Ep 1209: Magnus shows how far he's willing to go

When last we left our adventurers, a very angry sphynx had just plane-shifted us to the plane known as Limbo. Elle and Magnus are angry, Tsedek is pondering if he knows anyone here, Leoven is a bit freaked out, and Itanis is almost fascinated.

Now Limbo is this topsy-turvy sort of place where matter is relative, as is gravity. You'll have a beautiful waterfall that will shift into a river of lava that then bursts into a gaggle (flock? herd?) of butterflies. You move by thought not by movement and you're just kinda floating about. And not a one of our adventurers have the means to plane-shift us back to the material plane.

So the five of us are fighting this sphynx that is currently blinded and grovelling. Leoven lets loose with more arrows, striking true as always. Tsedek also continues damaging the sphynx. The sphynx continues to grovel at Magnus' feet, then his eye sight clears up and Elle strides in while playing with a ball of pure radiant energy.

In her best version of a noble command voice, which is admittedly not something she's good at, she stated: "Creature, you will take all 6 of us back to the material plane now or you will die" and then lobs the ball of radiant damage, severely damaging the sphynx and blinding him again.

Magnus then smashes the sphynx to death. Then hollers at Tsedek to tie the sphynx up. See, apparently Magnus came up with a plan. Generally his plans are see evil smash evil, so Elle stepped back to see what he is up to. Also, Magnus got his missing point of intelligence score back. Tsedek then tied up the sphynx as it started bubbling -- probably to disintegrate into the make up of this plane. And then Magnus uses revivify on the sphynx, which restores a recently dead being to 1 health. While we're doing this Itanis is attempting to study the area.

So now the very angry sphynx is alive and seriously damaged, tied up, and facing a glowering Magnus. He growls out something to the effect of: "You will take us all back to the prime material plane and resume your life and we will resume ours or I will kill you again, hack off a body part, and then bring you back to life again. And repeat as often as necessary!" Elle just stood there grinning and playing with her ball of pure radiance. The sphynx decided to take Magnus up on his generous offer and plane shifted us all back to the dock in the material plane.

But the fight was not over. Tsedek stepped in to cut off the ropes tying up the sphynx, only to find they didn't make the shift back to the material plane. The sphynx, deciding the tiefling with a knife was up to no good took a massive swipe and doing some solid damage to Tsedek. So Tsedek returned the favor and knifed him, to death.

This time we left him dead.

The "ferry" took us back to the ship where we defeated the cult of the broken body and we decided to rest for the night in the throne room. It had been a long day and by this point Elle was getting quite hungry after the, er, purging in the the leather-works room. She proceeded with caution on the food front however.

After a long rest Itanis reactivated the portal and we strode through, Magnus proudly in the lead again. Makes our two scouts kinda irked though LOL. We arrive at the correct destination this time. It's a long dead and forgotten dwarvish city, crumbling into ruins. And somewhere in this mess is this high value item we're trying to retrieve.

Or is it crumbling into ruins? Upon further visual inspection, what we can see shows a lot of vines and crumbling stonework, but about 30' up from the ground there's a weird shimmer that is barely noticeable at first. And below that shimmer the buildings look intact. Though there's floating bones below the shimmer, along with what appears to be glass statues of humanoids. It's above the shimmer it looks like time has taken its toll with the crumbling buildings. Also, how old/long abandoned does a dwarven city need to be that their legendary stonework is crumbling?

At this point we're not sure what we're dealing with, so we went a short way down the path and started experimenting. First Tsedek uses mage-hand to go into the shimmer, grab a bone, and return. Since it apparently looked like a regular old bone, he decided to toss it at Elle. She, of course, fusses at him for throwing a bone at her.

Magnus was then like why don't I summon my horse and send it in, we all protested at that. While it is a special mount that he can summon and dismiss at will, we're not sure what's going on with this shimmer and the horse is a living breathing (celestial) creature.

So Elle, being her reckless self, strides up and pokes the shimmer with a stick. Oh boy did it not like that. It proceeds to attack her with two psuedopods, she used her reaction to cast shield so she didn't get hit. She then scampered away, quickly.

Magnus, seeing it attack, does what he is known for ... strides up and smites. Only apparently the shimmer was prepared this time, so it attacks Magnus. Hits him solidly and sucks him in to the ooze. Yes, it's apparent now that it is an ooze, a gargantuan grand pappy of a monster ooze as it blankets the entire ruins of this dwarvish town. Magnus takes quite a bit of acid damage, does some damage to the ooze, and then misty steps back out of the ooze.

"Elle, you really shouldn't be poking this with a stick."

"Well I'm not the one who got sucked into this thing now am I Magnus?", with a smirk of course.

And that's where today's lunch ends.