Bleeding profusely from numerous cuts and bites, Kaul looks in his element.
The thug mugs a grin at the mayhem wrought upon him by the simiantagonist. Then with a nod to his axe, attempts to return the favour;
For his part Dibbets, spits upon his grubby palm and shifts to slap the scarred nugget upon his back;
The thug is surrounded by an oily sheen... and feels a taste o' sea-salt in his craw.
The serpent folk thronging below press against the platform, turning their wrathful hissing against the golden-faced imposter. With the swashbuckler in its face, the hard-pressed naga priest bites at Jim, but misses under duress as the mob turns against it.
In a nearby jungle nightmare, Kaul and Dibbets once again prove a formidable team. Lopper once again cleaves into the manky monkey. Though the supernatural hide proves resistant even to the heavy blade, black blood now oozes from several deep gashes and it bares its great yellow fangs in pain.
Dibbets' prayer covers Kaul in a protective coat of sea slime that deflects the long black nails of the furry red claws, but it fails to ward off the furious demon's fangs as it bites deep into the thug.
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Fly, you fool!
Again Corliss hears a voice in his head, though he's not certain if it's his goddess speaking or her voice-mimicking minion. Seeing Jim in mid-air convinces the priest that anything is possible...so he tries to use magic to fly! Shockingly, Corliss finds himself hurtling though the air to join the battle, glowing rapier at the ready!
Dingus raises his hands, and rallies his people to help bring down the pretender to the throne, and holding his hands high a magnificent Eagle appears in the air in front of him with decidedly snakelike features.
The Snake-Eagle rises to the imposter and harries the creature with it's claws and beak.
Claw 1
Claw 2
Bite
Another leap, and Jim stabs at the glowing naga.
He can't follow up his previous success, though.
Jim rebounds off the altar, but is uncharacteristically off balance. Corliss is inspired by Jim's light footwork and launches into the air closing on their new neme-hiss. Dingus spends the round gyrating and giving weird little screams until a strange cobra-hawk thing appears. The serpent men in the pit below begin scrambling over each other and up the wall trying to reach the high platform.
The naga drifts back belching forth a pair of fiery rays; one at each of the sailors threatening it. The snake-eagle stoops on the spirit snake, but barely scratches it.
"Feck! I'll make you pay for that!" Jim recovers and leaps again, one attack hitting.
Dingus picks out one of the most dangerous looking and biggest of his new followers, and levitates the creature towards Naga chick.
"Rise to the occasion. Prove your worthiness to rule by my side"!
Corliss tries to be a flanking buddy to Jim, stabbing away while bobbing in mid-air like a handsome piece of flotsam. Two pieces of handsome flotsam, actually, as he wills a copycat of himself into existence as well.
for
Surrounded by a swooping cobra-hawk, twin sailors and a leaping swashbuckler, the naga priest avoids the Corlisses, but Jim bounds up and strikes him from a blind spot. Meanwhile, a burly falchion-wielding snakeman guard rises above the others lifted by an unseen hand toward the false priest!
Seemingly revelling in the biting scrap with the demonic ape, Kaul ignores all else around him and presses on swinging his fell hatchet wildly;
"Hur. Kauly see. Kauly do. Lopps will chop you!"
As Kaul wades in, Dibbs continues his divine interventions, once again calling on his god's indifferent might;
Sending a sparking trident of lightning forth from his calloused hand!
Kaul is reinvigorated, but his former coconut companion is wily and quick and the big swing is a big tum-nono. Meanwhile, Dibbets jabs with lightning again before remembering that it is ineffective against the demon. Seeing no effective offense available to him, the worried halfling lets the spell drop and looks around the dim understory of the abyssal jungle for help. Mixed in with the howling winds and the furiously shaking canopy above, he hears serpentine hissing. He worries a moment that more jungle demons are approaching, but spots a dim green radiance issuing between silhouetted buttress roots and for a moment hears Dingus' voice within.
The manky menace compensates for the oily ward around Kaul and tears into the bosun with redoubled fury. A claw tears deep into Kaul's chest and then fangs tear a bloody bite of flesh off!
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As Tum turns the thug to chum, Kaul staggers backward... chest ragged and his cheek chewed open.
Beady eyes blink, but he does not fall, instead setting about the Abyssal Apemonstosity with both hacking laugh and hacking axe;
Cursing his sauce and substance addled mind Dibbs peers at the verdant radiance with growing suspicion;
"Ding ye shifty snake ye. That you?"
Then Kaul's bellow snaps him from his investigation...
Kaul teeters a moment as blood sprays from the mortal wounds, but rallies with a vengeance and sends Lopper in a keening arc that whisks through the corded neck of the beast and cleanly beheads it. Lopper continues its eerie wailing as the body disperses in a foul miasma and the bouncing head takes a woodier texture as it rolls between the trees and into the green glow beyond.
Corliss(-es) decides that Jim's more likely to cut the naga to pieces than he, so he concentrates on being a flanking buddy or two to the swashbuckler. Instead of attacking, though, Corliss presents the holy symbol etched onto his buckler and channels positive energy.
Dingus continues to egg on the crowd, while his levitated minion, and his celestial bird/snake continue their attack. Richard is so excited that if he were a rattlesnake he would be rattling at an ear splitting pace.
Snake/Bird
Claw 1
slicing
Claw 2
Slicing also
Beak
Pecking
Jim leaps up at the serpent again and stabs it once, missing badly on the second attempt.
The flying naga finds itself alone among enemies as a pair of Corlisses threaten from being, a snake-eagle harries, and a serpentfolk warrior slashes with his curved blade. None of the attacks breach its blinding defense and hard scales, but before it can breathe freely, Jim leaps weightlessly high, spinning as he climbs and at just the right moment drives his rapier in the serpent's human-like face. The wings falter and the naga dives into the maddened mob of serpentfolk below that turn their wrath on the dying snakepriest!
The hissing fury is deafening so a rumble is felt rather than heard from the passage back to the bottom of the pit from which Corliss, Jim, and Dingus emerged.
The Taldan alights, shaking the naga's blood from his rapier while the creature falls. "Where did you come from, Corliss? This place has me all turned 'round."
"I was in the pit ye knocked me into!" Corliss replies, suddenly recalling how he ended up in the dark hole in the first place. His anger is short-lived, though. "Met one o' Bessie's associates. My Queen ain't real happy with you folks...but we'll deal with that once we've found Kaul an' Dibbets. They was fightin' some wooden monkey demon last I saw 'em."
"Aw, feck. Tum-Bo-Bo's in this place? Lead the way, mate!" Jim pauses. "She's not happy with us? Aye, we haven't been doing much for Her honor of late."
Corliss looks about for any more potential portals like the one he used to enter the snake pit. Over his shoulder to Jim he says, "Unfinished business with one Red Aesha."
"Her? Well, if the Queen says it's time, it's time."
Screaming in glee at his success Dingus sends his Eagle soaring in circles overhead screeching at the top of it's lungs. He then tries to introduce 'crowd surfing' to the packed masses below as they greet their new leader.
Corliss updates Jim while Dingus dances on the edge of the platform. The skinny and very strange sorcerer looks ready to leap into the snake pit when the platform warps and tilts toward the dark passage to the back. The room seems to darken and whirl sending the crew falling into another pit!
Elsewhere in the Dreamlands, Kaul and Dibbets jog and hobble after the rolling object. The ground seems to sink under it as if it has an incredible mass. The pair feel their footing give way as the verdant jungle groundcover slides after the descending sphere and the green canopy closes above them!
All awaken lying about Asnaan's quarters at the Grunt. The host lies paralyzed on the recliner once again with the little blue elephant thing perched next to his head on the pillow with its trunk softly stroking his cheek. In the immobile man's hand now rests a rough sphere that you don't recall seeing before. the Groom stands guard at the door, but turns at the sound of the explorers returning to consciousness.
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Jim grimaces. "Feck, my head hurts. Kaul, any time I want to drink that sh1te again knock me out with that sap of yours. Less fecking painful, hey? So what's that thing in your hand, Asnaan?"
The paralyzed man's eyes turn from Jim to drop down to the object in his hand and widen with terror as the little elephantine figment gives a tiny trumpet of alarm.
At the same moment the Groom's form wrenches and stretches a full foot taller and even gaunter. His clothing transforms from his characteristic salt-stained black jacket with tattered tails into a rotting, red ballgown as he becomes a horrible wrinkled gray hag with curled goathorns on her head and garish makeup caked on her face. "Which means that you're still ASLEEP!" she howls with glee.
Keelhaul Kaul-
Madman Jim-
Dingus-
Corliss-
foe-
Even before before Kaul can leap up and raise Lopper, the woman disappears and then reappears behind Asnaan's couch with her long black nails poised at his throat. "Sally Scrabblebones will have her mother's dreamstone now. Any of you move and the invalid gets his throat ripped out!"
Jim temporizes, blade out. "What's the downside of letting her take it, Asnaan? I'm a mite out of my depth here."
Asnaan just gives a panicked glance at the claws near his neck. "Let her have it," he whispers.
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"Let her have it," he whispers.
Dingus begins to sway his hips, and enlarge and contract his eyes. The hypnotic pattern of his dancing hoping to entrance Sally into forgetting what she's doing.
Cast Hypnotism DC 15 Will save.
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Dingus locks the hag in his uncanny unblinking gaze as he shakes his snakey hips in a dance of domination. The evil creature just cackles and leers at the sorcerer.
Jim lowers his sword and slowly approaches the paralyzed man, ready to strike should the hag attack him. "Tell you what...I'll take the stone, here, and hand it to you once you let go."
Corliss turns to face Jim, Kaul, and Dibbets bringing his buckler engraved with the skull-and-crossbones holy symbol of Besmara in close against his chest. He stands silently, allowing the others to choose their crewman's fate.
You recall that when Corliss using his positive energy channel, he typically presents his shield as a viable holy symbol. Chances are he's suggesting that he can heal Asnaan at a distance before the fellow perishes if folks want to charge the hag.
Dibbs for his part merely spits at the predictiment, then hobbles a step, jabbing a calloused finger in the direction of the hag;
"Nei. Ye'll keep yer manky claws tae yersel' Scrabblebones!"
Kaul for his part reads all the signs, Jimmer distracting her, Dibb's denying her, Corliss waving them on and Ding... doing whatever he was doing...
All the crew required the thug to do was deal with the hag.
Grinning, the scarred and bloodied thug hefts Lopper and charges...
Corliss unobtrusively signals that he'll try to heal Asnaan of whatever wounds the hag inflicts, but Kaul is already hurring softly as he readies a lunge. Jim steps forward to offer to mediate the exchange, but is shoved aside as Kaul charges and splits cleaves the headboard. At nearly the same moment, Dibbets forbids the hag to take her vengeance on Asnaan. In the chaos, the stone drops or is dropped by Asnaan and the dreamstone rolls toward Jim with the hag diving after it.
"Asnaan, if we're still dreaming you can move!" The Taldan tries a stop-thrust at the charging hag, then holds a parry in case she claws at him.
Asnaan rolls off the bed the opposite direction and hides behind it. "Yes, but not safely with a night hag at my throat," he responds.
Kaul wrenches Lopper from the bedframe, but is a moment too late to backhand the nimble blue fiend, who throws herself on the stone and Jim's interposed blade. She hisses with pain, but as Jim prepares to deflect an attack, the horned hag and the stone fade away from the room.
Dingus begins to summon forth crackling magical energy from the ether when the room fades from view.
"What is happening? First I'm the idol of millions, then I'm in danger. I need the world to stop spinning so quickly".
Jim scans the room quickly, eyes moving side to side. In a voice just barely this side of panic, he hisses, "Talk to me, Asnaan. What the feck was that thing?"
Asnaan's head cautiously pops up above the bed again. "Sally Scrabblebones? A night hag. Creatures of the lower planes that haunt the dreams of the sleeping and trade in souls. They can take any form and shift between the planes. "
He pauses and peers around suspiciously. "I think that she has gone though. The dreamstone must have prevented us from fully returning to the waking world. It is interesting that the hag claimed it as her mother's. Hags usually have a black gemstone that is invested with some of their power. It is rumored to have once been their living heart. If the dreamstone had a similar origin, that is most interesting indeed."
"Anyway, the dreamstone is gone and I think I can end this ritual and deliver us safely from the dimension of dreams." Asnaan seems to focus and everything goes black until you open your eyes and find yourself once again lying about the same room. This time however, the Groom does not stand watch at the door, but lies unconscious on the room's threshold unbreathing.
"Garn!" Corliss exclaims when he sees his fellow Besmaran down and out (even though the Groom secretly gives him the creeps). He takes one step toward the man before pausing.
"Kaul--can ye an' Lopper stand watch in case this be another fakey Groom?" Assuming the half-orc agrees, Corliss moves to examine the Groom.