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<blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 7958885" data-attributes="member: 508"><p><strong>ADVENTURE 74: INTO THE UNKNOWN</strong></p><p></p><p>PC Roster: </p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 19</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Darrien, half-elf ranger 19</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 19</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Gilbert Fung, human wizard 19</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 19</p><p></p><p>NPC Roster:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Aithanar Ivenheart, elf fighter 7</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Genevar, humanoid mutant</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> Malrin Ivenheart, elf druid 14</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"> MARCI, humanoid construct</p><p></p><p>Game Session Date: 4 April 2020</p><p></p><p>- - -</p><p></p><p>"It was good to see he's doing okay," Finoula remarked. The group had been asked to visit the garrison fort where the former King Galrich was currently stationed as the sellsword "Slayer," content to let his adopted daughter rule the kingdom even after his mental faculties had been fully restored via a recent <em>wish</em> spell his Adventurers Guild members had gotten cast to his benefit. Now the adventurers, heading back to Battershield Keep in their Vistani wagon, saw two garrison mercenaries on the side of the road just ahead, one of them seemingly about to strike a young girl who looked to be no more than ten years old.</p><p></p><p>Finoula wasn't going to have any of that. Dashing forward on her pony Daisy, she called "Hold off!" in her no-nonsense voice. The soldier with raised fist looked, startled, at the approaching ranger and apparently recognized her; most of the kingdom was familiar with the Adventurers Guild members who had brought so much wealth and prestige to Kordovia over the years since their founding. He sullenly lowered his fist and the girl looked over to Finoula, eyes widening as if in recognition, although the ranger couldn't recall ever having met her before.</p><p></p><p>"What's going on here?" she demanded as she dismounted from Daisy. Binkadink arrived at her side, likewise dismounting from Obvious, his awakened jackalope mount. Behind them, Aithanar brought the wagon trundling up. "Why are you threatening this girl?"</p><p></p><p>"She--she's a witch!" the soldier sputtered.</p><p></p><p>"He's just afraid of me because I'm mute!" replied the girl. Finoula puzzled over that statement until she realized, with a start, she hadn't actually seen the girl's mouth move when she spoke - what she had assumed was speech was really, the more she thought about it, more like the communication the heroes often shared over a <em>Rary's telepathic bond</em> spell. Putting a comforting hand onto the little girl's shoulder, she faced her and asked, "What's your name, sweetie?"</p><p></p><p><<strong>Genevar</strong>,> replied the little girl, and Finoula was right: she hadn't used her voice at all to respond. That, at least, explained her claims of being "mute."</p><p></p><p>"It ain't natural!" the garrison soldier complained. "She's some kind of monster, messin' about in our heads!"</p><p></p><p><There's not much in yours to mess about with!> taunted Genevar. <Mostly just thoughts about your cousin, and I'll bet if she knew what you--> Finoula had to grab the man's fist in her hand as he took a swing at Genevar in mid-sentence. "Get out of here, both of you!" she snarled at the sellsword. "We'll take care of her!"</p><p></p><p>"She's a freakin' monster," grumbled the soldier, but now that the other heroes were stepping out of the back of the Vistani wagon and approaching they opted not to make any further scene - not with this many potential opponents.</p><p></p><p>"What going on here?" demanded Gilbert Fung as the two soldiers scuttled off, glaring back at them on occasion as they continued their patrol. Behind him, MARCI approached and, as was her habit, sent her red eye-beam cascading over the new acquaintance. Genevar stood patiently without any show of fear as the beam scanned down her body from head to toe.</p><p></p><p>"Non-human entity," MARCI announced.</p><p></p><p><Yeah, I thought that was pretty much already known, MARCI,> Genevar spoke telepathically to the others. <I'm a mute - you know, a mutant.></p><p></p><p>"Wait, you know MARCI?" asked Binkadink. The humanoid construct had not been able to tell them much of her past from before they'd rescued her from the house of Henrietta Higgenbotham, a shrieking hag who'd found MARCI wandering in the Vesve Forest and taken her back to her run-down cottage for further study. According to the mechanoid, she had experienced damage at some point and a portion of her memories had been irretrievably lost.</p><p></p><p><Well, maybe not that particular one, but yeah, I know about MARCIs: 'Medical Android - Red Cross International.' We come from the same world.> At that, Gilbert spun to look at the construct that had more or less adopted him as her master. "You not from around here," he said. "I knew it! Spelljamming vessel bring you here!"</p><p></p><p><What's spelljamming...> began Genevar, before apparently digging the answer out of Gilbert's thoughts. <Oh. No, not like that. We're from a different reality altogether. So is Obvious, for that matter.></p><p></p><p>"Yep," agreed Obvious. Binkadink looked in amazement at his awakened jackalope - and suddenly, with a smile, he realized he'd <em>finally</em> realized what the prophecy he'd received back in the Purple Mage's manor had meant: "One you cherish will prove to be from much farther away than you might imagine."</p><p></p><p>"Then how you get here?" demanded Gilbert. Genevar explained there was a sort of <em>gate </em>constructed beside a cottage in the forest and that it opened for an hour or so, with at least a month between intervals. <But while it's opened, you can just walk right through from one world to the other. And it will be ready to open back up tonight, so we all need to be ready. You guys are coming with me back to my world.></p><p></p><p>"We are?" asked Darrien, smiling. "Why?"</p><p></p><p><Because that's what you do,> Genevar explained. <I've seen it. I get snatches of visions of the future - or at least the most probable future; it isn't always 100% accurate. But you guys come with me to my world and help revive the Eradicators.></p><p></p><p>"Eradicators?" asked Hagan. "Who are they? They don't sound like anyone we'd <em>want</em> to revive."</p><p></p><p><No, no, they're good - they're superheroes, like Iron Man, only real. They helped fight off the hybrids during the first days of the Shadow Times, keeping the humans safe as the DNA bombs created the unstables. And then they were never seen again, but legend says they'll return at the hour of greatest need - and I saw you all there with me, discovering their hidden flying base, right after you fight the apidox!></p><p></p><p>"Wait, wait, wait!" grumbled Gilbert. "Slow down! One thing at a time. Who this Iron Man?"</p><p></p><p>Genevar sighed in frustration. <Let's try it this way,> she suggested, closing her eyes and spreading her arms out as if in benediction.</p><p></p><p>Immediately, a flood of sensations swam over the heroes' minds, as the little mutant implanted memories directly into their heads. Iron Man, it turned out, was just a fictional "superhero" - a human who wore a suit of powered armor to fight off equally fictional menaces - but the Eradicators had been real, from the beginning of the Shadow Years, before civilization had fallen. They were a group of six superheroes: <strong>Banshee</strong>, <strong>Goliath</strong>, <strong>Ogre</strong>, <strong>Spriggan</strong>, <strong>Titan</strong>, and <strong>Wraith</strong>. Each wore a suit of powered armor like this Iron Man fellow, only four of them were much larger than a human, with the "superhero" sitting inside and controlling the larger construct from within. When the bombs went off and groups of people and animals started mutating, transforming into hybrids of various different species, these Eradicators kept the normal populace safe from the emerging monstrosities. Of course, that had been hundreds of years ago, and in the meantime Gamma Terra had taken on a new shape, with the human civilization fallen and the ruins of their cities being plundered by the survivors: clusters of pure strain humans but also groups of mutated humans and a wide variety of animals who had mutated into new forms, many of them attaining humanlike levels of intelligence.</p><p></p><p>Gilbert shook his head at the sudden feeling of being overwhelmed by information. "Okay, got the background story," he said. "But explain about this <em>gate</em> - how that work?"</p><p></p><p><There's a pair of small buildings on my world, with a set of columns in a courtyard between them. After about a month, the buildings have generated enough power to open a gateway between the two columns. That gateway leads to your world, this world, but only if your end of the gateway has been powered up, and here it requires a jolt of electricity, like from a lightning strike. Your gate has a lightning rod in place, so when lightning strikes it, if the generators at my end have built up enough power, the gateway opens and you can walk through from one world to the other. And then, after about an hour, the gate closes again - and stays closed until it builds up enough power in about a month. From that point, it just needs another bolt of lightning to hit your gate from your end and boom - gate's back open.></p><p></p><p>"Sounds interesting," admitted Binkadink. He looked to the others. "You guys feel like checking it out?"</p><p></p><p>"It sounds like we'd be stuck there for at least a month," pointed out Finoula. "Unless we can awaken these Eradicators and get back within an hour, which I imagine isn't very likely. Can we afford to be gone that long?"</p><p></p><p><Your littermates are all there on the other side,> Genevar pointed out to Obvious.</p><p></p><p>"Can we go?" pleaded the jackalope to his gnomish rider. "I want to bring them back here!"</p><p></p><p>"I'm in," declared the gnome, patting his riding mount - and best friend - on the neck. "We're both going."</p><p></p><p>The others all followed suit; it seemed like it would be an interesting experience and if Genevar had already "seen" them rescuing the Eradicators, who were they to try to defy Fate? They had some decisions to make, though, starting with who all would be going through the gate. Darrien and Finoula decided against bringing Grumps Junior, Wrath, and Daisy, as this Gamma Terra sounded like a pretty dangerous place. Malrin, too, would be staying behind, but not because of the danger; rather, they needed her to remain in place to activate the <em>gate</em> from this end with a <em>call lightning</em> spell in a month's time, to prevent them from being stuck in this other world. Aithanar, however, would be coming along; he was their animal groomer, after all, and Obvious had five littermates they'd hopefully be tracking down in the next month; they'd need tending to. (That was the argument he gave, in any case, although if he were being truthful he couldn't stand the thought of being separated from Finoula for a month or more.) And Binkadink instantly decided he'd have Malrin cast an <em>awaken</em> spell upon each of the jackalopes once they all made it back to Oerth - and maybe a bunch more, if they could find them, so Obvious could start a family here.</p><p></p><p>"But if Malrin stays behind, there go our source of healing!" argued Gilbert.</p><p></p><p>"We'll have MARCI," Binkadink pointed out.</p><p></p><p>"She all out of healing doses! And can't make more!"</p><p></p><p>"Not here," said Finoula. "But back in her own world, she can probably find whatever plants or herbs or whatever she needs to create her mixtures."</p><p></p><p>"We should probably see if we can grab a bunch of those too, so we can plant them over here," Binkadink suggested. There was no telling what all they'd find in this entirely new world that they might want to bring with them back home. But in the end, Malrin gave Darrien her <em>staff of healing</em> so he could use it as needed to heal any wounds they might sustain on Gamma Terra, and Binkadink recommended everyone stock up on healing potions beforehand. (They all hit his Uncle Winkidew's potion shop as a result, practically cleaning him out of his inventory.) Malrin also passed her brother the <em>portable hole</em> she normally carried for the group; it had come in handy on many an occasion.</p><p></p><p>And then, once all the preparations had been made, the heroes headed into the Vesve Forest, following a ten-year-old mutant girl from another world to the gateway that would take them off their own planet.</p><p></p><p>The Vesve Forest was a vast place, easily several times larger than the entire kingdom of Kordovia, but Genevar led them unerringly to where she wanted to bring them. <There it is,> she announced, indicating a bunch of trees than looked no different than the trees elsewhere all around them. "Where?" asked Binkadink from the saddle, but then Obvious stepped forward another step and a wooden structure came suddenly into view. The cottage looked old and weathered, like it hadn't been tended to for some time. There was a smaller structure jutting off to the east side of the building; judging by the barnlike double doors, a stable and storage for a wagon. But over on the western side stood the structure they'd apparently come here to see: a pair of stone columns capped by a curved plinth, with a tall, metal rod sticking up from the column closest to the cottage - apparently the "lightning rod" Genevar had spoken of. And that wasn't all that had changed in the moments between two steps, either: the trees all around the cottage had suddenly became bare and twisted.</p><p></p><p>"Hmmm," mused Gilbert Fung. "<em>Hallucinatory terrain</em> spell. Made permanent, look like." Just to test the theory, he backed away until the cottage and its immediate environs disappeared from view. Then, stepping forward, he pierced the illusion spell and saw the hidden cottage once again. "Whoever live here, want to keep hidden."</p><p></p><p>"It doesn't look like <em>anybody</em> lives here - or has, for a very long time," pointed out Darrien.</p><p></p><p>"Still, we be careful."</p><p></p><p>While Gilbert led a group of the other adventurers to check out the unopened gateway, Hagan decided to go check out the attached wing of the wooden cottage. The double doors opened easily, letting out a scent of decay: mildewing hay and the still-detectable odor of death and decay coming from the two skeletal horses, each lying in a pile of bones in a separate stall. As expected, there was a wagon off to the side, as well as a door leading into the cottage. Warily, Hagan approached it (while Wezhley, his weasel familiar, spun around on the half-orc's shoulder and kept a wary eye on the horse skeletons, half convinced they would rise up and attack). It was locked, and a closer examination led the sorcerer to believe it was magically locked - likely by an <em>arcane lock</em> spell.</p><p></p><p>Darrien came to the same conclusion when he tried opening the main entrance into the cottage and found it magically locked as well. Binkadink and Obvious came up behind him (the gnome fighter had no expertise in examining magical <em>gates</em>; he left that to the spellcasters), the little gnome dismounting once Obvious made it clear he'd stay outside if at all possible - the jackalope didn't fit easily inside dwellings built to a human scale.</p><p></p><p>Malrin and Gilbert examined the gate, with Mudpie and MARCI following in their master's wake, as usual; Genevar also opted to keep close to them. There were various runes etched along the columns and the crosspiece, which Gilbert identified as having conjuration and teleportation connotations. Genevar looked on in confusion while he gave a short lecture on their significance and didn't even bother peeking into his mind to get an explanation of what the heck he was talking about. It sounded all magicky to her, like the old legends of Merlin or Harry Potter.</p><p></p><p>Finoula and Aithanar explored the ground in the gateway's vicinity, the ranger's sharp senses having detected the glint of what looked like bone. Sure enough, it was a human skeleton, likely that of a woman due to its size and the decaying robe still clinging to its skeletal frame, half-buried in the dirt on the far side of the cottage. Finoula could see the robe, despite the weathering it had taken over however many years out here in the open, had several parallel rips along its side, possibly made by something with very large claws. It was complete supposition at this point, but Finoula got the sense this was likely the woman who had owned the now apparently abandoned cottage, and she guessed she had been a wizard, constructing this gateway in hidden seclusion behind her permanent <em>hallucinatory terrain</em> spell.</p><p></p><p>Darrien called over to Malrin to bring her <em>chime of opening</em> and Hagan left the dead horses to their stable, heading back out to the front as the druid used her magic chime to open the <em>arcane locked</em> front door. She then stepped inside, heading off to the left of the entry hall, where there was another door to the west. Darrien followed her into the building but headed straight ahead through an abandoned kitchen with cobwebs hanging in all corners and a stain on a counter apparently all that remained of some sort of vegetable matter long since rotted away. There was another small room at the end of a short hallway (with a door leading to the stables) which turned out to be a simple bathroom. Giving Obvious a pat on the neck, Binkadink grabbed up his <em>reverberating glaive</em> (because you never knew) and entered the building, heading over by Malrin. Hagan followed.</p><p></p><p>There was another door along the western side of the building and Finoula found it to be <em>arcane locked</em> as well. Fortunately, she had a <em>chime of opening</em> of her own and after grabbing it out of her pack she used a charge to unlock the door. As she did so, though, she thought she heard the sound of a door being yanked open from an inner room and wondered if the others had made it inside. Gilbert and the others followed her into an arcane lab of some type, with alchemical equipment arranged for potion creation and vials containing a half dozen or so finished products sitting labeled in a wooden tray.</p><p></p><p>While Darrien went further into the building, discovering a small bedroom past the kitchen, Malrin opened the door from the entry hall into a library. There was a single plush chair as the room's only furniture, but the walls were all covered with shelves of books and scrolls. However, that wasn't the only item of interest in the room: along the back, a door had just slammed open and in the doorway stood a glowing sword sheathed in flames. It hovered for only a moment before darting at the elven druid, slashing down at her. Malrin rolled with the hit but a deep cut ran across her left shoulder down to her breastbone. She backed off at once, stepping back outside to let the more experienced members of the group deal with this threat while she cast a healing spell on herself to close the wound across her upper chest.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink stepped forward into the open doorway to the library, hoping to contain the floating sword and prevent it from getting to anybody behind it. He slashed it with the blade of his own weapon, setting the glaive humming in power, but it was impossible to tell if his strike had caused any damage - <em>probably not</em>, he thought, as that blade looked an awful lot like the <em>Mordenkainen's sword</em> spell that both Gilbert and Hagan had each cast in the past - plus the added flames around the sword's blade, which probably just meant it was a spell variant. In any case, the gnome fighter wasn't sure how to go about "killing" a spell effect - although he was willing to give it a try.</p><p></p><p>Aithanar stepped through the open doorway from the laboratory to the library, thinking he'd heard the sounds of combat coming form that way. And sure enough he'd been right: there was Binkadink fighting a <em>flaming sword</em> hovering in place. But then another longsword materialized in the air, clashing its own blade of force against the one wreathed in flames. This new sword was a <em>Mordenkainen's sword</em> spell just cast by Hagan in an attempt to allow Binkadink to back off without taking any damage himself.</p><p></p><p>Darrien opened a door from the empty bedroom and found himself in the back of the arcane lab, just as the others were following in Aithanar's wake to see what was going on in the library. What was going on, at the moment, was the <em>flaming sword</em> whirling back the way it had come and stabbing down at Aithanar, who tried in vain to fend it off with his own unsheathed blade. A deep cut across his right bicep caused him to cry out in pain. At that, Binkadink rushed fully into the library, attacking the floating sword - some kind of magical defense spell, he reasoned, likely triggered when they forced their way into the house - not expecting to be able to destroy it but perhaps able to deflect its attention away from Aithanar and onto himself; despite their size difference, Binkadink knew he could last much longer against pretty much any opponent, compared to the nimble elf.</p><p></p><p>But then Gilbert stepped into the library doorway, took in the scene before him, and cast a <em>disintegrate</em> spell upon the floating sword. It winked out of existence at once. Then, after making sure everyone was okay, he rubbed his hands in glee at the sight of the library and opened up his <em>Omnibook</em>, ready to spend the next couple of hours transferring its contents into the infinite pages of the magical tome that served as his spellbook, research library, and spell scroll storage device all in one.</p><p></p><p>While he was doing that, Malrin healed up all those who needed healing and the others examined the lab equipment. Binkadink declared the potionmaking equipment was all in good repair and was certain his Uncle Winkidew and cousin Jinkadoodle could put it to good use, once properly cleaned up. Aithanar was designated the group's communal potion-holder, taking custody of the seven finished potions in the rack. But as the sun started sinking into the sky, the group decided everyone - even Obvious - should stay inside the cottage, where it was somewhat defensible if necessary. Genevar could tell, through her prophetic glimpses into the future, that the <em>gate</em> wouldn't be opened until it was full-on night, and that furthermore there was some kind of guardian who might make an appearance before then.</p><p></p><p>"What kind of guardian?" asked Hagan.</p><p></p><p><I don't know,> admitted Genevar, shivering in fear. <Female. Deadly. With tight skin.></p><p></p><p>"Sounds like undead," Gilbert observed, which was another word - and concept - with which Genevar wasn't familiar. Apparently on Gamma Terra the dead didn't come back to unholy life after their passing; that was one thing in its favor, at least.</p><p></p><p>It wasn't long afterwards that a horrible moaning erupted from outside the building. The group had all decided to huddle together in the arcane laboratory, it being the largest room inside the cottage. Finoula tilted her head in concentration, pinpointing the sound as coming from just outside in the general area where she had found the skeletal remains of what she imagined was the female wizard who had lived here before coming to a grisly end outside. Putting together what she knew about the various forms of undead and the legends she'd heard from her mother growing up, she hesitated a guess: "A banshee?"</p><p></p><p>That put certain thoughts directly into the forefront of Gilbert's mind, for he had an irrational hatred of all forms of undead. He also had a vast storehouse of information about the various types of undead, and he rapidly skimmed what he knew about banshees: they were troubled female spirits, angered at their deaths and filled with hatred for the living, capable of emitting cries capable of slaying all who heard them....</p><p></p><p>"Need to spread out!" warned Gilbert as the undead spirit of <strong>Selune Travers</strong>, the wizard who had built the <em>well of many worlds</em> outside only to be slain by a 9-foot-tall hyena-man who walked through the <em>gate</em> before she'd been able to experience for herself the results of the device she'd spent decades of her life building, glided through the wall and into the crowded lab. Of all of the group, only Hagan was close enough to a doorway to heed Gilbert's advice; he and Wezhley slipped into the library as the banshee appeared in the room behind him. Gilbert slapped his hands onto Mudpie's flank and Genevar's shoulder and cast a <em>quickened dimension door</em> on the three of them, sending them immediately outside the front door of Selune's cottage. But he'd gotten a glimpse of the banshee before he disappeared from the room and could feel the results of even the brief visual contact: he felt physically diminished in almost every way - weaker, slower, and physically drained of his vitality.</p><p></p><p>Most of the others in the room were feeling the same: Darrien, Finoula, Aithanar, Malrin, and Obvious also felt a physical draining sensation at the banshee's sudden appearance in the room with them; only Binkadink had been facing away from the undead apparition as she entered the room, and MARCI, while seeing the banshee just fine, had no adverse affects from the creature's horrific appearance.</p><p></p><p>And then, before any of them had a chance to react, Selune opened her undead mouth and howled a wail of torment. All but Binkadink and MARCI dropped to the floor, dead, like marionettes whose strings had been suddenly cut all at once.</p><p></p><p>From outside, Gilbert heard the scream but was well outside its area of effect; he silently congratulated himself on saving at least those who were within his immediate reach. He ran back into the house - he'd dispelled the <em>arcane locks</em> on the outer doors earlier - and entered the foyer, heading towards the library. The door was open (they'd left all the interior doors open so they could better hear anyone trying to approach), and he mentally ran through his spell selection to see if he had something available with which he could attack the banshee without having to be there in the room with her. Then, finding an optimal solution, he cast a <em>Mordenkainen's sword</em> spell of his own and sent it flashing through the library to attack the banshee in the lab after Gilbert focused on the undead creature's appearance and last known general location. The sword whizzed by Hagan and into the laboratory, where the blade of force cut into Selune's incorporeal form, causing her to hiss in pain.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink dropped his <em>reverberating glaive</em>, realizing two things at once: despite its magic, there was a good chance any strike he made with it would pass right through the banshee's incorporeal body; and <em>Tahlmalaera</em>, currently configured as a <em>ghost touch weapon</em>, was laying there in Finoula's open hand. He dove at Finoula's side, scooping up <em>Tahlmalaera</em> in a two-handed grip and bringing it slicing into the spirit-woman's side as he rose back up to his feet. But in finally facing the banshee, the gnome too felt the effects of her horrific appearance, as his sighting of her weakened him physically.</p><p></p><p>"Stay here," rumbled Mudpie to Genevar as he raced inside the cottage, following his master. Gilbert imbued his familiar with a <em>magic circle against evil</em> spell and sent him thundering through the kitchen and bedroom, showing up at the open door to the arcane laboratory. There, floating before him, was Selune, facing off against Binkadink wielding Finoula's magic longsword.</p><p></p><p>Hagan, realizing the advantages of Gilbert's strategy, cast another <em>Mordenkainen's sword</em> spell and sent his own force-blade into the other room to attack the banshee. She now faced three separate blades, one wielded by a gnome fighter on extended stilt-boots and the other two wielded from other rooms by spellcasters relying upon the power of their arcane mastery. Given the three opponents, Selune slashed her claws out at her only living foe, sending her incorporeal hand deep inside Binkadink's body and draining some internal makeup of his personality, using the stolen power to heal some of her immaterial wounds. But that didn't stop the little gnome from fighting on; he used <em>Tahlmalaera</em> to strike again and again into the banshee, cutting her down faster than she could heal herself up with power stolen from his own living body; at either side, the twin <em>Mordenkainen's swords</em> did their own part as well. And then Mudpie stepped up behind Selune; realizing his massive fists could easily pass right through her without effect, he instead used the magical <em>battleaxe</em> Gilbert had given him to carry when he was at his current, hulking size, the weapon much too big for anyone else to wield effectively. The weapon was unfamiliar to the familiar when he wasn't under the effects of one of Gilbert's castings of the <em>Tenser's transformation</em> spells but he brought it crashing down upon the banshee nonetheless. Selune seemed surprised at this attack from an unexpected direction, and that was all Binkadink needed to drop her for good. She dissipated into nothingness before she'd had an opportunity to bring her deadly howl back into play.</p><p></p><p>"Good job, everybody!" Gilbert said as he stepped into the room - only to find the remains of five of his slain friends.</p><p></p><p>"We can't go through the gate now," said Hagan, stepping into the lab behind the heavyset mage. Binkadink, his battle against the banshee won, had dropped his borrowed longsword and buried his face into the fur of his jackalope's neck, muffling the sobs that shook his body.</p><p></p><p>"No, it wait until tomorrow," Gilbert agreed. "Mudpie: go fetch Genevar, bring her in here!" As the elemental lumbered back through the cottage to do his master's bidding, Gilbert bent down over Aithanar's corpse and pulled out the <em>portable hole</em> he carried folded up in a belt pouch. "We put bodies in hole, get Moradin clerics to use <em>true resurrection</em> scrolls to bring them back to life tomorrow. Then we return here, open <em>gate</em>, go through."</p><p></p><p>That's exactly how it played out. The Head Cleric of the Temple of Moradin, Duerna Forgewife, opted to cast the <em>true resurrection</em> spells herself, and after the five slain heroes had been returned to life they gave themselves a couple of hours to get their minds clear of the stress of the situation before declaring themselves ready to press on. (Genevar was amazed at the entire process, not only that casting magical spells apparently worked here in this world but that the dead could actually be restored to life.) It was late afternoon when the group returned to the cottage of Selune Travers and prepared for their excursion into another world.</p><p></p><p>"I wish I was going with you," Malrin said wistfully. "Everybody stay safe."</p><p></p><p>"We'll miss you!" Finoula said, giving her fellow elf a farewell hug. "But we'll see you in a month!" Aithanar gave his older sister a goodbye hug as well; the others mostly made do with waves and farewell greetings. Then the druid cast a <em>call lightning storm</em> spell, directing a bolt of electricity to arc down out of the sky and strike the metal rod impaled into the top of the stone column supporting the <em>gate</em> between worlds. The energy did the trick: within an instant, the area between the columns had filled with a crackling screen of energy.</p><p></p><p><It's open!> Genevar said. <Let's go!></p><p></p><p>Those who were making the trip had lined up before the columns; as one, they stepped forward into another world. In one moment, they were standing in a forest area of twisted, barren trees and in the next they were in a clearing with a single-story building before them made of some glimmering metal - and with three hungry-looking spider-sharks directly before them.</p><p></p><p>Each of these mutant creatures was exactly what they sounded like: a shark's body, ranging from five to eight feet long, with eight hairy spider legs growing out of their sleek sides; their partial arachnid nature was also evident in the fact they each sported not the normal two but a full set of eight glossy black eyes. There were the normal gills along their flanks but the creatures were quite obviously breathing air just fine.</p><p></p><p>Before any of the heroes could overcome their shock at these odd, hybrid monsters the spider-sharks struck. Beams erupted from the eyes of each of the three monsters, targeting Obvious, Mudpie, and Darrien. Each set of eye-rays struck true and the targets each felt a tingling sensation like they were being shaken by rapid vibrations. None of the rays had the desired effect - stunning the spider-sharks' intended prey into unconsciousness - but it was only a matter of time; most prey could only take so many blasts from the stun rays before they fell to unconsciousness. In the meantime, the spider-sharks surged forward, crawling rapidly to those closest to them - in this case, Aithanar, Obvious, and Mudpie - and snapping at them with mouths full of sharp teeth. As the monsters got closer, the heroes could see each spider-shark had a set of arachnid pedipalps at the sides of their mouth to help draw in victims.</p><p></p><p>Hagan was the first of the heroes to react, aided in no doubt by a healthy dose of arachnophobia. His <em>polar ray</em> was probably a bit of overkill, as it froze the spider-shark it hit into a solid block of ice which then shattered under its own weight on the eight narrow spider-legs - but Hagan wasn't taking any chances the abomination might live to get even closer to the half-orc than it already had. He shivered uncontrollably at the very sight of these monstrosities.</p><p></p><p>Darrien had stepped into the <em>gate</em> with an arrow already set into his <em>Arachnibow</em> so he'd be ready for whatever they might encounter on Gamma Terra, and he not only raised it and fired it at the nearest spider-shark, he followed it up with a handful of others, one after another. That monster fell under the onslaught of arrows before it had gotten a taste of any of these strangers from another world.</p><p></p><p>Finoula killed the third one by transforming herself into a living bolt of lightning, courtesy of her magical amulet. She pivoted through the spider-shark's corpse and resumed her elven form against the front wall of the northernmost metal building. From this vantage point, she could see the <em>gate</em> extended between two metal pillars, each partially embedded into a section of building. The entire complex, she saw, was ringed by a series of standalone obelisks, rectangular in shape unlike the circular pillars flanking the gateway home. Finoula couldn't see through the gateway to her own world; the <em>gate</em> was a shimmering field of energy - and would remain in place for about an hour, if what Genevar had told them was accurate. Finoula's sharp hearing also picked up a low-level hum, but she assumed it was from the <em>gate</em> being generated before her.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink, astride Obvious, moved forward into the clearing, glaive ready to strike if any of these spider-sharks gave any indication of still being alive, but the twitching, spidery legs were just muscular reactions - death throes, it seemed. Gilbert, Mudpie, MARCI, Aithanar, and Genevar stepped forward as well.</p><p></p><p>"These monsters here when you come through to our world?" Gilbert asked their ten-year-old guide.</p><p></p><p><No, the place was empty. Spider-sharks like to travel in packs, though - they probably just wandered in here.></p><p></p><p>This particular spider-shark pack was a bit larger than the three the heroes had already killed, however - those three just happened to be on that side of the <em>gate</em> when it was activated. The other four in the pack, three of them horse-sized and the leader over twice that size, scrambled from the south over the buildings on either side of the <em>gate</em> and attacked. Two sets of stun rays shot out from two sets of eyes to strike Obvious, while two other spider-sharks each targeted Mudpie and Aithanar. (The earth elemental was completely immune to the stunning effects but the spider-sharks didn't know that; they just saw a large opponent who could quite possibly be delicious - a belief that would be immediately dispelled if any of them ever tried taking a bite out of Mudpie!) Once again, their attempts at biting their intended meals failed as the heroes quickly dodged out of the way.</p><p></p><p>Once again, Hagan's intense dislike for spiders and spider-related creatures caused him to bring one of his more powerful spells to bear, although the <em>chain lightning</em> spell killed outright the spider-shark leader, it only fried up one of the smaller creatures but failed to slay it. Binkadink finished that one off with his glaive, while Darrien took another down with his <em>Arachnibow</em> as Finoula advanced and used her <em>flaming burst whip of thorns</em> on the last one. A solid punch from Mudpie crushed the final spider-shark's skull in and it joined the rest of its pack in twitching death.</p><p></p><p>Everyone quickly checked around in all directions, waiting to see if there would be another wave of these creatures, but it seemed the spider-sharks had all been slain. Mudpie started dragging their bodies out of the way by stacking them up against the wall, the followed his master and a group of the others in examining what looked to be the main door to the northern building. There was a sign of some sort on the wall beside the door; examining the unfamiliar characters, Gilbert asked Genevar, "This some sort of writing? What it say?"</p><p></p><p><'Transdimensional Conduit Generation Complex.'> Genevar translated. Gilbert just shrugged; the term meant nothing to him, but he assumed it was this world's version of the <em>gate</em> the banshee-woman had built when she was still alive. He tried the door but it was locked; rather than wait for one of the <em>chimes of opening</em> to be deployed, he ordered Mudpie to open the door. It resisted all of three punches from the elemental's solid stone fists before buckling open off its hinges.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink decided to check out the small building to the east, which jutted up against the eastern pillar generating the <em>gate</em>. That door was unlocked; opening it, his little gnomish heart soared at the elaborate machinery displayed within - none of it the least bit comprehensible to the fighter, but certainly appreciable as a very complex bit of technology. (His Uncle Winkidew would undoubtedly drool at the sight, he knew.) But there was nobody inside so the gnome closed the door, got back in the saddle, and turned to pass by the building and see what was over on the southern part of the complex when he heard the same low-level humming Finoula had detected earlier. However, he was much closer to the exterior columns than the ranger had been and Binkadink could tell the noise was coming from these rectangular obelisks.</p><p></p><p>In fact, he decided they bore more than a little resemblance to the sonic pillars that had protected the <em>Titanslayer</em> sword in the lower depths of Carceri. Testing a theory, Binkadink fished out a copper piece and, from the saddle, flipped it into the space between two outer columns. Sure enough, it hit an invisible wall of some type which sent a cascade of subsonics vibrating through the general area. It was some sort of sonic fence, the gnome decided.</p><p></p><p>Hagan, in the meantime, was not convinced there weren't any more of these spider-sharks about and decided to verify for himself the truth of the situation. Casting a <em>fly</em> spell, he rose some 60 feet straight up into the air, high enough that he could see over the gateway to Oerth and the long, low building at the rear of the complex - and sure enough, there were no more of those horrible mutants to be found. From his vantage point he could see rolling hills of grass in all directions; this small complex of one-story metal buildings had been built far from other habitations. He saw a road leading from the side of the complex off into the distance, but this road was built of no substance he'd ever seen before in his life. This truly was a strange world indeed!</p><p></p><p>Finoula and Darrien had moved past the small building with the machinery inside while Binkadink was checking it out and advanced to the long building to the south. There was a single door facing them and it was unlocked; Darrien entered cautiously. The large room before him looked to be some sort of lounge area, with tables and chairs and some strange-looking devices on several of the tables. There were two hallways, one at either end. Randomly taking a left and heading to the longer hallway to the east, the archer was surprised when what sounded like a klaxon went off - apparently he'd triggered some sort of alarm? But then he got an even bigger surprise when, darting out from the shadows behind one of the tables in the back - a rather strange table indeed, covered in green felt with a series of round, multicolored balls sitting on the surface between holes in the corners and the sides - came a massive dog wearing a leather saddle. Odder still, the dog seemed to be making the klaxon sounds, or at least did up until the point he tried clamping his teeth down upon Darrien's leg.</p><p></p><p>Finoula entered the room and saw the giant podog attacking her fellow ranger. She instinctively tried calming the creature, making soothing sounds while acknowledging her surprise that the beast looked rather like a larger version of the mastiffs she'd seen before on her own world. But the podog was not interested in being soothed, so Finoula forced the issue by casting a <em>hold animal</em> spell on it. That did the trick.</p><p></p><p>Back in the northern building, Gilbert and company found themselves in a reception area of some sort, with a pair of double doors directly across the room and a single door along the western wall, over by a desk. Gilbert deployed Mudpie as the door opener, having him smash through the double doors. "You wait here, we check it out," Gilbert said and MARCI stayed behind as ordered, while Aithanar held his longsword at the ready to protect Genevar, their guide in this strange place.</p><p></p><p>Gilbert and his familiar didn't get very far, though; they turned a corner to the left and advanced a mere handful of steps before triggering some sort of defense system which shot waves of subharmonics that had the heavyset mage collapsing on the floor. Mudpie dragged his master back to the reception room, where Genevar suggested there was probably some sort of badge required to get further into the building. Explaining to Aithanar what they were looking for, the elf found a set of security badges inside one of the drawers in the receptionist's desk. MARCI, meanwhile, scanned Gilbert's unconscious form and announced he should wake on his own in a minute or two. The group opted to stay where they were until he regained consciousness on his own.</p><p></p><p>Back in the southern building, though, there was a bit more excitement going on - for the podog's klaxon noise (a perfect rendition of an actual klaxon he'd heard earlier in life, administered via the mutant canine's sound impression ability) had alerted his master, <strong>Resnick</strong> of the intruders. Resnick, a mutant wanderer, grabbed up his Mark V blaster, stepped out of the bunkroom he'd been hiding in since the pack of spider-sharks had chased him and his loyal podog <strong>Grey</strong> into this complex the night before, and fired off five shots at the stranger standing before his unmoving riding mount. Three of the shots hit Darrien square on and he fell over, still feeling the effects of the spider-sharks' eye rays.</p><p></p><p>Hagan heard the shots fired and flew over to the southern building's door - he wasn't sure what had made those noises but he was willing to bet they weren't good. Binkadink and Obvious, already heading that way, hurried even faster to see what was going on.</p><p></p><p>Finoula, already on the scene, activated her <em>lightning amulet</em> and blasted through the gun-toting mutant, emerging in the hallway behind him. Resnick staggered under the attack but didn't suspect the silver-haired dame had actually <em>become</em> the bolt of lightning that struck him; in his experience, it was more likely she'd shot him with a blast of electricity and then used some mutant power to bend the light waves around her body, cloaking her in invisibility. But before he had a chance to try to detect her, another mutant ran into the room, this one half Resnick's height and wearing a ridiculous helmet with antlers on it - unless those were his own antlers, which wasn't outside the scope of possibility.</p><p></p><p>Resnick wasn't taking any chances; as he popped out the energy cell from his blaster and slapped in a replacement, he sent his inherent mind blast power in a beam of coherent energy from his forehead to the little antlered guy (his bladed weapon looked sufficiently dangerous) and Binkadink froze in place, unable to move or even to think.</p><p></p><p>Hagan stepped into the room and Resnick took the half-orc as another mutant. The sorcerer sent a <em>polar ray</em> Resnick's way, but the nimble mutant easily dodged it and Hagan snarled at the wasted spell. But then Finoula reactivated her amulet and blasted through Resnick a second time as a bolt of living lightning, angling her way out of his body so she easily avoided the three-and-a-half-foot-tall gnome, reforming into her elf body in midair and landing surefootedly just past him.</p><p></p><p>And then Obvious entered the room and the fray, biting and clawing at Resnick. This, at least, was a foe the mutant recognized: it was a hopper, although oddly enough this one's fur seemed to be staying the same color despite his surroundings. Resnick easily avoided the hopper's attacks - he was, Finoula noted, moving at a much quicker pace than anybody she'd ever seen except for those quicklings in the Land of Faerie and anybody under the effects of a <em>haste</em> spell. But, not liking the odds or the fact that his trusty steed looked to be just as stunned as the little antler-man, Resnick dashed over to Grey, put his hand upon his steed's back - and the two vanished. Now it was Hagan and Finoula's turn to wonder if they'd turned invisible or not, but the mutant had opened a portal between the spaces and <em>dimension doored</em> himself and his podog outside the complex; if these weird mutants had made it in here, he'd assume the spider-sharks were long gone by now.</p><p></p><p>Binkadink blinked himself back to sensibility, the mind blast having worn off, while Finoula bent over Darrien to see if he was okay. He was breathing, at least - that was a good sign. Binkadink, in the meantime, headed into the room the mutant human had exited from, seeing if he could learn anything about him. He'd left some interesting stuff behind: a steel canteen full of water, a cloth bag of marbles, something that looked like two spyglasses side by side (and which, when placed over the eyes, allowed the gnome to see for great distances; there was even a little knob between the two eyepieces that adjusted how close the image was within the lenses), and something that looked a bit like a sunrod but which Genevar later explained was a road flare.</p><p></p><p>When Gilbert finally awoke, the group gathered up together again and gave the northern building a quick exploration (once Genevar had affixed security badges to their armor and clothing), but there wasn't much else to see. Genevar cautioned them from touching anything in what she termed the "control room" as she feared changing the configuration on any of the equipment could cause the <em>gate</em> to sync up with somewhere other than Oerth the next time it was used, in a month. But by the time they had explored to their satisfaction that there was nobody there in the complex with them, the <em>gate</em> had shut down in the courtyard.</p><p></p><p>"That it - we here for the next month!" observed Gilbert Fung.</p><p></p><p>"How are we going to get out of this complex?" Binkadink asked, after explaining what he'd learned about the sonic fences.</p><p></p><p>"How did the spider-sharks get in?" asked Darrien. A quick walk around the complex gave them their answer: one of the 12 sonic pillars had, over the centuries since its construction, stopped working, and as a result there was a gap in the invisible fence that could be traversed without harm. Once it had been pointed out, both Genevar and Obvious recalled they had each wandered in through that section, neither realizing the potential danger of the rest of the fence - it had just looked like a bunch of metal obelisks ringing the complex.</p><p></p><p>"So now where do we go?" asked Hagan once they had exited the Transdimensional Conduit Generation Complex. "Where is this Eradicator Base located?"</p><p></p><p><Nobody knows,> Genevar replied, causing a brief moment of panic when the heroes thought they'd been lured into a month-long wild goose chase. <But I saw it in a vision, floating in the sky, and we were all standing in a desert. There's only one desert I know of in the area, so we should head that way.></p><p></p><p>"Which way that?" asked Gilbert. Genevar pointed and started walking. The others followed.</p><p></p><p>The group had only traveled for about half an hour, during which time Genevar explained in brief a quick history of her world, when they were suddenly enveloped in shadow, as if a dark cloud had suddenly occluded the sun - although the sky was as bright as it had been a moment ago. Binkadink looked down and saw they were all standing inside a circle of shadow, making him think immediately of a weak version of the <em>darkness</em> spell; Aithanar noted a series of "branches" sticking out of the shadow-circle all around them; Finoula shaded her eyes from the sun and looked up - and then cried out in alarm: "Spider!"</p><p></p><p>Sure enough, floating in the air above them, about 80 feet up, was an enormous spider with a bloated abdomen, one three or four times proportionally larger than any spider any of them had seen before. Hagan gave a cry of terror and reacted instinctively with his most powerful spell: <em>meteor swarm</em>. Four blazing projectiles went flashing up at the balloon spider as it lowered itself towards its prey, to explode upon impact. But though the spider had been obviously hurt in the explosion, it didn't look like it had been turned away from its goal.</p><p></p><p>Aithanar had no ranged weapons and thus stood protectively before Genevar, vowing to die before he let anything happen to their only guide. Darrien pointed his arrow-loaded <em>Arachnibow</em> at the incoming monster, smiling to himself at the appropriateness of his chosen weapon in this battle. He sent a wave of arrows up at the balloon spider, each one sticking into the thing's carapace but likewise not causing it to alter its trajectory in the least.</p><p></p><p>Judging the distance between them, Finoula activated her <em>lightning bolt amulet</em> for the fourth time that day, blasting up at the balloon spider, ricocheting off it, and resuming her elven form near where she had started. But the floating arachnid had by then chosen its meal; twisting its bloated abdomen behind it, it shot a thick strand down at the brown-furred hopper, the tip of the strand barbed like a harpoon. And despite its arachnid appearance, this was no line of webbing it had generated from its body but rather a tail-like extension of its abdomen it could shoot out and then retract back into its mostly-hollow back section. The harpoon struck Obvious in the upper right shoulder and penetrated completely through, the barbed tip sticking out of his right side. Obvious screamed in pain as the balloon spider retracted the strand, reeling up its prey so it could bite him to death and start sucking out his life-juices. Binkadink was still in the saddle as his riding mount and best friend was being raised up off the ground to his eventual doom.</p><p></p><p>The balloon spider was a large enough foe that Gilbert was confident he could target it with a <em>maximized chain lightning</em> spell without accidentally hitting either Binkadink or Obvious. Such was indeed the case, although once again the spider took the damage without seeming to flinch. Meanwhile Obvious, in terrible agony, tried extracting himself from the harpoon before the follow-on fall to the ground was likely to kill him, but he couldn't manage the feat - the harpoon was embedded in too deep. Binkadink decided his best bet was to climb up the strand and get to the spider before Obvious was brought within biting range; climbing up out of the saddle would also have the added benefit of removing the weight of the gnome and his armor from the jackalope, hopefully reducing the pain Obvious was taking from the jagged harpoon. Grabbing up his glaive, with which he hoped to slay the balloon spider, Binkadink noted the spider was now rising back into the air since he'd snagged himself a snack - and then the gnome slipped, his hand sliding off the strand while he tried climbing and holding his glaive in his off-hand. Binkadink plummeted back to the ground, landing with a whoof of expelled air as the world spun crazily about him.</p><p></p><p>Hagan cast another <em>meteor swarm</em> at the balloon spider, wanting to kill it before it flew out of range - he could always cast another <em>fly</em> spell upon himself to chase it down if it came to that, but he hoped they could slay it beforehand. The flaming meteors struck true once again and this time, if the half-orc wasn't mistaken, it looked like the spider was starting to feel some of the pain they'd been inflicting upon it.</p><p></p><p>Aithanar, seeing Genevar was in no danger, ran up to Binkadink and pulled out a <em>potion of fly</em> they'd just taken from Selune's lab the day before. The gnome gratefully drank it down, grabbed up his dropped glaive, and rose into the sky, off to rescue his jackalope, who was now only 50 feet away from the spider and some 30 feet above the surface of the ground.</p><p></p><p>Darrien continued pin-cushioning the spider with arrows while Finoula repeated her <em>lightning bolt amulet</em> maneuver for the fifth and final time that day. Gilbert followed suit with a <em>lightning bolt</em> spell of his own, glad to see they were steadily wearing down the arachnid beast. Hagan applied a third <em>meteor swarm</em> wondering if this dreaded thing was <em>ever</em> going to die.</p><p></p><p>But Gilbert was thinking ahead on how they were going to save Obvious if they did manage to kill the balloon spider. He cast a <em>fly</em> spell on himself and flew after Binkadink, calling out his plan. Binkadink flew up to his jackalope and swung his <em>reverberating glaive</em> for all he was worth against the strand, which seemed as strong as a steel cable - but he managed to sever it, and then Gilbert cast a <em>quickened fly</em> spell on the wounded jackalope, who wove a wobbling course back down to the ground, away from the predator out to make him a meal.</p><p></p><p>Darrien pumped another five arrows into the balloon spider before it drifted out of range, but it was Binkadink who managed to get in the killing blow: he flew up to the creature's head so he could stab his glaive into the thing's head, directly in the center of its ring of eyes. That was all it took; the eight legs went limp and the balloon spider floated away at the vagaries of the wind. Binkadink flew back to his wounded friend's side, to see that the others had managed to pull out the horrid harpoon and Darrien was already sealing off the wound with Malrin's <em>staff of healing</em>. "You okay, buddy?" Binkadink asked his jackalope.</p><p></p><p>"Been better," Obvious replied.</p><p></p><p>But once his wounds had been healed by magic, Obvious expressed a desire to resume their trek. He, after all, had not forgotten Genevar's promise that there was a good chance they'd meet up with his littermates. He fervently hoped she was right; he'd love to see his siblings again - and be able to lead them back with him to the better world he'd discovered.</p><p></p><p>- - -</p><p></p><p>And that was it for this adventure, the one where I finally got the PCs to Gamma World. I'd been planting seeds from the very beginning of this campaign, too: the "sonic yuan-ti" were Gamma World hissers; the "Yeenoghu" avatar was simply an ark (a nine-foot-tall humanoid dog-man); Burroc the thought master and his invisible blight (winged worm) are both from the Gamma World campaign, as is MARCI and Obvious. Each of them wandered through the <em>well of many worlds</em>, although this particular setup is really a "well between two particular worlds".</p><p></p><p>Hagan's sudden arachnophobia is a direct result of his player Harry's sudden arachnophobia; he absolutely did not like the spider-shark minis I'd created using plastic sharks with black pipe cleaners for spider legs. I'm not sure where that came from, although my oldest son Stuart also has a deep fear and loathing for spiders - it must (sporadically) run in the family.</p><p></p><p>Logan is absolutely thrilled because he believes the Eradicators the PCs are being sent to revive are likely long since dead and the PCs will be instead gaining their mech suits. All I can say is that he and I sometimes seem to share a brain - we often call out "Wavelength!" when we both are about to say the exact same thing (which happens quite frequently) and at the end of this campaign I'll have to share a particular story about how our "shared wavelength" sometimes interferes with our two separate campaigns. So while I won't admit to anything just yet, there's a very good possibility he's hit the nail on the head with his guess. (If nothing else, he has the history of having done exactly that time and time again on his side.)</p><p></p><p>I also alerted Dan that between this adventure and the next, "off camera" as it were, MARCI will have found the local plants she needs to synthesize the healing mixtures she administers to the PCs as needed (or used to, until she ran out), so she can "load up" on her doses and be fully restocked. She'll be back to being the primary source of healing during Malrin's absence for the next four adventures, while the PCs explore Gamma Terra.</p><p></p><p>- - -</p><p></p><p>T-Shirt Worn: One of my two TARDIS shirts from "Doctor Who," since the PCs traveled to an alternate reality this adventure and that's a trip the TARDIS has made on several different occasions.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Richards, post: 7958885, member: 508"] [B]ADVENTURE 74: INTO THE UNKNOWN[/B] PC Roster: [INDENT]Binkadink Dundernoggin, gnome fighter 19[/INDENT] [INDENT] Darrien, half-elf ranger 19[/INDENT] [INDENT] Finoula Cloudshadow, elf ranger 19[/INDENT] [INDENT] Gilbert Fung, human wizard 19[/INDENT] [INDENT] Hagan, half-orc sorcerer 19[/INDENT] NPC Roster: [INDENT]Aithanar Ivenheart, elf fighter 7[/INDENT] [INDENT] Genevar, humanoid mutant[/INDENT] [INDENT] Malrin Ivenheart, elf druid 14[/INDENT] [INDENT] MARCI, humanoid construct[/INDENT] Game Session Date: 4 April 2020 - - - "It was good to see he's doing okay," Finoula remarked. The group had been asked to visit the garrison fort where the former King Galrich was currently stationed as the sellsword "Slayer," content to let his adopted daughter rule the kingdom even after his mental faculties had been fully restored via a recent [I]wish[/I] spell his Adventurers Guild members had gotten cast to his benefit. Now the adventurers, heading back to Battershield Keep in their Vistani wagon, saw two garrison mercenaries on the side of the road just ahead, one of them seemingly about to strike a young girl who looked to be no more than ten years old. Finoula wasn't going to have any of that. Dashing forward on her pony Daisy, she called "Hold off!" in her no-nonsense voice. The soldier with raised fist looked, startled, at the approaching ranger and apparently recognized her; most of the kingdom was familiar with the Adventurers Guild members who had brought so much wealth and prestige to Kordovia over the years since their founding. He sullenly lowered his fist and the girl looked over to Finoula, eyes widening as if in recognition, although the ranger couldn't recall ever having met her before. "What's going on here?" she demanded as she dismounted from Daisy. Binkadink arrived at her side, likewise dismounting from Obvious, his awakened jackalope mount. Behind them, Aithanar brought the wagon trundling up. "Why are you threatening this girl?" "She--she's a witch!" the soldier sputtered. "He's just afraid of me because I'm mute!" replied the girl. Finoula puzzled over that statement until she realized, with a start, she hadn't actually seen the girl's mouth move when she spoke - what she had assumed was speech was really, the more she thought about it, more like the communication the heroes often shared over a [I]Rary's telepathic bond[/I] spell. Putting a comforting hand onto the little girl's shoulder, she faced her and asked, "What's your name, sweetie?" <[B]Genevar[/B],> replied the little girl, and Finoula was right: she hadn't used her voice at all to respond. That, at least, explained her claims of being "mute." "It ain't natural!" the garrison soldier complained. "She's some kind of monster, messin' about in our heads!" <There's not much in yours to mess about with!> taunted Genevar. <Mostly just thoughts about your cousin, and I'll bet if she knew what you--> Finoula had to grab the man's fist in her hand as he took a swing at Genevar in mid-sentence. "Get out of here, both of you!" she snarled at the sellsword. "We'll take care of her!" "She's a freakin' monster," grumbled the soldier, but now that the other heroes were stepping out of the back of the Vistani wagon and approaching they opted not to make any further scene - not with this many potential opponents. "What going on here?" demanded Gilbert Fung as the two soldiers scuttled off, glaring back at them on occasion as they continued their patrol. Behind him, MARCI approached and, as was her habit, sent her red eye-beam cascading over the new acquaintance. Genevar stood patiently without any show of fear as the beam scanned down her body from head to toe. "Non-human entity," MARCI announced. <Yeah, I thought that was pretty much already known, MARCI,> Genevar spoke telepathically to the others. <I'm a mute - you know, a mutant.> "Wait, you know MARCI?" asked Binkadink. The humanoid construct had not been able to tell them much of her past from before they'd rescued her from the house of Henrietta Higgenbotham, a shrieking hag who'd found MARCI wandering in the Vesve Forest and taken her back to her run-down cottage for further study. According to the mechanoid, she had experienced damage at some point and a portion of her memories had been irretrievably lost. <Well, maybe not that particular one, but yeah, I know about MARCIs: 'Medical Android - Red Cross International.' We come from the same world.> At that, Gilbert spun to look at the construct that had more or less adopted him as her master. "You not from around here," he said. "I knew it! Spelljamming vessel bring you here!" <What's spelljamming...> began Genevar, before apparently digging the answer out of Gilbert's thoughts. <Oh. No, not like that. We're from a different reality altogether. So is Obvious, for that matter.> "Yep," agreed Obvious. Binkadink looked in amazement at his awakened jackalope - and suddenly, with a smile, he realized he'd [I]finally[/I] realized what the prophecy he'd received back in the Purple Mage's manor had meant: "One you cherish will prove to be from much farther away than you might imagine." "Then how you get here?" demanded Gilbert. Genevar explained there was a sort of [I]gate [/I]constructed beside a cottage in the forest and that it opened for an hour or so, with at least a month between intervals. <But while it's opened, you can just walk right through from one world to the other. And it will be ready to open back up tonight, so we all need to be ready. You guys are coming with me back to my world.> "We are?" asked Darrien, smiling. "Why?" <Because that's what you do,> Genevar explained. <I've seen it. I get snatches of visions of the future - or at least the most probable future; it isn't always 100% accurate. But you guys come with me to my world and help revive the Eradicators.> "Eradicators?" asked Hagan. "Who are they? They don't sound like anyone we'd [I]want[/I] to revive." <No, no, they're good - they're superheroes, like Iron Man, only real. They helped fight off the hybrids during the first days of the Shadow Times, keeping the humans safe as the DNA bombs created the unstables. And then they were never seen again, but legend says they'll return at the hour of greatest need - and I saw you all there with me, discovering their hidden flying base, right after you fight the apidox!> "Wait, wait, wait!" grumbled Gilbert. "Slow down! One thing at a time. Who this Iron Man?" Genevar sighed in frustration. <Let's try it this way,> she suggested, closing her eyes and spreading her arms out as if in benediction. Immediately, a flood of sensations swam over the heroes' minds, as the little mutant implanted memories directly into their heads. Iron Man, it turned out, was just a fictional "superhero" - a human who wore a suit of powered armor to fight off equally fictional menaces - but the Eradicators had been real, from the beginning of the Shadow Years, before civilization had fallen. They were a group of six superheroes: [B]Banshee[/B], [B]Goliath[/B], [B]Ogre[/B], [B]Spriggan[/B], [B]Titan[/B], and [B]Wraith[/B]. Each wore a suit of powered armor like this Iron Man fellow, only four of them were much larger than a human, with the "superhero" sitting inside and controlling the larger construct from within. When the bombs went off and groups of people and animals started mutating, transforming into hybrids of various different species, these Eradicators kept the normal populace safe from the emerging monstrosities. Of course, that had been hundreds of years ago, and in the meantime Gamma Terra had taken on a new shape, with the human civilization fallen and the ruins of their cities being plundered by the survivors: clusters of pure strain humans but also groups of mutated humans and a wide variety of animals who had mutated into new forms, many of them attaining humanlike levels of intelligence. Gilbert shook his head at the sudden feeling of being overwhelmed by information. "Okay, got the background story," he said. "But explain about this [I]gate[/I] - how that work?" <There's a pair of small buildings on my world, with a set of columns in a courtyard between them. After about a month, the buildings have generated enough power to open a gateway between the two columns. That gateway leads to your world, this world, but only if your end of the gateway has been powered up, and here it requires a jolt of electricity, like from a lightning strike. Your gate has a lightning rod in place, so when lightning strikes it, if the generators at my end have built up enough power, the gateway opens and you can walk through from one world to the other. And then, after about an hour, the gate closes again - and stays closed until it builds up enough power in about a month. From that point, it just needs another bolt of lightning to hit your gate from your end and boom - gate's back open.> "Sounds interesting," admitted Binkadink. He looked to the others. "You guys feel like checking it out?" "It sounds like we'd be stuck there for at least a month," pointed out Finoula. "Unless we can awaken these Eradicators and get back within an hour, which I imagine isn't very likely. Can we afford to be gone that long?" <Your littermates are all there on the other side,> Genevar pointed out to Obvious. "Can we go?" pleaded the jackalope to his gnomish rider. "I want to bring them back here!" "I'm in," declared the gnome, patting his riding mount - and best friend - on the neck. "We're both going." The others all followed suit; it seemed like it would be an interesting experience and if Genevar had already "seen" them rescuing the Eradicators, who were they to try to defy Fate? They had some decisions to make, though, starting with who all would be going through the gate. Darrien and Finoula decided against bringing Grumps Junior, Wrath, and Daisy, as this Gamma Terra sounded like a pretty dangerous place. Malrin, too, would be staying behind, but not because of the danger; rather, they needed her to remain in place to activate the [I]gate[/I] from this end with a [I]call lightning[/I] spell in a month's time, to prevent them from being stuck in this other world. Aithanar, however, would be coming along; he was their animal groomer, after all, and Obvious had five littermates they'd hopefully be tracking down in the next month; they'd need tending to. (That was the argument he gave, in any case, although if he were being truthful he couldn't stand the thought of being separated from Finoula for a month or more.) And Binkadink instantly decided he'd have Malrin cast an [I]awaken[/I] spell upon each of the jackalopes once they all made it back to Oerth - and maybe a bunch more, if they could find them, so Obvious could start a family here. "But if Malrin stays behind, there go our source of healing!" argued Gilbert. "We'll have MARCI," Binkadink pointed out. "She all out of healing doses! And can't make more!" "Not here," said Finoula. "But back in her own world, she can probably find whatever plants or herbs or whatever she needs to create her mixtures." "We should probably see if we can grab a bunch of those too, so we can plant them over here," Binkadink suggested. There was no telling what all they'd find in this entirely new world that they might want to bring with them back home. But in the end, Malrin gave Darrien her [I]staff of healing[/I] so he could use it as needed to heal any wounds they might sustain on Gamma Terra, and Binkadink recommended everyone stock up on healing potions beforehand. (They all hit his Uncle Winkidew's potion shop as a result, practically cleaning him out of his inventory.) Malrin also passed her brother the [I]portable hole[/I] she normally carried for the group; it had come in handy on many an occasion. And then, once all the preparations had been made, the heroes headed into the Vesve Forest, following a ten-year-old mutant girl from another world to the gateway that would take them off their own planet. The Vesve Forest was a vast place, easily several times larger than the entire kingdom of Kordovia, but Genevar led them unerringly to where she wanted to bring them. <There it is,> she announced, indicating a bunch of trees than looked no different than the trees elsewhere all around them. "Where?" asked Binkadink from the saddle, but then Obvious stepped forward another step and a wooden structure came suddenly into view. The cottage looked old and weathered, like it hadn't been tended to for some time. There was a smaller structure jutting off to the east side of the building; judging by the barnlike double doors, a stable and storage for a wagon. But over on the western side stood the structure they'd apparently come here to see: a pair of stone columns capped by a curved plinth, with a tall, metal rod sticking up from the column closest to the cottage - apparently the "lightning rod" Genevar had spoken of. And that wasn't all that had changed in the moments between two steps, either: the trees all around the cottage had suddenly became bare and twisted. "Hmmm," mused Gilbert Fung. "[I]Hallucinatory terrain[/I] spell. Made permanent, look like." Just to test the theory, he backed away until the cottage and its immediate environs disappeared from view. Then, stepping forward, he pierced the illusion spell and saw the hidden cottage once again. "Whoever live here, want to keep hidden." "It doesn't look like [I]anybody[/I] lives here - or has, for a very long time," pointed out Darrien. "Still, we be careful." While Gilbert led a group of the other adventurers to check out the unopened gateway, Hagan decided to go check out the attached wing of the wooden cottage. The double doors opened easily, letting out a scent of decay: mildewing hay and the still-detectable odor of death and decay coming from the two skeletal horses, each lying in a pile of bones in a separate stall. As expected, there was a wagon off to the side, as well as a door leading into the cottage. Warily, Hagan approached it (while Wezhley, his weasel familiar, spun around on the half-orc's shoulder and kept a wary eye on the horse skeletons, half convinced they would rise up and attack). It was locked, and a closer examination led the sorcerer to believe it was magically locked - likely by an [I]arcane lock[/I] spell. Darrien came to the same conclusion when he tried opening the main entrance into the cottage and found it magically locked as well. Binkadink and Obvious came up behind him (the gnome fighter had no expertise in examining magical [I]gates[/I]; he left that to the spellcasters), the little gnome dismounting once Obvious made it clear he'd stay outside if at all possible - the jackalope didn't fit easily inside dwellings built to a human scale. Malrin and Gilbert examined the gate, with Mudpie and MARCI following in their master's wake, as usual; Genevar also opted to keep close to them. There were various runes etched along the columns and the crosspiece, which Gilbert identified as having conjuration and teleportation connotations. Genevar looked on in confusion while he gave a short lecture on their significance and didn't even bother peeking into his mind to get an explanation of what the heck he was talking about. It sounded all magicky to her, like the old legends of Merlin or Harry Potter. Finoula and Aithanar explored the ground in the gateway's vicinity, the ranger's sharp senses having detected the glint of what looked like bone. Sure enough, it was a human skeleton, likely that of a woman due to its size and the decaying robe still clinging to its skeletal frame, half-buried in the dirt on the far side of the cottage. Finoula could see the robe, despite the weathering it had taken over however many years out here in the open, had several parallel rips along its side, possibly made by something with very large claws. It was complete supposition at this point, but Finoula got the sense this was likely the woman who had owned the now apparently abandoned cottage, and she guessed she had been a wizard, constructing this gateway in hidden seclusion behind her permanent [I]hallucinatory terrain[/I] spell. Darrien called over to Malrin to bring her [I]chime of opening[/I] and Hagan left the dead horses to their stable, heading back out to the front as the druid used her magic chime to open the [I]arcane locked[/I] front door. She then stepped inside, heading off to the left of the entry hall, where there was another door to the west. Darrien followed her into the building but headed straight ahead through an abandoned kitchen with cobwebs hanging in all corners and a stain on a counter apparently all that remained of some sort of vegetable matter long since rotted away. There was another small room at the end of a short hallway (with a door leading to the stables) which turned out to be a simple bathroom. Giving Obvious a pat on the neck, Binkadink grabbed up his [I]reverberating glaive[/I] (because you never knew) and entered the building, heading over by Malrin. Hagan followed. There was another door along the western side of the building and Finoula found it to be [I]arcane locked[/I] as well. Fortunately, she had a [I]chime of opening[/I] of her own and after grabbing it out of her pack she used a charge to unlock the door. As she did so, though, she thought she heard the sound of a door being yanked open from an inner room and wondered if the others had made it inside. Gilbert and the others followed her into an arcane lab of some type, with alchemical equipment arranged for potion creation and vials containing a half dozen or so finished products sitting labeled in a wooden tray. While Darrien went further into the building, discovering a small bedroom past the kitchen, Malrin opened the door from the entry hall into a library. There was a single plush chair as the room's only furniture, but the walls were all covered with shelves of books and scrolls. However, that wasn't the only item of interest in the room: along the back, a door had just slammed open and in the doorway stood a glowing sword sheathed in flames. It hovered for only a moment before darting at the elven druid, slashing down at her. Malrin rolled with the hit but a deep cut ran across her left shoulder down to her breastbone. She backed off at once, stepping back outside to let the more experienced members of the group deal with this threat while she cast a healing spell on herself to close the wound across her upper chest. Binkadink stepped forward into the open doorway to the library, hoping to contain the floating sword and prevent it from getting to anybody behind it. He slashed it with the blade of his own weapon, setting the glaive humming in power, but it was impossible to tell if his strike had caused any damage - [I]probably not[/I], he thought, as that blade looked an awful lot like the [I]Mordenkainen's sword[/I] spell that both Gilbert and Hagan had each cast in the past - plus the added flames around the sword's blade, which probably just meant it was a spell variant. In any case, the gnome fighter wasn't sure how to go about "killing" a spell effect - although he was willing to give it a try. Aithanar stepped through the open doorway from the laboratory to the library, thinking he'd heard the sounds of combat coming form that way. And sure enough he'd been right: there was Binkadink fighting a [I]flaming sword[/I] hovering in place. But then another longsword materialized in the air, clashing its own blade of force against the one wreathed in flames. This new sword was a [I]Mordenkainen's sword[/I] spell just cast by Hagan in an attempt to allow Binkadink to back off without taking any damage himself. Darrien opened a door from the empty bedroom and found himself in the back of the arcane lab, just as the others were following in Aithanar's wake to see what was going on in the library. What was going on, at the moment, was the [I]flaming sword[/I] whirling back the way it had come and stabbing down at Aithanar, who tried in vain to fend it off with his own unsheathed blade. A deep cut across his right bicep caused him to cry out in pain. At that, Binkadink rushed fully into the library, attacking the floating sword - some kind of magical defense spell, he reasoned, likely triggered when they forced their way into the house - not expecting to be able to destroy it but perhaps able to deflect its attention away from Aithanar and onto himself; despite their size difference, Binkadink knew he could last much longer against pretty much any opponent, compared to the nimble elf. But then Gilbert stepped into the library doorway, took in the scene before him, and cast a [I]disintegrate[/I] spell upon the floating sword. It winked out of existence at once. Then, after making sure everyone was okay, he rubbed his hands in glee at the sight of the library and opened up his [I]Omnibook[/I], ready to spend the next couple of hours transferring its contents into the infinite pages of the magical tome that served as his spellbook, research library, and spell scroll storage device all in one. While he was doing that, Malrin healed up all those who needed healing and the others examined the lab equipment. Binkadink declared the potionmaking equipment was all in good repair and was certain his Uncle Winkidew and cousin Jinkadoodle could put it to good use, once properly cleaned up. Aithanar was designated the group's communal potion-holder, taking custody of the seven finished potions in the rack. But as the sun started sinking into the sky, the group decided everyone - even Obvious - should stay inside the cottage, where it was somewhat defensible if necessary. Genevar could tell, through her prophetic glimpses into the future, that the [I]gate[/I] wouldn't be opened until it was full-on night, and that furthermore there was some kind of guardian who might make an appearance before then. "What kind of guardian?" asked Hagan. <I don't know,> admitted Genevar, shivering in fear. <Female. Deadly. With tight skin.> "Sounds like undead," Gilbert observed, which was another word - and concept - with which Genevar wasn't familiar. Apparently on Gamma Terra the dead didn't come back to unholy life after their passing; that was one thing in its favor, at least. It wasn't long afterwards that a horrible moaning erupted from outside the building. The group had all decided to huddle together in the arcane laboratory, it being the largest room inside the cottage. Finoula tilted her head in concentration, pinpointing the sound as coming from just outside in the general area where she had found the skeletal remains of what she imagined was the female wizard who had lived here before coming to a grisly end outside. Putting together what she knew about the various forms of undead and the legends she'd heard from her mother growing up, she hesitated a guess: "A banshee?" That put certain thoughts directly into the forefront of Gilbert's mind, for he had an irrational hatred of all forms of undead. He also had a vast storehouse of information about the various types of undead, and he rapidly skimmed what he knew about banshees: they were troubled female spirits, angered at their deaths and filled with hatred for the living, capable of emitting cries capable of slaying all who heard them.... "Need to spread out!" warned Gilbert as the undead spirit of [B]Selune Travers[/B], the wizard who had built the [I]well of many worlds[/I] outside only to be slain by a 9-foot-tall hyena-man who walked through the [I]gate[/I] before she'd been able to experience for herself the results of the device she'd spent decades of her life building, glided through the wall and into the crowded lab. Of all of the group, only Hagan was close enough to a doorway to heed Gilbert's advice; he and Wezhley slipped into the library as the banshee appeared in the room behind him. Gilbert slapped his hands onto Mudpie's flank and Genevar's shoulder and cast a [I]quickened dimension door[/I] on the three of them, sending them immediately outside the front door of Selune's cottage. But he'd gotten a glimpse of the banshee before he disappeared from the room and could feel the results of even the brief visual contact: he felt physically diminished in almost every way - weaker, slower, and physically drained of his vitality. Most of the others in the room were feeling the same: Darrien, Finoula, Aithanar, Malrin, and Obvious also felt a physical draining sensation at the banshee's sudden appearance in the room with them; only Binkadink had been facing away from the undead apparition as she entered the room, and MARCI, while seeing the banshee just fine, had no adverse affects from the creature's horrific appearance. And then, before any of them had a chance to react, Selune opened her undead mouth and howled a wail of torment. All but Binkadink and MARCI dropped to the floor, dead, like marionettes whose strings had been suddenly cut all at once. From outside, Gilbert heard the scream but was well outside its area of effect; he silently congratulated himself on saving at least those who were within his immediate reach. He ran back into the house - he'd dispelled the [I]arcane locks[/I] on the outer doors earlier - and entered the foyer, heading towards the library. The door was open (they'd left all the interior doors open so they could better hear anyone trying to approach), and he mentally ran through his spell selection to see if he had something available with which he could attack the banshee without having to be there in the room with her. Then, finding an optimal solution, he cast a [I]Mordenkainen's sword[/I] spell of his own and sent it flashing through the library to attack the banshee in the lab after Gilbert focused on the undead creature's appearance and last known general location. The sword whizzed by Hagan and into the laboratory, where the blade of force cut into Selune's incorporeal form, causing her to hiss in pain. Binkadink dropped his [I]reverberating glaive[/I], realizing two things at once: despite its magic, there was a good chance any strike he made with it would pass right through the banshee's incorporeal body; and [I]Tahlmalaera[/I], currently configured as a [I]ghost touch weapon[/I], was laying there in Finoula's open hand. He dove at Finoula's side, scooping up [I]Tahlmalaera[/I] in a two-handed grip and bringing it slicing into the spirit-woman's side as he rose back up to his feet. But in finally facing the banshee, the gnome too felt the effects of her horrific appearance, as his sighting of her weakened him physically. "Stay here," rumbled Mudpie to Genevar as he raced inside the cottage, following his master. Gilbert imbued his familiar with a [I]magic circle against evil[/I] spell and sent him thundering through the kitchen and bedroom, showing up at the open door to the arcane laboratory. There, floating before him, was Selune, facing off against Binkadink wielding Finoula's magic longsword. Hagan, realizing the advantages of Gilbert's strategy, cast another [I]Mordenkainen's sword[/I] spell and sent his own force-blade into the other room to attack the banshee. She now faced three separate blades, one wielded by a gnome fighter on extended stilt-boots and the other two wielded from other rooms by spellcasters relying upon the power of their arcane mastery. Given the three opponents, Selune slashed her claws out at her only living foe, sending her incorporeal hand deep inside Binkadink's body and draining some internal makeup of his personality, using the stolen power to heal some of her immaterial wounds. But that didn't stop the little gnome from fighting on; he used [I]Tahlmalaera[/I] to strike again and again into the banshee, cutting her down faster than she could heal herself up with power stolen from his own living body; at either side, the twin [I]Mordenkainen's swords[/I] did their own part as well. And then Mudpie stepped up behind Selune; realizing his massive fists could easily pass right through her without effect, he instead used the magical [I]battleaxe[/I] Gilbert had given him to carry when he was at his current, hulking size, the weapon much too big for anyone else to wield effectively. The weapon was unfamiliar to the familiar when he wasn't under the effects of one of Gilbert's castings of the [I]Tenser's transformation[/I] spells but he brought it crashing down upon the banshee nonetheless. Selune seemed surprised at this attack from an unexpected direction, and that was all Binkadink needed to drop her for good. She dissipated into nothingness before she'd had an opportunity to bring her deadly howl back into play. "Good job, everybody!" Gilbert said as he stepped into the room - only to find the remains of five of his slain friends. "We can't go through the gate now," said Hagan, stepping into the lab behind the heavyset mage. Binkadink, his battle against the banshee won, had dropped his borrowed longsword and buried his face into the fur of his jackalope's neck, muffling the sobs that shook his body. "No, it wait until tomorrow," Gilbert agreed. "Mudpie: go fetch Genevar, bring her in here!" As the elemental lumbered back through the cottage to do his master's bidding, Gilbert bent down over Aithanar's corpse and pulled out the [I]portable hole[/I] he carried folded up in a belt pouch. "We put bodies in hole, get Moradin clerics to use [I]true resurrection[/I] scrolls to bring them back to life tomorrow. Then we return here, open [I]gate[/I], go through." That's exactly how it played out. The Head Cleric of the Temple of Moradin, Duerna Forgewife, opted to cast the [I]true resurrection[/I] spells herself, and after the five slain heroes had been returned to life they gave themselves a couple of hours to get their minds clear of the stress of the situation before declaring themselves ready to press on. (Genevar was amazed at the entire process, not only that casting magical spells apparently worked here in this world but that the dead could actually be restored to life.) It was late afternoon when the group returned to the cottage of Selune Travers and prepared for their excursion into another world. "I wish I was going with you," Malrin said wistfully. "Everybody stay safe." "We'll miss you!" Finoula said, giving her fellow elf a farewell hug. "But we'll see you in a month!" Aithanar gave his older sister a goodbye hug as well; the others mostly made do with waves and farewell greetings. Then the druid cast a [I]call lightning storm[/I] spell, directing a bolt of electricity to arc down out of the sky and strike the metal rod impaled into the top of the stone column supporting the [I]gate[/I] between worlds. The energy did the trick: within an instant, the area between the columns had filled with a crackling screen of energy. <It's open!> Genevar said. <Let's go!> Those who were making the trip had lined up before the columns; as one, they stepped forward into another world. In one moment, they were standing in a forest area of twisted, barren trees and in the next they were in a clearing with a single-story building before them made of some glimmering metal - and with three hungry-looking spider-sharks directly before them. Each of these mutant creatures was exactly what they sounded like: a shark's body, ranging from five to eight feet long, with eight hairy spider legs growing out of their sleek sides; their partial arachnid nature was also evident in the fact they each sported not the normal two but a full set of eight glossy black eyes. There were the normal gills along their flanks but the creatures were quite obviously breathing air just fine. Before any of the heroes could overcome their shock at these odd, hybrid monsters the spider-sharks struck. Beams erupted from the eyes of each of the three monsters, targeting Obvious, Mudpie, and Darrien. Each set of eye-rays struck true and the targets each felt a tingling sensation like they were being shaken by rapid vibrations. None of the rays had the desired effect - stunning the spider-sharks' intended prey into unconsciousness - but it was only a matter of time; most prey could only take so many blasts from the stun rays before they fell to unconsciousness. In the meantime, the spider-sharks surged forward, crawling rapidly to those closest to them - in this case, Aithanar, Obvious, and Mudpie - and snapping at them with mouths full of sharp teeth. As the monsters got closer, the heroes could see each spider-shark had a set of arachnid pedipalps at the sides of their mouth to help draw in victims. Hagan was the first of the heroes to react, aided in no doubt by a healthy dose of arachnophobia. His [I]polar ray[/I] was probably a bit of overkill, as it froze the spider-shark it hit into a solid block of ice which then shattered under its own weight on the eight narrow spider-legs - but Hagan wasn't taking any chances the abomination might live to get even closer to the half-orc than it already had. He shivered uncontrollably at the very sight of these monstrosities. Darrien had stepped into the [I]gate[/I] with an arrow already set into his [I]Arachnibow[/I] so he'd be ready for whatever they might encounter on Gamma Terra, and he not only raised it and fired it at the nearest spider-shark, he followed it up with a handful of others, one after another. That monster fell under the onslaught of arrows before it had gotten a taste of any of these strangers from another world. Finoula killed the third one by transforming herself into a living bolt of lightning, courtesy of her magical amulet. She pivoted through the spider-shark's corpse and resumed her elven form against the front wall of the northernmost metal building. From this vantage point, she could see the [I]gate[/I] extended between two metal pillars, each partially embedded into a section of building. The entire complex, she saw, was ringed by a series of standalone obelisks, rectangular in shape unlike the circular pillars flanking the gateway home. Finoula couldn't see through the gateway to her own world; the [I]gate[/I] was a shimmering field of energy - and would remain in place for about an hour, if what Genevar had told them was accurate. Finoula's sharp hearing also picked up a low-level hum, but she assumed it was from the [I]gate[/I] being generated before her. Binkadink, astride Obvious, moved forward into the clearing, glaive ready to strike if any of these spider-sharks gave any indication of still being alive, but the twitching, spidery legs were just muscular reactions - death throes, it seemed. Gilbert, Mudpie, MARCI, Aithanar, and Genevar stepped forward as well. "These monsters here when you come through to our world?" Gilbert asked their ten-year-old guide. <No, the place was empty. Spider-sharks like to travel in packs, though - they probably just wandered in here.> This particular spider-shark pack was a bit larger than the three the heroes had already killed, however - those three just happened to be on that side of the [I]gate[/I] when it was activated. The other four in the pack, three of them horse-sized and the leader over twice that size, scrambled from the south over the buildings on either side of the [I]gate[/I] and attacked. Two sets of stun rays shot out from two sets of eyes to strike Obvious, while two other spider-sharks each targeted Mudpie and Aithanar. (The earth elemental was completely immune to the stunning effects but the spider-sharks didn't know that; they just saw a large opponent who could quite possibly be delicious - a belief that would be immediately dispelled if any of them ever tried taking a bite out of Mudpie!) Once again, their attempts at biting their intended meals failed as the heroes quickly dodged out of the way. Once again, Hagan's intense dislike for spiders and spider-related creatures caused him to bring one of his more powerful spells to bear, although the [I]chain lightning[/I] spell killed outright the spider-shark leader, it only fried up one of the smaller creatures but failed to slay it. Binkadink finished that one off with his glaive, while Darrien took another down with his [I]Arachnibow[/I] as Finoula advanced and used her [I]flaming burst whip of thorns[/I] on the last one. A solid punch from Mudpie crushed the final spider-shark's skull in and it joined the rest of its pack in twitching death. Everyone quickly checked around in all directions, waiting to see if there would be another wave of these creatures, but it seemed the spider-sharks had all been slain. Mudpie started dragging their bodies out of the way by stacking them up against the wall, the followed his master and a group of the others in examining what looked to be the main door to the northern building. There was a sign of some sort on the wall beside the door; examining the unfamiliar characters, Gilbert asked Genevar, "This some sort of writing? What it say?" <'Transdimensional Conduit Generation Complex.'> Genevar translated. Gilbert just shrugged; the term meant nothing to him, but he assumed it was this world's version of the [I]gate[/I] the banshee-woman had built when she was still alive. He tried the door but it was locked; rather than wait for one of the [I]chimes of opening[/I] to be deployed, he ordered Mudpie to open the door. It resisted all of three punches from the elemental's solid stone fists before buckling open off its hinges. Binkadink decided to check out the small building to the east, which jutted up against the eastern pillar generating the [I]gate[/I]. That door was unlocked; opening it, his little gnomish heart soared at the elaborate machinery displayed within - none of it the least bit comprehensible to the fighter, but certainly appreciable as a very complex bit of technology. (His Uncle Winkidew would undoubtedly drool at the sight, he knew.) But there was nobody inside so the gnome closed the door, got back in the saddle, and turned to pass by the building and see what was over on the southern part of the complex when he heard the same low-level humming Finoula had detected earlier. However, he was much closer to the exterior columns than the ranger had been and Binkadink could tell the noise was coming from these rectangular obelisks. In fact, he decided they bore more than a little resemblance to the sonic pillars that had protected the [I]Titanslayer[/I] sword in the lower depths of Carceri. Testing a theory, Binkadink fished out a copper piece and, from the saddle, flipped it into the space between two outer columns. Sure enough, it hit an invisible wall of some type which sent a cascade of subsonics vibrating through the general area. It was some sort of sonic fence, the gnome decided. Hagan, in the meantime, was not convinced there weren't any more of these spider-sharks about and decided to verify for himself the truth of the situation. Casting a [I]fly[/I] spell, he rose some 60 feet straight up into the air, high enough that he could see over the gateway to Oerth and the long, low building at the rear of the complex - and sure enough, there were no more of those horrible mutants to be found. From his vantage point he could see rolling hills of grass in all directions; this small complex of one-story metal buildings had been built far from other habitations. He saw a road leading from the side of the complex off into the distance, but this road was built of no substance he'd ever seen before in his life. This truly was a strange world indeed! Finoula and Darrien had moved past the small building with the machinery inside while Binkadink was checking it out and advanced to the long building to the south. There was a single door facing them and it was unlocked; Darrien entered cautiously. The large room before him looked to be some sort of lounge area, with tables and chairs and some strange-looking devices on several of the tables. There were two hallways, one at either end. Randomly taking a left and heading to the longer hallway to the east, the archer was surprised when what sounded like a klaxon went off - apparently he'd triggered some sort of alarm? But then he got an even bigger surprise when, darting out from the shadows behind one of the tables in the back - a rather strange table indeed, covered in green felt with a series of round, multicolored balls sitting on the surface between holes in the corners and the sides - came a massive dog wearing a leather saddle. Odder still, the dog seemed to be making the klaxon sounds, or at least did up until the point he tried clamping his teeth down upon Darrien's leg. Finoula entered the room and saw the giant podog attacking her fellow ranger. She instinctively tried calming the creature, making soothing sounds while acknowledging her surprise that the beast looked rather like a larger version of the mastiffs she'd seen before on her own world. But the podog was not interested in being soothed, so Finoula forced the issue by casting a [I]hold animal[/I] spell on it. That did the trick. Back in the northern building, Gilbert and company found themselves in a reception area of some sort, with a pair of double doors directly across the room and a single door along the western wall, over by a desk. Gilbert deployed Mudpie as the door opener, having him smash through the double doors. "You wait here, we check it out," Gilbert said and MARCI stayed behind as ordered, while Aithanar held his longsword at the ready to protect Genevar, their guide in this strange place. Gilbert and his familiar didn't get very far, though; they turned a corner to the left and advanced a mere handful of steps before triggering some sort of defense system which shot waves of subharmonics that had the heavyset mage collapsing on the floor. Mudpie dragged his master back to the reception room, where Genevar suggested there was probably some sort of badge required to get further into the building. Explaining to Aithanar what they were looking for, the elf found a set of security badges inside one of the drawers in the receptionist's desk. MARCI, meanwhile, scanned Gilbert's unconscious form and announced he should wake on his own in a minute or two. The group opted to stay where they were until he regained consciousness on his own. Back in the southern building, though, there was a bit more excitement going on - for the podog's klaxon noise (a perfect rendition of an actual klaxon he'd heard earlier in life, administered via the mutant canine's sound impression ability) had alerted his master, [B]Resnick[/B] of the intruders. Resnick, a mutant wanderer, grabbed up his Mark V blaster, stepped out of the bunkroom he'd been hiding in since the pack of spider-sharks had chased him and his loyal podog [B]Grey[/B] into this complex the night before, and fired off five shots at the stranger standing before his unmoving riding mount. Three of the shots hit Darrien square on and he fell over, still feeling the effects of the spider-sharks' eye rays. Hagan heard the shots fired and flew over to the southern building's door - he wasn't sure what had made those noises but he was willing to bet they weren't good. Binkadink and Obvious, already heading that way, hurried even faster to see what was going on. Finoula, already on the scene, activated her [I]lightning amulet[/I] and blasted through the gun-toting mutant, emerging in the hallway behind him. Resnick staggered under the attack but didn't suspect the silver-haired dame had actually [I]become[/I] the bolt of lightning that struck him; in his experience, it was more likely she'd shot him with a blast of electricity and then used some mutant power to bend the light waves around her body, cloaking her in invisibility. But before he had a chance to try to detect her, another mutant ran into the room, this one half Resnick's height and wearing a ridiculous helmet with antlers on it - unless those were his own antlers, which wasn't outside the scope of possibility. Resnick wasn't taking any chances; as he popped out the energy cell from his blaster and slapped in a replacement, he sent his inherent mind blast power in a beam of coherent energy from his forehead to the little antlered guy (his bladed weapon looked sufficiently dangerous) and Binkadink froze in place, unable to move or even to think. Hagan stepped into the room and Resnick took the half-orc as another mutant. The sorcerer sent a [I]polar ray[/I] Resnick's way, but the nimble mutant easily dodged it and Hagan snarled at the wasted spell. But then Finoula reactivated her amulet and blasted through Resnick a second time as a bolt of living lightning, angling her way out of his body so she easily avoided the three-and-a-half-foot-tall gnome, reforming into her elf body in midair and landing surefootedly just past him. And then Obvious entered the room and the fray, biting and clawing at Resnick. This, at least, was a foe the mutant recognized: it was a hopper, although oddly enough this one's fur seemed to be staying the same color despite his surroundings. Resnick easily avoided the hopper's attacks - he was, Finoula noted, moving at a much quicker pace than anybody she'd ever seen except for those quicklings in the Land of Faerie and anybody under the effects of a [I]haste[/I] spell. But, not liking the odds or the fact that his trusty steed looked to be just as stunned as the little antler-man, Resnick dashed over to Grey, put his hand upon his steed's back - and the two vanished. Now it was Hagan and Finoula's turn to wonder if they'd turned invisible or not, but the mutant had opened a portal between the spaces and [I]dimension doored[/I] himself and his podog outside the complex; if these weird mutants had made it in here, he'd assume the spider-sharks were long gone by now. Binkadink blinked himself back to sensibility, the mind blast having worn off, while Finoula bent over Darrien to see if he was okay. He was breathing, at least - that was a good sign. Binkadink, in the meantime, headed into the room the mutant human had exited from, seeing if he could learn anything about him. He'd left some interesting stuff behind: a steel canteen full of water, a cloth bag of marbles, something that looked like two spyglasses side by side (and which, when placed over the eyes, allowed the gnome to see for great distances; there was even a little knob between the two eyepieces that adjusted how close the image was within the lenses), and something that looked a bit like a sunrod but which Genevar later explained was a road flare. When Gilbert finally awoke, the group gathered up together again and gave the northern building a quick exploration (once Genevar had affixed security badges to their armor and clothing), but there wasn't much else to see. Genevar cautioned them from touching anything in what she termed the "control room" as she feared changing the configuration on any of the equipment could cause the [I]gate[/I] to sync up with somewhere other than Oerth the next time it was used, in a month. But by the time they had explored to their satisfaction that there was nobody there in the complex with them, the [I]gate[/I] had shut down in the courtyard. "That it - we here for the next month!" observed Gilbert Fung. "How are we going to get out of this complex?" Binkadink asked, after explaining what he'd learned about the sonic fences. "How did the spider-sharks get in?" asked Darrien. A quick walk around the complex gave them their answer: one of the 12 sonic pillars had, over the centuries since its construction, stopped working, and as a result there was a gap in the invisible fence that could be traversed without harm. Once it had been pointed out, both Genevar and Obvious recalled they had each wandered in through that section, neither realizing the potential danger of the rest of the fence - it had just looked like a bunch of metal obelisks ringing the complex. "So now where do we go?" asked Hagan once they had exited the Transdimensional Conduit Generation Complex. "Where is this Eradicator Base located?" <Nobody knows,> Genevar replied, causing a brief moment of panic when the heroes thought they'd been lured into a month-long wild goose chase. <But I saw it in a vision, floating in the sky, and we were all standing in a desert. There's only one desert I know of in the area, so we should head that way.> "Which way that?" asked Gilbert. Genevar pointed and started walking. The others followed. The group had only traveled for about half an hour, during which time Genevar explained in brief a quick history of her world, when they were suddenly enveloped in shadow, as if a dark cloud had suddenly occluded the sun - although the sky was as bright as it had been a moment ago. Binkadink looked down and saw they were all standing inside a circle of shadow, making him think immediately of a weak version of the [I]darkness[/I] spell; Aithanar noted a series of "branches" sticking out of the shadow-circle all around them; Finoula shaded her eyes from the sun and looked up - and then cried out in alarm: "Spider!" Sure enough, floating in the air above them, about 80 feet up, was an enormous spider with a bloated abdomen, one three or four times proportionally larger than any spider any of them had seen before. Hagan gave a cry of terror and reacted instinctively with his most powerful spell: [I]meteor swarm[/I]. Four blazing projectiles went flashing up at the balloon spider as it lowered itself towards its prey, to explode upon impact. But though the spider had been obviously hurt in the explosion, it didn't look like it had been turned away from its goal. Aithanar had no ranged weapons and thus stood protectively before Genevar, vowing to die before he let anything happen to their only guide. Darrien pointed his arrow-loaded [I]Arachnibow[/I] at the incoming monster, smiling to himself at the appropriateness of his chosen weapon in this battle. He sent a wave of arrows up at the balloon spider, each one sticking into the thing's carapace but likewise not causing it to alter its trajectory in the least. Judging the distance between them, Finoula activated her [I]lightning bolt amulet[/I] for the fourth time that day, blasting up at the balloon spider, ricocheting off it, and resuming her elven form near where she had started. But the floating arachnid had by then chosen its meal; twisting its bloated abdomen behind it, it shot a thick strand down at the brown-furred hopper, the tip of the strand barbed like a harpoon. And despite its arachnid appearance, this was no line of webbing it had generated from its body but rather a tail-like extension of its abdomen it could shoot out and then retract back into its mostly-hollow back section. The harpoon struck Obvious in the upper right shoulder and penetrated completely through, the barbed tip sticking out of his right side. Obvious screamed in pain as the balloon spider retracted the strand, reeling up its prey so it could bite him to death and start sucking out his life-juices. Binkadink was still in the saddle as his riding mount and best friend was being raised up off the ground to his eventual doom. The balloon spider was a large enough foe that Gilbert was confident he could target it with a [I]maximized chain lightning[/I] spell without accidentally hitting either Binkadink or Obvious. Such was indeed the case, although once again the spider took the damage without seeming to flinch. Meanwhile Obvious, in terrible agony, tried extracting himself from the harpoon before the follow-on fall to the ground was likely to kill him, but he couldn't manage the feat - the harpoon was embedded in too deep. Binkadink decided his best bet was to climb up the strand and get to the spider before Obvious was brought within biting range; climbing up out of the saddle would also have the added benefit of removing the weight of the gnome and his armor from the jackalope, hopefully reducing the pain Obvious was taking from the jagged harpoon. Grabbing up his glaive, with which he hoped to slay the balloon spider, Binkadink noted the spider was now rising back into the air since he'd snagged himself a snack - and then the gnome slipped, his hand sliding off the strand while he tried climbing and holding his glaive in his off-hand. Binkadink plummeted back to the ground, landing with a whoof of expelled air as the world spun crazily about him. Hagan cast another [I]meteor swarm[/I] at the balloon spider, wanting to kill it before it flew out of range - he could always cast another [I]fly[/I] spell upon himself to chase it down if it came to that, but he hoped they could slay it beforehand. The flaming meteors struck true once again and this time, if the half-orc wasn't mistaken, it looked like the spider was starting to feel some of the pain they'd been inflicting upon it. Aithanar, seeing Genevar was in no danger, ran up to Binkadink and pulled out a [I]potion of fly[/I] they'd just taken from Selune's lab the day before. The gnome gratefully drank it down, grabbed up his dropped glaive, and rose into the sky, off to rescue his jackalope, who was now only 50 feet away from the spider and some 30 feet above the surface of the ground. Darrien continued pin-cushioning the spider with arrows while Finoula repeated her [I]lightning bolt amulet[/I] maneuver for the fifth and final time that day. Gilbert followed suit with a [I]lightning bolt[/I] spell of his own, glad to see they were steadily wearing down the arachnid beast. Hagan applied a third [I]meteor swarm[/I] wondering if this dreaded thing was [I]ever[/I] going to die. But Gilbert was thinking ahead on how they were going to save Obvious if they did manage to kill the balloon spider. He cast a [I]fly[/I] spell on himself and flew after Binkadink, calling out his plan. Binkadink flew up to his jackalope and swung his [I]reverberating glaive[/I] for all he was worth against the strand, which seemed as strong as a steel cable - but he managed to sever it, and then Gilbert cast a [I]quickened fly[/I] spell on the wounded jackalope, who wove a wobbling course back down to the ground, away from the predator out to make him a meal. Darrien pumped another five arrows into the balloon spider before it drifted out of range, but it was Binkadink who managed to get in the killing blow: he flew up to the creature's head so he could stab his glaive into the thing's head, directly in the center of its ring of eyes. That was all it took; the eight legs went limp and the balloon spider floated away at the vagaries of the wind. Binkadink flew back to his wounded friend's side, to see that the others had managed to pull out the horrid harpoon and Darrien was already sealing off the wound with Malrin's [I]staff of healing[/I]. "You okay, buddy?" Binkadink asked his jackalope. "Been better," Obvious replied. But once his wounds had been healed by magic, Obvious expressed a desire to resume their trek. He, after all, had not forgotten Genevar's promise that there was a good chance they'd meet up with his littermates. He fervently hoped she was right; he'd love to see his siblings again - and be able to lead them back with him to the better world he'd discovered. - - - And that was it for this adventure, the one where I finally got the PCs to Gamma World. I'd been planting seeds from the very beginning of this campaign, too: the "sonic yuan-ti" were Gamma World hissers; the "Yeenoghu" avatar was simply an ark (a nine-foot-tall humanoid dog-man); Burroc the thought master and his invisible blight (winged worm) are both from the Gamma World campaign, as is MARCI and Obvious. Each of them wandered through the [I]well of many worlds[/I], although this particular setup is really a "well between two particular worlds". Hagan's sudden arachnophobia is a direct result of his player Harry's sudden arachnophobia; he absolutely did not like the spider-shark minis I'd created using plastic sharks with black pipe cleaners for spider legs. I'm not sure where that came from, although my oldest son Stuart also has a deep fear and loathing for spiders - it must (sporadically) run in the family. Logan is absolutely thrilled because he believes the Eradicators the PCs are being sent to revive are likely long since dead and the PCs will be instead gaining their mech suits. All I can say is that he and I sometimes seem to share a brain - we often call out "Wavelength!" when we both are about to say the exact same thing (which happens quite frequently) and at the end of this campaign I'll have to share a particular story about how our "shared wavelength" sometimes interferes with our two separate campaigns. So while I won't admit to anything just yet, there's a very good possibility he's hit the nail on the head with his guess. (If nothing else, he has the history of having done exactly that time and time again on his side.) I also alerted Dan that between this adventure and the next, "off camera" as it were, MARCI will have found the local plants she needs to synthesize the healing mixtures she administers to the PCs as needed (or used to, until she ran out), so she can "load up" on her doses and be fully restocked. She'll be back to being the primary source of healing during Malrin's absence for the next four adventures, while the PCs explore Gamma Terra. - - - T-Shirt Worn: One of my two TARDIS shirts from "Doctor Who," since the PCs traveled to an alternate reality this adventure and that's a trip the TARDIS has made on several different occasions. [/QUOTE]
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