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Oct. 1st, 2002 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothGot the car back, the estimate was accurate, no special problems, and it seems to be fixed. So that's over with, regardless of how good the outcome was, and I can stop thinking about it. I'm sure I'll stop nervously watching the heat gauge in a week or two.
Tonight was Lance's game, again. We got showered with (relatively modest) gifts from the gods, and charged with an immediate mission, and, should we choose to accept it, a long-term task. Then we went in and kicked some sticky-guy butt.
The last session ended with the Dragon of Flame telling us to meet him at dawn at his temple so that the gods could repay their debt to us for freeing them. The plan was for the good members of the party to simply step through the mirror into the temple, while the not-quite-so-good, and (coincidentally?) sneakier members snuck in by conventional means. Which we did.
Except that, as Wren and Ozzie (I'm Ozzie) approached the temple, we saw that the grassy lawn outside the temple was littered with bodies. Enough bodies that the rectangular boundary of the 'line of death' was clearly demarcated. That would have been enough to spook me away, but Wren noticed that three of the bodies were of warder-beasts, and remembered something she'd been told before I joined the party -- that the warder beast that had been following us around (and harassing me) had been driven away from 'its temple' and wanted us to go back and reclaim it. So, obviously, the bodies weren't the victim of some terrible trap, and this was simply the battlefield we should have been expecting.
So, confident in her explanation, we ran like hell across the field. And while nothing appeared to smite us, torches on and around the temple lit up, announcing our presence. Since the main bad guys' castle was only a mile away, and in direct line of sight, and we'd moved early to make sure we made it and still had about eight hours 'till dawn, this was a bad thing.
Fortunately, only a small patrol responded to the torches, and the remaining warder-beast held them at bay until dawn, when the gods arrived.
Each of us got a special boon, and an assortment of gifts. The kitty monk got 'hands of the gods', allowing her to kill anything by hitting it with her fists (and doing enough damage, it just bypassed damage resistance). The drayman (draconian, basically) fighter got... hmm... some ability I don't quite recall. Wren got a giant femur staff, and I got something 'that I'd discover soon'.
We also each got armbands of protection (we don't know what they do), a magic weapon (mine were 30 bullets that turn into giant boulders when flung), the ability to cast a single healing spell per day as a cleric of our level, the promise of a home, somewhere, that would 'suit us' and also respond to our will, a bunch of random crappy 'I'll spare your life *once*' promises from the evil gods, and from the leader of the gods, a guardian cloak.
Now, the guardian cloak is the symbol of the authority of the empire, which doesn't currently exist, but might in the future, especially with our help. It acts as a bag of holding which can shrink down to a clasp at your neck. It gives you the authority -- in the name of the empire -- to go anywhere and do anything. It also requires you to swear your life to the empire, to obey to the letter all of its various laws, and to follow unflinchingly the orders of your superiors. And if you *break* this oath, the god told me, when I asked, it kills you, slowly and painfully.
So I thanked the god nicely for the offer and turned it down. Wren and the kitty monk took it, though. Which means I don't get any of the power, but will probably end up having to help them carry out the responsibilities. SIGH.
Oh, the god also granted Wren and I the ability to pass through the mirrors and other alignment barriers, so long as we refrained from committing any evil acts.
Before leaving, the gods charged us with one task -- to reactivate the Mythal that protected the city, driving away the undead and, more importantly, the gou-uld, evil eel-like things that crawl inside people and take over their bodies. And that happened to be our main enemy. Since we were going to try to get rid of the damn eels anyway, and this seemed like the most likely way to accomplish that task, we said 'sure!'.
We were also warned to act quickly, since Darien (the enemy) was bringing his 'vessel' to the butte in response to our previous unsuccessful assassination attempt.
The enemies had put a tapestry over the mirror, and were watching it closely, so we dragged a dead body from outside the temple and tossed it through to take out the drape. The body got well-fried by the people standing guard -- two bone warriors, and three 'sticky guys', basically guys with sticks.
But the hostages were gone, so I tossed a boulder at the enemies while they poked at the body to make sure it was dead. It worked better than I'd expected, crushing one of them and knocking the other two aside. My compatriots lept bravely through the mirror to engage the remaining enemies, taking two of them out, and then got fireballed by the remaining bone warrior.
Nobody died, and we managed to quickly subdue the last two enemies, but then four more teleported in in response to a distress call he'd gotten out. Wren slept two, but the others were holding their own, so, in a fit of stupidity, I ran out through the mirror to flank with the warriors and sap them unconscious. I got one, the kitty and I eventually took out the other, and Wren and the Drayman raced ahead upstairs, generating additional aggro while we were still busy.
The additional monster was a weird-ass metal dog-thing, described as 'like the quadroped alien from Alien 3'. It was fricking nasty, whatever it was, so Wren, the Drayman, and the kitty decided they weren't going to fight it, instead running upstairs to hit the Mythal.
And of course, the Mythal was guarded, by two sticky-guys and Darien, the Main Bad Guy. Hearing more fighting upstairs, and being the last person in combat with the metal dog-thing, and having no real offensive skills except sneak attack, I decided to taunt it into following me away from the rest of the party. And it worked! I evaded its cone of cold breath, somehow managed not to get hit by its attacks, and fled back through the mirror to the temple, and wasn't followed.
Meanwhile, in the Mythal chamber, Wren cast sleep on the two sticky guys (who'd already held the Drayman), leaving the kitty to try to tumble past Darien to activate the Mythal. He failed, and Darien grappled him and started trying to force-feed a gou-uld into his mouth (but didn't manage to). Things looked bad for our heroes, when the little teddy-bear druid who'd been keeping to the sidelines during the fight decided to use what was probably a new 'Turn Undead' power (which also worked on gou-ulds, we'd been told by the dragons earlier) which stunned Darien long enough for kitty to activate the mythal.
Which forced Darien to teleport away. We stopped as Wren, kitty, and Drayman panted in relief in the mythal chamber, only to hear the *clink* *clink* *clink* of the metal-dog coming back up the steps...
last week... next week
Tonight was Lance's game, again. We got showered with (relatively modest) gifts from the gods, and charged with an immediate mission, and, should we choose to accept it, a long-term task. Then we went in and kicked some sticky-guy butt.
The last session ended with the Dragon of Flame telling us to meet him at dawn at his temple so that the gods could repay their debt to us for freeing them. The plan was for the good members of the party to simply step through the mirror into the temple, while the not-quite-so-good, and (coincidentally?) sneakier members snuck in by conventional means. Which we did.
Except that, as Wren and Ozzie (I'm Ozzie) approached the temple, we saw that the grassy lawn outside the temple was littered with bodies. Enough bodies that the rectangular boundary of the 'line of death' was clearly demarcated. That would have been enough to spook me away, but Wren noticed that three of the bodies were of warder-beasts, and remembered something she'd been told before I joined the party -- that the warder beast that had been following us around (and harassing me) had been driven away from 'its temple' and wanted us to go back and reclaim it. So, obviously, the bodies weren't the victim of some terrible trap, and this was simply the battlefield we should have been expecting.
So, confident in her explanation, we ran like hell across the field. And while nothing appeared to smite us, torches on and around the temple lit up, announcing our presence. Since the main bad guys' castle was only a mile away, and in direct line of sight, and we'd moved early to make sure we made it and still had about eight hours 'till dawn, this was a bad thing.
Fortunately, only a small patrol responded to the torches, and the remaining warder-beast held them at bay until dawn, when the gods arrived.
Each of us got a special boon, and an assortment of gifts. The kitty monk got 'hands of the gods', allowing her to kill anything by hitting it with her fists (and doing enough damage, it just bypassed damage resistance). The drayman (draconian, basically) fighter got... hmm... some ability I don't quite recall. Wren got a giant femur staff, and I got something 'that I'd discover soon'.
We also each got armbands of protection (we don't know what they do), a magic weapon (mine were 30 bullets that turn into giant boulders when flung), the ability to cast a single healing spell per day as a cleric of our level, the promise of a home, somewhere, that would 'suit us' and also respond to our will, a bunch of random crappy 'I'll spare your life *once*' promises from the evil gods, and from the leader of the gods, a guardian cloak.
Now, the guardian cloak is the symbol of the authority of the empire, which doesn't currently exist, but might in the future, especially with our help. It acts as a bag of holding which can shrink down to a clasp at your neck. It gives you the authority -- in the name of the empire -- to go anywhere and do anything. It also requires you to swear your life to the empire, to obey to the letter all of its various laws, and to follow unflinchingly the orders of your superiors. And if you *break* this oath, the god told me, when I asked, it kills you, slowly and painfully.
So I thanked the god nicely for the offer and turned it down. Wren and the kitty monk took it, though. Which means I don't get any of the power, but will probably end up having to help them carry out the responsibilities. SIGH.
Oh, the god also granted Wren and I the ability to pass through the mirrors and other alignment barriers, so long as we refrained from committing any evil acts.
Before leaving, the gods charged us with one task -- to reactivate the Mythal that protected the city, driving away the undead and, more importantly, the gou-uld, evil eel-like things that crawl inside people and take over their bodies. And that happened to be our main enemy. Since we were going to try to get rid of the damn eels anyway, and this seemed like the most likely way to accomplish that task, we said 'sure!'.
We were also warned to act quickly, since Darien (the enemy) was bringing his 'vessel' to the butte in response to our previous unsuccessful assassination attempt.
The enemies had put a tapestry over the mirror, and were watching it closely, so we dragged a dead body from outside the temple and tossed it through to take out the drape. The body got well-fried by the people standing guard -- two bone warriors, and three 'sticky guys', basically guys with sticks.
But the hostages were gone, so I tossed a boulder at the enemies while they poked at the body to make sure it was dead. It worked better than I'd expected, crushing one of them and knocking the other two aside. My compatriots lept bravely through the mirror to engage the remaining enemies, taking two of them out, and then got fireballed by the remaining bone warrior.
Nobody died, and we managed to quickly subdue the last two enemies, but then four more teleported in in response to a distress call he'd gotten out. Wren slept two, but the others were holding their own, so, in a fit of stupidity, I ran out through the mirror to flank with the warriors and sap them unconscious. I got one, the kitty and I eventually took out the other, and Wren and the Drayman raced ahead upstairs, generating additional aggro while we were still busy.
The additional monster was a weird-ass metal dog-thing, described as 'like the quadroped alien from Alien 3'. It was fricking nasty, whatever it was, so Wren, the Drayman, and the kitty decided they weren't going to fight it, instead running upstairs to hit the Mythal.
And of course, the Mythal was guarded, by two sticky-guys and Darien, the Main Bad Guy. Hearing more fighting upstairs, and being the last person in combat with the metal dog-thing, and having no real offensive skills except sneak attack, I decided to taunt it into following me away from the rest of the party. And it worked! I evaded its cone of cold breath, somehow managed not to get hit by its attacks, and fled back through the mirror to the temple, and wasn't followed.
Meanwhile, in the Mythal chamber, Wren cast sleep on the two sticky guys (who'd already held the Drayman), leaving the kitty to try to tumble past Darien to activate the Mythal. He failed, and Darien grappled him and started trying to force-feed a gou-uld into his mouth (but didn't manage to). Things looked bad for our heroes, when the little teddy-bear druid who'd been keeping to the sidelines during the fight decided to use what was probably a new 'Turn Undead' power (which also worked on gou-ulds, we'd been told by the dragons earlier) which stunned Darien long enough for kitty to activate the mythal.
Which forced Darien to teleport away. We stopped as Wren, kitty, and Drayman panted in relief in the mythal chamber, only to hear the *clink* *clink* *clink* of the metal-dog coming back up the steps...
last week... next week
