In Which Three-and-a-Half Rounds of Combat Pass in Two-and-a-Half Hours of Play; Welcome to Seventeenth Level, Folks

Starday, 20 Reaping, CY 601

The centipedes swarm upon the party, hitting Archie, Tyrrell, and Riddle but especially converging upon Long Claw, who is unable to resist the poison in their bite and suddenly feels a lot clumsier than before. Riddle summons a dazing blade barrier to cut the party in the half and injure most of the centipedes and putting one of the fray indefinitely.

From deeper into the cavern comes the sound of spellcasting…

Twelve seconds in and already tired of this shit, Archie kills three of them, moving methodically from one to another with silver arrows to overcome their resistance.

Long Claw shakes off the poison, heals himself a bit, and pounds on one of them while Scar-Eater dimension hops outside the barrier to burn another to ask.

And again, from deeper into the cavern, comes a scarmbling sound as two enormous black scorpion-type things with three stingers points on each of their tails come chittering along the ceiling, towards the commotion.

Jane casts a spell that enlarges Long Claw to legendary proportions as Tyrrell flies, invisibly, to the now-huge griffon and taps him with the wand of restoration. The only non-dazed centipede remaining attacks Long Claw but misses twice.

Suddenly, Riddle feels pulsing waves of insanity and madness attempting to overtake his mind. He pushes the waves aside and casts heal on one of the approaching scorpions, and while it seems to be able to defend itself against the spell, it still takes a good chunk of pain from it.

Archie finishes off the active centipede and tries to hit the same scorpion that Riddle attacked but the one shot that lands seems to deal considerably less damage to it than it should. Archie returns his fire to the dazed centipede where him might do more good.

Long Claw, seeing how Riddle’s healing energy affected the scorpion, lays hands on himself before channeling positive energy on the enemy, dealing a bit of damage. Scar-Eater dimension hops past the blade barrier and into the fray with the scorpions and attempts to dimension hop one of them away from the fight, but the scorpion is able to resist. Both scorpions attack the duskblade, grppling and poisoning him until he is limp, unconscious and dying, in its graps, with their stinger draining his very intelligence from him. Jane flame strikes them both for some damage. Tyrrell, still invisible but confident he can’t penetrate the scorpions’ chitinous carapace, draws his breath of life scroll and moves adjacent to Scar-Eater to restore his drained intelligence.

Riddle dimension hops adjacent to Scar-Eater and then away again, taking the duskblade with him. Archie handily kills the remaining centipede and then, switching to adamantine arrows, tries again to hurt the scorpions. Long Claw makes a powerful lunging attack on the first scorpion, using his new immense size to deflect a blow from the scorpions’ huge reach as he does. Scar-Eater stabilizes as Riddle hangs on.

It’s evident that the scorpions are healing at an abnormally fast rate, and they both charge Long Claw (Tyrrell just managing to duck out of the way), one of them getting in a good blow though it fails to grab him with his pincers.

Jane releases her prepared find the path spell (as she is pretty sure they have already found it) and attempts to ensnare the evil scorpions with some greater black tentacles summoned from the ground. When the spell fails to work, she realizes that what they had previous assumed was a floor covered with boiling rocks is only an illusion, and that they are all actually flying above a one-hundred-and-twenty-foot gorge. She shares this information telepathically with everyone else.

Tyrrell doesn’t have much time to process this as the mental attack from both scorpions overwhelms him. He has just enough presence of mind remaining to use the restoration wand on himself, but he is still in trouble.

Riddle heals Scar-Eater, blast a cold ice strike on the first scorpion, and free-falls sixty feet, away from the fight. Archie unleashes a massive volley on the scorpions, distracting both of them, before doing the same sixty-foot drop. Long Claw follows suit, but not before pounding the first scorpion into oblivion.