Zar holds a hand before his face, trying to keep away the black flies Omm startled. ''Sidd saw the Fool in there, doing something. Search the crevices.''

Since Omm has bravely volunteered (much to everyone else's relief), Arnie offers to grant him summer divine protection before he makes his descent.  However, it seems for the moment that if Gorhan's earthly representative isn't going into the pit, then neither is His power.

Josh rolled 11 using 1d20+1. Protection From Evil.

EDIT: Checked the book now.  Yeah, no magic.  My patron is disappointed in me.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:55, Thu 13 Aug 2015.

Heeding the cries from above, Omm searches the crevices after feeling around in the murky water.

After a few seconds to gain his bearings, the descended warrior perceives a greater buzzing than the one immediately about him. The flies have nearly occluded a tunnel-like passage exiting the pit. It is even thicker with them than the pit bottom.

Then he scoops his mailed fingers through the pooled water where he spies a shaft or hilt. In a minute, he's extracted both a hand-and-half sword and a spiked mace from the putrescence. Neither looks capable of more than a few swings of service.

A third weapon, a footman's flail, also emerges from an underground tarn. This one, though, has not been raised courtesy of Omm's biceps and triceps. Instead a mass of flies has formed its own arm to wield it -- with more swarming to form the torso.

OOC Meet or exceed 6 to act first.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:01, Tue 18 Aug 2015.

Due to spatial restrictions, Sidd and Zar are forced to hang back and do nothing but cheer Omm on.
''Yay, Omm, you will make it!'' ''You are the best!'' ''Go go go!''

Zar nudges Arnie in the side. ''Just hold your healing prayers ready.''
This message was last edited by the player at 07:16, Thu 20 Aug 2015.

Omm is quick to respond to the coalescing swarm of nasty flies. He jumps back and draws his sword for a ready strike.

An oversized fly-swatter might be more effective, but steel is what he knows best. So he uses it. The warrior strikes out at the flail, attempting to sunder it from the forming arm. It is a swift powerful strike, but would it be enough to strike through the flail and into the mass of flies?

"Gah! The flies are back! In a big way!!!"


14:56, Today: Omm rolled 16,2 using d20+3,d3 with rolls of 13,2. Attack/Mighty Deed (Sunder).
14:55, Today: Omm rolled 21 using 1d20+1. Initiative.

Felix isn't sure what to do about this, so for the moment he draws his crowbar and hangs back to, uh, protect the wizards.

Not so for Arnie.  In his mind is a rushing confluence of the need to act more in accordance with his deity's strictures and of memories of his past life, before he took up the collar.  He gives Zar a melodramatic look that would make any fourth-rate actor proud, and says I'm afraid I am needed down there more than I am up here.  Hold the rope steady.  He then grabs the rope himself and lowers himself into the pit as quickly as he safely can.  He has his pack with him, and as he descends he goes over the contents in his mind.  There is a bag of dung in there that he's been carrying since the gods know when, for the gods know what reason.

Well, maybe this will be the reason...

Josh rolled 20,17 using d20+1,d20+1. initiative for A, F.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:32, Fri 21 Aug 2015.

First to join Omm in the Pit of Flies, Maggots, and Larvae is Arnie, who splashes down next to him, just in time to witness the sundering of fly fist's flail. The action itself causes little harm to the nascent swarm as not only do more flies coalesce around the hand and wrist already formed, but also through the passage Omm had noticed more flies pour in.

These and others mass together until the arm is joined by a shoulder, chest, neck, and all the rest: a fully-formed fly being, empty-handed but ham-fisted.

Above the pit, the scholarly men shout encouragement and in the next room, the servants lusty game of elimination hearts continues.

OOC: All may act
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:24, Sat 22 Aug 2015.

If Omm were a smarter man, he might mull over the fact his attacks might have little, if any effect on a swarm of flies. But that's not the case here. He continues to swat at the fly-being with his sword, hoping to dissuade their further formation.


08:45, Today: Omm rolled 7 using 1d8.  damage.
08:45, Today: Omm rolled 12,2 using d20+3,d3.  attack/mighty deed.

''Aha!'' Zar triumphs. ''I have just the right spell for an infestation of flies. Burn, you vile little insects, burn!'' His incantation works indeed and flames shoot from his fingers and veil the flies in fire.

Sidd meanwhile tries to apply his unholy crozier as an oversized fly swatter, but is not really succesful with that.


21:48, Today: Sidd and Zar rolled 8 using 1d20.  Sidd Crosier.
21:32, Today: Sidd and Zar rolled 7 using 1d6+1.  dmg.
21:30, Today: Sidd and Zar rolled 18 using 1d20+2.  Zar Flaming Hands.

Arnie hears Zar's spell in the works, and waits to let it take effect.  After that, he proceeds with his plan of opening the bag of dung and inviting the remaining flies to feast on its contents.

A jaunty jingle and an insistent refrain becomes audible just over the hellacious buzzing: "Fistful of flies, Fistful of flies, Fistful of flies." It is articulated in the same way a cook might chant, "Chick'n 'n beans, Chick'n 'n beans."

The fated fist does not arrive. With Arnie having diverted the new arrivals, the fly thing cannot regenerate. And with two servitors joining you in the pit, having been unjustly eliminated from their game, you overwhelm the thing of flies with sword, fire, and crozier.

Before it can reform, you squeeze through the aperture, and all but one of you cannot recall a time you quite felt so larval. You find yourself in a much larger space but identical in theme, the focus a certain end stage in the cycle of life.

At the far end of the cavern, you can discern a quivering wall. Before it and before you stands the jester, all draped in drippy motley, his tri-belled cap pinging. He mouths a three-word refrain to himself.

The mailed warrior emerges through the aperture, batting the pesky flies away from his face  with his free hand, the other with sword held aloft, at the ready.

Upon seeing the Jester, Omm bellows "Hold your tongue! Lest I cut it from your fool mouth!"

With one of his hands, he extends his tongue, a thick, ropy appendage with a split tip. With his other, he cinctures it, before yanking it back and forth while leering at the god among men, Omm.

Omm cracks the semblance of a smile while continuing to pace forward. At least the jester was good at his job. "Clever, fool, clever. We have ivory cards and are looking for others. What is your game?"

Omm feels quite uncomfortable doing much talking in this place and may have already said too much. Oh well, maybe he was in fact the fool?

Sidd and Zar proceed pale through the narrow aperture, following sturdy Omm. Sidd repeats unvoluntary (and quietly) the eerie chant, but from his mouth it just sounds like 'a fistfull of lies'.

Zar hobbles forward to put himself beside Omm. At least he is happy that he pushed the others to get here. Not that he has any idea what to do now that they have made it.

''Yeah, what's your game,'' he repeats Omm's question. It actually sums it all up.

Arnie and Felix are the last into the jester's room.  Since the others have already started the conversation, they wait patiently to see how it proceeds.

Grinning, the harlequin reaches into one of the loose folds in his pantaloons that doubles as a pocket, withdrawing a few white cards of his own. He entices you to come examine them by means of various hand, facial, and tongue gestures.

Zar just knows - the cards the Fool is holding depict themselves. Zar wants nothing to do with them, or this plane, or the Fool. Omm was right from the start. The only goal here is going back home.
''We don't want to play your game! Just let us go!'' He cries out.

''And that nice enchantress, if you would. She treated us decently.'' Sidd adds mumbled.

Apparently, neither the scholars' petulance nor their invocation of the fetid lady of the lake sway the harlequin from his purpose. His various appendages motion you forward to come examine his flimsy, filmy cards.

Arnie is probably getting ready to say something about bravery and valor, but Felix's impatience wins out.  The halfling strolls up to the jester, rubbing his gloved hands together, and says Okay crazy man, show me what you got.

Zar and Sidd step forward, too, and be it just because there is nothing else to do.
Sidd at least also looks past the beckoning Fool. Maybe there is an exit somewhere which would be worth making a run for it?

Omm paces forward while straining to see the Fool's cards. The warrior's muscle twitch in anticipation of battle, but perhaps it will not come to that?

Never hurts to be prepared...

Obligingly, you draw close to view the harlequin's hand. His cards are not the proud, upright ivories you have gallantly snatched from mad sage and magician. No, they are barely playing card size, forcing you all to bump cheeks to get a peek at them. The first, the Jack of Flays, portrays a strapping buck slicing an old man to bits. They're in some kind of over-the-top torture chamber with oversized braziers and undersized tongs and pincers. The jack, as always, wears little more than a strap and apron so that his heaving thews seem to sweat through the paper, which is rather moist you have to admit. The next, the Eight of Ulnas, shows an octet of lackeys throwing stones for wagers. Convulsing with laughter, they admire the pantomime of the third lackey: a dead-on rendition of a petrified man left as a lizard perch in a lost grotto. Occasionally, a blind cave fish blunders into his stone feet. It is truly a marvelous pantomime, you concede. Another card, the King of Feculence, shows a greasy, robed man displaying tiny cards to oglers, so intent on their ogling that they've no mind to where they've been stepping and what they've been inhaling. It's a little dizzying made no better by the fuggy heat and rancid odor of the cavern.

Omm struggles to make sense of the cards. "Enough of this madness, tell us what we need to do to get the hell out of this accursed realm, Fool!"

He then rubs his head, his face twisted in a mixture anger and confusion.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 06:36, Sat 10 Oct 2015.