PREVIOUS EXCERPT: #10

Excerpt #11

This was a busy week as far as my notes are concerned, so lets get to it...

There may have been some more objections, but there were no further strong or pertinent arguments against the spell aside from the precedents already given by Omit for comparison, so for the time being the spell was admitted into the game without uproar. Now at this point, [based on occurences in the following battle and my postmortem conversations with participants], I can tell you that there was some kind of telepathic exchange between Omit and Verian. Perhaps telepathic is too strong a word, but they shared a glance, and they shared an understanding that was mutual, such that without verbal communication, the following information was agreed upon by them:

Balcoth shoots GM a withering glare that says "that's a stupid question" in a very strong, very final way. Though GM is actually quite resistant to Balcoth's crushing gaze, normally ignoring it and repeating the question, on this occasion he decides that there is little information to be gained so he graciously lets it go, proceeding on to his next line of questioning.

The rest of us can't even be certain if GM was at all serious about this tax idea or if he just proposed it for the fun of it. In any case, when we left off, the heroes were trying to decide what to do next, and manually searching miles and miles of mine shafts is not a popular option. We were investigation a strange stone protrusion in to entrance chanber - a semicircle projecting from the wall which was obviously created by a Wall of Stone spell, but to what purpose?

After spending over half-an-hour last time considering what to ask, Verian seemed to be no closer, indicating that must have forgotten to ponder the question for the entire intervening week.

This is greeted with the same eye-rolling enthusiasm as everything else GM says when roleplaying our gnomish healer.

Now that the main cutting is out of the way, Balcoth tries to further offend Donner by offering his mining pick to Azheron, who gives up on smashing defenseless skeleton miners to help dig for a bit. They uncover a metallic spoke or rod of some sort...

At that point something other than a skeleton came up the shaft - a ghoul (sort of a putrid zombie). GM still declared the ghoul too puny to initiate combat (adventurers of our calibre simply butcher it - when the enemy is so beneath us that Verian could take it on in hand to hand with his shortsword, it is not worth making the rolls), but he warns that it is just barely beneath that threshold - a ghoul is quite a step up from the harmless miners, all told.

Azheron tosses the ghoul in the volcanic furnace of the smelting room to dispose of it. Balcoth tries to find a faster way to pull the rocks away from the metal object buried within.

Despite this most minor of setbacks, Balcoth's enginuity prevailed, and the rest of the excavation proceeded rapidly. After the rod, we found a metal hand (not unlike the one from Terminator 2), and soon after we found the owner, who we extrapolated to be 03, a missing representative from Mechanus (the same model as 07 whom we met earlier with Dom Arod. We didn't have too much time to think of this though, as a full-plate caster burst into the room with a retinue of Wights - midlevel undead, but their ability to level-drain means they are still a little scary.

Okay, a HELL of a lot happened that week, and this report is already so long, I'm afraid I have to cut it short at this critical point in the battle. But I should leave you with a little bit more than a simple "To Be Continued", so...

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Excerpt #12: CONTINUED FROM #11

That was a busy week, that one I started in #11. This battle is far from over... When we left off, the invisible arcane caster was revealed once more by the Invisibility-purging field emanating from Donner, the NPC cleric, and Balcoth (who had been tripped by the skeletal dragon) was being beat on by all-and-sundry, who were trying to take advantage of the bonus to hit him whilst he was on the ground. Actually, they were still missing more than hitting, but the armored mummy (augmented with barbarian levels) managed to land a blow or two. Verian and Omit have been gang dispelling the invisible arcane caster (using only area dispels, on the 100% accurate assumption that he is using GM's newly invented Ablative Dispelling buff, which protects against targetted dispels).

[Azheron is trying to mouth something the Verian, who appears totally oblivious to the subtle appeals. Balcoth, having previously been knocked prone, is trying to figure out how he can both get up (a move equivalent action) and do more than just a standard attack action, particularly since a gang of burly undead monsters had gathered around to beat on him (you get +4 to hit prone targets in melee) and they will all get an attack of opportunity just for trying to stand up in their threatened area. After investigating all his options, and considering that he has to make a new save against the Spiritwall's fear every turn on invisible arcane caster's initiative...]

He does so with his Wand, eliminating anyone's need to make fear saves, allowing us to move freely through the room again, and rendering invisible arcane caster visible once more as line-of-effect is re-established between him and Donner's spell. Azheron's mouthing becomes more fervent, and Verian (currently controlling the NPC cleric) finally notices. His lip-reading may have been a little fuzzy, but "heal me" was coming through pretty clear at this point. However, by the time it was obvious enough for the less-than-observant Verian to notice, GM also noticed (although he could not quite lip-read looking at Azheron in profile).

Balcoth halfheartedly butchers a wight as he works his way towards the enemy casters and Omit readies his action against spellcasting, but it is clear that everyone is sort of coasting along in the wake of Azheron's most recent death. Verian has the Cleric cast Mass Cure Light Wounds, healing the allies somewhat, as well as dealing damage to all the undead, and we find that both the enemy casters were in fact living (so they are also healed). At least now we knew that anti-undead stuff wouldn't work on them.

[Nobody questions Azheron's uncharacteristicly frustrated criticism (except anywhere he happens to dispute GM's choice in controlling monsters or proffessed targetting of Verian and Omit, in which case GM vociferously denies any bias or impropriety) because, for all our efforts, nothing speaks like results and the result of our rampant survivalist individualism is generally his demise. Although we tend to tabletalk a little (giving dubious out-of-character advice to each other from time to time), we don't necessarily act much like a cohesive unit. I don't spend a lot of effort recording this kind of thing though, so we move on...]

Verian rolls extremely well, and his psionic power deals 55 damage to each of them, allowing a Reflex save (DC 23) for half (which both of them fail), and upon failure of the Reflex save, each is forced to make a Will save (at the same difficulty) or be stunned. GM rolls his saves, and appears VERY displeased...

Now all the players are stunned. Even Azheron. And he's dead.

[It takes GM a moment to regain his resolve. He was quite distraught that his wizard died with his "getting serious" tricks still unused; his potential unrealized. However, contrary to players' initial impressions, it was not so much the Energy Stun (although the high damage roll did kill the wizard, and furthermore the cleric was stunned for one round, dropping his shield and weapon and suffering a defense penalty). Rather, it was Omit's use of multishot on a readied action; the fact that it allowed him to interrupt spellcasting with multiple arrows blew GM's mind, since the concentration check goes from slightly difficult (damage from a single attack) to nigh on impossible (two attacks worth of damage). It raised serious concerns which he had not previously considered regarding the potential for a character with Manyshot to lock down spellcasters (assuming that the character could hit with both shots with the penalty every time). Regardless, GM felt a sense of obligation to the players, so he resolved to continue.]

Balcoth, Omit and Verian (mostly Balcoth and Omit) take down the evil cleric and the remainder of the crummy undead... except for the mummy, who was not only nearly unscathed, but started chasing after Donner in a fasion reminiscent of Jason (the hockey mask guy from the horror movies). In fact, Donner was taking damage at an astounding pace, and the useful heroes were still busy mopping up the other enemies. Verian, however, was hovering up near the ceiling not accomplishing anything.

By this time, Balcoth was rushing over to help (alas, too late), and suddenly the mummy was the last enemy standing, and had to full attention of the party. But Azheron and the gimp cleric were dead - that's 40% casualties (call it 30%, since we didn't really value the NPC cleric too highly).

As Balcoth faced off against the augmented mummy, it became apparent that although this one was only a tiny bit tougher than the three we bested in the previous encounter, it was still going to be a very long painstaking process for Balcoth to beat him down, past his AC of 31 and his 6 points of universal damage reduction. The previous ones hadn't been this hard to take down, but then Verian had blasted them with a whole lot of pyrokinetic mental energy... which brought up another point. It became apparent that one of the reasons Verian had held off on nuking their foes until he was certain the wizard (his primary target) was stripped of defenses, was that Verian had expended a great deal of mana in the previous fight, and as we neared the end of this one, he had very little left - in fact, if he assisted against the mummy, he would have been unable to assist when we were inevitably attacked while trying to rest afterwards.

[GM says nothing to acknowledge this, nor do Omit and Verian, who are fairly certain that repairing the weapon would be a waste of money; it could be reforged, but it wouldn't be Masterwork anymore. The one saving grace was the system GM put in place many levels ago with regard to magic items; essentially, magic items could be repaired (at minimal cost), so that sundering attacks and other, similar freak powers (such as the weapon destroying acidic skin of a Babau demon) would be of tactical value, and could cause problems (needing a smith to repair a "destroyed" magic weapon before it could be used again) but such abilities would not permanently or irrevocably destroy treasure. Because of this, we could be fairly certain that (now that the furnace plan was averted) at least the wizard's magic items would survive to reimburse us, however slightly, for our losses.]

WARNING: SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE EMOTIONAL SCARRING AND VEHICULAR HOMICIDE.

Bear in mind that this report carries with it only a fraction of the bitterness generated on all sides. In fact, reading this report could be hazardous to all our health...

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Excerpt #13

With both Azheron (or at least, his most recent character, the late spiked-chain-wielding Elocator, Malevaune) and our NPC cleric (the gnome, Donner Lifesaver) having died the previous week, Azheron would be introducing a new character, and since we unanimously exempted Azheron indefinitely from our "survivor"-style lottery (next one to die has to come back as a healer), GM has decreed that we must have an NPC cleric in order to function. He gave us a choice this time; either Verian or Omit could design the new cleric as would normally be our default, or Balcoth could do it (to "expand his horizons" or some such), in which case the cleric could be a dwarf; exempting this useful NPC from the existing ban on dwarven characters. It is possible that Balcoth has been pushed even further in his efforts to make his own character invincible by both the "house rule" limitations imposed by GM, AND by the fact that if he dies, he is forbidden from coming back as a dwarf. So over the intervening week, Balcoth took the task very seriously, intent on adding this new dwarf to the party and hoping to influence GM's roleplaying of the new cleric to reflect proper dwarfy standards.

[Though no stranger to the rules and specifically to building D&D 3.5 characters, making a divine caster would be something of a new challenge for Balcoth (who normally concentrates on honing the ultimate melee fighting machines), and he would need a little advice here and there on spells, but GM forbade Verian and Omit from helping out, offering his own time and advice wherever needed (meanwhile, Azheron was busy developing his own new character in secrecy). Omit couldn't help but interject his savvy at certain points, which appeared to infuriate GM, who attempted to silence him by responding to each of Omit's suggestions by cutting him off with extremely dubious advice of his own (such as compromising dexterity in order to increase the cleric's charisma stat because it is useful for undead-turning), which Balcoth in turn ignored. In the end, Balcoth ignored enough of the advice from all sides that he ended up with a perfectly good dwarven cleric, all set to heal us, cast dispel magic and not die (too easily). As a bonus, he settled upon the deity Farlagn to grant him spells, because Farlagn (God of Travel and Wanderlust) has the best domains. GM has often made light of the tendency for all Verian's clerics to worship that particular faith (with the 1/day reroll from the Luck domain and the wizardlike mobility spells and automatic-free-action power granted by the Travel domain), so it was satisfying to see Balcoth independantly reach the same conclusion.]

We rolled a d6 to determine who would run the NPC cleric this week, and it turned out to be Verian. Then we were right into the "interrogation phase".

GM avoided sighing or mentioning that the book says a party of upper-mid-level adventurers should be able to handle 4 even-level encounters per day, having discussed it many times with Omit and Verian, who argue that the book's figure is based on so-called "full-powered PCs" unhindered by our many house-rules, and also not taking into consideration the great length to which GM goes to "optimize" encounters (using only the enemies with the best to-hit and armor class numbers, combining the most efficient casters and the occasional mob of much lower-level monsters who still have some ability to expend our resources), and the fact that the book itself says specifically that Game Masters must take into account the fact that some encounters are far more draining upon a party. Regardless, GM had no desire to rehash this discussion and eat unnecessarily into our gaming time...

He is not. GM reviews the rest of the race description and (with some misgivings) decides that at the current level of the party, the winged flight does not present any game-breaking problem, and the rest of it is okay, considering that it is an ECL race.

GM spends some time looking up those spells with which he was unfamiliar, that is to say, the ones from the new book within which the class resides, and after checking them, he reluctantly approves, albeit with a bad feeling that the players will neither appreciate nor even acknowledge his generosity in allowing the class... and the race... But he doesn't want to hose Azheron, and doesn't see any immediate dangers to his adventure. Besides, another more unexpected issue cropped up:

The appartment living room we use for gaming (which is typically unoccupied the other 6 1/2 days of the week as the occupants just stick to their own bedrooms where their electronics are) had recently recieved a donation of old (but mostly new condition) furniture, easily doubling the number of sitting devices even AFTER we threw the worst of the old chairs in a dumpster. There was also a new (brand new hardwood) table, which GM hoped would finally allow us to keep the battle-map and miniature table pristine, and uncluttered by the food, books and character sheets. He looked forward to the players using this new table as a writing surface so the map could remain clear.

It was apparent that there was some history between Balcoth and the round table, but Verian traded places with him so he wouldn't be stuck within reach of it, and we moved on.

The elemental escorts us safely within him some unknown distance into a large natural cavern, part of which has been hewn to make a stately tomb. It is very ancient, and the only staircase appears to have been collapsed thoroughly, probably through the work of a large (or possibly huge) Earth Elemental under the command of a planar binding spell of some sort. There is a raised dais with the tomb proper, but the majority of the room has rough mostly natural cave floor, the ceiling is of varying elevation and there are large stalagmites projecting from the ground in places. And there is a large stone disk standing upright against a wall, which we recognize as a planar portal.

Grom (or whatever the Elemental's name was) wants to give us every advantage to prepare, but as soon as we say it's on, it's on, and the will be no more mercy. After giving us the command words for the portal (in case we win and choose to depart that way), he descends into the ground and waits for us to call out his name. We stake out the section of the room with the highest ceiling/deepest floor, but we can see right from the outset that there is nowhere tall enough for us to get out of reach of a Huge creature which can pop out and attack from the ceiling as easily as the floor. Nevertheless, we all take to the air through our various means (Boots of Flying, Wings, Elocator levitation and Psionic Overland Flight) because Earth Elementals suffer penalties to attack you if you aren't touching the ground. After all GM's warnings of the lethality of the Elemental, Grimbeard the new NPC cleric cast Prayer, and Omit used a precious scroll of Good Hope, so between the two spells we were swimming in to-hit and saving throw bonuses. Then Balcoth summoned Stampy the super-elephant, Grimbeard used HIS brand new (and far stranger) Figurines of Wondrous Power to summon the mystical Goat of Travail and the Goat of Terror (large constructs). And thus prepared (with Verian and Omit casting their own buffs as usual, Azheron and Verian triggering their Rings of Invisibility, figuring that the Elemental's tremorsense would not help it to locate flying targets, and Omit taking the extra step of using his Wand of Magic Weapon [CL 20] to upgrade Balcoth's Axe to a +5), Grimbeard cast Aid and Shield Other to protect Balcoth, and finally we felt ready to initiate...

Of note, there was something of an exchange when Azheron popped off his first Orb of Force spell...

Yet strangely enough, GM was no more pleased after the fight... As though he expected this 8-round battle to go more like 28 rounds, particularly with the amount of warning and prep time he gave us.

Once again, GM is frustrated to find a flaw which appears major to him, and utterly unconcerning (if not positive) to the other players. In any case, the Elemental's body "poofs", leaving none of its valuable gemstone behind, which indicates that it was brought physically from its home plane the hard way, rather than being conjured via the usual Summon spells and made out of local materials. However, it drops one large Gem, which turns out to be a Stone of Earth Elemental control/summoning. With his "dying" breath, Garam-arush-arom-arom-arush thanks us and "lends" us this powerful magic gem, requesting that we return it some day. Searching the tomb, we uncover little else of value. The body lying in state is so old that even its armor appears to have decayed away. Only an old not-very-special looking warhammer remained intact. However, when Balcoth grasped the hammer, he was beset by visions and fell unconscious. We were unable to wake him.

And finally, I can't really figure out from my notes what inspired this exchange, but for the record, I'm sure GM was annoying Omit in some manner (whether or not Omits frustration was warranted is not recorded):

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Excerpt #14

[In case anyone is at all confused, I should make it clear that we DO NOT sit around referring to each other by character names. That's just my thin privacy protection method for these reports. In reality, we refer to each other by real names, and in fact we tend to do so sometimes even when we are otherwise "in character", which is pretty poor practice for roleplaying, and leads to some of us occasionally even forgetting the names of our fellow party members, particularly Azheron's characters. But anyhow...]

Moving on... we started out, examining the room more closely. Balcoth, being unconscious in-game, gets up to visit the kitchen and stuff. The tomb yields very little of value; in fact, nothing other than the crappy looking and apparently non-magical (and yet obviously magical) hammer Balcoth touched. GM says everything else has decayed into uselessness, including any magical items that might have been there. He later mentions that the junk has been there over 700 years, and the players balk at the idea that magic items would not only stop working, but would in fact rust away to nothing in such a short span, since most NON-magic metals would survive virtually unscathed in the sealed tomb. When Balcoth returns into the room...

And so we turned our attention to getting out of the tomb (although GM made clear that he wasn't going to hose us with "running out of oxygen" any time in the forseeable future. We got in with the help of a powerful earth elemental. But then we killed him, so THAT option is out. He left us the command words to operate the Stargate-like ring of the dimensional portal (which Garam-arush-arom-arom-arush said he had dragged down here from elsewhere in the mine tunnels in case we wished to use it), but we have no idea where it goes. From our previous experience with these portals, we know it's rarely anywhere good. GM has suggested that while we could go that way, he made sure it was not the only way out (despite the fact that the tomb's only access was a staircase, which the elemental had THOROUGHLY collapsed on Aaron Crash's orders before we killed the evil wizard.

Not a single person even thinks to ask how we'd would find anything to attack us in a sealed cavern 2 miles beneath the earth. It's just assumed that something would come along. Probably while we were sleeping.

GM is visibly displeased by this notion. After "generously" giving us a chance to rest unmolested before fighting the Elemental, he was expecting us to make some effort to at least try to do the 2-3 fights per day the players had admitted to be reasonable, if not the 4 GM wanted. We had done one, and were already resting AGAIN.

Azheron is not pleased by the simultaneous "many death" and "future death" allusion so 'elequently' put. Anyway, we rested safely, and with all our spells and hit points replenished we were ready to address the issue of the planar portal.

Balcoth elects to lug through his injured brethren using his superior carrying capacity (and the dwarven power to move the same under their maximum load as they do when unencumbered), rather than to give them over to such indignities. Anyway, everyone starts to fly (using their own individual means, from wings to psionics to Balcoth's magic boots) and those who can turn invisible do so. Then with one last check to make sure we haven't forgotten anything, we all pass through.

We emerge from the other side in complete darkness. Fortunately everyone by now has some form of darkvision, allowing us to percieve the nearest 60 feet of the cavernous space in clear black-and-white. The portal is lying horizontally, parallel to the ground such that the travellers are ejected upwards, and the portal beneath them appears closed - an empty space, save for the instant that each character emerges, meaning there is no return - either the gate is one-way, or the command words that would take us back (or to any other portals that may be linked with it) are different and unknown to us. In fact, Verian Seth's speculations prove eerily accurate on nearly all counts.

We get no useful information from the stupid religiously brainwashed orcs.

We summon and load the sickly dwarves onto the Goat of Travail, but before we headed through the endless caves of The Abyss to find the Screaming Fortress of Incarceroni and its cruel master Blong Cho, and possibly even rescue some of his countless slaves... there was a little bookkeeping to cover:

Balcoth's number was pretty bad (about -7), but it turned out not to matter since Grimbeard (our brand new dwarven NPC cleric), also in full armor and heavy shield, but with less dexterity than Balcoth to mitigate the noise, rings in at around -10 Move Silently. That means if he is walking down a hallway (taking a 10 for an average MS check), he clanks loud enough that a casual observer (somebody not specifically listening for trouble) with average Wisdom and no particular Listen skill would automatically notice the sound from 100 feet away around a corner. An alert sentry with good ears could hear him coming from 300 feet or farther. That's a minute and a half's walk for a character in heavy armor.

Whether or not this blatantly out-of-character heads-up was part of the decision, Omit (whose hovering strides an alert sentry with good ears would be hard pressed to detect from 6 inches away, and whose darkvision actually extends 120 feet) decides to scout ahead. Well ahead. We don't have to travel too long...

Like a night breeze, Omit returns swiftly to stop the party, who order Grimbeard to march in place while they decide what to do (thus keeping up the noise level so the enemy won't realize they've been detected). While contemplating possible plans of attack, Omit gets bored, so he just sneaks off and slits the throats of all the orcs himself. A couple of them clue in just in time to fire off some misses with their crossbows, but they may as well have been attacked by Batman. This leaves a different problem though, as the rest of the party catches up. The orcs were accompanied by ten or so human slaves whom we now have to deal with. The party breaks all the chains to free them.

As much as everyone but Omit would love to be rid of them, we freed them so we have some obligation to try to keep the slaves alive. Which means (perversely enough) we have to bring them with us, where they will doubtless be exposed to harmful AoEs and other adventuring risks.

After travelling a ways more, with Omit revelling in his new "Divine" status only from a 120 foot scouting lead, we encountered the exact same thing. Exactly. Another group of orcs heard what sounded like an army of armored dwarves trudging down the hall, and were setting up an ambush. They all fell from spontaneous throat cancer, with pointy steel tumors that sprouted feathered wooden shafts. Leaving Omit with another ten parishioners. As the party caught up, he shared his message of faith with great enthusiasm and (being the fickle self-serving wretches that they were) they instantly converted to believe whatever they thought would result in their least immediate demise. Balcoth roped them together, but the another tussle had one of them killing another. Balcoth cut him down.

Our path took us onward to a massive round chasm, ringed by a wide path spiralling down. The chasm went farther down than we could see, but also went upwards for miles where a tiny round patch of sky showed through. Azheron's character was all for going up, but this was impractical due to the mass of slaves plus the original three injured dwarves. It was also far more likely that the fortress was downward, since the orcs had no way to fly with the 2000 lb iron cart and the stargate... although the tunnels had branched off once, and though we chose this route based on the foot traffic and the suspicion that both routes led eventually to the fortress, it was still possible that we may have gone the wrong way.

Omit (with his far greater vision) spots a pair of Dretches ahead of us down the shaft. They are Demons (or are they Devils?) of the lowest rung, and not a threat on their own, but they are telepathic and we don't want to attract the attention of anything linked to their eyes. Omit follows them quietly for a ways, then sees them obliterated by a beam of light from the darkness. Now, sane people would just find another way to progress, but as adventurers, the party is powerful, not that sane, and dependant on the Game Master to set difficulty based on appropriate guidelines, so they advance to see what the deal is.

What they found was the ramp opening into a large cavern that typified the anti-geological forces that shaped the Abyss. The chamber was irregular in every regard; the floor and ceiling were uneven, and riddled with both stalagtites and stalagmites protruding up and down, and with shafts or tunnels projecting both up and down from the cavern. Not the ideal environment to encounter anything. What popped up was even less welcome... a spherical creature with one large eye at the center, and 4 eyestalks on top. Not a true beholder, but beholder-kin known as a Gauth. Lacking the full power Anti-Magic eye of its bigger cousins, or the profluence of instant-death powers, what Gauths do have is a strong Dispelling ability, multiple weak paralysis-type effects, and the means to deal damage that is not massive, not impressive, but inevitable in its consistency.

Aware (thanks to Omit) of at least a couple other lurking creatures in the shafts, and particularly after seeing a Gauth, we were very cautious. Though succeeding in their spot/listen checks, and thus able to act in the surprise round, the two arcane-ish casters, Azheron and Verian, chose not to, remaining instead invisible at least until they could determine the exact nature of the threat (in other words, line up more than 2 targets for their Area of Effect spells). Omit managed to take cover around a corner, using another of his Good Hope scrolls to boost the party's saving throws and to-hit rolls. This left only the two armored dwarves, Balcoth and Grimbeard as available targets for the Gauth. And the next Gauth, which popped out of a vertical tunnel, fired off two beams then retreated back into cover using the Flyby attack feat. Then a third Gauth, which also fired without leaving itself exposed for more than an instant. Then a fourth, fifth, sixth... and another six. Several of the twelve beholder-kin were forced to drift away from their hidey-holes to get line of sight, and were stranded out in the open, but more than half were able to attack with relative impunity, using two eye-stalks (a free action) and then retreating back to safety. Each attacking Gauth chose two of its four eyes; the Dispel Magic eye (ray automatically stripping two spell effects with our House dispelling rules), a paralysis eye (ray and Will save DC 17, which if failed would paralyze long enough to take you completely out of the battle), a single Scorching Ray (ray, 4d6 fire damage, no save), and a Cause Wounds (ray, 3d8+5 negative energy damage, Will 17 for half). And later in the battle, when closer, their main eye provided a Gaze attack with Will DC 19 capable of Stunning for several rounds.

Balcoth, in truth, shrugged off these attacks. His touch Armor Class (quite impressive compared to most full plate wearers) was high enough to reduce the number of hits somewhat, his Ring of Fire Resistance reduced the average net Searing Ray damage to between zero and four, and his high Will save (quite impressive compared to most non-spellcasters, thanks to his Crystal Mask of Mindarmor and his dwarven bonus against magic saves) left him taking half damage from the Cause Wounds rays, and with very little chance of paralysis. Grimbeard, however, was bloodied by the assault, since he was an easy target for the rays and lacked the Fire Resistance. The only other target visible, the Goat of Travail, was left unscathed for now, in favor of the nearer, more humanoid targets.

TO BE CONTINUED...

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Excerpt #15: CONTINUED FROM #14

Well, in the end I had enough material that I didn't have to combine this report with the next week (although I anticipate some combined-week posts for some fairly slow weeks that followed this one). Just to clear up (in advance) in case there is any confusion at all: our gaming group is all male. Anything that looks like I'm referring to Azheron as "she" is actually referring to his character Rikkon, who is female. I try to keep this clear, but I don't want a bunch of confused comments...

[At this point, nobody had any desire to remain and have a shootout with a veritable army of opponents who could partially outmaneuver even flying melee combattants, and who could use the massive natural advantage of the terrain to avoid being blasted en-masse by area attacks. However, the concern which made the situation truly untenable was that retreating up the ramp into the massive chasm would leave even more space to spread out, allowing them still to avoid area attacks, and giving no real opportunity to escape.]

Grimbeard cast Prayer to try to help with the saving throw problems. Omit cast a Wall of Stone from a scroll (he'd been saving that one; normally he uses the indestructible Wall of Force spell, but he knows that would be dispelled by the Gauths, whereas Wall of Stone is unique in that it creates a real, solid stone wall instanteneously, such that it is not subject to Dispel Magic) and retreats back a huge distance up the ramp. Balcoth (disliking being one of the only targets) also retreats. Verian and Azheron, glad that at least these enemies lack countermeasures against their invisibility rings, are still hovering around, readied, trying desperately to find an opening to hit multiple targets with their spells. Neither of them wishes to risk exposing themself until they have the opportunity to reduce the volume of fire incoming. With the Wall in place, the enemies will necessarily have to come closer to aim over it, or at least expose themselves further.

As with most real world battles, things hit the fan surprisingly fast, with no real way out, and without a cohesive plan on the player's side, the veritable battery of beam weapons cut into Grimbeard who, having rolled bad initiative, acted last every round - after the rest of the visible characters acted and after the monsters' attack, and was thus left (along with the Goat of Travail) being the only target near enough to be attacked practically by the Gauths. Though this round the Gauths did waste a few shots on the poor magic goat, they drew closer to the wall (or rose up to the ceiling to get an angle over it) and systematically burned down the NPC cleric, the last hit dropping him below -9 into permanent death almost before anyone realised. It was only then tha Verian saw his first realistic opening - three of the obnoxious orbs lined up with altitudes in close enough sequence, and Verian revealed himself by firing off a bolt of fire, injuring them severely (almost 60 damage), but the situation took on an even more dire dimension as they proved to have more hit points than Verian could deal damage in a single attack.

Verian, angered that he had been unable to save Grimbeard, had acted last in that round only because he had readied his action earlier. His actual initiative was high, so he was able to act again almost immediately (after Omit, of course, who sprung into action, and finished one of the injured ones in a hail of arrows, showing their hit points to be in the 70-90 range). Verian, measuring the deadly risks against the maximum potential damage that he could deal, soars brazenly over the wall and down, positioning himself to fire another fiery beam of psionic energy, this time cutting through one Gauth right next to him, plus three more that were clustering just behind the wall where they had been making popup attacks. Though one of the saved, most suffered damage in the mid-fifties, before turning angrily to retort.

Gauths began to open fire. They still had to roll to hit, but rays are touch attacks, ignoring armor, and Verian's touch armor class was not high enough to pose much of a challenge to them. He shrugged off a Sleep ray, was burned by a Searing ray, ignored a Paralysis ray... but attacks kept coming. He saved against several Cause Wounds rays, but those ones are "save for half", so the damage kept coming, wearing him down. A Dispel magic ray hit, and with no save, stripped off the Prayer and Good Hope buffs which had been augmenting his saving throws, and suddenly each ray was 15% more likely to affect him (or 300% more effective, from the perspective that 4 pips on a d20 now represented a failure, rather than just 1). A couple more damage rays struck him, and excess Dispels bounced off - unable to strip away his mental flight power, and already having removed all lesser enchantments. But the relentless assault continued, and as his body jerked back and forth, one of the orbs behind him focused its gaze into a beam, and Verian rolled a 2. He was Stunnd (the random duration came up only 2 rounds, but two rounds of this pounding was more than it would take...). Now he could no longer dodge AND attackers gained +2 to hit. They no longer needed to roll, their rays would all hit automatically. Verian's body fell limp, bobbing listlessly in the air, shuddering under the continued attacks.

Azheron's initiative finally came up, and "decloaking", his mephling glided over a couple wingbeats and drew a line in the air between her slender blue index fingers - a line that was echoed by a fierce Arc of Lightning from one Gauth to another, catching a third target in between. The massive release of arcane electricity ruptured their central eyes, which spilled fluid like burst water-balloons as the bizarre creatures floated lazily downward, their extended eye stalks twitching uncontrolledly. Three of the orbs which had been wounded by Verian were terminated, but dozens of other eyes perked up, assessing the new attacker; a new target. Balcoth advanced cautiously, but to fly up above over the wall now would make him a target for many Gauths currently hidden behind it. For the moment, he grabbed his floating shield out of the air, commanding it to fire one of its large magic spikes through the air, wounding one of the enemies.

There were still several Gauths who had yet to act. A couple of them blasted Azheron, inflicting some damage and dispelling his buffs. Then one moved past Verian and gave the players another shock - one which some of them (those more familiar with the Monstrous Manual) must have known about, but which nobody appeared to have recalled. The Gauth floated past Verian, hit Azheron with another fire ray and another failed sleep ray, but turned a paralyze ray and a Cause Wounds ray upon the motionless Verian. Gauths are limited to 2 rays per-round, per- 90-degree arc, but actually firing the eye-stalks is a free action, so if they can place themselves in between victims, they can make more attacks per round.

Azheron suffers several more attacks. While the amount of fire that stikes him is not as great as that Verian took earlier in the round, it becomes apparent that Verian's psionic micromanagement of the energy infusing his Elan body had made him much tougher than his fragile human appearance would tend to indicate, even under the tide of Dispelling. Azheron's new character (actually named Rikkon) was clearly a lot more fragile, and could not possibly take another round like this. At least she was able to remain aloft because she flew using wings, rather than magic. However, one of the Gauths attacking her also blasted motionless Verian. The heroes had thought he was limp before, but he had still been in standing position... now he leaned over twisting to the left and down and fell slowly as the energy of his psionic flight dissipated. He drifted down, spinnning very slowly until he settled on the ground - that he lost altitude control could only mean that he had lost consciousness... He was not bleeding, and though burned severely in places, Balcoth and Omit had seen him looking worse. His ordinary skin color was such a light caucasian tone that only Omit's keen eyes could make out the palor caused by the negative energy damage of the Cause Wounds spells - damage which left no marks, but was perhaps even deadlier than the burns. Omit could also detect thin shuddering breaths. But there was not much time.

Omit was acting first, so he might have a chance... but the situation was incredibly rough because whatever he might possibly do to save Verian would not necessarily help the fact that he was still in range of most of the monsters; plus, Omit was very far away, hovering just above the Wall of Stone's height, but with a large chunk of the map table between himself and Verian's body. He had a lot of thinking to do...

Omit was pouring over his list of one-use and charge-based items, not so much physically as mentally running through them. Counting map-squares on the board. Trying to predict the actions of his allies and the likely fire-arcs of the Gauths.

The Gauths take aim at Azheron, and although they put a few shots into Omit as well, his high armor class (ALL of which is touch armor class) is too much for these somewhat lower level enemies, who were counting on the fact that they make ranged touch attacks in order to affect players several levels above them. Only a very small percentage of the attacks made against Omit in this battle succeed. But Azheron takes a severe battering... And some of the Gauths attacking him line up their rear arcs and fire sleeps, and paralysis and exhaustion rays into Verian's body. And then with nothing better for their side or rear arc eyestalks to do, they scorch him with fire rays and inflict negative energy damage upon his corpse even rounds after he dies, killed not by a masterstroke or coup-de-grace, but with a casual visciousness. And there is no time to mourn, in the middle of combat, with 8 Gauths left, many of them undamaged. In fact, if retreat weren't more-or-less impossible (except for Omit and possibly Azheron if he lives long enough to go re-invis), the survivors would prefer to give up and turn tail right now. Oh, that and...

Just before Azheron's initiative, one more pops up to attack altitude (above the height of the Wall of Stone) to try and kill him before he can cast again.

Omit chanted, his mouth hidden beneath the darkness of his hood, reading the mystic syllable which unleashed the energy of the stained-brown roll of parchment, which partially crumbled as though the spell stored within was the only thing holding the scraps together. His arm glowed a light blue from the elbow right down to his index finger, the point of which was bright enough to make the Rikkon and Balcoth blink and shy away, though they couldn't rip their eyes from it completely. "How do YOU like it, YOU BASTARDS!" A foot wide beam of blue light eclipsed the rising orb of the Beholder-kin, encasing it in ice crystals. All its eye-stalks were instantly stilled, and the monstrous milky central eye cracked. The beam did not fade yet, instead increasing in intensity with the rushing sound of an arctic wind, blowing the frozen eyestalks right off, then virtually sandblasting away the entire frozen sphere from the outside in until there was nothing left except a patina of icy shards embedded in the stalagtites of the uneven cieling behind the space a Gauth had once occupied. Only then did the chilling illumination dissipate.

Spared that last series of attacks, Azheron did not waste the time given him; he targetted the old standby of arcane casters, Fireball, hitting four of the orb-like enemies lurking about the wall, using it as cover for their "popup" attacks. A pair of them were previously wounded ones - they had suffered enough burns from Verian's fiery ectoplasm, the additional flame was too much for them and the succumbed to the pain, sinking through the air at odd angles on their natural buoyancy, smoldering from internal fires which could be seen flicking out in places from beneath their outer carapace. Two more were wounded by the fireball, but still they were still far from finished, and were enraged by the pain, and by the spectacle of their allies, who touched the ground but who, unlike the crashed zepplin they resembled, could not find rest there, touching off, and half-floating half-rolling sickly across the cave floor like ashen tumbleweeds.

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Excerpt #16

Everyone sits in stunned silence trying to get their minds around the question.

Anyhow, at the end of the previous session, Omit had Planeshifted the players to the Outlands, an outlying region around the interplanar nexus and city of Sigil, a safe ground in which anyone, even Angels and Demons, can walk without fear of attack due to the protection of a neutral entity of Deific power called the Lady of Pain, who would visit instant and final retribution upon anyone who dared break the peace in her city. GM skipped them ahead to the city, seeing no reason to slow down the game with meaningless encounters before they had a chance to meet up with Verian's new character. They passed through a commonly known portal from the Outlands into the city proper, which was actually several days travel away by foot - emerging in the back room of a bar.

The party often complains about pointless money-sinks and fees, but because this one is minor (actually 1 gp per person is very expensive in terms of a basic economy, but Sigil is a wealthier city than most, and the amount is trivial compared to the fortune carried by the players) and because the fee is relating to extradimensional teleportation, they pay up without further prompting and move out into the streets. Soon they were bumbling about the MASSIVE (weeks to walk across) metropolis and Star-Wars-Cantina-atmosphere of Sigil, looking for anyone who could help them find one of the many hidden portals back to the Prime Material Plane where most of their previous adventures had taken place. They passed by creatures of all races, species, ones from different planes, even different orders of life entirely. Natural enemies passing by each other with uneasy glances, or simply pretending not to see each other. And Omit spotted one Xeph (a brown-skinned race, reknowned for their wanderlust, and whose appearance is more or less indistinguishable from humans) in a black cloak with light-grey almost silvered spiderweb embroidery, using a short, stout quarterstaff as a walking stick in one hand, but wearing a silver spiked-gauntlet on his offhand and a broad black blindfold over his eyes. There were a lot of things on the street that were far stranger than a wealthy, strangely-garbed blind-man, but for one detail - a familiar smart-assed grin.

While we spend a moment discussing our options, trying to figure out what to do next, we were somewhat indecisive and had no idea how to find a portal back to the Prime Material plane, or even just a quiet inn to get a room and chat... and were suddenly accosted by an assortment of NPCs:

Even in a weird place like this, inns ought to stand out by virtue of the big vertical signs. Even on dark-age earth, innkeepers and shops of all sorts understood the value of advertising. We found one place and headed in, seeking short term shelter more than a night's resting place, although we were of course willing to pay for the whole night for our privacy.

Balcoth wanders out into the crowded street in search of something less annoying. He is out of luck. As the rest of the party catches up with him, the same sleaze NPC from before (Abrasive NPC#1) attempts to sell some "service" or another to help us with our most recent needs. We all ignore him and dodge into the next inn we come across. This inn is full of (and run by) ogres, who begin looking at the smaller party members with what can only be described as an "unhealthy" interest.

And IRL he breaks spontaneously into a loud, bawdy inane song which he made up as he went. Now, it was as impossible to predict this as it was to record it, but the tune went: "da-da-DAAAH, do-do-DOOOH, da-da-DAAAAAAAH, dun-dun-DUNNN", except that if a verse had a word or two with far too many syllables, he would just cram it in anyway. So keeping this in mind, I'll make an attempt to recreate the song, or at least to demonstrate the gist as closely as possible...

The lyrical qualities of Omit's unrehearsed solo are not having the desired "torture him into being more reasonable" result, however. GM actually thinks it's great, and the ogres all begin to join in - although they don't know the words, they certainly help reinforce the 'melody'. The rest of the players are all laughing (so hard, in Azheron's case, that his face is beginning to redden). Omit, refuses to be defeated, and simply ups his "enthusiasm" (ie. volume) another notch.

Balcoth departs the ogre inn, and strides relentlessly through the crowd, making a beeline for nothing in particular in a strange city about which he knows nothing except that it sucks and that everybody is a dick. And you aren't allowed to hit them, or else you're liable to have your soul destroyed by the locally-omniscient Lady of Pain. The other party members would have followed, having no desire to get separated in this place, and no particular affinity for the company in this inn, but Balcoth was in the crowds and out of sight before anyone else could even think of a way to disengage from the rowdy drunks of the ogre bar.

Flabberghasted that he had offered Balcoth a friendly, inoffensive, un-abrasive dwarf, eager to help, and that he had STILL chosen to avoid any interaction... baffled as to what more Balcoth could possibly want, GM turned his focus back to the rest of the party for a moment.

This was easier said than done, since Balcoth had been powerwalking for minutes now, plowing past every NPC who was either annoying him, trying to get money from him, or seemed untrustworthy - which is to say, all of them. And there were no shortage of NPCs... GM just kept trying to goad a reaction out of the dour dwarf.

GM, needless to say, is less than thrilled with this assessment, and voices his disagreement. It takes him a little while to recover from the affront, but as he has been for the whole session, he tries to goad the players into making SOME decision, or doing SOMETHING. And while he tries to get us to do anything, for every few seconds we take without taking any action, he throws another minor roleplaying encounter out there (which is somewhat counterproductive in terms of getting the PCs to make decisions or do anything proactive).

[Balcoth proudly displays the +3 Ring of Protection he had looted after the powerful demon's corporeal form had disappeared, infuriating Bizmatorak to no end. ]

Balcoth, being nobody's fool, does not even consider reacting to the demon's blustering and threats, seeing them for what they were - a feeble attempt to trick the dwarf into violating the Lady's Ban. Balcoth was utterly unflustered because he knew the demon had no desire to have its soul destroyed either. In fact, Bismatorak accepted his offer, took his beer and drank beside him in the bar (threatening him all the while, much to Balcoth's amusement). Finally, the Glabrezu gave up, and left on this note:

Pardon my French, but PWNED! Well, that came out to be a lot more than I thought because of all the Roleplaying. You know what? I'm just going to stop trying to predict the length of these things in advance. See what happens to whom, and who annoys what, next time!

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Excerpt #17

The players will have to forgive the loose paraphrasing of dialogue for this segment, this week's installment covers the second half of a full night of roleplaying, and I decided to expound upon these events both because some funny stuff happened, and for continuity's sake (since the early reports, where continuity didn't matter at all, it has become more the norm to actually show readers how we get "from here to there"). Therefore, forgive me if the conversations stray from the word-for-word truth, as long as they maintain the gyst. Here comes some storytelling;

Balcoth's desire to leave the interplanar metropolis of Sigil seemed to grow more urgent with every NPC who confronted him, and he was urged on also by the belief that more dwarves (like the 3 injured ones we'd been caring for as we lugged them across the universe) whom we had left behind in the undead-infested mines of the abandoned dwarven kingdom, and that they could be dying as we wandered through the city, searching for any way back to the Prime Material Plane. We decided to seek the help of the powerful Dom Arod, who was doubtless wondering what had become of us after he sent us into the desert of the ancient dwarven lands (with the sentient flying carpet Sepathula). So we set out for the magic quarter.

It wasn't too hard to get directions to the magic quarter. The zone is surrounded by a massive prismatic barrier from top to bottom (to D&D players, prismatic is a word that throws up a lot of red flags about high level spells with random and generally lethal effects; that and pretty colors). At the gate, we were met by a wizardy-lookin' gnome.

The players took a moment to discuss. Verian was pretty sure that Omit could bluff, feign or otherwise hornswoggle his way in (perhaps by casting one of his minor psionics powers along with a bluff or performance check to make the gnome think it was just an unfamiliar arcane spell). Though we hand't asked, we were fairly certain that a non-wizard arcane spellcaster like Azheron could get in, but the main reason to get somebody other than Verian in was that his character, Rhaek, was a newer addition to the party who had never met Dom Arod, whose aid we were seeking. Although Azheron's new character, Rikkon, had met him very briefly, she likely wouldn't carry much more sway, appearing without any member of the original party. However, the others assured Verian that it wasn't worth the effort, since all he had to do was get in touch and say that Balcoth and Omit needed a way back to the Prime Material Plane. Plus, the others seemed more than content to avoid any excess roleplaying...

The interior of the wizard's quarter of Sigil was the kind of place that non-wizards are better off not going, if only for their own sanity. Many of the buildings featured architecture that bore no relation to structural engineering as we know it, and real-estate was of a more three-dimensional nature, with warious floating buildings and upside-down towers and such. Flying was not Rhaek's preferred form of travel, and as such he had only a pair of cheap boots of levitation should he need to access any floating structures, but as he looked around in mild bewilderment and disorientation, he remembered why in all his time in Sigil he had stayed away from this dump (not least of which was that he had started out as a priest, and thus wasn't as enthralled with the art of "extravagent mockery of physics" as most wizards seemed to be). He prefered dealing with people, seing them as simultaneously a more important quantity, and one that required more skill to manipulate than simple physics. As such, he was simultaneously relieved and annoyed when he was confronted by an (apparently) autonomous floating sphere; a "guide".

Verian heads back out of the wizard's quarter to inform the other characters, though of course IRL they are already deep in "discussion".

The players chose to interpret that more as a confession and less as the sardonic remark it was doubtless intended to be. What GM was really missing, it seems, was having a conduit for roleplaying whom the party needed, and therefore couldn't ditch. Although technically, the majority view amongst the players was that the NPC clerics (who were 2-3 levels below party average, stole 1/9th of our treasure and XP as their "henchman's share", and justified a small increase in the average challenge rating of encounters we had to face) were less needed and more forced. But anyway, now that Verian had taken up the mantle of party healer (or at least downtime-reducer and status-effect-remover, since his new character, Rhaek wasn't that good as a frontline battle medic), we had unburdened ourselves of any "talking-dead-weight" NPCs.

Regardless, although Omit may have been on the verge of suggesting that we pay (guessing that based on our previous dealings with him, he would almost certainly cover the 2000 for us, and possibly punish the functionary), after GM suggested it there wasn't a chance the others would go for it so he kept his silence. As the players searched around for another way, GM decided that the players seemed to have exhausted all their options, and finally relented on his "city is so big, you can't find any thing, nor anyone-who-knows-and-is-not-a-dick" motif, allowing the players to find a known portal to the Prime. The portal was accessed through a bar; the owner complained that he could no longer access the cellar because the portal had opened up right in the middle of the stairs. The players paid the head tax and passed through, emerging into a dark storage room, or possibly an attic.

The characters prepared themselves for any potential danger, checked their darkvision, then progressed out through the door. Into a high class ballroom. The heroes had only a moment to adjust to the light, and the wealthy nobles who mostly failed to notice them, when a full-armored, uniformed guard - apparently not unused to the occasional appearance of small bands of utterly unusual individuals emerging from that particular back room - checked us for invitations, and establishing the absence of such documentation he escorted us respectfully but firmly out of the mansion. Now, all this would have been perfectly acceptable except for one off note as the guard "greeted" us:

Outside, we try to get our bearings. We establish that we are on the Prime Material Plane (which in GM's setting is only one world, strangely enough), so we are at least on the right planet. Unfortunately, we learn that we are on another continent; we are neither in the Kingdom of Grandular (from whence we began our quest over a year ago), nor in the desert lands surrounding Aberia Del-Fayr and the now-deserted dwarven lands we had been exploring as recently as two-days previous. Either destination was a long ocean journey away - weeks, if not months. Balcoth was dismayed, making it clear that (based on information provided by that Earth elemental before we smashed him and sent him home) there were still a number of dwarves left alive, held somewhere deep in those mines, and that every passing day could see more of them suffer or even die. Though the others respected this (new to them) sense of racial/civic responsibility, there was a strong conflicting vibe amongst the others that we (A) were not in Sigil anymore (B) had basically finished with the dwarven mines (C) hadn't killed anything in hours.

As the players debated where to go from here, a wealthily-dressed, well-fed noblewoman passed by with a small entourage, and seeing such a strange group gathered in the street in the evening, she made it her business.

Nobles may be useless at virtually everything, but they have their own specialized skillsets. For example, her well trained eye may be blind to many obvious things, but cannot fail to recognize the cut, the craftsmanship and the material of Omit's robes (which though non-magical, are worth over 7000 gold).

Thus appeased, the plump noblewoman and her retinue headed out, doubtless to annoy some exclusive and expensive tailor before arriving at the party fashionably late.

Politics won out once again. Now that everybody had that lovely image runing through their heads, it was much easier for Balcoth to convince us that we didn't want to be here (despite GM's assurances that the choice was up to us - he would provide story arcs and encounters whether we stayed here, or paid the bribe to contact Dom Arod, or took the next ship back to somewhere we had been). Balcoth still wanted to get back to the mines as soon as possible, and weeks or months didn't sit well with him, so the party was going back through the portal into Sigil, to try and find a gate that would drop us much closer to where we were going.

Once it was decided that we had to have to pass back through the ballroom, Rhaek set down his Heward's Handy Haversack (and as Verian carefully wasted everyone's time in describing), pulled from the extradimensional space a long waterproof leather-covered hardwood case (this one alone, at 6-inches deep, appeared to be large enough to fill the entire main section of the backpack). He then pulled out another case of the same length but slightly lesser thickness, then removed the silver gauntlet from his left hand. Gingerly, he reached into the soft-leather-lined spiked metal glove, and withdrew a pair of keys from the flat part on the inside of the wrist. Unlocking both cases, he used his large Cloak of the Arachnida for privacy as underneath, he removed his crossed shoulder-straps (with at least one empty wand-holster) and the many grey belt-like straps that ran all down his loose black pants. Without them, the pants looked almost like cut-but-unsewn cloth as he folded them neatly and placed them in the shallow case (which had been empty). Opening the thicker case, it was full of silk and ruffs, black and yellow with a smaller box full of gold jewelry inside. By the time he was done changing, Rhaek had gone from the "ready-for-trouble" roguish look to a fine fitted black uniform-like suit, with knee length black boots worn right over his pants (and his scruffy-looking Boots of Levitation), gold buttons and trim (including four superfluous gold buttons down the forefinger of the left elbow-length black glove and four simple gold studs in his left ear). He pushed up his Headband of intellect from blindfold position to its "proper" place as a head band, letting his bangs flop overtop of it, and put on a pair of dark-frosted stained-glasses to conceal his eyes' everpresent magic-detecting blue glow. Finally, it was all topped off with yellow ruffled cuffs, sash-belt, and a yellow neck kerchief that could not be pulled off by anyone with skin even a shade lighter than Rhaek's creamy-brown tones. He looked as though he fit right in with the foppish nobles at the formal ball.

In moments, we were back in Sigil. Even as they paid the innkeeper his head tax (again), Verian was immediately wasting more time (with the keys, and cases, and outfits) changing back to his "normal" clothes. Rhaek obviously preferred not to broadcast his wealth in this fashion, and seemed quite relieved to get back into his magic cloak (despite the fact that it was worth about 15X as much as his "noble" costume). Since it seemed unlikely that GM would provide another easy portal (no matter how much Balcoth wanted one), Omit managed to convince the others to shell out the 2000 gold bribe for Dom Arod's attention. So Verian was more or less shoved through the gate back into the wizard's quarter, contacted the functionary through the guide, watched reluctantly as his sacs of coin "poofed", and within an hour (very fast considering how powerful, important and most of all busy the Dom is), Dom Arod greeted us in person outside the gate of the Wizards' quarter.

And so Omit gives a detailed account of everything we had discovered since around the time when Azheron's last character (Malevaune) died, including the fact that someone had already stolen the third "Lich-box" (part of the big story-arc relating to the protection that prevents teleportation-type effects on the Prime Material Plane). After the retelling, the Dom decided this was indeed important enough to take precedence over the ancient treaties, and so he would go to the abandoned Dwarven Kingdom in person and sort it out himself, taking responsibility for any surviving dwarves still there (thus freeing Balcoth to go whence he will without worrying). Since we still wanted to return to the Prime Material Plane (to get out of Sigil), the Dom walks us towards an appropriate portal that is known to him. On the way...

So Verian is looking inapropriately smug as the Dom stops at the edge of the "Celestial" zone of the city. The area, under the stewardship of the paragons of Lawful-Goodness in the universe, was one of the small pockets of Sigil which the Lady of Pain did not extend her control to, perhaps in accordance with ancient treaties or whatnot, it allowed various beings to stay in the city where otherwise they might not be able to maintain their strict beliefs under the Lady's no-acts-of-aggression doctrine. This allowed Celestials to pass judgement in their own way in this part of the city (and doubtless allowed Demons and Devils in their own special zones to torture the innocent and devour souls in accordance with their nature). Regardless, the Dom told us that his friends here would see us safely through the Celestials' portal to the Prime Material Plane. Omit grew uneasy... And sure enough, no sooner had the Dom left us to their care, then a problem arose.

Certainly, Balcoth would not accept some BS about chances to adventure in GM's Sigil.

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NEXT EXCERPT: #18

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