Dungeon & Dragons & Expansion (BE, TF, MB, FMG)

[cyero]

Booby trap!

[SoylentOrange]

Oh, right. ^^;

And Madman, how do you mean? I thought I established who was what pretty good in the tavern scene... What was confusing?

[noxi]

Originally Posted by SoylentOrange

There's more, yeah- Jillian and Rena's are ready to go, in sketch form at least.

And Noxi, that's more of Medieval siege warfare knowledge rather than D&D knowledge, though I do sprinkle a few bits of that into the mix as well. ;3

Yes I know, I'm a medieval history minor with a music education major and I know many medieval terms, that's why I like D&D XD And again, very nice writing

[SoylentOrange]

Jillian's turn, and we've got a pic this time!
====================================
"All right," Jillian huffed, standing once again in the center of the antechamber. "Left is out. Do we go to the right, or straight ahead?"
"Straight," Rena grunted, taking her axe in her hands. "no more treasure-hunting in side-chambers until we fix Copper."
Celia simply nodded in agreement as Jillian glanced to her.
"All right, then," Jillian said, giving a curt nod. "Rena, if you would."
"Gladly," the half-orc growled, giving one last glance to the breast-choked doorway to their left. "I'm *hoping* there's something around here that walks, crawls or skitters, so that I can blame them for all this and mash their heads in."
"Just sit tight, Copperpot!" Celia called back as she followed Rena and Jillian down the center hallway, "We'll fix you up! Somehow!"

The trio of adventurers made their way slowly down the hallway, scanning the floor and walls for traps, though the three of them together didn't have as keen an eye as Copperpot did. Thankfully, Celia's elven eyes saw much farther than Jillian and Rena's could, even without the magical globe of light, so she'd be able to warn the others of any dangers beyond their range of vision.
Therefore, it was quite a surprise when Jillian suddenly barked out "Stop!" in the middle of the corridor, Rena spinning to see what caused Jillian's outburst.
"What? What?" Rena asked, looking back over her shoulder and forward again.
"...Step back," Jillian said, her eyes narrowing.
"What? What do you see?" Rena demanded.
"Nothing..." Jillian said, eyes narrowing as she stepped forward.
Rena growled deep in her throat. "Then why're we-"
"*Suspicious* nothing," Jillian clarified, hooking her arm around Rena's elbow. "*Magic* nothing."
Rena scowled into the darkness, then looked back at Jillian. "...All right, fine, do your thing," She said, stepping to the side but keeping her axe readied.

Jillian licked her lip as she glared down the hallway, her magic sense tingling. She could see it, just ahead- a shimmering of the air, a sense of something not being there that should be, something deliberately blunting her magical senses.
Jillian rose the orb of magical light to the ceiling, freeing her hands as she stood back in a magical stance. Whispering a few somatic components, Jillian drew her hands in slow loops around herself, the lines of power on her robe glowing slightly as she readied the spell. Finally, hands glowing with arcane energy, she flicked a hand towards the darkness, a shimmering bolt of magic sailing through the air and illuminating the hallway as it traveled. With a low "bong" sound, the bolt suddenly reversed direction, Jillian stepping to the side and Celia ducking as the bolt of energy flew back down the hallway and impacted with a fizzle against the wall by the stairs leading out.
"Hmm..." Jillian said, a wry smile playing at her lips. "Clever. An anti-magic field, an illusory facade, and all of it behind a spell-reflection wall. Clever indeed..."
"So... so what's that mean?" Rena asked. "Is it safe or not?"
"I just have to dispel it," Jillian said, stepping slowly forward with her hands out in front of her, still glowing softly with arcane energy. "The only problem," She said, tapping her feet on the ground as she edged forward, "is that because of the reflector I have to dispel it by touch." Making sure the floor was solid before easing forward each time, Jillian finally came to a stop in front of the invisible wall, Rena and Celia hovering behind either shoulder.
"So now what?" Rena asked. "Do I poke it with my axe, or...?"
"Shhhh..." Jillian breathed, concentrating. She reached a hand up, the air shimmering as he pushed the flat of her palm forward. The hallway, or rather the image of it, began to warp and crease around Jillian's hand like it was sinking into a soft pillow.
Jillian breathed a derisive snort out her nose, pressing harder into the strange resistance as her hand glowed brightly. The image began to waver more and more, Celia able to feel the magic energies in the hallway beginning to fail.
"Yes... yes... yes!" Jillian exclaimed, her hand pushing through the barrier with a sound like a mix of rending wool and shattering glass. Her victorious mask vanished, however, when her hand stuck into something with a wet schlorping sound, a translucent blue mitt encasing her hand and trailing slime as she pulled it back out of the hole she had punched in the illusion. The three adventurers gawped as the illusion fell away and they realized the entire hallway in front of them was clogged floor to wall to ceiling with an enormous gelatinous cube, unmoving save for the limp tendril of slime leading from Jillian's hand to the cube.
Reacting on instinct, Celia spun a Protection from Acid spell onto Jillian, while Rena followed *her* instincts and swung her axe down into the gelatinous cube, the formless mass splitting open like the wake of a rowboat through a mill pond and eliciting a shriek not from the cube but from Jillian, her feet braced against the floor as she tried to pull away from the wall of goo, the cord of ooze leading from her hand to the gelatinous wall pulled taut but showing no signs of breaking.
"Do your thing, Priest!" Rena yelled as she hefted her axe over her shoulder once again. Celia cast a healing spell on Jillian, not really knowing what the slime was doing to her but praying for her wounds to be healed, whatever they may be.
Jillian was preparing a spell of her own in her right hand, still trying to pull her left out of the slime, when Rena's axe came down again, causing Jillian to scream so loudly she dropped to her knees.
"Ceel!" Rena shouted.
"I'm trying!" Celia said, readying another healing spell.
"St-stop!" Jillian bellowed, lunging to her feet but still held tightly to the cube by the tendril now covering her hand and most of her forearm.
"What?" Rena demanded.
"I- I can feel it!" Jillian said, grabbing her elbow with her other hand even as the blue ooze slithered and bulged inside her sleeve. "Every time you hurt it, it hurts me!"
"So- so what do we do?" Rena demanded.
"Just- hnnngh- pull me out!" Jillian said, grunting as the blue slime trickled up her arm.
Not needing to be told twice, Rena dropped her axe and picked up the human woman by the waist, taking two great strides backwards before the slime pulled taut again, jerking both human and half-orc forward.
"Rrrgh... Come on..." Rena grunted, pulling. Celia was pulling on Jillian's other arm as well, and though she wasn't adding much to the weight compared to Rena, it was still worth something.
"By... Da'Nogra... let... go... damn... it!" Rena grunted, a fierce tug from the cub's tendril sending all three of them airborne, Rena having the presence of mind to let go of Jillian and stop her own fall to avoid crushing the unarmored human. Rena had barely hit the ground when she lunged forward again, grabbing one of Jillian's ankles and slowing her skid towards the wall of goo. Unfortunately, it didn't slow her down enough, and Jillian's choked cry was cut short when her head dunked into the wall, a clear blue hood over her gaping expression as she sat upright and clawed at her face with her free hand.

Rena snarled, an illegible utterance of fear and anger as she got to her knees. She wrapped each arm around one of Jillian's legs, leaning back on her knees and once again stretching the blue tendrils out from the cube. By now there were three, one coming from each hand a third attached to her head.
"Cut it!!" Rena bellowed. "Now!"
Celia wasn't well-trained in combat; beyond what they'd taught her in seminary and the few instances she'd had an opportunity to step into the front lines, the flanged mace that hung off her hip was little more than decorative. Nevertheless, fear surging through her blood, Celia raised the bladed head up in both hands as Rena pulled on Jillian's legs, the three tendrils connected to her head and hands pulled taut again. But when Celia looked down to place her strike, she hesitated, her eyes going wide in shock.
"Do it!" Rena yelled, straining against the cube's inexorable pull.
"I- I can't see her!" Celia yelled back. As she scanned the tendrils, she could see no trace of Jillian's arms; the translucent blue ooze just disappeared into her sleeves, no hint of human-colored flesh anywhere from the wall of ooze to her bare shoulders.
"Just cut her loose!" Rena barked. "You can heal her later!"
"Right!" Celia said, finally striking down on the tendril leading to Jillian's head, figuring that even if she was a little off, the only thing she would do to Jillian would be giving her a bad haircut. The flanged mace easily cut through the tendril, Jillian's head snapping forward as she was no longer tied to the block of ooze. But even as she raised her mace to strike again, the severed tendril surged to life, whipping forward and wrapping around Jillian's waist. With one mighty tug, Jillian was pulled free from Rena's grip, the section of her robe Rena had pinched between her arms ripping entirely off as the sorceress' feet were yanked free. She landed flat against the face of the ooze-wall, slumping forward onto her hands and knees. But something was different this time, and both Rena and Celia were too stunned to react.

As Jillian reached a hand up, the others could see right through it, five fat, blue, translucent fingers leading up to a wide, jiggly arm.
"Oh..." Jillian started, slowly looking down. Rena and Celia followed her gaze, and watched as Jillian's breasts began expanding against the flimsy confines of her top. "Oh no...." Even as the top began to rend, Jillian's stomach started bloating out as well, forcing the girl to sit up straighter as the mass grew larger and larger.
"Wh-what do we do?" Rena demanded as Jillian's top burst from the growth, looking from the human to the blob behind her, rapidly losing the point of distinction between the two.
Celia just shook her head as Jillian continued to expand, her stomach growing to the point where it obliterated the view of her legs. As she grew, her skin started to lose its color, the bulging, stretching skin turning that same translucent blue as she expanded. When Jillian's stomach got to the size where it wasn't merely touching the floor but actively lifting her off of it, Celia noticed the slime was getting smaller, just as though it were filling Jillian with itself.
Jillian rocked back and forth as she moaned, her huge, pendulous breasts obscuring nearly her entire field of vision as she rose up to eye-level with Rena on her stomach.
"What do we do, Ceels?" Rena demanded, holding her axe and bouncing back and forth in her attack stance, "WHAT DO WE DO?" Rena was getting agitated, like she always did when they ran into a problem she couldn't hack and bash her way out of.
"I don't know!" Celia yelled, casting every spell she could recall that might help. Protection from Evil did nothing, nor did Dispel Magic. Just like with Copperpot, whatever was happening to her wasn't a poison, wasn't a disease, and wasn't a curse, at least not under the classic definitions of magic she'd been brought up learning. Celia was exhausting herself casting, and Jillian's growth continued unabated, almost completely blue from head to foot as she swelled out of what was left of her clothes, the fabric seeming to fall inside of her and dissolve as she continued to moan and expand, her pendulous breasts and puffed-up head and shoulders seeming to stick out of the middle of the gravid sphere that was her torso. Eventually her rocking was stopped by her girth exceeding the dimensions of the hallway, finally stopping after Jillian had swollen to such an enormous size her translucent blue flesh pressed against all four sides of the hallway. Just above the level of Rena's head, Jillian's own translucent face hung, bloated and shimmering but still carrying her unmistakable features. Below her head and shoulders, starting at Rena's eye level and hanging down past the half-orc's waist, Jillian's enormous breasts hung, shuddering and wobbling with every breath of the goo-creature, dwarfed only in size by the giant, spherical orb of flesh that was her belly. Celia wasn't even aware if Jillian even *had* legs by this point, or if they were subsumed by her enormous belly like the rest of her seemed to be.
"Jil... Jillian?" Celia started, unable to tell on the translucent face whether the blank eyes were opened or closed.
The blob monster groaned, and Rena tensed up, her axe ready but quivering. The muscles in her arms showed her body's readiness to cleave into the creature that was once her friend, but the angry tears brimming her eyes showed her heart's reluctance.
"I'm hunnnngry..." Jillian moaned, sounding like she was being roused from a deep sleep.
"Jillian, can you hear me?" Celia continued, her brow furrowing.
"'M hungry..." Jillian echoed.
"Jillian?" Celia repeated, almost pleading now. "Jillian, if you can hear me, please..."
"Dammit, Celia, go get me some food already!" Jillian snapped, her bulbous frame jerking up and down once as she made some attempt at movement. As Celia squeaked and began rummaging through her pack for rations, Jillian shook her head and looked down the valley of her cleavage where Rena was still shifting her weight from foot to foot, looking nervously at Jillian. "Gods..." She muttered, trying to part her breasts but unable to because her arms would just sink into the gelatinous masses of her bosoms when she tried. "What a mess... and where's that food!?" She bellowed.
"Here!" Celia said, tossing a handful of the rations she'd packed up towards Jillian's head. Most of them didn't clear the swollen spheres of her breasts, sinking into the ooze and dissolving. Rena gaped as Jillian's form swelled further, her sides squishing into every bit of space the corridor provided.
"Mmm..." Jillian moaned, her enormous form undulating happily. "...Got any more?"
Rena and Celia shared a look, then Celia tossed another ration up to Jillian.
"Mmm!" Jillian squealed, catching the dried meat and devouring it in two bites. "Oh, man, that's great," She said, smiling. "Okay, right, so... Oooh... geeze.... got any more? I'm sure I could think straight once I got some more food..."
Rena took a step forward and reached a hand out to Jillian's stomach as Celia looked for another ration, experimentally poking a finger into the jiggling globe of her belly. She held her breath as she pushed her finger in, only to jerk it back out with a yelp, shaking her hand back and forth.
"What? What?" Celia asked, her last ration in her hand.
Rena turned to the elf and raised her hand, the metal of her gauntlet eaten away clear through to the leather padding beneath, all the way down to her ragged fingernail.
"Oooh, so that's what that was," Jillian giggled. "Kinda tasty!"
Celia and Rena shared another look.
"...I think we should go before she decides we're edible," Celia said.
Rena curled her fingers around the shaft of her axe, like she always did when she was nervous.
"Can you use this Maag whatever, if we find it?" Rena asked. "Can you magic enough?"
"I..." Celia started, eyes darting side to side. While she knew how to use wands and other magical devices, her knowledge of arcana was a pale shadow of Jillian's. "I think so, yes," She finally said, nodding.
"Fine. Then let's get out of here," Rena said, backing away from Jillian.
"Uhm... we're gonna go get some more food!" Celia called to Jillian as she backed away.
"Oh, great!" Jillian said, bouncing happily. "I'm, uh, I'm sure I can fix this once I'm not so hungry..."

[wafflecannon19]

I'm liking how this is going. Though I'd just like to point out that somatic components are gestures made with the hands and arms. Not really something somebody would whisper.

[SoylentOrange]

Ooops, got my terminology mixed up. IF somatic is the movement, what the chanted part of the spell? I know there's Still Spell and Silent Spell, but I got their corresponding attributes mixed up it seems.

[Nibblet]

Nerd reporting in.

Its just called a verbal component. Verbal, somatic, material, and focus.

Good stuff by the way.

Anyway, going back into the shadows now.

[SoylentOrange]

Thanks, man, I'll edit that into the final version when it goes up on DA.

Next part should come soon!

[cyero]

Can't wait!

[SoylentOrange]

Here's that FMG the title promised.
==============================
Celia had to jog to keep up with Rena as the half-orc stormed to the right-hand passageway in the antechamber, Copperpot trying to lift herself up on her breasts to see better.
"Hey!" The halfling called after them, "What's goin' on?"
"We're, uh, we're working on it!" Celia called over her shoulder as she followed the seething wave of orcish muscle down the last pathway. She barely had time to get her own light spell up, Rena charging into the darkness seemingly without concern for what lay in wait down the final hallway.
"Rena! Wait!" Celia called after her friend, the half-orc's shadow casting long down the hallway and into the darkness as Celia's light grew behind her.
"What for?" She snarled, not even looking back. "So they can get worse?"
"But-" Celia started, until a loud >chunk< echoed down the hallway, Rena immediately stepping back into a fighting stance as the loose flagstone she stepped on sank into the floor.
Celia clutched her staff to her chest, eyes darting back and forth as a deafening grinding sound reverberated through the corridor. Rena bared her fangs as two sections of wall began to grind and move, swinging on a pivot until the two sections of wall had come together in the middle, turning the straight hallway into a kind of hoop.
"...Is- is it over?" Celia asked, holding her light from one side to the other, trying to look into the side passages that had formed.
"...No," Rena said, her eyes narrowing. "Listen."
Celia stopped and focused, and her elven hearing immediately picked up the sound, a series of clicks and ticks against the stone that was growing louder and more numerous with every passing second.
"S-something's coming!" Celia said.
"Good!" Rena spat. "I was getting tired of bein' angry and not bein' able to hit anything!"
Celia bit her lip as the skittering noise got closer and louder, mentally preparing her strongest healing spell. She knew when Rena got like this, it wouldn't be the small, incidental wounds that a skilled fighter gathered on her; it would be a whirlwind of death and blood, and it'd be Celia's job to make sure Rena didn't succumb in the process.
"Rrrrr.... Finally!" Rena bellowed as a wave of huge beetles poured out of the two side-tunnels. Celia barely had a chance to recognize the the bright red and yellow-splotched carapace before Rena's axe came down on it, the beetle's innards escaping as some kind of pale orange ichor, spraying out of the wound with such force it splattered on the ceiling.
"Ha!" Rena bellowed as she swung again, cleaving two more beetles into similarly explosive pieces. "These things die good!"
Celia swallowed hard as she watched the battle. She was used to seeing Rena work by now, and knew the half-orc could handle herself, but the wave of giant beetles seemed to be inexhaustible.
"Behind you!" Celia called, seeing the leading edge of the insect tide began to circle around her.
"Rrrrgh!" Rena growled as she swung her axe in a wide arc with one hand, the axe heads slashing through several insects as she spun back into a fighting stance, bringing her armored boot down on one she had merely wounded and mashing its head into paste.
"Haaarg!" She exclaimed, her fangs glinting in the light as she grinned ferally. "Not gonna work!" She shouted, stomping on another beetle as she waded into battle anew.
Celia watched nervously, making sure none of the beetles hurt her friend. She saw their jaws snapping at her, but even as big as Rena was she was amazingly quick, and the few times she saw her friend get bit, it wasn't enough to pierce the heavy plate armor Rena wore.
"Hah! Yeah! Die!" Rena bellowed as she cut and sliced her way through the beetles with what seemed to be ever-increasing speed and ferocity, the pale-orange ichor now liberally splattered across the floor, walls and ceiling, Rena herself painted with the gore and viscera of her enemies.

Celia watched with concern, Rena's increasingly frenzied attacks troubling her. Rena was no subtle fencer, to be sure, but she looked like she was losing control, which, when throwing around an enormous double-headed axe, can be as dangerous to the wielder as their foe. Celia gasped when she turned to the side, her ichor-splattered face seeming off somehow. She edged to the side, watching as Rena swung her axe back and forth through the swarm of beetles, each death spraying more and more pale ichor around.
"Hrrgh.. Rrrrgh... Raaaah!" Rena bellowed, lifting her arms above her head and roaring. Even over the din, Celia could hear the sharp metal retort of her bindings coming apart, a couple plates of her armor hanging loose over an unmistakably larger frame. Rena seemed to be swelling right out of her armor, the already-muscular half-orc bulging and growing with every swing. Celia whimpered as Rena's hands grew out of her gauntlets, her nails lengthening into bestial claws. Her neck strained and bulged, the collar of her armor cinching tight around her burgeoning frame. She snorted and snarled at the constriction, heedless of its cause in her bloodlust but still slowed down by it. She roared again, Celia whimpering as she saw Rena's tusks surge in length, as wicked and monstrous as a dire boar's. Celia saw the beetles circling around behind Rena, opened her mouth to warn her friend, but the cry died on her lips, Celia's fear choking her off, not wanting to alert the swarm of monsters nor the new and terrible monster they seemed to be attacking.
Rena grunted in pain as a few of the beetles managed to sink their mandibles into where she'd grown out of her armor, launching herself backwards and slamming the offending beetles between her broadening shoulders and the wall. Celia cast a heal spell on her friend, her sympathy overriding her fear and just hoping that when this was all over there was enough of Rena left to remember not to attack Celia. Rena was thrashing back and forth, half-naked by this point as her leather and chain mail strained to contain her flesh. Rena was unrecognizable as a civilized race, looking more like an especially bilious ogre or troll as she thrashed back and forth, every motion a killing blow, the hallway painted floor to ceiling with beetle carcases and orange ichor. More than painted, even- she noticed as Rena thrashed around that the Ichor was beginning to stick to her, her ankles already completely submerged in the goo and refusing her movement outside her battle stance.
"Hrrrraaaagggghh!" Rena bellowed, her wild mane of hair matting to her skull as the ichor hardened, swinging her axe with all her might until it flew out of her hands, Celia ducking reflexively as the blade drove itself into the wall only a few paces from her. Celia cast another healing spell, unable to tell at this point where the beetles' blood ended and Rena's began, but still not wanting any lasting harm to befall her friend. Celia noticed the skittering sounds seemed to be dying off, no longer the continual wave of clicks but still a small swarm of them. Rena was becoming increasingly entangled in the ichor, but the beetles were lured to her, perhaps through the scent of their blood on her. Rena's hands were fused into orange mitts by the ichor, but still she pummeled them, crunching their bodies into the ichor soup. Her back, her knees, her elbows, she used any part of her able to move with any force, killing beetle after beetle until she wore their numbers down, Celia healing her when needed. Finally, nearly totally immobilized, Rena killed the last beetle by driving her tusk through its stomach and against the wall, leaving the hallway silent save for Rena's continual struggles against her bonds.

Celia swallowed, taking a step towards the struggling... monster, was the only word for it. Rena looked like some unholy crossing of a minotaur and an ogre, every line of flesh rippling with muscle, her head nearly touching the ceiling even though she was on her knees. She lunged this way and that, fastened so tightly against her bonds she could only really move her head and shoulders. Celia edged along the side of the hallway, careful not to touch the ichor splattered against the walls. She gulped as she approached her friend, Rena's snorting and huffing echoing down the hallway.
"R-rena?" Celia started.
"Hrrragh!" Rena roared, lunging for Celia and making her jump back against the wall.
"Rena!" Celia called out, tears brimming in her eyes. "Rena, it's me. Celia. Your friend..."
Rena glared at Celia, huffing each breath past her tusks, her enormous bulk taking up the entire side of the hallway. Celia tried to search Rena's eyes for any glimmer of recognition, but all she saw in the glaring eyes was bloodlust.
"I..." Celia started, looking down the hallway, to the caverns the beetles had poured out of. "I'll find the Maag," She said, reaching a hand out to Rena's straining face. "I'll... I'll fix this, I promise," She said, wiping tears from her eyes before she gingerly picked her way through the ooze, coming to the turned-out walls sealing off the end of the hallway. Slowly working her way around, she could see that the beetle nests had been completely emptied, every last specimen vanished from the warren as she stepped around the trick wall.

[cyero]

For some reason, Chuckles' art of her reminds me of some monster... but I can't remember which. ._.

YA GOTTA HAVE MUSCLES ON YOUR EYEBALLS.

[SoylentOrange]

"Muscles on your eyeballs"? What? ^^;