The group arrived at the pit without engaging further delays. Jace guessed the three shamans they had seen were the guards Psycho hadn’t killed, and there wouldn’t be any more NPCs upstairs. The wooden platform still hung partway down the center of the shaft where Psycho had left it. The lion and panther were in constant agitation below. Lexi had referred to them as her pets; if she had died or gone, they might be restless with their master out of range.
Jace turned to the archer. “Can you remove the cats for us?”
The animals were substantial enough that Psycho needed a full round to enact his Death Shot ability to ensure one-shot kills, but two rounds later, the animals were dead. Jace turned to Esther next. “Change of plan; we want to take the prisoners alive if we can.”
“If we can?” she replied. “Why wouldn’t we be able to?”
“They will have several banes, and if we run into any more enemies, I don’t think we can protect them all. Death still allows them to escape, but the elf needs to stay alive. His existence and the lives of his family in my dimension depend on it.”
Esther nodded. “I assume you are sending me down to get them?”
“I’m coming with you.” Jace turned back to Psycho and Draya. “I don’t expect anyone to interrupt us, but you two can handle it if they do.”
“And I?” Gromphy asked.
“How many potions do you have? What kinds? They will be in a bad state when they come up, and we may need to remove curses or something else.”
“Thou needest a priest, not I. Trixna wouldst be mine own choice.”
“She’s not here,” Jace said. “I brought you.”
Gromphy nodded and handed Jace four healing potions. “I can evaluateth those captives as best I can at which hour thee returneth. But ‘twill taketh time we don’t has’t.”
Jace nodded. While they assumed all the occupants of the fortress were in the Mithril Palace, the ground shook constantly, reminding them of what else was down there, and none of them wanted to hang around to see if it could escape.
Psycho started toward the winch to raise the platform, but Esther jumped to the elevator casually, dropping 15 feet as gracefully as if descending a staircase, her skirt billowing out as she fell. “Just jump,” she offered.
“Not everyone has your Dexterity, Legs,” Psycho replied.
Esther stared back up at him, her eyes challenging the nickname he had decided to stick with.
“Plus, I’d snap the rope,” Jace said, breaking up the staring contest. As an orc, he wasn’t as nimble or light as the rogue.
“Then change,” Esther said.
Jace was still going to wait for Psycho to raise the platform, but since he had his magical items back, it might not be a bad idea to transform into his human appearance. No need to scare these players more than they already were. Soon the elevator was only five feet below the edge, but it was still a 20-foot jump to the middle of the 50-foot-wide pit. Psycho pulled on the tether cord and swung the platform up and over to the edge, allowing Jace to step on through a gap in the railing. The elf let the slack out slowly so they didn’t swing dramatically back into the middle, and then he worked the ratchet and winch to send them down.
The silence between the two characters was thick as they descended into the darkness below. Esther spoke first. “I haven’t used it yet. I mean, not since the lich’s tomb. I don’t plan on using it, but just in case, you know. It’s not like anyone else on our team can do anything with it. Though I guess Gromphy could probably make something scary. I just thought. . .”
“We will talk about it later,” Jace repeated. It was like trying to deal with a 500-year-old teenager.
He drew Diamond Etcher and looked over the railing. His orc night vision still worked in his human form, and the lightning totem had a soft glow. He waited until they were ten feet above the ground and tugged on the rope for Psycho to stop. They only had to wait another minute before the totem dealt electrical damage to the prisoners, and the other one healed them.
Jace instructed Esther to stay put and leaped to the ground. He had canceled his three totems when they had been leaving the Mithril Palace, and he didn’t bother casting them here. Instead, he went straight for the lightning totem. It had two scripts: one for attacking the prisoners in the cages and one for anyone outside a cell. It unloaded on Jace but hadn’t generated much mana since its last attack. It stole some from the four prisoners, but their Mana Generation was horrible.
With the protections his class and boots gave him, Jace saved critically against the attack and took no damage, passing nothing on to Esther. He beckoned for her to jump down as he hacked apart the glowing metal statue in the shape of a lightning bolt. A sword was a horrible weapon against other metal, but Etcher was enchanted to ignore the penalties for attacking metal and stone constructs. After three attacks, the totem was destroyed.
Esther wasn’t a rogue who could pick locks, so she had to wait for Jace’s sword to successfully cut open the cages like sardine cans. He started with the elf, and the South Korean player emerged with 12 HP. They gave him a healing potion that should have restored 100, but he only made it up to 20. He had so many banes draining levels and causing him fatigue that his maximum Hit Points were reduced. It was the same for the two Americans. The human had a maximum of 25, while the dwarf got up to 50.
Psycho had lowered the platform to the ground now, and Esther guided the prisoners on board. Jace saved the half-orc for last and tensed himself as the door popped open, knowing they would face an enraged barbarian. She was also the largest of the four players, but Ian and Brock had not graced her with a bigger cage. When she unfolded her impressive body, still dressed in a chainmail bikini, she took one look at her rescuers and exploded. “You two!”
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She snarled and found the strength to rush Jace. Esther was faster, intercepting the unarmed woman and wrestling her to her knees. It was the most criticals she had ever gotten in a Grapple attempt, and she snapped the half-orc’s neck without thinking. Jace stepped back at the violent move, but Esther didn’t flinch as the body fell limply to the ground.
The other three prisoners huddled on the platform, looking even more frightened than before. Esther glared at them, then Jace, and finally the dead PC. “You could have told me whom we were rescuing,” she said in a hushed tone.
“The initial plan was to kill them,” Jace said. “No reason to tell you who they were.”
She walked past him to the elevator. “There’s a weight limit,” she explained to the other players, hardly quelling their fears. Jace shook his head in amazement and followed onto the platform.
A minute later, Psycho pulled the lift to the edge again, and Esther and Draya helped the weary players off. “Weren’t there supposed to be four?” Psycho asked.
“One didn’t make it,” Esther said before Jace offered a better explanation.
Psycho exchanged a look with Jace, but the shaman shook his head in a universal gesture that meant drop it. The elf might remember this foursome from over a week ago at the travel node for Ironfel, as they had transported there just in time to see Esther take out six half-orc guards, but he wouldn’t know the brief history between Esther and the barbarian, and there wasn’t time to explain it now.
Instead, Jace led his troupe back out of the fortress. The other three larger companions helped the prisoners walk while Gromphy scampered alongside Jace. “What do you think?” the leader asked. “Do you have anything that can help them?”
“Level drain, curses, horror, permanent Daze, and terminal fatigue,” the goblin reported. “They art losing health every few seconds. Other than a floweth of health potions, I canst doth do but little for them.”
Jace knew there was no way they were getting across the bridge. The structure only allowed one character at a time, and the PCs would only make it two steps on their own before they fell. He hoped the freight elevator would be operable.
[Stormhold is now available. The previous owner has died or relinquished his . . .]
The prompt stopped Jace in his tracks. He figured that Brock had just died, but why didn’t the message finish?
[Stormhold has been claimed by Ian Forthton. It is no longer available to . . .]
When the prompt cut off again, he knew what was coming.
[Stormhold is now available. The previous owner has died or relinquished his claim. To establish ownership of this location as a stronghold, you must belong to the previous owner’s party or resolve the active combat.]
Jace wondered if Lexi would make a claim, but he guessed she was out of the picture. While powerful, her claws were no match for the armadillion, and she had probably jumped ship. That meant Stormhold was Jace’s for the taking. All he had to do was defeat the Balrog in the Basement. No thank you.
The group left the front gate as the fortress shook from the chaos in the caverns below. Jace ran up to the much larger elevator and inspected it. Like the one in Mithril Palace, it operated with mana and not a manual winch.
[Elevator not available. A Stronghold must have an active owner to use its facilities.]
[Stormhold is now available. The previous owner has died or relinquished his . . .]
Jace dismissed the prompt and tried again but got the same response.
{It won’t work without someone owning . . .}
“I know,” Jace said. “I was just hoping. What if we wait? If the monster kills everyone and can’t find anything else to do, it will eventually drop out of combat mode, correct? If it can’t escape the cavern, it will just crawl back into its hole, right?”
{Those are some pretty big Ifs,} Gracie said. {I don’t think Gandhi is going to let you off the hook that easily.}
Even though they were nowhere near the armadillion, Jace’s vision showed he was in combat mode. Neither he nor Draya could cross the bridge like this, to say nothing of their new additions. Jace could only hope the combat mode would end, but that still wouldn’t save the others.
“The only option is to go back the way you guys came in,” Jace said, turning to Esther, Draya, and Psycho. If the mage activated her Dragon Strength again, they were each strong enough to carry one of the prisoners down the cliff side. Jace would have to take Gromphy in his chest again, as only the Goblin or the group leader could move the magical object. It was risky, but it was the only option.
The ground shuddered again, but unlike before, it grew stronger with each passing second until the eastern side of the keep exploded in a spray of stone and brick as the armadillion burst onto the expansive plateau.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jace said.
“Is that the thing we heard?” Psycho asked. He and Gromphy had never ventured into the lower level.
The goblin shrieked in terror, ejected his chest from his inventory, and hopped back inside. The two MIT students passed out, their health dropping every round.
“Where did it come from?” Psycho asked, not bothering to pull his bow as he watched the beast uproot trees like weeds in a garden.
“Jace set it free,” Esther said quickly. “It was all part of the plan.”
“Not a plan I signed up for,” the archer said.
“One would rarely request one of Jace’s plans,” Draya quipped.
Jace tried to ignore the negativity. “Any ideas?” He was willing to outsource the decision-making for once.
“Psycho, Snowy, and I race across the bridge,” Esther started. “We throw the prisoners down the ravine. They are dying anyway. Then you and Draya race back into the fortress and climb down the far side of the cliff while Psycho shoots arrows at the monster to distract it. We get back to town and leave.”
It was a reasonable, if not brutal, plan. Jace looked across the chasm and knew Psycho could hit the armadillion with his new bow and probably distract the monster long enough for him and Draya to escape. He looked over at the three players he had rescued. Already they had lost 25% of their maximum health. Just keeping them alive would be a full-time task for someone.
{There is more to consider,} Gracie said. {While the monster can’t escape this module, the module does include the city of Stormview. If it leaves this plateau, which is entirely reasonable to assume, it will destroy and kill everything and everyone down there. Many innocent PCs and NPCs will die. This game has risks, and most people know that going in, but you might want to consider that in your decision-making. Of course, you and your companions are all property of the US government, and risking them like this may not be worth it.}
Jace knew he couldn’t let the three escapees die, much less an entire city’s worth of people, even if it was just a game. Putting aside the moral aspects of that, he knew others in the realms would figure out what had happened here, and just like his actions elsewhere had impacted how NPCs in other towns treated him, his actions here would travel with him too. He had to try something. He just couldn’t think of anything. Usually, in times of severe stress and anxiety, the solution came to him.
“Can you tell me anything about it yet?” Jace asked.
{It has a magma core. Every few rounds, it generates an explosion of liquid stone that it can use to heal itself or spew lava. It is powered by chaotic magic, so it is unpredictable how often it fires or for how much, making it very hard to kill.}
“I assume it is immune to fire?”
{Likely, but there are four levels of fire. Normal fire, which includes mage fire, is the lowest. Then comes volcanic fire, dragon fire, and finally, demonic fire. If you are immune from one of the higher levels, it translates down. Draya is immune to dragon fire, meaning normal fire and volcanic fire can’t hurt her, but if you run into a demon, all bets are off. I would guess your friend over there is immune to volcanic fire, so Draya’s attacks should still hurt it. Fire protection doesn’t care about the source, but immunity is different.}
Five hundred feet away, the armadillion stopped its destructive rampage, sniffed at the air, and turned toward the characters, smoke drifting from its nostrils. It bellowed into the air.
Jace actually swore this time.