Gryphon

Multiple posting personalities give me a headache.

Gryphon takes a moment from his checking of the survivors... "I think the Cursed Spirit threw it over that way", he says gesturing in the appropriate direction, "I don't know what happened to it after that." Turning back to what he was doing Gryphon continues to (gently) assemble all those who didn't come through the final confrontation consious together, getting those more skilled in healing than himself to check them over for anything serious or life threatening. Yui-chan chants a healing spell and the cuts and other minor injuries from the ice explosion heal up for the group while Ayshela speaks in earnest to an amulet that Merelas is wearing, imploring it to heal him so that he can help the others. Turning to Pilocanci and the shadow of Cryptomancer Gryphon speaks, "If you have any method of locating those of the Mighty Pen who are still down here and letting them know that most of us are heading back up to the mansion, please do so. If not we'll just have to come back down for them later." Gryphon then turns begins and begins laying the foundations for a transport spell to move everyone in the room back up to Salinye's mansion.

The blinding flash of reflected nether-worldly fire and the flare as Tanny's shielding gives out causes Gryphon to cry out and cover his eyes in pain as he staggers back from the twin blasts. Out of the darkness beyond his blinded eyes comes a spray of icy shards, striking and causing more pain, and hopefully not too much physical damage. Gasping with shock Gryphon drops to the ground and makes as small a target of himself as he can, while reflexively trying to throw up some minor shielding until the assult ceases. Once the shockwave has gone Gryphon gets up again, blinking furiously trying to clear the tears and sparks from his eyes, looking around at the darkness he calls up a trio of small glowing lights that dance around the room to give light to all. "Did we get it?" When no-one answers at first Gryphon moves to find out who's still alive (hopefully everyone), who needs help (alas too many people), and who should be first to be transported back to the healers at the Mansion.

Out of curiousity, has anyone been keeping track of the whereabouts of everyone who came down into the haunted house? If we're going to have to do search and rescue as well as transporting the survivors/hurt out of here we should probably know about it now rather than later. I'm just hoping that we've not had everyone who's been tracking people's movements just pass out on us.

No worries Ayshela, looks like Gnarlitch is going to be our front line evil spirit grinder for this one... we'll improvise the rest as we go. Get better soon. hugs

What can I say, I'm a sucker for dragon stories, though often not patient enough to write them myself. If it's a part of a greater whole I shall be watching further developments with some interest.

Fortunately we've got a Tanny... who correctly theorised that it would have to become (however temporarily) fully coporeal to deal with an artifact such as your amulet, and then she cut it off from going back to whatever parallel plain incoporeal creatures inhabit... Let's go get it.

Loved it, this actually reminds me of a Weird Al Yankovic song that I love called Albuquerque. A stream of consious or uncosious thought that tells a tale in an amusing way. B E A Utiful

Even warned as he was Gryphon is caught (briefly) by suprise at the sudden shift in the battle... then a plan takes form in his mind. Surprise it, slow it down, maybe disable it's nervous system... does it have a nervous system?... never mind, if it doesn't I can at least cause it pain, lots of pain. The spirit gathers its self to leap one again at the mages arrayed in front of it, and springs... into a lightning storm. Small bolts of lightning cascade from Gryphon over the Spirit's body as it shudders and twitches before falling back on the ground where it lies twitching as the first attack ceases. Gryphon readies a second strike just in case, but holds it for fear of hitting one of the Mighty Pen's warriors. "Now, attack it now while it's incapacitated..." Gryphon starts to yell, even as the enemy starts to stir and draw it's self back to its feet with evil murder in it's eyes.

Rev, I've never played the kind of game you're talking about here, but some of the guys I used to play D&D with did... They too were clever and played the numbers game. I think it was actually something like Warhammer they were playing, I just remember that their descriptions of how they won and the consequences of doing so were were exactly the same as you described here. It's funny as hell. I guess banning the person who's smart enough to play strategically is easier than learning to play with a strategy yourself, so thats what they do. In the case of the tale I was told they'd just banned people from playing the combination of armies that my friends had come up with because like yours they were too good... Last I heard my mates were coming up with a new army with similar advantages, including the all important advantage of not being a banned one yet.

Nice, I love dragon stories, they're like an addiction. I didn't pick it up until I re-read this though, there's a brief indication of orcs capturing and taming the dragons: Maybe some indication of where the orcs fit into the tale, a paragraph or even a line indicating two young lovers catching a moment's respite from an ongoing battle with orcs from the nearby mountains or something. (please forgive me for presuming to dictate a possible path to the story) I just think some indication of where orcs fit into the picture might be possible without disrupting the flow of the story. Just as their removal wouldn't hurt that much in the slightest. Maybe there's some other reason for a pair of dragons to attack small town?

Gnarlitch, I like your armour... Presumably you've got some way of hitting incoporeal things? We might have a solution to hand, protect you from possession with Vahktang's amulet, build a shield that encloses you and the Curse's Spirt and then drop the shield containing it... and watch the blades/warhamers/axe fly. Does anyone have any other ideas? Gnarlitch, have I assumed too much about your intentions?

Incidently I believe that some of you, Vahktang?, may be operating under the notion that the spirit is currently possessing someone. The thing that Tanny is holding under shield - probably an ever weakening shield too by the way - is actually just the spirit of the curse its self. Cryptomancer, or possibly his shadow, managed to drive the curse out into the open. If I'm reading what Vahktang's amulet does properly then he'll need to either put it on someone already possessed, or someone willing to go into hand to hand with it, risk possession in order to hope that the amulet will absorb the Spirit of the Curse. Going into hand to hand could be tricky as it's incorporeal, but it can be done. It'll also mean Tanny needs to drop her shielding unless it doesn't protect against a physical intrusion from one of those present.

Actually I think what happened was that everyone who was actively in the game got either pranked out or exposed as a wolf. So when the last wolf was found the freeing of the character left us with a confined evil spirit. So we never in the context of the game found out anything about the spirit it's self, nor the history of the haunted house, and now we've got a couple of people struggling to hold the curse spirit in check so it doesn't take someone else over. Once that'd happened it kind of evolved into a bit of a free-for-all in which we decided that breaking this curse once and for all by destroying it's spirit was a good plan. Cryptomancer provided the spirit so he might be able to enlighten us more.

Oop... oh boy. I've been having an afternoon of not turning my brain on. Actually, everyone here at work has. I meant childhood friend of Nehrathi. Sorry Tanny, Ayshela... I'm so glad it's friday - my brain obviously needs a rest.

Ok, I've worked out the basics. In a nutshell I'll be joining you as Rahotep. A junior officer in the pharoah's army assigned to the pharoah's palace staff. Also a childhood friend of Napheen.

From memory, which does tend to be faulty at times, (thus enabling me to re-read books), the bit about people believing anything was part of the expanded explanation of the rule. Basically, as you say, they might mean the same thing. Pitty though... I was wondering what it felt like to be people. Guess I'll just have to settle for being me.

Just as an aside to the vaguely meaningful posts I've been putting in here in an effort to make conversation: Terry Goodkind in the book Wizards First Rule states that the rule is "People are stupid" (I hope I've not misquoted, it's been a long time since I read that book) Casual observation of people (both individually and as a race) often seems to support this rule. Sometimes I'm stupid and sometimes I'm not... does this mean that sometimes I'm not people?

Sorry Ayshela, it's a character flaw - Gryphon thinks in terms of magic since he's primarily a mage. However, I'd rather not add "stupid" to that description. If you've anything at all that can be contributed to taking out nasties please, please, please jump right in. After all, you've a certain experience when dealing with the nasty things that come out at night (I've been reading Hostel Fox ) Right now, unless someone's gone and posted while I wasn't looking we're still all just holding the Spirit of the Curse in place, no-one's actually done anything yet. Edit: I'll add that I've no experience in dealing with evil spirit types. ~Gryphon - the hopefully not stupid mage

No! Bad Cryptomancer... no more necronomicon for you! OOC: No more drugs for that man.

I'd like to play, but I'm having trouble coming up with a character. I'll see if I can think of anything and let you know (if thats ok?)

Peredhil: Yes quite possiby... assuming the premise that intelligence is genetic is true. The other possibility being that the intelligent will come up with a way to stop the 'stupid' from breeding. Vigil StarGazer: I didn't want this to be an arguement. I wanted some ideas and discussions on thoughts I'd been having. I'm going to hope that the topic hasn't devolved (evolved Tamaranis?) into an arguement and thank you all for contributing. Now if I can ask something else. Does anyone else follow what I've been thinking about? Do you all, as a sample of a global community as well as a community here at the Pen that I've willingly become a part of understand where my thoughts have been wandering? To be fair I dont always follow the wandering of my own thoughts, so I'm not asking you to be able to get inside my mind, what I really want to know is how many others have seen things, read things etc that got you thinking something similar to what I've come up with in my individual posts in this thread.

Vahktang is there. There's probably a limit on how many people can be brought in that way by Gryphon. I know it's a different system of magic to what some of the others use, but like so many of them it does take personal energy to control the power from outside. I'll keep an eye on this thread to see if anyone else is going to be joining us for this little battle. We've still got people that can confine this thing, but by the sounds of it not many other than Gryphon with any combat magic. I dont have a lot of that as it is and the energy cost of transporting people into the battle zone like that is going to wear me out pretty quickly... This could be interesting / fun

Vahktang sits forward watching the scene unfolding in the haunted mansion with interest, willing himself to be there, willing some one to get him there... when suddenly a bright blue light erupts all around him. Power from out of nowhere starts to envelop his body and begins to swirl around him, making a kind spinning funnel. Suddenly with a crack that sounds like thunder he's somewhere else, the others at the party see a flash of light and Vahktang is gone. There ya go - you're at the battle now Vahktang appears on the screen.

Trying to build a spell to attack an unknown spirit form is tricky at the best of times... these are not the best of times. Prepairing a lance of mage energy Gryphon hesitates watching the spirit of the curse lash out at Tanny's barrier, causing the magic to flare and flicker... and hold! He glances at Tanny seeing the strain of holding a shield clearly on her face, along with the determination and strength of her spirit. Stepping back and quickly dropping his own sheilds Gryphon decided it was time to call in some reinforcements. Moving slightly back to an open area of floor he starts to use power to sketch a rough portrait in the air, lines of power flow out and slowly, somehow, despite the crudity of the picture somehow it gives the impression of being a perfect rendition of Vahktang. Once the 'image' is complete Gryphon pumps power into it, drawn from the clean energy source he linked to earlier. In moments the image is replaced by Vahktang himself, suspended in the air with sparkles of power dripping off him and looking fairly surprised as moments ago he was sitting back at the Halloween party. "I can't remember who, but said you know something about stopping things like that", Gryphon indicates where Tanny is holding the Spirit of the Curse in a tight shield. "Can you help her stop that thing? And if you know anyone else that might be able to help, let me know. I can try to bring in one or two more"