Deepening Rift 3

Nulloc's teeth part in a satisfied grin. Some twenty five toads dot the cavern floor beneath him, croaking and hopping in agonized confusion. That leaves four or five people unchanged. He'll have to deal with them a bit more thoroughly, but the battle has been effectively won in the space of fifteen seconds. THESE are the people who gave those ghouls so much trouble? Just as he has predicted, he's completely and unerringly crushed them. Not a surprise, but it's invigorating to always be correct. He'll have to ask the ghouls for more money.

And yes, right on schedule, there is the sound of his trolls – well, servile goblins polymorphed into troll shape, if the truth be known, because they're so much easier to bully – shambling out of the side passage with sacks and cages aplenty. Superb! Soon all of his new pets will be safely stored away, and he'll have new friends to talk to.

First things first, though. Four enemies left: a halfling wizard, a human paladin, an old cleric, and a flame-haired bard. All four look panicky and scared.

What to use? Well, let's start with a quickened slow, of course, countering that fiery-headed man's mass haste. Tsk, tsk. Then what? Chain blindness is always fun, what with the stumbling and staggering and humorous falling into the slime pit. Or maze. He can turn someone to stone nearly irresistibly – but best to save that for someone who can shapeshift, he thinks. Drawing out all of their moisture would be funny, because human corpses always get so wrinkled when hit by a horrid wilting! He also has aberrate, which would mutate them into hideous abominations, or grim revenge, where their hands would rot off and begins to insolently slap them – but truly, those spells are more for fun than actual combat. Sometimes it's best to stick with the classics. That means a standard polymorph other, followed with a heightened version of the same spell. Who to target? His finger bobs as he recites a drow choosing rhyme, "Spi-der climbed the rock-y wall, try-ing to catch.. YOU!" That makes it the wizard and the paladin. Welcome to life as a toad, fools.

*Blink* It didn't work.

Worse. No one has found him yet, but one of the toads – HIS toads, thank you very much – has just changed to a unicorn. Blasted shapeshifters, she'll get the petrification spell. And she's – what is she doing? Something forming in front of her

Oh. He recognizes that. She's opened a gate.

And stepping through it, a huge.. Lloth's bloated belly, what IS that? Oh. A solar of some surface Goddess. And next to the old cleric, a now there's a summoned Astral Deva. Angels? Arch-angels? Oh, dear. And now the trolls are running for their pathetic little lives. Hrmmm. And that damn Solar has just dispelled a half-dozen of his toads, and the Deva is starting to do the same. Less toads, more people, and that's not good. Nulloc doesn't like live people. Sweat trickles down his brow, cutting through the ghoul-colored makeup of his disguise.

The drow wizard quickly re-evaluates his options, brain flashing down paths of possibility as he clutches his magical staff. Only one strategy seems guaranteed to work. He thrusts out his hands and raises his voice in an elemental chant, and his projected image does the same. With a sound like a stopping heart, the ceiling in the cavern turns into a slab of thick, falling mud.

The malodorous mud crashes downwards, crushing and coating and burying everything beneath it. The buoyant toads begin to instinctively surface, but before anyone can fully act Nulloc uses his hasted action to cast transmute mud to rock. There is a brittle sound like ice freezing, and with a ripple of purple fire every bit of mud in the cavern suddenly returns to its natural state of solid stone. The drow lets out a breath that he didn't realize he was holding, and takes a long look to see what he still needs to do to finish this fight.

The angels? Trapped, along with every person and toad in the cavern. The halfling is trapped up to his neck, the others to their lower chest. Perfect. Nulloc takes the time to glance behind him.

"Croak!"

"Why thank you, my darlings. I agree. It was inspired."

But by the time he glances back, everything has changed. The solar has teleported several creatures free from the mud, and is pointing not at his projected image but directly at him! Then there is that bloody unicorn directly in front of him. He backs up in the alcove, but there isn't much space. Dimension door out? Yes! But his hands are shaking and he's starts to stutter from some sort of horrible aura emanating from the beast, and he fumbles the spell. No! Turn her into stone, quick, quick – it fails! And here is a githzerai that he hardly even noticed scrambling into the alcove past the illusion, casually slamming a fist into his belly as leaps to his feet. Oof! And the unicorn slashes at him with her horn, and now the arch-angel has teleported the paladin in, and his sword is so very bright ---

Falling, tumbling. And then there is nothing.

Piratecat:
Yeah, once they figured out where he was, it was just fast and messy. Malachite did something like 130 points of damage just by himself in one round, and I hadn't counted on those damn solars and devas. :)

Luckily Agar had a rock to mud prepared, freeing everyone else still trapped and toadified. The celestials used dispel evil to unerringly turn folks back.

At the time I made an on-the-fly ruling that said that the toads could get mostly to the mud's surface. I was too lenient; if I was to do it again, I'd let them make a save (DC 29!) to do so. Just goes to show that mistakes happen. *shrug* Luckily, when all was said and done, Agar's spell meant that there was no in-game effect other than a suspicion by my players that I was going soft.

The chained enervation turned out to be brutally effective. Velendo lost both miracle and sovereign wall, for example, and Agar took a similar hit. This was a challenging fight, considering the levels and numbers involved.

Piratecat:
Two letters were found near Nulloc Toadbringer's body. The first was on him, kept near his heart.

The second was found behind a secret door, on his writing table. Apparently he had been in the process of scribing it when the Defenders came calling.

DoctorB:
I really liked the updates from Nulloc's point of view.

Did Nulloc ever have a legitimate chance to get away? Did his overconfidence make him stay too long, or did the counterattack get to him so fast he didn't really have a chance?

As I was reading the post, about the time that the Arch-angels arrived, I thought: "Time to get out of there, Nulloc!"

Piratecat:
Well, part of the problem is that while Nulloc could guess at what a solar or a deva might look like - a big honkin' angel - he had never come across one before, and didn't know what they could do. Heck, he had virtually no conjuration spells, and as a result was woefully unprepared for their power. He also had exceptional faith in his powers, because it's hard to say "no" to a saving throw DC in the low 30's. Finally, Nulloc had a lot of pride tied up in the thought of defeating these notorious, unstoppable heroes virtually single-handed. That caused him to wait one round too long.

He did try to dimension door away, though. To cast defensively, he needed to make a concentration check of DC 19, not too tough for someone whose concentration skill is +16. Then I rolled a "3" - and Tao's divine agent class ability menacing aura imparts a -2 penalty on attacks, saves and checks. He hit DC 17, and he lost the spell. He tried to turn her to stone, but it didn't work, and next thing you know he was promptly turned into shish kabob.

Incidentally, 3.5 makes the "call" function of gate slightly more of a cost/benefit decision to use, so in the future solars might be gated in slightly less often. I'm okay with that. :)

As for Stone Bear, you aren't the only one who was frustrated. Wulf was probably pissed; he missed his save, went all toady, and then got buried in the mud. It's especially frustrating because (due to travel or sickness) he's had to miss a few games that were combat-heavy. This should change; our game next Thursday might involve an assault on a kuo-toa shrine, and I'm aquiver with anticipation to watch the hand-to-hand combatants do their thing.