The huge ugly red creature charges at us, we barely have time to cast some defensive magicks and gulp down a potion before we are in battle. Entwhistle whimpers a bit as he sees his first barrage of arrows bounce off the hide of this creature. Xinh and the half orc chick manage to land a blow but it does not slow it down at all, with its huge reach it swats Xinh out of the way and moves to the archer and Leorn who stand guard over the weakened Alex Tercival, Xinh skids about 10’ along the ground but his legs are already working and he scoots back into position between this scarlet monster and the increasingly worried Entwhistle.
Quarion and Oskar maneuver behind the beast to try and attack it and we manage to land a few blows but it makes a beeline for Leorn who is carrying Tercival and doing his best to get out of range. With several devastating blows Alex body is hewn apart, looking rather satisfied with itself the creature then buggars off. We look to Leorn to use his healing magics as we collect the body parts back together, sadly the cleric shakes his head, but looks as surprised as the others as a voice emanates from the head of Tercival. This sounds like some divine message where we are to go into the desert and we will meet the one we seek and seek out the Smoking Eye. OhhhhKaayyy.
After resting up and healing our wounds (and burying Alex) we head on out into the desert, after several days we spot a lone figure trudging towards us, after some initial misgivings we decide that it is unlikely to be a coincidence and greet the fellow. Well it turns out that this is some type of Daemon and we should help him/her/it, there is a fantastical story of how two planes collided one of good and one of evil and how a struggle now goes on. This chap seems to think that he could rule this plane and disentangle the chaos that ensues. Being miles from any pub and with time on their hands the Token Human Party accept the challenge – after all it could be handy in future to know the ruler of a plane (at least the less scrupulous members of the party think this).
We are led by this creature are transported to the plane and soon start to witness the craziness. A serene landscape is suddenly replaced by cracks and fissures and all sorts of ugliness, then reverts back.
We make our way to a church which Johhny (the Daemon) claims contains the first test, he says he is unable to enter and we should go in and check it out – sure.
We open the creaking front door and move inside, in a few seconds we are hit with arrows and a web spell. Entwhistle methodically fires his flaming arrows into the darkness and Quarion uses his bobbing ball of fire to illuminate some spiderish demonic creatures which are quickly targeted with arrows and spells. We take one down quickly but another scoots through a hole in the roof and casts a fireball back at us. The elf settles down to watch the hole as the others make their way across the room to a locked door, sure enough a curious spider pokes through the hole and gets drilled, but not before the door has been opened and other creatures attack the party. A winged beast drifts down and starts slapping us around, this is one of those Erinyes which we have gone up against before, Xinh loses a level and some fire creature summons a fire elemental. We start to retaliate and the fire summoner hightails it out of the action down the long hallway to hide behind a statue casting a wall of fire behind him, once we overcome the other creatures we leave some of the party to battle the fire elemental while Xinh, Charra and Entwhistle pursue the summoner. Xinh has a ward against fire and blithely runs through the wall taking a little damage, Charrra also runs through taking a lot of damage and wondering why she is all singed looking and the Dwarf is unaffected, Entwhistle is running high along the walls and is over the top of the fire. Xinh dispatches the summoner and the elemental disappears.
Johnny now decides it’s safe to join us and as we start looting he finds the secret door which leads to the first test, he cuts short our search for spoils with his impatience. We travel to a room where a mummy lord declares the first test, several of the party are trying to hide behind each other at this point. Through one door the challenger will have to defeat a creature of good to balance out the chaos on the plane, through the other door is a creature of evil to be defeated. Johhny turns to us for advice and we reckon he should plump for whacking out the evil door as we will happily join in, some of us might be reluctant to smoke some good creature.
The Daemon decides he will smite down the good being and he reaches for the handle…..
You Brits might not get the Johnny Daemon reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_DamonHere are some ‘U’s and ‘S’s to convert the US typing back into English
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu ssssssssssssssssssss
