NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 455029" data-attributes="member: 94">LORD OF THE IRON FORTRESS-- Part VI (cont)Just inside the main entrance they found a storeroom holding some uniforms marked with a fiery scimitar. “Let’s wear these,” Wulf suggested. “Maybe it’ll fool the golems.”They found the interior of the fortress surprisingly small and cramped-- all the better, as it narrowed their options. At the end of a short hallway to the north, they found a door, warm to the touch, and the dragon informed them that he could hear a low, animal snoring from inside. Assuming it would be more steel predators, they turned south.Wulf slowly opened the door they found there. An ogre-mage stood inside the spartan room, flanked by a couple of stone guardians. He seemed to be watching the north wall, where a long curtain bisected the room. The ogre-mage looked askance at the group, then turned away, disinterested. Wulf shrugged, walked into the room, and cut the legs out from underneath the unsuspecting ogre. Dorn stepped in quickly behind him.“Stick on him!” he said. “Don’t let him cast!” Dorn cast a silence spell on Wulf, who was already grinning in eager anticipation. But it was not to be: the ogre-mage retreated behind the curtain, as the statue guardians came to life to attack Wulf and Dorn.Wulf disengaged from the statue, tumbling off behind the curtain in pursuit of the ogre-mage. When he rolled to his feet on the other side, he was standing in a smaller curtained cell-- and face-to-face with a mind flayer.Like clockwork, Wulf’s dwarven instincts took over: He succumbed to a sustained screaming fit.A long, silent, unanswered scream.Desperate, Wulf fumbled at the ring of invisibility on his finger. Somehow, miraculously, he got the damn thing to work. Things were looking up, now. He was isolated on the other side of the curtain from the rest of his group, true enough, facing a mind flayer, silenced and with no way to warn them, yes-- but at least you couldn’t say he wasn’t invisible. He grinned and gave himself a little mental “Thumbs up!”Back in the other room, Keldas stepped in, saw Dorn hacking one of the statue guardians to pieces, and nonchalantly leaned up against the wall. “Looks like you guys have this under control.”The mind flayer turned towards Wulf with a hungry little quiver of its tentacles, feeling for him, feeling for his presence with its tentacles as well as its mind. Wulf knew what was coming, and it was then that he felt the almost tangible presence of Haela Brightaxe, hovering over his shoulder, offering him good luck.Piss off! Wulf thought. He had enough problems just worrying about Moradin’s steely-grey peepers on him all the time. Wulf Ratbane ain't none o’ yer concern!. A powerful wave of psionic energy washed over Wulf--  but he fought it off. I don’t believe in luck, he thought. Good or bad.Another mind flayer suddenly stepped out from the adjacent curtained cell. Ok, that’s pretty bad…The second ‘flayer blasted Wulf; again he felt Haela calling to him, and again he refused her aid and stubbornly resisted the overpowering psionic energy on his own. “Luck’s got nothin’ to do with it!” He shouted and shook his fists, though there was no one to see or hear.The ogre-mage cast a cone of cold at the group hovering around the doorway. The dragon shook it off and slinked into the room. Its keen senses had somehow warned it that there was something lurking behind the curtains, and it fired a blast of its lightning breath across the ogre-mage and both mind flayers. The ogre mage had had enough, and wisely turned to gaseous form. But the dragon’s lightning blast had provided just the jump-start Wulf needed. He grabbed the closest mind flayer by its face-tentacles and frenziedly beat its brains out in about three seconds flat. Now visible, and covered in mauve-colored gore, Wulf staggered backwards out of the cloister, ripping down what was left of the curtains and gesturing wildly the way he had come.The second mind flayer knew the jig was up. It stepped out and positioned itself to blast everyone in the room. Wulf and Dorn, the two dwarves, were the only ones stunned. Wulf stood there slobbering stupidly, surprised as he was to see Dorn standing there slobbering stupidly as well. He took this as proof positive that Haela Brightaxe was full of…Shifting over slightly from behind the stone guardian, Karak finally hove into view. He smoothly drew his ghost touch bastard sword and swung full-force at the misty form of the ogre-mage. The ghostly vapor was scattered and Karak continued his swing right into the mind flayer. It dropped to the ground, cleft nearly in twain. Karak wrenched his sword from the rubbery hide and turned just in time to see his dragon finish off the last statue guardian.</blockquote>

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