Haluk will charge the nearest under-elf praising the gods as he does so.
Blibber, your shot is accurate but ultimately does no damage. You stare in shock as the guard continues rising to his feet despite being pegged in the chest by a crossbow bolt - then you realize, the bolt is sticking between his ribs. His exposed ribs.
Haluk, meanwhile, is attacking the nearest guard, whom he incorrectly assumed was a drow elf. He swings his morningstar in a fierce overhead arc, knocking off the guard's helmet with his impact...and revealing rotting flesh over a white skull.
The guards moan as they rise to their feet once more, animated by some dark necromancy, a favored magical school of the drow. Wielding their broadswords in whirling arcs they retaliate against the goblins. The one Blibberblab shot pulls the bolt out of its chest cavity, breaking it in half with its fist...then it turns its spectral gaze upon the bard, staring at it with the intensity of the grave. Your muscles are sluggish, slow to respond, Blibberblab - you're weakened (-1 Str mod) until the gaze is broken. Even as you feel yourself weakening, your followers squeal in rage as the guard charges toward you! However, he is slowed down by the difficult terrain that Tutti's eruption created, giving you some time to react.
Haluk, the wight near you with his helmet knocked off begins to swing his broadsword all around him in great whirling arcs. His arms are animated by fell magics, not muscle; thus, the guard does not tire, and simply continues whirling the heavy-looking sword in circles around him as he advances on you. What do you do?
Haluk will attempt to speak with the wight, using his speak with the dead spell.
I turn to the rotten-bones and shout a phrase that darkens the sky and chills the air, "Legnoai-bbhaa!"
Metal Hurlant
Talks levels her mighty horn, bringing it to bear against one of the Freakish Undead. So-not-natural! With a hissing bellow, she shoves her horn under the creature... or at least she thinks, having eyes on the sides of your head seems strange for something that attacks directly in front of it, and attempts to suplex it with a mighty toss of her head.
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In utter contempt and disgust Retzack throws away the careful spell he had been working on. A THOUSAND CONFOUNDS! Countless hours scribbling out the best way to feed on the soul of an unwitting living creature thrown away by drow trickery!
Bah! That he must simply content himself on the utterly _predictable_ negative energy of undead causes him no end of vexation. Ah well. In life there is always some trouble.
He simply ties planer energy to the strongest one--the one that is swinging the weapon at the Priest. Retzack sets up a trans-dimensional "sieve" between the undead and the Abyss, for pure negative energy is considered a delicacy to those which Retzack confers with, and it's always utterly joyful to actually send a horror to a realm of horrors. Ah, delicious, delicious irony.
That the undead monster should be bereft of any further movement is really just a byproduct.
The wights rally after Tutti's dramatic entrance, and the first few moments of combat do not go well for the goblins.
SMASH, and Blibberblab's attempt at a vicious shout is silenced by a metal boot to the face from the wight that he had shot earlier. You're knocked backwards onto your back and take 1d6 stun damage (reminder: Stun damage is nonlethal, but if your stun damage = your current HP, you're knocked out, and your next action requires a Defy Danger Constitution roll to go off).
WHOOSH, and the huge broadsword slices the air immediately before Haluk, causing the big cleric to stumble backward. Haluk, you find yourself backed up against the wall of the tower, pressed against it as the wight advances on you! You feel dark magic crawling through the very stones behind you and the wall takes hold of your clothing, holding you momentarily pinned!
The wight advances on you, Haluk. It doesn't even notice when Tutti charges past it from behind, nearly missing it with her horn and careening into the stables area nearby. Tutti, you crash into a wooden single-story structure that's dark on the inside...and you see several sets of eyes open in the darkness around you.
Meanwhile, Retzack the Black completes his spell, much to the joy of his snake-tongued followers. The dark magic twists and warps the air around the wight attacking Haluk, and the wight throws its head back in a soundless scream that somehow manages to make your ears hurt regardless. The wight falls to its knees, pinned...by the tentacles that begin to sprout from it's back. You have restrained it for now...but your partial success means that when it breaks free, it will be even stronger.
No big deal. Just back away slowly. AND THEN REND THE WOODEN STRUCTURE AS IF YOU HAD INTENDED TO RUIN ITS LIFE BECAUSE IT OBVIOUSLY BELONGS TO THE FILTHY ELVSES! She whips her horn back and forth, as she tosses around within the structure to get a better view of the things inside.
Haluk will defy danger using his strength to break free from the wall.
Having spat in the face of the danger he will now smash the held Wight with his mace.
for dmg
Haluk will defy danger using his strength to break free from the wall.
2d6+2
Having spat in the face of the danger he will now smash the held Wight with his mace.
2d6+2 for 1d8 dmg
"Acolytes hold down the oncedead so I can free his soul." acolytes aid me in attacking the wight.
Great, roll 2d6+your current number of followers to see how successful they are at trying to help you :P
Great, roll 2d6+your current number of followers to see how successful they are at trying to help you :P
they perform at the minimum standards Haluk accepts from his acolytes.
Groonk leaps out of the tunnel, but is surprised to see that he has lost track of his beetle friend. How unfortunate! But luckily there are some really sickly looking drow-things.
His own horn whistles through the air as he brings it swinging low, trying to smash one of the wights and send it toward the tower itself. "Duck!" he yells out to the other goblins who might be in the path of destruction.
Haluk, your zealots spring to their master's aid immediately when you command them, interrupting their constant prayer-chanting they had been doing. The wight doesn't respond when you swing at it, but the tentacle growing out of its back does; it tries to block your swing, but your loyal goblins swarm over it like a pack of nasty biting dogs, heedless of the danger of the swinging tentacles.
Their ferocity pays off and you deal a devastating blow to the undead. Its skull is crushed, and from the shattered bottom half of its remaining skull after your morningstar comes away, a tentacle emerges. It screeches at you in a high-pitched, modulating voice, like a glitchy speaker, and you bat it away.
Haluk's morningstar destroying the last vestiges of the wight's skull allows the tentacled...thing that sprang forth from the interaction of negative energies to emerge fully realized onto our plane of existence. It screeches from too many mouths that bite and slaver and drool, and it squirms in ways that make onlookers nauseous, rising in pitch, and finally explodes in a geyser of blood. Blood raindrops cover the ground in a several meter radius. The spectacle is pleasing to your dark patron - take +1 forward to Cast a Spell. The effect of his favor is like a shiver of ecstasy that runs along your spine, coupled with a deep, abiding disgust.
Groonk isn't quite able to knock the other wight off his feet, but he certainly distracts him from advancing on Blibberblab. The wight's unholy strength, granted to it by the ritual that animates it, allows its broadsword to contend even with your massive horn, Groonk. You glare at each other for a moment, over your weapons - the guard's empty eye sockets somehow nonetheless convey a wordless malice.
Your strength and superior size wins out! The broadsword is knocked away from the wight, and you smash it in the face (deal your damage,) but as the wight is knocked down, it drags the horn loose from your grip! You almost keep hold, but the massive weapon is knocked to a roll that leads it closer to the tower. The wight is knocked down before you, struggling to rise to its feet to lunge at you again.
MEANWHILE, the bug named Tutti Frutti has crashed herself into the drow's Drider stables. Yes, these drow have enslaved driders to use as horrific mounts. As your multiple insectoid eyes adjust to the light - and you smash the walls, bringing more light in - you reveal them. They wear thick armor as if designed for a brutish humanoid on their upper bodies, but their lower bodies are those of massive spiders. In response to your smashing of the walls and destruction of their prison, the driders glance at one another and flee, in the direction of the cave entrances to the World Beneath in the nearby mountain.
In moments, half the stables building is completely destroyed. The other half is preciously standing still, largely because that half is built on a solid stone foundation. But the wooden paddocks are obliterated.
Tutti was fairly certain that this was the -best- form she'd ever taken. Freeing spider slaves from nasty elves, wrecking undead things (kind of), digging around, -and- completely wrecking a spider-barn? All in mere moments? Yessss. She was pleased. She was mighty! Very mighty!
She looked about the stables, perhaps the strange elfses had some sort of saddles. If she had a saddle, other people could ride her in her forms more easily. But how would she get it from place to place? Surely an -enchanted- saddle would be just the thing! And of course elves would have such a thing if they were keeping -spider-people- as mounts!
She seemed to forget about the combat behind her for the moment as she ruminated on that, and instead looks about for the riding implements. But clearly, they're either right under her gargantuan nose, or they're in the rubble... or something. Soon... the tower would become her prey.
"Kyrevennei! Drider-nah, urielilenivent! PAHARSA!"
A voice interrupts your inner thoughts, and you recognize the lilting, hate-filled voice of a drow - a male drow, the stablemaster, who had been hiding among the remaining ruins. In your moment of distraction, he had looped one of the very enchanted halters you were looking for over your back!
But the enchantment was not what you imagined. Like all drow creations, this halter was meant to inflict pain, to dominate, to terrorize, to control. Your mind is assaulted with a wild whirlwind of emotions, leaving you unbalanced, distracted, and barely able to move. The pain wracks your mind, take 1d8 stun damage. The only actions you don't need to roll Defy Danger: Wisdom to perform are the ones...that the stable master orders of you. If you fail the DD roll, instead of being stunned you must obey the orders of the Stablemaster.
The drow smiles triumphantly as the halter's magic takes hold of your mind. "ARANNEN!" he commands, ordering you to and Charge your allies! This first command comes at you before you can resist it, and you become aware that you're obeying him as your feet are already slamming against the ground in a terrifying charge toward your goblin friends.
Talks is in a funk as the pain surges through her. She has to do what it tells her to. Has to. Can't! Can't let him! But...
She -does- charge into her allies, spending the last of her hold, and as she begins to weaken back into being a tiny-goblin, she stops in front of Haluk, of all people, as she shrinks smaller and smaller, the sides of her head bulging out and her eyes shrinking in together into singular red orbs. The lizardhide begins to poke back out as she whimpers, "No! Don't look!" and tries to dive into the hole.
But whether she makes it into the hole or not, the filthy drow has been delivered to the Hobgoblin and his horde...
"Good, Groonk!"
I bring the guh-nome hammer down on the wight's head, trying to crush it like a melon.
Hack and Slash
With his horn knocked aside, but the wight on the ground, Groonk bellows and charges the creature. He doesn't need a horn, he has one of his own! Or... at least if he did, it would be on his forehead right? So jumps on top of the wight, trying to pin it to the ground and even head butt it if he manages to take control.
The stablemaster roars in shock, shouting "Ezahir?" in drow tongue as you lose your final Hold. When you shapeshift out of your enormous beetle form and revert to a goblin once again, you're free of the halter's mind control - it falls to the ground along with the stablemaster himself when your body rapidly shrinks back to tiny goblin size.
The stablemaster skids on his butt to a stop near the rest of the warband. The fodder goblins turn to look at him, then at each other, then back to him, licking their lips. The drow's black skin grows a few shades paler as he scrambles to his feet, running the opposite direction. Most of the fodder goblins are in hot pursuit.
Groonk, your dive is savage and overpowering despite your utter lack of a weapon. It's never really stopped you before, after all; the horn, while fun, is not required for you to be an efficient goblin killer. Your arms flail wildly around as you smash both fists into the wight's skeletal face, attacking in heedless abandon.
Unfortunately, your flailing fists also clock Blibberblab in the jaw in your enthusiasm. Whoops! Roll your damage...to the wight, and to Blibberblab. Two rolls.
"Acolytes seize that under-elf, I need a proper sacrifice"
Acolytes action
Talks, still slightly dazed, follows the orders of Retzack's friend! She chases after the drow, wobbling a bit as she does. She tries to grab hold of the Drow to help the other followers catch him.
The drow stablemaster, despite being a lowly male, is still a dark elf. Whirling his thonged whip, he flips the assailing goblins back, knocking them into each other and off of him. He cackles in glee as his weapon, more designed to cause pain than injury, slices across the goblins' faces. Haluk, you lose a follower to a neck wound that gushes blood; Tutti, you similarly take 1d6 damage, no armor because the whip touched open skin.
Retzack, as your hand extends toward the fleeing drow, a hand made of chains that resembles an enormous version of yours emerges from the earth in front of him. Distracted by whipping Tutti and the other goblins back, the drow doesn't immediately notice, until the chain-hand looms over him and shadows him. He turns, and barely has time to scream before the hand collapses on him, its deteriorating chains enveloping him painfully.
The chains-hand, though strong, resists being held together by your magic. You can tell that they will be completely gone within mere moments; you'll have to act fast to restrain the drow before his chain restraints disappear.
As you all approach the pinned drow, he's already struggling and trying to escape, spitting curses at you in the dark elves' black tongue.
While the chains still hold him down Haluk will kneel, draw his ceremonial dagger and slice the dark-elf's throat, muttering a prayer to the gods as he does so.
When the drow bleeds out it becomes less necessary to restrain him.
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Haluk, your sacrifice pleases your dark gods. You experience a vision!
You stand at the heart of a great mountain, taller than any mountain on earth - the Mount of Gods. You are within the mountain, but from your third eye, your spiritual eye, you feel as if you can see every inch of it, the inside and the outside. Your awareness expands far out around you in an ecstatic unfolding of potential; then, your awareness touches upon the dark consciousnesses of your gods, looking down at you from their dusky thrones.
From within the darkness you can see them nodding. Your quest is blessed by the Gods!
The splashing of the drow's blood on your hands brings you back to yourself.
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Pleased with himself, Retzack stalks forward, seeing that a lone undead still struggles.
He conjures a simple spell, merely calling forth the weight of the undead creature's own torment to weigh down its limbs.
No need to conjure more comlicated material when the tapestry itself provides such meat material with which to work.
You finish off the remaining wight by crushing it with the weight of its own negative energy. It struggles to retain its form for a few seconds, trembling, its skeletal mouth open in a soundless scream...
Then its bones are crumbled to dust.
The goblins stand among the dead bodies of their enemies, having created a massive hole in front of the drow's tower and wrecking the drow's stables. Overhead, black clouds are beginning to swirl around the focus point of the tower's tip, with lightning bolts shooting from cloud to cloud.
"Groonk, let the power of Squid-head flow into you, and bring the foul building of the deep-elves down!"
Arcane Art (Groonk, The next time someone successfully assists the target with aid, they get +2 instead of +1)
I begin chanting and clapping and jumping in a steady rhythm, my followers joining in. The combined beat of me and my goblins echoes off the stone of the tower. "Push, Groonk! Push, Groonk! Push, Groonk!"
The syncopation urges you to ram the tower in time with the beat, Groonk.
Aid Groonk in Juggernaut
Misty, caught up in the moment, and being terrible at punctuation, begins to push Groonk.
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Incensed by the dark knowledge of Retzack's patron, and filled with determination and fury by the chanting of Blibberblab and his followers, Groonk enters a deep rage, throwing his massive bulk against the Tower.
CRASH, and the stone trembles. Groonk shakes his head dully from the headbutt.
SMASH, and the tower's stone begins to crack. A shard of one of the crystals embedded in the massive goblin's back snaps off and goes flying; heedlessly, Groonk rears back again.
SMASH SMASH SMASH. His arms begin to flail in huge windmilling motions, continuously beating upon the cold dark stone. The fodder goblins are cheering continuously now, chanting "GROONK! GROONK! GROONK! GROONK! GROONK!"
You hear the sound of stone snapping from the immense force of the impacts. The tower won't take much more. Groonk braces his shoulder against the structure itself and - heedless of the dark magic in the stones - presses with all his might.
AaaaaaAAAAAAAHHHH..." the goblins, in awe that the tower's actually being moved, let out a drawn-out scream as the tower actually begins to tip!
The drow aren't beaten yet, however. Groonk has had to be in constant contact with the darkly-spelled stones of the tower. Now, as the tower begins to ponderously lift up, the magic strikes!
the stone opens up spinneret orifices all over itself, and sprays a thick webbing!
The tower is stabilized! It rests now, partially lifted up, against a massive pile of webbing that completely covers Groonk. The webbing prison has 12 HP...has the Acidic tag, and 2 Armor.
Groonk is immobilized, only capable of Hacking and Slashing to try and free himself. The tower is held up by the same webbing that is trapping Groonk.
You hear laughter coming from higher up on the tower. A dark elf, female, is staring down at all of you from a high window, her white hair whipping in the wind. With a laughing shriek, the elf witch lifts her arms to the sky, and spiders crawl up the length of her body to escape the tower.
A living wave of spiders is swarming down the tower toward all of you, what do you do?
Hope of all hopes! Shattered and gone and dashed! And now her BFF was locked up! Oh Waaagggggh is she. What to do, what to do!?
Something muddy. Mud didn't care about acid, right? Or was mud acid? The sizzling made her angry. And she didn't want more sizzling. Her form became indistinct, but stayed a vibrant green... it looked as though she were being melted by the web. If the whole thing came down... mud is squishy too. So maybe that would help.
She reaches out with a hand to see how the acid will react to her if she begins pummeling the wall of web!
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Retzack had backed up as the living juggernaut had battered against the stone tower...just to be safe.
His elation at the tipping tower turns to disappointment as it displays foul drow sorcery to hold off the ram-like blows.
Then his disappointment turns back to elation as a living drow female reveals herself to his foul magicks...
...but then he turns to disappointment again as a wave of spiders come at them. Confound! Will no one walk willingly into an eternal Abyss of despair and torment. Ah well, first things first.
Retzack had spent some time studying the various "Swarm plague" spells, which populated the higher-realms of sorcery. Such things were awful to counter, since they evaded sword blows with ease, and often were too numerous for even balls of fire to consume entirely.
Hence, you needed to not just counter a lot of the plague...but _all_ of it.
Retzack centers himself, closing his eyes to the oncoming wave of death, sensing it; feeling it; embracing it. Each spider was a life, a living thing conjured by magic, and each had a sweet, sweet drop of red red life flowing through it.
He senses the soft tendrils of magic that are tied to each and every one, a minor ephemeral connection to their summoned and commanded origin. Had he such skill, be might be able to Dismiss them, or void their calling.
But that is not his intent.
To those countless tendrills he attaches a rider; a parasite, a 'bug' if you would. The rider grows, multiplying, crawling along those myriad threads until it hovers over each crawling thing, unseen in this dimension, but all too real in the realm of the Abyss.
He raises his arms, and calls out to the Thing That Knows.
"Multis! Armatis! Enfant! "
Over each of the summoned spiders opens a small sucking hole of Abyss Vacuum, hungrily clawing it to suck it up and feast upon its many, many little lives.
Tutti: A bonus to Constitution seems apt for a slime form, with a penalty to Dexterity. Your form seems not to mind the acidic webbing that is enveloping Groonk. Spend 1 Hold to Mud Slam, dealing your class damage to the web!
Retzack, your spell succeeds - the spell's tendrils reaching out and destroying your class damages' worth of spiders - however, the range is not far enough to extend all the way up the angled tower. Only some of the spiders are destroyed, and only within a Near radius of you are spiders continuously sucked into the Abyss.
Farther up on the tower, the drow witch lifts a much bigger spider in both arms, embracing the thorax like a treasured pet. Laughing madly, she sets the creature on the tower's walls, and the thing's 8 legs begin to scrabble immediately. Its venom-dripping fangs curl over one another as the spider, as big as a German Shepherd, charges down the tower's walls at Retzack. It'll be upon you in moments, mage, and it seems to big for your spell from before to suck it away instantly! What do you do?
Talks slams her entire upper body into the webbing, trying to free Groonk, before punching at the webbing and stone behind it with her cursed iron fist (of forcefulness!)… and then something bad happens.
Ignoring Groonk and the bizarre ooze that has appeared, I swing my strange hammer into the tower's side; shouting with goblin fury at the tricksy elvesy building.
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Retzack calls out to the Abyss, trying out his new spell. He calls out to the Things That Live, offering them the sweet sacrifice of the spider charging down at him. He uses his personal force to drive their way so they know their target.
"Oup Oh Ohm Oh Sker Bisk Sor Back HAM!:
"Hmmm," he muses when nothing happens. "Maybe the emphasis is on the 'Sker Bisk' and less so on the 'Sor Back'"
Webbing: 8/12 HP
As you're distracted trying to destroy the webbing, Tutti, spiders that escape Retzack's purging spell begin to swarm over you. Your skin as a mud-elemental is not solid because that would prevent you from being able to move...so the spiders begin to sink into your body. You can feel their legs kicking and their mandibles biting. They have no effect on you now, but you do wonder what would happen to them if you shifted back...
Blibberblab: Good instincts, shows your gnowledge of tech-gnology! The gnome hammer does in fact deal bonus damage to structures - you may roll an additional D6 of damage without exposing yourself to greater harm when you attack an inanimate object, and you ignore 2 of the object's Armor. Roll your bonus damage! Half the damage is translated to the web prison holding Groonk, since you're attacking the wall the web is attached to. Webbing: 6/12 HP minus whatever else you roll on that additional D6.
Retzack's minions cry out in dismay as, in the middle of their master's incantation, the bigger spider specimen that was charging down the tower's wall LEAPS THROUGH THE AIR, attaching itself to his chest! Take 1d8 damage, and roll +Con to steady yourself and avoid being knocked prone by the impact!
Through all this, you can hear the drow elf screaming an incantation. The words themselves seem to be giving her some sort of sick pleasure; she's practically orgasming the spell out, in typical hedonistic drow fashion. Lightning from the clouds above begin to strike down closer and closer to her. What do you do?