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Wing Three
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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 6651494" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 98: FLIGHT RISK</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Feron Dru, half-elf druid</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Galrich Slayer, half-orc barbarian</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Rale Bodkin, human rogue</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Telgrane, half-fire elemental human conjurer/archmage</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Thunderwolf, human fighter</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster: <p style="margin-left: 20px">Aerik Battershield, dwarven fighter/dwarven defender</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Roughknuckles, half-orc fighter</p><p></p><p>We started this adventure after having just finished up "Fur, Feathers, and a Fisherman" earlier in the same session. The players had already selected which PCs would be going through this adventure, but then Dan surprised me by having Desdemona Honeytongue (one of Rale's NPC cohorts) stay behind and having Roughknuckles come along in her place. Roughknuckles is significantly lower in level than the rest of the party, but I figured Dan might as well get the most out of Rale's Leadership feat in the last three adventures in this campaign, so I jotted down the half-orc's AC values and hp total on my PC tracking sheet and we were off. (Fortunately, I had already made up initiative cards of all of his major cohorts, Roughknuckles included.)</p><p></p><p> - - -</p><p></p><p>Brother Altamaic the Calm had once again invited a group of Wing Three adventurers over to one of the conference rooms in the vast Church Library of Boccob. "Well," he said, "You've managed to procure the <em>Elemental Earth Stone</em> and the <em>Elemental Fire Disc</em>. The <em>Elemental Water Halo</em> has proven to be a bit more difficult to locate. I believe our best bet for the moment is to leave that one aside for now and concentrate on finding the <em>Elemental Air Torus</em>. With any luck, once we've gathered up three of the <em>Elemental Items</em>, the fourth will be easier to locate."</p><p></p><p>By now, the group had this system down to a science. The morning had started with a <em>heroes' feast</em> spell courtesy of Cal, on the presumption that Brother Altamaic was ready to send them to the Elemental Plane of Air; now, after casting their standard bevy of "prepare for imminent battle" spells, Telgrane cast a <em>plane shift</em> spell focused through the two <em>Elemental Items</em> they'd collected thus far. Fortunately, the Elemental Plane of Air was perfectly habitable for creatures from the Material Plane, so no <em>attune form</em> spells would be required. Telgrane had a <em>gate</em> spell prepared as their way back home once their mission was successful.</p><p></p><p>They arrived in a featureless plane of blue skies, white clouds, and pleasant illumination which didn't seem to emanate from any celestial body but rather permeated the realm from all directions. They floated serenely in mid-air, although it took a bit of concentration to keep from falling in a random direction; Roughknuckles in particular took a bit of time to get used to the practice, for he had grown up in the streets and back alleys of Greyhawk City and this was a bit out of his comfort zone. Each time he started "falling," Rale took after him and got him situated, then showed him how to "fall" in the right direction to get back to the group.</p><p></p><p>"You guys do this kind of thing often?" Roughknuckles asked, his normal half-orc coloration several shades paler than usual.</p><p></p><p>"Pretty much, yeah," replied Rale as nonchalantly as he could.</p><p></p><p>Looking in all directions, Telgrane found a large chunk of solid ground directly above him – it seemed to be the bottom of a floating island, of the type favored by reclusive wizards and clerics seeking solitude to build their fortresses. And sure enough, as the group traversed the span to the side of the chunk of earth, a small stone keep came into view, erected upon the edge of the floating island. Oddly enough, the rooftop was covered in ice, although the ambient air was not particularly cold.</p><p></p><p>The stone tower seemed to be a small, two-story affair. For whatever reason, despite the size of the chunk of floating rock upon which it sat, it had been built within 15 feet of the edge, with a small pathway leading to an out-thrust chunk of rock some 75 feet or so off to the right of the keep. The only obvious guess as to the projection’s purpose was a landing platform of some type, but that seemed odd given the general openness of the floating rock in general.</p><p></p><p>Telgrane's magically-enhanced eyesight saw more than the ice-covered tower, however. Just to the side of the small tower keep stood a lozenge-shaped stone building, about 15 feet tall, over 100 feet long, and some 70 feet wide. A pair of double doors centered on the "landing platform" at the end of the platform led to the tower's front door. On the top of the roof was an enormous bird, somehow looking mostly reptilian despite the colorful feathers on its short wings, head, and body. It raised its head and looked in Telgrane's direction. Both the bird and the structure radiated auras that told the archmage that they were invisible to normal sight. </p><p></p><p>Telgrane informed the others about the invisible building over the <em>Rary's telepathic bond</em> he'd cast on the whole group back on the Material Plane. There was a brief discussion over which structure to check out first, the obvious stone keep or the hidden oval structure. While the others argued the merits of their opinions, Feron wildshaped into an air elemental, thinking the increased airspeed would be particularly useful. She was the first to notice the pair of antennae popping up over the roof of the stone structure, followed shortly by an insectoid head looking rather like that of an enormous terrestrial honeybee. Once Thunderwolf was apprised of the threat, he flew straight up, notching an arrow into his bow as he did so. "Don't hurt it!" commanded Feron over the <em>telepathic bond</em>. "Let's wait and see what it does first -- it may be friendly!"</p><p></p><p>"What about the other thing -- the invisible bird?" asked Galrich, his <em>vorpal greataxe</em> gripped in his hands.</p><p></p><p>Telgrane looked over at it. It had wandered over to the edge of the invisible roof and glowered at the archmage, its body tensed in a defensive posture. Telgrane wracked his brain, trying to identify the creature and recall some of its salient details. It fit the description of the illusive jub-jub bird, which was said to inhabit a great many different planes, making each its own. Jub-jub birds were said to be particularly resistant to pretty much all types of spell energy, so he'd need to use a wide variety of different types of spells....</p><p></p><p>While the others held their distance, Telgrane cast a <em>glitterdust</em> spell upon the jub-jub bird, covering it and a section of the invisible structure upon which it stood in sparkling motes which gave away their location. "It's a big sucker," Galrich said, flying over closer to the jub-jub bird, which had apparently managed to avoid being blinded by the <em>glitterdust</em> spell. Aerik, charged to keep his future king safe from harm, followed suit.</p><p></p><p>As soon as the duo got within range, the jub-jub bird let loose with a shriek that startled Galrich so much he instantly dropped his weapon; fortunately, in the strange gravity of the Elemental Plane of Air, it just hung there, well within reach once the half-orc shrugged off the stunning effect he'd just been hit with.</p><p></p><p>"Let me try something," suggested Telgrane, and suddenly there were overlapping explosions of fire, electricity, and acid between the two structures, with an overall sonic shriek that pierced the ears painfully even at range, catching both the jub-jub bird and the gigantic bee in their respective areas of effect.</p><p></p><p>"WHAT JUST HAPPENED?" Feron demanded, looking over at the archmage who had ignored her suggestion to leave the bee alone until it showed dangerous inclinations.</p><p></p><p>"I've been wanting to try that," Telgrane admitted with a sheepish grin. "I recently learned the <em>time stop</em> spell, so I just cast it and four <em>delayed blast fireballs</em>, timed to all go off simultaneously, and converted three of them to other forms of energy to try to take out the jub-jub bird. And, since I could get both of the monsters at the same time, I just figured...."</p><p></p><p>"Well, it's too late to change our minds about that," the druid grumbled. Looking over, Thunderwolf was peppering the giant cold element bee, which had crawled onto the roof of the stone structure, with a series of arrows, magically enhanced earlier by Telgrane to deal sonic and electricity damage as well as the normal flames provided by the fighter's magic longbow. The fire seemed particularly potent to the enormous insect, whose body seemed to be the source of the ice covering the roof and back wall of the stone tower. Telgrane cast a <em>sunburst</em> spell which blinded the jub-jub bird, rendering it less able to find its enemies. And then Aerik, Galrich, Rale, and Roughknuckles moved in, hacking away at the nearly-helpless avian, while Infernia joined her master in attacking the giant bee with Thunderwolf. Before too long, both creatures had been slain.</p><p></p><p>"Probably guard beasts," commented Rale. "I imagine our whoozy-whatsis is inside the invisible building -- let's go check it out!"</p><p></p><p>But the invisible building was particularly unnerving. To everyone but Telgrane, and with the exception of the chunk of rooftop (and the dead jub-jub bird) covered in the effects of the <em>glitterdust</em> spell, it seemed to be a 15-foot-deep pit dug into the solid stone of the floating chunk of island. Furthermore, as some simple experimentation demonstrated, anything - and anyone - touching the rooftop was also immediately turned invisible to normal sight. What's more, once a person was invisible on the structure, he was granted with no further enhancement to his sight: he could still see himself just fine (except the others now couldn't see him at all), but the invisible structure was just as invisible as it ever was to the now-invisible viewer.</p><p></p><p>"This is making my head hurt," Roughknuckles complained.</p><p></p><p>"Agreed," replied Rale. "Let's go check out the stone tower; at least that seems to make some normal sense."</p><p></p><p>Feron tried opening the only door to the tower, finding it locked. Rale tried taking care of that, but fiddling around with his lockpicks only revealed it had been <em>arcane locked</em> as well as locked in the normal, mechanical fashion. "Screw this," Rale finally said, reaching for his belt and grabbing up his <em>rod of thievery</em>. One <em>knock</em> spell later and they were in.</p><p></p><p>The keep's interior proved to be just what the group had guessed it would be: the residence of a spellcasting hermit. They discovered a kitchen and den on the ground floor and a bedroom and small arcane library upstairs, all coated with a layer of dust that implied nobody had been here for some time. (Telgrane grabbed the contents of the arcane library and added them to his own mobile library, stored inside the Door That Doesn't Belong; Rhunic began sorting through the books at once and placing them where they belonged on his own shelves.) But a set of stairs leading down to a basement level carved into the very stone of the floating island proved to be of much more interest.</p><p></p><p>The stairs led straight down before opening into a larger room. However, the floor at the bottom of the stairs contained an opening with a 10-foot wide diameter; judging from the stones flanking it in all directions, it was apparent that something had burrowed its way into the basement room from below, but a quick examination of the tunnel led to many puzzled looks, for the walls of the tunnels were incredibly smooth, covered with a red metallic substance as hard as steel. Nobody had any idea what could have made such a tunnel, but given its size and circular cross-section the best guess was some sort of planar purple worm.</p><p></p><p>The room beyond was taken up almost exclusively by a magic circle etched into the stone floor. Furthermore, the circle was not empty - laying face down in its center was a dark, humanoid form with an elongated skull and no visible hair. "Don't break the circle!" advised Telgrane over the <em>telepathic bond</em> from his position upstairs - the stairwell was narrow enough that there was only enough room for a single-file line of heroes heading down it at any one time. But that didn't turn out to be a concern, anyway, for the bodak, upon hearing the intruders, rose up from the magic circle and glared a gaze attack at Feron, who had flown over the others in the line down the stairs to arrive in the basement, still in her air elemental form. She managed to shrug of the attack, then responded with a spell of her own, causing a bolt of lightning to strike down from the ceiling and catch the undead creature in its arcing forks. Telgrane finally made his way past the others and cast a <em>maze</em> spell on the creature, whisking it away to try to find its way out of an extradimensional labyrinth. "That should hopefully give us plenty of time to get out of here," the archmage explained. "If he does make it back out, he won't know which way we went."</p><p></p><p>As the rest of the group settled into the summoning chamber, each stepping carefully past the large hole at the bottom of the stairs, Rale examined a section of wall jutting out from the summoning room. It was only about five feet deep, and the far wall was not only diagonal but also slightly curved. Sure enough, some diligent searching revealed a hidden lever which, when pulled, slid the curved wall into a pocket recess, revealing an apparently lozenge-shaped depression in the stone that could only be the lower level of the invisible maze.</p><p></p><p>"Ugh, this thing again," complained Rale. "Before we check it out, I want to look at that hole by the stairs." He scrambled back to the hole, threw down an <em>everburning candle</em> which showed the tunnel to only drop about 20 feet before turning to the north, and then unceremoniously jumped into the hole. His <em>winged boots</em> activated instantly, and he lowered himself carefully down the vertical shaft, careful not to touch the metallic walls with his hands - the color was disturbingly similar to that of blood and he didn't want to take the chance of there being any necromantic effects if he touched it directly. But when he got to the bottom, he could see the tunnel leveled off and became just another vertical tunnel, although it retained into circular cross-section which meant walking down its length would be easier in the direct middle. Picking up his <em>everburning candle</em>, he held it before him and saw the tunnel branched off about 10 feet ahead, with another portion of tunnel leading off to the right.</p><p></p><p>And then he heard the sounds of footsteps approaching from down that cross-shaft. They were weighty footsteps; Rale imagined them being made by a stone golem or similar automated construct. Listening closer, he updated his mental image to possibly two stone golems, because his ears picked up what could be two pairs of stone feet walking at the same time. Rather than wait for them to reach the intersection, Rale peeked around the corner with his light source. It was only one stone golem after all, but one that had been carved in the shape of a stylized tiger. It continued walking in Rale's direction, its unmoving stone expression nonetheless giving Rale the idea that it was somehow hungry. "Coming back up!" he yelled to his companions as he flew hurriedly back up the shaft from which he'd come.</p><p></p><p>"What's down there?" Feron asked.</p><p></p><p>"A bunch of round tunnels and a stone golem tiger," replied Rale. "Let's go check out that damned invisible maze."</p><p></p><p>Entering through the secret door Rale had unearthed, the group hesitantly stepped into the invisible maze, each one but the archmage immediately losing sight of the others in the maze as they did so. Telgrane scooted up to the front of the group so he could describe what he saw. "There's a curving wall just in front of you," he advised Rale.</p><p></p><p>"Where?" Rale asked, putting out his hand and feeling nothing.</p><p></p><p>"Take a step forward," advised the archmage.</p><p></p><p>Rale's fingers brushed what felt like solid stone. "Yeah, okay, I got it," he said. "So which way?"</p><p></p><p>"This is ridiculous," Feron said. "Surely there's got to be a way for us all to see where we're going. Can't we dispel the magic effect?"</p><p></p><p>"Not all of it," Telgrane reasoned. "Remember when we fought the doppelgangers in the warehouse? Oh, wait, you weren't there -- that was Delphyne. But in any case, the whole warehouse had been covered in multiple castings of the <em>dimensional lock</em> spell. To undo the effects, we would have had to remove each and every individual <em>dimensional lock</em> spell cast. I imagine the same would be true here, and we don't have nearly enough <em>dispel magic</em> spells at hand."</p><p></p><p>"Then why don't we try a physical solution?" Feron asked. She tried squirting water from Thunderwolf's waterskin at the wall, to no avail. She even flew back upstairs to the unknown wizard's wardrobe and came back with an old cloak. Infernia was only too happy to burn it up (since becoming a familiar, she very seldom got to burn things for fun anymore!), and then Feron tried smearing a handful of ashes on the invisible wall. Unfortunately, as soon as the ashes touched the invisible wall, they too became invisible. "Rats!" exclaimed Feron, before wildshaping into a bat, thinking its echolocation might come in handy while navigating a maze whose walls couldn't be seen.</p><p></p><p>But the wait while Feron tried her experiment had been put to good use. With a slap of his hand on his head, Telgrane announced to the others, "I'm an idiot!" Then he cast a <em>limited wish</em> spell, gaining the sudden knowledge of the <em>invisibility purge</em> spell, a spell normally only capable of being cast by clerics. "There," he announced, as a radius of normal vision expanded from his body. Suddenly, the walls and ceiling became visible, as did each of the adventurers. "We'll all have to stick fairly closely together, but I centered the spell on me, so the effects will move along with me. Let's go!"</p><p></p><p>As one, the group entered the no-longer-invisible maze. Turning a few corners, they met up with their first guardian: a rather large, horned humanoid figure wielding an oversized sword. It grinned at the sight of the heroes and advanced. The sepid had been brought to the invisible maze years ago by the unnamed wizard who had lived in the small keep - the one whose botched summoning spell had transformed him into a bodak with no memories of his former life, merely an all-consuming hatred for the living - and the outsider had faithfully fulfilled his duties, hunting down any living beings who might breach the invisible structure. However, even the sepid was aware that these particular interlopers were more powerful than the others who had made into the unseen labyrinth, for one of them had actually made the entire structure completely visible. That was a pity, for the sepid rather enjoyed testing his mettle against other opponents who could not see, for he had no inherent ability to see invisible enemies and had enjoyed his combats in this invisible structure thus far. But before he could cross the distance to his foes, Feron called forth another bolt of lightning from the ceiling to strike the horned foe. He seemed more irritated by it than anything else, so Telgrane modified a <em>scorching ray</em> spell to deal cold damage instead of its normal fire damage.</p><p></p><p>To the archmage's surprise, the sepid swatted away one of the rays right out of the air, before it could strike him. The others struck true, though -- not that it mattered much, for by that time Feron had summoned a greater air elemental which attacked the creature from behind, and then Galrich and Aerik had stepped up and cut the outsider to ribbons.</p><p></p><p>Further exploration of the once-invisible maze revealed a minotaur - not particularly surprising, given the labyrinthine corridors the heroes were traipsing through - and another pair of the stone tigers identical to the one Rale had seen in the blood-red tunnels below. The minotaur was dispatched fairly easily, given the odds against it, especially once the heroes were able to flank it from two directions. However, the stone tiger constructs - the taotiehs - were much tougher opponents, for the opposite was true: the adventurers had encountered one of the taotiehs in a dead-end corridor when its counterpart crept up behind them from a different passageway. They also learned an unpleasant ability the constructs had been granted: their mouths practically sucked in any prey they bit, forcing them into what Galrich (once he had been swallowed whole by the original taotieh they'd been fighting) described as a "stuffy little room." It turned out to be an extradimensional storage space, and the creatures had more than one of them, for at one time both Roughknuckles and Galrich had both been swallowed by the same beast and neither encountered the other while trying to cut themselves free before suffocating.</p><p></p><p>Realizing that these taotiehs were likely some type of golem, which were historically immune to most spells, Feron opted to return to her normal half-elf form so she could access her <em>construct bane</em> longbow. Between the attacks against the taotieh's outer forms and the attacks from inside by those who had been swallowed, the stone tigers were soon destroyed. And it turned out the unnamed wizard apparently used them as mobile treasure storage devices, for one of each creature's four extradimensional stomachs had been used to store valuables: coins in the one, gems in the other. Rale made it his duty to gather the valuables up and get an exact count later.</p><p></p><p>The only other thing of note in the maze was another breach in the floor, of the same type as seen in the stone keep, right down to the blood-red, metallic walls. "There has to be a way to get upstairs, though," reasoned Feron. "There's another whole floor up there!"</p><p></p><p>Once again, it was Telgrane's magically-enhanced eyes that found the way to the upper level of the maze. One dead-end section radiated an aura of conjuration magic of the type the archmage recognized as that associated with teleportation effects. Sure enough, by merely touching the section of wall, he was able to walk "through" it and pop out of another wall, this one presumably on the upper level. The others followed.</p><p></p><p>"Great," grumbled Rale. "Now we gotta slog our way through another whole level of maze guardians."</p><p></p><p>He was right: there were four guardians on the upper level of the once-invisible maze. Three of them had been constructed for that very purpose by the reclusive wizard who had designed and built this entire structure - one brass golem and two bone golems, each having been given a position in the maze to guard against living intruders. The fourth was a nightwalker, gated by the wizard into his tower's basement as the last act of his life; the nightwalker had turned the wizard into a bodak and then went exploring, deciding the invisible maze was an interesting place in which to fight the living.</p><p></p><p>The first of these upper guardians encountered by the heroes was one of the bone golems, and in fighting it they made enough noise to attract the attention of the other bone golem as well as the nightwalker. Galrich got to experience the bone golems' "bone cage" attack firsthand, in that shortly after smashing the first construct to pieces, the other one sent a mass of bones flying in his direction, pinning him into position in such a manner as to make it almost impossible to move. Fortunately, Thunderwolf and Aerik were on hand to help him shatter his way to freedom and then dispatch the second bone golem shortly thereafter.</p><p></p><p>In the meantime, Feron and Telgrane were dealing with the nightwalker in a rather unique fashion, in the form of overlapping <em>wall of fire</em> spells that ate away at the creature's undead flesh. The only way for the beast to survive was for it to cast its sole <em>cone of cold</em> spell-like ability, which unfortunately caught Infernia in its area of effect and hurt her significantly as well as snuffing out the portions of the flame-walls in front of the nightwalker, allowing it to move forward towards its enemies. But it had been badly damaged by the twin <em>walls of fire</em>, to the point where it didn't survive long after having escaped their effects. That left only the brass golem over on the other side of the maze, and it was quickly dispatched at a distance by spells and arrows while Feron sent another greater air elemental forward to batter it into scrap.</p><p></p><p>A quick perusal of every passageway on the top of the maze revealed no further exits, nor the <em>Elemental Air Torus</em>, which in turn caused further grumbling from Rale.</p><p></p><p>"Never mind, I'll bet I know where it is," remarked Telgrane.</p><p></p><p>"Where?" demanded Rale.</p><p></p><p>"That stone tiger you saw in the tunnels below," the archmage replied. "I'll bet it fell through the hole in the floor of the bottom of the maze when it was invisible, and hasn't been able to climb its way back up, given the smoothness of the tunnel walls. And we already know they have extradimensional stomachs, which the wizard who built this place used as places to store his valuables...."</p><p></p><p>"So if we'd have fought that damned tiger when I first saw it, we could have avoided the whole maze altogether!" groaned Rale. "Okay, let's go back down there."</p><p></p><p>"We need to keep a look out for whatever made those tunnels," Feron reminded the group. "We have no idea what might have done so."</p><p></p><p>The group opted to enter the tunnels via the hole in the maze floor, presumably the one the stone tiger had fallen through. Using drow <em>floatdisks</em>, Rale's <em>winged boots</em>, and Telgrane's <em>carpet of flying</em>, they each lowered themselves cautiously down the vertical shaft. The landscape at the bottom was very similar to the area Rale had scouted out before, although there was no sign of the stone tiger. Looking around, they did spot a small pile of discarded treasure: a leather belt with a pouch still attached to it and a dagger, as well as a pair of torn boots that had seen better days.</p><p></p><p>Rale took a moment to get his bearings, trying to envision which way the other vertical shaft - the one at the bottom of the wizard's basement stairs - lay. "Let's go this way," he suggested, leading the way down a tunnel. The others followed suit. As he had expected, he found the other shaft he had used earlier, but there was still no sign of the stone tiger. Continuing down the tunnel, he came upon another vertical shaft, this one apparently far enough away from the invisible maze to have avoided its accidental piercing.</p><p></p><p>But this one was occupied. Dropping slowly down the shaft was a spherical form with waving appendages, that immediately brought to mind a beholder to those in the front rows of the formation. But as the creature turned to face the heroes, it became apparent that this was no beholder - or at least not one of a type that any of the adventurers had seen. This one had multiple eyes, all right - it looked like a row of five of them, arcing above the creature's maw - but the waving appendages were more in the form of tentacles, with the front-most pair also sporting an impressive pair of claws.</p><p></p><p>As might be expected, Galrich charged the beast, summoning forth the depths of his rage as he did so. Aerik raced just behind, struggling to keep up with his headstrong liege. Axes swinging, the two attacked the strange creature. Galrich's first blow was deflected off the ghorazagh's thick carapace, and then the beast swung with surprising maneuverability and clamped its teeth down on the half-orc's neck and shoulder. The barbarian roared in pain, but the ghorazagh held on, sucking up Galrich's blood and storing it in internal sacs in its body. Aerik raced up and swung his axe at the beast, cutting through its carapace but unable to force it to release its toothy grip on his liege.</p><p></p><p>Behind them, Thunderwolf pulled an arrow from his quiver and effortlessly shot it at the ghorazagh, then followed up with arrow after arrow like a well-oiled automaton. The magical enhancements Telgrane had cast upon the fighter's arrows seemed to be dealing a great deal of pain to the beast, but whether the sonics or the electricity did the most damage was difficult to determine.</p><p></p><p>And then, while everyone was focused on the battle with the ghorazagh, the third of the stone tigers crept up from behind.</p><p></p><p>Roughknuckles was the first to notice its approach, his childhood in the back alleyways of Greyhawk City coming to good use in this similar maze of twisting passages. He cried a warning and spun around, bringing his sword up in a defensive posture. But his warning was enough to allow Feron and Telgrane to target with the archmage's remaining combat spells and the druid's <em>construct bane</em> longbow. Together, they brought it down and turned to see that the others had similarly dispatched the ghorazagh. Feron rushed over and attended to Galrich's wounds, closing up the sizable hole in the side of his neck with a <em>heal</em> spell.</p><p></p><p>Telgrane, however, was more interested in the defeated taotieh. Sure enough, once it had collapsed, the contents of its extradimensional stomachs had been shunted next to it. Stepping over the carved tiger's form, he approached the cloudy discus-shaped object on its other side.</p><p></p><p>"Be careful, Master," advised Infernia, not trusting the stone tiger not to return to life somehow. While she focused her attention on the defeated taotieh, Telgrane pulled out the <em>Elemental Items</em> they had gathered thus far. The <em>Elemental Earth Stone</em> was a rough, spherical lump of stone, with a ring of flames, the <em>Elemental Fire Disc</em>, completely encircling it. As he approached the disgorged treasure, the <em>Elemental Air Torus</em> seemed to sense the presence of its counterparts; rising up of its own accord, it flashed over to the archmage and merged with the two <em>Elemental Items</em> he held in his hand. Now there was a second ring of cloudy air around the stony core, perpendicular to the ring of flames. Telgrane could sense that simply by holding this powerful combined item, he was immune to the attacks of elementals of air, earth, or fire. And he had a hint of even further power buried deep into the three merged artifacts, power which might be made known once all four were together....</p><p></p><p>Turning back to the rest of the assembled group, he held up the merged <em>Elemental Items</em> and smiled. "Three down," he said, "and only one more to go!"</p><p></p><p> - - - </p><p></p><p>Logan had given me the <em>Pathfinder Pawns: Bestiary 3</em> boxed set for Christmas last year, so when writing this adventure I purposefully found ways to incorporate creatures from that set: specifically, the jub-jub bird, sepid, bone and brass golems, taotiehs, and ghorazagh. The giant cold element bee was another "giant plastic bug" I had picked up from Target for a dollar some years ago and was determined to find some good use for before this campaign ended.</p><p></p><p>I had anticipated the invisible maze to be a bit tricky, with Telgrane being the only one who'd be able to see the enemies (and even the walls!) within. But once again, I discounted Logan's mastery of figuring out a way to get just the right spell he needed. Since we played this adventure over two sessions, and the first session ended just after the fight with the sepid (the first fight inside the invisible maze), for the second session I made two outlines of the maze on the backs of desk calendar pages, with 1-inch gridlines drawn in pencil, and then drew in the walls with a Sharpie marker during the second session as the PCs moved around the no-longer-invisible maze.</p><p></p><p>For the ghorazagh tunnels, I tried something different: I made an 8-by-10 table in Word with 1-inch squares for each row and column, then printed a bunch of them off. I then drew the ghorazagh tunnels onto these paper "geomorphs," trimming the inner borders of each page to they can all be lined up to form a much larger whole. Every time the PCs moved onto another of these geomorphs, I just plunked that whole sheet down. It allowed them to see what would be around corners, but it certainly sped the game up. (And a bunch of same-sized sheets are easier to use than individual sections of branching tunnels.)</p><p></p><p>After the session ended, Logan gave me his predictions for the last two adventures: the next one would obviously be the search for the <em>Elemental Water Halo</em> so that adventure #100 could be devoted to Galrich's ascension to the throne of Kordovia. I just smiled mysteriously and told him that was certainly one way it could occur.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 6651494, member: 508"] [b]ADVENTURE 98: FLIGHT RISK[/b] PC Roster: [INDENT]Feron Dru, half-elf druid Galrich Slayer, half-orc barbarian Rale Bodkin, human rogue Telgrane, half-fire elemental human conjurer/archmage Thunderwolf, human fighter[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Aerik Battershield, dwarven fighter/dwarven defender Roughknuckles, half-orc fighter[/INDENT] We started this adventure after having just finished up "Fur, Feathers, and a Fisherman" earlier in the same session. The players had already selected which PCs would be going through this adventure, but then Dan surprised me by having Desdemona Honeytongue (one of Rale's NPC cohorts) stay behind and having Roughknuckles come along in her place. Roughknuckles is significantly lower in level than the rest of the party, but I figured Dan might as well get the most out of Rale's Leadership feat in the last three adventures in this campaign, so I jotted down the half-orc's AC values and hp total on my PC tracking sheet and we were off. (Fortunately, I had already made up initiative cards of all of his major cohorts, Roughknuckles included.) - - - Brother Altamaic the Calm had once again invited a group of Wing Three adventurers over to one of the conference rooms in the vast Church Library of Boccob. "Well," he said, "You've managed to procure the [i]Elemental Earth Stone[/i] and the [i]Elemental Fire Disc[/i]. The [i]Elemental Water Halo[/i] has proven to be a bit more difficult to locate. I believe our best bet for the moment is to leave that one aside for now and concentrate on finding the [i]Elemental Air Torus[/i]. With any luck, once we've gathered up three of the [i]Elemental Items[/i], the fourth will be easier to locate." By now, the group had this system down to a science. The morning had started with a [i]heroes' feast[/i] spell courtesy of Cal, on the presumption that Brother Altamaic was ready to send them to the Elemental Plane of Air; now, after casting their standard bevy of "prepare for imminent battle" spells, Telgrane cast a [i]plane shift[/i] spell focused through the two [i]Elemental Items[/i] they'd collected thus far. Fortunately, the Elemental Plane of Air was perfectly habitable for creatures from the Material Plane, so no [i]attune form[/i] spells would be required. Telgrane had a [i]gate[/i] spell prepared as their way back home once their mission was successful. They arrived in a featureless plane of blue skies, white clouds, and pleasant illumination which didn't seem to emanate from any celestial body but rather permeated the realm from all directions. They floated serenely in mid-air, although it took a bit of concentration to keep from falling in a random direction; Roughknuckles in particular took a bit of time to get used to the practice, for he had grown up in the streets and back alleys of Greyhawk City and this was a bit out of his comfort zone. Each time he started "falling," Rale took after him and got him situated, then showed him how to "fall" in the right direction to get back to the group. "You guys do this kind of thing often?" Roughknuckles asked, his normal half-orc coloration several shades paler than usual. "Pretty much, yeah," replied Rale as nonchalantly as he could. Looking in all directions, Telgrane found a large chunk of solid ground directly above him – it seemed to be the bottom of a floating island, of the type favored by reclusive wizards and clerics seeking solitude to build their fortresses. And sure enough, as the group traversed the span to the side of the chunk of earth, a small stone keep came into view, erected upon the edge of the floating island. Oddly enough, the rooftop was covered in ice, although the ambient air was not particularly cold. The stone tower seemed to be a small, two-story affair. For whatever reason, despite the size of the chunk of floating rock upon which it sat, it had been built within 15 feet of the edge, with a small pathway leading to an out-thrust chunk of rock some 75 feet or so off to the right of the keep. The only obvious guess as to the projection’s purpose was a landing platform of some type, but that seemed odd given the general openness of the floating rock in general. Telgrane's magically-enhanced eyesight saw more than the ice-covered tower, however. Just to the side of the small tower keep stood a lozenge-shaped stone building, about 15 feet tall, over 100 feet long, and some 70 feet wide. A pair of double doors centered on the "landing platform" at the end of the platform led to the tower's front door. On the top of the roof was an enormous bird, somehow looking mostly reptilian despite the colorful feathers on its short wings, head, and body. It raised its head and looked in Telgrane's direction. Both the bird and the structure radiated auras that told the archmage that they were invisible to normal sight. Telgrane informed the others about the invisible building over the [i]Rary's telepathic bond[/i] he'd cast on the whole group back on the Material Plane. There was a brief discussion over which structure to check out first, the obvious stone keep or the hidden oval structure. While the others argued the merits of their opinions, Feron wildshaped into an air elemental, thinking the increased airspeed would be particularly useful. She was the first to notice the pair of antennae popping up over the roof of the stone structure, followed shortly by an insectoid head looking rather like that of an enormous terrestrial honeybee. Once Thunderwolf was apprised of the threat, he flew straight up, notching an arrow into his bow as he did so. "Don't hurt it!" commanded Feron over the [i]telepathic bond[/i]. "Let's wait and see what it does first -- it may be friendly!" "What about the other thing -- the invisible bird?" asked Galrich, his [i]vorpal greataxe[/i] gripped in his hands. Telgrane looked over at it. It had wandered over to the edge of the invisible roof and glowered at the archmage, its body tensed in a defensive posture. Telgrane wracked his brain, trying to identify the creature and recall some of its salient details. It fit the description of the illusive jub-jub bird, which was said to inhabit a great many different planes, making each its own. Jub-jub birds were said to be particularly resistant to pretty much all types of spell energy, so he'd need to use a wide variety of different types of spells.... While the others held their distance, Telgrane cast a [i]glitterdust[/i] spell upon the jub-jub bird, covering it and a section of the invisible structure upon which it stood in sparkling motes which gave away their location. "It's a big sucker," Galrich said, flying over closer to the jub-jub bird, which had apparently managed to avoid being blinded by the [i]glitterdust[/i] spell. Aerik, charged to keep his future king safe from harm, followed suit. As soon as the duo got within range, the jub-jub bird let loose with a shriek that startled Galrich so much he instantly dropped his weapon; fortunately, in the strange gravity of the Elemental Plane of Air, it just hung there, well within reach once the half-orc shrugged off the stunning effect he'd just been hit with. "Let me try something," suggested Telgrane, and suddenly there were overlapping explosions of fire, electricity, and acid between the two structures, with an overall sonic shriek that pierced the ears painfully even at range, catching both the jub-jub bird and the gigantic bee in their respective areas of effect. "WHAT JUST HAPPENED?" Feron demanded, looking over at the archmage who had ignored her suggestion to leave the bee alone until it showed dangerous inclinations. "I've been wanting to try that," Telgrane admitted with a sheepish grin. "I recently learned the [i]time stop[/i] spell, so I just cast it and four [i]delayed blast fireballs[/i], timed to all go off simultaneously, and converted three of them to other forms of energy to try to take out the jub-jub bird. And, since I could get both of the monsters at the same time, I just figured...." "Well, it's too late to change our minds about that," the druid grumbled. Looking over, Thunderwolf was peppering the giant cold element bee, which had crawled onto the roof of the stone structure, with a series of arrows, magically enhanced earlier by Telgrane to deal sonic and electricity damage as well as the normal flames provided by the fighter's magic longbow. The fire seemed particularly potent to the enormous insect, whose body seemed to be the source of the ice covering the roof and back wall of the stone tower. Telgrane cast a [i]sunburst[/i] spell which blinded the jub-jub bird, rendering it less able to find its enemies. And then Aerik, Galrich, Rale, and Roughknuckles moved in, hacking away at the nearly-helpless avian, while Infernia joined her master in attacking the giant bee with Thunderwolf. Before too long, both creatures had been slain. "Probably guard beasts," commented Rale. "I imagine our whoozy-whatsis is inside the invisible building -- let's go check it out!" But the invisible building was particularly unnerving. To everyone but Telgrane, and with the exception of the chunk of rooftop (and the dead jub-jub bird) covered in the effects of the [i]glitterdust[/i] spell, it seemed to be a 15-foot-deep pit dug into the solid stone of the floating chunk of island. Furthermore, as some simple experimentation demonstrated, anything - and anyone - touching the rooftop was also immediately turned invisible to normal sight. What's more, once a person was invisible on the structure, he was granted with no further enhancement to his sight: he could still see himself just fine (except the others now couldn't see him at all), but the invisible structure was just as invisible as it ever was to the now-invisible viewer. "This is making my head hurt," Roughknuckles complained. "Agreed," replied Rale. "Let's go check out the stone tower; at least that seems to make some normal sense." Feron tried opening the only door to the tower, finding it locked. Rale tried taking care of that, but fiddling around with his lockpicks only revealed it had been [i]arcane locked[/i] as well as locked in the normal, mechanical fashion. "Screw this," Rale finally said, reaching for his belt and grabbing up his [i]rod of thievery[/i]. One [i]knock[/i] spell later and they were in. The keep's interior proved to be just what the group had guessed it would be: the residence of a spellcasting hermit. They discovered a kitchen and den on the ground floor and a bedroom and small arcane library upstairs, all coated with a layer of dust that implied nobody had been here for some time. (Telgrane grabbed the contents of the arcane library and added them to his own mobile library, stored inside the Door That Doesn't Belong; Rhunic began sorting through the books at once and placing them where they belonged on his own shelves.) But a set of stairs leading down to a basement level carved into the very stone of the floating island proved to be of much more interest. The stairs led straight down before opening into a larger room. However, the floor at the bottom of the stairs contained an opening with a 10-foot wide diameter; judging from the stones flanking it in all directions, it was apparent that something had burrowed its way into the basement room from below, but a quick examination of the tunnel led to many puzzled looks, for the walls of the tunnels were incredibly smooth, covered with a red metallic substance as hard as steel. Nobody had any idea what could have made such a tunnel, but given its size and circular cross-section the best guess was some sort of planar purple worm. The room beyond was taken up almost exclusively by a magic circle etched into the stone floor. Furthermore, the circle was not empty - laying face down in its center was a dark, humanoid form with an elongated skull and no visible hair. "Don't break the circle!" advised Telgrane over the [i]telepathic bond[/i] from his position upstairs - the stairwell was narrow enough that there was only enough room for a single-file line of heroes heading down it at any one time. But that didn't turn out to be a concern, anyway, for the bodak, upon hearing the intruders, rose up from the magic circle and glared a gaze attack at Feron, who had flown over the others in the line down the stairs to arrive in the basement, still in her air elemental form. She managed to shrug of the attack, then responded with a spell of her own, causing a bolt of lightning to strike down from the ceiling and catch the undead creature in its arcing forks. Telgrane finally made his way past the others and cast a [i]maze[/i] spell on the creature, whisking it away to try to find its way out of an extradimensional labyrinth. "That should hopefully give us plenty of time to get out of here," the archmage explained. "If he does make it back out, he won't know which way we went." As the rest of the group settled into the summoning chamber, each stepping carefully past the large hole at the bottom of the stairs, Rale examined a section of wall jutting out from the summoning room. It was only about five feet deep, and the far wall was not only diagonal but also slightly curved. Sure enough, some diligent searching revealed a hidden lever which, when pulled, slid the curved wall into a pocket recess, revealing an apparently lozenge-shaped depression in the stone that could only be the lower level of the invisible maze. "Ugh, this thing again," complained Rale. "Before we check it out, I want to look at that hole by the stairs." He scrambled back to the hole, threw down an [i]everburning candle[/i] which showed the tunnel to only drop about 20 feet before turning to the north, and then unceremoniously jumped into the hole. His [i]winged boots[/i] activated instantly, and he lowered himself carefully down the vertical shaft, careful not to touch the metallic walls with his hands - the color was disturbingly similar to that of blood and he didn't want to take the chance of there being any necromantic effects if he touched it directly. But when he got to the bottom, he could see the tunnel leveled off and became just another vertical tunnel, although it retained into circular cross-section which meant walking down its length would be easier in the direct middle. Picking up his [i]everburning candle[/i], he held it before him and saw the tunnel branched off about 10 feet ahead, with another portion of tunnel leading off to the right. And then he heard the sounds of footsteps approaching from down that cross-shaft. They were weighty footsteps; Rale imagined them being made by a stone golem or similar automated construct. Listening closer, he updated his mental image to possibly two stone golems, because his ears picked up what could be two pairs of stone feet walking at the same time. Rather than wait for them to reach the intersection, Rale peeked around the corner with his light source. It was only one stone golem after all, but one that had been carved in the shape of a stylized tiger. It continued walking in Rale's direction, its unmoving stone expression nonetheless giving Rale the idea that it was somehow hungry. "Coming back up!" he yelled to his companions as he flew hurriedly back up the shaft from which he'd come. "What's down there?" Feron asked. "A bunch of round tunnels and a stone golem tiger," replied Rale. "Let's go check out that damned invisible maze." Entering through the secret door Rale had unearthed, the group hesitantly stepped into the invisible maze, each one but the archmage immediately losing sight of the others in the maze as they did so. Telgrane scooted up to the front of the group so he could describe what he saw. "There's a curving wall just in front of you," he advised Rale. "Where?" Rale asked, putting out his hand and feeling nothing. "Take a step forward," advised the archmage. Rale's fingers brushed what felt like solid stone. "Yeah, okay, I got it," he said. "So which way?" "This is ridiculous," Feron said. "Surely there's got to be a way for us all to see where we're going. Can't we dispel the magic effect?" "Not all of it," Telgrane reasoned. "Remember when we fought the doppelgangers in the warehouse? Oh, wait, you weren't there -- that was Delphyne. But in any case, the whole warehouse had been covered in multiple castings of the [i]dimensional lock[/i] spell. To undo the effects, we would have had to remove each and every individual [i]dimensional lock[/i] spell cast. I imagine the same would be true here, and we don't have nearly enough [i]dispel magic[/i] spells at hand." "Then why don't we try a physical solution?" Feron asked. She tried squirting water from Thunderwolf's waterskin at the wall, to no avail. She even flew back upstairs to the unknown wizard's wardrobe and came back with an old cloak. Infernia was only too happy to burn it up (since becoming a familiar, she very seldom got to burn things for fun anymore!), and then Feron tried smearing a handful of ashes on the invisible wall. Unfortunately, as soon as the ashes touched the invisible wall, they too became invisible. "Rats!" exclaimed Feron, before wildshaping into a bat, thinking its echolocation might come in handy while navigating a maze whose walls couldn't be seen. But the wait while Feron tried her experiment had been put to good use. With a slap of his hand on his head, Telgrane announced to the others, "I'm an idiot!" Then he cast a [i]limited wish[/i] spell, gaining the sudden knowledge of the [i]invisibility purge[/i] spell, a spell normally only capable of being cast by clerics. "There," he announced, as a radius of normal vision expanded from his body. Suddenly, the walls and ceiling became visible, as did each of the adventurers. "We'll all have to stick fairly closely together, but I centered the spell on me, so the effects will move along with me. Let's go!" As one, the group entered the no-longer-invisible maze. Turning a few corners, they met up with their first guardian: a rather large, horned humanoid figure wielding an oversized sword. It grinned at the sight of the heroes and advanced. The sepid had been brought to the invisible maze years ago by the unnamed wizard who had lived in the small keep - the one whose botched summoning spell had transformed him into a bodak with no memories of his former life, merely an all-consuming hatred for the living - and the outsider had faithfully fulfilled his duties, hunting down any living beings who might breach the invisible structure. However, even the sepid was aware that these particular interlopers were more powerful than the others who had made into the unseen labyrinth, for one of them had actually made the entire structure completely visible. That was a pity, for the sepid rather enjoyed testing his mettle against other opponents who could not see, for he had no inherent ability to see invisible enemies and had enjoyed his combats in this invisible structure thus far. But before he could cross the distance to his foes, Feron called forth another bolt of lightning from the ceiling to strike the horned foe. He seemed more irritated by it than anything else, so Telgrane modified a [i]scorching ray[/i] spell to deal cold damage instead of its normal fire damage. To the archmage's surprise, the sepid swatted away one of the rays right out of the air, before it could strike him. The others struck true, though -- not that it mattered much, for by that time Feron had summoned a greater air elemental which attacked the creature from behind, and then Galrich and Aerik had stepped up and cut the outsider to ribbons. Further exploration of the once-invisible maze revealed a minotaur - not particularly surprising, given the labyrinthine corridors the heroes were traipsing through - and another pair of the stone tigers identical to the one Rale had seen in the blood-red tunnels below. The minotaur was dispatched fairly easily, given the odds against it, especially once the heroes were able to flank it from two directions. However, the stone tiger constructs - the taotiehs - were much tougher opponents, for the opposite was true: the adventurers had encountered one of the taotiehs in a dead-end corridor when its counterpart crept up behind them from a different passageway. They also learned an unpleasant ability the constructs had been granted: their mouths practically sucked in any prey they bit, forcing them into what Galrich (once he had been swallowed whole by the original taotieh they'd been fighting) described as a "stuffy little room." It turned out to be an extradimensional storage space, and the creatures had more than one of them, for at one time both Roughknuckles and Galrich had both been swallowed by the same beast and neither encountered the other while trying to cut themselves free before suffocating. Realizing that these taotiehs were likely some type of golem, which were historically immune to most spells, Feron opted to return to her normal half-elf form so she could access her [i]construct bane[/i] longbow. Between the attacks against the taotieh's outer forms and the attacks from inside by those who had been swallowed, the stone tigers were soon destroyed. And it turned out the unnamed wizard apparently used them as mobile treasure storage devices, for one of each creature's four extradimensional stomachs had been used to store valuables: coins in the one, gems in the other. Rale made it his duty to gather the valuables up and get an exact count later. The only other thing of note in the maze was another breach in the floor, of the same type as seen in the stone keep, right down to the blood-red, metallic walls. "There has to be a way to get upstairs, though," reasoned Feron. "There's another whole floor up there!" Once again, it was Telgrane's magically-enhanced eyes that found the way to the upper level of the maze. One dead-end section radiated an aura of conjuration magic of the type the archmage recognized as that associated with teleportation effects. Sure enough, by merely touching the section of wall, he was able to walk "through" it and pop out of another wall, this one presumably on the upper level. The others followed. "Great," grumbled Rale. "Now we gotta slog our way through another whole level of maze guardians." He was right: there were four guardians on the upper level of the once-invisible maze. Three of them had been constructed for that very purpose by the reclusive wizard who had designed and built this entire structure - one brass golem and two bone golems, each having been given a position in the maze to guard against living intruders. The fourth was a nightwalker, gated by the wizard into his tower's basement as the last act of his life; the nightwalker had turned the wizard into a bodak and then went exploring, deciding the invisible maze was an interesting place in which to fight the living. The first of these upper guardians encountered by the heroes was one of the bone golems, and in fighting it they made enough noise to attract the attention of the other bone golem as well as the nightwalker. Galrich got to experience the bone golems' "bone cage" attack firsthand, in that shortly after smashing the first construct to pieces, the other one sent a mass of bones flying in his direction, pinning him into position in such a manner as to make it almost impossible to move. Fortunately, Thunderwolf and Aerik were on hand to help him shatter his way to freedom and then dispatch the second bone golem shortly thereafter. In the meantime, Feron and Telgrane were dealing with the nightwalker in a rather unique fashion, in the form of overlapping [i]wall of fire[/i] spells that ate away at the creature's undead flesh. The only way for the beast to survive was for it to cast its sole [i]cone of cold[/i] spell-like ability, which unfortunately caught Infernia in its area of effect and hurt her significantly as well as snuffing out the portions of the flame-walls in front of the nightwalker, allowing it to move forward towards its enemies. But it had been badly damaged by the twin [i]walls of fire[/i], to the point where it didn't survive long after having escaped their effects. That left only the brass golem over on the other side of the maze, and it was quickly dispatched at a distance by spells and arrows while Feron sent another greater air elemental forward to batter it into scrap. A quick perusal of every passageway on the top of the maze revealed no further exits, nor the [i]Elemental Air Torus[/i], which in turn caused further grumbling from Rale. "Never mind, I'll bet I know where it is," remarked Telgrane. "Where?" demanded Rale. "That stone tiger you saw in the tunnels below," the archmage replied. "I'll bet it fell through the hole in the floor of the bottom of the maze when it was invisible, and hasn't been able to climb its way back up, given the smoothness of the tunnel walls. And we already know they have extradimensional stomachs, which the wizard who built this place used as places to store his valuables...." "So if we'd have fought that damned tiger when I first saw it, we could have avoided the whole maze altogether!" groaned Rale. "Okay, let's go back down there." "We need to keep a look out for whatever made those tunnels," Feron reminded the group. "We have no idea what might have done so." The group opted to enter the tunnels via the hole in the maze floor, presumably the one the stone tiger had fallen through. Using drow [i]floatdisks[/i], Rale's [i]winged boots[/i], and Telgrane's [i]carpet of flying[/i], they each lowered themselves cautiously down the vertical shaft. The landscape at the bottom was very similar to the area Rale had scouted out before, although there was no sign of the stone tiger. Looking around, they did spot a small pile of discarded treasure: a leather belt with a pouch still attached to it and a dagger, as well as a pair of torn boots that had seen better days. Rale took a moment to get his bearings, trying to envision which way the other vertical shaft - the one at the bottom of the wizard's basement stairs - lay. "Let's go this way," he suggested, leading the way down a tunnel. The others followed suit. As he had expected, he found the other shaft he had used earlier, but there was still no sign of the stone tiger. Continuing down the tunnel, he came upon another vertical shaft, this one apparently far enough away from the invisible maze to have avoided its accidental piercing. But this one was occupied. Dropping slowly down the shaft was a spherical form with waving appendages, that immediately brought to mind a beholder to those in the front rows of the formation. But as the creature turned to face the heroes, it became apparent that this was no beholder - or at least not one of a type that any of the adventurers had seen. This one had multiple eyes, all right - it looked like a row of five of them, arcing above the creature's maw - but the waving appendages were more in the form of tentacles, with the front-most pair also sporting an impressive pair of claws. As might be expected, Galrich charged the beast, summoning forth the depths of his rage as he did so. Aerik raced just behind, struggling to keep up with his headstrong liege. Axes swinging, the two attacked the strange creature. Galrich's first blow was deflected off the ghorazagh's thick carapace, and then the beast swung with surprising maneuverability and clamped its teeth down on the half-orc's neck and shoulder. The barbarian roared in pain, but the ghorazagh held on, sucking up Galrich's blood and storing it in internal sacs in its body. Aerik raced up and swung his axe at the beast, cutting through its carapace but unable to force it to release its toothy grip on his liege. Behind them, Thunderwolf pulled an arrow from his quiver and effortlessly shot it at the ghorazagh, then followed up with arrow after arrow like a well-oiled automaton. The magical enhancements Telgrane had cast upon the fighter's arrows seemed to be dealing a great deal of pain to the beast, but whether the sonics or the electricity did the most damage was difficult to determine. And then, while everyone was focused on the battle with the ghorazagh, the third of the stone tigers crept up from behind. Roughknuckles was the first to notice its approach, his childhood in the back alleyways of Greyhawk City coming to good use in this similar maze of twisting passages. He cried a warning and spun around, bringing his sword up in a defensive posture. But his warning was enough to allow Feron and Telgrane to target with the archmage's remaining combat spells and the druid's [i]construct bane[/i] longbow. Together, they brought it down and turned to see that the others had similarly dispatched the ghorazagh. Feron rushed over and attended to Galrich's wounds, closing up the sizable hole in the side of his neck with a [i]heal[/i] spell. Telgrane, however, was more interested in the defeated taotieh. Sure enough, once it had collapsed, the contents of its extradimensional stomachs had been shunted next to it. Stepping over the carved tiger's form, he approached the cloudy discus-shaped object on its other side. "Be careful, Master," advised Infernia, not trusting the stone tiger not to return to life somehow. While she focused her attention on the defeated taotieh, Telgrane pulled out the [i]Elemental Items[/i] they had gathered thus far. The [i]Elemental Earth Stone[/i] was a rough, spherical lump of stone, with a ring of flames, the [i]Elemental Fire Disc[/i], completely encircling it. As he approached the disgorged treasure, the [i]Elemental Air Torus[/i] seemed to sense the presence of its counterparts; rising up of its own accord, it flashed over to the archmage and merged with the two [i]Elemental Items[/i] he held in his hand. Now there was a second ring of cloudy air around the stony core, perpendicular to the ring of flames. Telgrane could sense that simply by holding this powerful combined item, he was immune to the attacks of elementals of air, earth, or fire. And he had a hint of even further power buried deep into the three merged artifacts, power which might be made known once all four were together.... Turning back to the rest of the assembled group, he held up the merged [i]Elemental Items[/i] and smiled. "Three down," he said, "and only one more to go!" - - - Logan had given me the [i]Pathfinder Pawns: Bestiary 3[/i] boxed set for Christmas last year, so when writing this adventure I purposefully found ways to incorporate creatures from that set: specifically, the jub-jub bird, sepid, bone and brass golems, taotiehs, and ghorazagh. The giant cold element bee was another "giant plastic bug" I had picked up from Target for a dollar some years ago and was determined to find some good use for before this campaign ended. I had anticipated the invisible maze to be a bit tricky, with Telgrane being the only one who'd be able to see the enemies (and even the walls!) within. But once again, I discounted Logan's mastery of figuring out a way to get just the right spell he needed. Since we played this adventure over two sessions, and the first session ended just after the fight with the sepid (the first fight inside the invisible maze), for the second session I made two outlines of the maze on the backs of desk calendar pages, with 1-inch gridlines drawn in pencil, and then drew in the walls with a Sharpie marker during the second session as the PCs moved around the no-longer-invisible maze. For the ghorazagh tunnels, I tried something different: I made an 8-by-10 table in Word with 1-inch squares for each row and column, then printed a bunch of them off. I then drew the ghorazagh tunnels onto these paper "geomorphs," trimming the inner borders of each page to they can all be lined up to form a much larger whole. Every time the PCs moved onto another of these geomorphs, I just plunked that whole sheet down. It allowed them to see what would be around corners, but it certainly sped the game up. (And a bunch of same-sized sheets are easier to use than individual sections of branching tunnels.) After the session ended, Logan gave me his predictions for the last two adventures: the next one would obviously be the search for the [i]Elemental Water Halo[/i] so that adventure #100 could be devoted to Galrich's ascension to the throne of Kordovia. I just smiled mysteriously and told him that was certainly one way it could occur. [/QUOTE]
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