Aria nodded and, her body movements suddenly invigorated and seeming quite ready for battle, reactivated her blink ring and spoke the command word for the door, audibly for Kass - she had thought about trying to keep blinking through doors, but gone against it for four reasons: that had some chance of hurting them as it had her, a chance of causing one of them to successfully make it through so much sooner than the others that they got set on by enemies alone, blinking again and again would tax Kass's magic, and having actual open doors gave them a potentially quicker retreat - especially if they came upon another chamber like the one in the temple that had suppressed her blinking (or a spell like the construct had tried to tag her with). She'd even considered identifying the exterior doors and opening those before proceeding, but that would've taken another minute of delay identifying runes - at least she presumed each door had its own command word, judging by the fact that only one set was now opening.<br/><br/>The exterior doors they'd phased through had been ten feet of stone which, to judge from the architecture and scuffing just inside, worked by sliding back and then to each side, into the southern corners of the chamber. Aria thus expected this new set to move back ten feet - but it only moved back a quarter that, before the doors parted and slid sideways into narrower recesses along each side of a great doorframe ten feet deep and twenty across and high. It seemed the doorway consisted<em>two</em>pairs of blocks, each 'merely' thirty inches thick, leaving enough hollow space between to permit themselves to slide back together and then aside, like four dancers changing partners. ..<br/><br/>...to reveal a chamber of such dimensions that it made their present one seem a mere foyer. The depth they saw, and the inward slope of the far wall, suggested it stretched to the corner of the pyramid. Six forty-foot columns supported the flattened-out expansive of the ceiling. Each column was carved and painted with a dozen neatly stacked rows - separated by the same magically glowing lines - of depictions of men in two-dimensional perspective. Almost all were depicted at some sort of task or labor or trade: plowing, masonry, weaving, and on. The upper paintings depicted men seated, and listening attentively, heads tilted up - towards mindflayers who loomed over them, gesticulating; teaching or commanding them, and themselves holding the tools used by the men in the rows of art below.<br/><br/>The long far wall, angling inward and looming over the far side of the chamber, depicted a two-dimensional landscape of river running over sand to a sea, with a city 'floating' at the edge of the sea (probably meant to be at a river delta) - and hovering over that, a black pyramid, probably the same. Human men seemed to be hanging in midair between he city and pyramid, and floating to either side, mindflayers gestured them along. The sun hung over the pyramid in turn, an eye within, shooting down a single beam which touched the tip of the pyramid, from which it burst into many rays angling sideways over the landscape, some of which passed through and seemed to be slaying flying sphinxes and blue dragon.<br/><br/>Above this, near the ceiling, was another row of paintings, which depicted mindflayers showing scrolls and tablets to men, and to the right of that, leading a line of men past a giant-like creature which seemed to point to them, and then gesture onward - where the line split; some men seemed to float upward, ending at a floating garden; the lower line ended at what Kass and Aria would recognize as a depiction of the wicker man they'd fought - and in this depiction, it was aflame, the last man of the line inside.<br/><br/>For all this, the chamber did not lack for three-dimensional things: lines of sarcophagi were placed at intervals around the outer edges of the chamber and at the bases of the columns, but the tops of some had been smashed open, and they held no archaeological relics or mummies, but rather now vats of some faintly luminescent bluish-green liquid. One was near enough that Kass and Aria could see something humanoid floating in it - it had the curly black hair common of humans in the region, but its skin seemed sickly - in fact, despite the hair, the creature seemed halfway between man and mindflayer, with skin a purplish-brown almost like a faint even bruise all over, the jawline almost nonexistent. The limbs were spindly, and the upper and lower lips each split in half to form small boneless appendages, exposing a horrible rictus grin in receding gums beneath. Several tubes or ropes, black and of some unusual substance like Maztican rubber, seemed to coil about the man, perhaps keeping him suspended enough in the liquid to breathe. A pack lay on the floor against the edge of the sarcophagus, and hanging over it a sheathed khopesh, hook-curved type of sword popular in Mulhorand and for disarming the weapons of others.<br/><br/>Over a further sarcophagus-tub stood two mindflayers, each one clutching and hoisting one end of a naked and thus quite apparently female human who hung limply, stunned or unconscious perhaps, in their grasping fingers and tentacles.<br/><br/>The chamber's six columns formed two rows flanking a sort of throne, and something sat in it - not humanoid, but living; it seemed like a great lion, yet almost made of stone. It sat up on its rear haunches, horse-sized body of a rock-hard brown. Kass would recognize it as some sort of creature of the elemental nature of earth, eve though its shape and body movements - and likely, claws and bite - were like hose of a lion, albeit an unusually large or sturdy one. Not the mind, though; it seemed to watch the mindflayers intelligently, and with stoic approval.<br/><br/>Indeed it had been intoning, its voice confident but thick with an unfamiliar accent and which almost seemed to be practicing the Common tongue, "...and thus, those judged insufficiently unenlightened or pure, those sufficiently impure and blighted, they shall be born anew, old cares and menial, mendicant minds sifted away like sand and earth sifted away from shining stones of true clarity..."<br/><br/>The voice had begun echoing prominently off the stones as the door-blocks began to slide aside, but the lion-creature was turning in the ancient-looking oversized throne, and so too the mindflayers riveted their milky eyes to the opening portal.<br/><br/>Aria, spying the (wo)manhandling mindflayers, pitched a hammer. It spun end over end and cracked the nearer creature between its milky, pupil-less eyes, as the tiefling vanished and thrice more rreappeared from thin air to throw and strick the mindflayers.<br/><br/>Both fell, dead on their feet, one splashing into the vat with the human they'd been holding. The earthy lion had leaped from its throne and loped swiftly towards the just-opened door; Aria was just pivoting on a heel to face it, only to see it leap abov her head, striking her with a great claw as it came down. She gasped - it would've been a shriek but her wind had already been knocked out - as the thing pinned her flat against the stone. Jaws flew down, and she managed to tilt her head, taking a painfully strong bite on the shoulder. The thing even landed with one hindclaw on her, raking the diamond-like claws down a thigh to shred pantsleg, and tiefling flesh beneath.<br/><br/><br/><br/>s'fine, my sentence made no sense. I'm really bad at self-proofreading, since I 'read with my mind and not my eyes' when it's what I wrote.<br/><br/>And it was a good guess, both b/c of context (the reverse gravity / floating structure) and, I suspect, terminology (slippers of spiderclimbing are the only DnD footwear I know of referred to as 'slippers').<br/><br/>You asked about a Mettle item once - I found one but it's only active when you have < 1/2 HP, and costs 16,000 gp (which in practice probably means 24,000 combined with something); IMO not very good.<br/><br/>Level 23 is another 'switch out a spell known' level (which of course is optional). My suggestion would be something that's similar to something else, like Blink (since you have Gr Blink and, I know you and you'll go nuts if you ever cast something like Heaven's Trumpet on a dozen foes and it 'misses' b/c of the blink) or Charm or Hold Person (since you have (Mass) Charm and Hold Monster, which also have the advantage of higher DCs even when you know the target is humanoid).<br/><br/><br/>init<br/>aria 31<br/>npcs 16<br/>kass 13<br/><br/>Aria: sniper's shot, throw hammers at s mindflayer<br/>mods 40/35/30/25 and 40/35/30 (22 bab 13 dex 1 mw 2 blink 2 sacred (bracers of murder) 4 inspire courage -2 range increment -2 twf),<br/>mh dmg 1d4+15 (w/ +2 from bracers ofmurder sacred bonus vs flat-footed, and +4 from inspire courage) oh dmg 1d4+14<br/>will alternate mh/oh...<br/>http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2955713/ (http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2955713/)<br/><br/>mh1 hit 96<br/>oh1 phaseout<br/>mh2 phaseout<br/>oh2 hit 83, slain<br/><br/>5' west, throw at n mindflayer (-4 to attacks since it has cover from the east-central column)<br/>mh3 phaseout<br/>oh3 hit 95<br/>mh4 hit 95 slain<br/><br/>Earth lion: pounce-charge Aria<br/><br/>claw blink miss<br/>claw atk 68 dmg 26<br/>improved grab grapple check 53; Aria's mod is 24 so she'll lose<br/>bite atk 58 dmg 19<br/>rake atk 72 dmg 12<br/>rake blink miss<br/>total dmg 57<br/><br/><br/>L = lion<br/>M = mindflayer<br/><br/>(you can choose a different starting square for Kass w/i the first room if you prefer.)<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: courier;"><br/>24 X X X X X X X X X d d d d X X X X X X<br/>   X X X X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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L L . . . . . . . . . d<br/> 6 X X X X . . . . . . l l . . . . . . X X . . . . . . . . X<br/>   X X X X . . . . . . l l . . . . . . X X . . . . . . . . X<br/>   X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X . . . . . . . . X<br/>   X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X . . . . . . . . X<br/>   X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X d d d d X X X<br/> 1 X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X d d d d X X X<br/></span>