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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 1416048" data-attributes="member: 1210">The Winter-Wight!For those of you with an interest in gaming history, the winter-wight actually first appeared in Return to the Tomb of Horrors.  It's now in the ELH. <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=":)" />The landing is small, a last stepping stone above the Void.  As Orbius’ greater teleport lands the group on the platform, he grimaces.  The Void, he thinks.  The Negative Energy Plane.  Lester...The mists churn behind them as the party examines the glowing bars of energy that they scried out moments ago.  “That’s not where Mr. Grab is,” Orbius tells them.  “My locate creature has him pinpointed.  He’s above us.  I think he’s frozen in the ice.”“Something’s back there,” Sybele calls, pointing beyond the bars.  She sees something in the darkness, something huge, with a long, low shape... she thinks she catches a glimpse of a saddle. “One thing at a time,” Orbius urges.  “We’ve got a shot at Mr. Grab now, we need to take it!”  He starts to fly up towards the ceiling, but his foresight warns him against it.  “Whoa!  Nobody go up!”While Orbius mulls over the best approach to getting at Felenga’s familiar, Ulla, Rex and Angelfire fly around, scouting the tower’s interior.  The ceiling- a slab of dull black ice- is about 20’ overhead; the mists are below.  At either end of the tower is a small landing.  The one they first arrived at, of course, has the colored bars sealing off... something.  The other landing seems to have an ice chute that leads in from above.  Rex and Angel land to check it out.Before they have time to more than glance at the chute, something springs out from behind it. A skeleton encased in ice with a corona of familiar-looking black flame around its skull leaps out and deals a resounding blow to Rex!  “Come to feel my icy embrace, darlings?” it rasps in a hissing, cracking voice, and its blow sends Rex reeling.Angelfire deletes it, the weird gauntlets crushing her hands as she does.  “NGGG!” she groans as the effects of the Deleter continue to ravage her.  The arc of eye-splitting energy shoots out-And misses.The winter-wight starts forward to finish off Rex, who kicks out with bone-cracking force and deals a tiny amount of damage to the monster.  “Uh-oh,” the dragon disciple grunts, but then the winter-wight is blown off balance for a moment by a puncture from Orbius.The winter-wight lets out a blood-curdling laugh as it tears into Rex.  Its massive icy claws tear open horrid wounds on Rex’s torso and leg, and only the dragon disciple’s amazing speed keeps the black flames from catching on his very soul!  Rex spins and leaps away, taking another telling wound as he does.Angelfire timeslips, and with Rex flying away from the thing, it is left alone on the landing.  But the thing is clearly not so easily discouraged- it fires a cone of freezing air at the group!  A chorus of cries rings out as our heroes feel the ice settle into their limbs and organs!“Kill it from a distance!” cries Sybele, firing arrow after arrow at the thing, but the winter-wight ducks back behind the ice chute, out of sight.“Crap,” mutters Horbin, casting a heal on a very grateful Rex.  “We should kill that thing.”  Rex nods agreement.“It’s strong,” the draconian-looking adventurer comments.  “And watch out for that black fire.”A few nervous seconds pas as out heroes watch for any sign of the monster; then Angelfire reappears, looking around, and in another instant the creature has emerged again, cackling wickedly as it hacks at Angelfire with deadly, brutal force.  She throws her shoulder into the monster, knocking it back a pace, trying to force it off the edge of the precipice, but it’s too strong!  It slashes back, cutting a deep trench in Angel’s face.  She groans, shaking her head as the black flame catches on her body!  A terrible scream of pain rises from the landing as she staggers.“No!” cries Orbius, and a greater dispelling snuffs the black flames.  Horbin the Holy flies forward, skimming the surface of the Void, and casts a mass heal.  Like a hammer blow, positive energy arcs into the winter-wight, inflicting tremendous damage even as it heals Angelfire of most of her wounds!Gasping at her near destruction, Angel lifts her feet off the ground (she’s still under the mass fly Orbius cast earlier) and whips an odd cube of rusty-looking iron from a pouch at her belt.  “Here!” she calls, and activates it.There’s a tremendous noise.The cube- a Daern’s instant fortress- expands rapidly on the edge of the landing, smashing the ice slide and part of the ceiling before the platform shatters under its growing weight and falls into the Void, taking the instant fortress, the winter-wight and all with it.Shaking her head, Angelfire quirks her mouth in a smile.  “Bad, but not so bad,” she comments.Next Time: Mr. Grab!</blockquote>

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