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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 541216" data-attributes="member: 143">Hmm... I did participate in a messsageboard game for a few months in early 2000; it was interesting but ultimately I drifted away from it.  I wasn't planning on doing it again, but perhaps once Travels is finished I can whip something up (gotta have my distraction here at work. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Anyone who had the fortitude to wade through all of this story would have first dibs on playing, of course. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  I'd set the game in the Realms, of course, and maybe we could even meet an NPC "guest star" from the Travels. Speaking of endings, I had a brainstorm this morning and sketched out the ultimate conclusion of the series over breakfast this morning.  Travels will have a final end, and it will come at the end of Book VIII (at the pace I'm writing, we'll likely see it in early 2003).  There will be plot twists leading up to the final scene, frantic action, a huge confrontation, a terrible choice, and betrayal.Nothing precludes our heroes coming back later for some epic action, however...Anyway, here is your Friday update:* * * * *Book VII, Part 16Benzan fought for breath, struggled against the strength of the thing that had encircled his throat and continued to drag him higher into the air, almost to where the lowest of the trees’ branches formed a latticework of gnarled limbs.  He’d dropped his bow, but that would have availed him little.  With both hands he tried to loosen the grip around his neck, but the thick band there may as well have been made of iron for his efforts.  He held on with one hand while he tried to grasp his sword with the other, but his fingers fumbled on the hilt, as if the sword were trying to escape his grip. He was aware of sounds over the pounding of his blood in his ears.  Dana’s voice, shouting his name.  Something bright lanced past his head, striking something above with a meaty thunk.  The pressure on his neck did not loosen, and everything started to grow fuzzy around him.  As soon as he’d been struck, Benzan’s companions had leapt to his aid against whatever it was that had attacked him.  They could see only a thick strand, like a cable, dangling down from the knot of branches a good fifteen feet above the forest turf.  In a blur Lariel drew and fired his bow, aiming for the origin point of that cord, but whether the arrows had an impact, they could not say.  Gorath and Lok shared a quick look, then both were charging forward, axes flashing in the pale light.  But as they neared the ring of trees, the forest itself seemed to lash out at them.  Tangling vines and thorny bushes sprang up and entangled the two warriors in their grasp, hindering them and trying to hold them helpless.  They couldn’t quite do that, not against the strength of those two, but neither could either of them do anything at the moment to aid Benzan.  And to make matters worse, another tentacle shot down from the tree, seeking Gorath’s neck.  “Look out!” Lok cried in warning, as the half-orc sliced through several of the vines wrapped around his legs with his axe.Dana’s heart caught in her throat as she watched the vine drag Benzan up into the air, his legs kicking out helplessly beneath him.  She swallowed her fear and without further hesitation opened her mind to the voice of the Goddess, calling upon the power that filled her with divine magic.  As she completed the spell she shot up into the air like a dart, her spear before her as she headed toward Benzan.  Unfortunately, she could barely see in the half-light, even Benzan just a shadowy outline, the source of the attack invisible among the branches.  Benzan’s struggles guided her, though, and she flew up toward him.  Whatever had grabbed him had already dragged him up a good ten feet above the ground, and now he dangled, his struggles already growing weaker.  Another silver arrow shot past her, gleaming with a bright radiance that shone like the light of a torch.  The arrow flew high, slamming into the trunk of one of the trees, dispelling the shadows with its light.  The glowing arrow revealed the thing that had grabbed Benzan, and Dana swallowed reflexively in horror. It was a huge, creeping vine, or rather a knot of vines, wrapped around a writhing central mass that twisted around several of the interlaced tree trunks and their assorted branches.  She recognized it, but only from stories—an assassin vine, they called it, an animate plant creature that fed upon the rotting corpses of the creatures that it slew.  She held her spear tightly, unsure of where to strike, how she could save Benzan, whose grip on the tendril holding him began to loosen even as she watched.  A fat glob of acid streaked past her, striking the creature, burning into it, startling her into action.  Once again she stilled her thoughts, opened herself to the purity of Selûne.At Lok’s warning, Gorath reached up and grabbed the vine even as it tried to latch onto his throat.  The tendril writhed in his hand, resisting his grasp, but the half-orc grunted with determination and dragged at it.  Even with his strength, the vine almost pulled free, but before it could Lok was there, grabbing onto it was well.  The two warriors shared another look, then together heaved at it with their combined strength.  A snapping sound came down from above, and then a large mass connected to the vine came tumbling down from the branches above.  Even before it hit the ground, Lok and Gorath were lumbering forward at it, tearing through the still-clinging undergrowth around it.  A vine slapped up from the writhing mass and slammed Lok across the helmet, but for all the effect it had on the genasi, it may as well have hit a stone wall.  Dana stuck out her palm and called forth a ray of searing light that blasted into the body of the huge assassin vine still up in the tree.  The divine energies tore into its matter and ripped away the roots of the tentacle holding Benzan.  As its grip loosened, the tiefling fell to the forest floor below.  The distance was not great, and the damp vegetable matter softened his fall, but Dana was already diving after him, concern written on her features.  He had fallen limply, and she prayed silently that he was only unconscious, passed out from lack of air.  Another vine snaked out from the remnants of the creature, but Lariel and Cal both continued their attacks.  Arrows lanced into its body, and while the dancing currents of electricity released by the missiles did not seem to harm it, the steel tips tore through its fibers quite effectively.  Cal’s acid arrows were even more effective, dissolving its substance.  Before the creature could attack again the combined attacks overcame it, and what was left of it quivered and hung limply, no longer animated by life.  Gorath and Lok, meanwhile, had hacked the smaller vine to pieces.  The animated brush fell silent, and they all quickly gathered around where Dana was bent over Benzan’s unmoving frame. “Is he...” Cal asked.“He lives,” Dana said, with relief.  She had pulled the remnants of the vine from around his throat, where an ugly purple bruise surrounded his neck like a ring.  Tenderly touching the injury, she closed her eyes and channeled another potent healing spell into him.  As the blue light of healing poured into him, he opened his eyes and shot up with a start. “By the gods!” he cried, his hands shooting to his neck.“It’s all right,” Dana said, soothing him.  He sat up and looked around, grimacing as he caught sight of the thing dangling lifelessly from the branches above.“That was a close one,” Cal commented.  “Yeah,” Benzan said, taking his bow as Lariel recovered it from a nearby bush and handed it to him.  With Dana’s help, he regained his feet, still a bit unsteady despite the healing.  “Are you all right?” she asked, and he nodded.  “Next time, I think I’ll let you scout ahead,” he said, gesturing with a nod to Gorath.  “Looks like this... thing... ran afoul of the vines,” Lok said, prodding at the corpse that Benzan had seen earlier with his boot.  They could all see it clearly now.  It resembled a lizardfolk, only bigger; its thickly muscled frame made Gorath look slender by comparison.  It had wings, too, now folded back against its body, and wore a leather tunic now very much the worse for wear.  By the smell it had only been dead a day or so, as Gorath had said, but the damp and insects had already gone quite some way toward its decomposition, so much so that there was little more they could discern from it. “What is it?” Dana asked.Benzan opened his mouth to reply, but a voice from behind them all interjected first.  “It is a dragonkin warrior.”   They spun around—none of them had sensed anyone approach!—and more than one mouth dropped in surprise.  The speaker stood barely twenty feet away.  His frame was tall and lean, his shaggy head easily seven feet above his bare feet.  He wore a tunic fashioned from mismatched hides, decorated by lines of painted color and assorted fetishes.  He held a heavy spear with a haft as thick around as Dana’s wrist, its broad head a sharp slab of curving iron.  But most shockingly, his words came from a mouth that looked incapable of fashioning human speech, slavering jaws in a face that resembled the leering snout of a hyena.  The face of a gnoll.  The gnoll regarded them with hard eyes that nonetheless shone with intelligence, but there was no fear in that look.  As they stared, a pair of creatures shuffled up beside it; badgers, if badgers could be the size of a pony.  They watched the companions the way that a cat might look at a mouse caught between its paws. “Welcome to the Reaching Wood,” the gnoll said to them.</blockquote>

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