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Forced Fruition

Last week, the party tried to fight their way out of the ancient pyramid past the swarm of otyugholems. They used the entrance to the pyramid as a chokepoint to limit their exposure to the golems' grappling tentacles. This was disappointing, since I hoped they would all run into the direct center of the swarm and immediately die. Instead, they kept the golem swarms to a manageable level during the fight and eventually wiped them out with a great many water balls, fireballs, and general smashing.

After the fight, the party turned their attention to the dragon bones. They retrieved a small dragon bone from the pile, brought it out onto the pyramid steps, and coordinated everyone to try to smash it simultaneously. It was impenetrable until Gregory lowered its defenses with his ability to sever magic, at which point the party's combined efforts annihilated it. This released the magic within the bones in a large explosion that wounded or vitally wounded almost everyone in the party, prompting a second round of analysis. The party decided that Gregory and Diplo could work together to break the bones while the rest of the party waited, since both of them were more resistant to the explosion than most of the party and Diplo had developed a particular talent for smashing items after being freed from Alistair's control. Diplo and Gregory ran a number of tests, and determined that they could smash about 25 bones before the wounds they suffered from the explosions would make it dangerous to continue.

For the next few days, the party went through a ritual of smashing dragon bones and then nursing Gregory and Diplo back to health from their vital wounds. They made great progress, and were close to destroying all of the bones. However, on the evening of the final day, with 25 of the original 100 dragon bones remaining, the suppressing ritual collapsed, awakening the full power of the latent magic. The party woke up in the middle of the night to see kaleidoscopic colors dancing through the air and natural structures forming themselves into golems without any intervention. They gathered around Gregory, whose null magic aura dampened the magical power, and watched as the wild magic reached out into the world.

Ayala created a tiny inert magical scrying sensor, and it appeared as a strange sensory golem that immediately broke free of her control to run into the pyramid. Through its eyes, she saw the walls of the pyramid begin to twist and move as they changed into golems. In the heart of the pyramid, just before she lost connection to the eye, she saw the remaining dragon bones disintegrating. Mikolash deduced that the ritual was burning through the dragon bones incredibly quickly to try to extract the full power of the ritual from the few dragon bones that remained, and as a result this ritual would end on its own far sooner than it was designed to. Ayala performed a few more tests and confirmed that magic in the area was generally amplified to a surprising degree, and she used that to construct a massive anti-magic barrier with her shield that blocked the ritual from affecting the party. Before the party could fully get their bearings, a silvery manifestation of the Sable family mage emerged from Camilla's head, knocking her unconscious, and shouted at her to COME HOME!

Join us next week to explore the consequences of the power of the rituals finally being unleashed...

Stupid Awards

Gregory: Diplo: Mikolash: Camilla: Ayala: Chort:
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