Lightning shivered, striking the stone floor hard enough to trigger Immortal Object.
That – that can’t happen, you can’t dodge an eldritch blast! Resist it, yes, but once it’s touched nothing can dodge-!
A claw clipped the edge of her pinion feathers; too fast, the second claw would have her-
Raked past her, as Asuna desperately flailed through air, the bebilith curling on itself in pain. Darkfire dripped from its underside.
Kirito’s hits land, the vice-commander realized, hitting the ground hard enough to make her ankles scream. Some of them, anyway… darkfire is Shadow, it reaches beyond this plane, it must be enough to get past some of the glitching–
The world blurred again, the bebilith doubled on itself like an out-of-focus stereo image, almost splitting. Putrid gray webbing splurted from both demons.
…Oh, that’s just not fair.
From the Draconic curses on the bebilith’s ancestry and probable deformations as a larva in the pits of the Abyss surfacing from one web-snare, Kirito thought so too.
Let’s hope the bebilith thinks he’s just swearing! Asuna leapt aloft, damaged pinions or not; all that mattered were her feet were off the ground, no tremor of her presence left to sensitive demon-spider feet. “Anweledig!”
Lightning wreathing her, she vanished.
Demons are smart. It’ll go after the unknown threat first–
Then there was no time to think, just deadly dodging as the bebilith made very good guesses where her invisible body had to be. And the hope that she was buying enough time; a sorcerer’s spiderwalk would let a Moonsword slip even the thickest giant spider’s web, but a demon’s?
Smoke curled away from violet flames, and Kirito finally squirmed free.
Toes just tapping the floor as she stabbed another chitinous joint, Asuna breathed a sigh of relief. And choked.
Oh gods what is that stink!
A/N: Bebilith web is just nasty.
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
The link on the main page isn’t working.
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Hopefully it is now, I just updated it again. WordPress delenda est….
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I also noticed you have the abyss, despite it not being part of the Eberron cosmology.
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Earth isn’t part of Eberron cosmology either, and who knows if all Caerulus’ lorebooks are accurate about what belongs on which plane? 🙂
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Also just because Eberon has different planes doesn’t mean that the Great Wheel is invalid.
I have seen references to being able to reach other Prime Material Planes through both Spelljaming, and both the Deep Ethereal and Deep Shadow.
So the Abyss could be known to the Dragons without much of a stretch. And wasn’t there a spelljamer port in D&D Online to link to older settings?
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There was indeed.
Spelljammer was awesome, I still like the bionoids, the”were-Gyvers” of the setting, and I wish they’d done more with it.
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Given also that the Abyss is explicitly given the properties in several plannar expansions of being an invasive plane, it’s not being a part of Eberron’s or earth’s cosmology is not necessarily /fixed/ either. Not that this is at all necessary; It’s known the Abyss tries to spread. It may not be part of either world’s ‘close cosmology’ now, but –
If say, someone were to carelessly leave some gigantic shadow magic construct laying around just slightly outside and between two realities, and fill it with death and horror, well.
You’d be hard pressed to find better Abyss Bait.
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Good point!
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I feel like – while true – this suggestion is the sort of thing one should be careful about saying in Caerulus’ presence.
Caerulus’ has an excellent sense of humor, but insinuating things about a dragon’s hoard is never wise.
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I just had a terrifying thought.
They’re working in the system, which is something like an illusion/shadow/dream and only barely touches reality.
What if the system looks at the attack, and looks at the target, fails to find object data for the target, and defaults to “immortal object” making all attacks irrelevant?
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If it could do that, it could assign the target appropriate stats; since it apparently can’t – it doesn’t have a hp bar or icon – I think we’re safe from this bug.
Moreover, ‘Immortal object’ isn’t apparently a default property in SAO – even most objects don’t have it.
Even if it were tho, most likely the SAO survivors are deep enough in the shadow magic development that ‘attacks are at least 20% real’ has become a thing. That’s…not /good/ exactly, but it means that at least something is likely getting through even in that corner case where the system tries to tpk in the above manner.
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Think you guys are overthinking it a bit. 🙂
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Er, no. Her strike went mostly past and hit the floor, which is not supposed to happen.
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Considering the sheer level of emotions and magic he’s channeling, combined with the fact that Shadow touches all the planes; how much of a danger zone is Kirito’s hospital room right now?
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Enough for the YGO cast to direct suspicious looks in said hospital’s general direction and then come investigate.
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Not, really. He’s “not home”.
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So now that that abomination has slipped into the game and is causing glitches, can anything else sneak in through whatever cracks in the matrix it’s causing?
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That will definitely worry our characters if they survive.
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Wonder if it’ll help the task force any? Actually, what would the Monument say about people who died to the abomination?
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“System Error” is a possibility. Eep.
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>> “System Error” is a possibility. Eep.
Yeah… That’s probably the sort of thing that Taskforce list under ‘Nightmare Fuel Unleaded’.
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As well they should.
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I read this this morning, and couldn’t figure out what the smell Asuna was referring to was supposed to be.
After double-checking the Bebelith’s page and stats, I still don’t know.
Current guesses are: she’s finally registering the ‘fire and brimstone’ stink of the Abyss wafting off the Bebelith, a smell not uncommon to the Evil-aligned Outer Planes; someone has started to rapidly decompose from the Bebelith’s rotting venom; or Bebelith webs have a scent not unrelated to burning hair and similar vile smells when set ablaze.
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Venom and webs. I figured the bebilith might pull a real spider trick and spit venom on some webs to snare anyone with an open wound.
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That… I’m making a note to add that to any future Bebilith encounters I run.
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I have inspired Evil DMing. *Buffs nails.* My work here is done….
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Hate to disappoint, but when it comes to DMing I’m more interested in running a good story than making my players suffer or killing their characters.
I’ve had players tell me that my games are fun, that I come up with clever and interesting and unexpected but still logical ideas and that my encounters can be challenging because if an enemy stat block gives it a high INT or WIS and it has a tactics section that lists a goal I do my best to reflect that in the enemies’ strategies… But I’ve also been encouraged by my players to be Eviler than I am, and that I’m an extremely nice DM from their perspective.
It probably doesn’t help that while I want game balance I also…
I think of my Players’ characters as the Heroes of the story I’m telling. I don’t control or write these characters (unless the group is small enough that I havve to run a DMPC), but they’re still the Heroes. And I want my Heroes to win.
I don’t want their victories to be easy or cheaply bought, my players should have to fight for their triumphs. But conversely I enjoy when the heroes are cool, so if the player has an idea or a nifty trick they want to try… I treat Game Balance (I admit- a nebulous concept at best) as my unbreakable rule, but if it doesn’t break balance in my opinion I’m more likely to say ‘yes’ to whatever crazy thing my player(s) want to try, even if I shouldn’t. Because it’s cool, it’s fun for my players to feel cool, and I feel like as the Heroes of
myour story they should get to feel cool.So. Like I said: hate to disappoint, but while that’s a nifty trick my players may be tempted to curse at, I don’t really qualify as an evil DM.
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…Head-breaking players DM? *Halo*
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I wonder if the server/processor cluster that’s currently responsible for rendering the game location in question is showing any visible signs of distress? Smoking? Sparks flying? Overheating/Kernel Panic alerts pinging like mad?
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A lone error pops up in any admin window connected to the server.
“User Error: Replace User”
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Electronic whimpering. *Sober nod*
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From the Draconic curses on the bebilith’s ancestry and probable deformations as a larva in the pits of the Abyss surfacing from one web-snare, Kirito thought so too.
I don’t disagree with him.
He probably isn’t the only one making similar remarks. Or at least agreeing with them.
Oh gods what is that stink!
I don’t think you want to know.
But knowing your luck, you are going to find out.
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