Tuesday, September 25, 2012

From Flannery, with love in the Demon Wastes

Off we fly toward another Eye. But I cannot be bothered with these things at the moment. All the lovely alchemical tidbits I found and liberated from that vile bastard of a wizard's clutches needed love and attention. That I fully intended to give them. Yet, I missed so much! Our warforged, who I have decided to call "Waffles" instead of W.F., somehow had babies.... don't ask me! I wasn't there! I don't know how this happened or why! And gods be blasted if I would rather have been there to document this strange event than with my eyes glued to magnifying glass and chemical compositions.
It's sulpherous!
Something splatted into our ship and Thunk the idiotic druid from the pit of morons decided to reincarnate it. To be fair I was actually quite impressed with his confidence and go-to attitude. However, wiping your finger across a goo covered deck, sniffing said goo on said finger, then declaring: "I wonder what this was." Before reincarnating it is actually quite stupid. Quite. If it were an Irfreet or Dragon or Roc or any other infantile creature we'd have more trouble and damage than our curiosity was worth.
Luck held out for the brainless bean bottle; the man, who is now a Dwarf thanks to the strange realm of divine magical quirks, was a wizard by the name of Clive Icarus. He is also an idiot and told of spells that could revolutionize travel, blaming some one for taking out the landing portion of the spell that had killed him when he, I'm most certain, was the one who forgot to put it in the spell to begin with. Idiot. It's probably his face that makes him stupid. When one is as symmetrical of look as he one can afford to be daft. Well he's Slash's problem now, not mine. And gods help him if the half orc ever loses her reign on him... I will turn his blood to acid in his veins if he gets in our way. Hehe.

We find ourselves in the Demon Wastes. A scarred and torched land worthy of such an unpleasant name. Though I'm beginning to wonder about our employers. What do they hope to accomplish by gathering these Eyes of the Tirant, little more than beholder eye stalks turned wand, and should they prove dastardly in intention how could we hope to overcome such strange power? I suppose those are thoughts for later.

No one knows what they are doing. In a dungeon such as the one we just departed there needs to be a clear line of thought, reason, perhaps even a touch of logic. But no, a perfectly round hole in the wall sends Slash and Won into fits. Slash is certain that we should be wary of a Beholder and Won.... well I honestly don't know what Won thinks. He's on a different plane of existence from the rest of the universe. He pulls me into the tunnel and wants me to make acid. Then he wants me to light his torch, hold a rope, throw a sun rod down the perfectly smooth, odd, tunnel that's 10 feet off the ground. As fascinating as it is I know that there are orbs of annihilation floating near by, and they are just as perfectly round as this tunnel. My curiosity is quite capable of being overridden by my self preservation. When Won asked me to throw oil of impact down the tunnel I couldn't help but scream "NO!" and leave him there to kill himself. I used Thunk's giant bear face to climb out of the tunnel before Won did something stupid enough to kill himself and me if I were too close.

Unsmelted silver abounds, ready to be hauled away, probably gathered by the gnome and the lizard man called 'Sam', though being absorbed in fairly important research and development of my own I can't imagine why they would do such a thing, or why the were here in the first place.
Thunk thinks the silver is Tuna. Which is fine as long as he allows me to measure  how much he eats so I can figure the ratio for turning one's skin blue.
While I'm measuring the silver and dreaming of the alchemical possibilities Slash opens a door and nearly burns herself to death. Afterwards Thunk practically throws himself down the stairs on the other side. I'm flabbergast that he's alive still. Not long after he disappears there's a thundering crack of sound followed by unearthly screams. I do not doubt that he's tripped another trap.
With some care, but mostly haste, the rest of us follow after the stupid, stupid, druid. On our way the screams stop. A long hall opens into a small room filled with doors, and shreds of some fungal substance covered in goo. Spent runes mar the wall opposite the door. So the crack was lightning; I deduce by the smell of ozone in the room. Surprisingly enough the cat form druid is whole; singed, bleeding from his ears, but whole. All the doors are locked with magic locks. From the way Slash is laying into one of the doors with an axe and not getting anywhere I believe they're probably bespelled in many more ways. Self healing, force wall... wait... force wall?
We all watch in stupified horror as the doors hinges are depinned, the door removed by a gnome, and then replaced while he laughs at us from the other side. Thunk goes at the wall of force and only manages to slam into it and slide down leaving a blood trail and a screeching noise that makes me cringe.
It's time to think around the box.
While everyone is blustering, well mostly Bitterbrew is blustering, I decide to blow up the wall around the door... I will never admit that Won, the strange korean monk, gave me the idea when he started to attack the stone around his door rather than his door.
My companions seem to be getting wiser. They clear out of the little room when they notice that I'm laying explosives.With a bang and a cloud of dust the wall gives way to a simple room. It looks like it may have been Sam's room. A sword and a bow are flung to the floor under a weapon rack my explosion managed to mangle slightly, those might be worth something. Beside it is what looks like a scraping pit. A simple bed and dresser and another door. Thunk announces that "Medusa's live here!"
Bord I go to see if I can reverse engineer the magic on any of the other doors.

Thunk and the others go through the secondary door in the small suite. I imagine it was quite a sight, before Slash started feathering her hoard by cutting down the crystal beads that hung from the ceiling. Vaguely I remember Thunk yelling something like: "Beads of Delayed FireBall?! I GOT DIS!" but seeing as how he can't tell Silver from Tuna it's easy to ignore anything he shouts at the loudest decibel possible.
I can easily imagine how they found the ice giant demi-god.
Thunk rushed in with his overconfident idiocy. Probably threw the door open with a triumphant "Ha ha!" then froze in his tracks at the sight of the massive form in front of him. We all remember the Oni. Slash more than the rest of us seeing as how she was literally decapitated for an instant before Bitterbrew's magic took effect. He's a blustery pimple of a being, but the stocky squalor face is a damned decent healer.
The giant must've thrown his mace at the poor door while Thunk was trying to shut it, otherwise I don't think he would've turned Direbear to face the thing. The booming voice announcing "Not Again." was hard to miss. I was told later that the giant had spoken to the fire elemental sealed inside Thunk's spine and it had power over it.
Of course I was called in by the time Bitterbrew was making groundless threats. "Better be clarifying yourself or I'll go through yer eye!" In his grouchy brogue. Thunk is conflicted, from the looks of him he's been well healed. Taking it for granted I took over command and told Bitterbrew to shut his face, half the ship is mine, and the giant will owe us something for letting him out of his prison. By the symbol on the ceiling and the wax solidifying around the door jam that wreaked of burning blood I could deduce as much. The dwarf butted out and the giant used his strange powers to make the gnome everyone hated for reasons beyond me get the Eye we were searching for. Nice, sweet, simple.
The giant gave Slash a coin the size of a dinner plate with his name scrawled on it in lovely dwarven lettering. "Ulric Skyson" whether or not we'll have to pay for letting him free will be attended to when the matter arises. For now whatever was drawing power from him with a blood seal has been stunted energy and I feel confident about that for some reason.
A classic argument starts up as soon as we get to the top of the stairs. No one knows how to work the boom, people are arguing about how to call the ship to our location, Ulric tells us we don't have much time since he's going to make sure there's nothing left of his prison. Again I save the others from their less than adequate wit and work the boom myself while Bitterbrew signals our capable captain.
Our Gnoll, 2 Ears, killed Sam the Lizard man. I'm pretty sure I'll smell rot before the body is done with. Poor Sam.
As we streak away we hear Ulric booming and angry voice. "I'm making a point. I WILL NEVER BE IMPRISONED AGAIN!!!!" With a shattering of ice crystals throwing a rainbow explosion into the air the place was gone. Leaving the Demon Wastes the ship took a balista bolt to it's hull. The 'doorf' is bent out of shape about it. But it's minor. I have other things to busy myself with. Other, more important things.