Of the babau demon and the two succubi, only one of the latter has any possessions: leather armor, boots, and the sword she picked up when her ruse failed. The latter two radiate with magic.
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The combined attacks from Uriel, Arloric, and Darya are enough to take down the babau demon, and Darya delivers the killing blow. Are we close to leveling, DM?
We are recovering from the flu, though both my wife and I are gonna hit urgent care in the morning as she may be developing a respiratory thing and I almost certainly have a sinus infection.
Telerin channels planar energy. The babau demon shrugs some of it off, but the succubus succumbs to it and falls to the ground, dead. The goblin dog moves in to flank the babau with Darya and attempts to bite, but its jaws don't connect.
It tears at Darya, and one of its claws rakes across her.
My only advice for you during the holiday season is: don't catch the flu, and then don't pass it on to your spouse.
Darya moves into position, ignoring the babau demon as it snaps at her, and strikes the succubus.
We lost our cat on Wednesday. She was losing weight, and ultrasound showed a large mass on one of her kidneys, almost certainly renal lymphoma. We weren't going to force a 13-year-old cat into aggressive cancer treatment, so it was time. :(
Arloric cuts into the babau demon, while Uriel delivers the killing blow to the succubus between him and Alexa. She drops to the ground, bleeding out. Kemat moves to Alexa and taps her on the shoulder, healing some of wounds.
I spent the last week with my sister in Colorado. Her spirits are strong but it is awful seeing how cancer ravages the body. How is she responding to treatment?
Power was out for 5 hours. They were replacing the distribution transformers on the power poles coming up our hill, probably due to a new subdivision that is going in at the bottom of it. When the power came back, it killed the PoE+ injector for the Ubiquiti WiFi AP, and an 8-port PoE+ switch. May have fried the WiFi AP, too, but I can't test it to be sure because it only uses PoE for power, and our PoE+ injectors are dead. At least it happened on Cyber Monday.
The power company will be shutting off power to the neighborhood sometime today for some amount of time to do some maintenance work. No, really. The exact quotes are "we apologize we're unable to provide an exact time your power will be off" and "Length of outage: Up to 8 hours between 8am and 4pm". This was originally scheduled for Wednesday last week(!) but a whole lot of calls, including mine, pointed out that the day before Thanksgiving was a bad day to randomly lose power for some undisclosed length of time. I am shutting down the servers in the house in preparation before I head off to work.
Sorry to hear about your sister, Telerin. We are reaching what feels like a steady state over here. My mom has recovered and is back at her apartment in assisted living. She had developed sepsis but they caught it very early. My mother-in-law has moved back in with us. That was an ordeal because my brother-in-law came with her, and we were his "home base" (for lack of a better term that also isn't pejorative) while he figured out where he was going to live. This took a few weeks, but it's finally done, and he's moved out and away. Right when I was about to post "we are reaching what feels like a steady state" last week, my MIL fell. Fortunately, the worst of it was just a fracture in one of her fingers. That was also an ordeal because her Medicare Advantage plan wasn't accepted by the major healthcare provider system (the one that we use) out here, so we had to navigate a whole new network of providers in the middle of it. This was obviously a lengthy absence on my part, and I'e not exactly been reliable in the past year. So you all tell me how you want to proceed here. I need to get through Thanksgiving though before I can resume, but I am ready and able to move ahead.
A couple of days ago, my mother-in-law's current husband passed away. And on that same day, my mother was admitted into the hospital.
The succubus engaged with Uriel steps back 5' towards the southern door and casts a spell, though you don't see any immediate effect. As she does that, the babau demon steps south as well to confront Uriel directly.
The succubus engaged with Darya and Alexa steps 5' back towards the doorway so she's no longer flanked. "This isn't over," she says. "You have no idea what's waiting for you."
Alexa tumbles into position behind the succubus. Both she and Darya land blows against the demoness.
I survived the next wave of layoffs, though one of my co-workers was caught up in it. There is potentially one more wave coming, but indicators are that the biz group I am will be impacted either very lightly or not at all.
Uriel lands another blow, and the succubus is looking haggard.
The succubus engaged with Uriel steps out from between him and the goblin dog, then takes another swing with her rapier.
The babau demon steps up to Arloric, and sends a bite at Arloric and 2 claws at Uriel.
The other succubus strikes at Darya and Alexa
The goblin dog appears behind the succubus to flank with Uriel. It attempts a bite, but can't get its jaws on her. Telerin steps back and channels energy.
Both succubi shake off some of the effect.
I hope that you are looking for another job. There's not much out there at the moment, though I haven't done an exhaustive search. I am actually feeling a lot safer than I was. We'll see how that holds up at the end of the year. I qualify for retirement under the rule of 75--I have been here a long time--so if I am laid off I (involuntarily) retire instead, which means I get a retirement package instead of a severance package. That's not a financial windfall or anything, but it would give me more time to figure out the next steps.
Kemat focuses on defending herself from attacks. Uriel flies across the room, and strikes the succubus, landing a solid hit.
I'm in my 50's. Age discrimination is a real thing. On top of that, I am in an industry that has been getting hammered for the last couple of years. It's never a good time to lose a job, but now would be especially bad.
The succubus Dary and Uriel are engaging steps back into the closet and pops away, reappearing on the far side of the room.
Alexa attempts to tumble through the succubus's space, but the demon is too fast even for the nimble aasimar.
Fortunately, Alexa is fast enough to avoid an opportunistic swipe from the succubus's sword. There's pop in the air as another succubus appears in the room. You recognize this one from the chapel area not long ago. Immediately after, a babau demon casually strolls in through the open door.
I'm safe but only for now. It's possible there will be another round in a couple of months, when some division budgets get trimmed. This has been stressful. We went from 500 laid off (that's just in our city/metro area) to 2400+ with almost no warning.
Hey, all. I hope you had a happy 4th of July holiday last weekend. I am hoping to not be laid off in the next couple of weeks. Will keep you all posted.
Telerin starts casting a spell. Darya steps in to attack with Radiance, but she's unable to land a blow against the succubus.
Uriel lands a blow but Arloric's blade fails to connect.
Telerin strikes the succubus with her magic missiles. Then the succubus bears the full brunt of the channeled energy. The succubus seems visibly shaken as Darya stares her down. Alexa moves into flanking position and strikes, landing a solid blow. The succubus steps back out of reach, and teleports to the north end of the room, by the open door to what looks like a storage room. Alexa sees her pull a rapier from an otherwise bare set of shelves, and readies herself to fight.
The figure shifts into the form of a succubus with long, white hair. "So you're the reason the halfling won't speak to me anymore." She says, taking a guarded stance.
Kemat and Arloric check on the prisoner, and he eagerly accepts the offer of food and water. Then Telerin channels energy into the room, and he shudders as it washes over him.
His tone immediately changes from that of a weakened, desperate man to something altogether different. In a firm, appraising voice, he says, "Clever. And here I believed I'd thought of everything." The manacles fall off as his form shifts.
Corrected the description, above.
Uriel steps into the room and sweeps his vision from one side to another. He detects a tainted aura from the man who is shackled to one of the bunks. He cries out, "What did you do to her?" Arloric and Alexa have a look as well. This was definitely barracks of some sort, and the room has mostly been cleared out, but there's a pile of tattered clothes under one of the bunks, and bundled in them is a rapier. Kemat's spell, however, has an immediate effect. The shackled man stares blankly as her spell washes over him, and then he collapses to the bed behind him grabbing hs head with his hands. "No. No, no, no. She did it to me again! It doesn't stop. It never stops!
"Not today, crusader," she says to Arloric. "But fine. Take this one. He bores me, anyway." She steps back five feet, and disappears again. The chained up human cries out, "No! Come back!"
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