones and skulls, canopic jars, and three large vats about 7’ in diameter and 4’ high.  The group starts looking stuff over. “I think this was a mummy preparation chamber,” Angelfire states.  She’s very interested in everything here- it’s giving her some interesting ideas.  Wandering over to the large vats, she finds Rex already looking into them.  The first appears to hold dirty water; the second, some sort of blue-tinged liquid; and the third, a bright green fluid.“Look,” Rex says, pointing into the blue-tinged stuff.  “There’s something in there.”Before Angelfire can comment, the dragon disciple plunges his arm into the vat.  “Ow!” he cries as the acid within the great vat starts to burn him.  He gropes around within the liquid and quickly pulls his arm free, some sort of key in hand.  He swears as he pours water on his smoking arm.  “Ow!  Dammit!  Ow!  Ow!”  I wonder if there’s anything in the others, Angelfire thinks.  Boldly she plunges her arm into the green fluid.  An instant later she screams.  Jerking her arm free she staggers back a few steps-Her arm is starting to turn, very quickly, to green slime.*At this point in the game, Drelvin’s player Craig looked at me and said, “I cast magic missile at the darkness.”  You may have heard the infamous audio track he’s referencing...Next Time:The Crypt of the Demilich!</blockquote>

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