Caledon zooms off to the north east, toward that group of zombies.
b]Boss Music[/b]
Cashara's derringer launches the BANG!-flag. It soars high into the air...
The Snowball From Hell ignores the seemingly-aimless projectile and prepares to blast Caledon out of the sky—
—until an object smashes into his face! A fiery explosion blasts shards of brimstone teeth! Snowball gargles a roar from his partially melted face.
Cashara's projectile then makes a downward turn, and homes in on the Snowball's rocky body. Flaming startbusrs—red, gold, green, violet, pink!—blast the rocky body. The Snowball From Hell is like a deflated balloon, about ten feet shorter and distorted.
His three eyes, now aligned like a colon and period, search in vain for the flying wizard. But Caledon is now hovering close to the charging ice-men, well out of reach of the Snowball's attack.
Each eye focuses on an alternate target—
The beams appear to be flames, but are in fact a "cold fire." The protective magic spares our heroes from what could have been a lethal blast in this unnaturally cold weather.
_____
As Caledon gets closer to the group to the south, he notices the Ice Men look like ice sculptures rather than zombies. They are not like the sculptures at the dwarves' property. They are muscular horned satyrs with defined masculine torsos that are disproportionately large in comparison with the lower bodies, which are covered in snow that resembles sheep's wool.
There are thirteen of them. As far as Caledon can tell, all three groups have roughly the same amount of Ice Men.
The creatures are clustered in a way that most radial spellswoukd hit the whole group, and conical would hit nearly half. They are almost directly below, and two have ice jevelins in hand.
Derringer Dolly is very excited by the colorful flames. Straddling Cashara's left forearm, she removes her hat and yells, "YAHOO!" She then turns to Cashara with an ear-to-ear grin. "You put a Crystalhue gift to use, and the fire is rainbow-colored—the colors of Shelyn! I believe you made a Crystalhue miracle happen!"
The doll launches her own BANG-flag at the snowman. Tiny colored flames blow up in his face. On brimstone eye rolls off of the snowman's head and onto the ground, though it's not clear whether the doll's gun did any real damage. That eye lost it's glow after the snowball unleashed his cold fire attack.
The other two snowman eyes continue to burn with hellish fury.
_____
The doll in Vetalia's purse says, "That snowman was very rude to you, Nice Lady. I believe you owe that mean monster a Crystalhue miracle!"
The doll peeks out from Vetalia's pouch and shakes her tiny fist at the Snowball From Hell.
Cashara takes a glance at the beast, and then at the eye that is now disconnected, and back at the beast.
"guys, ether go for the eyes, or make it mad. we need to use this guy up!" she yells at her companions
Cashara hastily puts the derringer away and fires another round at the giant snow ball as she tries to back away.
"Calistria will provide a miracle if it's required"
As Mavrin continues to get farther from the monster he reloads his crossbow and mutters "Black clouds and thunderbolts..."
Caledon activates his last scroll of Stone Call underneath the North East group of Satyrs and flies west 60ft.
An 80ft wide, 20ft cylinder of flying stone erupts underneath him battering the ice beasts and slowing their progress toward the party.
Boss Music
Cashara and Vetalia both hit their target! The Diminutive Dolly's gleeful cheers are barely audible over the snowman's roars.
As Dr. Marvin backs off to reload, the Snowball From Hell glares at the doctor. His lower body spins in place and a twiggy hand extends a twisted finger pointed at the bag containing the Cryonomicon.
The Snowball From Hell rolls past Cashara and Vetalia, and lashes out at Dr. Marvin!
The creature clutches Dr. Marvin, but only the fingertips get a hold. The icy appendages snaps like the twigs they are!
...
To the South, Caledon casts a spell that puts a few cracks in the icy creatures! Two of them hurl icy javelins at Caledon. The rest form javelins of their own, unaware that the first two lost their momentum just a few feet of the airborne wizard. The other eleven are no more accurate.
The creatures now realize they have no chance of reaching the wizard, who is purposely flying just out of reach. Two of the satyrs attempt to lead the charge to aid the Snowball... but they find the rocky ground difficult to navigate!
[ooc]((Cal can still target the entire group with a 20' radius spell.))
The two groups of icemen meet, and Cashara and Vetalia can see them well enough to identify their shape—there are a dozen or so minotaurs made of ice mounted on the backs of charging ice centaurs!
Cashara takes I diagonal 5FT step away from the snowball from hell and the closest group of ice.
she takes another shot
Caledon activates a scroll, conjuring a one foot thick layer of churning, burning sand underneath the feat of the Satyrs.
The doll in Vetalia's purse scratches her head. "Does Calistra celebrate Crystalhue too? I only learned about Shelyn. I think it's Her birthday today, or ...Coronation Day?" The doll shrugs. "I only know she likes glitter and colors and snowmen. Not scary giant killy snowmen, but the regular kind."
_
The other doll with Cashara peers out of an otherwise empty holster. (She apparently dove in for cover as the Snowball From Hell rolled by.) She sees the monster ignored Cashara to go after Dr. Marvin. She asks Cashara, "Why's he so super extra mad at Peppermint Scarf Guy? I know he melted the snowman's face, but your shot with the derringer hurt way more." She cups her hands over her mouth to project her voice to the half-melted-but-still-really-huge snowman. "YA TURNED YER BACK ON THE WRONG GUNSLINGER! SHE'S GONNA SHOOT YOU A RED BUTT CHEEK! THAT'LL LOOK GOOD WITH YER YELLA BELLY!"
She yee-haws as Cashara shoots the snowman in the backside, but observes, "Snowmen don't bleed, so I guess you can't color snow with bullets. Guess only my face is red." The dolls cheeks glow extremely bright red for a moment. Then she turns the 'blush' feature off, presumably so the thundering herd of ice-minotaurs on centaur-back won't notice her.
Cashara smiles from the reaction from the doll
"can you give me another shot with the Derringer? she asks, lining up another shot with the revolver.
Mavrin ducks away from the snowman and runs forward before twisting around, his scarf twirling in the wind, and fire a bolt at the abomination!
As his scarf creates a tunnel, like a ribbon dancer twirls her baton, in front of him, the bolt flies through it, straight at the monsters forehead!
"nice one Doc, you made him a unicorn" he yells
seemingly playful in spite of the situation.
Cal's spell stops another group! The ice Centaurs' hooves sizzle in the Burning Sands! The lead Centaur's front hooves snap! It throws its Minotaur rider—whose icy horns shatter from the faceplant!
Caledon notices the viscosity is strange. A thick cloud of steam almost immediately obscures the sand, and the steam itself rises no more than a foot, spirals outward and falls to the snowy ground. It seems the spell will not last long, but while the alchemy keeps the sand churning and burning, any ice creature who fails to escape may perish!
The Snowball From Hell fires back—blasting blue beams of fire from his remaining two eyes!
The only damage caused by the spell is the snowball's right eye dimming to black. The eye rolls onto the ground. The creature roars in frustration as the Blessed Warmth negates the blasts of cold fire!
The Ice Satyrs gallop quickly from the south! From the Northeast, riders shift their direction about 90 degrees in attempt to escape the rough stone as quickly as they can. Caledon estimates the riders' progress. They will likely be spread as three pairs galloping about a hundred feet apart from each other. (The mounted riders in the Burning Sands are rather discombobulated. The fallen Centaur and dismounted Minotaur will definitely not survive the next ten seconds.)
_
Derringer Dolly giggles at the unicorn comment.
As for the additional bullet, the doll replies, "Sorry, Pardner. I don't know how to make those. My sister does, but it takes a really long time."
The doll in Vetalia's pouch peeks out and waves in Cashara's general direction. "Hi, Derry!" she calls out.
The doll in Cashara's holster perks up as she turns. "Hey, Dimmy! What are you doing here?"
"I followed you. I have a Crystalhue present. Maybe I should give it to you now?"
She holds up a gift bag that is only an inch or so tall. Derringer Dolly's eyes widen at the sight of it.
"Hey, Pardner?" she says to Cashara, "Can you scoot closer to the lady with my sister in her pocket?"
Cashara scoots over to Vetalia as fast as she can
dodging any attacks along the way.
"I got your back of you got mine" she says to Vetalia as she readies her gun but holds, not sure what the snowball or dolls are going to do.
By the time Cashara scoots over the Vetalia, the doll in Vetalia's pouch ("Dimmy") has already removed the gift—a very small bullet.
"Sorry to open your gift for you, Derry. I thought you might be in a hurry."
"Oh!" Derringer Dolly (a.k.a. "Derry") grins at Cashara. "Looks like you got another Crystalhue miracle, Pardner!" She points to the bullet. Cashara can plainly see that it is ammo for a derringer.
"I won't be able to make another until summer, but use it if you need to!" says Dimmy.
"So you won't think me tacky for regifting this to Pardner?"
She hastily takes the bullet and loads it up.
Derry and Dimmy offer to reload the seven-shooter to its maximum capacity while Cashara loads the derringer. "...if that's okay with you, Pardner."
By the time Cashara fires the derringer (next round), her seven-shooter will have seven bullets in it.
"do it" she says, under enough pressure just in the battle so right now.
With panic slowly rising in his heart, Dr. Mavrin reached into his coat and took out a bottle swirling multicolor liquid. He wanted oh so desperately to grab his snuff box... Why had he agreed to this? It ruined his entire schedule! He could've stayed in reading or gone to a play, but Noooo! He just HAD to join some sort of hero guild!
But no matter, he had a way to get out of this quickly (hopefully). A trump card if you will (again, hopefully)
Mavrin brought the vial to his mouth and gulped it down, the warmth flowing through him.
The cycloptic Snowball From Hell grabs Dr. Marvin...
...completely unaware of the colorful potion bubbling within the alchemist!
Cashara loads the derringer. The dolls see Dr. Marvin being lifted off the ground. Dimmy says, "The nerve of that guy!"
Derry says to Cashara, "Shoot that big, dumb jerk in his fat, snowy butt!"
Minions from the south rush our heroes with javelins in-hand—but they are far enough away that Caledon can easily stop them without his spells affecting his allies!
The minions in the northwest fall easily to the burning sands! Two Centaurs almost escape before their hooves melt underneath them. All perish, and about five or six seconds later, their Ice Minotaur riders are reduced to puffs of steam.
If you do not attack the satyrs in the south (as your *first* move), they will be within 30 ft of the party, and will be in position to either hurl javelins or charge into melee (if they can move).
she yells as she double pulls the trigger of the derringer.
Cashara's first pull of the trigger sends a tiny bullet into the snowball's body. The hole is so small, only the diminutive dolls can see it.
"Speaking of hell," Derry says to her sister, "what the hell was THAT?!"
Though no bang-flag unfurls from the barrel as expected, Cashara double-pulls the trigger. Several tiny pellets shoot out of the tiny gun at a rate of over a hundred rounds per second! Each hit covers the snowman in a splotch of paint—neon pink! Bold vermilion! Earthy-crunchy greens and every blue from ice to midnight!
Over the rapid thumping of the tiny gun, Dimmy replies, "I made a special paintball shooter. I thought you and CB could play games where you shoot people without hurting them."
The colorful spray might not hurt a person, but the same can't be said for the Snowball From Hell. Rainbow colored steam swirls about his sizzling body. A rainbow puddle begging to spread out from under him.
The two dolls hastily load one more bullet into Cashara's seven-shooter, though judging by Dr. Marvin's progressing transformation, the dolls wonder if their "Pardner" will even need another bullet.
Cashara's derringer shots melt the abominable enemy like a scoop of rainbow sherbet on a hot sidewalk! The creature's upper body uses the last of its might to raise Dr. Marvin to eye level and blast him with cold fire—
—but the Doc's hands become engulfed in regular fire! The stick hands burn up, their ashen grasp crumbles, and Marvin falls harmlessly onto the soft rainbow snow-mound below, sinking up to his knees.
In the same instant, a shrill scream echoes about!
—but not from the pathetic monstrosity, whose head breaks apart as he topples, reduced to an eight-foot-tall mound of steaming, colorful slush.
The scream is coming from Dr. Marvin's bag! It is the Cryonomicon itself! It rises into the air, pages lit in orange flames!
The dolls hastily arm the women! Derry hands Cashara her (reloaded) seven-shooter! Dimmy hands Vetalia a color-spray wand!
But before anyone can react, there is a sudden burst of white!
-----
Caledon sees it from the air, even as his magic hinders the final cluster of Ice Men—he sees a burst of snow completely envelop his allies!
-----
His allies only see white. And they feel a chilling sharpness, as if icicles are stabbing into their spines!
Our heroes in the sudden extreme cold see not a book, but a towering monolith twenty times their height! Even the dolls, Derry and Dimmy, appear to be ten times larger than the trio!
-----
(Caledon just sees a swirling white "bubble" of snow with a 10 ft radius, and within the confusion, he can barely perceive three "sparks"—three points of light that never fade. The Cryonomicon is imperceptible, but the Wizard could surmise that the book is in the center of the sphere.)
-----
Our heroes find their own bodies to be white silhouettes—and only their upper bodies retain their shapes! From the waist down, our heroes' lower halves are three intertwining white wisps spiraling into an opening in the colossal Cryonomicon!
Vetalia can see that the whiteness—presumably her legs? Her soul?—is forming strange runes and symbols onto a burnt page in the giant book! (The white unraveling from Cashara and Dr. Marvin's is doing the same on other pages.)
Vetalia uses the wand to attack! But... nothing happens! It seems magic cannot function in this strange place, which explains the sudden pain of the unnatural coldness!
Fortunately for Dr. Marvin, alchemical fire still burns in his hands. And whether Cashara is just her soul or enveloped in whiteness, she has no idea—but in any case, she has her gun in hand and she did have that idea about shooting the Cryonomicon...
Cashara is tripping out right now.
she tries to pull herself together.
she takes a step towards the book at shoots.
No. No. No no no no nononono.
Fighting living toys was one thing.
Fighting a giant snowman was another thing.
But fighting a 20ft tall book on top of a mountain, when I could be at home, alone, with my thoughts?
Just.
No.
Mavrin, determined to destroy this wretched book and never go outside again, ran forward with all the rage and madness of a bull. He slashed into the the book with his flaming claw, then with his normal one, twice, and then he opened his maw to bite it as hard as he could.
[dice=Fire Damage] 1d6]/dice]
Cashara has no idea what her gun can do to a book that humongous, but she fires anyway—and to her surprise, the bullet from her gun instantly expands to the size of her torso! The gunslinger actually sees the bullet's flight—it takes the smallest perceivable fraction of a second to plunge into one of the Cryonomicon's eyes. The eye bursts into a gooey mess!
As globs of gods-know-what splash in slow motion, Cashara fires three more shots! Each causes an eye to explode!
Cashara notices that each bullet is bigger than the last—her fourth shot being more than twice her size! And the book must be over a hundred times her height! The doll's eye is bigger than her!
The other heroes appear as sparks of light, but like Cashara, their attacks are surprisingly effective against the impossibly large tome.
Dr. Marvin's fiery touch ignites the book's binding—the enormous burst of flame erupts suddenly! From Cashara's view, the flame is like a sun surrounded by a thousand stars! From Dr. Marvin's view, he is enveloped in bright orange! The sizzling, the smoky small, jumping sparks the size of Marvin's head... all prove the attack is effective. He keeps clawing and biting!
Vetalia gets sucked into the book's opening. Cashara can't see her spark, but she can easily see half a dozen shreds of paper slowly floating from the Cryonomicon—no doubt the work of the rogue's blades.
Caledon cannot see how hard his three allies are fighting—as if their very souls depend on it!—and that may in fact be the case, judging by the sudden, agonizing pain biting into the trio!
♠️♠️♠️♠️♠️52 Damage to Cryonomicon...
♠️♠️♠️♠️♠️♠️♠️♠️
Our heroes continue their relentless attack! Cashara has blasted so many holes in the book, only one eye remains! Dr. Mavrin's claws nearly rip the entire binding in two—though the book is so infinitely large, it seems it would be easier to cleave a castle in two! Vetalia continues to slice and dice pages—
—but the soul-sucking attack reels our heroes into the Cryonomicon!!
The book slams shut on Vetalia, trapping her in its pages! Dr. Mavrin finds his waist pinched in what's left of the binding! Cashara is about to be swallowed by the tome's remaining eye!
...
Cashara Screams out of rage and desperation.
feeling her essence leaving and becoming weak the thinks gods, not now, I'm not finished yet.
she pours in more shots after a swift reload.
Vetalia is smothered by impossibly large pages. She is alive, conscious, but weakened to the point that one false move could break her...!
Dr. Mavrin feels the crushing bite of the book's binding. It's enlarged to the point that it appears to be two chasms sealing together like a reverse earthquake! To destroy something so immense with his claws, Mavrin would need to be powerful enough to sever the entire planet in two! Yet, he strikes...!
Cashara is deep inside the iris of the book's remaining eye! It is an endless well of blackness, and she, a formless white particle. She sees no hand and no gun, but she still feels the weapon in her hand. She squeezes the trigger. A deafening boom blasts her surroundings to smithereens, shreds of blackness burning away in blinding white-hot doom...!
-----
Suddenly, the painful cold is gone. There is pain, but its intensity from a moment ago is dulled by a blessed warmth, the very same our heroes felt since they set foot on Baron von Heatmiser's land.
Cashara's final gunshot still echoes about the hillside. She finds herself sitting in a heap of rainbow snow, seven shooter still smoking in her hands. The Cryonomicon's front cover lies at her feet with a dozen holes where the eyes used to be.
Dr. Mavrin stands with the Cryonomicon's back cover impaled on his claw. Of the trio, he is the only one standing.
Vetalia is on her back, with torn pages strewn about, some on her body, some near. Dimmy pokes at her. "Are you okay, Miss Vetalia." The little doll can't do much for her, but Caledon can. He swoops down from the sky above and reaches a hand to the rogue, helping her up.
Her trembling hand pulls a healing wand from her purse. Caledon takes it and heals Vetalia once, and from there, the rogue sees herself and her fellow heroes restored to full health.
While Cashara is still seated in the snow, Derry hops onto her lap. "I saw myself, Pardner! I saw me, and then I saw the book get bigger and bigger! It had a mouth and tried to eat me up!" The little toy sounds very excited, but her inquisitive expression suggests she's actually quite confused by the experience. She seems to think Cashara has answers.
Dimmy turns to Dr. Mavrin. "I guess you guys ripping and shooting that creepy book saved my sister. Thank you!"
It turns out the Caledon saw our three heroes in the whirling snow. Cashara was unloading bullets into the Cryonomicon, while Mavrin and Vetalia were slashing, tearing and burning with knife and claw. Vetalia nearly passed out, but Caledon was powerless the help her—for neither the wizard's spells nor the wizard himself were able to enter the anti-magic field.
As for what caused our heroes' out-of-body experience, how it's possible that the tiny machines might have souls, or what would have become of souls taken into the Cryonomicon—our heroes may never find answers.
But hey, it's Crystalhue, and Rooftopolis' new generation of crime fighters just foiled an ice devil's invasion of the mortal realm. Time to celebrate! ...or get drunk on gluhwein if that's the best way to process having your soul sucked by an evil book. Either way, Snowberry Hills has plenty of parties to crash...!
-----
Mavrin hastily grabs his snuff box and begins to snort mountains of powder. Father wouldn't have been happy about it, but a man can only take to much stress.
But... They were alive! The may have saved a world, already burning its self down, on the annoying, loud, pointless holiday to ever exist, and badly anyone knows about it! And despite all this a creepy, yet warm, smile stretched across Mavrin's face like he was a Cheshire Cat.
Now, he expects to be dragged off to celebrate by that loudmouth gunslinger, but, to tell the truth, he was fine with that.
As long as it wasn't that place with the fat lady and the kids... Some more yak's milk from the Baron WOULD be nice... *wink* *wink*
Cashara puts one more bullet into the book, then fall backwards into the snow, to exhausted to move much.
[B]what a day[b] she mumbles. [And I'm late. Probably think I ditched on purpose. Oh well[b]
A single gong from each surrounding church-bell and clock-tower gives our heroes the needless reminder that it is well into the night. But a snowy hilltop is no place to sleep, so our heroes head to the one place that offers both party and slumber (besides the place with the fat lady and at least a dozen noisy kids)—
—Baron von Heatmiser's!
As our heroes enter, they receive a warm welcome from the baron and spy a few familiar faces. he young couple, for starters, is resting by the fire, which frankly, smells of incense sticks. The Baron explains it was a gift from a monk. There were three. Another donated gold to the young couple, and the third gave them a cat. The Baron thinks the third monk just waned to get rid of the cat.
"Myrrh," says the cat.
The Baron goes on to ell you the child was born at the stroke of midnight. "It's a boy! His name is Brian."
"I'm Brian," says the one monk who stuck around for yak's milk and reindeer cookies.
It turns out that is only a coincidence. The baby was named after his father, and his before him and so on. Brian the Eleventh.