With a further snarl of frustration Nyx holstered his pistols and took out his vibro-knife from it's sheath at his back. Thumbing the blade to power, he began to cut at the net, eyes peeled for danger approaching

Round 4

Kalista is awaiting the results of a private message that I sent just minutes ago. So is her wraith-buddy.

Doc was able to holster his guns before they became entangled. He soon feels the net loosen around him as an expanding force field offers the gunfighter a degree of elbow room with which to work.

Ethan projects his force field away from himself to include his companions within a bubble of semi-transparent defense. The field only expands about ten feet outward before it reaches the limit to which it is held by the magic net.

The second guardian wraith turns its attention towards the immobilized targets. While staring at the adventurers inside the net, the wraith reaches its hand into the dirt. It pulls out a long and knotty wooden sword made of roots and thorns from the earth.

Nyx begins the tedious and frustrating task of carving through the netting.

The last of the three guardian wraiths chants another spell. This casting is loud enough to be easily heard by anyone, but the wraith is currently ethereal and invisible, so it bold despite the fact that its ectoplasmic body has already been destroyed. The target of his spell is Nyx, and the magic is Paralysis: Lesser. If Nyx makes his Save vs Magic, he is unaffected. If he fails this saving throw, the arm holding his vibro-knife will dangle uselessly at his side for six melee rounds, and Nyx must resort to using only one hand.

Arulas reaches within melee range of the tree's trunk. At the same time, he slashes at it with a psi-sword that sizzles with righteous anger. Splinters fly from the tree's bark. The wood underneath appears hardly scratched at all.

Polkatain receives a command in Elven-Dragonese. "Surrender your power to me, little dragon. Give me your magic and psionic energy, all of it."
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:16, Sat 10 Dec 2016.

Polkitain starts clawing at his own chest above his heart.
Since he is not an evil creature though his psionically enhanced claws don't do extra damage.

Each melee attack he does 3d6 MD to himself.

Doc will begin to tear at the net.

A burst of light erupts from seemingly nowhere in front of Kalista. She brushes off the offensive spell as if it were nothing and counter-attacks with powerful thrust. Her psi-sword finds it mark this time and obliterates the wraith's ethereal corpus. The hollow sound of cracking sticks (or perhaps breaking bones) echoes through the graveyard.

Meanwhile, Polkatain has begun clawing at his own chest and drawing blood. Everyone can see this.

I should be a cheeky GM and require that Polk roll to strike. Missing himself would be amusing to me. We're not doing that though. The forest runner hatching really is inflicting grievous injury upon himself.

Doc is using what, his survival knife?

OOC yes sir.

Even though controlled the pain draws light roars of pain from Polk.

In reply to Doc (msg # 75):
The knife seems to be effective -- or as effective as anything else.

In reply to Polkitain (msg # 76):

The forest runner is back on the ground by now, right?

Round 5

Kalista has destroyed her immediate opponent entirely. To where does she turn her attention now?

Doc is busily cutting at the magic net. This will take some time.

Ethan maintains his protective force field. It's a good thing he is doing so, because...

The second protecting wraith rushes towards the magic net with a gnarly two-handed wooden sword in its grip. It slashes at the immobile targets within, inflicting 22 mega-damage to Ethan's force field.

Nyx is also working towards the goal of cutting through the magic net. Did Nyx make his saving throw?

The third protecting wraith, still ethereal and invisible to most, follows up his undermining paralysis spell with a more potent and offensive spell, Call Lightning.

Arulas trusted with his blade, driving it into the Soul Tree. (14 points of damage)

Polkatain receives a new command, this time telepathically.

Samuel is still there, confined with some of his teammates by a combination of Carpet of Adhesion and Magic Net spells. He has an eight foot tall wraith-thing baring down on them with a sword-like weapon, but a round energy shield of some type is protecting them.
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:47, Mon 12 Dec 2016.

Round 6

I think that Kalista, Samuel, and Arulas still have attacks per melee to use here.

The second wraith strikes again at Ethan's force field. This time, it misses the gap and instead mere damaged the magic net further.

The third wraith completes its casting of Call Lightning. A thunderbolt drops out of the cloudless sky and hammers at the force field. This attack also fails to penetrate the threads of the magic net and instead damages the net itself.

Suddenly, Arulas is struck by the force of a magic transformation, pitted against his own force of will. Arulas has been targeted with the House of Glass spell. He can feel the magic pouring through him. If he makes his Save vs Magic throw successfully, he is unaffected, and the magic harmlessly washes over him. If he fails, he will transmute into a creature of living semi-transparent glass, although he might be the only one who knows it if his body armor is entirely concealing.

Yep he would be the only one who knows it.

As he starts to feel his body turn to living glass Arulas stops completely for a second breathes to clear his mind and reverts his flesh to normal. "Ha ha if that is the best you can do tree you might as well shift back to your home plane now because we will banish you." Save vs magic is a 21.

With that he runs at Polk while yelling "Quit hitting yourself. You daffy lizard." He slams into the small dragon with his shoulder.

Using as many movement actions as needed to reach the now possessed Polk. So long as at the end I can tackle him."

Polkitain is on the ground, most likely he landed when he was controlled.

Polk nods up to the tree and looks around the graveyard trying to figure out which area is the northwest corner. If the tree sent an image of which was the northwest he will head there if not Polk will pick out a corner that looks like the northwest and run that way.

Ethan watches as Polk claws at his own chest. "What the hell is he doing that for?" he wondered, "Part of some spell or something?"

Then lightning and a wooden sword wielding wraith slammed into his force field. He grunted under the twin impacts but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. "So far at least," he thought as he renewed the strength of the field. As he was doing that, he saw Sir Arulas slam his shoulder into Polk. "OK maybe that's not part of some dragon blood magic..."

In reply to Ethan (msg # 84):

Samuel had been attempting to use his Gladius exoskeleton's robotic strength to get free of the magical effects when he saw the net coming. He raised his rifle and line up shots at the net, but that if they missed they would likely hit the giant tree. He waves the weapon up and down to take out swaths of the net coming towards them and maybe even cut it in two.

Okay then, Polkatain picks out a corner which looks like it might be northwest. While the dragon is spinning his long neck around to work out compass directions, he is struck in the chest by a tackling Arulas, and they both tumble backwards onto Polkatain's back.

Samuel unleashes a stream of particle beam blasts that he has been lining up for some time. He unleashes subatomic hell on the net, it being difficult to miss all around him. One stray shot does slip through the net, crosses the graveyard, and seems to vanish suddenly. Those who can see the invisible saw the blast clip the Soul Tree instead. (26 points of damage to the tree.)

A lot happened in those 15-or-so seconds. Battle formations formed, fell apart, and reformed differently. One minion has been destroyed. I am ready to start the second melee round if anyone everybody else is ready. For simplicity, I suggest that we keep using the same initiative numbers. An initiative roll from Sam would help (him).

I am wrong. It's not possible to attack through the net, because that is the entire point of the spell. All of Sam's blasts went into the net which is beginning to look ragged and melty already.

OOC Doc is cutting at the net til he's free or someone gets him out.

"Hey Sir Arulas, why did you hit me ? I need to get to the Northwest corner. Can you show me Northwest corner ?"

"Must lead forces !" tries to move Sir Arulas off him.

Kalista will use TK Leap to try and get herself as close to the tree as possible. If possible she will also attack (leap attack) the tree.

I will roll if a single leap gets me to the tree

Ethan was glad his force field was holding so far. He had yet to encounter an attack that could penetrate it and he was delighted that trend seemed to be holding. Thankfully keeping it going didn’t require an intense effort on his part only the presence of mind to renew it as needed. That left him time to observe that his friends attacks on the magically created energy net actually seemed to be weakening it.

“Well I may as well give it a go,” he thought and reached out his left gloved hand to touch the net. It tingled but didn’t hurt. Since he wasn’t being burned or electrocuted, he proceeded to the next step and let power flow from him and into the net. Unlike when he would use his ‘gift’ to heal, this time his touch meant death and destruction. “Never know until you try,” he muttered out loud.

With one arm dangling by his side, Nyx cursed roundly and saw shots peppering into and through the net. Carefully sheathing his knife, he pulls out one pistol and begins taking potshots once more

OOC: 20:33, Today: Nyx rolled 1 using 1d20.  Save vs Magic.

1st Attack of the Melee Round

Kalista springs into the air with grace which is almost super-human. Her telekinetically augmented leap carries her far. The branches of the soul tree cover almost the entire graveyard, however, with an invisible canopy. Some of these branches hang low. The cyber-knight finds her journey interrupted by a large limb hanging only ten feet or so off the ground towards the middle of the graveyard. She is now standing on that limb. The good news is that the Soul Tree is no relation to a Wollaping Whillow or similar. It's limbs are strong and articulate, but the smaller finger-like branches are under its full control.

Doc continues to saw at the strands of the magic net. He can feel the net fighting against him, but it seems to be growing weaker.

Ethan experiments with using his power offensively. The results are inconclusive as the net stretches and bends under his influence but does not break.

The protecting wraith with the sword takes another stab at the captives inside the magic net. This time, the blow is accurate. The wooden blade pierces the net and slams against the force field within. The sword, however, snagged the net resulting in an unimpressive amount of damage inflicted. (13 points)

Nyx feels his arm go numb. He draws a pistol with his remaining good hand and levels it at the wraith who is trying to break through.

The last protecting wraith observes that his magic paralysis technique was more effective than the lightning strike -- if infinitely less cool looking. It repeats the same Paralysis: Lesser incantation almost exactly. This time, it targets Doc instead. Save vs Magic please

Arulas comes to halt, laying on top of Polkatain. Polkatain issues his proclamation.

The Soul Tree mumbles another quick incantation. This tree can articulate a spell as fast as any Elven spellcaster that Arulas has ever heard. A mass of wormlike tendrils form from underneath Polkatain's back and wrap around the hatchling's body. The tree has cast Armor Bizarre on the dragon.

Samuel lets off the trigger on his energy weapon for a second. He observes that the magic net remains intact but is visually burn and frayed looking. In recognition of the natural twenty rolled against the Carpet of Adhesion spell, I'd like to give Samuel a minor bonus here. Sam is the least immobilized of all the captives regardless of this saving throw, so simply negating the effects of a CoA doesn't help Sam much. I am open to suggestions.
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:27, Sat 17 Dec 2016.