Episode 58: How Many Time Zones Are There In The Known Universe?

Mr. Prim started blankly at the Vectroscope. It had been a Very Trying Week, and the distinct lack of 'plibs' on the Vectroscreen did nothing but magnify his annoyance. _ __ ____ The Ever Mightie had made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that the Naugahyde Cotillion had "verrry littttle tyme" to locate the band of minor-league deities and get them back on the Path.

Prim had the tact and strong urge for self-preservation not to ask what would happen if they didn't, but he had a feeling that it would be more than the nullification of their company contract. He redoubled his efforts at the Vectroscope, leaning in over the glowing green screen, knuckles whitening on the control knobs, scanning, scanning....

plib.

At first, he couldn't believe his ears.

plib.

A quick check of the settings and a deft twirl of the tumblers assured him he wasn't just imagin-

plib. plib.

With what passed (for him) as a feeling of elation, he zoomed in on the quadrant, attenuated the Focusizer, and set the Pfhasiur to Stun.

plib. plib. plib.

"Got 'em," he whipered to himself, and to everyone, as he knew he was being observed.

"Athas. They're on Athas, your Eminences." Fingers whirred and tumblers tumbled. "Shall I take The Desk and go have a chat with them?"

"Nø," boomed a voice that came from the floor, the air, and everywhere in between (all at once). "¡ wi∫∫ ∂e@£ w¡†h †hem m¥$e£f."

There was a •pop!•, and the feeling that every other molecule in the air had ceased to exist. It was not an unpleasant sensation, but it went a long way to make one feel like one had been operating under unpleasant circumstances for longer than one had realized.

"Crazy bugger," Prim thought to himself. "Let's see HIM deal with that lot. They're so unstable, I wouldn't be surprised if they-"

Prim sat bolt upright, a strange, puzzled look crept over his face and under his dark glasses. His fingers didn't move, but tumblers tumbled in his mind.

With lightning speed and a sweat of anticipation, he threw himself at the Vectrometer, cranking and wheedling the contraption into maximum focus.

plib. plib. plib. plib. plib. plib. PLIB.

Prim had no idea what was going to happen next.

But he was sure as Hells going to watch.

Episode 57: Once Again, With A Little SOUL...

The rather unexpected battle with Snow Yellow was going unexpectedly well. Koresh had laid low all seven Militant Dwarves, and Captain Bonkers had finished off the last of the Dragon Guard. Dolorous was poised to make a deadly strike with her Dagger of Venom, and they might not even need Stonehenge to unleash his Earthquake (and most likely collapse the temple down around them).

Even the Jade Scarab had failed in his attempt to heal The Enigma to death.

It was all going so well. Too well, one might say.

In fact, it was going so well that when Dolorous pounced on Snow Yellow's neck and plunged the dagger into where she thought her carotid artery might be, she rolled a 30... and sealed her doom.

For as a great wound opened up in Snow Yellow's neck, revealing the black and tortured soul of a lesser Tanar'ri, Dolorous became disoriented for one fatal, giddy second.

The Dark beckoned to her, called to her...

This is a place to hide, it whispered in a voice over a thousand eons old.

"Why not?" retorted Dolorous, and she immediately withdrew into the dark, internal and infernal space inside the now-dying demoness.

The others watched in horror/fascination/blasé disinterest as Dolorous' form was pulled, spaghettified and sucked into the hole in Snow Yellow's neck. The Darkness swallowed her up, pierced her in a million places and exploded what was left of her consciousness inside the foul Abyssal fiend. As what was left of her soul clung to the idea of Dolorous/Zoe and battled with the last vestiges of Yellow's consciousness for possession of the body it froze, toppled over, and clattered to the floor of the hallway like a sickly mannequin.

As the two souls battled in the body for supremacy, Koresh quickly attempted a Break Enchantment spell on the demoness' body. An arc of magic leapt from his fingers to the dying tanar'ri and, for just a split second, caused the two battling souls to separate just long enough for...

...

...Stonehenge to step in. In one fluid motion he retrieved Dolorous' dagger from where it lay and started to chant the ancient and deadly words of the Druid Strike. He raised the dagger up, spoke the last eldritch phrase and

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brought the knife down and plunged it into the demon's body. On impact, the blade flashed red and a surge of power shot up through Stonehenge's arms and went, as should come as no surprise, straight to his head. Stonehenge was thrown back as the lifeforces of both Dolorous and Snow Yellow mingled and were pulled up through the enchanted dagger and straight into Stonhenge's very being.

A floating, golden crown appeared on the top of Stonhenge's head. He began to radiate a great and powerful aura. The Jade Scarab prostrated himself in front of the glowing red druid and began to babble "My Lord" most obsequiously.

Snow Yellow gave out a great scream and sat up with a start - and as everyone drew their weapons and pointed ensorcelled fingers in her direction and made ready to strike her down, she held both hands up and squeaked out with weak voice, unaccustomed to her new vocal chords...

"Don't shoot, guys. It's just me."

Episode 56: Li'l Bonkers Gets in the Mix

Somewhere in the depths of the temple, Tiamat was sleeping...

Well, not totally sleeping. Having been slain in avatar form, Captain Bonkers was now back in the blue neck of Tiamat, and he did not feel good. As his consciousness tried to come to terms with his physicalness, he decided that the process of being slain out-of-body and telepulted into the Dragon Queen's form was not a pleasant one.

He also wondered how many times it would be allowed to happen.

As the obdurate, stinging wasps of feeling slowly returned to the dragon's seven limbs, Bonkers noticed two things. One was that his bulk was laid out on a large disc of stone - one that seemed to be slowly rotating under a dull amber light. The distant wall seemed to be moving past at a crawl, and various glyphs of warding gave the sense of some serious protective magics.

The other thing he noticed was that somewhere, not to far away, one Hells of a melee appeared to be going on...

Li'l Bonkers, the animated-then-emasculated stone dwarf guardian of the temple had had enough in the way of paradigm-shifting events for one day. His sense of time may have been fuzzy, but he was pretty sure it had been eons since anything like this had happened to him. It was far more usual for a party of intruders to accidentally animate him and then die at his hands (or as would occasionally would happen when other party members tried to help, the hands of his magically-summoned twins) than it was to be so thoroughly humiliated like this.

For not only had he been whittled down to half his height by a rather surprising obsidian-laced sandstorm (who were these intruders, anyway?) but he was now being compelled by the meanest, largest, reddest one to skitter down the hall on his stumpy femurs and attack his old friends in the Dragon Guard.

Looking to make a big impression on his new employers, Li'l Bonkers headed towards the six heavily-armored, lasgun-toting Draconoids and... slipped. His velocity took him (not for the last time that night) into the heart of his adversaries, and while he took down four of the six, Koresh leapt into the chaos and coconutted the remaining two, causing their helmets to short-circuit and arc with strange, blue light.

Dolorous then flew in, and while she managed to deal some acidic breath damage on the two sparking 'noids, she also learned just how ouchy the lasguns could be as she was shout out of the air by a recumbent Draco.

What followed was a combination of slapstick, vaudeville and Baldur's Gate as Captain Bonkers returned to the fray and The Jade Scarab drew the attention of Snow Yellow.

(The most humorous passage of play involved Li'l Bonkers feeling out the metal door just before it was blown open, with the result being that he was hurtled along at great speed towards The Enigma, who couldn't quite evade the dwarven missile and took Massive Dwarven Damage to the tune of -8 hit points and a sucking chest wound. LB then extricated himself, charged Snow Yellow, and (owing to another horrible die roll) found himself lodged in her Hammerspace and groping about for some loot.

In other news, the Jade Scarab weilded the Shiv of Healing on The Enigma and steadfastly failed to kill him.

Wo0t.

Episode 55: Of Pistachios and Kings

It finally worked.

The Shiv of Healing, crafted from the blue crystal that was harvested from the disintegrated hallway deep within Chang Kai Eel's fortress during what had to be one of the Weirder Sessions (granted, there have been many... how do you begin to rank them?) of the entire campaign, finally saved a life.

The corpulent sack of flesh that was Captain Bonkers rose and thanked the Gods that he'd been spared. He'd been saved from an ignominious death at the hands of Inglorious Gravity, and longed to fight and pillage and maim and burn and kill once more.

(15 minutes later. I shit you not.)

With a click, the secret door locked behind the Captain and Stonehenge, and a vile green gas filled the hallway. While Stonehenge melded with the hallway to escape the poison, Captain Bonkers decided he'd had just about enough of living on this goddamned planet and inhaled deeply the miasmic vapours that would certainly bring him to his inevitable doom.

Outside the chamber, Koresh was busy trying to reduce to slag the statues in the temple foyer. His barrage of superheated steam had not only reduced a third of the statues to rubble, but had vaporized the poisonous coating of said statue, creating a Sinkhole of Lethality in the foyer, just outside the Hallway of Imminent Peril, where the Captain was throwing his last hit points away like a drunken, giggling septagenarian throwing her last few nickels into a sordid slot machine.

With his last bit of dying psychic energy, Bonkers reached out and connected with The Enigma, and with his last bit of will managed to whisper in the faintest of breaths: "Need help. (Just you)." Responding quickly to his fallen comrade, The Enigma raced into the Sinkhole, threw open the door, just managed to reach the Captain, throw his foot into the closing trap door, and pull him out of the hallway... before he died.

The Jade Scarab managed to race into the Sinkhole, fail a saving throw, and take 36 points of damage.

Dolorous, it must be said, watched most of the goings on with a detached wisdom that can only come from nearly dying once too many times.

Perhaps the others will learn.

Episode 54: When Dwarves Cry

Smoke stung their eyes. Creosote filled their lungs. But at least the terrified screams of the dying mob had ceased to fill their ears. The entire coliseum was on fire now, and eighty percent of the God Squad cowered in the burning tunnel as flames and chaos arose around them.

(Dolorous had, before Holth (R.I.P.) unleashed his bazooka in tandem with Koresh's Forked Finger of Fong, fled to the Pocket Plane of Shadow - a dark, cool place that came equipped with it's own soothing elevator music.)

From her retreat of quietude, Dolorous was suddenly made aware of a growing nimbus of light - light emanating from the tunnel, and, in fact, emanating from the form of The Enigma...

As she watched, a billowing cloak of cool white light issued forth from his chest and ballooned over and around the party, protecting them from the burning bits of colisetritus that were falling like ripe figs throughout the tunnel.

Captain Bonkers, in a fit of claustrophobic zeal, leapt forth from the nimbus of light and made a frenzied dash for door. He made it, of course, but in hindsight he probably should have retired for the evening right then and there... The Dice would soon forsake him.

The rest of the party strolled nonchalantly out of the coliseum just as the entire structure collapsed in a conflagatory cloud of smoke, ash and burning remains. It is not known if even the Great Ghost of Gary Gygax knows how many experience points a coliseum is worth, but let's just say this: it's probably alot.

The only thing that seemed to survive the firestorm was a skeletal dragonship - one that rose from the ash cloud and hovered off towards a distant and ruddy outcropping of rock - it's smoky, translucent skin protecting it's occupants from the harsh Athasian sun.

Bonkers and Dolorous (who deemed it safe enough to exit her Pocket Dimension) reasoned that the dark, dragon king that Stonehenge had described must be in the ship, and that if anyone on this godsforsaken planet deserved a right kick up the backside, it was he.

Captain Bonkers, having recently reobtained all his Worldy Possessions, brandished his Teleportation Chamber, and attempted to teleport a bazooka shell to a point in front of the dragonship where it would contact the nose of the ship, explode, and hilarity would ensue.

He opened the box, placed the ordinance in detonator-first (setting off the three-second timer), and as he attempted to push the 'Teleport' button, the shell exploded... and drove a fiery gout of superheated, pulverized shrapnel throuh the unlucky dwarf's hand.

Dolorous decided then and there to take matters (and her Crossbow of Shocking) into her own hands. Lifting off and quickly closing in on the lumbering ship, she fired one bolt from her crossbow at the nether regions of the ship and...

...took the sumbitch down.

Bones splintered. Exoplaz shattered. Minibars and keggerators exploded in a chain reaction of mayhem as the ship tore itself apart from within. Strippers, bartenders, midgets and a mime fell, flaming, to their deaths on the hots sands below.

Only the dragon king remained.


Long, dessicated and corrupt, like the magic that he wields, the dragon king looked over his shoulder and gawped in disbelief at the mere size of his tormentor. It had taken him YEARS to build that ship from the hollowed-out remains of his father, and months on top of that to train the midgets and the bartenders - not to mention the fortune in jewels and fine silks it had taken to lure the best girls that had ever polished a pole to work his party barge...

He wouldn't miss the mime.

And now this, this insignificant, petulant, tiny, worthless woman had blown it all away. She would pay. Oh, boyo she would pay....

"If only I could make it to my secret lair," he thought. "I think I have the greater part of an Athasian beer tap lodged in the small of my back..."

At that moment, out of the blue (literally) an angry and vengeful dwarf flew up and grabbed the dragon king's tail. Bonkers heaved with all his considerable might in an attempt to stop the fleeing dragon.

He succeeded, to some degree, in that he got the dragon to whirl around in a half circle, just in time to come face to face with a flying tiger-headed, bat-ankled semi-deity who wanted to bite him in the face.

It didn't go well.

Not only did Koresh fail to damage the dragon king in any appreciable way, but it refocused the king's annoyance at having his tail pulled. The dragon king turned towards the straining dwarf...

He opened his mouth...

And he sang.

!!!

...

---

The last thing Bonkers heard was the sound of his eardrums exploding.

As he plummeted to the ground, Dolorous was reminded of what happens to a tarantula that is dropped from a great height...

*plop*

The Captain hit the ground with a sound like a cow hitting the Great Wall at terminal velocity.

Orifices oozed.

Organs traded places.

Bones fragmented.

By the time Dolorous got to him and rolled him over, he sounded like a rubber sack filled with pottery shards and Jello.

She quickly took one of her healing magic items and placed it around his neck, thus saving his life.

But man, was he ever gonna be sore in the morning...

Episode 53: If You Thought...

...that it would be highly unlikely that Holth and Koresh could create a superconducting supercollider inside the curved tunnel that defines the outer wall of a gladitorial stadium using a bazooka filled with green metal sausages and Koresh's Forked Finger of Fong, you would be right.

And, as it turns out, very, very wrong.

For as the howling cloud of superheated plasma, steam and deceased mob whipped around the circular tunnel, it caught up to it's own tail and, like the ouroboros of old, swallowed itself.

And accelerated around for another lap.

76 points of damage (and some saving throws later), all that was left of Holth was a molten slab of tattooed bacon.

Stonehenge looked up at the now burning infrastucture of the coliseum and quipped, "That was fun. Hey, has anyone seen The Enigma?"

Episode 52: Not So Glad He Ate Her...

Somewhere in Her consciousness, Iryien detected a dying plea. Someone - or some thing - had called out to her in the throes of mortal peril. A living being, a being with a soul and a heart that yearned for love needed Her, and needed Her now. She looked down at the Temple Manicurist, Lobella, and asked how long it would be until the freshly-applied nail lacquer had fully dried.

"Just another minute or two, my most radiant Lady."

Well, whoever it was, Iryien thought, I'm sure they can hold on for another few minutes...

Responding to the plaintiff cries of a dying Aramis, Iryien cuts short her tour of the Temple of the Divine Shoulder Blaster and materializes on Athas.

Discovers death and administers healing.

Creates a protective sphere.

Tiamat (reunited) rises up and our after hearing worms and pteradactyls.

Big boom, and Tiamat is exploded.

Grog the Slavemaster informs them of their Fate.

Some win, some lose.

Grog is Seduced.

Iryien discovers the dragon king.