Chapter 4 " One Step Forward, Three Steps Back " page 17 ' The Hand of God; The Hand of Micheal ' Clives cry for Elly could be heard all around after Barrel-lith unleased it's breath weapon on the party both Cade and Elly fell. Jumping down from the roof of the building he took the thr ground running. "Clive, catch!" yelled Charisma down to him as she threw him a potion. Catching it he started to run as fast as he could directly to Elly. Enutrof saw Cade fell and turned back to go help his friend with everyone else continuing their mad dash for dry land. Barrel-lith lowered one of its wings to make the large loop so it could turn to make another attack. Enutrof was able to make it to Cade so he could feed him a healing potion before he died but at the same time Barrel-lith wanted the opposite effect and unleashed a stream of acid down on them seriously hurting Enutrof and knocking Cade out again. Myr lifted himself upon a roof after being warned, by Charisma, of the Zombies that will attack them from the ground. Clive was able to make it to Elly in time to heal her and stop her from drowning in this sad swamp. As she revived he embraced her in a hug and said, "Don't scare me like that, you had me worried but now we have to start moving. Run as fast as you can I need to help the other two." As Barrel-lith past over Myr, striking him slightly with its tail, to attack Charisma, who was filling him full of arrows. Clawing Charisma Barrel-lith moved out to circle back for some more attacks and got a taste of a fireball from Myr. By this time everyone was out of the swamp standing on roof tops except Cade, Myr, Clive, and Elly. Enutrof cast acid protection on himself and grabbed Cade out of the swamp with his free arm as Skeletons started to emerge around them. Needing more free hands he tossed Cade over to Clive who was able to catch him. Barrel-lith tried to claw Myr as it past by because of the fireballs that Myr continues to unleash on him. It then turned it's attention to Enutrof and continued flying north to release some more acid down on him. The Acid took care of the skeletons and wasn't to harmful to Enutrof who started to move as best as he could to the shore. Myr released another fireball as Barrel-lith circled around again. Clive tossed the halfling up to Elly who was already on a roof then got up himself, but his rifle was useless because it was now water logged. Barrel-lith dived down at Enutrof who jumped under the swamp for protection but was surprised when it opened its maw as wide as it could sticking underwater and taking a chunk out of the ranger. Enutrof stood out of the water cocked back an arrow and let it fly free directly at the pseudo-dragons underback side. Hitting the sweetspot Barrel-lith lost control and fell from the sky almost on top of Myr but instead directly into Charisma. Clive jumpped down to get Charisma out of the rubble and back up on the roof where it was relativly safer. Enutrof approached Barrel-lith jammed his sword into its mouth to pry loose one of its teeth as a prize. Not wanting to make camp for the night on these not to sturdy roofs the Party decided to sprint the best they could after everyone regained continous, Cade. After a few minutes of rest everyone jumped down and started to trudge through the swamp again. Making halfway there they were ambushed by some two dozen skeletons that they were able to take down even as weakened as they were. Everyone was happy to finally get back to dry land but didn't want to rest until Charisma was able to find them a safe place to rest. The Party lit up a nice warm fire to dry themselves on then went to sleep, taking watches, then waking up early to continue their travel to East Cameron. Only ten miles from the town Charisma thanked the Party for the adventure but told them she needed to be going now. "Be careful everyone, especially you Cade. And, Clive, please give your Father my reguards, I've . . . . well good luck on your mission," Charisma said then turned and walked away, "this stench will never get out." It was early evening when the Party came into town and the first thing that Myr did was to bump into a little gnome. The little gnome looked up at him, "Appologies. I am but a humble traveling Fuda (good-luck charms) salesman. Protective magic and Lucky Charms are my specialty. It seems that you have need for some protection of your own, can i interest you in one?" Myr politely thanked him but had to decline and with a whiff of the air the gnome continued, "Perhaps you are looking for a bath too? Might I suggest that rebelious and lively inn over there. There seems to be a celebration there tonight." The party thanked him and Myr asked his name the gnome looked back and said I was, "Mataichi," and continued walking till he was gone. Clive told them that he was going to search around the perimeter of the town just in case and that he'll meet then at the inn later. From the outside the lights were on and it seemed like a lively and happy place so they entered and immediately everyone stopped what they were doing. "Ummm, hi were travelers and we need a place to sleep," said Cade. "Well," said the barkeep leaning far over the bar to bring his face next to Cade's, "Why didn't you say so in the first place we love visitors. Maybe I should get some baths for you." Cade paid for baths, rooms, and food then went upstairs with everyone else to wait for the baths. Not long after they were taken to the mens bath and Elly was taken to a seperate one. Twenty minutes later and five pounds lighter (dirt wise) everyone was back in their rooms with newely cleaned cloths. The Party came down into the bar area for well deserved food and Cade found a table filled with other halflings and decided to join them. The music played on and Cade inquired to his fellow halflings, while buying more beer, what was the celebration all about. "We had this gang of thugs come into our town saying that we needed to give tributes, lots of gold, to this god named Micheal. Well we finally had enough of it and like four days ago we attacked them taking down a bunch and chasing the rest back into the forest. Good riddiance, Cheers," the halfing told Cade over some beer. It seemed like everyone in this town was happy and getting back to normal lives. Myr wanted to get some air so he walked outside and started to wonder around a little. He saw something out of the corner of his eye and decided to investigate. He found two guys dressed in cloaks both carrying a heavy object the size of basketball and followed them to a shed. They broke the lock in the shed and left the object they were carrying in there. Myr sent his raven to follow those two guys and then snuck into the shed. He found the object wrapped in cloth and decided to cast detect magic on it finding it to be a moderately high powered device and using spellcraft found that it was of the Necromantic and Transmutation types. Knowing he needed help he quickly rushed back to the bar and told the Party what happened. Myr then told Cade and Enutrof where to find the two men east of the town walking into the forest and brought Elly with him back to the object. Back at the shed Elly kneeled down to unrap the object for the first time. What they saw was an almost wireframmed orb with two silver handles on either side and a pulsating collection of blue, violet, and white swirling energy. Elly used her innate abilities to identify what this object could possibly be. "I can't find out too much but I do know that this device is used to unlease a large ammount of magical energy which is what that swirling energy is," Elly told Myr. A light appeared above Myr as he understood what it was, "It's Magic Bomb. We need to get this out of town quickly. Cover it up and grab the other end." Walking only about fifty feet from the shed they were spotted by two new men dressed in cloaks and one was a dwarf. "What are you doing? Wait hey drop that! Nevermind we have to kill them they saw it," were shouts between the human and dwarf so they pulled their weapons and attacked. Myr was able to drain some nine points of strength from the dwarf to make him too weak to fight. Elly one the otherhand got angry when the man sliced her deep so she used her gloves to electricute the guy to a crisp. Using a few more spells Myr was able to drain the dwarf to the strength of a toad. At that time Elly turned her attention to the dwarf and cast sleep on him, something she just realized she should do when Myr told her that they needed a prisoner to interrogate. They then dragged the bodies into the shed so they could continue taking the bomb out of the town. About the same time Enutrof and Cade walked into the forest to look for the two guys who Myr saw. By the time they were able to spot the guys they were right on top of them. They weren't hostile but told the Party to stay quiet, everything was fine, they were just trappers, and Cade and Enutrof should just go back to the town and their homes. Enutrof and Cade agreed walked back a few hundred feet then snuck back in the shadows to about fifty feet away. Only hearing that they were there waiting for something to happen at a time they didn't know. Cade then snuck in closer so he could chuck a rock at one of them. The first one barely hit while the second one did better but by this time the two guys knew something was up and started to look around. This gave Enutrof the perfect opportunity to sneak up behind them raise his shield above their heads and miss twice. One of the guys was severly hurt by another rock and the other cut Enutrof deep. This pissed Enutrof off so he dropped the shield fast drew his swords and cut the man down. Enutrof then knocked the other guy down with another rock and with one guy still alive they had a prisoner to bring back. They two teams met at the edge of the forest while Elly and Myr were carting the bomb east while Enutrof and Cade were brining back their prisoner. Enutrof used his healing skills to wake his prisoner up by slapping his face a few times. "What is it?" the party asked with everyone being able to intimidate the guy except Enutrof. "It's the Hand of God! The Hand of Micheal!," he said then answered the question about numbers, "and there's six of them in this town." Kuso! the Party left the guy bound up in rope right next to that bomb as they went back into town to warn everyone. Cade went into their inn to tell everyone there that Micheal is attacking and they need to run, but no one believed him. Myr's attention was diverted when he saw the little gnome Mataichi writing something in the dirt around the town's square. He walked up to see some sort of magical engraving on the ground and asked, "You need to leave this town there are some bombs here we need to warn everyone." With his wooden staff Mataichi pointed into an ally and simply said, "No Time." In the ally was another one of those bombs but this was was shifting to yellow, red, and orange colors like it was activated. Myr shot a fireball at the roof of a house which got a lot of people into the streets including Cade who was pushed out through the door during the rush. "You might want to stand closer," said Mataichi to Myr who promptly did. Myr then yelled out to the rest of the party to join them as the towns people rushed to douse the flames. Elly stepped inside the circle then turned around, "Wait Clive's not here. Clive! Clive!!," she was about to step out when Matachi stopped her. Mataichi then twirled his 6 foot wooden staff around changing it into different type of staff one which was now a dark metal and it had a unique looking decoration at the top. "Cliiiiiivvveee!!!,"screamed Elly one last time as Mataichi's staff was jammed into the ground the etchings he made started to glow. Then a flash so bright all anyone could see is just blinding white nothingness as each one of the six daisycutters exploded envoloping a radius of two hundred meters around each one. A minute later the only thing that was left in the town was the Party Mataichi and the small piece of ground that they were standing one. Nothing but a small crater. That's all that was left of the town. Elly fell down to her knees, "Clive, no. Please don't leave me," then the tears started to stream from her eyes. Myr's face was frozen as he looked at the all of the devistation, "God no," and he started to cry too. "I don't want to stay here any longer besides I think your friends are going to want to know why we survived, "said Mataichi as he pointed at Micheal's men who were comming out of the forest to investigate the damage. SPECIAL: "Micheal Proves His Point" a second view of the story from another campaign. Session on Monday January 19th, 2 - 6pm page 17