Zilean's Revenge

Ok, I'm back now. Yeah, I was moving and there wasn't anything I could do about the no internet thing. (I might have to be at the previous place with no internet later tonight and tomorrow, not entirely sure.) Man you guys sure posted a lot more than what I would have expected. Wonder why Kris has vanished. She mentioned college earlier but....you'd think she would have posted at least once or twice since then. Plenty of other people on the forum are having various troubles with power/internet though so, she might be too.

What went through Skitter's mind was: Mushrooms....can often be harmful. No way to tell how deep that water is. Ledge might hurt my arms a bit but, it's the best bet. And thus he grabbed for the ledge. (*roll* What am I rolling here? Athletics? Whatever. d20 says...... it hates me 5.)

Oh good, your back! Now we can move on... to....

Dammit. Back to the story.

I'm probably stuck on this little solo adventure for a while anyway. You might as well go on your trip down false-memory lane. Also, I am now of the theory that Horizon is just Rolf's imaginary friend and this is why he's so crazy and paladins and such ignore him.

Good to hear from you, Ramsus. You're probably going to be the only one "doing" much for a while (at least to interplay the time between the explosion and the bells chiming). Bronymous and I can work on our co-op (and his backstory post). Hope Kris will come back to us soon.

And Horizon being Rolf's imaginary friend? Please. Obviously Rolf is a part of Horizon that seperated from him after he saw the demon painting. Rolf symbolizes his knowledge and aptitude for magic (which is why what remains can't use magic and doesn't trust it), as well as a sort of innocence that was robbed from him. The major plot twist will occur when Rolf finds out that certain "memories" he has didn't actually happen, and he really just "appeared" a few years ago, right around when Horizon looked at the painting. Right before the final showdown against Zilean, Rolf and Horizon combine to form....*Horizon's original name", an entity trained in both martial and arcane arts, who then proceeds to curbstomp Zilean. Having mad peace with himself, Original Name goes off afterwards, no longer haunted by the visions of demons that had plagued him.

And then he dies of a heart attack due to Rolf activating the death orb.

That story would be 50% better if he gained his awesome power and immediately died. Like, the curse was sitting there going "error, cannot complete program" the whole time and had been trying to kill him immediately the whole time. Then "I am now a Go-hrgrrrrrrk! *dies*" Then Tiffany turns out to be her "brother", transforms into a werewolf, and mauls Zilean to death. Then Skitter kills her because he had accepted a contract on the werewolf's life. Oh and of course then Skitter dies from werewolf bite/vampire stuff combining (even though that wouldn't kill you in this setting). Yup. Everyone dies and afterwards nobody really has any clue what the crap happened or why.

Lyntermas wrote:And Horizon being Rolf's imaginary friend? Please. Obviously Rolf is a part of Horizon that seperated from him after he saw the demon painting. Rolf symbolizes his knowledge and aptitude for magic (which is why what remains can't use magic and doesn't trust it), as well as a sort of innocence that was robbed from him. The major plot twist will occur when Rolf finds out that certain "memories" he has didn't actually happen, and he really just "appeared" a few years ago, right around when Horizon looked at the painting. Right before the final showdown against Zilean, Rolf and Horizon combine to form....*Horizon's original name", an entity trained in both martial and arcane arts, who then proceeds to curbstomp Zilean. Having mad peace with himself, Original Name goes off afterwards, no longer haunted by the visions of demons that had plagued him.

...
Dammit, now I have to start over. Thanks for ruining my whole story.

Interestingly enough, though, If Horizon somehow ends up dead during this whole thing, my backup character would have been a Hexblade, which of course is

an entity trained in both martial and arcane arts

.

"Crud." said Skitter aloud to himself and prepared to get wet. (Is there a roll involved for this? As I'm not sure I'll just let you make it if there is.)

Ooh, you could do scale of 1-20, how you hit the water:
20: feet first, legs straight but not locked, minimal pain deep or shallow
10: flailing belly flop, lots of pain, depth no longer an issue
1: head first, no fun, especially if shallow.

Story's up. These are so much easier to write when you have help.

Glad I was helpful, Bronymous. I'm working on Rolf's part right now. I have the ideas fleshed out in my head, it'll just take time to type them.

Let me know if I can help in writing your "demon conversation".

Skitter, while I know you're attracted to shiny things, you might want to take a moment to surface and figure out where shore is. You can go diving for treasure after you fulfill basic survival requirements. Like air.

Dragon Egg. Or one of those...things... The things Lich's use to survive and regenerate. Holds its soul or something. Phylactery.

You guys know it's almost all Zarhon doing the "ooh shiny!" stuff right?

Skitter thinks, "Hey, that wasn't as bad as I thought it could go. Wonder what that is. It'll have to wait for a moment though..." and he headed back up the get a look around and a lungful of air. (If there's nothing particularly interesting for him to see, he'll dive back down to find out what the shiny thing is. Note: Find out. Not immediately grab without checking for things like "is this a monster" like an idiot.)

Skitter

After emerging from the water, he checks his surroundings. The cavern he is in is roughly circular. High above him is the hole he fell through. Matilda is roughly halfway down the walls. To his right is the mushroom patch. To his left, he can see what appears to be a small dug-out mineshaft frame/tunnel, with a few luminescent mushrooms as makeshift lanterns (which he now recognizes as the feint lights from before). The mineshaft is roughly large enough to fit a creature of Skitter's size. The rest of the cavern is fairly normal, a few mushrooms here and there, various lichens and such.

Perception -> 12

He then takes a deep breath and dives to see the object below, immediately noticing that it has changed slightly from when he saw it, gaining an extra shiny detail. After getting near enough to see it properly, he realizes the object is glassy, like a pearl, green colored, with a shiny-edged slit with a pitch black coloration in the middle.

As the slit suddenly moves, he realizes that he's looking directly into an eyeball, as large as he is. And it's looking at him.

(How good a swimmer is Skitter? And how would his shadow powers work in areas with random light-refracting conditions, such as water?)

FFFFFFFFFFFF- wait. Wait. Maybe the giant water monster is friendly. Or maybe it can't fit down that mineshaft. Hopefully one of the two.

"Uh oh." Skitter thinks and then starts swimming as fast as he can towards the mineshaft. ((Well, he's trained in athletics and that's also the swimming skill so probably pretty good? I think as long as there are shadows at all the shadowporting works fine?

If you guys are wondering why he didn't just try the ring of animal friendship. Well 1) It probably wouldn't work and 2) He's not really all that smart 3) Kobolds natural instincts tend towards "Run away!" ))

Damn, the internet has failed me. No pictures of a kobold being tentacle raped. I found this though. Kinda made me giggle.

Horizon stopped short, turning back to the tunnel. "Did you hear that?" He asked, the faintest hint of what might have been fear creeping into his voice. As the paladin replied in the negative, he reached for his kukri and gripped it, firmly. He looked back in the direction they were headed. "Keep going forward until you reach a dead end. Turn right, dead end, pull the torch. The others should still be in that room. The head back to the intersection and take the other path, it should lead out." Without another word, Horizon began a quick walk back into the tunnel.

You don't have to update this, I'm still in the process of writing out the scene. Just thought I'd lead into it here.

But what about matilda? Since that was the entire reason all of that just happened.

Last I checked she was still crawling down here. Skitter isn't going to go back out and get eaten by the tentacle monster so he could either move ahead or sit there waiting for Matilda to show up. I figure either she'll end up coming to him going this path or she'll go the other and he'll then have an excuse to go exploring that one.

Skitter

Skitter continues into the right tunnel. Going steadily upwards, the tunnel becomes less rocky/cave-like and becomes more and more dirt-based. It trails off into a few short dead ends (where some mining took place, but ended for some reason) as well as some slightly-expanded chambers where the tunnel has rudimentary supports placed. He eventually reaches a chamber with various man-made stone blocks of various sizes and shapes, as well as old rotten planks and wooden boards. On the left side of the chamber is a crudely cut small hole, roughly the size of Skitter, leading somewhere. The hole has sunlight coming through it and appears to have been intentionally blocked by piled-up dirt, rocks and rubble. To the right is another tunnel, leading into an unknown area.

Off to sleep.

Zarhon wrote:The hole has sunlight coming through it

What time is it, again? I thought the sun had set by now.