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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Angcuru" data-source="post: 809404" data-attributes="member: 10948">There is an evil epic-level sorcerer holed up in a tower about to finish an incantation that will finish a string of rituals that, when completed, will open a portal to the abyss, allowing the minions of darkness to overrun the countryside. The leader of the land's army, an oh-so honorable human paladin, in sent into the tower single-handedly to deal with the sorcerer while his incredibly skilled forces amass at the site where the portal is to be opened, prepared to fight against the onslaught of demons, should he fail. While riding towards the tower to stop the sorcerer, he is intercepted by two messengers, one bearing the message that the key component to the final incantation is the blood of a new-born half-elven child, the other with a message saying that his beloved elven wife who is in the final stages of her pregnancy had disappeared from the midwife's chambers. The paladin, of course, rides with ever more speed towards the tower, arrives at the base, bashes in the door, and dashes up the spiral staircase. Surprisingly he meets with no resistance, and soon reaches the peak of the tower, where sight he beholds stops him dead in his tracks.Description of the scene:Close to the parapets near where the paladin emerges from the staircase there is a stone table, upon which lies the paladin's wife, bleeding profusely from a slash across her belly. Above her abdomen hovers a swinging pendulum blade suspended in the air by a ray of dark energy protruding from the outstretched hand of a red-robed figure who stands in front of a pit of obsidian pungee sticks in the center of the floor. In his other hand he holds the dangling form of a new-born child, held by it's ankles over the pit.Now for the question: What does the paladin, who is a disciple of the goddess of love and family, do in this circumstance? Does he attempt to kill the mage before the ritual can be completed, causing his wife to be split in half by the falling pendulum, taking the 50/50 chance that his child will fall from the dead mage's hand into the pit and completing the spell?OR...Does he slice of the mage's hand(from which the energy protrudes) at a timing to that the pendulum will swing away from the stone table, sparing his wife and fosaking his child while the ritual is completed, trusting that his army may be able to handle the demons?OR...something else?</blockquote>

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