Not noticing the cold itself, Katherine certainly noted the snow and ice. Which was lucky. She didn't want to give the idea that she wasn't quite...normal, not while it could still hold certain advantages.
Slipping and staggering around, she aimed another of the fireball's she'd just set off in the same place. She knew where he had been even if she couldn't see him now, and perhaps he was still there. What on Earth is happening?" she called out, "Where is everyone?" She hoped two things - that her voice would cover the movement of the others, and that it would draw his attention while still making her seem unthreatening.
Tomasz glanced around him, frowning with eyebrows suddenly tightened by the cold, and reached into his coat and made a wrenching motion. The sound of ticking, metronomic, like a dozen clocks in counterpoint, filled air that was lent a certain weight.
Totem of Expulsion: All non-native outsiders (including allies) within are sickened (no save) while they remain inside the area of the totem. In addition, they receive a penalty to any damage reduction, energy resistance, and spell resistance they possess equal to your caster level. Energy immunity is also affected: treat immune creatures as having a resistance equal to twice their total Hit Dice, then subtract your caster level asyou would with normal resistance, to a minimum of 0. You can only create this totem on your home plane.
Ada forced her mind back to take back control as the air in front of her went the thick white of snow. 'All too easy to escape in this.' With a grunt she forced her hand to pull the blue compact from her voluminous bag, snapped it open and stared deep.
It wasn't a compact, of course, though it could pass for one. The symbols hidden behind the tiny one-way mirror flashed into incandescent light for a second, blazing through the glass, and Ada did her best to stare deep into them.
Her optic nerves twisted, something other happening to them as the neural pathways were adjoined to an other-dimensional creature 'tamed' - or at least bargained with - by her mentor. Her eyes - already open - seemed to open again as the symbiote translated a number of energy states into impulses a mind designed to see only three colours could understand.
Blood - purple from the Cherenkov radiation emitted by her vitreous fluid - ran from her right eye, dribbling a track down her face like tears. Crystallising as the surface flash-froze in the Fimbulwinter, and then digging its way through her skin back to the warm.
The pain had grown. Still separated enough that she could think - but every moment she stayed sentient that separation frayed.
Titus winced slightly as the cold bit into him, though he managed to hold against it for now. He still had some salves in his bag if things got genuinely dicey. "Be careful about getting too close to them!" he called out as he focused his internal energies. As he did so, one of the guns in his hands hummed faintly - and this time, when he pulled the trigger, dozens of blasts shot out to go in and around his target.
for
for
for
Richard feels the cold bite into him and his teeth begin to chatter, creating a disturbing sight when paired with his unnaturally wide grin.
He raises a hand and points at Heydrich and says...something. A word that though inaudible is somehow visible.
Seeing the word feels wrong, as if the eyes weren't meant to see whatever Richard just called into being. In an instant, it flies at Heydrich's eyes, it's inherent wrongness threatening the blind the man.
84
Two of Titus' blasts hit their mark, drawing a grunt from the hierarch. You barely catch a hint of something whispered in German before the silhouette behind the snowstorm becomes more indistinct, then disappears downwards, apparently uncaring of Richard's spell.
Ada's sight, however, tracks his aura, stinking of necromancy, below ground level. By some trickery, Heydrich must have merged with the earth. What is worrying, however, is a feeling that something is beyond the radius of her divination, something unthinkably powerful and dark, impossibly far away in any direction. Whatever the Nazi called forth has come, but not here. Or anywhere. It has come everywhere. And when Tomasz' device starts whirring, that something is amused and annoyed at the same time.
"Under the earth." growls Ada, running to the spot Heydrich vanished, with no plan but to tear the street up with her nails "Something is coming. Something" she snarls, eyes glowing blue through the storm "bad."
Well. That would be awkward. Katherine chose to move back a little. She had no idea how to blow up a target she couldn't see, so for now waited to try when one came from below.
"Is anyone hurt? Move towards my voice if you are!" Titus called out. "I can help!"
Tomasz curses softly to himself in Polish, slowly backing up and keeping his head on a swivel. Sausage-like fingers moving surprisingly deftly - he'd been made to practice this maneuver many times, when he first joined the Biuro Szyfrów - he pulled a large packet of specially-prepared salt out and tore it with his teeth. He spun, trailing it in a wide circle around him - hopefully, it would ward off the worst of Heydrich's creature. Hopefully.
"I am well, worry not!"
Richard calls out, "Comrades, steel yourselves for what is to come. Though dire powers loom on the horizon, greater things are at work here, as always. We will prevail!"
The presence that has been called in this mockery of a world between worlds has come. But not in any shape that you can rationalize. You can feel it, impossibly vast, a size to blot out the stars in the sky, and too distant to be seen. You can just feel its presence as a difference between the world as it is now and as it should be.
And then, it stops, the difference between your sizes so incredibly vast that it can't directly attack you any more than you could single out a microbe. And suddenly, realization strikes: the creature is absorbing heat, feeding on ambient energy and causing the arctic icyness that's gnawing at you, an accelerated heat death of the pocket universe that contains only you, the creature, and the currently hidden Heydrich.
Katheryn groaned as the attack washed over her, and cowered away from the...thing...that had been called. Or made. Or perhaps this was its place, and the Nazi commander had simply brought them all here.
Still, she backed away while cowering and attempted to blow a chunk off the thing.
If it was nothingness the beast wanted, it was nothingness it would get.
The frost bites into Richard, his face beginning to grow numb. He smiles.
He raises the Stone aloft and recites an incantation in Sumerian. The words sound wrong. They stretch and contort into infinite and baffling angles before they dissolve into a roiling burst of absolute and total nothingness.
It veers around his allies, but fills the rapidly shrinking universe in its totality.
He was at least resisting the cold, though. And while his gun didn't have fire, he could at least try to bring the creature down as fast as possible.
for
for
for
for
Once again I think Beserking might be off the table.
Questions:
* how far below the ground is Heydrich? Is he still moving? Trying to work out if using explosives or Stone Fist would allow us to get to him.
* how might we leave this area? Theoretically Ada can cast Dispel Magic. Would that be enough? Would the extradimensional space of Mirror Hideaway be sufficient? Do we need to get to Heydrich.
* is there any point attacking the ice-thing, given the scale difference? Seems like it largely environmental.
Ada growls at the ground, desperately forcing her mind to work once more.
"This thing, I question the utility of shooting it!" Tomasz cried out, while frantically working through options in his head. He did not think he possessed the skill to dismiss something of this magnitude, but perhaps... perhaps he could weaken Heydrich's control.
He again produces one of his little devices, winds it, and throws it outside his circle of salt.
* Heydrich is only slightly below ground level, moving around to flank you.
* Dispel Magic would not be enough. For gameplay purposes, you are in a demiplane, although it's limitless. If you have extra-dimensional travel you can use it to escape.
* There is, indeed, no point in attacking it, as shown under.
The gun fires, the incantation goes off and the fireball blasts, and they all lose themselves into infinity. Your mind is baffled, and though your eyes can't fathom it, your brain suggests that this creature is on planetary scale and distance. You would have better luck attacking the Sun.
And yet, it has to only be a shade of itself. Nothing that large could be called this quickly, even considering months and years of preparation.
But when Tomasz's totem activates, you feel a soft chuckle turn into a growl of surprise and rage.
Well, Thomasz was right about it being pointless to attack that thing. They needed to kill Heydrich. Which meant finding him. Either here or by ejecting them all from this place, which he had so much control over.
Ada growls as the creature trapped inside her responds to the freezing temperatures.
Desperately she starts triggering her contingencies, hopeful that one of them might prove helpful. Staggering under the sudden cognitive load she tries to phrase sentences in the simplistic structures of human language, rather than the elegant complexity of mathematics.
"Down! There!" she points to the ground "Get heydrich. E. Ignore Cold. Trapped here. N log n. Heydrich must have... way out. Tan. Get him... 'Fore he runs.!"
Well, if nothing else Tomasz could perhaps make a crater. This time, it's no small ticking device he throws, it's a simple grenade.
With a sudden crack, Titus was no longer a man, but a bird. He glanced around a moment later, looking for their target, then started flying towards his best guess.
84
6 SP used, 1 inv
Miss: 35%
Betweenthe rush of adrenaline from the fight and the looming presence, you can't make out much about the plane you are currently in.
From the crater left by Tomasz's grenade Heydrich floats out, his form ghostly and evanescent, a snarl on his features. He snarls a growling curse at you while pointing a hand, and the cold congeals in a flesh-rending gale colder than anything on Earth, sweeping over you.
The after-effects of the discharge of magic leave your stomach queasy, but more worryingly the air around Heydrich seems to congeal into something more dense, distorting the hierarch's image like uneven glass.
Katherine collapsed under the attack. The blast simply wiped her out.
Noticing Katherine being so hurt, Titus darted over towards her. "Hold on!" he said, slamming the heel of his hand into her stomach and unleashing a pulse of healing energy into her body.
Ice formed on Ada's skin, her hair broke like straw, and the eyes still glowing with extradimensional sight froze solid. The blood within - or the creature within the blood - railed against the cold, glowing with heat.
Ada growled, exultant to have a target, and flung herself on Heydrich, her entire body slamming behind a slim steel boot-blade with supernatural speed and damage.
Gasping as Titan healed her, Katherine rose back to her feet and sureptitiously healed herself as well.
Tomasz collapses to one knee, his old bones too frozen to do more than lock up while his muscles shivered.
Richard’s fortitude is strange and unwavering, frost building on manically grinning lips.
He looks towards Heydrich and charges forward, dagger drawn.
S:FS
Ada's wild charge breaks through the field of chaotic energy surrounding Heydrich, and while her mouth fills with the taste of ash, the blade strikes home in his quasi-solid body. The hierarch coughs up a sputter of blood and growls "Noch... nicht!" between clenched teeth. His form glides to the car, reaching for under the seat and drawing a violin case. As a release button is pressed, a set of springs triggers, revealing a bone-white violin and a bow as black as night.
The chord he plays is one not meant for human ears, a song of entropy draining the life from you, feeding on the electricity running through your nervous system and rupturing blood vessels. Heydrich's fingertips bleed profusely and his face is frozen in a grimace of agony, but he keeps on playing through some superhuman willpower.
Katherine was surprised at how resilient she was to the latest attack, but it still took its toll on her. She felt weaker and less able to fight back. Whatever that violin was she did not want to suffer another of its effects.
With a grunt, she focused her abilities. This was no time to be calm nor cautious. Instead, she poured her reserves into the spell, and the area around Hendrich - and his car - erupted in a roar of fire. It wasn't as powerful as it should have been. Whatever that violin did ensured that. But it did retain its size and difficulty to avoid thanks to the years of practice she had put into incinerating whole rooms.
"Gyaaaaah!"
Titus didn't look like he was doing very well against the noise, and he staggered off to the side, looking like he was trying to shake it off.
so staggered and takes damage... damn, that's close with the neg level.
Ironically it is the nonlethal that is problematic.
I think she has a choice of closing or casting a spell.
Confirming; Heinrich is far enough away to require a move action. There is difficult terrain. The terrain will be difficult for flight. Difficult terrain means no charge (I looked this one up!). Visibility is such there is a miss chance, but spells can still be cast.
Already stunned by the icy cold, Tomasz barely holds himself together as the violin's shriek sets his limbs to dancing like some spastic marionette - it's all he can do not to fall to the ground, never mind shoot or cast.