The Spies Who Went Out in the Cold

Episode Four: The Devil and the Snowman

AK 594/2/17-24 (2116-2123 PK)

Includes events from the 1/30 run.

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While Ganeth retrained at the Wind Temple, Silvana made a trip to the grey-elven forest and picked up a batch of special leaves to use as a basis for G's new body. Though she'd taken the precaution of working through live grey elves and keeping Plant Dude out of the loop, Nomistrus' true seeing still spotted some Chaotic Neutral leaves with a Haj-like signature in the pile. Naturally, these were weeded out, and by the time Ganeth had returned from the Icelands, the Crystal Cocoon, the special snows, and the inspected leaves were all ready to go.

Matt:
"Soon G will be the six million gp elf."
Ganeth put stoneskins and strengths on people and enchanted a few weapons (clearing his mind of spells in the process), Silvana put a prot evil and a weakness on G, she and Nomistrus put up lots of detection spells, and Beeel escorted them all into the 10'x10' chamber Nomistrus had set up inside his inner sanctum. (Ganeth had to make some saves, but he forced himself inside.)

Nomistrus:
"This is where we will be living for the next several weeks. We will be able to take a 10 minute break every two hours without interfering with the procedure, so we will not entirely lose track of the outside world."
The Crystal Cocoon was ready and waiting, filled with a mixture of snow, leaves, and holy water that resembled cold green slime. Ganeth stepped into the cocoon (another save) and took some damage from the holy water, while Silvana and Nomistrus saw astral flames start coming off his body.

After making still another save (despite a big penalty), Ganeth managed to lie down in the holy sludge. As he was doing this, Silvana and Beeel saw strange flames appearing in his eyes, and just before G dipped his head into the muck, a double-barreled black/red fiery gaze attack (with astral projection) shot out at Silvana (who MRed it). Beeel got the cocoon's lid down, but the astral flames grew brighter and spilled out through the cocoon.

Nomistrus:
"Very interesting...I have not seen this phenomenon before. I expected the cocoon to completely contain all of this energy. I hope that my other hypotheses are not jeopardized by this observation."
Silvana:
"I take it fleeing the altar room would be cowardly?"
Nomistrus:
"It does appear that you are the target of this rage."
A turn passed, and Silvana and Nomistrus saw the flames coalesce into an astral creature. With an unfurling motion, the creature thrust a stinger (dripping with some sort of fiery venom) onto the Prime. Beeel parried the stinger away from Silvana, and the appendange went astral again.

The creature was still somehow attached to Ganeth, and he realized he could exert some influence over its actions, provided he didn't try to make it do anything too obviously stupid. (G's side of the will vs. will battle was based on a d20 roll modified by his level and reaction adjustment.) He decided that having appendages appearing for a segment and then vanishing was not a good thing, so he coaxed the creature into fully materializing (to press the prey, naturally).

The creature manifested as a red/black scorpion surrounded by flames, attacking with four pincers and two stingers. Eyes randomly appeared and shifted around on its head, but no gaze attacks were forthcoming. (Rahul later revealed that the creature needed a full turn to warm up its heavy-duty gaze of ultimate doom.)

After hearing some claws bounce off Silvana's stoneskins, Ganeth's next suggestion was to focus on Silvana's head (it's unarmored, right?), figuring the -8 called shot plus the stacked magical protections would extend Silvana's stoneskins. Unfortunately, by the time the suggestion had taken hold, the creature's other claws had MRed the stoneskins and one of the pincers had sliced off Beeel's arm...

Erich:
"This is either a brilliant gamble or a catastrophe in the making."
The scorpion was truly nasty: 50% MR, THAC0 8, AC -4 body/AC 2 tail (but a -4 on the called tail shot), 6 attacks per round (4 claws of sharpness+grabbing and 2 venomous stings), fire shield (not covering the tails), each cluster of 2 claws + stinger magic got separate checks to MR through defensive spells (but were all-or-nothing against incoming attacks), and each stinger took damage separately from the main body. (The xp came out around 25 effective hit dice.)
Nomistrus:
"I did not realize that Ganeth was carrying around this kind of power inside him. No wonder Omimajish was nervous."
The creature realized that waiting for a 20 to slice off Silvana's head had a low expectation value, but Ganeth forced it to keep trying anyway (despite the scary variance). Beeel did some one-armed bashing, Silvana burned a lot of thief strikes, and Nomistrus cast many holy damages, all repelled by the scorpion's magic resistance.

Eventually the heroes did enough damage to knock the creature unconscious. Silvana used a dispel evil and got rid of a scorpion and the fire shield, leaving another creature lying there with its funky eyeballs. Beeel and Silvana outpaced its regen and drove it incorporeal, and Nomistrus sucked the creatures' energies (dark astral fire) into a special bottle (smoked glass with silver and cold iron bands, activated with an abjure).

About half an hour later, the holy water burned Ganeth down to 0 hp, and he made one last penalty save to stop himself from bolting. Nomistrus handed Silvana a long crystal rod and told her to focus on it while stirring the slush. It drained away her priest spells (but not the mage spells transferred from Stealth), and G's body broke into little chunks. Oddly, G remained conscious through the process, though he passed into a meditative state of mind.

The next day, Silvana finished dissolving Ganeth's body into random organic goo, and Nomistrus reattached Beeel's arm. A week passed without further incident, and Beeel was released from inner sanctum guard detail.

Ganeth's regrowth is expected to take about 18 weeks, giving the rest of the party lots of time to get into trouble...

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Maintained by Erich Greene; last changed 4-10-99