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Kalchine finishes his spell and a large oval cuts itself into the very air in the tent. Like a window in reality, it shows a snowy, mountaintop speckled with massive pine trees. Almost as tall, is a giant humanoid with a fur covered body and long ears much like Kalchine's. It walks through that oval, stepping into the tent and swinging his icy axe at Mametqal.
He sees Fin taking damage from a Div and projects healing magic at him to counter it.
With the Div's taking on their true forms and his comrades piling in, it doesn't take long before the tent is quite crowded. Kalchine starts casting a spell to make it even more crowded, but it will take a bit to complete.
Kalchine, in air elemental form, remains at the back of the group, lingering in the doorway to the tent rather than going inside and making a mess of everything.
...everyone likes mine.
Well, you know what they say about opinions...
You don't play with rich people, you play with middle class people. Rich people don't share boats with hundreds or thousands of other people. They pay dozens of people to man their boats. Also...what exactly should be we wasting thousands of dollars on? Also...I'm in the same snow...which rich people are not. They like to head to Cancun when bad weather comes.
Kalchine shifts again, becoming a mass of wind, though this time with thin bits of stone swirling in its midst. He sets off as Selena prepares her spell, pausing only long enough to reach out to Quasit, his wind gentle, though it ruffles her hair wildly. Reuniting with the group after they take the quick way, he waits for their final preparations. "Now Mametqul isn't the only one with a harem," he teases as Sakitu mirrors herself.
As requested, Kalchine casts a spell on himself, the stone of the floor under his feet turning liquid, rising up over him from head to toe then solidifying but remaining malleable. He then rests his hand on Saki and invokes another branch (pun intended) of nature and her fur takes on a barklike texture. "Now Fin can pretend you're a dryad," he says, his ears flicking playfully. "I can turn into an air elemental again, if we are short on transportation options," he offers.
"I can provide someone with stone skin," Kalchine volunteers. "And someone else with bark skin, should that bee helpful." He pauses reflectively. "I fear that we are in a viper's nest with them all striking each other and us and that Mametqul is simply another serpent. No doubt the outcome that Baba Yaga planned, thinking she was the biggest snake. I hope I am wrong, however. Perhaps a deal can be struck with Mametqul without conflict. Though her guidance is valuable, we do not serve Baba Yaga and, therefore, do not have to deal with every encounter in the way she demands."
Kalchine's ears flick at variable paces as he scowls in thought. When he speaks it is far from certain. "Divs are genies who were corrupted by some great betrayal or conflict. As such, they like to corrupt others either before or instead of destroying them. "I don't know enough about them to be able to recognize what kind Mametqul is, though and they can be aligned with any of the elements so he might be immune to fire or not."
"I would also be pretty upset if someone burned a hole in my tent," Kalchine points out, a bit flatly then combs through his memory for information about Divs.
Kalchine lends a hand in loading up the items into the magical bag. He wishes he had not changed back to his humanoid form. Paradoxically, his airy form is physically stronger than his physical form. At least this one. He also listens closely to Quasit's story, always fascinated by tales from her past and the series of decisions that brought her from her self confessed humble beginnings to where she is now. "It seems to me that those lesbian android dragons are much worse off for not having you around, Quasit. How many of them have crossed multiple planes and travelled to numerous worlds?" he asks. He also makes a mental not to start calling her "Kitten."
Kalchine's relief at Bulvi's recovery is marred by a grimace of disappointment at his inability to help. There are simply limits to the magic he can perform. After Quasit activates the wand again, he places his hand on her shoulder and gives it a squeeze, leaning in so that he can speak quietly enough for only her to hear. Quasit: "Again, you prove to be the linchpin to this group. If you didn't have the skill to use that wand, Bulvi would likely be dead now and Maka would have had to watch him wither away."
He looks away, troubled. "My magic could not help him and I fear that we are going to face more such afflictions before this is over. "I just want to make sure that you know how invaluable you are to all of us and that, though you may doubt it, you are quite capable of rising up to the challenges that come to us." His ears, which were back and down suddenly flick rapidly. "Also, you have a cute butt."
Kalchine joins the crowd and hubbub around Bulvi as their comrade slowly slips away from them. "The flame is not damaging him as fire normally would," he says, shifting back to his humanoid form and kneeling next to Bulvi. "Rather, it is directly draining his vigor and life force. I fear my magic cannot aid him as there is nothing natural about this. But we have a wand that can assist. We needed it back at the military compound for a similar affliction."
Actually, Kal definitely does not have it. Restoration is not on the Druid list so someone else is probably going to have to UMD it. I'm assuming it's in the sack of magic and treasure.
To further bottle up the incoming aerial archers, Kalchine puts up a Wall of Fire across the entrance, facing the hot side toward them.
[dice=Caster Level Check]1d20+15[dice]
Kalchine comes into the chamber and sees that Bulvi has been shaken to his core by the attack of the ice queen. He doesn't like those black flames that burn on the man, but, at the moment, it is time to do some triage. He casts his most potent healing spell.
Never one to ignore messages from the Universe, Kalchine moves to their fallen foe's trident and casts detect magic on it before the doors are pushed open.
Kalchine concentrates and coalesces, not to his fully solid form but rather to the more coherent windy elemental shape. He can't get to either of his healing wands (he can feel which strands of wind they are but they're in no shape to do anything, at the moment,) so he casts one of his healing spells. The air around him gets thinner as he draws some of it in and adds it to his mass to replace what was frozen out.
Kalchine manages to avoid the worst of the winter blast his victim sends out, though he feels strangely sick, a very odd sensation for a mass of coherent air. He keeps tumbling his victim around in his winds to limit her options.
Kalchine blows past his allies (literally, slipping between and around them like a coherent wind.) When he gets close, he transforms into a towering whirlwind, reaching from the floor to the ceiling and the top of his form half the size of his height. He engulfs the red skinned creature.
"Maybe," Kalchine answers.
The effects of the arrows finally wear off and Kalchine springs up, once more a mobile tempest of vaguely humanoid shaped air. "My apologies. I could not overcome the paralyzing effects of those arrows," he examines them all to see how much damage they've taken but decides to save his healing for the moment as their wounds are minimal. "Perhaps I will have to come back as a woman," he adds to the conversation. "I'll be as furry as Sakitu is."
Three of the arrows hit Kalchine and as they pass through him they take some of the air he's holding together that make up his form with them but leave behind their magic in their wake. It locks him in his current shape, the wind roiling around but not allowing him to move.
C'mon, guys! It's gonna be great! Dev teams almost always get things right the first time and only ever make things better. (Apologies to any developers. I know how hard your job actually is.)
In this form, Kalchine is almost as agile as Maka and he darts in behind her. He isn't nearly as devasting though as he swings one airy pseudopod made of wind at one of the archers.
I don't know how many of you follow the Paizo blog or play in other places where it may be discussed but the Paizo site is going to experience a planned outage starting on Monday. It's supposed to last 2-3 days, but I'm betting on at least 4. You can see more HERE See you guys on the other side!
Kalchine also keeps his eyes and ears open, though he doesn't technically have eyes or ears at the moment.
Kalchine, still a walking whirlwind comes down near Bulvi, frigid water and snow flakes misting into his form and swirling around as he gets near the surface. "Should I assume you will depend on your own regenerative abilities rather than requiring my healing?" he asks, his voice coming out like winds escaping his aerial body.
Kalchine is shocked to watch the pile of bodies demonstrates what a mass of fists can do to a human body. In only a few seconds Bulvi looks seriously injured and Kalchine moves closer and infuses him with the healing power of nature to keep him in the fight.
"Weee sssshall sseee," Kalchine says, flying a bit closer to the corpses before reaching out to swirl the air around the corpses so rapidly that it ignites into a fiery conflagration.
Kalchine's form expands again, growing transparent then shifting and roiling. Flecks of snow are lifted up in his wake and swirl around in his form as he becomes a mass of rushing wind. He shoots up and over the wall at phenomenal speed, a personification of the winter wind itself.
The stony man shape formed began to nod its head but the motion was somewhat hidden as it shrank and its features returned to flesh and fur. Then, it is Kalchine standing there in his alien but more human form once more. He does not approach the rope but begins concentrating, expunging his earthy essence rapidly and replacing it with the roiling nature of air.
I hope you can get housed and settled quickly!
The ground under the group's feet begins to rumble and shift but before they can prepare themselves for some strange earth magic by the residents of the demiplane, the earth and stone begins to rise in a column. It slowly takes on a humanoid form. "What's the situation?" Kalchine asks, his whispering question sounding like sand flowing between stones.
Understanding the plan, Kalchine nods but pauses to put his hands on Quasit's waist for a moment, holding her close. He presses his forehead against hers, letting their breath mingle for a few seconds, literally inhaling her essence. "See you soon," he promises, looking from her to the others then turning to Chest Thumper. The frost ape seems to know what's coming and starts to back away but Kalchine catches him by the finger. Then, Chest Thumper shrinks down into a tiny stone shape that could easily be mistaken for a chess piece. The triaxian then undergoes a similar yet opposite transformation, growing notably larger but also stony in texture. He looks around a final time before seemingly dissolving into the earth.
"I can shrink Chest Thumper and transform into an earth elemental," Kalchine replies. "Though clearly it will take me longer to get there than it will you." His ears flick a few times, rapidly then slowly and his eyebrows go up before lowering. "Also, I can grow horns."
Kalchine sighs, "And we will likely have to kill or sneak past her guards, as well. After so long and pointless a task, the logical conclusion would be to simply give up on it, but people are surprisingly stubborn about clinging to things if they have done them for a while. The longer they've done them, the more they cling. "And no doubt Bremagyr is at least bitter over her confinement, even if she is not undead. Unless we can find some way to convince her we can get her out or get revenge on Baba Yaga, I'm going to guess she won't be interested in discussion."
"What a terrible fate," Kalchine comments as he takes his cup of coffee. Those gathered may think he means Bremagyr but he's actually speaking of Mametqul. To have to spend untold years, perhaps millennia doing nothing but watch misery and decay all so that he can tell someone who doesn't care enough about it to watch herself what it looked like seems cosmically pointless. And now, they were going to kill this queen because Baba Yaga had changed her mind and decided that ending her now was more suited to her purpose than letting her suffer. At least ending her suffering was better than letting it continue, but Kalchine didn't feel good about being Baba Yaga's instrument of spite.
Kalchine's ears flick up, a nod of approval. But then he frowns. "Unless the doll needs us to be sacrificed via poison to release Baba Yaga and this is just part of her plan."
Kalchine flicks his ears down, a negative gesture. "I did not prepare for that, today," he confesses. "Let me drink first. My connection with the natural world has made me resistant to some toxins."
Kalchine takes a seat next to Quasit. Quite close, actually, partially so that he doesn't crowd the dour looking woman nearby and partially because he likes sitting close to her and partially because it will be easier to protect and aid her if there is danger. "We're not..." Kalchine breaks off in the middle of his denial, realizing it may not be the best idea to disagree with this man. More importantly, in a real way, they are servants of the ancient witch. "...opposed to having some coffee as we talk," he says, instead.
Kalchine shakes his head in disapproval as Fin simply strides into the blackness. It's a bad idea by itself but even a worse idea to do it without checking in if it follows any plan Quasit might have come up with. It works out, though and Quasit follows. Unwilling to let her go alone and unwilling to remain behind alone, he takes a few seconds to convince Chest Thumper to join him, then follows her into the darkness.
Chest Thumper hoots in confused disdain as members of the group walk into the unknown within the darkness. "Well, we have to figure it out somehow," Kalchine explains, as he prepares himself to charge in should there be any sign of things going wrong.
"I'll perform a more thorough examination of your body for other places that need to feel better later," Kalchine answers Quasit after bestowing both the psychological and magical healing she requests. His ears give two sharp asymmetrical flicks, the equivalent of a wink. "It is probably magical darkness," he comments when his own ability to see in the dark is also stymied by the cave. He summons up and focuses the light from outside into a small ball.
"Is anyone hurt?" Kalchine asks, pulling out two now well used wands before helping Quasit look for lost arrows. If it becomes necessary to climb up to the ledge, he will cling to Chest Thumper's neck like an infant ape. An act that highly amuses his brother who cradles and rocks him like a baby before letting him scramble away. "You know I hate when you do that!" he exclaims.
Though threatening at first, Kalchine suspects that these creatures are on their last legs...or wings as the case may be. As fire, arrows, bullets and spells fall on them like rain, he draws another lightning bolt through one, not willing to spend more resources on them that will undoubtedly be needed for more perilous threats later.
Kalchine keeps the storm cloud overhead but does not call down another bolt of lightning. Given the damage the drakes have already done, and the fact that many of the group are bleeding, he sends out a wave of healing energy, instead.
Chest Thumper does an impressively agile shoulder roll to avoid the blast of acid that comes at him.
Kalchine is not nearly so lucky and takes the full brunt of the acid. Chest Thumper looks smug but then his expression turns to one of irritation and anger as he gestures helplessly at the flying figures and looks imploringly at Kalchine. "What do you want me to do about it?" he asks through teeth gritted with pain. "Learn how to throw things, or something!" He casts a surreptitious glance at Quasit, his own pain somewhat soothed by the fact that she has obviously avoided the acid, as well. Kalchine reaches up to the heavens, and a cloud overhead roils and darkens. He clenches his fist and draws it down sharply and a bolt of lightning cracks down through one of the drakes. Electricity. |
