VotS: Ecru

[Jim Roberts]

[Feb 6 -- The Waterworks]

> Lomi then asked, "Is she...?"
>
> Jeyshann finished the sentence. "Fluorescing."
>
> "From the inside.” Lomi agreed. “I think that's her bones glowing.
> That's gotta hurt, and the smoke coming outta her ears is a nice
> touch."
>
> "Why are you looking at me like that?” Laquendi snarled. ‘I am not a
> fan dancer!"

Meanwhile, up at the forefront of the battle, Laurelin charged forward,
her boots lifting herself off the ground so that she could both avoid
the floor webs, and reach the monstrous spider filling the top half of
the tunnel. As she surged ahead, the spider backpedalled along the
ceiling, retreating behind a curtain of vertical webs that the elven
priestess could easily see from this close range, now that they were no
longer blocked by a giant spider.

"Say, Ben," Laurelin called behind her, "mind those webs there."

She then flew right *through* the web curtain, the sticky strands not
delaying her in the slightest, thanks to her Freedom of Movement prayer
she’d cast not a dozen seconds before. The spider did NOT like this
intrusion upon its privacy at all, and lashed forward, even as
Laurelin's sword descended. Both blows missed, and both ladies eyed each
other, eager to continue the match.

Ben checked his forward charge at the priestess' warning call. His
Angelic Aspect could fly as well... but he had not the defensive magics
to ward against webs. And he'd already tasted one spider's webs
yesterday, and was in no mood to do so again.

Drawing himself up some sixty feet away from the webs, he began to pray,
his hands sketching out a glowing tracery of red lines intermixed with
blue sparkles as he chanted in sonorous Liturgical Quenya. And a moment
later, a mighty cone of howling winds shrieked down the far end of the
hallway, catching webs, spider, and priestess alike.

The webs turned out to be all but impervious to the howling gale. The
vertical curtain bowed, and stretched in a few parts, but remained
intact. As too did the webs along the floor, with only the section of
webs immediately below the priestess peeling back in the blast and
blowing away.

Neither spider nor priestess, however, fared quite as well as the webs.
The monstrous spider scrabbled all eight of its legs against the blast,
but found itself being pushed inexorably backwards… which lost its
contact with the ceiling, sending it the relatively short distance down
to the floor below.

Laurelin, however, did not have the spider’s advantage of eight legs to
try to dig in against the gale. In fact, flying as she was, she really
had no legs on the ground at all. Only a quirk of the benevolent entity
powering the gale – or the bulk of an interposing spider providing a
backstop – prevented the priestess from being sent cartwheeling towards
the far end of the tunnel, no doubt allowing the spider a viscous
parting bite “goodbye”.

As it was, both the spider and priestess were blown back some fifteen feet.

Back at the rearguard, Lomi was fuming. She had no good target, now that
the spider had retreated behind its vertical curtain of webs. Finfin,
meanwhile, was staring after the now retreated spider. The color of its
eyes meant something… if only he could remember…

“It’s a FIENDISH spider!” Jeyshann yelled, running forward as close as
she dared.

That bit of information provided Finfin the tidbit he needed. Fiendish
variants of monsters, representing manifestations from one of the
infernal planes, did indeed have a certain number of resistances. But
that meant…

“It’s fire RESISTANT, not fire PROOF!” the elf yelled, pulling out one
of Seaweth’s patented bat guano pellets. He couldn’t recall just how
many years it had been since HE had last cast a Fireball. But he still
knew how, and made a point of having ONE prepared today, just in case
the more traditional “boom” mages were busy.

An instant later, a red pellet streaked forward, exploding in a
detonation of fire that almost completely filled the back part of the
corridor. Excluding the VERY rearmost, if possible, but that was a
secondary priority. Burning away the webs was the main goal. A goal that
was fully met, as the intense heat burned away each and every bit of
webbing.

There was, sadly, no way to spare Laurelin the blast, but hopefully she
would forgive him. Or perhaps not even notice, if the Abbot’s prayer
granting everyone a large degree of Spell Resistance turned aside his
blast, much like an earlier Fireball did nothing to the Roper. THAT
hope, sadly, was in vain, as his spell punched through the Abbot’s Spell
Resistance. However, Laurelin managed to interpose her borrowed shield
against the bulk of the blast, and the shared prayer of Mass Fire
Resistance easily took care of the rest.

The spider, however, did not fare quite so well. It caught the blast
full on, and while it was indeed resistant to fire, as Laquendi had
seconds before discovered, it was rather toasted by the blast.

The fireball, however, was EXACTLY the dramatic climax Tramma had been
waiting for. Gleefully, the silver haired bard swung into her chorus,
lustily singing her words still infused with residual Bardic Power:

Fire, I'll take you to burn
Fire, I'll take you to learn

Proud of a job well done, she ran forward to tend to a wounded Laquendi.
“We silver hairs gotta stick together,” she quoted one of her favourite
memes as she began to sing up an entirely different song over the still
web covered and somewhat mauled elf. Within moments, nearly all of the
dimensional torsional injuries were sung away.

Ignoring the drama immediately before her, Lomi was turning back to her
delayed job at hand. “THANK you,” the tall scout muttered, and sent
another quartet of arrows winging towards the once again visible spider,
taking advantage of the unnatural speed lent to the entire Away Team by
Finfin’s earlier Haste spell.

Finally, with a scream, followed by a leap, Jeyshann completed her full
run into the now web-free zone, sinking her claws into the side of the
spider.

The spider was now oozing ichor from all directions. It was still going
strong, however, and was now beyond incensed at these interlopers.

Back towards the rearguard, Laquendi glared at the now grounded colossal
spider over a hundred feet away. She wished that she could be in the
thick of the battle, alongside both Laurelin and Jeyshann. But thanks to
these webs, any progress forward would be slow. The spider fiend was
beyond Laquendi’s physical reach. But not beyond her magical one…

The injured elf began to chant, even as she began to sketch out some
glowing red and orange lines in the air, struggling to keep the spell on
track and not be fouled by the cloying, sticky webs. At the end of the
spell’s invocation, there was a flash of red on one side of Laquendi’s
pointing hand, and a hint of indigo on the other.

And then, the area around the spider, Laurelin, and Jeyshann fairly
exploded into a swirling vortex of smoking lava intermixed with chunks
of steaming ice. And the fiery ice storm lingered, battering all three,
as well as all but preventing any more incoming archery from having any
effect. A defensive prayer, courtesy of the Abbot, helped Jeyshann
ignore any touch of the spell… but both the spider and Laurelin took a
minor pounding from the icy component of the spell.

The huge spider, by now, had taken a deep and abiding personal dislike
to… well, everyone. But this most annoying glowing elf lady was nearest,
and the spider gave Laurelin a vicious bite. The elven priestess might
be safe from the spider’s venom, courtesy of the Abbot’s Heroes’ Feast,
but the damage itself hurt like anything. But her answering sword cuts
hurt the spider right back again.

From the rearguard, Lomi cursed, while Finfin shrugged. His fireball
had freed the corridor from archery blocking webs. Only to have their
arrows now foiled by a lack of a visible target; Laquendi’s Storm of
Fire and Ice was STILL raging. Ben, too, was confounded by the lack of a
visible target. He had been planning on blinding the creature with one
of Belmak’s Words of Power, but now was unable to put the plan into
action. Lacking any other clear choice, he hustled forward, arriving in
time to be able to stick his sword into the foul spider’s body.

Caught up in the Fire and Ice storm, Jeyshann slashed away… and the
colossal spider slumped to the floor.

“Is it dead?” Ben asked as the Fire and Ice storm dissipated.

Jeyshann considered for a moment, and shook her head. “Still twitching.”

This was not a circumstance that Laquendi could bear. "By all that is
holy, please make sure the spider from the abyss is actually,
permanently, dead," she instructed in an intense frightening flat
monotone before she sent her final salvo of Magic Missiles into the
creature. Only to see all five vanish inches away from the spider’s form.

"I have had my body and mind restored,” Laquendi intoned mournfully.
“And somehow am still impotent."

“It’s all right, sweets,” Tramma said reassuringly, beginning to carve
her fellow silver hair out from the webs. “Fiendish creatures are
somewhat immune to spells.”

“Are people worried about the Spider?” Ben called back. “I can always
Power Word: Kill it.”

Next to him, Jeyshann snorted her worst possible insult at the
suggestion. “Men!” There was a brief flash of her claws, and the huge
spider stopped twitching. “Embedding my claws in its nervous system will
stop the twitching,” the Cat Priestess snarled, holding aloft claws
quickly clearing themselves of fiendish spider ichor as she
unconsciously struck a significant Kirbyesque pose.

“Will nothing rid me of this meddlesome… macho posturing,” Jeyshann
demanded, hopefully rhetorically. With a last loud menacing SNIKT ripe
with disgust her claws retracted, though her glare of annoyance still
speared the priest before widening to include the elven wizard far
behind them.