Just as Rodrigo is finishing pulling his pants up and Carina is reaching for an extract, the sensor winks out. An electric hum fills the air.
Two figures pop into existence. From the tips of their lashing tails to the serrated features of its fang-filled visage, the foul, fiery-eyed fiends bristle with sharp barbs. They hiss at the party, shouting in a harsh, frightening tongue Carina recognizes instantly. "Jetzt!"
"Now!"
The party as one senses that these are not the only new arrivals to the scene. There is a rustling in the branches of the tree north of Rodrigo, a stirring in the grass around the two devilish forms, and Eben personally can feel warm breath on his shoulder coming directly south of him.
Astraden feels a stirring next to her.
Five hideous creatures pop into existence. Merging the most horrifying features of carrion-fed insect and withered cadaver, these bony monsters move in unsettling lurches. One of them is lurking up in the tree, its tail wrapped around the trunk for support. The rest are flying roughly ten feet off the ground, hovering more by magical aid than the whirring of their insectile wings.
They raise their long skeleton claws and point—one at Rodrigo, one at Tanith, one at Carina, one at Astraden, and one at Eben. Farrukh is momentarily ignored.
At that precise moment, Clunk reappears, sending spectral chains flying towards the devil next to Eben. Clunk's target freezes up and starts to drift in the air, slowly sinking back down to the ground. It is totally paralyzed. Clunk gives an amalgamation of a grin, averaged out between the six partymembers—a bit of Tanith's signature smirk, a bit of Astraden's ghoulish grin, and a lot of Uncanny Valley.
The other four, however, all loose green bolts of energy at their targets. And they hit! Eben, Carina, Rodrigo, and Tanith are all immersed in green glows for a moment. It seems to have no obvious effect, but they feel oddly heavier than they did a moment ago, like someone who's eaten a bit too much too fast.
"Hey, thanks Clunk!"
These are barbed devils—proper name "hamatula". They are very hard to injure without good weapons, and can be tremendously deadly when grappling foes due to their sharp prickles. They are immune to fire.
Also, the spell-like ability they used on everyone but Farrukh and Eben was dimensional anchor.
Both the devils activate magical effects, and the group feels twin energies of pure law and pure evil settle upon them at once.
If you rolled less than 18 on the second save and are chaotic, you take damage and are Dazed for 1 round. If you rolled above, you halve that damage and are not Dazed. If you are ethically neutral, you take half the damage (so, 4) and cannot be dazed.
Lawful characters are unaffected by the latter effect and did not need to roll.
"Attention, mortals!" barks one of the bristly baatezu. "This is an organized raid by order of Archgovernor Visciannix! Relinquish stolen properties, i.e. the fragment of well-known artifact Rod of Law, or be prepared to face lethal prosecution!"
"We have a warrant for its immediate securement," adds the other prickly planejumper. "You are violating the rights of a law-abiding citizen of Hell, and, by extension, from Hell itself, and, by extension, all of creation itself. The penalties are, as you can imagine, severe."
Eben looks unresponsive after the massive lash of rigid, evil energies.
Rodrigo freezes up, and begins drooling at he doubles over in pain, clenching his gut. "BFFFfflaarrgh...!"
Carina, however, weathers both assaults with Tanith's spell helping her. Part of her resistance may have stemmed from being in a bad mood already.
The undine just rolls her eyes. "Oh, lovely. Now we know who to send your heads back to."
She yanks several bombs from her belt and starts throwing them at the devil in the tree above her.
The devil dances with the grace of the southern owlgazelle, easily maintaining its foothold. The bombs themselves, however, do take their toll. It grimaces.
Farrukh feels a slight tingle in his extremities.
Tanith temporarily goes cross eyed as the fiend's awful magic works to turn his mighty muscular form into something less swole and more... orderly.
Coming back to the his senses, the big man chants a quick prayer turning his skin to iron and a second longer prayer calling on the Brawler's might to bolster himself and his friends.
"You don't honestly think any of that makes any sense?" he demands from his accusers. "We're violating the rights of all of reality?"
"It doesn't have to make sense," one of the barbed devils says crisply. "It's the law."
"Where is it written? Show me the bill."
"It is not our responsibility to educate violent criminals."
Astraden is slightly slowed by the devils' aura of rigor, but the damage is almost entirely healed by Tanith's blessing.
She points to the barbed devils. "Hamatula! Don't grapple them or use fire, and use good weapons! And don't teleport!"
She looks at Carina, gauging the alchemist's reserves of strength. "Sorry!" Astraden raises a fist and brings it down powerfully through the air, screaming gibberish. Sound and light explode into the air between the airborne bone devils, assaulting their very being with bits of song lyrics, hearty laughter, and a variegated violet color. Eben, Tanith, and Rodrigo are unharmed by the brief glimpse of chaos, but Carina finds the color garish and the sounds unpleasant.
As the violet light fades, Astraden steps around Eben, strapping on her shield.
"It is not our responsibility to educate violent criminals."
"Well here, let me come over and we can figure it out by trial and error."
Farrukh moves over to whichever one spoke.
"Is it written here?" he says, and swings his shield.
Astraden's powerful spell washes off of the paralyzed skeletal fiend and the southern barbed devil. The rest, on the other hand, are not so fortunate. All but one of the bone devils doubles over as the sound and light of pure chaos rip through their lawful beings. The barbed devil, too, seems badly affected. Nearby, Clunk reaches up and rubs its head, looking disconcerted.
Farrukh rushes under the bone devils to reach the injured hamatula, striking it in the belly. It winces, but he feels the barbs on its body puncturing through the steel of his klar shield in several places, cutting deep into his own flesh. And just as Astraden indicates, his attack is roughly halved in effectiveness against the devil.
"I question your jurisdiction," the kolyarut says, advancing and gripping the paralyzed bone devil by the neck. It attempts to sever the creature's head.
The skull-like head falls to the ground. The rest of the body promptly follows suit. "We are quite far from what you call Baator," Clunk continues, sounding highly skeptical.
"Actually, technically speaking..." one of the bone devils says in slow motion, clicking its fingers together. A thirty-foot long, ten-foot tall wall of solid ice pops into existence with a ping sound.
"...The entire Material Plane, by official legislation..." another devil goes on, also very slowly, and also clicking its fingers together. Another thirty-five-foot long, ten-foot tall wall of ice appears, this one directly between Rodrigo and the rest of the party. Rodrigo is quartered off.
"...is legally classified as a small peninsula off the coast of a small, pleasant island in the Second Layer," finishes the third, who was not slowed down at all. Its fingers click together. A third wall of ice, this one twenty-five feet long, pings into reality directly between Carina and Tanith.
The fourth taps its fingers. A final twenty-five foot long wall forms to separate Astraden, Carina and Clunk from the rest of the party. "Peculiar legislation, but what can you do?"
Meanwhile, the slowed barbed devil waves a hand in front of Farrukh's eyes. "Apologies," it says in a pleasant tone of voice. "Please hold."
The un-slowed barbed devil, on the other hand, edges around the fight and lets loose another blast of lawful energy at Astraden and Eben.
"Nope, sorry. But clearly that wasn't it. How about here?"
He flashes his scimitar.
"Or here?"
"Look again, maybe you missed it the first time."
Rodrigo flies up and out, swooping around above his companions. "A little help incoming, don't move away from each other! Farrukh, edge towards me!"
[dice=Will]1d20+6
"Nope, sorry. But clearly that wasn't it. How about here?"
He flashes his scimitar.
[dice=Slash]1d20+14
[dice=Damage]1d6+15"Or here?"
The barbed devil ducks. "No."
[dice=Bash]1d20+16
[dice=Damage]1d6+16"Look again, maybe you missed it the first time."
The barbed devil weaves. "Maybe you missed it both times."
[dice=Bash Iterative]1d20+11
[dice=Damage]1d6+16
"I think you—OW." The devil recoils as Farrukh's blade slices into its neck.
"Scratch that about the fire, Carina!"
Astraden focuses on the nearest hamatula, making a sign of warding with her free hand. "Tsurikkumen tsu heym," she intones.
[dice=Random plane? "Good" for the players would be the non-Baator, I assume]1d100[/dice]
The priestess steps in front of Eben, readying her rapier.
Astraden's spell fizzles as it comes into contact with the devil's form. It crosses its arms, unimpressed.
"Also, Carina - think they've got magic for seeing through illusions?"
Eben continues reeling back and forth under the infernal assault of the hamatulas, his metamagic rod clutched uselessly in one hand.
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Finding himself out of reach, Tanith readies his poleaxe. He calls on Kord's might to bless the weapon and levels it at the nearest airborne devil.
"Sorry!"
"Wait, wha--?"
And then Astraden's spell hits her.
"OW!" Carina is almost caught unaware by Astraden's chaos-born spell, and then a series of ice walls spring up on either side of her.
A glowering Carina groans in exasperation as she plucks a pair of anti-magic bombs from her belt and throws them at the walls on either side of her.
Carina's bomb deletes the wall between herself and Tanith, but the wall blocking off Astraden and Eben remains resolutely in place.
Clunk turns to the nearby barbed devil. "You teleport away," it says, "before you are destroyed."
Clunk then turns invisible again.
The hamatula rolls its eyes. "Inevitables."
The bone devils begin to blink out of sight, turning invisible again. The party feels and hears great forms swooping down nearby. Rodrigo feels powerful wingbeats quite nearby him, and Astraden and Eben both sense the presence of a massive body behind them.
Dread begins to fill those nearby the demons. It festers and boils until it threatens to transform into all-out terror.
Farrukh and Carina both get substantially more evident proof as the devils reappear and attack. Farrukh is raked and bitten, and both he and Carina are stung in the back by the monsters' scorpion-like tails.
The barbed devils both grimace. "Relinquish the item," repeats the one fighting Farrukh. "Or just hold still."
The non-slowed barbed devil grimaces. It raises its hand and fires off two rays of fire at Astraden. The second bolt catches her right upside the head, searing into her neck. The smell of burning half-orc flesh fills the air.
Rodrigo goes to cast a spell, and suddenly is completely overcome with terror. He flies straight up as fast as he can.
Finally, Eben snaps out of the insensible state the hamatulas magic had placed him in, only to feel the swell of terror surrounding him on both sides as well.
He manages to shrug off the worst of it. "Y-you call that fear? Let m-me show you fear..." And he gleefully begins to describe from experience the many, many ways one can break the law and get away with it.
Meanwhile, he cautiously casts a spell, trying to avoid the invisible beings he can sense nearby.
Unfortunately, his caution (and trembling fear) causes him to gesture incorrectly and the entire illusion comes grinding to a halt before he can get it up and running. There's a split second where he looks like he might have a couple of noses, but that's it. He throws some creative cursing into his litany of chaos without breaking the flow of words. Still, with a snap of his wrist and the faint sound of humming glass, he tries for another spell.
This one he gets off with relative ease. He gives a little dance in celebration. A dance with a certain number of steps to it.
Seeing the near-panic in Rodrigo's eyes, Tanith mutters another prayer. "Take heart! Hell's s*~!-rakers are ugly but they can't stop us!"
Rodrigo thanks the gods silently for Tanith's spell, and casts his own. He is careful to do it such as a way as to not expose himself to harm.
Rodrigo's haste spell hits Eben just as he's casting haste of his own. Fortunately the haste effect actually sharpens his reflexes enough so that he just manages to move his tongue fast enough to change spells on the fly.
"Because we are in dire need...er... I believe in all of us!"
'All of us', in this case, sadly only referring to those on this side of the wall of ice.
Carina stumbles forward from the force of the stinger in her back. Even with the fear aura throwing her off, she turns and gives the devil an incredulous look. "I'm sorry, did you just try to poison me? I'm an ALCHEMIST. I put worse s@+& into my body every morning!"
The alchemist opts to focus on drinking down an extract--this one tailor-made to help her avoid getting hit.
Farrukh shrugs off the poison and paralysis, and Tanith's spell stops him from panicking.
Seeing that hitting the Barbed Devil hurts him more than it does the creature, he shifts his attention to the bony one.
"Maybe you have better eyesight than your buddy there."
The tail lunges out as Carina drinks her extract, stabbing for her leg.
Carina manages to dodge as her form dilates and shifts position.
Farrukh slashes brutally into the bone devil, cutting deep into the base of its tail. The devil howls in pain.
"Astraden," Clunk calls from the southwest, "are you able to use that loathsome blast again?"
Astraden shivers as the invisible devil closes. For a split second, the looming menace is overwhelming, but she tells herself that it's a f!##ing skeleton, and is she really going to start being afraid of those?
She's congratulating herself on her perseverance when a bolt of fire sears through her hair, exposing the white of skull in the split second before blood begins to weep from the wound. She screams, "NO!" in response to Clunk.
Drawing an eight-pointed star in the air, Astraden carefully speaks a divinely reinforced command. "Vrati se na avionot na apsolutno pravo." Spreading from her hand, a flame of yellow and violet crawls over her skin and envelops her form. She turns and feels for the devil in front of her, but Eben can still sense the oppressive danger.
Biting back the pain, the priestess sidesteps, conjuring a double. She's still not sure it'll do any good.
"Good."
Clunk reappears next to the hamatula, slashing brutally at its side.
One of the spines stabs through Clunk's human-looking hand. Clunk grimaces. But the inevitable's sword does inflict some damage.
The last two bone devils reappear again. One is in the air right next to Rodrigo, stabbing brutally at the unusually exposed summoner. The other is next to Astraden and Eben.
Astraden's armor manages to absorb the blow (and Eben's dirge combined with her ward protect her copycat), but Rodrigo does take a painful rake along the side.
Meanwhile, the non-slowed bone devils strike at Carina and Farrukh. Eben's frustrating remarks render their attacks confused and clumsy. Except for one, as the devil's teeth sink into Carina's shoulder for a moment before she can shake it off.
The barbed devil facing Farrukh seems to consider trying to cast hold person on him again, then scowls, shakes its head, and lunges to go for a different kind of hold. Farrukh knocks it away before it can grab on, but as its claw rakes into his flesh, he feels a peculiar fear taking hold.
"Give me. The. Rod."
The other barbed devil attempts to cast the same ray spell again, aiming again for Astraden, but Clunk's presence forces it to cast more cautiously and it loses control of the magic. The spell fizzles.
"Inquisitor!" the devil barks at the nearer bony baatezu. "Give that bard something to really complain about!"
Rodrigo grunts as the devil stabs him with its tail. Gotta get out of here or I'm dead, he thinks. He carefully casts a spell and flaps through the portal that opens next to him. He reappears quite some distance away.
"Carina, I've got something up my sleeve if you can get this wall down!" Eben calls over to the other side of the ice plane.
Carina's pain gets Tanith's blood boiling but it's Farrukh's situation that gets his attention. Worried the slayer might be overwhelmed, Tanith turns his blessed poleaxe on the devil coming around to flank him.
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"Nope! You can't have it!" Farrukh says and runs off.