Everyone is dead. Dara felt her heart being wretched through her chest, and Dylan felt his soul being sucked through his nose. They return to consciousness but are strangely empty. Dylan is very depressed that he has no cigarettes. He and Dara emo about dying. Dylan sees the face of the elven druid Culnamo, and they discuss dying as Culnamo meditates. Tormund mutters about wanting apples and mead in the background. Culnamo reports that he is the only one here who died of natural causes. They are in a gigantic cavern; at one end is a portal with bars to prevent passage. Dara kicks it and gets damaged. Dylan hears swearing coming from the other side: Wrath, grumbling about guarding the door because of orders. Tormund taunts him. Wrath yells at him to shut up.

Tormund asks Culnamo how they can get out of here. “Get rid of the bars somehow without magic items and then beat the dragon.” Culnamo had used the hidden staff of life to bring Tormund back after he had tried to get out…several times. Culnamo tries to give them advice: “You must never say this out loud, or Wrath will disobey orders and kill all of us. There are hordes of magical items stashed somewhere in this cave…like, I was able to keep this.” He pats his staff. Tormund: “Where would I go about findin’ a pointy rock? A BIG pointy rock?” “Ask the hundreds of others in this cave.” Tormund talks loudly and boisterously all the time. Culnamo reports one of Wrath’s “favorites,” an apprentice of a priestess that despised half-humans. She would do anything to get out of this.

They look around and see about a hundred souls, a lot of Dara’s and Dylan’s former companions. Culnamo can’t move because he died a natural death. He also has an itch. Tormund moves him. “Thanks, you only gave me six bruises this time.” Dylan sees a chunk of adamantine in Tormund’s ass. Tormund uses it to dig and comes up with a small chest. Culnamo: “I never buried anything.” Tormund: “It’s just a chunk of rocks. Nod nod, wink wink.” Tormund smashes at the chest with adamantine. Culnamo: “You know, you could just open it.” Tormund: “I assumed this rock would be opened.” Viory: “Barbarian dude, why did you through dirt in my face?” Tormund: “Why don’t you clean yourself off by going and getting killed by the dragon?” Tormund starts chucking things out, which Dylan catches. Viory takes a book, a magic book. Scrolls, wands, dust, helm, shield, rapier…Dara casts create water on Dylan holding all the stuff; the water goes through him. There’s also a ring of protection plus two and an immovable rod, as well as many other “rocks.”

They search for more items. Tormund: “Ale and whores…I mean, rock!” Dara looks for clerical items and discovers an old cleric with a relic. Viory also hears of the relic as well as the dead head of the white wizards. Viory helps Dylan and Tormund by finding the person who executed him (who was also executed)…he still has his executioner’s axe. Dylan is glomped by a lonely girl ranger. She strips off her hide armor and gives it to him. He resists being seduced. Tormund sees a person one third his size that smells like annoyance on a stick. She holds up a shiny: a flat piece of metal with a strap on the back. Viory gets word of a tiny thing that has made a burrow in the corner. It hisses at everyone who comes near, but there is something shiny in there. Dylan uses handle animal, and it likes him a bit more. Dara diplomacizes it…it stops hissing and yelling profanity, but it won’t let them near. It’s a tiny weasel, but there is lots of ectoplasm scattered everywhere. It says everyone wants its shiny, the little ring thing. It laughs when Dara creates water on Tormund. It wants something shinier in exchange. Tormund holds out his shiny plate (aka buckler). Viory casts dominate monster on the paragon baby dire weasel. He gives him the ring and clings to his ankle. Viory now has a little friend. It’s a ring of protection +4, and the buckler is a +1 ghost touched buckler. Viory makes the adamantine rock shiny and tells him to stay in the hole and protect the rock. There has been a tunnel near Wrath’s horde chamber, but he keeps a close eye on it.

Dara thinks to talk to Skyler, who’s very angry about being dead. He’s a bard, so he can identify things. Tormund pulls out a ring: “Holy…” He clamps over his mouth. He wants them all gathered before he casts identify. The cleric is sitting in the back tearing at his holy symbol: “You betrayed me…” After lots of wrangling, Tormund wrenches it out of his hands. It smells like unicorn giggles. Viory encounters a wizard who is toying with a stick. He goes into a long rambling story about his younger days. He’s trying to make a wand. The dragon let him keep a couple of things, but the dragon will rip him apart if he gives it to anyone else. He gives it to him when he bluffs that the berserker is not in on the escape attempt. He gives him a wand of magic missile ninth level, a ring, and a scroll. Dara talks to the apprentice of the Ur-priestess. “I kicked your master’s ass!” She laughs and spits at her. Tormund gets mad at Dara being spit at. She threatens Dara with a rod. To Tormund: “Oh, is she your girlfriend?” Tormund: “It’s better than a dragon!” She stabs at him with that rod. Then she realizes her mistake. She gives him the rod. She’s going to tell Wrath probably, though. Tormund threatens her. He tells her to go sleep in a corner…one with a certain paragon weasel. Tormund tromps up to get the ax. The executioner was a friend of his back when both were fighting for Wrath and Pride. They were drinking buddies. He’s very vindictive about getting killed by Skyler. Tormund gets his ax.

They go check out the carpet room…people with eating compulsions are eating each others’ ectoplasm and rocks. Tormund flips over the table and tells them to leave. He stands on the carpet and yells “Up!” Nothing happens. Dara tries to pull it out from under him. Viory looks and sees stone underneath. He tells Dara to say fly in Draconic. It shutters a little in her hands every time. Dylan tells it a story using all the words on the carpet, and it comes up and wraps itself around him. Tormund pulls it off and wrestles it into a bundle. It’s a ten-by-ten slightly defective carpet. Dara tries to start a ghostly rave. Everyone’s too obsessed by how-they-died-quirks to rave. They hear that Raven (an old party member) is skulking about somewhere. He has a ring that lets him look through walls into a ghost harem. They intrude in on him. After lots of arguing and him hitting on Dara and grossness, they get the ring of x-ray vision. Culnamo also gives him the staff of the woodlands.

Maranda: “They’re in emo-land, the amusement park where you get cut on every ride and bad poetry abounds.”

Skyler identifies their items. Culnamo points out a man in a fetal position fondling a bag. Dylan goes up…he doesn’t notice him, so he takes the bag. Inside is a very thick deck of cards, three times thicker than a normal deck of many things. Viory senses that they are not good and takes them and creates Dylan a shadowy deck of cards. He proceeds to play solitaire in mid-air. Viory creates twenty five little prying eyes for spying. Wrath is snoozing in his room. He sees a bunch of potions, a shield, a rod, a cape, a couple of staffs that Wrath’s tail is wrapped around, a working flying carpet, a breastplate, and a longsword. Viory sends the rest of the eyes throughout the cavern…some graffiti from the wizard (it’s an invisible arcane rune), vague outlines of ghosts that didn’t have a strong enough personality to manifest as ghosts… Luminia sees a shiny fang amulet around Wrath’s neck.

They play with the deck of many things. Dylan gets wishes, and Viory becomes a half celestial, gets a level of fighter, a fourth level bodyguard, two wishes (no more half celestial or fighter, rogue level instead), two points to any ability score…becomes a half orc, puts four ranks in search, gets smarter, then becomes a gnome, then becomes a half-elf, then gets an answer to a question. Luminia and Dylan play go fish with the ghostly cards. Dara loses intelligence, gets tumbling, and becomes a lycanthrope instead of a half air-elemental. Tormund kills a dreadwraith and gets 50 xp, gets a level of bard, loses all of his magic items, gets more move silently and search, loses four points a wisdom and adds it to something else, becomes a CR 1 half celestial, loses four intelligence and adds it to something else, gets bling, and gets the fate card. He draws the cards again using the fate card. This time he retrains four ranks into move silently, enmity between him and any one outsider, he retrains four more ranks into move silently, two vizier cards, retrains four ranks into spellcraft, loses four dexterity and adds four to something else, and he must singlehandedly defeat the next combatant (as does Dara). He also becomes a halfling. Viory figures that trying to kill Wrath won’t work. He asks the vizier card if the five of them can defeat Wrath in battle (yes, if they are very well prepared and can negate these advantages).

They make plans. Viory casts lots of spells, as does Dara. They are now buffed up. They get through to Wrath’s room in various forms. They grab some things, and when Viory grabs a staff, Wrath wakes up. He can see their images but not them, as they are invisible. Dara casts ice flowers on Wrath. Dylan spring attacks. Luminia goes after a ring. Tormund runs straight at Wrath. Wrath launches himself into the air and casts true seeing on himself. He casts celerity on himself and breath weapons. He also casts fiendish presence. Viory puts up a wall in front of him. Dara heals Dylan. Tormund frenzies and runs into a wall. Dara backs away from everyone and prepares a spell. Wrath gets bigger as Tormund starts frenzying. Tormund comes out of his frenzy, and Wrath calms down. Wrath poofs over by Luminia. Dara casts greater dispel magic on Wrath. Luminia breath weapons him. Viory casts mindfog. Wrath is pissed at Tormund and flies into him. He falls over dead. Dara casts greater dispel magic again. Wrath can’t see them now. Dylan spring attacks him. Luminia full attacks Wrath and bestows negative levels. Wrath goes after the invisible Luminia…or one of her images. Four of the images are down. Viory casts mass hold monster, but Wrath saves. Dara giggles and casts searing light. Dylan crits as he drops his shield and hits two-handed. Luminia makes a sunder attempt on the amulet, and he hits her. The amulet is hanging by a thread but still on. Viory casts mass hold monster again but fails again. Wrath jumps into the air, clings to the ceiling, and casts true seeing again. Dara dispels the true seeing. Wrath looks annoyed. Luminia goes up to Wrath and drains him. Viory tries again, and he is paralyzed for one round. Dylan spring attacks and hits again. Wrath casts celerity to make another save, but he’s still paralyzed. Luminia attempts a coupe de grace. She bites his throat and rips it out, getting the amulet with it. Wrath is dead…again! Dara brings Tormund back to life again. They gain 39,000 gp, 58 gems, scroll of speak with plants, ring of minor acid resistance, ring of spellturning, potion of haste, potion of displacement, rod of cancellation, cape of the Montebank, potion of cure serious wounds, another ring of x-ray vision, ring of blinking, ring of spell storing, cube of force, greater horn of blasting, five by ten magic carpet, rod of the viper, metamagic rod of empower, +4 ghost-touch breastplate, rod of epic spellcasting, ring of iron skin, interesting tapestry that looks like the wall of the cave.

As they explore the cavern, the air begins to become more and more stale. Not that they breathe. Cliffhanger ending: there is no way out. There is a dimensional anchor to keep people in.

The tapestry that looks like the wall of the cave is made of a different kind of rock. It leads into Wrath’s other chambers. Spirits are all gathered up watching the death of Wrath: “What the hell?!?” Dara bathes in the blood of Wrath and takes lots of damage, but she gains new abilities. She then creates water on herself to clean off the gore. They set Wrath’s corpse on fire. Since he’s immune, he just keeps burning. Viory uses a vizier card to ask how to get out: the tapestry is the key. The stone in this tapestry is not in this sedimentary layer. He uses magic device on the tapestry to try to make it work. Information flows into his head about a cave that looks like the tapestry. He asks around and finds out a dragon comes down every once in a while and takes a couple of souls out, who are never seen again. Dara summons dire bears to break down the walls and let the ghosts into Wrath’s chambers. Viory tries to dispel the dimensional anchor, but the spell seems to have bounced off the wall. They take the tapestry to Skyler for analyzing. Dara offers sex with Dylan; Dylan runs away, and Viory takes over negotiation. They need to find someone who can cast teleport. Wrath had a habit of carving spells on the walls and covering them with illusions; Viory casts greater arcane sight to see them and then casts greater dispel magic. The entire room goes dark completely.

Viory figures it out and takes Dara, Dylan, and Skyler with him when he teleports. Skyler ends up scrambled, but he gets his ectoplasm straightened out. It looks like Wrath’s horde, but the chambers are made of a different kind of stone. There is an adamantine door. The entire area still radiates dimension lock; the tapestry has changed to look like the other chamber. As they peer at the door, a mouth pops out and says “State the name of your master!” Viory bluffs that his master is Wrath. It was the wrong answer, so they get a burning hands spell thrown at them. Dara goes up to the door and says “myself.” It sprays acid at her. Dara remembers that it starts with a “K.” Viory casts knock on the door but has to dodge sonic damage. Kurik is a dragon word they remember, the draconic word for slaughter. Dara thinks up all the dragon gods she can remember, but none of them start with K. Nothing happens when Dylan says Kurik. It does nothing and seems like it is waiting for something. There’s a whirring noise on the other side of the door. Liruh is the word for creation in draconic. Dylan tries Kurik Liruh, but it says “Does not compute. Please state again.” Viory tries next and bluffs better, so the door slams open.

Through the door sitting there is an inventor’s nightmare. It looks like an iron golem with lots of blades, gears, and other gnomish stuff. Six of the heads are vestigial. “You really must learn the name of our master better. You mispronounced it horribly.” It’s an outsider abomination: an anaxim. It has a mind of its own, but its mind is not its own. “Well, no matter. You are not one of the scaly ones, so show me your token and you shall pass.” They try various objects. Viory bluffs that they lost it in teleporting. Viory and Dylan play with the ghostly cards while they think. A vague rumbling begins in its throat as it figures out that they are lying, and its blades start spinning. “You are obviously not from the master. You must be the one responsible for the deaths of his servants. You must die.” A sonic blast hits them. Dara heals herself. Dylan goes full out with rapier and sword but fails to do it any damage. Viory moves away, tells the other two to move toward that room, and readies an action. It spins, slams, and shocks Dara and Dylan. Dara runs over, followed by Dylan. Viory points his staff and puts a wall of force between them. Then the anaxim breaks through the wall of force and tromps over. Dara dispels magic on the anaxim. It looks like slightly more broken clockwork. It looks at them. “I am not sure whether to thank you or smite you because you are stupid living things. I hate souls, but you have freed me from my cursed bondage. He is the new god of this world and created me before he abandoned me and gave favor to Theron.” They share the enmity of Theron. The anaxim wants to leave before the compulsion on him revives. His spinning blades turn into a helicopter like thing and goes straight up and disappears.

A long way up is a hint of light. They unfold the magic carpet and fly up. Dara as a rat on Dylan’s shoulder goes “Whee!” There it continues up and opens onto four side tunnels. One area is fire, another is a battle, the third is a frozen icy pool, and the fourth is rock. Vague screaming comes from each area, except for the frozen pool and the rock. Torment of hell, draining souls of their willpower to become a part of the plane…whoever created this area had hell in mind. Dylan wanders into the rock one; there are motifs of screaming people in the ground. Dylan chips with his sword. Eventually they get a chunk of rock that looks vaguely humanoid. Dylan casts freedom of movement at Viory’s suggestion, and the soul is freed. “Thank you for freeing me from my torment. Perhaps I can assist you in other ways. I cannot move anymore…they have drained me, but I can join you and give you the toughness of rock.” Dara lets him join her. Then she runs over to the ice area. She casts fire spells on the ice to melt the souls out. Dylan keeps working on the rock ones. Then Dara goes over to the fire place and casts ice flowers. A vague dragon-like carving was blasting the souls with flame. Dara pretends to pee on the ruins of the carving. Those souls were supposed to be consumed. Each of them gains a breath weapon of dragon fire for once a day for 30 days. Then they go into the battle area. Dara puts up a wall of stone and makes two separate battlefields. Viory casts break enchantment, and they stop fighting and look at him. “Why have you interrupted? Are you here to torment us even more? You must prove your worth to us before we give you any of your power.” A ghost fights Dylan. Dylan eventually beats him, and they decide he is worthy. Dylan feels overwhelmed and gains greater battle insights. Each morning he can practice with a weapon for fifteen minutes to gain a plus two damage with a single weapon for twenty-four hours.

Then they go up. They come up into a little area with a big ceiling above them. They go into the tunnel and reach an open chamber. There are chunks of ectoplasm and battered weapons. Dylan pulls ectoplasm off of a spellbook and juggles with it. They continue along the tunnel and crawl as it becomes smaller. Dylan sneaks ahead. He sees a strange creature that deposits clear goo into a pool, nearby which is a long thin tunnel that leads up. It’s the antimagic goo. The creature is a not-natural dragon. It lumbers up to Dylan and attempts to grab him. It fails to grab him but does damage him. Dara scampers up to Dylan as a rat and squeaks murderously. Dylan tumbles past it and casts find the gap on himself. It explodes into a gruesome tentacled mass with eyes and spikes. Dylan gets grappled in a tentacle and ripped off the ground. Invisible Viory casts greater mirror image on Dylan. Dara goes into hybrid form. Dylan barely manages to squirm free. His ectoplasm was beginning to rot. All of them get tentacle- raked. Viory casts freedom of movement on Dara. She sings, “It cannot rape me!” Dara heals, and Dylan chops at it. It goes after Viory and Dara. Dylan spring attacks again. Viory puts up a scintillating pattern, and it is confused. It flees away. Dara casts mass heal and runs down the tunnel, and Viory follows. The creature attacks Dylan and grapples him. Dylan uses his breath weapon. It hits the pool and explodes. Dylan becomes blind as he is being grappled/tentacle raped. Then he disappears from the tentacle and reappears somewhere else. He has also polymorphed into wyrmling white dragon. Dara also gets polymorphed into a pseudodragon. All of the debris on the floor hits the ceiling. The dragon turns into a pseudo-natural treant and then disappears. Viory sees a pseudodragon and dispels magic. The little tunnel thing has no more goo in it. Blind baby dragon Dylan whines.

As they reach the tunnel, they fall and hit the ceiling because of the antigravity field. Dara as a hybrid rat scampers up, and Viory follows more slowly. Dara hears a faint whining. They eventually crawl over a little dragon form. Dara screams “Baby!” and tries to put a diaper on him. Dylan: “It’s Dylan, you idiot. I can’t see, and I think I look funny.” Dara is out of spells, so they continue onwards.

Eventually they get into a large cavern, and the rock becomes normal rock. The anchor has dissipated. As soon as they cross the threshold, they turn incorporeal and their gear clatters off. They put their gear on the magic carpet and tow it after them. There is a rockslide in front of them. Dara pokes her head through to look: she sees a large furry sleek black body. She back away and squeaks. The paragon dire weasel digs after her and asks what’s going on. Dara explains that they died. “Are you going to try to disturb us or not?” He points the way out. They need to find the teleportation circle to get their stuff out. There’s a cairn for one of their children (the baby that was in the cavern). They direct them. They float through the tunnels, past the “undead toasters,” past the blade winds, and to the teleportation circle.

They bampf and find themselves in a very different looking city. It looks like a long time has passed. There’s a half-elf skeleton (Dylan’s remains) spiked to the walls of a palace with a giant statue of Theron on it. Things have gotten kind of bad. A group of people pass by chanting “Hail Theron, hail Theron…” Dylan wants to find Steve. They float looking for the Temple of Steve. People don’t notice them. The temple is now the temple of Theron. People dressed as Theron are doing unspeakable things to people dressed as the rest of them. Dylan fortunately can’t see this. Theron himself presides over this. The barracks have been transformed into an elite fighting force. Alton has been deposed and is now digging latrines. The druids’ grove is amazingly still functional. Ortinoth looks haggard and tired. They manifest and appear in front of him. His eyes narrow and his teeth bare in a snarl: “Where have you been? Do you have any idea what has happened since you left?” Dara explains and says Culnamo says hi. “We have been forced into hiding, people are doing unnatural things.” They have apparently been gone seven years. “His goal is nothing less than to drive us to death for his own twisted pleasure.” It’s Kurik Uhril, not Kurik Liruh. It’s anti-creation. That’s who Theron serves, but they’re not allowed to say that. Ortinoth makes Dylan not blind and not a dragon. He turns back to himself sitting on Dara’s shoulder. “There’s a little hope – come.” They follow him. Viory is still in the barracks looking for his body. Dara and Dylan still scramble after him.

Ortinoth slams his staff into the ground, and a hole opens up. They go underground and come across the giant dragon skull and Steve! “Your little badger friend there is a lot smarter than he seems.” Steve climbs up Dylan’s leg, even though Dylan is a ghost. “It seems that both Theron and Steve are gods. Unfortunately Theron has been stealing most of the divine worship.” They need to get people to believe in Steve. “The so-called faith of Steve has been forced into the faith of Theron. Steve has been helping us survive, although he is no match for Theron himself, as he has told us.” The members of the druid grove are so far Steve’s only followers. The others are doped up on Theron’s aphrodisiacs. Dara wants to make an even stronger addicting drug. Dylan touches Steve and feels somewhat happier. Viory catches up with them and is introduced to Steve. They rest floating in midair. “Steve has counted to infinity…twice!” people chant as their prayers. Steve likes humble, easy-going worship. They need to start a secret cult of Steve. Ortinoth has changed from a druid into a cleric and is heading the worship of Steve.

They learn that the aphrodisiac drug is also sterilizing. The choirboys of Steve are all of the babies they have rescued from Theron. If Dara comes back to life and breaks a staff of the magi and she died and came back as a ghost and was brought back to life again…Theron has created artifacts for himself: a threepiece suit with gloves. They need to distract Theron while they make followers of Steve. Bring up the ghosts! They go to Bohb’s shop; there’s an explosion, and a chunk of metal flies through Dara’s incorporeal head. Bohb looks vaguely like Boom…he’s gone a little odd in the head. Most of his magic stuff is rotting in the back. He has decided to embrace a different kind of magic. Dara manifests in front of him. He doesn’t really recognize her. His mind has snapped. There’re teleporting scrolls in the back, so Dylan takes them. He throws gold at them. Bohb would rather have items that help him. They put Skyler in charge of the teleporting stuff.

They go around and gather information. Dylan goes to the Crying Jester. The two dragons are still in charge, but more people visit the emo side. The people complain that the guards get the good beer. The Crying Jester is the place where Theron distributes the food and the aphrodisiacs. Viory at the barracks learns of Alton’s lowering and that large sums of money are given for traitors. Few people go into the palace. The temple is a scary place. There’s a web of lies and blackmail and people turning each other in. People are either paranoid or stoned. Luminia, also a ghost, goes to Bohb’s to look for a harem costume. He has to craft her a chainmail one from scratch. Dylan goes to the Naughty Nibbler and sees that the Crying Jester is getting all of their business. Underneath it is pretty much deserted…a good hiding place?

The sad thing is, they’d need masterwork ghost-touched pillows in order to have a pillow fight as ghosts.

Viory goes back to the paragon dire weasels to intercept Skyler bringing the ghosts. The paragon dire weasels come back with them to get their baby raised from the dead, and they and all the ghosts go down to the tunnels under the Naughty Nibbler. Dara brings the baby back to life, and Steve visits the tunnels. There are now eight paragon dire weasels, and they frolic around Steve and become his bodyguards. Luminia goes back to Bohb and buys a tiara. Dara writes “I know” on a wall near a paranoid guy. Dylan talks to ghosts and gets ideas: Steal the aphrodisiacs and plant the evidence with powerful people they want executed. Then make Theron a mockery. Dylan learns more about the elite guard, who are really thugs. Two important higher-ups are a minotaur and an elf. They alternately blackmail each other and get it on with each other. One’s name is Darkstorm.

Viory looks around in the other magic shop, run by a gnome sorcerer. The gnome still has a picture of the now dead Ariel up in his shop. Some of the ghosts go out to convert people to Steve. Dylan shapes ectoplasm so that Skyler doesn’t look so horrific. They gain five followers, whom Ortinoth lectures on the Cult of Steve. Viory also convinces people that their lives are retarded and they should convert to Steve. Steve’s code name is Evets. Follow the path of Evets! Viory converts about seventy people. Dara starts creating an epic spell to summon Trogdor.

Luminia gets her chainmail bikini and goes to the brothel. She comes to a large chamber with a bunch of disturbing portraits on either side. People who don’t satisfy Theron are given to the guards. Luminia casts sanctuary on herself. Dara has Dylan change her appearance and creates paranoia among some guards. Luminia gets tied down to a table; Theron comes in and recognizes her. This part gets skipped…four hours worth. Luminia is now contained inside the castle because Theron enjoyed it. Theron shows her around after some pillow talk. She learns about his vampires and is given the fourth highest slot in his harem. Dylan uses a wish to make Viory a human again, as Viory didn’t want to be a half-elf as the deck of many things had made him. Viory sneaks in to the castle to spring Luminia. He sees the portraits of the seven sin dragons and Theron, as well as a rod with seven sticks coming off of it. He climbs along the ceiling invisibly and creeps past the guards. Dara meanwhile tries to make a forgery saying “secret plans to overthrow Theron by so-and-so.” Viory puts on the ring of x-ray vision and looks through the walls to find Luminia. He grabs her and teleports out.

That night the alarms go off. People are looking for Luminia. Some guy takes Dara’s forged scroll. Dara gets questioned by Luminia searchers on the way back. A vampire questions her, one of the secret police. Dara turns him, and he flees from her sight. Ghosts and converts go get a few more converts. They now have 127 worshipers. Viory preaches all day and uses Dara to remove poison on the stoned people so that he can convert them. He gets thirty more people. They come up with a cunning plan. The unholy symbol for the Church of Theron is a pixie’s head on a spike. The dwarf cyrokineticist vampire lurks around the grove. Dara talks to him. She is ordered to go to bed. Dylan hides and sneaks and follows him around, seeing what he does. He wanders around staring at people, as if he’s looking for someone. He obviously suspects something.

The next morning, Viory dominates a clerk priest and a couple of guards. He then has the guards stop the wagon; the priest runs out screaming about Theron, and a column of fire hits the wagon. The horses freak out and gallop down the street with a flaming cart behind them. Viory holds them in place with a spell as one of the mooks kills himself accidentally. The priest shouts: “Theron holds back the good stuff!” as he fires the wagon again. Viory releases the horses after the bottom of the cart falls out. The flaming cart eventually crashes into the temple of Theron. The high priest kills the poor dominated priest. Both of the mooks were dead. Viory casts instigate riot before he leaves. There are lots of guards, and everyone is in withdrawal. “This wouldn’t happen if you prayed to Evets.” Viory has epic diplomacy. He is fire and brimstone incarnate. 207 new coverts! 100 more also join. There is a giant Evets camp underground. Dara calms emotions on them. Dylan guards the exhausted Ortinoth. The barkeep of the Naughty Nibbler joins Evets as well and becomes a yuppie. Everyone has gone underground.

Dara scries on the druid grove. There are three vampires there. The grove is now burning. They set up a new druid grove underground. In the morning, a blackness settles on the ground, and the secret police comes out and drags people in for detainment. Even the poor gnome sorcerer was lynched. Dara goes over to see Bohb but is recognized by the vampire Vaeria, who attacks her with Dylan’s old trident. Dara mass heals both of them. Vaeria hurts Dara more. She stops beating her and strolls towards Bohb’s shop. Dara limps back and tells the others. Luminia hears that Vaeria has a shiny sword that she uses to kill vampires who disobey her. She is the head of the secret police.

A poof of mist follows Dara; she runs around in circles. Then she briskly walks around and tries to get past the guards at the temple to talk to the priests. One of them steps inside and follows her in. Eventually the high priest comes out, and Dara comes up to him. “I have the information you were looking for.” “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out!” Dara leaves, feeling satisfied that she caused trouble. The mist still follows her, though. She turns undead on it in an alley, and it explodes the puff of mist. Dylan makes her an ectoplasmic lunch. There is a massive hubbub in the chamber of Steve. In one corner, priests are chanting “Steve does not get frostbite, Steve bites frost…” In another, the ogre bard is acting like a TV evangelist. “Do you feel Steve, sister?!?” In another corner, a woman stands up wailing in another language, and in the last corner, people with shaved heads are going “Ommm….” trying to meditate with all of the chaos. Steve is in the next room with Ortinoth and the higher priests. People think that Dylan’s ectoplasmic lunch is communion. They are calling Dylan the virgin mother of Steve, Dara the arch-cardinal of Steve, and Ortinoth the pope of Steve. They disguise Dara, and Dylan sneaks along after her. Everyone believes Dara is a little old lady as she goes to the temple. Luminia invisibly casts glibness on herself on the way up; Dara moves her lips, and she talks. She asks for a prayer written by the high priest in a very long-winded story, and they give her one to make her go away. The card suggests that she do something anatomically impossible. Dara sees a poof of mist again. She toodles down an alley, but it doesn’t follow her. They take the card to Viory so that he can forge something incriminating from the high priest. They talk to a priest of Theron who recently converted to Steve for the high priest’s old religion: he was a priest of the dragon queen Takisis.

Dylan and a baby dire weasel find a city guard scraping at the outside wall with his fingernails. The priests tell him to grab him and bring him in. Dylan grapples him, hogties him, and brings him down. The priest interrogates the raving man. Viory gets thirty more followers. Dylan is the paper boy and Dara is the secretary; they make lots of copies of the forged prayer: 700 prayer cards. Dara disguised as the little old lady goes around handing them out: from the high priest, he did this for us all…Dara feels an abrupt cold grip on the back of her neck and is told to come along. She gets slammed against a wall by Vaeria. “Why are you spreading heresy against the church?” “High priest…treason…The high priest gave me this card…this was the only way I could get your attention.” “How do you know about us?” Dara makes up a story about her son disappearing in the middle of the night. “Well, are you saying that you are trying to get our attention because you believe that the high priest is a traitor?” She chuckles. “Well, come by the temple at sunset, and we will see that you get your reward. Now, don’t go spreading these…” Dara stuffs the cards away.

Dylan sneaks into Bohb’s shop. A flying gear shoots through Dylan’s incorporeal face. Bohb ignores Dylan, so he looks around. Bohb is making a big machine with the moaning diamond in the center.

Dara gets a holy symbol of Theron for disguise purposes. They go to the temple at sunset; the high priest comes out, and Vaeria appears in front of him wielding Dylan’s trident and the prayer card. “You are a traitor. Traitors must die!” She flings him at the wall, and he falls prone. Dylan yells “Kill the traitor!” and hits him with his longsword. The priest gets up and rebukes undead. Vaeria cowers. Dara casts searing light on him, as he is a lich. Dylan attacks him again, and the lich moves away from him and casts harm on himself. Dara: granny anger! She assays spell resistance. Dylan follows him into the next room and gets drained and nearly cursed by a touch. He attacks him again. The priest grasps a piece of stone and chants to summon a golem. Dara casts searing light on him, making him fail in his concentration. Dylan hits him as he starts to cast another spell. He screams with the wail of the banshee, and Dylan and Dara manage to make their brains not explode. Dara casts another searing light from behind Dylan. She kills his form (but not his phylactery). Vaeria slowly manages to come back to herself. She wasn’t expecting that. Dara: “Are you okay, dearie?” She is mad at herself, but throws a sack of gold at Dara and tells Dylan that he can loot the body (although she wants his soul thingy). Dara thinks it might be that rock he was holding. She makes a charismatic speech to the acolytes as a little quavering old lady as Dylan loots the body.

Dylan disguises Dara as a beautiful woman so that she can attempt to buy the moaning diamond. Dara bluffs to seduce Bohb for the diamond. He shows her the diamond in the middle of the machine. She pulls out the 50,000 gp. He wants more. She holds up the ring of x-ray vision. He palms it. She gives him the 58 gems that they had, and he trades her the diamond. She winks and says she will come back later tonight. He cops a feel of her butt and she goes along her way. Dara keeps the diamond in the hole in her chest.

Thanks to Dara’s speech earlier, people are starting to doubt Theron, and they start to listen to Viory. They gain another 300 followers. Theron no longer has power. They have about 900 followers now. They’re having a hard time feeding everyone. Dylan goes to talk to Glimmer and tells her the whole story. Dara continues to shaken the faith of Theron, and Viory goes out in her wake addressing the wonders of Evets. Mist begins to form all around Dara. She goes incorporeal and runs, and the mist follows right on her heals. She turns undead, and one of them takes form against her. A vampire with a spiked chain flies out of the darkness at her. She turns into a little rat and scurries away. He runs after. She runs into a hole, and he follows slowly in gaseous form. She comes out in a room full of portraits with a sign that reads “Do not touch upon wrath of Theron.” She casts greater dispel magic on the picture of Theron (it’s that big). She gets rid of the temporal stasis on the picture. She knows if she touches it or looks at it, something will happen. She summons a monster to hold the picture. Nothing happens, so she takes it from the elemental. She feels a horrible debilitating poison enter herself, but manages to fight it off. She removes poison on herself. She also sees a painting of a rod with seven spikes, and there are also the seven sin dragons. She summons an air elemental, tells it to take the pictures to an alley, and sends it off. She turns into a rat and goes there. She covers them in her hat and goes back to the Evets place. Dylan shapes ectoplasm to give Dara latex gloves, and she draws all over the picture of Theron: scars, pirate patch, mustache, feathers on the sword, ballerina skirt, dog humping his leg, little bows in his hair, a cat…and “WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW!” She uses air elementals to post it in town. It eventually gets smote, but everyone sees it paraded through town and Theron is a laughing stock. Laughing is eventually illegal, so everyone joins Evets.

They have a thousand followers, but Steve can’t get the powers until they all worship at once. Dara and Viory make a speech, and Dylan helps a little. Steve shows up, and they start chanting “All hail Steve!” Steve is very happy about this, and light absorbs into him, and poof, he is a larger badger. Dylan and Dara are in awe at the Steveness of Steve. The first thing he does is a miracle: he brings them back to life. Except they are naked. They quickly get clothing. Glimmer joins them just as Steve becomes deified. She is sad that she was too late to see it happen.

Their ranks in the Cult of Steve: Tormund is the Archangel of Steve, Ortinoth is the Pope of Steve, Dara is the High Cardinal of Steve, Viory is the High Prophet of Steve, and Dylan is the Virgin Father of Steve (a title he greatly disputes).

They go to strike a blow at Theron. Dara and Tormund attack the temple and Vaeria…Tormund got Dylan’s trident. Tormund smells like win and cookies. Then they go to find Vaeria’s other weapon, knock off Vaeria and her undead minions, her lieutenant the ice dwarf…Vaeria and the cyrokineticist retreat, however. Tormund smashes through walls and golems and works to grapple a titan to death.

Dylan and Luminia meanwhile sneak into the palace to free people. They enter the picture chamber, and Dylan’s eyes are caught by Wrath. He feels a vague urge to touch the picture. His eyes pass to Lust, who almost starts to emerge from the picture. The illusion begins to draw Dylan in. He decides not to get dragged into pictures and continues onward. Luminia says that behind the portrait of Sloth is a secret door to the harem. Dylan has Luminia move the picture so he can get to the door. Dylan opens the door and takes constitution damage. They go down the hallway, and Luminia goes in followed by Dylan. Tormund then bursts through the wall and frightens the girls away, making a couple of them faint as he searches for vampires. Green mist leaks from the walls. Dylan talks the girls into following Luminia to safety as Tormund battles the titan. Dara summons Trogdor the giant earth elemental (who changes to a storm elemental due to lack of a monster manual) to fight. Tormund gnaws at the titan as he grapples. The titan concentrates and heals himself. Trogdor hits him. Tormund continues gnawing on him. The titan tries to escape the grapple of Tormund but can’t. Tormund rides it like a rodeo. Dara casts searing light. She shatters his spell resistance. Trogdor smacks it around with lightning. Dylan comes down and sees the battle. Tormund keeps gnawing, and the titan heals himself again. Trogdor slams with shocking damage. Dylan tries to tumble in and hits Trogdor by accident. Tormund grapples it again and gnaws. The gloves are off! A hand springs into being and hits Tormund. It tries to pull Tormund off, but he hangs on. Dara blasts the hand with searing light. Trogdor slams and power attacks. Dylan gets up and moves over to the hand. Tormund continues to grapple and gnaw. The hand continues to try to pull him off. The titan tries an unholy blight. Dara casts cure crit mass. The titan is enslaved and can’t escape. Trogdor shocks him again. Dylan goes up and attacks the mass of grappling things. Tormund attempts death blows. The hand yanks Tormund off of the titan. The titan casts chain lightning. Dara casts another cure crit mass, and Trogdor casts thunder and lightning on the tritan. The titan is a charred outline on the floor after the thunder and lighting. Trogdor sings “Shockinating the titan…” Tormund is sad he didn’t get to kill him. He comes out of his frenzy. Dara high-fives her elemental. Tormund reverts to halfling form.

In the next room is a gigantic treasury. Tormund eyes the mattock of the titan. Green mists seeps in the room as it thuds into the wall. It gives them con damage. The weapon is gargantuan, a plus three adamantine war hammer. There’s lots of art depicting the three of them being disgustingly killed and abused, gems, a box full of diamonds, a box of other gems, a small ring (of protection +2), a scroll, an odd spiny shield, a thing that looks like the holy symbol of Theron with a non-evil aura: what use to be Dara’s, but it has been recrafted with the face of Theron. Perhaps a periapt of wisdom. There’s also a scimitar with hellfire motif. And over 30,000 gold pieces. And a small rack of potions with cure light wounds, jump, +1 magic weapon, identify, and another identify. They rest there, and during Tormund’s watch, he sees a door open up a hairline crack and close again. He smells aberration and monstrous humanoid. Dara puts a wall of stone around themselves and the treasure. She casts light on the wall. She puts Trogdor outside the wall and tells him to kill anything that comes in here (except Viory or Luminia).

On watch, Trogdor is hit with a flying charge attack. He is dazed and confused. Dylan is woken up by the noise, and Dara tries to wake Tormund up (he doesn’t get up). Dara goes up and peeks out and sees Trogdor getting pwned by a troll and an umberhulk. Trogdor disappears. The wall busts in. Tormund wakes up. “Can’t a man…person…flying angel of destruction get any sleep around here?” He shifts into hybrid form while stretching and grabs the mattock. The troll’s teeth come through the wall. Dylan spring attacks the troll’s teeth. More of the wall is torn down. Dara is forced to attack the nearest creature. As a rat, she bites Tormund’s leg. Tormund mass-charms monster. The umberhulk appears to be genetically engineered. Dylan breaths fire on the troll that hit him. Dara keeps biting Tormund’s leg. Tormund sunders the troll’s sword. The troll is left holding the hilt. “What the…” “Go away, I’m tired.” “You broke my sword!” It claws and bites Tormund. The umberhulk moves up and attacks Tormund. Dara squeaks incoherently. Tormund tries to hit the sword on the umberhulk. He weakens the weapon. Dylan stabs the umberhulk with his trident. The umberhulk turns around and attacks Dylan. Dara gnaws Tormund again as a little rat. Tormund keeps trying to sunder the umberhulk’s sword. He snaps it in two. It looks shocked. “I’m tired. Leave me alone.” It’s angry. The troll is mad for his friend and attacks Tormund. Dylan slashes with trident and longsword for much damage to the umberhulk. Dara babbles incoherently and humps Tormund’s leg. Tormund full-attacks the umberhulk. Its head is smashed in, but it’s still alive. Troll: “You hurt my friend!” It attacks Tormund. Dylan kills the umberhulk by leaping on it. Dara squeaks incoherently. Tormund turns to the troll. It’s wimpering. “Do I have to kill you?” It runs away. Dylan runs after it and grapples it. He tells Tormund to help. Tormund leap-attacks. He’s not quite knocked out. The troll tries to bite at Dylan’s face. Dylan pins it. Dara finally comes to after an extremely bad acid trip. Tormund knocks it out. The head flies off toward the ceiling and begins to regenerate.

They tie up the troll and question him. His stare is blank. He is dominated. Dara dispels it. Tormund: “Who are you, and why did you wake me up?” They think since he’s good at fighting, he can fight for them. He says his name is “You There.” Tormund slings him over his shoulder and carries him off with them.

In the next room is another treasure chamber with gems and platinum. Dara makes the umberhulk’s sword whole again: a huge luckblade with vicious, shocking burst, and mouth grip on it.

They continue into a hallway. Tormund casts daylight every sixty feet to light it up. They see the lynched gnome dude who is now alive again. Tormund: “The sword you gave me broke.” “Good. If I knew you were going to fight Theron…” The disguise falls away, and it is Boom the insane gnome. He takes a step back, and a huge construct appears in front of him. Tormund: “Troll, I choose you…kill!” and chucks the troll at him. The troll and the astral construct bounce off each other. Tormund smacks it in the face, and Dara summons a greater storm elemental. Dylan moves up and tries to attack it. Dara takes damage from Boom’s crystal shard. Boom creates another construct and moves further down the hallway. Tormund frenzies as he becomes pissed. He inspires frenzy in Dylan. Tormund smashes at the construct. Dara tries her interrupted summoning again. Dylan foams at the mouth and tumbles past to the next construct. He hits it; then it blinks out of existence and goes behind Dylan. It hits Dara and Tormund with a blast of force. It bounces off of Tormund’s spell resistance. Tormund bashes the construct out of existence, and he takes to the air. A storm elemental pops in front of Dylan, and Dara starts charging down the hallway. She casts harm on the construct in her way. Dylan tumbles and hits the next construct. The other construct moves down the hallway and sends a blast of force back at Dara and Tormund. Dylan feels a tug at the back of his neck as Boom tries to rip his brainstem out. Tormund takes out a construct in his way as he dives into it. Dara tells “You There” to come on and heals herself. The storm elemental summons thunder and lightning. However, Boom quickly negates the electricity and only takes the sonic damage. The elemental just keeps moving forward. Dylan nearly decimates the construct. Boom disappears and freezes time. Dylan gets clawed by the construct. Tormund switches to halfling form and goes off after the gnome. He gets right behind the elemental. Dara and the troll run up behind. Dylan kills the construct and runs after Boom. Tormund keeps flying on. The back construct is actually flying as well. Boom has placed more constructs in their way. Dara and the troll run up to Dylan, and the elemental floats up to a construct and slams into it. The constructs move back into the unnatural darkness. The flying construct tears and rends Tormund.

Tormund is surrounded by three astral constructs. He swings and twists his ankle. Dylan sees something appear behind Tormund and blast him with cold. The cold dwarf vampire has reappeared again. Dara’s air elemental slams into an astral construct. She heals Dylan and moves up behind her air elemental. The constructs grapple Tormund; he smacks them away. A construct blasts Dara through her air elemental. Dylan runs up and stabs a construct. Tormund hacks at the dwarf. His head nearly comes off, but it springs back into shape. The dwarf blasts with cold and moves around the corner. Dara looks around the corner and casts mass heal. A giant badger of positive energy bursts from the floor and turns the vampire into a poof of gas. The air elemental and constructs slam. Dylan and Tormund beat on constructs. Dara goes back to get the troll. Fire blasts down the corridor, and Dylan goes into ranger space to evade it. Tormund and Dylan continue to beat on constructs. A ball of crystal smacks Tormund in the head. They hear annoying laughter from down the hallway. Dylan kills one, and Tormund leaps to hit the next one. He smashes its head down into its chest cavity. The air elemental slams into it. The construct disappears. Dylan, still frenzying, attacks Dara. Tormund comes out of his frenzy. Dara runs by Dylan, and she gets hit again. She yells at the troll to follow. It just sits there. Dylan suddenly snaps out of it. He gets to troll to come down the hallway, and he apologizes to Dara.

He listens at the door and hears ranting, but it’s very faint. He opens the door. It’s a room of darkness. Tormund goes back to halfling form. Dara summons a small earth elemental to send it through the stone walls to find Theron. Dylan sees that the ceiling is weak and the floor is also weak but not going to fall. Tormund goes to crunch it. Gas comes out of the ceiling, but the floor is false, and they get gold and stuff. Two pieces of gold float out of the pile and slam into Dara’s eyes. The coins are trying to bore into her brain. A voice in her head says that greed results into fatality. Dara poofs into gas, and the coins stay by her head. Dylan finds bracers, a couple of potions, and an interesting belt. Tormund finds a pair of silver rings and a crown with some interesting gems in it. Dylan throws the wall of cave tapestry over the coins and drags them out of the way. The crown has seven dragons on it with fine stones of all different colors with Theron in the middle. Dara finds fullplate. It has a black dragon motif on it. There’s another fullplate inside. She also finds a potion. The stones in the tiara are ion stones. Dara gets the troll to try it out. Tormund doesn’t want her to. He snatches the crown from her. The belt makes Dylan stronger. Dara puts the fullplate on. When she says the command words, the armor disappears. It’s glamoured. She also feels faster.

Dylan hears a hiss next to his ear as Vaeria pops up beside him. She slams a trident into a chink in his armor and retreats down the corridor. Dylan chases after her, and Tormund slams through the doorway. He tells Dylan to move aside. Dara goes to the door. Vaeria runs down the hallway and ducks into a doorway. There’s a giant ball of sticky nastiness and fleshiness in the room, and Vaeria has ducked around it. Dara casts a treant spell on herself and moves around the corner, and Dylan moves after her. Vaeria intercepts Tormund as he tries to destroy the ball of flesh. Tormund frenzies. Dara runs in. Boom appears and grabs Vaeria by the leg. They teleport out, and a green field envelops the room (dimension lock). Gravity switches, and what was once the floor is now the ceiling. The ball of flesh rolls into Tormund. He is stuck to the ball. Dara summons a small fire elemental. Dylan gets to his feet and swings at the ball of flesh. Tormund attacks while in the monster with his bear paw. The room flips again, and it goes splorch some more. Three rays come out of nowhere and hit Dara. She casts greater dispel magic on the room. Nothing happens. Dylan gets to his feet and hits it again. Tormund keeps attacking while in the flesh, and the room shifts again. Three rays are shot at Dylan. Dara suddenly gets vertigo. She casts mass heal. Dylan springs up and hits it, and Tormund bursts out of the top of it. The room shifts again, and the ball rolls over them. Chain lightning, cone of cold, and wail of the banshee hit them. Dara activates her ring of spellturning. Dylan tumbles to his feet and hits it again. The room shifts again. A prismatic wall goes up, but Dara turns back a scorching ray. Tormund goes blind. Dara casts dispel magic. Dylan breathes fire on it, and Tormund activates his immovable rod. The troll is unconscious inside the ball. The room shifts again, and Dara goes through the prismatic wall. She dies. Dylan goes berserk and kills the ball. Tormund comes out of frenzy and detects evil beyond the prismatic wall. The room shifts again. Tormund goes through the wall to get to Dara’s body. He gets through in one piece and lands right next to Dara. He hooks her body up with his immovable rod. Dylan clings to the wall as the room’s gravity shifts again. There are bits of troll statue everywhere. A meteor storm hits Tormund. He flies into the thing casting the magic. “I can smell you!” The room shifts again. It casts prismatic spray and polar ray; Dara’s ring turns the prismatic back on it. It turned it to stone. It was a beholder with a ruined central eye. The prismatic wall disappears, and the green glow in the center of the room fades a bit. Tormund grabs Dara’s body and looks for a door. There is none. Dylan climbs off the wall.

After fifteen minutes, Dara’s ghost appears. Tormund resurrects her after smacking the heads of her ghost and body together. Dara as ghost falls unconscious. He resurrects her. They go to where the green glow has faded and are vamped to a hallway. They hear Theron cursing about how his present from Lust was defeated so easily throughout the castle as they move down the hallway. There’s magical darkness through a doorway. Dara summons an earth elemental, and Tormund casts daylight on it. It can’t see anything in that room. Tormund wanders in and sees nothing. Dara follows. The floor rumbles and falls out from under her. It was the treasure room she falls into. Cloudkill does more con damage. Tormund flies down and gets her. Dylan hears breathing in one of the rooms. Tormund kicks open the other door. It leads into the hallway. Tormund hides and peaks around the corner but doesn’t see anything. He walks over to where he hears the breathing. He dodges acid, and a great globe of light is there. It flashes and disappears. The breathing is right in front of his nose. [Ghost sound.]

There’s a spiral staircase to the next floor up. Dara puts a wall of stone to recreate a floor, and they sleep in the room to rest before going up. In the middle of the night, one of the doors blows off its hinges in a massive fireball. Tormund wedges it back. Then he hears a sound from the door behind him. He turns into a werebear and prepares to smash whatever comes through. A trident comes through and stabs him. Tormund rages and hits the door, knocking it into Vaeria. He hits her with a hammer, and she throws him back into the room. Tormund runs after her to hit. She poofs into vapor and disappears. He comes out of his frenzy, puts the door back, and goes back to sleep. Dara puts a wall of stone there. They go up the staircase after waking up. Tormund keeps casting daylight in all of the blacklight. They finally reach the door at the end. When they open the door, there is a series of prismatic walls. They move around them, and Dara puts up walls of stone to prevent them from getting shoved into the walls. Dylan points out bags of sand that are poised to shove them into the walls. He and Tormund destroy them. They come to another door to more prismatic walls. Tormund goes through. He smells a vampire. Vaeria flings him through the prismatic wall. He falls into a fifty foot pit on the other side. Then Vaeria charges Dara and throws her and Dylan into another wall and into a pit. Vaeria leaves. Dara casts mass heal, but she’s gone and beyond a prismatic wall.

Tormund flies up, and Dara and Dylan use flying carpets to escape. Dara summons an earth elemental, who goes through a rock wall after Vaeria. She is grappled, and then she poofs into gaseous form. Dylan looks for a button to turn off the walls. Tormund goes through the wall to where the elemental is trying to bat at gas. He puts an immovable rod on the door so that reinforcements can’t come. He and Vaeria argue about gaseous form. She turns solid on the ceiling, and Tormund flies up to attack her. Vaeria makes him hit himself in the head, and he starts frenzying. Dara summons a thoqua to burrow through and get her and Dylan out. It dies from the cloudkill. Vaeria and Tormund keep battling, and she bites him with shadow. Dara emerges and casts mass heal. Vaeria poofs away. Tormund: “Dealing with that woman is making me tired.” Dara restores them.

Tormund sniffs at the door. He smells red dragon and opens it to a long room in complete darkness. Tormund makes it light. The ice dwarf is there, headless and staked. Something smells like clowns and red dragons. They continue onward to a large ornate door. Tormund gets jumped and nearly dies. The catgirl Jen smiles and poofs away. He slams at the place where she was. Dylan charges and misses. She dimension doors away. Dara tries to heal Tormund, although he hits her when she goes up to heal him due to the frenzying. He falls over unconscious, and Dara heals him.

Adam’s bad Blue Rose slash: then there was a burst of erotic energy and a phoenix and man appeared. The phoenix was shrieking oh Almos, you’re soo pretty. Almos replied: Take me Brent, take me now! then there was another burst of erotic zeal and the pair disappeared.

They buff, summon elementals, cast sanctuary, and go in the large ornate door. Theron is sitting on a tacky seven-headed dragon throne. The high priest of Theron and Boom are in there, and some can smell humanoid. The elementals slam Theron but miss. Tormund holy smites. Boom damages the elemental by sucking its hitpoints into himself. Dylan tries to distract the summoning lich. Theron breathes fire, an elemental sits on the lich, and Tormund speaks a holy word before raging and frenzying. An iron golem springs up. Dylan slashes the Lich. Theron invokes his force breath on Tormund. Dara puts a greater dispel magic near them. Jen’s greater invisibility disappears, and an elemental attacks her. Tormund smacks Boom. The iron golem smotes Dara. She laughs at his piddly damage. Dylan is harmed by the lich. He slashes the lich some more. Theron breath weapons some more. Dara creates a wall of elementals between her and the golem. Tormund smashes Boom with a hammer. They continue the battle. Boom disappears, leaving two astral constructs. Dara moves in and casts wall of stone, blocking the iron golem out of the room. Tormund jump attacks the lich. Dylan spring attacks a construct. Jen leaps at Tormund. He kills both the lich and Jen. The fighting continues, and Dara heals them. Tormund jumps over the throne to get at Boom. Dylan and the astral constructs fight. Theron looks at Dara and blasts her with the elements, though she resists most and evasions the others. She summons Trogdor. Tormund takes out one of the astral constructs, and Dylan keeps hitting on the other. Theron zaps Dara with negative levels (eat soul). Dara sends her elemental in and searing lights his face. Tormund jumps over the contructs and flies at Boom. Dylan gets his brainstem ripped out by the psionic gnome. Dara puts a wall of stone up around herself so that she can restore herself. Trogdor and Theron duke it out! Boom: “I’ve got the bigger brain!” Tormund, splatting Boom’s brain everywhere: “I’ve got the bigger hammer.” Dylan is coupe de graced by the astral constructs. Tormund and Theron fight, and Theron disintegrates Trogdor. Theron grabs Dara’s face but is distracted by Tormund hitting him in the back of the head with a hammer. Dara grabs her rod of empowerment and his face in the other and tries to inflict. The battle continues. Theron explodes with all types of energy. He flies into the air, leaving them in a cloud of breath. Tormund flies after him, and Dara floats. Theron devours magic on Dara.

Maelstra reappears suddenly and unexpectedly to help them. Maelstra (the Ur-Priestess) makes an image of Theron explode through the floor, and she makes everyone as they were. Dylan is alive again. Dara targets Theron with an implosion. Tormund super super crits. Theron’s rib cage is crushed. Dylan charges in, stabs him in the head, and kills him. Tormund takes his clothes. Theron: “Why won’t you help me?” The seven heads of the throne come to life: “Because you were weak and couldn’t even kill these people. You spent all your time having sex.” His ghost gets pulled out from his body and struggles and flails in midair. He is rent by the dragon. They ask Maelstra why she is helping (she hates gods) and who that big dragon chair is. Tormund eats Theron’s body.

They loot the castle: stuff worth a million gold pieces. Maelstra punches the idols, making them look like Theron did when he died. Theron’s mantle and cloak are very magical. There is a mostly giant celebration in town. Steve works on purifying the castle. Behind the throne is a doorway, leading to a long spiral staircase.

They go shopping and get rid of the aphrodisiacs. Some talk to Glimmer and Alton; Dara has to listen to Glimmer rant, and Tormund trains Alton’s troops while he looks for armor for them. Dylan helps Ortinoth get rid of the aphrodisiacs. Tormund tells an ogre to hit him as hard as he can. Then he leap-attacks him in the face. But Tormund falls on his face. Then he changes shape and freaks everyone out. Dara talks Glimmer into making the Crying Jester into a teahouse, and she convinces emo dragon that teahouses are emo and makes an agreement. Dylan finds a Sherlock Holmes outfit, complete with pipe and tobacco. One of the trolls shows off by regenerating his arm into three elbows; Tormund tells him to stop showing off, rips his arm off, and eats it.

Tormund digs for water and then gets the idea to have a fountain made. Reconstruction! He and Dara work on this. Tormund runs into an elf girl who knows his full name and tries to fling herself at him. “You’re my hero!” She had been in the harem and is now his fangirl. He makes her his runner. Dylan and Ortinoth become good friends. There is rehabilitation through song and dance. Dara wants an iron flask from Bohb. She duplicates herself through a polymorph spell in order for it to go through with what Bohb wants to get the flask. He shows her his baby pictures. He cries, and her duplicate turns back into a rock. Dylan agrees to help Bohb with his machine in exchange for stuff. He and Tormund talk to emo dragon for identification of the shiny things they found. Dylan and Ortinoth plant feather tokens of trees in a sad attempt to regrow the druid grove. Dara trades Alton: she will help with training the troops in exchange for a monk’s belt.

At the end of the week, Tormund drinks mead with his elf and gets smashed. The elf sings on stage. Then the ogre bard sings about Tormund, and he heckles him. Dylan uses the violin from the Sherlock Holmes costume to play emo-ly in the emo dragon’s half. Dylan walks out of the bar and a massive explosion drives him to the ground. An elf girl runs up to him – did you see that mad man? Dara goes up to the roof to check it out. No one is there. The elf has a hole in her stomach. Carla is her name. Elthora is Tormund’s elf girl’s name. She and Tormund are meanwhile making out. Dara heals Carla, and Carla glomps both her and Dylan.

Dara trains troops as per her promise. Tormund hallows ground. Dylan checks in with Steve and Ortinoth. Theron’s garb and cowl settle on Tormund. Dara makes a “ring of power.” She helps Steve cure addiction. Steve was being snarky, but Dylan calms him down. He looks for a book on alchemy to try to figure out how to fix the soil and finds one in l33t speak. Tormund and Dara continue training the troops. They have a mock battle to demonstrate. Dylan meanwhile works on figuring out alchemy so that they can fix the soil to grow food with the help of Glimmer and the druids. He also sets up guards to watch the spiral staircase. Carla tags along with him. She has a spellbook and knows how to make alchemist’s fire. She’s actually an elf wizard with long black hair and blue eyes. Suddenly she hears the mysterious bowman again, shoots, curses, and runs after him with Dylan. Tormund while fighting Dara suddenly has an explosion hit him from behind. A firestorm comes out of nowhere and envelopes them all. Dylan gets a message that his guards saw a spider. He mentally bitch-slaps them.

A little kid gets Tormund’s attention and says a girl outside wants to talk to him. His name is Rich, and through him they learn that it is Vaeria who wants to speak to them. There’s a moshpit in the Crying Jester. Dylan’s new animal companion, the dire weasel Raymond, bodysurfs the mosh pit. Dara scrys on Vaeria, and Tormund picks her and Dylan up and flies them out to meet her. It was a major image, though, not the real Vaeria. A shadow sends a noose down and attempts to lift rat Dara up by the neck. Dylan sees a shimmer in the air and points it out to Dara, who dispels in that direction. Vaeria appears and flies at Dara. Dylan tries to attack but can’t see her. She also goes poof when Tormund attacks her. It’s an illusion. There is no Vaeria. Tormund chases something that clomps away after Dara turned undead. Something still keeps attacking Dara, and Dylan tries to help defend her. Tormund has been drawn off, and now Vaeria is in front of him. He poofs her and sucks her gaseous form into bellows, which he puts into Dara’s iron bottle. They have a Vaeria in a bottle.

On their way back to the city, Dara gets death attacked by a black flame zealot with a black flaming kukri. The invisible person grabs her body and runs off. Tormund chases, as does Dylan (though more slowly). Tormund gets most of her body back, but the invisible person still has her amulet of wisdom. Tormund tells Dylan to pick up bits of Dara’s body. He can’t get her amulet back, though, because the assassin poofs away. Tormund brings Dara’s pieces back to life.

The command word for the iron bottle is Snape Killed Dumbledore, according to emo dragon. Whatever is in the bottle has to obey them for one hour. Dara makes a shape with a wall of stone of a hand giving a finger. The rest of the stone says “F- you.” They do alchemist’s fire, but it makes the soil worse. Dylan runs into the little kid T.K. in the castle and tells him to go someplace safer (like helping out Glimmer). He sends him on the dire weasel to get Dara and Tormund so that they can investigate the padding he heard in the castle. They look around, and the support pillar of the staircase is now rigid (it used to be smooth). It has explosive runes on it. They blow up. Dara puts a quick wall of stone on the foundation, and they get the heck out of there, flying Tormund carrying them. Cloudkill sweeps over the city as the castle falls down. Dara summons a bunch of elder air elementals to get the cloudkill out of there. They protect the residential area, and Tormund flies to get Steve. A shield is protecting Steve’s area and his followers. Dara restores them, and they go into other areas to save people. Dara keeps off the cloudkill as Tormund rescues many people off the streets and Dylan loads people onto the dragons’ backs at the Crying Jester. The cloudkill finally disperses.

Ortinoth broke orders and left the shield to rescue children, so he asks Dara to take over as the Pope of Steve. They trade hats. About a tenth of the population died due to the cloudkill. Steve tells them to go down to search out the cause. Before they leave, Elthora tries to seduce Tormund, and Carla succeeds in seducing Dylan. Both elf girls are both gone in the morning. Then Dara, Dylan, and Tormund descend into the depths. After days they reach tunnels.

As they rest, some flesh creature shuffles into their area. “The Underking demands to know why you have entered his realm.” The Underking has a nation he has saved from the apocalypse. The flesh creature’s name is Munth, and the Underking is Kai. Munth leads them to a cavern bigger than their city. There are more people like Munth there. They are led to a door, which they enter. A man is in there, an orange lizard man as small as a halfling with four black tentacles protruding from him. He has a blindfold across his eyes and a circlet with a fire opal. He is Kai Underking, that which should not be. He has a pseudodragon familiar named Vorel with a tentacle. He’s had problems with intruders as well, and he offers to go with them on their search and to “improve” them if they wish.

Silawyn appears! She has green regenerative blood and is attracted to the bottle with Vaeria in it.

Dara: “Do you have 100,000 and almost sex with Bohb?”

Dara and Silawyn duel. Dara blows up Silawyn.

They also meet Neka, a cute gnome with green dragon wings, and Snarky the mastiff made out of human body parts.

Silawyn teleports off to have s&m sex with Maelstra, who is now her bitch/lover.

As Kai offered to give them grafts, Dylan accepts tendon and bone grafts, which make him hardier and more dexterous. Dara gets a breath weapon and dragon boobs (not really, but that’s the joke). There is lots of in party bickering and heckling.

They leave the city to search for the nightmare. Neka plays with a rod of wonder. The stone in the walls and floor gives off a vague feeling of dread and woe. They have horrible nightmares, but they escape these and come up to a river of lava with acid fumes. Kai whips out a magic boat.

Some there know about the demiplane of dreams. Someone has either put them there or taken their worst dreams and put them here. It seems wrong. Tormund feels something trying to take over his mind. He takes off the garb and the cowl that they got from Theron and puts them in his haversack. Kai explains that he thinks the nightmares come from the Far Realms. Then more nightmares come and rape their minds. Dylan gets taken over and grapples people. Tormund grapples him, and Silawyn runs around them with a spool of endless rope and ties him and Tormund up together. Then they get blasted again. Silawyn ties Dylan up by himself and knocks him out to make sure that his mind doesn’t get possessed again.

The lava starts moving faster; they tie ropes to immovable rods and make it stop until Tormund can finish casting hallow on the boat: “Namu Amida Stevesu.” Then the ones who can fly grab the boat and lift it off. They fly under a trap, and the flying people fall back into the boat as it goes off.

They come to a division of ways. Dara and Silawyn investigate each of the ways at Dylan’s suggestion. They contemplate lava and go to the left to a chamber. In the chamber, the lava turns into tentacles and blood and other nasty things. A nasty horrible thing laughs at them. A sleeping dragon (Sloth) appears there after Dara dispels. Tormund charges in and gets headslammed back. Spells go poof. Dylan also gets knocked back. Sloth floats back. Silawyn throws a lesser orb of cold. Glyphs carved into Sloth’s hide seem to repel it. Kai cuts Sloth with an eldritch blade. The others also beat on him with weapons. The battle goes on for a long time…they finally kill the dragon. They have a vision of Sloth eating their dreams and attacking them with it; they gain his epic spells.

All of them have dreams after killing Sloth. Tormund recalls Laxim, Kisha’s sword. They’ve got Kisha in the center, according to Tormund’s dream. According to Kai, she’s chained to a red dragon, thousands of feet up. Dylan had overheard Kurik, the seven-headed dragon, and some other horrible thing from the Far Realm having a diabolical conversation. Then they loot the body: Sloth had a rod of epic spellcasting, a neck bracer of Charisma (cloak spot), three scrolls of heal, and dragon gloves of dex +6. Silawyn is still after the bottle of Vaeria. Except they finally realize that Vaeria in the bottle is already dead. Whoops. Silawyn breathes in the dust and is overwhelmed with the memories of Vaeria. She knows that Myr was in her dream and that they have to go save her. They play with the ion crown that they had found in Theron’s castle a while ago. It ends up swirling around Tormund’s head. Dylan puts on Theron’s cowl, and the intelligent item of clothing accepts being there (for now).

As per they dreams, they fly/fall to the center of the earth through a shaft. It takes seven days attached to Tormund. Neka learns where Kai came from. He’s the son of lizard folk and something from the Far Realms, so that’s why he has tentacles and was kicked out of his village. People slowly go insane as they fly down. They get out of the shaft and into a giant, hollowed out cavern in the center of the earth with something glittery. It is the size of a small moon. There’s a shiny thing in the center with a hole and a door. Something that was supposed to seal a deity failed.

They have visions of deities and then get to the bottom, where there are prismatic spheres in all eight directions. Dara turns Dylan into an elf to try to get him to find secret doors. His pointier ears twitch. The cowl gives Dylan more power, providing he continues to pursue awesome power. Tormund goes through to the other side of one sphere and finds an alcove. He continues to go through the spheres. Fireballs detonate in the rooms. And acid balls. And cold, fire, and acid. Dylan lives in ranger space. Silawyn lives in monk space. The teleportation circle activates and deactivates depending on whether or not the switch is on.

Neka turns into a small spider sized thing and goes into a hole in the next teleporting room after all of them finally get through. She finds quicksilver. They find a hidden door but can’t figure out how to open it. Dara flame strikes the quicksilver, and the door opens to a hallway. It goes around in a circle. Dara dispels magic. It does nothing. On an arch, it reads “Scales and flesh shall pass this; anything more shall be set back.” Silawyn gets naked and goes through to another door. On the closet, it reads “The children may bring their toys if they are willing to part with them for a time.” Dara drops her stuff, turns it into a rat, and scampers through. Tormund modestly arranges his wings. They all have to get naked and leave their stuff and go through. For some reason Dylan and Silawyn are attracted to each other. Then they have more deific visions about deities performing incest and other things, the origin of Kurik from the incestuous union of Paladine and Takhisis that was inspired by Ne Oloki…

Dylan and Silawyn moon over each other until Dara slaps them with a spell to get them out of it. They go into another room, figure out a rhyme, get themselves (and some of them their stuff) purified, and enter a room of lust babies (people with red and black scales, the babies who were conceived of lust on the surface and brought down here by Lust). Kai and Neka get them past the seducing creatures and into a room with lots of test tube embryos and fetuses. Neka eats one. Dylan sees one that looks kind of like him and is disturbed. They find a door out. A wall of force separates Tormund and Dara from the rest of the party and a Tormund clone thing fights Tormund. Tormund kills the clone.

Dylan’s half-elf pointy ear senses tingle and sense from behind the wall of force that the not-Tormund has slightly pointy ears. Hmmm…. Back with the others, they make jokes about Dara being on top (as in rat form she rides on people). They go back and go down path two. They hear something coming up behind them. Dylan sneaks back to the fog cloud shaft. The others are stuck behind a wall of force. A massive updraft of fog levitates Dylan. Something is repelling down the side…a Dylan-like thing with lust dragon scales and broken glass shards and drippy liquid. It’s a girl, and it leaps down on him. He knocks her unconscious and carries her off to the rest of the party. Dylan has another vision like before and relates it to the party; Tormund also shares his vision. They’re apparently working through the prison Paladine made to hold Kurik.

People scamper off down more tunnels. Silawyn and Dylan end up down one. They see a thing with red and black scales with a quarterstaff…it is four feet tall and has sideburns and breasts. “My name is Black Ruby, the Crown of Lust.” She is Ruby and Thakramil’s kid. (Silawyn’s player: Oh god no. Silawyn and Dylan: Blink blink.) Black Ruby just wants Silawyn, so Dylan backs behind a corner to watch the battle. Silawyn gets hit horribly, and as Dylan prepares to shoot, he gets shot by a hidden archer with Evard’s black tentacles. Black Ruby to Silawyn: “Myr never told you about your father. Vaeria, I am your half sister.” (Silawyn still has Vaeria’s memories. She is half-Vaeria.) Silawyn teleports back out to Tormund and has a vision. That archer was whatever had attacked them from the city. And Black Ruby has disappeared, stealing Silawyn’s sai.

Dara has meanwhile gone down another tunnel as a rat. She gets grabbed out of nowhere and her throat gets slashed by a kukri. It’s the black flame zealot from before. He fights her and then steps back into the shadows. She time stops and then puts a wall of stone behind her. Then she faces an iron golem with her earth elemental. The golem batters the elemental to death and turns on Dara. She puts another wall of stone in front of it…it disappears.

They all meet in a chamber beyond. Tormund hears someone calling for help. They go into a chamber that looks vaguely like a love nest. Lounging in a chair is a figure they haven’t seen for several weeks: Elthora the fangirl. There’s a wall of iron in front of all of them but Tormund. She says it’s a shame that he killed his son…a semen sample is a wonderful thing. They have several others growing in the lab. “I’m only a fangirl because mother told me to.” They fight, and Tormund sunders her weapon. Tormund comes through the wall, and Elthora disappears. Dara heals everyone. They’re in a messy love nest now. Elthora is really the Claw of Lust. A corridor goes on, and they go onward. Dara discerns location on the archer person. They go along, and Tormund is separated by a wall of force. The spell tells them to go back and around. Next Dylan and Dara are separated, and Kai goes with them. They’ll all eventually get to the same chamber…maybe. An arrow hits Tormund as he enters a chamber. Damn arcane archers. The others get there, and Raymond the weasel looks like a guy with a bow now. Then he poofs back into Raymond again. Tormund thinks Raymond is the bow guy and hits him. Raymond is pissed, but Dylan keeps him from attaching to Tormund and draining his blood. Another arrow comes out and hits Tormund.

They follow the path into a chamber with another shaft, which Dara and Tormund cover and prepare to rest. Dara gets hit with an arrow during her watch, and a bead on the arrow explodes. Tormund was having a horribly erotic dream because of Elthora’s sample. The walls collapse. Something comes out of the hole: a breath weapon. Tormund is rather enraged but snaps out of it. Dara heals people. They go down and prepare for battle. All of them are down there. Carla is the archer. They’re also fighting the assassin, Elthora, Black Ruby, and a kobold. Tormund jumps on Black Ruby. Kai takes on aspects of his horrifying father and casts implosion. The kobold resists imploding. Carla takes out a pitch black arrow and shoots at Dara with a prismatic spray. Dara energy drains the assassin, and Silawyn tumbles in. Dara gets power word killed. Black Ruby invokes a war master’s charge and has everyone charge Tormund. Tormund attacks the assassin. Kai’s tentacles grow eyes and mouths and a scintillating pattern engulfs the battlers. Carla apologizes and shoots Dylan. Dylan kills the assassin. Carla teleports away, Black Ruby is pwned, and the others retreat. They gain: a plus one wounding vicious kukri, plain shirt with greater shadow and silent moves, headband of int +6, gloves of dex +6, goggles of darkvision, amulet of wis +6, minor cloak of displacement, +5 ring of protection, vest of con +6, monk’s belt, and Black Ruby’s scythe. Its name is Terrible Fang, and it gives Silawyn four negative levels. It hates the lawful part. The scythe is like Kisha’s sword. They also get mithril fullplate with moderate fortification, +4 animated ghost touch steel shield, three potions of lesser restoration, ring of protection +5, scarab of protection, +5 cloak of resistance, con amulet +6, and strength belt +6.

Tormund and Dara resurrect themselves. They discover that one of the walls is unnatural, so Tormund smashes it with a hammer, a bad idea due to the cloudkill. They race out the maze and have visions about Boom, Kurik, and Ne Oloki. Silawyn flirts with Dylan and then sees a room and goes into it. The others follow more slowly with an air elemental and fan tokens to dispel the cloudkill. Further up Lust takes Terrible Fang away from Silawyn and starts to strip her. Then the others catch up. Lust: “You and your friends killed some of my children; I hope you’re willing to replace them.” She spews some fluid on Silawyn, and Silawyn’s abdomen extends at an alarming rate. Elthora springs over to Tormund and stabs him. Kai blasts Litrix the kobold. Lust hits Tormund with power word orgasm. Dylan gets hit with a ray of clumsiness. Neka turns Litrix to stone. A little fiendish Silawyn spawns out of her. Lust turns on Neka. Carla shoots Dylan. Elthora tumbles over to sickened Silawyn.

Another Lithirx comes out from where Lithrix stood and causes a sense of impending doom, glowing and channeling energy. Silawyn runs away from the battle. Mini Sil runs after her. Dara puts a wall of stone around Lithrix from floor to ceiling. Lust teleports away to the second level of the room, and Elthora and Carla also teleport away to the upper level. Tormund revives and charges into screaming skeleton Lithrix. Neka teleports to the third floor. Dylan uses his boots of flying to go up. The epic spell goes off, and a massive tornado springs into being, filling the entire chamber. Dara tries to dispel it. Tormund flies into Lust’s face. Elthora looks vaguely impressed. Neka teleports to the second level. Lust grabs Tormund with her tail. Neka turns Carla to stone. Lust is pissed and invokes a baby inside Neka. Silawyn meanwhile kicks her own fully grown baby. The baby mindlessly attacks her. Lust rips at Tormund’s entrails. Elthora sends her blade at Dylan and cuts him. Neka’s baby rips free of her and falls (but has wings). Kai blasts Lust for first blood. Neka turns her baby to stone.

Dara uses her staff of power to do retribution on Lust. Steve takes the power that would have killed Dara onto himself. Dylan ends up in Lust’s mouth. Kai casts blink on Dylan. Tormund gets out of Lust’s tail. Neka casts time stop, moves close to Lust, casts 2 prismatic sprays at her, and runs away. Silawyn pummels her mini to death. Dylan gets swallowed. Elthora attacks Tormund. Kai swoops in and hits Lust. Tormund goes after his ranger. Neka prismatic sprays Elthora. Dara dispels. Tormund rips Lust up from the inside and pushes Dylan out. Dylan tumbles and grabs his trident. Lust rips up Dylan. Elthora flings her rapier at Neka. Kai summons something from an alien realm. Silawyn becomes a masochist because of Lust. Kai summons a pseudonatural colossal monster spider. Silawyn tries to dispel Lust’s spell and gets her cloak back. Lust speaks a word that stuns Silawyn for seven rounds. Elthora tumbles over and stabs Dylan in the back. Kai sticks his eldritch glaive in Lust’s throat and rips it out through her head while Tormund rips at her from the inside. Lust heals herself and turns on Kai. Neka gets ray of enfeebled. Lust throws Tormund up over the edge, and he drags some of her internal organs up with him. Neka teleports to the hallway. Dara restores Silawyn and hits her out of her stun. Tormund is killed by Lust. Dylan still can’t hit Lust. Silawyn hits her with an orb of force in the eye. Her brains splatter over Tormund’s body, and everything goes splat on the ground. Elthora shakes Lust’s (her mother’s) head as Tormund’s ghost comes back. She has lost all of her will to fight. Silawyn gets her sword. Tormund the ghost and Silawyn comfort Elthora.

Silawyn and Dylan bathe in Lust’s blood, and Silawyn eats her heart and goes into blood lust, attacking Elthora and Dara. Kai puts tentacles up around her. Tormund comes back to life. Silawyn gets a tail grafted to her by Kai. Tormund brings Elthora out of her grief. Kai, Tormund, and Dylan intimidate Silawyn into letting them keep Elthora and Dylan’s daughter (who has spent all of this time tied to Raymond) around.

Elthora shows them a secret passage. There’s a river flowing towards the center, a river of sand coming from 4,000 miles above, the outside of the planet. Dara talks to Steve, and he says there have been earthquakes recently. The world is being hollowed from the inside out. The sand is moving so quickly that it flays Tormund’s finger to the bone. Around the pillar is a spiral ramp large enough for a gargantuan dragon to go down.

They rest…and Tormund and Elthora…yeah. Talk or something. Tormund tells her some interesting things and she somehow believes them, as he is using something from vials that Kai found on Lust. He recreates her history: Lust does not get mentioned, he inserts her in most of where he’s been. He tells her that she was his significant other, traveling together, etc.; they died and had to fight to get back together…lots of crazy stuff that she somehow believes. An evil sin dragon took away her memories. Then he destroys all but three more doses of Lust’s vials that he and Kai had found. Silawyn feels the urge to run down the ramp as fast as she can. She’s still masochistic and is putting her hand in the sand. Dylan’s daughter is slowly learning languages. Dylan names her Sylvia after his mum.

They catch up to Silawyn and hear two voices at the center of the world: Kisha and Myr. The daughter and Raymond the weasel go up the rope trick that Kai creates for them to hide in safety until after the battle. Myr is floating in the center all bound up, and Kisha is chained to her chest. Something around Myr begins to flow in. There are sand rivers flowing into a ten foot diameter orb, and around it is forming a gigantic sphere-oid of ick. Black Ruby’s scythe wrenches off Silawyn’s back and begins to spin under Myr and Kisha. It shatters into seven pieces, and the form in the center flows into each of the seven pieces, forming shades of all of the sin dragons.

Antepenultimate battle! Dylan tries to shoot Carla’s bow but misses. Tormund goes after Lust. Greed takes Tormund’s sword. Lust flings Tormund to the ground. Dara gives an air elemental the hilt of Kisha’s sword (that fell out when the scythe shattered into seven pieces) to take up to Kisha. Sloth debuffs Tormund. Wrath frenzies with wraith strike, omnislashes, and leaves Tormund a crater in the floor. Pride attacks Dara. Envy attacks Silawyn and transforms into Silawyn. Gluttony breath weapons everyone. Kai slashes Pride. Dylan tumbles and shoots Sloth. Silawyn fights “herself,” and Tormund goes after Pride. Elthora attacks Wrath. Greed lands on top of Dylan and takes the bow. Silawyn gets impregnated again. Kisha gets her sword back, gets her stuff back out of the glove of holding on the sword, and flies out chanting the song of Steve (+11 to attack and damage!). Wrath flies over, gets hit by Elthora, and attacks Silawyn. Envy Silawyn fights Silawyn. Gluttony grapples Tormund. Kai hits Pride. Dylan charges Sloth…battle continues. Kisha’s tongue has been cut out. Silawyn gets a male baby. Tormund gets swallowed. Elthora makes Wrath have the con of a commoner. Silawyn gets killed by Pride. Dylan casts freedom of movement on Myr, who joins the battle. Dara kills Pride after avoiding getting pregnant. Kisha brings Silawyn back to life for a few rounds. They take Wrath down with con damage, and Kai implodes him. Tormund rips Gluttony into little pieces. Kisha makes Greed dance. Silawyn pwns Lust.

Ne Oloki abandons the sin dragons and they die, and the thing detaches and rotates around and around it. A horrible alien intelligence comes from it…it’s a portal to the Far Realms. They don’t want to be touched by it, but they have to damage it to save the world. Ne Oloki’s avatar is coming out of the pseudo-ick. They attack Ne Oloki and the black hole thing. Ne Oloki sends out pseudopods. They fight. Dara gets sucked into the Far Realms. Everyone chips in to take out the portal, and Dylan shoots it for the final blow. Tormund, Elthora, and Silawyn beat horribly on Ne Oloki, shattering the avatar of him.

They begin to hear a rumbling as entire parts of the sphere begin to tumble away. A seven headed dragon has grabbed the moon itself as part of the earth’s crust itself has crumbled. The moon smashes right into the city of survivors. Steve uses every bit of his divine power to hold the party and a handful of the townspeople in safety. The world has shattered into millions of pieces, and they are all floating around. The seven-headed dragon Kurik looks at them: “Thanks to the laws that govern all of reality, gods cannot interfere now that their world has been destroyed, for this is my territory, and now I shall destroy you, take what is mine, and make my parents pay for what they have done.” The two dragon gods (Kurik’s parents) and Steve, though they cannot interfere in the battle itself, manage to bring everyone in their party back, rested, and more powerful than ever for their final battle.

Kurik’uhril has white, green, black, red, and blue, plus platinum and prismatic, heads. Observing are great platinum and chromatic dragons who cannot participate, and Steve stands in between the party and Kurik to give them time. Kai uses a ring of three wishes to give Tormund’s sword holy power and Dylan’s trident dragon dread. Steve gets kicked aside, they move in, and the heads of Kurik attack. Fighting Kurik are Tormund, Dara, Silawyn, Dylan, Kai, Kisha, Myr, and Maelstra (whom Silawyn has summoned). They battle in an asteroid field. The melee fighters slice at his heads as Kurik breath weapons and bites them. He makes Tormund start dancing, and the others tumble around to avoid the breath weapons. Silawyn casts greater shout. Kurik has a stinging tail with which he strikes them. Kisha breaks Tormund free of the irresistible dance. Silawyn wraith strikes, and Tormund jumps onto his wedged sword and flips up, slamming his sword into one of Kurik’s heads. Dylan sticks his trident into the white head and slices it off with a sunblade – it goes flying into the distance.

Kurik rips stars from the sky and smashes them into everybody. Maelstra dies from the attack, and Silawyn gets insta-deathed. Kai uses his last wish to imitate a mass heal, although it hits Kurik too. Kisha brings Silawyn back for a bit to fight. Tormund slices the black head. Kurik freezes time and sticks his black head back on himself while his other heads heal himself. Silawyn almost gets disintegrated. Dylan gets bitten and clawed. Myr harms and smites. Tormund dire charges along the dragon’s back. Dara time stops, heals, and buffs. Kurik dispels on Tormund and Dylan. Tormund rips into him and cuts the black head off yet again. Kurik time stops to heal. Dara casts harm. Kisha inspires heroics. Myr smites with a bite, and Silawyn wraith strikes and smacks Kurik. Elthora pokes him. Dylan two weapon spring attacks. Kurik rips the stars from the sky again and meteor swarms them all. Kai gets confused. Kai and Kisha are paralyzed. Dara is unconscious. Myr heals Dara, although Dara is paralyzed and on fire.

Silawyn knocks Kurik out. Tormund flying leap attacks and takes off the green head. “Heaven’s Fury rains upon you!” Kurik is unconscious and imprisoned in a globe as the high gods interfere (Kurik had laid a claim on their world, but now that he’s out, the other gods can come in). Kurik rages at his parents with horrible words of creation and dark speech. Those who can understand (Kisha and Kai) blush to hear his foul words. Takhisis (his chromatic mother) pins him to a large rock, and Paladine (his platinum father) says that they have a way to properly imprison him: the high god himself has stated that Kurik shall take the place of some of the deities who have abandoned the realm. He has been enslaved to the high god’s whim.

A furious and thwarted Kurik is taken away by his mother, and Paladine turns his eyes towards the party and Steve. “I owe you a great debt of gratitude. Unfortunately, it seems that he was successful in slaughtering many innocents. I have not the power to fix this, but you have brought our realm back with the few survivors there are. I must ask one more favor of you. As I mentioned, many other deities have abandoned us. Would you take their places?” Myr becomes a prismatic dragon and the mother of all dragons. The party becomes part of the pantheon. They all get five divine ranks, and Steve gains 10 divine ranks. They reform the threads of the world, creating new stars and constellations and a planet with good things. And to all things comes a beginning…