Episode 34: "Depends" On How You Look At It...

It wasn't supposed to be like this (thought Iryien, thought Xoe, thought Saladin, thought the DM...)

You make something, create it, you control it... right?

"NOT ON THIS NIGHT", saith the gods...

Iryien looked on in helpless exhaustion as SALAYASHI hovered over her dying Sulian. Even as he raised the glowing, crystalline syringe up over his exposed, bacon-scented chest she had the feeling that all was lost, that all was gone from her, that she was just watching a movie - a bad one at that - I mean, couldn't they at least have gotten Peter Jackson to direct it? Even as the syringe was plunged into (insert Sulian's name here)'s heart and he reared up, turned red and attacked SALAYASHI, she let it unfold, watched it dispassionately, she saw her grip on the situation slip, like pants over the hips of an Italian...

Xoe saw things slipping too, as Porthos' flesh bubbled into the stones, melting away into nothingness at the hands of SALAYASHI, (Healer??? Really? He's killed more of our party than the enemy, for Baldur's sake!) she watched her brother calmly strip two frames of their less-than-priceless contents. Umbertino's Two Sheep Humping? Really? I mean, not only is it the least of his works, but sheep don't actually do it like that - not modern, up-to-date ones, anyway - and the less said about The Painter Of Light the better... Did he have any taste at all???

At least she had Aramis left to, oh wait, where was he?

Hmm...

Well, her remaining Guido was dry humping the air at the base of the eel statue. At least that was within the bounds of relatively normal acceptability...

Now Takemiya, on the other hand - he was in complete control - control of the statue as it's crotch opened to reveal a secret passage... control of the eerily glowing sarcophagi containing the underdeveloped simalcra of the entire DCM crew (plus a dwarf???)... incontrol, in fact, of the naked dwarf that was released when Xeno shattered the glass above the growing Saladin's sarcophagus, setting off a chain reaction of explosions, untimely clone-deaths and releasing into the world an angry dwarf with no pants on.

Which brings us to....

Xoe gripped Aramis by the few threads of clothing he had left. He had been caught up in an illusory tryst - one involving the cheap, tawdry woman of his dreams (at the base of a creepy statue in a dungeon under the stronghold of his mistresses' sworn enemy, but whatever...) when Xoe slapped him (perhaps a little too hard) and called him back from the edge - called him back into his clothes - called him back into...

His Pants.

Somewhere in the Void, Trouseronomous, God of Pants, saw a 20 being rolled and smiled...

Aramis felt his legs become encased in 3 square yards of heaven.

Purple seersucker heaven.

In fact, now that his legs, his buttocks, and his $5 footlong had become wrapped up in what can only be described as 'dream trousers', nothing else in the whole world seemed to matter...

Except the naked dwarf who had appeared from below and was now suspiciously eying his pants.

A melee ensued. This multiverse's first 'Pants Off', in fact.

And when the dust settled, and the dwarf's buttocks stopped quivering, one thing was certain: DCM had a new (old?) member, he was wearing the best +5 Protection v. Fire purple seersucker pants imaginable, Aramis was now fully his bitch, and Aramis was now completely unclad.

OK, so that was 4 things.

I really need to regain control of this campaign.

Episode 33 - Really? Really??

You should never disintegrate a significate portion of any planet without expecting some... repercussions.

Saladin had become suspended midair in the recently excavated tunnel by a rising sonic turbulence - a turbulence that was now becoming more turbulent after the introduction of a guido who had improbably fallen into the tunnel.

Acting quickly and with heroics in mind, Kobayashi leapt to the rescue, proffering his extendable staff to Porthos. Unfortunately for Kobayashi, improbability reared it's ugly head again and caused the unlucky monk to be pulled into the tunnel as well. Xeno and Iryien started to get pulled towards the tunnel. As the third body entered the viciously thrumming space, flesh, bone, crystal and rock began to harmonize and echo all together, creating a clear, crystalline sine wave that bound the three bodies together in the air of the sonic microwave. It was at this point that Xeno disappeared. Iryien also noticed that Saladin's flesh was starting to melt off his bones.

Unbeknownst to the trapped individuals, atoms were whispering conspiratorially to one another now, shaken into sentience by the unlikely combination of crystal, flesh, and magical dragonscale armor. Molecules started to rearrange themselves, forming splinter cells along ideological lines previously unseen in the sub-cellular world. New substances were being synthesized. Old ones discarded. Something new and never seen before was about to happen...

Just under the molten surface of the tunnel, some red crystal of Ata'ri itched into a peculiar awareness, sensing something remarkable was about to happen...

Deep within Ata'ri, some rare green crystal, tucked away in scattered veins due to the introduction of a rather large meteorite to a very poorly-located prehistoric health spa, thrummed to life and started making its way to the surface, homing in on the life energies that were calling to it from a tiny space near the surface of the planet...

Directly underneath the tunnel, a sizable deposit of blue crystal, sensing it was on the verge of being late to something really exciting, decided to exert what little psychic influence it could on the scene as it was unfolding in the tunnel above. If only there was something it could use, something it could focus on in order to step up its energies just a wee bit...

It was precisely at this moment where Aramis decided to save his brother.

Grabbing the Demonic Lacrosse Stick from Hell, Aramis hurled a ball of blue energy into the tunnel, introducing into the finely balanced superturbulence an explosive, if not malevolent element to the tunnel.

Some strange things happened.

Firstly, Porthos was expelled with some force from the tunnel, landing with a thud inside the portable hole (which shall now be known as the Porthoble Hole).

Secondly, as the rest of Saladin's flesh fell away, the red crystal in the surrounding rock arced into the tunnel and replaced, molecule for molecule, the bone of Saladin's skeleton.

Thirdly, with no guido acting as a buffer, Kobayashi and Saladin were hurtled together at the speed of light. The red crystal skeleton, acting as both a hammer and a sieve, stopped Kobayashi's flesh in it's tracks while letting the shattered bits of his skeleton fly through it before being totally vaporized against the back of the tunnel.

The poor monk's flesh, superheated into a gelatinous, living magma, clung to Saladin's bare bones and instantly began to cool. It reacted with, through a series of harmonics, the skeleton, the tunnel walls and the rapidly emerging node of green crystal to form a clear green skin that hardened as it cooled, creating a symbiotic being never before seen on this or any other planet...

Just another Tuesday, really.