The Gaming Den

The Battle of the Stairs
The fight between the soldiers and the werewomen seems more even than it should be - the steel weapons cleave flesh, and steel armor saves lives from claw and fang. More than this, you notice the women weakening...small wounds appearing on their supple forms, even though some of them have not yet met the enemy.

Kamoses suddenly remembers he has a bow, pulls it out and fires at Katsetshuset.

On seeing Kamoses begin firing Velasco curses his own stupidity and follows suit, although rather than firing at Katsetshuset he'll focus on the soldiers not currently in combat.

The back ranks are partially concealed by those in front, but Kamoses can clearly see the twisted form of the sorcerer, who seems to be tracing a figure in the air and chanting. Knocking an arrow, the Stygian takes careful aim and lets fly - and is delighted to see the shaft sink into the pale bulk of the sorcerer's left shoulder! However, while the wizard's face grimaces in pain, he does not falter in his incantation, and the werewomen continue to bleed.

Velasco fires into the mass of the soldiers, and the arrow takes one of them through the left eye, straight into the brain. The soldier collapses dead.

Kamoses will continue firing at Katsetshutset.

Taotie grabs the nearest enemy he can to throw at a were-woman

Velasco will start firing at Katsetshutset as well.

The battle wears on. Men and werewomen continue to bleed and die, the soldiers of Katsetshutset driven back inch by bloody inch, the undead crowding behind the few werewomen remaining as they take the stairs. The arrows of Kamoses and Velasco continue to fall, occasionally striking the sorcerer - he looks to have at least three shafts in his twisted hide, and yet he continues. Then with a sudden, exuberant syllable, the remaining werewomen collapse dead, blood leaking from every orifice.

Katsushet himself sits behind his two remaining soldiers, who now seem to face the body of the undead shambling up the stone steps.

"Your fodder is expended, Katsetshuset, and the roiling abomination beneath your old skin has been exposed. Twice now I have attempted to engage you civilly as an equal, and twice you have rebuked me. Karanthes, the whore of Ibis, has died shortly after banishing your lamia. Would you join her? Submit, and realize we need not necessarily be at cross purposes, or have your chrysalis prematurely peeled away so that I may poke through your remains."

Neb. begins to move towards the steps, keeping his gaze fixedly upon Kat.. His viper slithers to his position.

While Neb advances towards the steps Velasco will apply the black stygian scorpion venom to his sword and ready the vial of elixir once again.

"No..." the Stygian sorcerer mumbles, his voice gradually rising in volume "...it cannot be...I will not allow it...I will not! I will make the Red Offering!"

Say saying the bleeding, wounded magician grabs the nearest of the soldiers, and pulling a dagger from his belt runs the steel across the poor man's throat. The other soldier does not even see his comrade's fate, so busy is he hacking at the oncoming wave of undead...

Kamoses nocks, aims and fires an arrow at Katsetshuset, hoping to disrupt his focus before he can finish his offering.

Kamoses' shaft finds its mark, nailing the sorcerer's tongue to the back of his mouth...and yet the arrow continues to sink into the pale flesh as the sorcerer seems to bloat, skin stretching bonelessly as his final soldier goes down under the claws of your undead, and the skeletons clamber over the corpse to claw at the strangely deformed wizard...

[If Taotie can get a clear path] Taotie dashes at the bloated sorceror to hit him with the fist enchanted by the blood ritual of the priest of Ibis.

Kam will order his skeletons to let Taotie through.

The Spawn Emerges
The skeletons move to part - although a few are too slow, and drawn in to the mass of the transformed sorcerer as his bloated bulk oozes down the stairs, his individual features barely distinguishable as a stretched-out gaping face upon an enormous sack of flesh...and then the skin splits and falls away, revealing a liquid, scaly darkness oozes forth, along with a familiar fetid odor you last recall from the forbidden shrine of Tsatha...

The creature that has shed its humanity looks like a great Son of Set, an oozing liquid corruption on the form of a titanic black serpent...and yet the form is wrong, too. The three-eyed head is too toad-like with the wide, gaping mouth, and weird one-eyed tendrils with blinking black orbs nestle and surround it like the head-coils of a medusa, and though you can see the outline of bones the thing moves with a weirdly liquid grace, not the smooth slither of a serpent.

The creature seems intent, at least for the moment, on devouring the bodies of the slain, beginning with its own fallen soldiers and the bodies of the werewomen, moving down the steps with frightening rapidity. Taotie's iron-clad blows fall on the scales as though he punched the trunks of a young tree - and yet a few scales fall off, quickly dissolving into foul-smelling puddles of ooze.

[-3 SAN all around, not that most of you would notice at this point.]

Velasco will move in closer and throw the elixir at the creature for whatever it may be worth. He'll then try and move around it before attacking so that he's flanking with Taotie.

"Be you now demon or god, Katsetshuset, you have gorged on a tonne of human remains, and I call you subject to their kind's frailty."

Neb. casts Incantation of Amalric's Witchman. The next round he'll shapeshift into a Lesser Son of Set.

Kamoses will step forward, holding up a hand to tell everyone to stand back, then charge forward as that hand blackens and he attempts to land a Death Touch on the horrible ooze beast, ready to blast it with Chill of the Grave when he is inevitably attacked after.

Isandro for now will try to stay outta Kam's blast radius.

Neb shouts his weird, wailing incantation, and Velasco tosses the potion on the slimy form, which seems to seep into the black flesh...at first there seems little effect, but within moments the unreal substance of the strange quasi-serpentine creature takes on a different texture, more like flesh, with even the hint of black scales here or there.

Not idle during these moments, the toad-like mouth gapes wide and lunges forward on the serpentine neck, completely engulfing Taotie and, rearing up, swallowing the Khitan whole, forming a bulge in the creature's neck as the struggling man is slowly forced down the monster's gullet!

Taking advantage of this moment of distraction, Kamoses races forward, his black hand raised to deliver the Death Touch. A shudder and groan seems to run through the hellspawn, and wisps of black smoke emerge from its mouth, but the beast does not die...

Neb, meanwhile, completes his transformation into a Lesser Son of Set.

Kam will will keep hitting the BETO with Death Touch until he is forced to respond to an attack by nova'ing.

Velasco will charge in and attack the creature with his envenomed sword.

With a hacking, ralphing noise, the serpentine tentacle monster violently regurgitates Taotie from its gullet, accompanied by a billow of foul smoke. Taotie lands prone some ten feet away, somewhat unhinged (-5 SAN) but mostly unharmed. The amulet that Karanthes had given him, embossed with the strange elder sign, glows red hot...

Kamoses attempts his spell again, but finds that his hand is covered in the elixir from when last he touched the beast, and the arcane energies are not quite heeding his call...

Velasco's envenomed blade hacks into the creature's flesh, lopping off several of the smaller tentacles, which flop around spewing a thing, noxious ichor.

Neb. attempts to grapple Kat. .