Games, all sorts

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When Boyce didn't immediately reappear following the battle in the cave with Grave and Serendipity, we all decided to collect what we had about us and return to Vana's place to determine what to do about the missing Boyce. And especially so close to the big battle with Kaz and Veris. However, a few hours later, Boyce just suddenly reappeared all nonchalant-like, and I was immediately suspicious. After talking to him a while and analyzing him with some Mind powers, I eventually decided that he may actually be telling the truth when he said he just went off to have sex with Serendipity. Although, in the back of my mind, I still suspected Boyce would turn on us before the end.

But, alas, the time was quickly approaching to face Kaz. In preparation, I spent about a week training with Sigurvan up at Vana's place, learning the particulars of the broad sword, in order be better able to wield Hiroko's Blue Dawn against Kaz.

I have to say… something weird was definitely going on at Vana's place, and I'm not sure what. Didn't sleep much, and not precisely for the usual reasons. I couldn't tell if I was projecting with my Mind powers, or what. Although I was pretty sure that my Mind powers were not anywhere near powerful enough to do things of this magnitude, so I figured something must be augmenting the force of my dreams. After a few tenuously sleepless nights, I determined there must be some outside force causing this, because it seemed I wasn't the only one projecting into others' dreams. In the end, I never did figure out what was going on. And since I really couldn't do anything about it, I just decided to cease fruitlessly resisting it, and just roll with it.

Anyway, just before the assault we headed back to Farne to acquire a cleric of Hathandar to assist us, as well as some potions of curing to hopefully make up for us having already spent two of the four healing potions we had acquired from Thrass Zal.

Once we had all of this ready, I performed a big Life ritual to boost a lot of stuff, and then Trent masked my magical emanations, and then we gated down to the Farne. Once back on Farne, I did a quick fill-up on mana, and then we gated over to the airship and began moving Kaz's gem to the location we'd decided upon as the location of the big battle, which a few hours away by air.

On the way, Nemesis appeared with the child-brained Melfir in tow. Since Boyce had been incapable of “finishing the job” with Serendipity, she wanted to make a deal with us. Basically, she wanted to be freed from her servitude which meant we had to successfully defeat Kaz. In order to facilitate that happening, we came to an agreement where she would keep Serendipity occupied during the battle (since they would inevitably be summoned) and we would all basically keep out of each other's hair and work toward accomplishing our same goal if for differing reasons.

With an agreement made, she disappeared with Melfir back to from where she'd come. Thinking on it, since Nemesis seemed to know what we were about, so that probably meant Kaz did as well. And so we should expect him to be prepared for and expecting our deception.

Finally, we arrived at our destination: a vast expanse of desert sands, barren and lifeless (more or less).

We had no trouble getting sucked into the gem as usual, but, of course, Kaz was nowhere to be found. So, we began our search. I turned on matter sense and began casting a wide net for the metal of Hiroko's sword.

Phantom Kazes started appearing, so I sprouted wings and took to the air to speed up the search. Trent got banged up a bit but the rest of us shrugged off the phantom attacks. Eventually Trent did as well. But then the two bimbos showed up to tempt Boyce. Man, he was eternally susceptible to the charms of evil ladies, I swear.

Trent went to his rescue while I continued to search.

Grey joined the search and apparently Trent had let his genie out of the bag to aid the search as well. With that many people on lookout, we quickly found what appeared to be it. I let everyone know the location and we all converged upon what appeared to be a dead Kaz stabbed through with Hiroko's sword, with a pulsating stone/light on he sword. After standing there fretting about this for some absurd amount of time, Grey finally reached down and dislodged the sword.

At that, Kaz's body stood up and more-or-less re-formed, except that he was basically a skeleton. And he looked pissed. For as much as a skeleton can convey emotion, anyway. Serves you right, asshole!

As the melee began, I grabbed the sword from Grey and activated my Accelerate Healing spell, and set an offensive stance before the scary freakish skeleton devil-god of the ancient times of Farne.

We quickly settled into a routine that seemed to work pretty well.

Trent sent his tree over to make a grapple attack on Kaz, usually failing, but distracting him enough to help both Boyce and I later. Boyce would then use his fencing abilities to force Kaz to lose his ability to defend. Then I would attack him with Hiroko's sword, dishing out some unhealable aggravated damage. Then Grey would step in to attempt to take as much of Kaz's attack as possible. I would heal what I could of the damage Kaz dished out. And Trent would work to dispel Kaz's multiple damage-over-time abilities to keep each of us in one piece for as long as possible.

Early on in the battle, Nemesis and Serendipity appeared (as predicted), and began to tussle. The two bimbos were nowhere to be seen.

We all ended up taking quite a bit of damage, but we all managed to persevere.

In the end, in a great fury-of-Hiroko-fueled thrust, I stepped forward with the Blue Dawn and rammed it right through the middle of Kaz, not unlike where Hiroko had planted it in him a thousand years before, and the mighty and despicable Kaz fell, exploding in a great ball of fire. His gem shattered around us, releasing us all from it and onto the sands of the desert where we had landed the airship, leaving a mile-deep crater beneath us.

As soon as the gem shattered, Nemesis and Serendipity were gone in the blink of an eye. The crotchety old cleric of Hathandar, Pete, dug himself out of the extremely damaged airship with sand now everywhere, and spent some time patching himself up with curing spells before coming to patch us up, all the while griping under his breath about these dang kids and their dang adventures.