The Gossip Board

[Anastasia]

With as much speed as she can muster, Mari jerks her hand away and tries to drop it! It' snot perfect, the barbs tearing out great hunks of Mari's flesh, but it works! The sword lies on the barge now, free of her hand!

Mari takes 10 points of damage. Adjust topic HP in #elysium.

[Anastasia]

Note: Add this 10 damage in when you update stats, Drac.

[Sierra]

HP adjusted. Evil sword of evil and mind corruption gone, yay! Mari is down with pushing that thing into the Styx (using an inanimate object, of course! She's not touching it directly again) unless someone else thinks it might be tradeable to abyssal denizens. It totally deserves it.

[Anastasia]

Knight, if I haven't replied on the mount stuff by Saturday give me a poke. With all this posting I have a dim idea I'll manage to forget to.

[Carthrat]

I have no interest in swords that refuse to disarm themselves.

[Dracos]

Kam thinks if we can wrap the sword we should keep it as something we can barter with that we do not care about to demons who might like it.  We're still in a nasty area and we generally spending more than we're taking in, so having something to barter away that we don't care about.

Alternately if we want to be really nuts, it does appear to be a sentient sword.  We can try dipping it into the styx and see if that takes the fight out of it. 

Anyhow those are ideas, not really going to argue hard about keeping the demonic hand eating sword.

[Dracos]

You have been stated.

[Sierra]

While it would be kind of amusing to actually mindwipe the sword (if that's possible), I am obviously not volunteering to test afterward to see if it worked. Getting rid of it the first time was trouble enough. Also, party-worst will save (I can only imagine what would've happened if I'd bombed that roll). I volunteer Nikkolai for this job!

We can wrap it up in something for trading, I suppose. We haven't picked up anything else this trip but some jewelry and a lot of pain.

[Carthrat]

Actually if we mindwipe it and it doesn't come up as evil after that I might want to check it out. Shall we use a complicated rope and pully system?

[Anastasia]

This scheme is looking more amusing by the moment.

Nice new avatar, Rat.

[VySaika]

How about Adail ties a rope around the hilt, then someone with height and muscle uses said rope to lower it in? I really doubt we need pullies and such for this.

[Anastasia]

Yes, but ropes and pullies are fun! When a DM sees a plan involving them, it's a jackpot for PC torment!

>_> <_<

[Dracos]

Alright, plan abuse the sentient sword is go.

First, Adail shall tie it up using Protection from Evil and...a ROPE.

Then Kamvakua will lift the rope...and provided it holds, slip it into the water of the styx carefully, wait a few moments, pull it out, and set it down.  Kam will be careful as he has no desire to get wet with styx water even accidentally.

I think we can then wait for it to dry a while before messing with it further, but then someone with prot from evil and saves to spare should check it out.

[Anastasia]

Knight consults the party for information on mounts! It turns out Mari knows the most about this by far, the two spending some time talking together. The options are as follows:

Fiendish versions of normal creatures: Yep. A normal, non outsider creature could be found on the abyss, possessed by the power of evil. This is the 'I want something normal but evil looking!' option. Except they are possessed by terrible, soul damning evil.  If you're interested in a particular fiendish type of creature, talk to me and we'll get into more specific information. Any creature that isn't always good aligned can theoretically have a fiendish variant in the Abyss, but the closer they are to absolute good, the less likely you are to find it. Fiendish pegasi are very rare, for example, but not unheard of. (Usually Chaotic Good).

Anarchic versions of normal creatures: See above, except replace evil with writhing, pure chaos. Adapt from there.

Half-fiend versions of mounts: Have you ever wondered what happens when a demon and a horse/pegasus/unicorn/nightmare/gryphon/hippogriff/giant bird/whatever else love each other very much? That's right, it's mounts that are half demon! On one hand these are a vast upgrade, having better stats, wings to fly with, and possibly SLAs. On the other than, they're always chaotic evil. It's like a demon lite: It's only a crazed sociopathic murderer instead of a full on demon.

Half-anarchic versions of mounts: Now this is more of Limbo's bag, as the half fiend template usually trumps the half anarchic template. But the Abyss is nothing but versatile, and sometimes a half breed pops out that's not evil but instead hopelessly chaotic. See above, replace evil with chaos where relevant, note that they're much rarer in the Abyss than the half-fiend variants, and that they're more random than purely homicidal.

At this point I imagine Knight's getting just a wee bit tired. This isn't new, this isn't helpful! She grabs Mari's hand and stares into her faded sky blue eyes, and whispers to her, "I need a better mount, Mari! Please!" Then I can see Mari blushing and smiling, "Aaah...yeah! Knight, of course there are better mounts..." Then looking at her and smiling, that smile that says so much as they draw closer together and...ack!

Ahem. Sorry. Where was I? Right.

Nightmares: While not a native of the Abyss, Nightmares are the most well known evil steed there is. If you find a blackguard, anti paladin or other such rogue, you know well you'll find a nightmare as it's loyal steed. With smoke, good attacks, good flying without wings, ethereal and astral travel capacities, a nightmare is the gold standard of hellish mounts. The trick is getting one to serve you. While normally neutral evil, many of the ones in the Abyss have become chaotic evil over the eons, as chaos has dug into their hearts. They're no better than demons, with taming one being an endless, perilous concept at absolute best. It usually takes dedication to a power of evil to succeed at this task, though it's not quite impossible.

Just fantastically close to it.

Demons: If a demon's large or larger sized, ride it! This has worked for the demons in the Blood War for years! Who can forget the time they first saw a balor riding on a tamed bebelith steed? This can be done, but you're trying to use an intelligent, malicious incarnation of the Abyss as a steed. Good luck if you pursue this path. If you have a demon in mind and want to pursue this, say so. Possible steeds: Bebeliths, glabrezu, mariliths, nalfeshnee, retrievers, advanced vrocks, armanites, chasme, goristro.

[Dracos]

Kam might note conflict of interest if we get honest to goodness vocal demons as part of our party.  Just saying.