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="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7851239" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 243, Part OneThe Spawning HiveLeon, Uru, Quartulain and Uriel were all set to reconnoitre Elofasp and capture a devil. Uriel cast a magic circle ritual into the Cracked Cauldron, and Uru took the handle, so they could pin one of the legion quickly. Before they approached the plane, they asked Calily what she knew about it, but she confessed her notes had been word-of-mouth. She had avoided it due to its inherent dangers and its proximity to Egalitrix. She volunteered to join their scouting party and they accepted.From what they hoped was a safe distance, they peered at the plane through a spyglass and saw unusual terrain: spindly spires rising above a dense jungle. Leon teleported Uru and himself just above the canopy, and they flew down to the ground, invisible. The immediate area was safe, and they used Uru’s radio to confirm this, before Leon went back for the others.While he was gone, which was not long, Uru explored a little and his termorsense revealed something very large moving through the undergrowth – large enough that he might have sensed it through ordinary means. It was moving slowly and was far enough away that it did not propose an immediate threat.They discovered themselves unable to communicate with the ship through telepathy; Uriel sensed some sort of psychic disruption – an emanation powerful enough to occlude other psionic waves. Leon cracked a wooden bead he had found on Padyer, providing himself with barkskin.Uriel closed his eyes and channelled the Hierophant.  “There are no demons or devils within a mile of us.” They stole slowly forward and came to a trampled clearing where several enormous beasts munched on foliage. They looked like hairy sauropods (which the unit had seen in Ber). Quratulain studied them, but said she needed more ‘input’ to draw any conclusions about them.Circling round, they headed for the nearest spindle.  Uriel sought to find a small example of local fauna, so that he could polymorph into it. As it was, he was the only member of the group not easily able to sneak through the undergrowth. But before he could spot a suitable creature, his clumsy movement drew the attention of the gargantuan herd. Honking angrily from holes in the top of their heads, they thundered towards the edge of the jungle!Leon bampfed them all away, back to the Coaltongue.  They circled round, found another insertion point close to the spindle, and returned even more cautiously, with Uriel now a mouse in Leon’s pocket.  When they drew close to the spire they saw that it was a focal point for the hairy beasts, and when they investigated more closely they saw it was made from gravel and debris held together with a natural cement, like an enormous wasps’ nest.  The beasts went in and out of it at ground level, but there were no other entrances higher up. Leon levitated up to the top of the tower and Uriel used location loresight.  He sensed that all the beasts they had seen were controlled by a dormant sentience within this structure.While they were up there, he scoured the treetops for more signs of the legion and – as well as some large, flying, lizard-like creatures with three long necks – very far away, he spotted a Golden Legion windskiff.Leon teleported them all towards it.  Where they arrived, the local fauna comprised those same flying lizards Uriel had already seen. Many of them wheeled around another gravelly spindle. Uriel meditated and sensed the presence of devils: half a mile away now, moving quickly and erratically.Again, Leon levitated upwards, and they caught sight of the windskiff, banking sharply and moving away from them. They teleported towards it again and this time they got close enough to see that it was chasing one of the three-headed lizards. A laughing horned devil finally hit it with his chain and it fell from the sky. The windskiff went down after it.  They hurried to find the spot.The windskiff was crewed by only six legionnaires.  They now stood impassively on the skiff as their leader, the horned devil, kicked at the corpse of his prey and jumped up and down on it, laughing and crowing and gesturing as if showing off to his dominated subordinates.In this part of the jungle, there were small, flitting creatures like foot-long mosquitoes. They didn’t seem to be bothering the devils.  Uru set off on Little Jack to disable the skiff, but he reckoned without the side-effect of the Cracked Cauldron Handle. The little flying beasts were enraged by its presence, and were suddenly on him from all sides, jabbing their proboscises into him, and sucking his blood. His hapless cries alerted the devils.Before they could react, Quratulain decided to deal with the skiff herself.  She stepped out the undergrowth, shouldered the Nok Gun, and took out its propulsion unit with a single shot (albeit one that threw her onto her back).  Uriel cast his overawe spell on the horned devil, trapping it in radiant light.  Leon teleported onto the skiff and attacked the devils with blade and spell.  They were struggling to regain their footing and he was too close to attack with their gearlances.  Calily leapt in behind him, disarming several.  Both of them were swarmed by bloodsuckers.Quratulain sat up, drew her pistols and ripped through the legionnaires with multiple shots. Leon and Calily finished them off.Though beset by bloodsucking insects, Uru played his part, and trapped the horned devil in magic circle. It bellowed foul-mouthed insults at them. Then Leon lit the Wayfarer Lantern, filled with Oil of Urim, granting everyone armour able to fend off the pests.Quratulain noticed they were not attacking the devils.  But she did not think it was their intrinsic nature that protected them, rather their golden chains. Uriel unravelled them from the legionnaires.  Holding a chain was not enough to make them safe, the bloodsuckers still came at him. He wasn’t prepared to try wearing one here, until he’d had a chance to examine it.The swarm had gotten steadily worse.  Every bloodsucker in the area was drawn towards them.  So they decided to interrogate the horned devil elsewhere.  Leon hit it with a curse of incapacity and they bundled it into the absurdist web.  Instead of going back to the Coaltongue, he took them to the Dream Palace.</blockquote>

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