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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 1536521" data-attributes="member: 1210">The Darkweaver“Well, this is the place,” Orbius says nervously.To recap:The party stands in the chill black air of Moil, the City That Waits, a demiplane teetering on the edge of the Negative Energy Plane.  The tower of the Darkweaver- whatever that is- is before them.  They must enter it to free the phantom flyer, which will take them to the Fortress of Conclusion where they can fight Acererak, the demilich of the Tomb of Horrors.Scratched in the stone of the tower’s door is a message in the party’s native tongue.  The people of Moil (our heroes have determined) spoke Abyssal.  Ergo...“Someone’s been here before us,” muses the Eye.“Right, well, let’s go kill the darkweaver!” urges Lester.  “Hold on a second,” Horbin cautions.  “We don’t want to go in unprepared.”I hope it’s undead, thinks Patyn. Thrush draws his sword.Sybele scratches her butt.“All right,” Orbius declares, “I’m sending my scry sensor in.  Let’s see... hallway... whoa, it’s dark.  I should be able to see better... hmph.  Something weird’s going on in there.”  He frowns, unnerved, then casts mass darkvision.  Even so, he cannot see far in the tower.“All right, why don’t we teleport inside the tower somewhere and try to hit it from an unexpected direction?” Sybele suggests.“Good idea!” Lester beams at her.  “Orbius, can you mass teleport us?”“Yes- I’m putting my sensor in a large open space now.  I’ll be able to send everyone else first, but I’ll have to trump in separately afterward.”“No problem,” says Thrush.  “And then hopefully we can find this thing quickly.”  He grins wickedly.Orbius casts his mass teleport and sends the party in, but he immediately becomes aware that something’s gone wrong.  His scrying sensor, inside the tower, in the space where the party should have arrived, shows no sign of them.  A mishap, he thinks bleakly.  Hopefully it’s not too bad...  He pulls out Lester’s trump but, after a moment’s concentration, discovers that he cannot make contact.Growing worried, Orbius reluctantly teleports in alone.  He materializes in a black hallway that seems to be choked with tangible strands of darkness and gloom.  Slowly he starts exploring, sticking to the left hand wall.“Left to live,” he breathes.****“Where’s Orbius?” asks Lester after a time.  “Why hasn’t he made contact yet?”Sybele says, “Maybe this tower blocks trumps.  Or these... strands.”The party is in a hallway of black stone.  Eerie strands of blackness, like darkness made manifest, twist in the air like webbing.  Their caress is oily.Ten Buck Tom says, “Did you hear that?”“Hear what?” Horbin asks worriedly.Sybele uses her control sound power to shout, at the volume of a lion’s roar, “ORBIUS!!!”  “Surely, if he’s nearby, he’ll hear that and try to follow the noise.  We might as well explore the nearby area,” suggests Thrush.  The party has already spread out a little.  Their visibility, even with the darkvision they all possess, is only about ten feet.  It’s dark, unnaturally so.  ***Orbius does indeed hear something.  It’s clearly a loud yell, probably his name-He hears something else, skittering towards him, and turns to see a horror from some insane nightmare.  A dark form, spider-like but with horrible tentacles instead of legs, and black eyes everywhere, the darkweaver emerges from the gloom and lunges to attack the Eye.Orbius screams and instinctively greater teleports away, heading towards the noise.  ***“What was that?”  Ten Buck Tom looks wary, almost panicky.  ”I heard it too,” confirms Angelfire as she manifests animal affinity to gain the strength of a tiger.“Me too,” Sybele adds, manifesting an extended displacement.  “That way!”  She points.“Let’s go!” Thrush draws his blade and starts moving in.  Lester draws upon his new powers as a contemplative of Malford** and casts greater aspect of the deity.  Then he starts moving after Thrush.  The others join them, manifesting and casting a variety of buffs and defenses as they go.  ***Orbius redirects his scrying sensor.  He still doesn’t see his friends, but he can hear stuff starting to go down back in the direction of the darkweaver.  It’s so dark!  He looks in on the lair with his sensor, then summons a huge air elemental.  As it arrives he immediately begins another summoning.***Ten Buck Tom casts daylight upon his rapier and moves forward.  It still doesn’t illuminate much of anything, but it pushes the strands back another 10’.  As he moves in he casts a dancing lights and sends them ahead.The party finds a central area, somewhat larger than the hall, and at about this time Londo first realizes he can’t go backwards.  “Watch out!” he cries, “I don’t think we can go out!”Patyn cries, “It’s a trap!”Then the darkweaver strikes, aiming a blow downward at Angel- who is straining to move backward with all her might, and therefore not entirely ready for the blow- from the ceiling.  But it misses, and all of our heroes have been on edge waiting for it.  There is a swift burst of motion as Angelfire’s falchion slices up and strikes it with terrible force, knocking it from the ceiling; and as it drops, Thrush and Lester hack at it.  The force of our heroes’ blows destroys the monster.***“Whew!” breathes Lester.  “That wasn’t so bad.  Let’s search around and see if we can find anything...” As Lester speaks, the tower shudders ominously.  Fortunately for our heroes, they almost immediately find a lever in the ceiling.  “There we are!” Angel chuckles, and pulls the lever.”As the tower shudders again, Horbin says, “Let’s get out of here.”  He casts a gate to Var, and the party goes home to rest. About a minute after they leave, the darkweaver’s tower shakes briefly and then collapses into the Void below.*This is a common invocation in my games.  The players like to always follow the left-hand path.  “Left to live” is the catchphrase.**As a contemplative, Lester took the Mysticism domain.***Angel got a crit on it right away, and under my ‘colorful critical hit’ system (which adds special fx to crits without increasing their damage) rolled a knockdown.  When it fell through the L’s and Thrush’s threatened areas and they got AoO’s on it, it was all over. Next Time: What will happen when our heroes confront the Mask of the Devourer??</blockquote>

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