The silvery web-embroidery of Rhaek's black cloak swished from side to side. Six illusionary duplicates clustered around him as he walked towards the wall, and all leaned back in perfect unison so as to walk smoothly onto the perpendicular surface just left of the front entrance passage. Moving in unbroken stride, now up the wall towards the ceiling of Umit's "improvised shelter", his hands twitched rapidly as he cast the transmutation that weakened the barrier between himself and the Etherial plane, followed by his own complex somatic suffix - the flurry of motions, words and thoughts that bound the Blinking spell to be controlled by his mental reflexes.

On the other side of the entrance, Rikkon flapped her sleek membranous wings in one moderate push, propelling her gracefully up to the 15' foot ceiling, before instantly resuming her usual, subtle wingbeats to hover in mid-air. She held her tiny right hand open gathering energy in the form of electricity that squirmed and danced around her slender fingers; energy collected from the aether, just waiting to be shaped into whatever sorcery she needed within a moment's notice. The mephling looked across the way to the flickering images of Rhaek, knowing that for all his flashy and eratic spells, and for all of the varied and impressive-looking things he could do, he could never match the sheer power of her own battle-magic.

Standing on the floor beneath and between them, Umit held his shield-strapped left hand out in front, positioned in a Pelorite sign of prayer. With the main two fingers of his right hand covered in silver paint, and the untrembling experience of a hundred campaigns, he completes a circle of mathematical precision on the breast of his armor. The protective rune thus inscribed, he finished the prayer of Protection from Evil, smeared the remainder of the precious-metal infused paint on the corner near him, and tossed his white, sun-emblazoned tabard overtop of it. Reaching back into his enchanted backpack with his now-empty main hand, he called his three maces, each in turn, until deciding on the silver one - scourge of all evil "children of the night". Pulling it out of the Haversack and raising it before him, he looked up the stairs and the indominable warrior, Balcoth.

Gleaming with adamantite - bearing nearly a quarter-ton of that metal of unparalleled rigidity and tensile strength that is borne to earth only by stellar impacts - the dwarf approached the stone door of the magically excavated and reinforced shelter. He bore no allusions about the dangers that likely laid in wait; he knew there was at least one powerful wizard who would not have come alone - not without monstruous allies. But with runic axe in hand, his shield hovering ready as his side and his Luckblade within easy reach, Balcoth made no special preparations. No archaic gestures, no mumbled prayers, nothing but a quick glance back to make sure the others were ready to do their part.

Rhaek (and the indistinguishable duplicates which flawlessly mimicked his every move) ceased flickering for a second, and with a couple short words and the outward sweeping gesture of an umpire calling "Safe!", one last transmutation washed over the group. Balcoth felt it... although there was nothing else moving within the shelter; no frame of reference against which to compare himself, still he could feel the familiar slowing. The slowing of everything else compared to him. He loved that feeling. A flick of the wrist slid the deadbolt wide open, and he pulled open the door, letting the afternoon light down the stairs.

"The rats are pouring out of their hole!" bellowed the alien voice of a black dragon, deep as sin, but with a cacophony is hissing overtones. Standing ten feet tall at the back a few steps from the top of the stairs, its grinning crocodile head resting twice that high atop its prehistoric neck. A second black-scaled monster the same size stomped into view, towering directly over Balcoth, with its claws practically on the threshold of the staircase, and an armored leg the size of a thick tree-trunk blocking the way out.

"They can run right into my jaws, hrA, hrA, hrA!" It craned its neck, peered straight down at the little armored dwarf, and as it laughed down, the fumes were putrid, like warm air off a polluted bog.

"Yeah, yeah," Balcoth replied, in a tone that somehow communicated how utterly unimpressed he was by the massive bulk and rapier wit of the beasts, "You have the exact same 'jokes' as the last black dragons we killed. Answer me something useful; do ya know any dragon parts that sell well? I'm thinkin to wizards - they'll buy all kinds'a useless junk"

The part that really sells a counter-taunt is not so much what you say as the attitude with which you dismiss your opponents. Incensed, the near dragon's head snapped down like a whip. Balcoth bent his knees and leapt forward, landing near its foreleg (with his spiked shield following close behind him), but even with his magical Haste he barely avoided being caught in the man-sized jaws which snaked around in reaction to his move. The dragon reared up on its hind legs and stomped down on the dwarf, who threw up his axe (clutched in both hands) and raised one shoulder, turning his face away to make room for his shield which flew instantly between his shoulder, the axe, and the broad incoming foot, helping spread out the force that he braced against. The shield's mean-looking spikes failed even to bite into the thick scale of the dragon's claw, but Balcoth adjusted under the weight, preparing to shove the leg off to his side, when Rikkon leaned around the corner within the 'fort' and spared him the trouble. The energy curling around her fingers crackled and expanded as she pulled in more magic from around her and within her. She reached out, closing her fist such that the energy swirled around it and turned a pale green, and then it projected out in the lethal beam of a disintegration spell. Aimed squarely for the place where the dragon's neck joined its hideous body, with unnatural reflexes the monster flinched back and drew its wing in front. The green light shone through the thick wing membrane as though it were translucent, and round voids appeared, piercing the wing and widening akin to the holes in burning movie film, but the innate magic resistance of the beast's hide broke the spell prematurely, saving the dragon from full disintegration. Its high-pitched screech of pain seemed wildly disproportionate to the actual damage caused - a sign of how the visible damage was a mere shadow of what the spell could have wrought.

"The dragons are Hasted," came Rhaek's voice from within the shelter.

"Oh, ya think?" replied Balcoth, but glancing back for a second he tried too late to shout out a warning. As he watched, his blindfolded ally rose etherially through the ground, right into the midst of a crowd of wights with a skeletal dragon behind them. The undead, who had not been visible from the bunker stairs (since they were positioned directly above the underground room), were as surprised as Balcoth was, watching as the illusory mirror images spread out from and shuffled around the caster.

Rhaek, having passed through earth and stone by controlling the normally-random phasing in-and-out of his Blinking spell, masked his displeasure at having risin within reach of a reanimated dragon corpse. Scanning around visually he could plainly see the familiar transmutation aura of Haste on all the enemies, but the dragons each had three other distinct minor spells affecting them. More important was that he couldn't see any sign of the wizard - it is true that dragons this size often posess minor magic of their own, such as Mage Armor, but Haste, Animate Dead and Cloudkill spells are far beyond their abilities. Rhaek reached out, and splaying the fingers of his spiked silver gauntlet he dispelled the area around the dragons before allowing his Blinking to randomize again. Each dragon's most powerful aura dissipated back into the aether, but it was asking too much to hope that the enemy spellcaster had been cowering invisibly behind his monsters, to be caught in the dispel. "...Were Hasted."

Umit stepped up and raised his arms; raised his palms heavenward and called forth a more powerful blessing of the sun. The aggravated dragon threw back both wings to its sides (including the partially disintegrated one), pulled back its head with a deep breath, and expelled a stream of corrosive acid; not the acidic bile that a lizard may spit in its prey's eyes, but a true, almost elemental stream of supernatural power aimed at the cleric at the base of the stairs. It washed over Balcoth, unable to infiltrate the flawless interlocking seals of his armor, but splashing the left side of his face, and the noxious fumes alone were enough to affect him. Umit, behind him, threw up his right arm, with his forearm straight up and his mace thus held perpendicular, sticking out to the side. As the column of acid struck him full force, it split, blasting the stone walls to either side of the stairs as though pushed aside and dismissed by his arm. As the flow subsided, leaving Umit unscathed, a bright light on his raised hand also subsided, fading to a mere, rather plain-looking ring. Umit could see that pinpoint of light reflected for a second in the mirror-sheen of the dragon's huge eye, and he could see recognition there - recognition that this battle was not a foregone conclusion... at least, not the conclusion the saurian had expected.

The second dragon advanced and snapped out at Balcoth, and soon both dragons were attacking him fiercely with huge maws and sinous necks, but with them no longer accelerated by magic, Balcoth had a decided advantage. Blocking with shield and axe, the dwarf snuck in precise counterattacks, with a glancing blow above the eye of one, and a spiked adamantine elbow right in the face of the other as its head streaked by missing him. On the surface, he had failed to penetrate their metal-like hide; failed to inflict any real damage... But to Umit's analytical eye, as he watched carefully for any sign of injury - injuries which would surely be hidden by the very armor that protected the dwarf - he saw that within seconds the warrior had disrupted a frenetic two-pronged assault just enough to get their bite attacks out of sync, alternating one and then the other, such that Balcoth could easily handle them. The dragons didn't even realize yet that they were being controlled.

Rhaek was trying to gather his energy for another casting when the bone dragon began attacking him with its sharp claws and the tips of its useless skeletal wings, and the rotting bodies of the wights descended upon him. They tore at him, each trying to grab his head in both hands and bite into it, but grabbed only illusions. The cluster of fake Rhaeks thinned as the images shattered one at a time, but one after another the images shifted and with no way to distinguish the real one, only as the last image was destroyed did one of them bite down onto something real - its distorted ghoulish teeth stopping against Rhaek's raised gauntlet, jarring the enchanted silver. But before either combattant could react, the ghoul melted away towards the right - it and all its kin eradicated by a luminous blaze which even the dead dragon shrank away from. Rheak peered back in the direction of the light to where Umit stood on the stairs, holy symbol of the sun raised in triumph.

Over Umit's shoulder the familiar arc of Rikkon's most powerful lightning spell shot out from one pain-wracked dragon towards the other, but the second target shielded itself with crossed wings, dissipating the electricity with its spell resistance. But then Rhaek caught something out of the corner of his eye; off to the side of the battle, the telltale "de-cloaking" effect of someone casting a spell from under Improved Invisibility. The enemy dispel attempt was cancelled out, expending the ablative ward the spider-cloaked jack-of-all-trades had cast earlier, but now he had an idea where the enemy caster was. Lowering his Luckblade, he waved his empty, silverplated hand at the wounded dragon, causing two more of its magic auras to wink out, then he began sinking into the solid ground as though the hard-packed dirt and magically conjured stone below were quicksand. The bone dragon reached down, biting clean through his torso but its yellow-white jaws passed harmlessly as Rhaek was now fully etherial, sliding down out of sight into the bunker.

The wounded dragon began striking more frantically, trying to trip Balcoth, but he surprised it by simply drifting off the ground, powered by his flying boots. The second dragon managed to get a claw past his shield and strike him in the side with a lot of force, knocking him sideways a few feet through the air, but as the first dragon tried to capitalize, the floating shield moved to block its striking head, and Balcoth kicked fiercely at the underside of the shield, banging it hard into the dragon's nose and dazing it, then he used his magic flight to flip over and around, dart under the head, and hack clean into the black-scaled neck with a two-handed baseball swing. The massive creature recoiled, spurting blood. It was not a lethal wound, but a very sensitive one that shocked the dragon. Its partner forced Balcoth back with its own acidic breath weapon, which Balcoth dodged pretty well, though it forced him down to the ground, and Umit dived back down the stairs. Even as he rolled around the corner, the stream of acid was deflected from around the cleric in a radius of several inches by his Ring of Evasion. And no sooner had Umit rolled into cover and the acid passed, when Rikkon flew around and out from above him, and in a motion that mimicked a monk's palm strike, she tossed a tiny globule of swirling, compact energy which flew between and past the dragons.

A great wind pulled every blade of the dead grass and every leaf in that direction, along with Rikkon's tabbard and her flowing hair - just for an instant, and then all were thrown back as the oxygen was converted into the violent explosion of a Fireball spell; a blistering intense heat so dramatic that the flames are blasted in and out of existence in the blink of an eye. The dragons howled and screeched as the black scales on the back half of their bodies were left with red-orange superheated edges, while the effect stopped short of hitting Balcoth. Umit rushed back up the stairs to see if there were any injuries, and felt a concerted mental attack. Looking around, he was sure he caught a hint of an invisible caster re-cloaking. That felt like one of the powers of Eyebite, he thought. His impenetrable resolve allowed him to shrug off the enemy spell, but he was distracted enough that he failed to notice to the approach of the undead dragon from behind. It whipped Umit with its serrated tail, striking him in the back as he retreated into the shelter once more, and for the first time Balcoth felt some of the sting, through the link of the mutual Shield Other spells.

"I get the feelin' this works out better for you, Umit", he found time to holler back while pushing the attack on the most wounded of the two dragons. The dragon, however, its throat covered in its own blood from the neck wound, and its tail still spasming from nerve damage caused by Rikkon's Arc Lightning, had had enough. It beat its massive wings, and the disintegration holes did not reduce the surface area enough to prevent it from gaining a good twenty feet of altitude, firing off one last stream of burning poison breath at the vicious dwarf, then propelling itself another hundred feet away. Umit, safe down in the bunker, merely smiled wryly, fingering some mild acid burns on the left side his face. "Let it go!", shouted Balcoth, mostly for Rikkon's benefit, since to Balcoth's eye she was the only one contributing a whole hell of a lot to his victory, "These little dragons don't matter; just find that caster!"

"They don't matter to you." she replies, flying back to put a little distance between herself and the enemies. However she fired a Scorching Ray spell at the bone dragon less because she disagreed than because no other target was presenting itself. The skeleton reeled under the flaming bolts, but suddenly Rikkon was hit by something intangible, losing 5 feet of height before recovering her balance... she was hit by a powerful feeling of sickness, of weakness... it was obviously magical, but knowing that did little to abate the feeling. Even as she reeled, she was hit by three of the same flaming missiles she had just used. The sequential impacts left her with severe burns, but also with clear smoke trails the she could follow back to the magically obfuscated enemy wizard, not far from her. Fighting the pain and dizzyness, she pointed: "He's over here!"

And suddenly the enemy caster was in plain sight. Rhaek emerged, black hair and "blindfold" first he phased once more through the ground. But this time an imperceptible aura (from a spell he had cast within the shelter) extended outward in all directions to suppress any invisibility around him. What it revealed in this case was a man in robes, a safe distance off to the side of the combat, in many-layered grey robes and with his face concealed by a white porcelain mask. Rhaek raised his arms to shoulder height, his holy Luckblade pointed out to his right-side and his spiked parrying guantlet to his left, but rather than attacking he released a pulse of positive energy, using one of his divine spells to heal some of the wounds of his allies, as well as inflicting light damage on the skeletal dragon. Umit seemed to think that was a good idea, but he cranked it up with his own far more specialized healing pulse, relieving virtually all the pain suffered thus far by himself, Balcoth and Rikkon, even healing the acid scars, and making a far more serious assault on the negative energy binding and sustaining the skeleton's undeath. But the mindless undead was merely a puppet of the wizard who animated it, and under the masked figure's direction, it lurched off in an unexpected direction, leaping and tearing at Rikkon. Though the claws were so close that they shredded her tabbard and pulled at the links of the chain shirt beneath, so close that it must have shorn years off her life, she managed to escape without real injury, flying straight up now to gain some definitive momentum.

Rising, with the sun at her back, Rikkon spread her wings wide, such that the light from behind cast her into shadow. The sparks that appeared in front of her were thus clearly visible even from the ground forty feet below. The crackling energy coursed up her slender arms, intensifying until it was possible to make out the outlines of her cupped hands within the shadow, and of uncharacteristically fierce lines on her normally pretty face. The wizard down below was carefully watching the movements of the dwarf who was cutting through his draconic minions, looking for an opportunity to shut him down, when he felt something. His robes rustled, as though caught in a wind from behind... an updraft? He looked down, catching motion in his peripheral vision, but it was just the grass - the brown-white sun-dried grass, which was dead, and flat, and matted over the entire clearing - was also caught in the wind, standing up straight and wavering just a tiny bit. The darkened eyeslits in his Sobe mask jerked suddenly upward, realizing too late... The fireball blast wave knocked him back ten feet through the air, the rush of flames searing the many folds of his robes black at the ends before self-extinguishing by exhausting all the available oxygen. Large parts of the bone dragon were blackened by the blast, since Rikkon had caught it too close to the wizard and hit them both.

The masked spellcaster rolled over and pushed himself back up onto his feet, watching his remaining dragon - the one that had not abandoned him - attack the dwarf, the holy man and the dilettante with its acid breath, but they had weathered several such assaults, and even the the blindfolded fool withstood it, thanks to his Blinking spell. The dragon skeleton was still standing strong, and it would take them a long time at this rate to break his spell upon its massive bones, but as long as he was visible the wizard knew he was vulnerable, so he needed to re-establish his own physical security before he could concentrate on slitting their throats. Drawing a human skull out from under his robes, he clasped it in both hands with a forefinger in each eye-socket, and brought it down on his knee - breaking and pulling it apart almost into two clean halves. Combined with a few words of necromancy, he summoned spirits of suffering which rose from the ground to form a barrier. The dark wall arose in front of him like a gateway to the netherworld, looking like nothing so much as a breach between the material plane and the torments of the Nine Hells. It drew the gaze of the heroes on the ground unwillingly, even as the barrier blocked the line of effect between Rhaek and the wizard: blocking the Invisibility Purge and allowing the necromancer to disappear.

Rikkon hovered - too far above the vertical plane of the spiritwall to be affected - but from her vantage she saw the enemy disappear. She could also see all her friends transfixed by the horrific sight and by the spellbinding power of its negative energy. She saw Umit simply turn away from it, then Rhaek shook his head and pulled his gaze off of it, cradling his blindfolded eyes in one hand to steady himself, and finally Balcoth... something was wrong. Although there was no way to see his face under all that armor, from up high, his posture had changed to one very unlike him. Balcoth, fighting dragons two-on-one, laughed at them. Balcoth ridiculed the hideous four-armed Glabrezu, a creature literally from hell that outmassed him by fifty times or more. Even when running for his life from the huge elemental, Balcoth didn't shrink away, and nothing made Balcoth drop his weapon... but here he did. He took another step back, and his marvellous shield clattered to the ground. It so often seemed that the floating shield had a life of its own, but it was too easy to forget that it is not an "intelligent" item. It's every move is guided by Balcoth's will, his instincts and his subconscious, and the fact that it failed was proof positive that the magical fear emanating from that sinister wall had ensorcelled him.

Guided by its invisible master, the bone dragon pressed the attack on Umit, trying to keep the priest from using his holy powers to undo the fear magic. As it struck him and crushed him against the wall, Balcoth shuddered at the pain shared from the Shield Other spell, whereas he had shown no sign of feeling it on earlier occasions. Caught offguard by the brutal blow, Umit was forced further down the stairs to try to escape the monstrous skeleton's reach. Meanwhile the black dragon laughed its bellowing screetching laugh to see the steely 5-foot tall juggernaut reduced to cowering before it. Off to the side and on his own Rhaek mumbled to himself, though it was hard to tell if it was a prayer to his elusive luck goddess, Olidamara, or if it was merely some bemused monologue:

"You got me; nobody saw that one coming to be sure. What twist of fate sees the imperturbable warrior thus perturbed? But imagine the look on that dragon's face when the tables turn once more..." He waved his hand, and raised his voice to make sure his bewitched ally could hear, "You've walked through that spell before, we already know it can't stop you. Now pick yourself up and wipe the grin off that lizard's face."

The anti-fear spell lifted the cloud from Balcoth's mind, snapped him out of it, and suddenly the horrific spirit barrier was just an ugly wall to him. Balcoth sprung forward, and without even touching the ground he stooped, snatching his deadly axe out of the dirt and then veering upwards, soaring off the ground and out of reach of the wall, with his shield snapped up as though by magnetism, orbiting him rapidly while he got his bearings. Floating high above the battlefield and looking for the wizard, he felt a wave of antimagic wash over him, stripping of him of his Haste. But the enemy failed in this last attempt to undo the Remove Fear; to keep the dwarf trapped in his own mind. Now that he was free, he didn't need Rhaek's spell anymore anyhow.

"Oh, I am pissed now!" he uttered. Down below, Umit was shaking off the last hit inside the bunker, at the base of the stairs, but got off a casting of Searing Light as the skeletal dragon reached down. The holy beam dealt visible damage to the lifeless skull and shattered some of its ribs, but the monstrosity showed no sign of slowing down. Clawing as far as it could but finding the white-clad cleric out of reach, it began advancing into the staircase. Balcoth streaked down from the air to land lightly behind it, right between it and the living dragon, but the mindless undead would not be distracted, and the other quickly forced the dwarf onto the defensive. With no mortal flesh or sinew, it was far easier for the skeleton to squeeze into the narrow space than for any living creature of its former volume, and it put forward its claws to pull itself forward, to pull it's shoulders down the narrow staircase and bring itself into striking range with its extended saurian neck, when one claw came into contact with the stone slab of the open door. A hidden rune on the surface went from effectively invisible to an eerie neon glow, then two more sprung up around it, and then there were over a dozen glowing sigils. Umit saw and dived around the corner. Just as Balcoth turned to face the last black dragon front on, and it reared up to try and stomp him down, the dwarf was lit from behind by a chain of small explosions which amounted to a massive thundering cluster of flame and smoke that rained bone fragments upon them. The last dragon shuddered and dropped back down on all fours.

"Ha! You should do that again Umit", Balcoth shouted over his shoulder, without really looking back on the smoke pouring out of the underground bunker and revealing the hidden air shafts. He kept his eyes on the dragon, and now addressed it directly, with a maniacal grin which it probably couldn't see behind his adamantine faceplate, but which came through in the tone of his gruff voice. "Don't worry lizard; I'm sure your master'll find himself another dragon skeleton... somewhere..."

Rhaek had been circling around the necromantic "wall", and as he brought his anti-insivibility field to bear, he found... nothing. The enemy spellcaster had clearly moved out of range. He picked what he thought was the most likely direction of escape and bolted off with a burst of speed which was uncannily fast even for one Hasted - and that despite the slowing drag caused by the fraction of his time spent in the etherial plane. But as Umit climbed out of the stairs through massive ribs wreathed in black smoke, they could see no trace of the wizard. The real enemy had quit the field, just as the first of the black dragons had. With a shrug, Rikkon fired another trio of scorching rays into the remaining dragon, striking it in the face and neck, as Balcoth rose off the ground and dove in for the kill.

And there were some other, usual sort of conflicts. Same old issues, coming up once again in a situation just dissimilar enough to previous occasions as to stir up the same debates again:

When firing any ranged attack "into melee" the attacker generally suffers a -4 penalty for cover. This penalty can be ignored by archers with a combination of 2 feats, but most spellcasters do not have those feats because they have few feat choices available to split between defensive and magic feats, and also because until a more recent book is was not clear that Precise Shot worked for ray spells as it does for weapons.

The issue becomes one of determining what constitutes "in melee". Between foes of different reach and size categories, this is not always as obious as one would think. With some discussion, our D&D group decided that in order to be "in melee", both combattants had to be within reach of one-another. This means that a human 10 feet away can't take cover from you just because he is wielding a whip, for example. But if you both had whips or polearms, then you are "threatening" each other, and are therefore assumed to be jockeying for position. Similarly, we ruled that you could not take cover from an opponent more than one size-class smaller than yourself. So a Huge creature occupying 3x3 map squares cannot take cover from a regular 1x1 square human-sized creature. However, a Large 2x2 square dragon could take cover from a human or dwarf "in melee" with it, because even if the smaller creature is one the far side from the attacker, "in melee" implies that the combattants are moving and dodging back and forth, in and around the abstract map squares they currently occupy.

[The others all exchange knowing and insinuating glances, which doesn't improve GM's mood]

Here lies one of the major sources of conflict; GM is quite open about allowing material from newer books - giving the players more options, as long as he retains a veto over any new spells/classes/races/feats. However, GM does not believe it is fair to expose players to enemies that do not conform to the ones they are familiar with, because totally unfamiliar opponents would make it difficult for them to make good decisions (which in itself conflicts with the goal of suppressing excessive "player knowledge"). However, because he expands his options much less than the players do, and has the additional constraints of putting together a story (so, for example, it is difficult to justify large numbers of psionic enemies, or all dragons or elementals, or even the various demons and devils which normally don't cohabitate). This, combined with certain balance changes which the players would accept as reasonable, even necessary, form the basis for a "slippery slope" where, as the players attained higher levels and gained new powers, the "adjustments" and bannings never stopped... The game never hit a stable balance level where GM was happy with it, and as a logical consequence of his quest for perfection, every spell or item or power removed or "nerfed" left a vacuum at the top, which was soon filled with another option which, with the change, became the new top of the pyramid, above-the-curve power, which the players would diligently discover and monopolize, beginning the process again. This was further compounded by those few things which GM deemed too powerful, but which were too integrated to be excised from his game; such as Balcoth's race (and prestige class). GM had already banned any future Dwarven Defenders, or Dwarves of any stripe, but it would not be appropriate to force Balcoth to change after all this time. And this percieved imbalance, to GM's mind, put the advantage even more squarely in the players' corner, forcing him to react even more aggressively to other problems, whilst the players felt pressed - forced to give up any semblance of whimsy or lassitude in their statistical decisions, because (in their eyes) GM's changes and his "engineered" enemies left no margin for error whatsoever. The players were even driven to overengineer their characters, making decisions based on backups (against suspected future "nerfs") and obfuscation (not lying or cheating on their characters, but rather, making design choices intended to de-emphasize their benefits and hopefully avoid drawing a ruling from GM).

Perhaps not the healthiest environment for everyone. Yet as Azheron pointed out, "If it wasn't fun, I wouldn't be going out of my way to keep coming."

Most online roleplaying games allow you to keep multiple characters in the same persistent world, which could enable you to log-out your current character, and the log- back in with one whose skill set is more useful for the situation. Of course, location is also persistent, so your second character might have to travel a prohibitively long time to get back to the party you just left, depending on where you were.

The dull orange-red illumination rising from below, around the bridge, was overlapped and supplanted in an instant by abrasive neon-white flashes as a series of bifurcating arcs of electricity rained down from the ceiling of the cavern - each one splitting and dividing along its line, but all the lines converging from several points-of-origin into the shallow length of tunnel between the bridge and the cave-in. The first two lightning bolts painted the heroes silhouettes on the fallen rocks, before they all leapt into action. Umit rolled sideways and his ring deflected the next lightning behind him, while Rikkon flew up into the corner to find partial cover, Rhaek crawled along the ceiling into the corner opposite, just beneath the overhang to where he could almost see the enemies, and Balcoth turned to face them, his sheild circling him though the air to leap from his back into his hand.

Looking up for the source of the attack they saw two pairs of large spiders crawling upside down along the ceiling near the vertical shaft, but where a spider would have a head, each of them had the upright torso of a bald, blackskinned elf like some kind of demented spider-centaur. Each was moving its hands and lips and continuing the lightning-casting.

"Freaks!" shouted Balcoth, lifting off the stone floor as he activated his boots of flying.

"Driders, actually," said Umit, before he cast a powerful healing spell, a softer glow filling the alcove and washing over the other heroes to counterract the nerve damage and electric burns. "My sister said to stay away from them."

"Half-sister," corrected Rikkon, showing she'd been paying attention. The mephling was moving her hands deliberately in a repeating pattern, sort of half-casting a spell over-and-over so that she could complete it more rapidly as soon as she saw an opening...

"Oh, REALLY? Well I'm glad she made such good use of her time in that Hell-hole Drow city", Balcoth spit out, sarcastically, before moving to attack.