[20] So much to do... So little time! One final push of his arcane might, and Zhorr had finally exhausted the energy that fueled the Magi's particular talents. Nonetheless, that last effort allowed him to recover one more spell to write down, which he did, following up with another spell, and another... And he almost missed Pale's arrival! Unforgivable!

The druid materialized slowly, just like the other members of the elite team the gods had assembled. He was the last, but by no means the least, and Zhorr welcomed him warmly as he offered him one of the many sets of clothes he'd made not eight hours before - although that somehow felt like days, even weeks.

---

(OOC:

This is it everybody. Welcome to the brave new world.

Each party member arrived about 1-1/2 hours after the previous one, meaning ~7.5 hours have elapsed since Zhorr's arrival, which would put the time, back when Pale left, at somewhere between 7 and 8 AM. Your characters, however, will notice a distinct lack of a Sun - or any font of light except the ones they made themselves.

Sider has had some 4 hours to write down his spells, and I'm curious to know which ones he chose (Zhorr will probably ask to copy some of them). Dekar has had even longer, so if he wants to do some spell research with Lareth this would be a good time.

Lareth is planning on doing spell research either way, she has this great idea for a transmutation spell... I'll post something later.

Just so you know, everything you do gains you xp at some point.

And now for the...

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)



Game mechanics notes:

[20] [GM: spending 1 point of Arcane Pool (22 spent so far) to refresh Unseen Servant (1 used so far) once (now available: 1). Writing down Unseen Servant (L1 => 5 gp, 1 page), Monstrous Physique II (L4 => 80 gp, 2 pages) and Keen Edge (L3 => 45 gp, 2 page).]

[GM:

Spells used so far:

Fabricate (10) (W) (5R)
Unseen Servant (2) (1R)
Extended Secure Shelter (1)
Prestidigitation (1)
Blood Money (9) (W) (3R)
Light (3)
Arcane Mark (2)
Monstrous Physique II (2) (W)
*Restoration (4) (W) (1R)
*Mighty Strength (2) (W)
Universal Spell Access (1) (W)
Alter Self (1) (W)
*Endure elements (1) (W)
Keen Edge (1) (W)

Spells written so far
Mighty Strength - Magus L6/USA, 180 gp, 3 pages
Restoration - Magus L6/USA, 180 gp, 3 pages
Blood Money - Magus L1, 5 gp, 1 page
Universal Spell Access - Magus L6, 180 gp, 3 pages
Alter Self - Magus L2, 20 gp, 1 page
Fabricate - Magus L5, 125 gp, 3 pages
Endure Elements - Magus L2/USA, 20 gp, 1 page
Monstrous Physique II - Magus L4, 80 gp, 2 pages
Keen Edge - Magus L3, 45 gp, 2 pages

Resources acquired/spent so far (running total):

-2 STR

+1 dagger (Zhorr)
+1 masterwork living steel scimitar (Zhorr)
+2 living steel fountain pens (Sider)
+2 living steel fountain pens (Zhorr)
+1 living steel ornate jug

+26 spellbooks, standard, blank
+1 spellbook, standard, in use (Zhorr, 20/100 pages used)
+1 spellbook, standard, in use (Sider, 0/100 pages used)

+21 sets of clothing and equipment as follows:
 - Undergarments
 - Short tunic
 - Trousers
 - Hooded cloak
 - Shoes
 - Gloves
 - Scarf
 - Belt (Sash)
 - Pouch, Belt
 - Pouch, Spell Components
 - Backpack
 - Bedroll + Blanket + Winter Blanket
 - 4 Sacks
 - Rope (Cloth, treat as hemp)
+1 set of clothing and equipment as above (Zhorr)
+1 set of clothing and equipment as above (Dekar)
+1 sets of clothing and equipment as above (Lareth)
+1 sets of clothing and equipment as above (Sider)
+1 sets of clothing and equipment as above (Tilly)
+1 sets of clothing and equipment as above (Mirelinda)
+1 sets of clothing and equipment as above (Pale)

+1 Materials for a Pearl of Power

+Ink for writing spells, 10000 gp (855 used)
+Diamond dust, 11000 gp (300 used)

]

---

This message was last edited by the player at 20:06, Fri 01 Mar 2013.

Knees bent, Pale meditates alone in the echoing emptiness of the cave.

Then his time comes.

Arising, his old bones creak like the ever-shattering stone far beneath his feet. Lengthening his stride, head held high, he walks into the portal.

As the white energies encompass and change him forever, Pale hears the creaking of his bones fade away replaced by the sound of searing flesh as his body knits itself back to a newer, younger form. Entering the plane, he drops to the ground, his bones- and, for the first time in his experience, the earth beneath him- silent.

His eyes opening, he nods to Zhorr in greeting and mouths a silent thanks as he clothes himself in the proffered garments, all of his attention on the growing connection to the young and straining earth beneath his bare feet.

Dekar got through early on, and by now, he had coordinated with the others to make his armor and shield and holy blade as strong as possible. Adamant all, so the elements, no matter how nasty they proved to be, would have little to no effect on any of them.

Once armed and armored, he has quite a presence to himself...an amazingly strong one, at that! It's been long since he was agile enough to make full use of arms and armor...he'd had a hard time moving as he got older...but now rejuvenated...

He took some practice swings.

"It's all coming back! It seems, Lareth, you're going to be stuck with me in your collection for several years more, provided we don't get ourselves killed ou here."

Teasing his dearest companion about her 'collection' tendencies.

Having started working on a permanent structure to serve as a base of operation for the group, Baron Sider finds a quiet place to scribe some spells that will be useful in crafting magic items later as well as starting the task of rebuilding his spell books from what he knows and the help of Helmut. Finishing up his work with the last arrival, he rejoins the group.

"Well now, I see that we are all gathered her in the new realm. Since we are all here, any suggestions on what we want to call this place?" he asks

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)


1st-2nd hour. Scribe Fox's cunning, Bull strength, Cats grace, Owl's wisdom, Bears endurance, Eagles grace. (6 pages 120 gp of ink)

3rd-4th hour Mage Armor, Fly, Sunburst (7 pages 370 gp of ink)

---

This message was last edited by the player at 13:06, Sat 02 Mar 2013.

"Considering...I want to call it Opportunity. Except it'd be Commodum in the Celestial tongue."

(OOC:Commodum is Latin for opportunity. IC, it's Celestial)

"You are mine until the end of time, sir knight. Never forget that." With a big smile, she hugged the large man, whose wings had acquired a strong metallic shine as an effect of his rejuvenation. Even without his armor, the newly young Paladin looked large and imposing next to the girl.

"Opportunity seems about right. Unless of course we all die horribly, which would be most inopportune." She mused with a pensive expression.

She had apparently forgotten to let go of her knight...

Once she has gotten her bearings, Mirelinda starts some serious spell-casting: keeping only a handful of spell slots for emergency, she spends more than 3 hours casting spells, pausing only to receive healing from Tilly. For the last 20 minutes, she even adopt the form of a Huge storm giantess, pouring alarming amount of blood to fuel her spellcasting.

At the end of the day she smiles and deposits a large amount of diamond dust (250,000 gp worth) into the common inventory, keeping some for herself as 'seed money'.

Stepping over to Sider and awaiting a gap in his preparations, Pale inclines his head.

"Sir, I have prepared spells that would aid in your construction of our stronghold- stone wall creations, spells of earth movement and the like. Please, direct my casting as you see fit."

Tilly comes to the front of the fortress that Sider is raising from the not-Earth in this not-World and looks up.  My, it's already impressive, but so lonely in this void.  There's no sense of depth, and that gives it almost a toyish quality.    She flies up to a rampart level, without quite watching, a little wobbly, and steadies herself just barely in time as she hits the rampart with a bump.

"Out of practice, " she says, folkishly, dusting not-Dust off her sleeves.    "AHEM!'

She raises her hands, and gestures to the blank emptiness of the sky.  Obligingly, a comet appears, streaking like Armageddon at a distance, and, without much ado, distance collapses, and it explodes into the center of the ground before her.  With a bracing impact, earth, mud, ice, comet, meteor explode into a blazing inferno.

Tilly leans over the side of the rampart, peering and she would have fallen quite off if she weren't flying.  As it is, she has to swing her hands around wildly to catch her balance and right herself again.

"It's not quite right.  Let's try that again..."

She raises her hands...

A few moments after the rock hits the ground, the entire world begins to shake.

Streaks of light fill the dark, featureless void of the sky, as thousands upon thousands of meteors of varying shapes and sizes begin to hit the world.

The temperature rapidly jumps from very cold to very hot, and it quickly becomes hard to stand up.

The tower, not yet fully built, apparently cannot take the strain and begins to crumble.

[GM: everybody please roll a DEX check, DC 15, not to fall down, a Fortitude save, DC 15, to avoid suffering the consequences of the gas and dust released in the atmosphere, and a Reflex save, DC 20, to avoid falling into a fissure. Those inside the tower, please roll an additional Reflex DC 15 to halve 8d6 of damage. You are also pinned beneath the rubble, even on a successful save.]
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:12, Wed 13 Mar 2013.

As fire and rock rain from the heavens, Pale restrains a sigh of annoyance as he wobbles but remains upright, covering his mouth with a sleeve. This doesn't help him when a fissure opens up beneath him and he plunges into the ground.

Closing his eyes, the pressing earth around him, he shifts himself, adopting the form of a pure incarnation of the ground itself. Easily slipping through the rock and dirt like a fish through water, he heads for the tower to pull out any injured peoples.

Wild Shape into an Elder Earth Elemental

00:47, Today: Dekar rolled 26 using 1d20+18. Reflex Save.
00:46, Today: Dekar rolled 35 using 1d20+27. Fort Save.
00:46, Today: Dekar rolled 5 using 1d20+1. Dex Check.

The Paladin falls down...but that's all he does, for his supernatural protection against occurances like this is in full force, and neither the gas nor the fissure do him any notable harm.

"Everybody okay?"

Mirelinda stays on her feet even through the shaking caused by the meteor, and gracefully steps aside to avoid a fissure opening under her feet.

Pun-Pun:

everybody please roll a DEX check, DC 15, not to fall down

Mirelinda rolled 16 using 1d20+2. Dex check.

Pun-Pun:

a Fortitude save, DC 15, to avoid suffering the consequences of the gas and dust released in the atmosphere

Mirelinda doesn't need to breathe.

Pun-Pun:

a Reflex save, DC 20, to avoid falling into a fissure.

Mirelinda rolled 27 using 1d20+8. Reflex save.

Pun-Pun:

Those inside the tower, please roll an additional Reflex DC 15 to halve 8d6 of damage. You are also pinned beneath the rubble, even on a successful save.

Mirelinda is outside to benefit from her fast healing while cutting herself.

Hearing the noise and the feeling the trembling ground, Zhorr runs out of the the shelter just in time to see the tower crumble, bringing Tilly down with the rubble.

"Tilly!!!" He deftly avoids falling down - and almost ends up being swallowed by the ground while he's not paying attention to the right things - and in the end he reaches the crumbled tower, where he realizes that Tilly is buried under it.

There's a decent chance that they won't be able to pull her out before she dies.

He starts cursing - or so it looks like, at first: in fact, he's going through a recitation of the names of the gods. All of them.

After a few seconds, he's speaking them so fast that his voice has become a buzz.

At the end of his frantic recitation, he raises his hands... And the rubble of the tower disappears.

Tilly and Sider, slightly confused but otherwise mostly fine, are lying on the ground where the fallen tower used to be.

Zhorr smiles... Then falls to the ground, bleeding profusely from... Everywhere, really.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:26, Thu 14 Mar 2013.

Here's the thing about being an oracle of the heavens with the star cleric domain.  You have perfect flight when you cast overland flight, and you have enough of a bonus to make peregrine falcons dizzy.  Also, you can't just fall.  You aren't really mortal, and gravity has you on a short list of people to ignore.

That's great, up to the point when a castle falls on your head.

Castles are so not on gravity's short list, and they are very heavy.

So actually, Tilly, while surprisingly undamaged, is dazed when Zhorr just unmakes the tower.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:39, Wed 13 Mar 2013.

Realizing that sooner or later she will need air, if only to speak, Mirelinda finally takes a breath. The air almost makes her gag, but she finally adjusts.

Mirelinda rolled 14 using 1d20+11. Fort save.
Using one of my Harrowing bonus, the Shield, for a +1 after the fact to make the roll
This message was last edited by the player at 22:05, Wed 13 Mar 2013.

Lareth almost fell to the ground when the terrain started to shake... After which she didn't lose any time. She immediately reverted to her natural form, and a moment later she was in the air.

What in the seven hells was going on??
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:12, Wed 13 Mar 2013.

Tilly gasps, nursing her skull, which feels like it just got put back together.  One moment there was dizziness, then a series of strange blurry images, and then Zhorr smiles down at her.

And then he falls over, at her feet.

Maybe it's the concussion, but Tilly just kind of loses it.    "Zhorr, wait a minute!  Hey!" she says, and before she knows it, she's on her knees, cradling his head, getting blood all over her fingers, her arms, her knees...  Vaguely, she's aware that they're something's different about the world... but she's too busy searching him over, finding out his wounds.

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)

19:39, Today: Tilly rolled 14 using 4d6. damage.
19:38, Today: Tilly rolled 33 using 1d20+18. Heal, try 2.

---

Preemptively, she summons magic, just a little, afraid to do too much, after everything that just happened.  Stabilize.

It's suddenly like she's just starting out again, when she was down to nothing and everything went wrong so often.  But she's grown since then, so she turns to the others.  "Get me some water.  And some cloth, from the hut.  Don't just stand there!  Someone count heads!"
This message was last edited by the player at 23:40, Wed 13 Mar 2013.

Dekar races over to Zhorr. He hadn't expected to need his healing abilities so soon, but...

He rushes right over, and lays hands on the downed man. Due to his experience, it heals to capacity automatically.

Sitting in the top part of the tower, scribing his spells into the spellbook, the Baron started to feel the ground swell up and down. Grabbing Helmut, he tossed the familiar out the window, little wings sprouting from the helmet as it fluttered away.

"What the... this is gonna hurt" was all he could think as the tower came crashing down around him. Pieces of the stonework on the ceiling started to fall on him, while the floor started to crumble under his feet at the same time.

When the dust cleared after being buried in the rubble, he found the tower gone and then started to get really ticked. "What in the Sacred Halls of Tephu happened!" he bellowed.


22:47, Today: Baron Sider rolled 18 using 4d6. tower damage.
22:41, Today: Baron Sider rolled 27 using 1d20+10. Reflex (fissure).
22:40, Today: Baron Sider rolled 19 using 1d20+10. Reflex (In tower).
22:39, Today: Baron Sider rolled 30 using 1d20+12. Fortitude.
22:38, Today: Baron Sider rolled 17 using 1d20+10. Reflex. 

Dekar's powers appear to do something, as the bleeding stops, but something is still really wrong with Zhorr. He seems to have lost life force in a much deeper way than simple bleeding should account for.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:24, Thu 14 Mar 2013.

Tilly looks him over and says, "His very essence has been drained, almost completely.  There is a spell to restore him, but we need some of the diamond dust that Grandmother made.  In the meantime, I'll keep him as comfortable as possible."

"Baron Sider, you should take a look at this..."

After a moment, the Baron cocks an eye up as something is not quire right within him. He starts stroking his beard, deep in thought before speaking.


"Hmm, now I feel a bit of power that seems to be more of an extension of the divine, like when I was first given the ability to cast orisons.  I feel that I can use a more powerful divine spells, like many years ago when I first started to learn the Arcane arts and graduated from cantrips. Yes, yes, that is it, that would be the case. But now I have graduated from Orisons. Lets add to it with what had occurred here on Commodum. Now when Tilly cast her Meteor Shower spell to create some materiel for us to use, as she is an Oracle, her spells are of a Divine nature and started the first "Divine" spark here on Commodum. When the rest of us cast a spell, it was of an Arcane nature like Zhorr or myself, it did not disrupt the natural fabric of magic that is already in place. Now those of us that do not normally use the the divine fabric of Magic, it has increased our power and those that use it already, like Dekar, their connection was opened up a little wider, like taking away a log that is blocking a stream." he says.

"Put it this way, in some aspects, we are paired up as Arcane/Divine versions of each other. Zhorr and Dekar, one a fighter with the ability to harness Arcane energy, the other a Holy fighter at the will of their Deity. Mirelinda and Tilly, one an internal source of Arcane magic, the other of Divine. Pale and myself, Nature is the fabric for one, the other, Magic is the fabric."  the Baron says while pointing to each of the members of the group.

"Tilly and Pale, for the moment I would suggest that you be careful what you cast or our time here will be rather short.  But, I have a thought, Helmut, will you try to see if you can create Daylight here? As you are a creature of another plane, I would first like to see if your divine connection is still there. If that does not work, Tilly and Pale if you have that spell available, please give it a try. If I am correct, rather than just the usual area of illumination, it will do it for the entire area here on Commodum. The only question will be as how bright it will light up the area and how it will be as an extension of the natural world from Pale vs the Divine ability of Tilly."

Looking over Zhorr he shakes his head. "Well it would appear in his attempt to reverse the damage that had been caused, he tried to something that was in the same magnitude as a Wish spell or other rather powerful spell but used his own spirit, as Blood Money, rather than the source of divine magic. What is strange, is that he was able to even do that. Divine casters ask for the power from another source be it Nature or the blessing of a Divine creature. Arcane casters just do it, either from their raw power like a sorcerer or from the fabric of magic like I do. Yes, lets get him comfortable and get him fixed up as soon we can." the Baron says.

OOC, Ask Helmut to cast Daylight.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:23, Fri 15 Mar 2013.

As Pale listens to the Baron's explanation of events, he remains solemn, face unmoving. Then he turns away from everyone, and releases a tiny but visible smile. Zhorr seeming to be safe, he closes his eyes and buries his mind in the constant ebb and flow of his blood before shifting himself into the shape of an incarnation of water. Gliding across the land, he moves a safe distance away from the previous location of the tower and his companions. Over his shoulder he calls out "Brace yourselves" in a voice like sea spray.

The twin vortexes that pass for Pale's arms rise and point in the opposite direction from the group. Then he quietly speaks. "I am of the planet; the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. In its name, I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely."

Then a torrent pours forth...

Shift into Elder Water Elemental
Cast Tsunami

Clutching her silver coffer full of diamond dust, Mirelinda jumps into the air and stays there, looking in chagrin at the destruction around her. Then she turns toward the culprits, anger in her eyes !

"Boys ! Try thinking for a change, and I mean with the head that's on top of your body ! I know throwing stones and making mud pie is fun and all for your age, but this is too much ! Couldn't you take a more creative activity, like crocheting or embroidery ? I should make you replace, by hand, every one of my outfits you just ruined !"

OOC: active overland flight. I didn't think I would need all my protective spells, good thing I cast them anyway before coming...