Chapter 221 - Roman Hell

Around Desyat 3, 1002.

We spent maybe ten minutes recuperating before moving deeper into the passage. We soon entered an empty room with a big staircase at its end that went up for about two floor. Its most striking features were two gigantic 28'-high rock statues of women embedded on each side of the stairs. Rufus noted that the whole stairs and statues setup was emitting a strange supernatural energy, as if they were all linked together.

We discussed a bit about what to do. Our guess was that walking on the stairs would provoke the statues into attacking us, so we tried to find a way to get up there without stepping on them. But after a while, we realized it was just not possible, so we decided to simply climb up as quickly as possible and be ready to dodge at any moment.

To our surprise, the statues did not move until we reached a little platform at the top of the stairs. Only then did the two statues turned their heads toward us and started to talk. They said they were the two sisters guarding the entry to their Master's domain, and that it had been a long time since mortals had come their way. They said there was no way out of this place except through them (which seemed confirmed by the fact the platform ended in a uniformed wall). They explained there was three ways to get out of here: be their Master, know their Master's password, or sacrifice part of our souls to them. When we asked where their Master was, they pointed toward the wall. Vinz stepped in front of it and casted Earth to Air on the section he was facing (using most of his remaining fatigue), but only succeeded in creating a two-yard hole into the solid rock. The statues said their Master's domain was only metaphorically behind the wall, and that in fact it was unreachable through any physical path.

We desperately tried to think of another way out of here, but eventually had to come to the conclusion that we had to take solution 3. Leif was the first to volunteer, so one of the statues picked him up, raised him at head level, and asked him to put his head between its teeth. The barbarian was evidently suspicious, but did it anyway after the statue assured him he wouldn't be physically harmed. He stayed there for a couple of second, then was told the operation was finished. Rufus examined him with his special vision, and confirmed he was still himself. The others then decided to go along - although Vinz had to hypnotize himself to resist the urge of plunging his sword in the statue's mouth. When Reema's turn came about, Rufus got a brief vision of her as a full demon, before she returned to her usual shape - except that she seemed a bit "rougher" than usual for a while.

(OOC, we only lost a couple of our unspent character points and some hit points. It had no real effect (at least that we know of), except for Rufus who was now down to 0 character points left. He could now feel little horns growing on his head, but was able to keep them hidden from the others because of his helmet.) (OOC again, knowing Sean, I'm pretty sure the thing about having our soul sucked was just a way to make sure Rufus would drop to 0 unspent CP left and thus change him into some kind of demonic creature. He just loves torturing Mike's characters that way. :) )

When it was all over, the second sister pushed aside her robes to reveal a glowing vortex that, she said, was the way to their master. We all jumped inside, and ended up in the middle of a gigantic four-way crossroads. In each direction, the passage was at least tens of meters wide and filled with columns disposed at regular intervals. The place was so vast that both the ceiling and the end of each passage were not even visible to us. We could hear cries of pain and terror coming from all direction.

With Vinz almost completely drained, we decided to wait a while. But as the seconds passed, Rufus had a strange sensation of energy building up, until suddenly a spark of electricity zapped Mushamee and Recnam for 15 points of damage each, knocking the priest right out. Rufus felt the energy had completely dissipated, but was now starting to build up again. We had no choice but to grab the priest's body and start walking, which strangely dissipated the energy. It really seemed like this mechanism was just there to make sure any intruder would not stop moving. Unfortunately, Leif had already used his prepared healing, which meant he was unable to heal Recnam because of his one-minute preparation time (which would cause at least another zapping). Vinz took the three seconds necessary to hypnotize himself and get rid of his half move/dodge penalty, and we forged ahead.

We knew we had to get to the Master, so Rufus used his special vision to determine which of the four passages was leading to him. He immediately detected an aura of pure evil coming from one of them, so that's the one we followed. We walked for a little while, until Vinz could feel some danger and made the rest of the group stop. Not that far ahead, we saw some big, vaguely familiar shapes hiding behind the columns. We slowly approached them, until we realized they were the same kind of big, chain-wielding demons we had fought before in the Temple of Evil (see chapters 105 and 106). There were eight of them in all, four on each side of us. Realizing our tactical position was really precarious, Mushamee tried to talk them into leading us to their Master, but it was pretty apparent they were only interested in killing us. So we prepared ourselves for the fight.

Here's a little plan of the situation:

    o      o      o      o
                             o = pillar
       D1             D5     M = Mushamee
    o      o      o      o   V = Vinz
       D2             D6     L = Leif carrying Recnam
              M  V           r = Reema
    o  D3  o   rL o   D7 o   R = Rufus
              R  P           P = Petr
       D4             D8     D = demon
    o      o      o      o

A couple of things we remembered about these demons. First, they had to be stabbed in the heart to be susceptible to death. It didn't had to be the finishing strike, and you didn't had to do it in one hit, but you had to cause sufficient damage to their heart (equal to 2xHT I think) before they could even start to make death rolls. Second, they were moving pretty quick. Third, they had a four yard reach with their chain, they were strong enough to wield it every turn, and it was a weapon that was hard to block or parry (i.e. a flail). Last, their defenses were not that great since they could only dodge, and they had no real armor, just tough skin.

Our biggest problem going in was that the demons would be able to surround and pile on us. We quickly solved this problem by 1) having Mushamee do an Heroic Charge on D4 (with Rufus to cover his back) and kill it with a combination swing/swing/thrust to the heart, and by 2) having Petr slamming D8 with his full vampire strength, making them both fall to the floor and start a grappling contest (which for all practicality put them out of the fight until the very end). Those two maneuvers resulted in a much more "controlled" fight, in which we could maneuver so that our backs were not constantly exposed. Add to that the judicious use of the columns to provide partial cover, and the fight suddenly became manageable.

Letting Mushamee and Rufus deal with the demons on the left side, Vinz and Leif took on the three to the right. To protect Recnam's unconscious body, Leif decided to stand over it and use his Bow of Su instead of his sword. Vinz did an Heroic Charge on D6 and, with a combination Feint/Power Blow/thrust, plunged his Cavalry sword into the demon's heart. Leif then shot it in the chest (he got to use the new rules for quick shooting bows for the first time, which, if you combine them with a Fast-Draw, allows you to shoot an arrow every second). Reema finally casted some kind of pain spell on it.

Mushamee then moved to attack D3, hurting it a lot. D2 attacked Rufus, who blocked the chain with his huge honking shield. D3 attacked Mushamee, who dodged. D1 attacked Leif, who also dodged. D5 and D6 tried to pick on Vinz, but he parried and dodged them. D7 hit Reema, splattering her small body all over the ground and killing her instantly (she completely fumbled her survival roll and had no luck). Vinz finished D5 with a slashing Power Blow. Leif quick-shot D7, hitting it in the torso.

Mushamee finished D3 with another combination slash/slash/thrust to vitals. Since there was no demon left behind him and Mushamee, Rufus abandoned his role of protector and Heroic Charged D2, hitting it in the vitals with a combination Feint/Attack. He was in turn hurt by D2, but his armor of Su absorbed the majority of the damage. D1 attacked Mushamee, but he blocked. D5 attacked Vinz, who blocked. D7 attacked Leif, who dodged. Vinz ran to D5 and hit it in the vitals with another Power Blow - and as a result of a critical failure on its defense, the demon fell down on the ground. Leif quick-shot D7 again, but it dodged.

Mushamee did an Heroic Charge on D1, only hitting it once. Rufus attacked D2, but his attack was dodged and he got hit a second time. D1 attacked Mushamee, who blocked. D7 tried to hit Recnam's body on the ground, but got a critical failure and unreadied his weapon. Vinz impaled D5 in the vitals a second time, severely hurting it. Realizing his Bow skill was not high enough for a quick-shot in the vitals, Leif dropped it and fast-drew the Sword of Necros, with which he impaled D7 (not enough to kill it, but enough to make him vulnerable).

Mushamee attacked D1, but only wounded it. Seriously hurt, Rufus went all-out defense against D2. D1 and D2 attacked their respective enemy, but both their attacks were blocked. D5 got on its knees. D7 re-readied its chain. Vinz hit D5 with a power blow to the brain, killing it. Leif made a combination Rapid Strike/Deceptive Attack on D7 and cut it in two.

Mushamee was finally able to kill D1. Rufus made a second attack on D2, hurting it seriously, and then blocked its attack. Vinz ran around D2 and killed it with a thrust to the vitals (to make sure it was vulnerable) and a Power Blow to the torso. He then slowly sit on the ground to wait for the end of the fight (he was at -9 FP and -2 HP).

At this point, the only demon left was the one wrestling with Petr. Seeing the situation, the vampire rolled away while it was busy getting back on its feet, which allowed Mushamee to run all the way back from the very opposite end of the battlefield and disemboweled it in a matter of seconds.

Even with the death of the last demon, our situation was still precarious. Given our particular condition, we had to come up with a precise plan for our healing. Rufus first checked Recnam's body and (serendipitously) found a set of four healing potions the priest's kleptomaniac hand had stolen from Kaeso. Leif was not really hurt, but needed a minute between each healing. Being in negative HP and FP, Vinz was unable to do any exercise, so he had to be brought back before he could recuperate his fatigue. Rufus was in negative HP, and so was Recnam. Mushamee and Petr were fine.

Our entire plan relied on the guess that moving one yard per second (the equivalent of taking multiple step maneuvers) would be enough to eliminate the energy build-up effect (which we quickly proved was the case). Since Vinz could not really move without passing out, Mushamee and Rufus would have to carry him on Rufus' shield, kinda like the village chief in Asterix. To do that, Rufus had to be able to move freely, so Vinz used the last of his gem's energy to cast Major Healing on him. Leif would carry Recnam, and Petr, Reema's corpse. The first healing of Leif would go to Vinz to put him back to full health, then the assassin would drink one or two of the healing potions to get his FP back in the positive so he could start his breathing exercises. Leif would then be able to heal the others over maybe an hour, with Vinz replenishing him in energy as needed.

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Chapter 222 - Roman Hell

Sometimes in the month of Desyat, 1002.

Fortunately, our plan for healing without being zapped went without a hitch. Leif fully healed Vinz, who then drank the three potions of healing left and started on his breathing exercises. The barbarian let Recnam drained him, then proceeded to heal himself. Finally, once fully recovered, Vinz gave some fatigue back to Leif.

Once that was done, we walked for another couple of minutes until Vinz detected a new threat. In the distance, Leif saw a small, vaguely familiar humanoid shape move from behind one column to another. As we got closer, we spotted more of them and saw that they were freaks, the little guys we met in Ruinas' pyramid with the really troublesome habit of exploding when they die. Before we had time to take a good formation, they charged us (they were extremely quick). There was, if I remember correctly, 16 of them, and we spent pretty much the rest of the session fighting them.

Our first tactic was to stay mobile and use a combination of stepping back and hitting them with a great lunge (attack with reach 2 using one fatigue point). But we soon found a major problem when Mushamee destroyed the first one: not only did it explode (causing no real damage because of our armor), but it also projected bones fragments all around, inflicting two dices of cutting damage to anyone not under cover (of course, the freaks themselves were immune to this damage). Both Vinz and Mushamee got wounded.

We then switched to another tactic where we tried to push the bastards away from us, and let those with long weapons (Leif and Recnam) kill them from afar. But that proved a bust too because we didn't have the necessary numbers to form an efficient formation and we were not able to push them far enough to stop them from swarming us. As a result, Leif and Recnam had no real occasion to kill them before they ran back in melee range - and none of them were getting killed. Finally, we realized that our only real shot was to just kill them right where they were and suffer the damage.

Fortunately, those guys were not very good with their weapons, and were not that tough. They only had a body strength of 8, although they had Striking ST 18 (which is probably the minimum for any of Sean's supernatural creature). Although they were immune to each other's damage, their body still provided cover, so we deliberately attacked those who's fragments could reach the smallest number of people. Also, our armor was usually good enough to absorb all of the explosion damage and most of the fragmentation. Leif and Rufus' torso armors were simply too good (DR 9 and 10 respectively). Vinz's was also very good (DR 8), and he also discovered he could use his Parry Missile Weapon skill (at -5) to parry the fragments. Recnam went completely unarmed, mostly because of his special shield who gave him an additional DR 5 against demonic creatures over DR 5 from his armor.

Once we adopted our final tactic, the fight went pretty quickly, with us killing two or three of them every round. The only two of us who ended up seriously wounded were Petr and, strangely, Mushamee. For Petr, it was his own fault as he decided that since he was so much stronger than the freaks, he would simply slammed them down to the ground. Unfortunately, one of the freaks got a critical success on his defense and made HIM fall down. Three freaks quickly surrounded him and hacked him repeatedly with their curved swords - lucky for him, as a vampire, that he could not die from a metal wound. As for Mushamee, he just got incredibly unlucky with the fragmentation damage, as he was systematically hit with enough force to overcome his DR of 7 (Sean was constantly rolling 10, 11 or 12 on two dices). But even that was not enough to bring him down, and he ended up killing the most freaks of the group.

The creatures got their revenge on the General later, however. Once the fight was over, Vinz and Mushamee, as the only ones who had been hit by bone fragments, both had to make Disease resistance rolls at HT-6. Vinz made it easily, as with his HT of 13, +2 for Metabolism Control and +8 for Resistant to Metabolism Hazard, he was still rolling at 17 or less. But Mushamee, with no special resistance and having used his Luck not that long before, failed miserably. He was suddenly overwhelmed with nausea and felt unconscious in a matter of seconds. Rufus took a good look at him and saw that he had been infected by some kind of strange disease. Recnam, with his knowledge of diagnosis and occultism, said he believed there was a little freak now growing inside the general's body, just beside his heart.

Leif wanted to try to heal him immediately, but realized he didn't had enough energy. So we decided to let Vinz tried a Cure Disease first; by remembering the spell with Wild Talent, even with Mushamee's Magic Resistance of 5, there was still an 11 or less chance of succeeding, and the cost was only four FPs. Vinz needed ten minutes of concentration to cast it, however, so we loaded Mushamee on Rufus' disk, with the Informatore and Petr in charge of carrying it. Leif told Petr to drain him (Leif) and get some of his HP back, but the vampire explained that the return in HP for draining blood was just not worth it; he was so hurt right now that even with completely draining Leif to the point of killing him, he would only reach the point where he would not be at half move and dodge. Since we needed Petr able to walk right now, Vinz gave some fatigue back to Leif which he used in turn to heal Petr - fortunately, Petr had at least 20 HP, so each point of fatigue Leif spent gave back four HPs to the vampire.

We walked for the next 10 minutes, with Leif using the time to prepare his next healing. Finally, Vinz was ready and casted his spell on Mushamee. It worked. Rufus immediately felt the strange energy emitting from the little freak dissipate. Mushamee immediately woke up, just in time to throw up parts of the little creature on the ground. He then slipped off the shield and furiously and repeatedly stomped on it.

Now it was Vinz's time to get on the shield to recuperate his fatigue. We walked slowly for the next 30 minutes, with the assassin giving fatigue to Leif so that he could almost completely heal Mushamee and still have enough FP for later. Vinz also got all of his fatigue back.

The wide corridor finally ended in a big blue arch ornately dressed with putrefied flesh and bones. The middle of the arch was covered by a kind of membrane that was constantly opening and closing, as if it was the ass of a gigantic smurf. Rufus that he felt we were at the end of the road, and that on the other side of that arch was the demon we had to face.

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Chapter 223 - Roman Hell - Roma

Sometime in the month of Desyat, 1002.

We stepped through the ass-shaped arch and came out in a room dressed in a roman fashion, with tables filled with food and wine, chairs, small columns, etc. Looking at the room with his special vision, Rufus could see that nothing was at it seems. Vinz inspected it and found a little gong standing on a pedestal. He picked the mallet that was just lying beside it and hit it one time.

A small man clothed in the roman style soon appeared and said he had a deal for us. However, it only concerned the living, so he flicked his wrist and both Petr and Reema's body disappeared. When we asked him where they went, he said he had no idea; he knew how to banish unliving things from his realm, but had no idea where they went.

Going back to his proposition, he said straight up he was a powerful Demon (I'll spell it with a capital D just to distinguish him from the other demons below) who wanted our soul, but was willing to offer us a way out in the form of a series of five one-on-one gladiatorial fights against five different demons of his choosing. In each fight, if our guy wins, he is sent back to Roma; if he loses, he has to stay here and work for the Demon for all eternity. We were free to chose who would fight which demon, based on the short description he would tell us.

Having no leverage here, we accepted the challenge. Satisfied, the Demon warned us that his demons would cheat like hell, so we were welcomed to do the same. The only description he would tell us of the five demons were that one was strong, one was fast, one was multitude, one was magical, and one was elemental. The fights would happen one after the other, and in the order he had just given us. After some discussion, we came up with the following program:

• Leif vs. Strong
• Rufus vs. Fast
• Mushamee vs. Multitude
• Vinz vs. Magical
• Recnam vs. Elemental

The Demon warned us that if our guy came out the winner, he would instantly be transported back to Roma, so if we had any preparations to do, we better do them now. He also said that we were welcome to bid on the winner of each fight, including our own; for each win, we get a free "soul" (whatever that means). But if we lose even once, not only can we not leave, we will also be tortured here for all eternity.

The amount of preparation was minimal. In the chance that Recnam would have to fight a Fire elemental, Rufus lended him his Salamander Amulet; and Vinz hypnotized himself to get +2 to his Will. The only other thing we did was to distribute some of our equipment among the group to make sure everyone was as unencumbered as possible. Once that was done, we told the Demon we were ready. One of the walls disappeared, revealing an arena surrounded by some kind of transparent material. Its ground held many obstacles like slimes, traps, and, right in the center, a big hole whose bottom was filled with lava.

Before the first fight started, the Demon asked if we were willing to bet. We all did, on Leif. The barbarian was then immediately teleported at one end of the arena. On the other end appeared an 8'-tall blue orichalcum golem wielding a gigantic club. As Leif would soon find out, this thing had DR 20 everywhere, and a boatload of hit points. Although it was probably stronger than Leif, it was fortunately not as good. After hitting it a couple of times and having to use a karma CP to avert a critical failure on one of his defense rolls, Leif decided to go for the golem's legs, hitting each one and using the draining power of his sword both times to make sure they were crippled. The golem fell to the ground and ended up stuck in a sitting position for the rest of the fight, unable to move and severely impaired on his attacks and defenses. The rest was just a question of hitting the golem again and again and again, until it finally disintegrated. Leif instantly disappeared.

Next fight was Rufus against the fast demon. A funny moment happened when the Demon asked us if we wanted to bet, and we all decided not too - except for Rufus, of course, who bet on himself. That made him pretty pissed off. :) He was then teleported in the arena. On the other side appeared a naked woman with feline features wielding a pair of big Kali knives attached to her forearms. Acting first, she literally ran from her end of the arena to Rufus' and attacked him with a pair of vicious slashes.

It quickly became apparent that Rufus was pretty much outmatched. This demon was some kind of martial arts expert, extremely fast, incredibly skilled (even Rufus' feint of 29 was not enough to hit her consistently), and with abilities like Extra Attack and Power Blow (although not instantaneous). The only things Rufus had for him was a torso armor so good that the demon was not able to penetrate it with normal attacks, and of course karma points to spend to save his ass - and an extraordinary run of critical successes toward the end. When she saw that her attacks were not powerful enough to go through Rufus' torso armor, the demon went instead for one of his legs, crippling it in with a Dual Weapon Attack hit. This was also combined with a critical failure on Rufus' defense roll, which made him drop his Legendary sword to the ground. The demon then kicked it out of reach, forcing him to rely on his Spirit Knife. What basically saved his ass was first the subsequent spending of fatigue to fend off successful attacks, and a string of three critical successes in two rounds (using Rapid Strikes and Flurry of Blows), two of them naturals and one bought with karma points. Luckily for him, the demon was not that tough, and the third critical proved enough to kill it. Unfortunately, it happened before he had a chance of recuperating his Legendary Sword, and when he was sent back to our dimension, his sword also disappeared from the arena, forever out of our reach. In all, it cost Rufus his sword, a crippled leg, and two karma points to survive (remember he had none left from before entering hell, so they all went into transforming him further into a demon).

Third fight was Mushamee against the multitude. This time, of course, all those left decided to bet on the general. Seeing what had happened to Rufus' sword, the general took no chance and tied Demonslayer to his wrist. Once he was in the arena, he found out that his opponent was some kind of gelatinous blob wielding six flails. Mushamee quickly closed the gap, allowing the creature to attack him with its six weapons and forcing him to use his Luck to fend off a critical hit.

The tactical situation emerged after just this first round. Because of the nature of the demon's body, any hit on it caused at most two points of damage, three because of Mushamee's Higher Purpose. The creature's six attacks per round made the probability of a critical success pretty high, but since the flails were unbalanced weapons that can't attack and defend on the same turn, Mushamee's three attacks per round forced the demon to use half of his actions for defense. Also flails are hard to defend against, but lowering the number of attacks from six to three made that manageable. Basically, Mushamee just had to be patient and hit at often as possible, and soon the demon was history. And he only had to burn one karma point in all the fight to fend off a second critical success.

Next to last was Vinz, who also tied up NightFang to his wrist. After he and Recnam put their bet on him, he was teleported inside the arena. At the other end of the arena, he saw a floating specter waiting for him. The first thing he did was to cast Vigor+5 on himself, which brought his HT resistance to 20 (his Mental Strength was already 21). He then switched to his Spirit Knife and ran toward his adversary, which was concentrating, as fast as he could. When he reached it, he attacked with his usual combination Feint / Power Blow, but the specter Phased out of the way (ruining its concentration). It then casted two HT-resisted spells in a row, which Vinz resisted. The assassin switched to making two attacks, the first one a normal one to use up the Phase and a second one with Power Blow, but since he couldn't Feint, its dodge was still high enough to not get hit. It casted a couple of spells to glue Vinz in place; the assassin resisted the first one, but got caught in the second one. But no problem, on his next turn he broke free with a Power Blow, then switched to a third tactic and used the whole second to fully Feint the demon. The specter casted another spell, which Vinz resisted. Then Vinz came back with two attacks, the first a normal one against which the specter Phased, and a Power Blow which the specter tried to dodge - at -13. It failed, and was instantly killed by 37 points of cutting damage. Vinz instantly disappeared, the first that did not had to use karma points.

Finally, it was time for Recnam to step into the arena. His enemy was an elemental demon who was randomly changing its element from turn to turn. Recnam immediately asked his Father for help, asking him to render his Scythe deadly against his enemies. Instantly, he felt his weapon changed, as if it was becoming denser. Also, the usually black blade was now emitting an ominous glow. The Elemental demon approached him, changed into fire form, and shot a big fireball. Recnam was not quick enough to get out of its way, but fortunately for him, the Salamander amulet protected him from all damage. He slashed at the elemental, but it Phased out of the way. The demon switched to air and caught Recnam in a Whirlwind, throwing him some yards back. To deal with the Phasing problem, Recnam immediately adopted the tactic he had seen Vinz used and took a full turn to Feint. When the elemental moved toward him, he slashed at it two times and killed it instantaneously with something like 30 points of slashing damage (his Scythe was doing double damage against it, and he rolled pretty high). Recnam immediately disappeared.

We all materialized back in the forest around the dead tree. Petr was there, waiting, as was the dead body of Reema. Not surprisingly, Kaeso was not waiting for us anymore. We also noticed that Rufus' helmet was not exactly fitting his head anymore, and when he removed it, we saw a small set of horns protuding from his forehead. After healing the informatore's leg, Leif transformed into a crow and flew back to Kaeso's workshop (carrying a bundle of clothes to change) - but not before stopping at a merchant to buy a boatload of food. Back at the warehouse, Kaeso told him that we had been gone for more than a week, and he had just grown tired of waiting for us.

They took the disk and went back to get the others. When we were all safely in the warehouse, we finally had time to eat a bit. Rufus asked Kaeso about the possibility of making a potion of Resurrection for Reema. The engineer said it could theoretically be possible, but he needed to do some serious research and would need costly ingredients to make his tests. Rufus basically gave him all the money he had, around $40,000.00, and used his Serendipity to make sure that Kaeso would have most of the ingredients needed in his lab.

The date was now between the 10th and 15th of Desyat (I have to ask our GM). We still had between four and five weeks before we had to meet with Black Adolf.

(OOC: our little trip in hell ended up pretty worthwhile in terms of character points as each point we earned while there was doubled on our exit. Also, we got a bonus of one CP for each soul we had won in the betting stage. I don't know how the others fared, but Vinz, for example, ended up with a total bonus of 15 points. Of course, we all have this transformation thing coming up, so most of these points will stay unspent until then. The only one who got new disadvantages following our little trip, because he was the only one who's point reserve went into negative, was Rufus, with a set of horns and Nightmares about the experience.)

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Chapter 224 - Roma

Desyat 10, 2008

Continuing the conversation we were having about creating an elixir to bring Reema back from the dead, Kaeso made some calculations and announced that the total cost of the ingredients would come at about $12,000.00, a price Rufus and Vinz decided to split amongst them. The engineer said that as for the ingredients, he would probably be able to get most of them through his contacts, with the exception of a half dozen relatively fresh human brains which we would have to procure ourselves.

After he was gone to see his providers, we talked about where we could find fresh brains at this time of the night without being seen. Since most of the dead ended up cremated, it soon became apparent that the only suitable place would be the Temple of Necros, where bodies were prepared for this process. But discretion was still of primary importance; even if Recnam was the Patriarch of the church, being caught would certainly cause a lot of problems socially speaking, and could even cause the church to be shunted by the population. Recnam said he knew of a secret passage that could take us to the preparation room without being seen. Rufus and Vinz decided to accompany him, while Leif and Mushamee preferred to simply go to sleep.

Rufus grabbed a big jar for the brains, then the three men left for the Temple of Necros. Since it was the middle of the night, they were able to make it without being seen. Using Recnam's secret passage, they made their way through a dark corridor, and then to the preparation room. The room was completely dark, so Rufus lighted his lamp and put a cloth on it (which was enough for Recnam since he has Night Vision). We inspected the room, and (serendipitously) found that all of its six tables were occupied by a corpse. Vinz examined the main door and found that since it was opening toward the corridor, there was no way to jam it in a way that was not detectable from the outside. Since Recnam needed at least 10-15 minutes to perform the removal of each brain and the sowing back of the cranial top to hide it, we decided he would perform the procedure inside the secret corridor. This would minimize the time spent in the room, and with the secret door closed and Vinz casting an Avoid spell on it, there was almost no chance that anybody coming into the room could find us out, even if they noticed that one of the cadavers was gone. The worst they could do was raise the alarm, giving us enough time to leave the temple and dodge any problem.

Fortunately, no one came to disturb us. For each cadaver, Recnam was able to remove their brains intact using his Surgery skill, and to hide the procedure using Mortician. After approximately two hours of work, the six brains were safely in the jar, the six cadavers back in the preparation room, and we were on our way back to Kaeso's warehouse. Once there, Recnam and Vinz decided to go to sleep (with the assassin using Healing Slumber on himself to get back the hit points he was missing), while Rufus decided to wait for Kaeso's return.

The engineer finally arrived at dawn, as Mushamee and Leif were waking up. As Rufus was giving him the brains, he warned him that even with all the right ingredients, creating the potion would be extremely hard. For any other alchemist it would be downright impossible, as the elixir had to be administered less than an hour after death to be useful and Reema had been dead much longer than that, but he had an idea how to modify the already hypothetical recipe to make it work after such a long time - at a cost of an even greater penalty than usual on his Alchemy roll.

Mushamee and Leif had absolutely no interest in watching necromancy in action, so after Leif fully healed Mushamee, they both decided to go the Temple of Bacchus for breakfast.

Kaeso worked intensely for the next three hours, with Rufus acting as spectator. After all this time, it all came down to a simple Alchemy roll, as he was dropping the liquid in Reema's mouth, with the penalties totaling -19. Even with Kaeso's skill of 26, that only gave him an effective skill of 7. But using his Luck, he actually rolled a 5; a jolt went through Reema's body, and she started coughing. With his special vision, Rufus was literally able to see her (now demonic?) soul returning to her. She opened her eyes, immediately fixed Kaeso's and simply declared that he had brought her back. She then sat up and started moving around, looking at all the people awake or asleep and giving her usual cryptic commentaries. It was definitely her, only a little more freaky than before.

Soon, everyone was up except for Rufus who decided it was time to go to sleep. Around a good lunch that Leif had brought and cooked, we started discussing our next steps, only to decide to keep to our original plan of going back to Tenosia to deal with Black Adolf (and Vinz to marry Locla), go back to the Imperial Library in Kapital to try to find the book-gate, come back to Roma for a study and training break, and then go to Tecla. Halfway during the lunch, a young man came to announce that since we had missed his last party due to uncontrollable circumstances, Officius was requesting our presence to another party that would take place the same night. Since we were in a good mood, we all decided to go, except for Kaeso who said he did go to the last one and had some work to do. Reema said she also wanted to go, so we decided to take her along, but Rufus warned her that he would keep an eye on her.

We spent the rest of the afternoon getting some new clothes. Vinz and Rufus bought some nice but relatively common stuff. Mushamee spent a couple thousands of coins on extremely luxurious clothes and ostentatious jewels. Of course Recnam didn't had to buy anything; he just returned to the Temple of Necros where he was furnished with a new set of nice robes and some jewels. As for Leif, he bought the most lavishly faked barbarian outfit he could find, which consisted of an expensive fur loincloth and a fur helmet with horns, and completed his costume with his Tenosian Jaguar cloak.

Just after nightfall, we decided it was time to go. Just before leaving, Kaeso came to see us with a bottle full of liquid. He said that Officius' party were always dull, so he invited us to taste his new distilled brandy. Mushamee, Leif and Rufus each took a good quaff, instantly noticing that the content of alcohol was probably high enough to make you drunk very quickly. Before we could stop him, Kaeso gave the bottle to Reema who also took a good gulp. Rufus immediately wrested the bottle from her hands, but it was too late - with her inexperience with alcohol and her really small body, it was enough to make her quite drunk. We discussed the possibility of leaving her with Kaeso, but decided that having a drunk Reema by herself in a lab full of alchemical material was probably a really bad idea.

We left for Officius' place, where we were greeted by a lot of rich nobles, senators and civil servants. Mushamee, Recnam and Leif started to mingle, while Vinz found a relatively quiet spot to relax and Rufus was taking care of Reema, who in her drunken state was even more direct with her remarks.

Some time passed, then Rufus, who was talking with someone, realized the little girl was not around him anymore. He searched the house, but wasn't able to find her. Finally, he heard some commotion coming from the back court and ran outside. He found the little girl lying asleep beside a strange man who was talking very loudly and attracting a lot of attention. Sensing a lot of supernatural energy coming from him, the Informatore used his special vision and realized it was none other than Akulbashkat, the Demon Lord with whom we had made a deal to get out of the liches's hell! He signaled Mushamee, who followed him, and ran to pick up the little girl while Mushamee engaged the Demon Lord in conversation.

Rufus carried Reema away from the party, but got freaked out when she started talking to him while still asleep. She said that the evil part of her was now speaking, and that it was she who summoned the Demon to make things more fun for us. Rufus tried to wake her up so that she could banish him, but his effort proved ineffective.

Meanwhile, Akulbashkat greeted Mushamee as if he was a good friend, but at the same time started telling embarrassing facts about him to the audience. He used his powers of illusion to make himself look and talk like Emperor Vasili, which immediately caused quite a roar. He then proceeded to humiliate Mushamee by giving him the order to get naked and using his illusions to make him appear so to the others, probably in a very unflattering way. After quietly saying to the general that he was planning on enjoying his full hour in our world, he walked away, going from group to group, insulting people, telling crude jokes at their expense, and generally acting as an asshole. He approached Recnam and proceeded to make fun of his and even frightening the people who were with him, enough that they ran back inside the house. Recnam decided to follow them, acting afraid just like they were.

Sometimes during all this Rufus carried Reema to Vinz and asked him if he could make her sober. Vinz, who was thoroughly enjoying seeing the social lives of Mushamee and Recnam, and even Vasili, going down the drain, said he didn't know how to do that. But when it started getting really nasty, he decided to wake her up using the Awaken spell. It was hard because she was basically drugged, but it worked. But it proved for nothing, as she couldn't remember what she had done exactly to summon the Demon, and knew he was just too powerful to be banished.

Finally, Mushamee went to talk to Officius in private and explained the situation to him. The civil servant admitted that there was no way this was the real Vasili, so something had to be done. They together improvised a little skit where a guard would come to Officius' place and announced that both Vasili and Mushamee were needed back in the palace immediately. They would then use a wagon cart, in which Mushamee would try to destroy the demon.

The plan was set in motion. When asked to leave, "Vasili" showed himself surprisingly cooperative, but as he was sitting in the cart, he turned to Mushamee, said he was happy to have been able to so thoroughly wreck our social lives, then simply disappear. Mushamee returned to the house and informed the others that the Demon was gone. But even then, it was easy to see that we had some real problems. People were looking at both Mushamee and Recnam in a strange way, as if they were some kind of social outcasts, or even laughing at them discreetly when they were not looking. Vinz decided it was time to try to mend things up, so he went upstairs to meet Officius and tell him his plan.

Half an hour later, "Vasili" returned to the party, more obnoxious and rude than ever. He slowly made his way out to the court, openly inviting people to follow him. Once in the court, he suddenly made a 180 degrees turn to face the crowd, and in a grand gesture, ripped his disguise away, revealing the face of an old man. He then changed his voice and presented himself as Marcus Nobilus, prestidigitator extraordinaire, and the best impersonator in the entire world. He then spent the next ten minutes doing magic tricks - including a stunt where he made it appear as if he was showing his entire set of dildos up his ass, one at a time - until a bunch of young teenage boys came out of the house carrying white floating drapes, then ran around him in circle. He used the cover of the drapes to make himself invisible, after which the boys just stopped and crouched on the ground, letting the drapes fall slowly to the floor and revealing Nobilus's disappearance. As the audience loudly applauded, Vinz quickly made his way back to Officius' quarters where he got rid of his second layer of disguise and returned to the party.

That in itself was not enough to completely resolve the situation, but it did give Mushamee and Recnam the occasion to mend it up pretty good with the use of appropriate social skills. What it did was get Vasili completely off the hook, as no one had any reason to suspect that the two Vasilis were not the same person. Mushamee played it up as diplomatically as he could, as if it was just a skit we had prepared well in advance, but he was also acting a little hurt that some people had actually believed some of the ignominious things the impersonator had said about him. As for Recnam, he played it the only way he could, using his insane Intimidation skill to say that yes, it was just a joke, and no, nothing that the false Vasili was said was true, and they better be sure about it because otherwise it would be an affront to the Church of Necros.

The party lasted another couple of hours. By the time it ended, we were pretty confident that we had satisfactorily solved the situation, so it was time to go back.

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Chapter 225 - Roma - Tenosia

Desyat 11, 1002

Back at Kaeso's place after the party at Officius - and our little meeting with Akulbashkat the Demon Lord -, we went straight to bed to get a good night's sleep.

Late morning, we all woke up to get some breakfast and prepare for our trip to Tenosia in the afternoon. As we were eating, Rufus noticed that Reema was not with us. We looked for her for a while, until Leif admitted his Granddad had talked to the Serpent Queen and convinced her to take Reema to her realm to train her until she was able to use her powers more responsibly.

We spent the rest of the morning preparing for the trip, with Leif buying a humongous quantity of food. We left Roma around noon, and for the next seven days, flew east on Kaeso's disk.

Desyat 18, 1002

We arrived in Tenosia and landed directly in the Imperial Palace. While we were changing clothes before going to our respective family, someone, I don't remember who, asked Kaeso how much time he would need to finish preparing the Inquisitors' device. To our great surprise, he said it shouldn't be more than one, one-and-a-half day. The only thing he needed to complete it was the equivalent of a million coins in gold. Unfortunately, we had nowhere near this amount of gold on us, so we had no choice but to ask Hyppolite about it.

It was thus that a little later, Mushamee and Vinz presented themselves in from of the Queen. After greeting her husband appropriately, she listened to our demand for gold. She was particularly interested by this mechanism that was supposed to make us "complete", although she couldn't help but feel a little skeptical about it. Mushamee related to her our latest meeting with the Inquisitors' little recording, and Kaeso's subsequent investigation of the documents they had left us. After a while, she finally relented and decided to give us the gold, all the while hoping that it would be worth it.

Once that was settled, Vinz came forward to talk about his real reason to be here with Mushamee; since we had no idea what the transformation implied, he wanted to marry Locla before it went on, on the very next day if possible. Hyppolite said there shouldn't be any problem, and that she was actually glad to do it as it would be a first step in bringing Tecla, the only important country on this world still neutral, on our side. Since all diplomatic obstacles had been removed when Vinz was made an honorary citizen of Tecla, all that was missing was Locla's approval (not to marry, she had already accepted, but to do it the next day).

Vinz left the two spouses alone to celebrate their reunion more informally, and went directly to Locla's quarter to explain her the situation and make his proposal. She accepted his offer.

The rest of the day and early the next morning were spent in rushed preparations. Kaeso, having received the promised gold from Hyppolite, finished the device, but it was decided to wait until the day after the wedding before using it. Vinz spent a good amount of money on new clothes and a big necklace for his wife, while promising himself to buy her something more practical as soon as he had the time.

The ceremony, led by Queen Hyppolite, was held on the afternoon of Desyat 19. Vinz was prominently wearing the bracelet that Spirit Anaconda had given him, while Leif, as a member of the Stone Jaguar squad, was wearing his ceremonial Jaguar cloak. Since preparation time had been minimal, the ceremony was quick and without too much fanfare, although the reception after it was nice. Sometimes during the evening, the new couple retreated to their room to celebrate privately.

Desyat 20, 1002

The next morning, it was all back to work, as we convened in Kaeso's shop to discuss the transformation process. Kaeso started by telling us what he understood from the Inquisitors' document. According to him, the Inquisitors had "programmed" 12 different archetypes into their devices for the six of us. He read us the following text that they had left behind:

Leif	Strong, Scout, Healer
Vinz	Wizard, Stalker
Recnam	Priest, Demagogue
Mushamee	General, Champion
Rufus	Athlete, Guardian, Investigator

Once that was settled, Kaeso showed us the contraption he had built using the strange armor we had collected from one of the Inquisitors' mansions, the many alchemical ingredients he had collected (including the gold), and the documents given to us in Roma. He then invited us to get into the armor one after the other, while he would try to control the changes with his Weird Science skill. As he explained to us, the result would be either really bad or really good; there was no middle ground. What it came down to is that for each of us, he would have to make a Weird Science roll (on which we could use our Luck). In case of success, we would receive bonus character points based on the level of success of the roll (doubled in case of a critical success), and would be able to buy new abilities. In case of failure... well, fortunately, we never got to find out.

So we all went in, one after another, all of us using their Luck to make sure everything went well. Kaeso even rolled a critical success on Leif's turn (to no one's surprise, since Bonnie seems to be as lucky as Leif).

The rest of the session was spent out-of-character. Sean gave us pieces of paper listing, for each part, the attributes, advantages and skills on which we could spend all of our unspent points. We spent the last hour of game time doing so.

I don't know in detail what each of us took, but here are the things that became evident pretty quickly:

• Leif: raised his Strength to 30(!) and bought a couple of useful skills like Power Blow and Breath Control.

• Rufus: bought the Mind Probe ability. I think that was all as he had less unspent points than the others, having spent something like 10 points the week before to make his Psychometry working without having to touch the object inspected.

• Recnam: Blessed, the second level of Luck, and at least one new path of magic.

• Mushamee: bought a second Extra Attack, raised his Move to 14 (to be able to move 2 yards as part of a "step-and-" maneuver even while lightly encumbered), and bought some cinematic skills like Power Blow and Flying Leap.

• Vinz: second level of Luck, a second level of Wild Talent (Magic Spells Only) (which brought his total number of Wild Talent levels to three), two additional Fatigue Points, and the Warrior's Way path of Magic and its complementary skill Intimidation (this path contains really interesting spells for a warrior, like Grace, Might, Shield, Armor, Great Haste, and many others).

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Chapter 226 - Tenosia

Desyat 20, 1002

(Now, if you know Sean, you should be able to guess what happened in this session. :) New fighting abilities at the end of a session always mean a big fight in the next one to test them.)

As the transformation process came to an end, Vinz suddenly felt danger as Rufus warned us that he could feel a portal opening right in the middle of the room. We had no armor on, and Leif was also without weapon. Vinz reminded everyone that we had been warned that the transformation could have big consequences (like Ruinas coming back), and it now looked as if we would have to deal with them.

Leif looked around him and found a long wooden pole lying against the far wall. He just had the time to go grab it, followed by Mushamee and Rufus, before a full squad of 25 Enduring troops materialized in the room, in heavy armor and wielding bolt casters (against which our armors would have been ineffective anyway). At the same time we heard a voice ordering the troops to kill anyone in the room, destroy the Palace, and bring back the Amazon Queen. Recnam and Kaeso decided to leave the room, leaving Vinz behind to guard the door. The Priest asked for Necros's help, who made him see through wall and changed his Scythe so that it could go through any non-organic material (making it effectively go through walls and ignore all armor). Vinz finished casting Great Haste on himself, then casted Shield +5.

Although the situation looked bleak at first, the entire fight lasted exactly eight seconds. Most of the starfish dudes concentrated on Rufus, Mushamee and Leif in the far corner, leaving seven of them to concentrate on Vinz and Recnam.

Recnam had a pretty easy time of it, as he was basically invisible to his enemy while still being able to attack them. His attacks were not total surprise, as the starfish men had some idea what he was capable of, but he was good enough to still take out two of them, leaving Vinz to deal with the five others.

Vinz was fully able to test how Great Haste could help. It allowed him to do stuff like All-Out Attacks followed by All-Out Defense (Dodge), which, added to his Shield +5, made him almost impossible to hit. His opponents simply could not keep him at bay as he could do a full Move, then a normal Power Blow attack. The only thing he couldn't use was Feint, but then his skill was high enough to use Deceptive Attacks instead. It took him less than five seconds to kill or knock out all his five opponents while being only hurt slightly.

On the other end of the room, Mushamee, Leif and Rufus were busy pushing back the assault of 18 starfish men. They were shot repeatedly at, with various levels of success; Mushamee, with his basic unmodified Dodge score at somewhere around 13-14, was just too quick to be hit. Rufus had to basically sacrifice his attacks and use All-Out Defenses to protect himself, but he still got hit a couple of time. As for Leif, he just stood there and took the damage, healing himself completely when he was almost down to his last hit points.

As for actually hurting the starfish men, as I said above, Rufus had to concentrate on defense, mostly to dodge the bolts, but also because the soldiers were intelligently staying a couple of yards away. But they were not far enough for Leif's long range stick and Mushamee's 2-yard step. And now with the general being able to make four attacks per round because of his two Extra Attacks (two at full skill and one as a Rapid Strikes), he was downing two enemies per turn. Leif had more problem hitting because the Endurings were pretty skillful, but since he didn't care about being hit, he was able to use All-Out Attacks (either double or determined) to boost his chances to hit; and whenever he connected, he literally sent his victim flying back a couple of yards, horribly wounded (if not outright knocked out or dead).

After five seconds of fighting, the three men had cleared the first rank of enemies and was moving on the second rank. At the same time, Vinz, who had finished off his own opponents, attacked its members from behind, killing three in a single seconds with shots to the brain.

Two seconds later, the last starfish man was killed. At this point, Leif, Rufus and Vinz were all at negative HT, having been hit by two or more bolts each. But we didn't had time to relax at all, as something big and metallic shimmered in existence, and we heard the same voice as before give the order to attack us while we were weak. The metallic being deposited some kind of device on the floor and turned toward us.

Vinz was just beside it, so he welcomed it with a Power Blow to the torso, causing a big gash in its armor to appear. But on its turn, one of the little stones he had attached to its body disappeared in a flash, and most of his gash had gone. Vinz deducted that those things were probably spell stones linked to some kind of big healing spells. The bad news was there were a lot of them. The good news was he could only use them on its own turn (contrary to, say, the protection talismans used by the starfish wizards), and the fact that they were healing a set amount of HP, not every damage.

The solution was evident: we had to do enough damage in one single turn to kill it. While Mushamee attacked it, the others spend the next second in preparation. Leif concentrated on Power Blow (!), Recnam moved into the room and aimed his Scythe, Rufus retreated (he knew he was out of his league on this one), and Vinz casted Strengthen Will +5 on himself and concentrated on a triple-ST Power Blow. On its turn, the thing healed itself again, although not from all the damage Mushamee had caused.

It was now time to act. Mushamee opened the ball with his four attacks, spending a point of fatigue on all of them to inflict more damage. Leif followed, making his Power Blow roll (at something like 8 or less, using his Luck), and with his ST 60, inflicted an awesome 9d of crushing damage! But even he was overshadowed by Vinz who, with ST 39 and Weapon Mastery, inflicted a total of 7d+14 points of cutting damage. That proved enough for even such a (we guessed) powerful creature, and it just tumbled to the ground, completely inert.

But it was still not over, as the device the creature had carried had started emitting some kind of strange noise. Kaeso, who during the fight had safely staid outside the room, came back in and instantly understood that this thing was about to explode, probably carrying with it the entire Palace and a good part of the city. He immediately produced from his potion belt (using all his Gizmos left) a couple of flasks of universal acid and poured their content on the device. The acid was so powerful that it almost instantly dissolved most of the device (thus rendering it ineffective), the floor, the floor of the room under it, the floor of the cellar under that, and finally the ground below (think the acid from the face-hugger in Alien). When it finally fizzled, it had left behind a pretty deep hole, maybe 50-60 yards deep.

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Chapter 227 - Tenosia - Starfish Dimension

Desyat 20, 1002.

The fight over, we had to wait for a while as Leif slowly recuperated enough fatigue to heal himself, after which he would be able to use his new Breath Control skill to get it back much more quickly and heal the others.

Since the situation was well in hand and Rufus couldn't feel any more buildup of energy, Mushamee decided to go inform his wife of the situation. As he was walking through the Palace, he couldn't help but notice that the place seemed somewhat deserted; more peculiarly, he couldn't see any Amazon. He eventually entered his wife's office just to find her pacing to and for, in the most furious mood. The moment she noticed him, she turned to face him and ordered him to go arrest Kaeso at once, and bring him to her for interrogation. Surprised, Mushamee asked her what the engineer had done to deserve this. She signaled him to follow her.

She led him up a couple of staircases and through a door, until they were standing on an outdoors balcony. But instead of the blue Tenosian sky and green surroundings, Mushamee could only see the strangely muted light and, a little past the city walls, the broken, stony ground of the starfish dimension! Hyppolite said she wanted Kaeso arrested for having caused the translocation of the entire city of Tenosia to the starfish dimension through the use of the Inquisitors' device. When asked about the other Amazons, she said she had to put them, as well as the two Legions, on patrol across the city, with strict orders to keep inside the city walls. Mushamee tried to calm her a bit, saying that even if Kaeso was ultimately responsible, he certainly didn't do it willingly. She said she would wait until he explained himself before torturing him, but she still wanted him arrested. Mushamee said he would take care of it, then left his wife and returned to Kaeso's lab.

He immediately explained the situation to the others. Kaeso put his hands in front of him and said it wasn't his fault, he had followed the instructions left by the Inquisitors to the letter. They never mentioned that such a thing would take place. Leif asked him if any of the text was missing. Yes, he said, three of the last chapters were missing, but then, any old book of magic was made of a bunch of pages loosely held together by ropes and rock plates, so having missing pages was nothing special, and to date, nothing bad had ever come out of it. He just assumed that would also be the case here.

With his Empathy, Mushamee could feel that the engineer was entirely sincere about the situation. But if the engineer was innocent, what did he think could have provoked such an event, and how could it have happened without us feeling it? Rufus confirmed two things: when he felt the gate opening initially, we were still in our dimension; and even he didn't felt anything when the translocation happened. So all we knew is that it happened sometimes during the ten seconds the fight took place. Kaeso wasn't sure, but he said it was probably linked to the Crystal Heart, which seemed to be some kind of energy storage.

Since we had no lead for now, Rufus decided to interrogate the four surviving starfish men using his new Mind Probe ability to see if they knew anything. The way it works is, he has to make a successful (resisted) Interrogation roll; if he succeeds, he can read the answer directly in their mind. No need for torture, and more importantly, no lying. And it works even if the subject is indomitable, Fanatic, or immune to pain.

He first tried to found out if they knew anything about the translocation. Their answer was, not only did they knew nothing about it, but for them, we were still in our dimension. He then tried to find out some strategic information, like their invasion plans, but it quickly became apparent that those guys were just grunts, not privy at all to the high-level decisions. Only wizards were.

Since it was the first time we could really interrogate starfish prisoners, we decided to use the occasion to get some tactical information. We learned that barring a direct intervention of their Dark Gods (about which Rufus tried to ask a question and barely resisted the resulting mental blast), their wizards could only transport a limited number of troops, of which the squad we just fought was a good representation, between dimensions, and only once in a while. Their particular Dark God had more than 80 legions under his control, half of them being regular troops and the other Endurings. We also learned that starfish men did not eat, drink or sleep, were asexual and did not reproduce; instead, they were created by the wizards, which made them almost like drones. They lived mostly to fight, and when no enemy was available, they had no problem fighting each other's armies.

The interrogation over, as Mushamee was busy finishing off the survivors, Rufus took a good look at the apparatus used by Kaeso in the Ritual and found that the table was still active in some way, as if it was waiting for something. There was a little red blinking button on its side. Rufus pressed it, and the translucent shape of Nicolai the XIVth appeared on top of it. In what was obviously a dictated message, he told us that now that we had gathered all the necessary troops and went through the Ritual of Perfection, it was time for the final stage of our campaign, the invasion of the starfish dimension. As the last things the Inquisitors would do for us, they have used all their power and alliances to move our armies for us; the rest was up to us. The shape finally bade us good luck, then disappeared. Rufus examined the table again and found it completely inert.

Wow, talk about a major fuck-up. Not only did we have absolutely no idea this would happen, but the "mighty" troops that came with us, i.e. the Amazons and Potnag's and Julianov's Legions, would not even be enough to repel a serious assault on the city, let alone conquer an entire dimension. We spent some time discussing how such a thing could happen, but there was just no way to be sure. All we could guess is that the information about this translocation was probably in the three missing chapters of the document. Now why were they missing? Did they fall by themselves, and a servant picked them up and threw them in the trash? Were they betrayed by the Harb? Or maybe they had an alliance with the Guardian (they did say in the initial message Kaeso read us that they had made a pact with some ungodly entity) who then betrayed them? There was no way of knowing.

The big question for now was, how could we return Tenosia to our world? We could only hope that the Inquisitors had selected an isolated place for the transfer, so that the starfish men would not immediately notice us and mount an assault. Just moving the people back would not be enough; Tenosia is a big and powerful city with plenty of resources, and its loss would be a terrible blow to our cause. Also, when we return, how will things be? We knew that time definitely goes much quicker here than in our dimension, so we were running the risk of completely missing our meeting with Black Adolf. What would he do then? Would he go on a conquering spree? Would we find our world, who we had spent so much time trying to unite to face the starfish menace, plunged in all-out war? It was clear that not only did we had to find a way to go back, but we had to do it as quickly as possible.

Recnam called the Serpent Queen to see if she had some information. Fortunately, she was still reachable. Unfortunately, she had no idea how the city could have been transferred without the universe literally unfolding. All she knew was that Kaeso was talking out of his ass when he said earlier that the Crystal Heart was responsible for it. It was some kind of energy reserve, yes, but only contained a tiny fraction of the energy needed to do such a deed. The only way it could have been used is if its energy had been used as a catalyst to reach another much, much greater source of energy somewhere. And according to her, only a god-like entity could have had the kind of energy necessary to perform such a feat.

At this point, Leif was back on his feet, and a lot of healing ensued. Hyppolite came down to join us. Mushamee explained to her that Kaeso was not responsible for the situation, and that in fact he could be the only one who had a chance to bring us back to our dimension. She was a little calmer at this time, so she decided to let it go... for now. Because of our situation, she was instituting some strict rules for security purposes: first, no one should be alone, especially Recnam or herself. Second, we had to be fully armed and armored at all time. Third, we were the only ones authorized to leave the city and search for a way out. Fortunately, because of the risk of a possible siege of Tenosia by Black Adolf's troops, she has been stockpiling food and water inside the city walls, enough to last 40 days. But that was a pretty strict upper limit, since there was no food or water anywhere in this dimension.

Before we left to get our armors, Mushamee asked Kaeso to go over the Inquisitors' manuscript another time to make sure he hadn't missed anything.

We all met on an outside balcony half an hour later to examine the situation. From our point of view, we could see that the transfer had taken not only the city, but the camps of the two Legions (which were now abandoned since the troops had been moved inside the city). Outside, we could see no trace of starfish men, which made us hope the Inquisitors WERE brilliant enough to send us to an isolated place where we could go unnoticed for a while.

Recnam proposed to go to the Bone Temple for now; since this was place consecrated to Necros, there was a possibility that he could still have access to his Father. Which proved the case - in fact, he realized that contrary to the first time we were here, he had no particular problem reaching Necros at all, even outside the Temple. His Father told him He was able to offer one wish for the entire city, and to chose wisely. After some discussion, Recnam decided that secrecy was more important than pure protection, so he asked his Father to shift the city underground. As he was finishing his sentence, the ground started to shake violently, then we could feel the city being lowered through the ground. When it was deep enough, a layer of rock reformed over it, effectively entombing it.

Leif took advantage of the presence of Necros to ask Him if Recnam could fuse his Rapier of Necros with his Spirit Knife so he would be able to have only one weapon that he could carry everywhere. Necros' answer was that Recnam did not have the ability to do that, but He did, and would be happy to do it. As a result, Leif ended up with what he called his Spiritual Rapier of Necros, the same 7' feet long sword embedded with little skulls, but with the additional abilities of being effective against insubstantial beings and being stored in the same external dimension as the Spirit Knives. The only characteristic it lost was the Knife's armor divisor (which would have been absurdly powerful on Leif's sword).

Once that was all done, we decided to leave the Temple and return to the Palace to spend a good night's sleep before going on our trek. Vinz said he would use the night to try and get some visions of our way back, if there was any.

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Chapter 228 - Starfish Dimension

Sometimes after Desyat 20, 1002

We all spent the next night peacefully, even Rufus. Before going to sleep, Vinz used his Oneiromancy to get a vision about a means of sending the entire city back to our own dimension. After rolling a critical success, he did not get a vision of a thing or place; instead, he got a feeling, a sensation of a type of energy that could help us. He didn't know where it was, but knew he would recognize it when he'll found it.

In the morning, he explained his dreams to the others and tried to describe the sensation as much as he could. Rufus then "accidentally" touched him, and without the assassin's knowledge (luckily for the Informatore), used his Mind Probe to get a real snapshot of the sensation.

After a little discussion with Hyppolite, we decided it was time to leave and start our search for the way out. A big problem we had was food and water; since there was no source for neither of them in this world, we had to bring with us everything we needed. Vinz said he could help with at least the water part, since one of his paths of magic, Way of the Deep, included the Create Essential Water spell. Since Essential Water is three times more efficient than normal water, by spending all his fatigue in one casting before leaving, he could create enough water to last us between five and six days. Then he could always cast it again as needed.

Kaeso quickly put together a big barrel that could hold all the water (if I recall, it was around 8 gallons), but when it came time for Vinz to cast the spell, he got a natural 4 and ended up with six times more water, enough for 32 days; normally, all this water would have fell on the ground and been, but since he had a critical success, he was able to keep control of it while Kaeso produced a bunch of two-gallon pouches to pick it up. In the end, we decided not to use the barrel at all and go exclusively with the pouches since they were a lot transportable and we could easily distribute them between ourselves according to our respective strength. After that, it was just a question of collecting 40 days of food to be carried by Leif, say goodbye to our respective mates, and leave.

Once outside, Recnam used his Divine Intuition to select which of eight general directions we should take, and we went on our way. We walked for many "days" (at least from our point-of-view since this place had no day-and-night cycle), taking extra precaution to hide all our wastes and garbage (since their discovery would have been a dead giveaway.

In the "morning" of the sixth or seventh day, Leif, with his telescopic vision, spotted some silhouettes in the distance. Fortunately (or serendipitously I should say), there was a small natural trench not far where we were able to hide. As the silhouettes got nearer, we recognized a group of five wizards, six warriors, and a single four-legged creature we had never seen before. It soon became apparent that the group was actually following the creature, who seemed to guide them in the general direction of Tenosia.

We could also see that they would pass near us, maybe 30-40 yards to our left. Since there was no real way to hide, we decided to intercept them. The plan was simple: Vinz would made Mushamee Invisible, then the general would make his way to starfish men stealthily. After a while, Vinz, Leif and Kaeso would shoot at the beast and/or the warriors, and Mushamee would use the confusion to hack the rest down (with his four attacks per round, he should be able to get past the damn wizards' seven talismans in two straight seconds).

Everyone got ready for the action. Vinz casted his spell on Mushamee (overcoming the general's Magic Resistance), who then made his way toward the starfish group while the others were preparing their ranged weapons. What we didn't expect was the beast's ability to feel Mushamee's presence from a distance; the moment it did, it just launched itself at the general. Fortunately for him, Leif was able to take it down with one arrow (just as Vinz miserably failed on his Zen Archery roll three times in a row and missed it). This in turn alerted the mages, and the warriors immediately moved between us and them. One of the wizards, maybe using a See Invisible spell, started pointing toward Mushamee. Vinz, Leif and Rufus got up and started running toward the group, but were stopped by a bunch of bolts. Mushamee reached the warriors and killed one of them with a series of attacks. Another one was shot down by Kaeso. The wizards, who had retreated a bit from the rest of the group, started casting something. On the next turn, Mushamee killed another two warriors, while Kaeso shot down another one. The wizards finished their spell and all rose ten yards in the air. Mushamee finished off the last warrior, then ran toward the wizards. But on their turn, they flew another twenty yards away, partly up and partly towards where they'd come from.

Because they were out of reach of our melee weapons and we could not shoot them quickly enough to exhaust their protection talismans before they got out of range, Recnam had no choice but to call on the power of Necros to stop them (even though it would certainly attract unwanted attention). By that time, the wizards had reached their maximum speed and flew another 40 yards. Necros did the same thing he'd done before when we had fought those 400 wizards in Indistan, he simply removed all the magical energy around them. Since they were flying magically, they had no real forward momentum, so they immediately stopped and started falling to the ground. They fell for a good three seconds, giving some time to Mushamee to close the gap. When they hit the ground, two of them were instantly killed, while another was knocked out. The last two, grievously wounded, tried to stand up, but missed their HT rolls and collapsed.

Mushamee reached them, followed soon by Leif and Rufus. Vinz, who was still far behind, decided to wait for Recnam to join him. Suddenly the assassin got a sensation of immediate danger and turned around, just in time to see the creature we all thought was dead spring toward Recnam's back. He just had the time to push the priest out of the way, as the creature sailed past them. It landed some five yards away, then turned around for another attack. Vinz waited for it. After a running start of a couple yards, it jumped into the air again, but just before hitting Vinz, it seemingly disappeared. Vinz instinctively turned toward Recnam, saw the creature reappeared just in front of the priest, and sliced open its belly with a Power Blow, spilling its gut on the ground and killing it for good.

We gathered around the three surviving wizards, and Rufus proceeded to interrogate them with Mind Probe. It proved harder than with the soldiers in Tenosia, as they had a much higher Will. Still, he was able to find out the following information:

• They, like at least 80 other patrols, had been sent out to investigate the powerful disturbance they had all felt some time ago. To do that, they were using those strange creatures that were able to sense and track any supernatural disturbance not of this world.

• They also confirmed the number of 80 Legions previously mentioned by the soldiers in Tenosia.

• They said that any powerful source of energy could only be found in one of their big cities.

• The reason they had to limit themselves to seven talismans of protection had to do with some enchanting limit they could not go over.

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Chapter 229 - Starfish Dimension

Sometimes after Desyat 20, 1002

We followed the tracks for a long time. We soon found out that they were covering a conical area, as if to cover as much ground as possible, so by letting Kaeso use some triangulation, we were able to find the exact direction of their point of origin and make a beeline for it. The first day, we didn't meet any other patrol. On the second day, we saw one in the distance, but were able to move around it without being seen. On the third day, we didn't met anybody, but sometime in the afternoon, Leif was able to make out some kind of skinny spire that seemed to rise all the way up to the sky, but it was so far away that he couldn't see any detail. Since it was approximately in the same direction we were following, we decided to make it our immediate destination.

On the fifth day, we were near enough for Leif to make out some details, and what he found out was not to our likings at all. The "spire" was not a spire at all, but the trunk of a gigantic plant. We guessed it could be the (or even more frightening, a) Nybboth, the strange, powerful plant we had met on our preceding trip here to save the Ashok.

After a final day or march, we were finally near enough to see the activities taking place all around it. After climbing a small hill, we saw an immense gathering of troops separated into 80 Legions, disposed in a 9x9 square grid. The center of this grid was occupied by a gigantic, half-mile wide ziggurath at the top of which came out the trunk of what was definitely a Nybboth. The ziggurath was least a couple hundred yards high.

But the biggest surprise of all was the presence of the bone boat of our good friends the Liches, still floating but anchored maybe 500 feet in the air. Beside it, and all around the ziggurath, were what seemed to be hundreds of disks hovering in the air, more or less similar to Kaeso's before he modified it. Since we had a real bone to settle with the Liches, and the fact they had tried to trap us in hell, we immediately assumed that they had formed an alliance with the starfish men, and could have even provided the floating disks in exchange for some artifact, or even access to the Nybboth.

Although we had no idea if we would find here what we were looking for, the presence of the liches here made the decision of infiltrating the place easy to make. For all we knew, this step pyramid could be the same building Leif had entered to recover the documents from Kotan, and the one where we rescued the Ashok, so it could be filled with secrets. We just had to make our way through hundreds of thousands of troops without being noticed. Fortunately, although there was a lot of troops, they were spread on a very large terrain, and the space between each Legion camp was big enough to let, say, someone invisible use it without any big risk of being discovered.

After some discussion, we came to the conclusion that the only practical way to reach the pyramid unnoticed was to go invisibly. First, Mushamee dropped most of his equipment on the ground so as not to be encumbered, then Leif put some camouflage makeup on his face, and Vinz made him Invisible. He then ran as quickly as he could toward the pyramid. When he reached it, he looked around for a place to hide. Fortunately, the walls were irregular and offered many such opportunities. When the spell expired, he was safely out of sight.

Back on the hill, Vinz spent the next 25 minutes getting his fatigue back. Meanwhile, Rufus did the same as the general, dropping most of his equipment to be unencumbered and letting Leif camouflage him. After the assassin had made him invisible, he followed Mushamee's steps through the Legions camps and made it to the pyramid unnoticed. There, he just had to use his special sense to detect Demonslayer and following its aura to the General, which he found just as his spell was expiring.

On the hill, we waited for another half-hour to let Vinz get all his fatigue back. We tied ourselves together with Leif's rope, then Kaeso produced four potions of Invisibility. As we drank them, we used our Luck to make sure they would be effective for at least 30 minutes, the time it should take us to reach the pyramid. Then Leif grabbed all the stuff that Mushamee and Rufus had left behind, and we all went on our way.

We safely reached the pyramid unnoticed. Leif was planning to find Mushamee and Rufus by their smells, but he rolled a critical failure and said they were not here. As time was running out on Leif's Invisibility potion, Vinz decided to cast Seeker for Rufus, which allowed him to find where the Informatore was hidden and lead the group there.

The place we were now was sufficiently far from the troops to allow us to discuss. We decided to eschew the main entrance as it was probably crawling with troops, and go through a balcony that was hanging some fifty feet in the air. Vinz grabbed the end of Leif's rope, then casted Wallwalker on himself and, still invisible, ran to the balcony as fast as he could. Peeking through its bars, he saw a guard standing right there, his back to a set of closed drapes. Vinz very stealthily stepped over the guardrail, then right in front of him; then thrust his sword through his eye with a Power Blow, simultaneously grabbing him by the torso to stop him from falling down. He then slowly deposited the dead body on the floor.

He pushed the drapes slightly aside and took a look inside the room. He saw four starfish men sitting at tables, each busily writing onto a parchment. There was two doors, one of them closed and the other opened and leading into a busy corridor. Vinz entered the room, stealthily made it to the door and slowly pushed it close, as if it was done by the wind. Then he slowly and meticulously murdered the four men in the room, hitting each one with a thrust from the back of the neck into the brain without the others even noticing.

The assassin returned to the balcony, attached the rope to a couple of its bars (remembering Knot Tying to make sure it was secured), gave it two tugs to signal that the way was clear, and sit on the ground to start his breathing exercises. The others all made their way up, except for Recnam who wasn't just a good enough climber. Vinz had to interrupt his exercises, slide down the rope, and cast Wallwalker on the priest.

Once we were all in the room, we discussed our next step. It was pretty clear that the moment we stepped out of this room, we would immediately be spotted and would have to fight our whole way through. Using his Intuition, Recnam said that the Liches were somewhere up. Guessing they were probably on the same level their boat was currently anchored to, we decided to change our plans. Recnam asked Necros to bring the bone ship down to our level, and to give Recnam control over it. We knew doing so would automatically blow our cover, but in return, it should greatly minimize the number of enemies we'd have to face to get to our destination. So the the ship up there broke his anchor and floated down until it arrived at our balcony, where we all jumped on board. When Recnam ordered it to go back up, it immediately obeyed.

As we were flying, Rufus decided to use his Psychometry on the ship. He got a clear vision of the liches flying through some unknown dimension, when they were suddenly intercepted and captured by a group of starfish men on flying disks. He then got a vision of the liches being led inside the pyramid, while one of the starfish officer was mentioning something about an operation named "Strike from the Heavens". As he relayed the information, we were almost disappointed that the liches hadn't betrayed us, but at least, if we freed them, they would owe us big. We discussed about how they could have been captured so easily, and realized it was quite simple: as powerful as they were, all the liches were basically magical in nature. Any thing that could neutralize magic, or a God (like Necros) who could make magic disappear, would be able to neutralize them all in a second. That was certainly one thing we had over them, since our powers had really diverse origins.

As we were about to reach the "harbor" level, we noticed maybe two dozen starfish men aiming bolt-casters at us. We prepared ourselves for the fight.

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Chapter 230 - Starfish Dimension

Sometimes after Desyat 20, 1002.

As we were flying up, the guards up there tried to hit us with their boltcasters, but the angle was just too awkward to hit us. From where we were, we could see that we were about arrive at the end of a small, two yards wide catwalk leading all the way to a door in the tower wall. The starfish troops, approximately 20 in number, were standing on it, braced against each other and waiting for us. Since the catwalk would only allow two fighters at a time, and the ability to shove them aside would be as important, if not more, than just being able to kill them, we moved Leif and Mushamee to the front, while Rufus braced himself behind the General. Vinz, Recnam and Kaeso climbed on top of the cabin with their ranged weapons. The boat soon reached the catwalk, and the fight started.

It didn't prove that difficult, as Mushamee and Leif just plowed through the starfish men's ranks, either killing them outright or pushing them off the platform (which, 500 feet in the air, was the same as killing them, just a bit messier). Rufus stayed behind Mushamee, helping him whenever a starfish man tried to shove him overboard, or even lending his Feint to Leif. Kaeso and Recnam shot a couple of guys in the back, but they were immediately shot down by many bolts and decided to take cover behind the melee fighters. Vinz followed them even if he was unhurt, because there was basically nothing he could do. Kaeso fired one of his bottle filled with Tenosian fire in the back of the enemy ranks, killing one and igniting two others. After that, the end came very quickly as Vinz shot down two soldiers with his double crossbow and Mushamee, Leif and Recnam took care of the three or four remaining ones.

Vinz healed Leif, who then healed Rufus. Recnam replenished his hit points by draining them from the five unconscious starfish men still lying on the catwalk. Kaeso used two of his Gizmos to produce healing potions and heal himself.

Meanwhile, Mushamee made his way to the door leading inside the tower, slowly opened it, and looked inside. Unfortunately, a guard was coming toward the door at the same moment to investigate the noise, and saw him. He (the guard) immediately turned around and ran away, yelling about intruders in the compound. Mushamee considered going after him, but, realizing it was just too late to stop him from raising the alarm and, he sagely decided to wait for the others.

They soon joined him, and we all entered the compound. Leif used his sensitive sense of smell to pick up, not the smell of the liches themselves since they had none, but the smell of one of the alchemical products their bodies were covered with. On the barbarian's instruction, we followed the left corridor until we reached another intersection with a passage going left. Just before we reached it, Vinz had a sudden flash of a group of soldiers waiting in ambush from inside the new corridor (critical success on his Danger Sense) and warned the others. Rufus used his sword as a mirror to look, and saw a dozen starfish warriors in formation seven yards away, their boltcasters aimed at the intersection. To level the field, Kaeso used his last Gizmo to produced a potion of Darkness that he threw in the corridor. We then all rushed in.

As you can guess, this fight went even faster than the first one, and for two reasons: one, none of our enemies could see in the dark, while Leif's Infravision and Vinz's Blind Fighting allowed them to act unhampered. Second, if you considered all those that were hampered, only our guys had the necessary perception and skill levels to overcome the blindness penalty. Leif was particularly effective, attacking from one or two yards away and using his opponents' blindness to brain them with all-out attacks.

When we emerged from the dark cloud, largely unhurt, we found ourselves in a corridor that seemed strangely familiar. Because he had a photographic memory, Rufus immediately recognized this place as the corridor we had used when escaping from the lab with the Ashok on our last visit here. A little farther down was the door leading inside the laboratory, and in the distance were the set of double doors leading to the Nybboth.

We reached the door to the lab, with Leif confirming that the liches had been led inside. It was locked, so Kaeso produced a set of advanced lockpicks and went to work. It took him all but one or two seconds to unlock it. We then kicked the door open and rushed in. Inside we found four starfish wizards working on some instruments. The floating crystal prisons were all filled with liquid and were each occupied by the animated skeleton of a lich. We distributed our forces between the four wizards, who proved to be no match. They tried to cast spells on us, but most of them were resisted; only Rufus got caught by an entangling spell that glued him in one spot for the rest of the fight. The rest was purely a question of hitting them as often as we could to exhaust their protection talismans, and then finishing them off.

Once the fight over, we closed the door and barricaded it until we could find a way to let the liches out of their prisons.

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