Jan 22

After several months of building their new mini-empires, trouble arose in the form of missing peasants. Several disappeared over weeks, disappearing in the night. Three members of Marchosias's special police force were found hung on Sunny's lands. The rumors began that the special police were rounding people up for sacrificing them to a dark god, and perhaps some peasants caught these men and hung them. Some of the peasants in the area sought protection from Yenrab, and they formed a camp around the temple under construction.

An Imperial Investigator came to speak with Marchosias. Though the man was not about to accuse a new High Lord of Shou Lung of killing peasants, he did want to seek out answers. It seems that naming some white devil as High Lords used up much of the emperor's political capital, and he was getting some unrest before this incident.

Eventually, Marchosias received a note indicating that he should go to a cemetery at midnight to end this problem. Oddly enough, he actually did. There he found the wraith-like Creslin, the elf who accused Marchosias in Myth Drannor killing his brother. Creslin demanded a duel, and he lost. He returned with Nightwalkers. Marchosias made himself invisible and flew, but he still barely escaped.

He received another note demanding he return and come alone. That night, the rest of the party hid in a ridiculous Rope Trick high in the clouds. Creslin, meanwhile, or his servants went around to the various homes and discovered the lords were away. He then killed everyone in those households except for one man who was left to run to the cemetery to inform the party of what had happened.

With this little victory, which seemed to have zero effect on the morale of the party, Creslin had another note delivered inviting the entire party to meet in three days at a new location.

It was at this time that Signy finally summoned Pewta, the silver dragon. Pewta was a lovely dragon who said she didn't know what had happened to her. She had once battled a wizard, and then she spent some time chasing butterflies in a strange world. She didn't know whether it was another plane or a dream, but she didn't care. It turned out she also had a thing for the bad boys. Not entirely evil, of course, but with a certain dark side. She also discovered that she could still Shapechange herself. Then she discovered that Marchosias has few morals. Signy was not happy, but these things happen.

Then the party went to their final battle with this wraith. This time, Creslin also brought a Night Crawler. This thing was nasty, and it learned not to swallow fighters. It then tried to swallow a wizard, but it got turned into stone. The battle would have been far more interesting if the wizard had not used a gay spell called Force Cage to lock Creslin away for the battle.

Eventually the party was victorious and their names were cleared again. The statue of the Night Crawler and another of a Night Stalker were left as tributes to their innocence.

After things settled down, Eron received a note by fast messenger.



The party quickly assembled and Eron brought them to Thay. A toadie wizard at the keep told the party that they would not be permitted to see Tomas. This made Eron very angry, but the party headed off for Zhentil Keep. Given their high levels and spells, all of this took about a day. No one even bothered noticing that there probably should have been a time zone issue.

Arriving in Zhentil Keep, they were reminded what a crappy city it was. Much of the city is in ruins, though it is being rebuilt. They also discovered that there is a mildly expensive cost to enter the city and a huge cost to leave. That's one hell of a good way to keep an oppressed people from leaving. By gathering information, they learned that Arcane Darkness was a small time slave trader that specialized in elves. They had not been seen at the slave market in several months, though.

Then an official Zhentarium messenger came to visit them in the inn. They went to a private room where they learned that the messenger was Tomas. "What took you so long? I've been waiting in this shithole city."

Tomas told them that this group, Arcane Darkness, wants to eliminate or enslave all elves and take their High Elven magic for themselves. They were very angry with the group who saved Myth Drannor. They had some information about them, including descriptions and maybe a first name. However, their efforts to locate them were blocked. They could not enter the forests of Myth Drannor, and of course the party is protected by their pins. However, they knew that the party went to visit Tomas Valance. They thought that a Red Wizard would make a good ally and give them the information. That didn't work. They tried buying it, and that didn't work. Eventually they kidnapped Tomas's parents and sister. Tomas needed help to save them, but he could not ask for fellow Red Wizards. Helping parents would be a sign of weakness. He needed to take the actual response that he sent to Eron in his letter, but he was in a damn good mood. He'd been generally happy since the party visited Thay. Of course, he didn't know that the party had freed the remains of the goddess of humor and whimsy.

Tomas knew that Arcane Darkness was in or around an inn called The Bespeckled Owl. The party headed out, and Marchosias and Eron went in to scout the inn. They found an old man who said they wouldn't be open for a couple of days yet but he would be happy to fetch them some drinks. He went into the kitchen, and then the entire floor dropped out.

Retardedly, Marchosias managed to avoid falling into the pit below. Eron, just to be irritating, cast a quicken Fly to avoid falling down. They retreated, and then later snuck into the inn.

They found a hidden passageway that lead down to where the trap would have snared them. This permits them to be ready for the battle that is coming next time on As Toril Turns...

Somehow I just knew you would make Pewta a lawful good fan of evil.

It was your "I'll be sure to keep her away from the bad guys" that gave me the idea.

"Forbidden love...? That's so romantic!"

I'll just say this - Pewta is fucking hot. And a fantastic presence in the sack.

I'm glad that Eron and I were smooth enough to avoid the dropping floor trap. That was a heck of a Ref save.

I still feel kind of dumb for going to the initial fight alone. Damn you, whiskey.

Note to self, when someone says "come alone", you can do just about anything you want, but the one thing you better not do is come alone.

Also, if someone asks you if you're a god, you say "YES".

What if they say "If you're a god, come alone"?

I say "ok, but you need to leave those magic hand cuff thingies at home."

You really were paying attention!

I am never as think as you drunk I am...

At first, we simply assumed that peasants, like subatomic particles, sometimes disappear into, and reappear from, the quantum foam, and that you can't really know the exact position and direction of one at the same time anyway, so why bother? However, supposedly that's not accurate. Hippies.



I think the problem may have been some soda in his whiskey. You can't trust that soda.



Trap the Soul- worth it? Or super worth it?



I believe he was two favorable d20s away from a new character, though to be fair he did spend a couple rounds trying to attack a powerful undead. Even if he COULD sneak attack undead (no) and even if he COULD land attacks every round (no) and even if he COULD pass every save (no), he still couldn't sneak attack because it was like one of him versus a mini-army. The rogue class doesn't exactly encourage you to challenge anyone to a duel. There are ways around this (like being good as misdirection in combat, as with say feint and improved feint), but that hasn't been how Marchosias has trained himself. And then you need something to get around the fact that wraiths are both undead and not made of actual molecules, but I'm sure somewhere in this universe is a wraithbane ghosttouch sword.



Any excuse for a puppy-pile. Sadly, the Handjob Palace spell wasn't memorized. I should probably put a couple of those on scrolls!



I want to point out that this has a high degree of both hilarity and awesomeness.



I'm not sure it was the right call for a forcecage, but I reasoned that, win or lose, the ability to come back with a small army in the morning and show off the captured fiend was the right thing to do. It would have been more dangerous what with the draining and all, but also it would have been a lot cheaper than throwing away 1500 gold worth of ruby dust. But then, forcecage. How many people in this world get to cast forcecage that often? We're getting close to a memorable number of forcecagen!



Which, by the way, is why you shouldn't have abilities that are refreshed "at midnight", a lesson I learned years ago. "It's always midnight somewhere!".

You can still have it, you just have to specify that the timezone is tied to the item or something whatever blah blah don't cheat assholes just don't.



It's like Dubai!



See, Lawful Evil can still be redeemable! And cool!



To be fair "any spell as an immediate action of 4th level or lower" was Eron's big prize when the monk got the ability to fly a bunch, the rogue to go greater invis, Signy to mass-buff himself, and the blue lighting the priest has. So it wasn't like I just had that one memorized and good to go in case of falling floors.

One points out that having wings is a gift that keeps giving, however, and we should totally look to all be some kind of winged humanoid next game.



I think I'm controlling two wizards with less than optimal spell layouts, but they are still pretty good. I think we should find some way to flush them into a place where Pewta can be brought to bear, but then, I'm going to recommend that at all times because a silver dragon ally is absolute win whenever logistics permit.

Oh, btw Zem- come up with some reason why we can't put Pewta in the pokeball (Smoky Confinement), or I'll have to do that at some point. Summon her once, then suspend her in the smoke. I'd suggest that her time still count as passing, and so when she's desmokified she immediately has to pop back home (if past her duration).

How about "because it would be a trivial task for me to kill off your character"?

There are others, of course, but that one strikes me as the most relevant to your interests.

Technically, I have built Marchosias to be able to use Improved Feint. He has the feat, and he has a reasonably high Bluff. But he also has ridiculous swords (more importantly, a small sword in his main hand and a light weapon in his off hand), the Improved Two Weapon Fighting feat, a ridiculously high Dex to go along with Weapon Finesse, and a few levels of Fighter thrown in. So it's not really benefitting him to lose his 6 attacks (or 7 when Hasted, like we usually are) just to gain the opportunity to a single sneak attack. Plus, he's usually Invisible, or at the least, flanking with someone. BUT....still, a full attack against most opponents will have a pretty good chance of landing enough hits to outweigh a single attack plus sneak attack. Except against loser undead elves with a grudge.

One also points out that given Creslin's history, if you had banished him to the 9 hells, he'd have come back as some kind of wraith-demon template thing that Zem would fuck up and he'd be some CR30 thing with three sets of armor and tons of at will save-or-die and teleportation. So, honestly, it was better to run away, because that sword offered you no win condition.

Adding "teleportation" to the dictionary -> signs life is going well.

Since Mark doesn't have the new summary up yet, I figured I'd post this here.

John, what do you think about making a few scrolls of Dim Anchor to give to Marchosias? During our epic battle, I had been thinking toward the end that it was beginning to be a good time for you or Yenrab to cast Dim Anchor. Then poof, they vanished. You and Yenrab were caught up in needing to cast various spells to keep us alive or them on their heels. Marchosias has a good Use Magic Device check, which is bolstered by a synergy when reading magic scrolls (5 ranks in Decipher Script, I think). While the two of you are running around trying to stay alive, I could have the ability to cast Dim Anchor. My ranged touch attack is, ahhh, pretty good.

EDIT: I suppose we could just buy some scrolls as well. We do have quite a bit of cash right now.