Thunder rumbled above, the artificial storm all the way up at the top of the storm facility's tower seething with unnatural and barely-restrained rage as it slowly swirled about against the sky.
But for Kindle, that possessed storm was high and away from her—far from her concern. Instead, for the ivory dragoness lying prone and vulnerable on the ground, her immediate attention was not focused on the distant rumbling of the storm high above her, but rather the rumblings of the deep, guttural growls that stood just over her.
Draped again in that same foreboding shadow from before in the demolished warehouse, Kindle, for the briefest of moments, could only hear her own deep breathing as she laid there in the middle of that deafening courtyard, staring at the talon foot in front of her.
Slowly, Kindle's sapphire eyes began to steadily climb up the massive foot, finding its leg both thick with muscle and absolutely covered in dark, violet scales. Following up this limb, she found a greenish-yellow underbelly; not of a softer hide as most dragon bellies were, but instead like one that was composed from rows of naturally-armored plates. Behind this bulk form of toughened scales and hardened plates, her eyes glanced a large tail—fat with muscle, yet long enough to end in prehensile capabilities—that swished and wagged about on the ground like a heavy whip eager to ricochet the end of its arrowhead tip with dangerous intent. From the end of this tail began green spikes that pierced out of the violet scales. These spikes though were not spindly like her own golden ones that were the norm for dragons, but rather they were large and stocky, like jagged hatchets that could equally tear and bludgeon with enough force; and the further they traveled away from the tail and up along the violet scales, the bigger they became, until they resembled the curved, point-ended cleavers that sat at the top of the head, where under green irises seemed to radiate with a fiery glow as they stared down at Kindle.
Her sapphire eyes locked with those radiating irises, and that was when she knew.
The scales, the spikes; at first glance, Kindle had assumed that the resemblance meant that she was dealing with a protective parent of some kind.
But no, those eyes spoke everything.
And what those eyes told her was that this massive drake was the very same snarky, little, purple dragon that she had spoken to not barely a moment ago.
It was hard to believe. Most mature dragons had some decent control over their stature through their hoarding and greeding, with most tending to be able to shrink to the size of a cottage when they were feeling charitable—which was about as often as one would imagine it to be, though it does happen—to being able to grow back to their original giant forms just as easily.
But never from such a small stature, and never so quickly.
He was taller than her now. Standing upright, he had the length of a head over her even if she were to stand on her own hind-legs. Despite this though, his neck was shorter than what was usual for a dragon, although it was also slightly more bulky in width. In fact, everything about him could be described as if all of the physical features that had given a dragon some sense of agility had been traded away in favor of bulk and muscle. His body, his tail, his arms and legs: they were all thicker with lean muscle than what the average dragon was expected to have. Even his snout, which was currently snarling and showing off glistening rows of white teeth the size of swords, was broader from his powerful jaws that looked like they were ready to crunch on something besides gems and crystals.
...Something like her.
Quickly realizing the vulnerable position she was in, Kindle, with a single flap of her large wings, immediately jumped back away from the larger dragon and landed on the opposite side of the courtyard. It was through this distancing of herself from him that she was better able to see his entirety at once, and because of this, as she growled threateningly at him with a defensive glare, she took notice of his most prominent feature.
His complete and utter lack of any large, leathery wings that were so complete of a dragon.
Kindle froze, her aggressive growls cutting short as her glaring eyes widened at what she saw, or rather at what she didn't. How she had missed such an obvious trait until now, she did not know. But what she did know was that she needed to be much more wary now.
Because there was only one wingless-drake she knew of, and it was the same one that every dragon knew of.
For among the multitude number of tales about Mantle, Smog, and the other legendary drakes that older dragons told young hatchlings when they wanted to frighten them and warn them about the dangers of stealing from another dragon's hoard through horrible tales that had such wrathful retributions contained within them, his were some of the most frequently spoken. A fact Kindle herself learned very early, during her first few involvements with dragon migratory groups.
Of course, when one was known by all of dragon-kind and all other kinds as the Guardian, it's no surprise that one tends to be very famously ferocious and successful at what he hoards.
The display of surprise and wariness upon Kindle's face seemed to bring amusement to the purple dragon, as he began chuckling a deep chuckle befitting of his size, "Well now," he said with a much deeper tone from before and a grin full of large teeth, "it looks like you've finally gotten a clue as to who I am," raising a claw, he began rubbing his knuckles against his chest in a pompous manner that was most usual for male dragons, "gotta say: it took you long enough. I mean, did the lack of wings seriously not tip you off?" he finished off with another chuckle.
Narrowing her eyes at him for that slight, Kindle steadily raised herself up on her hind-legs as she kept her gaze locked on the dragon before her, wary of not coming off as too aggressive. She knew she was out-matched here. Her size and strength would be of no use to her in a straight-up brawl with this famously more experienced dragon. It would have been pointless anyways. His show of dominance was already established when he easily threw her across the facility.
But that was alright. After all, it wasn't a fight that Kindle was here for anyways.
"So... you are the one that they call the Guardian?" she began smoothly, her tone equally inquisitive and cheshire, "The one that has so many other dragons too fearful to cross you lest they get their skulls crushed under your heel?" her sapphire eyes trailed up and down him, giving him an obvious once over before again facing him, a sharp smirk on her features, "No offence, but from all the stories I have heard associated with the 'largest of all dragons,' I had expected you to be much ...bigger."
The Guardian's grin faltered for a brief second as he stared incredulously at the ivory dragoness before him brazen with charisma, before rearing his head back and letting out bellowing laughter that echoed across the courtyard and facility grounds, "Well, sorry to disappoint!" he shouted humorously between his bouts of laughter, "Bigger... hah!" he admonished. When his laughs lessened and he finally began to calm down, he looked back at Kindle with an amused smirk on his maw and told her, "And don't worry about that whole 'skull crushing' thing or whatever, that's mostly just an exaggeration on the part of all those stories you hear about me."
A slight tilt of her head with an inquisitive expression, Kindle showed off an amused smile, "Mostly?" she replied in a cool tone as her tail steadily swished about on the ground.
A deep hum echoed from inside the larger drake's throat as his smirk drooped just a bit and his face took on a more serious expression, "Well, you know what they say: every story s'got a grain of truth to it," he replied in an almost somber tone, "and besides, you should know how it is with us dragons when someone threatens our hoard."
"Oh? I did not know these factory-produced crystals were apart of the illustrious Guardian's most-valued hoard?" said Kindle in an off-claw manner, her sapphire eyes distractedly trailing across the ground around her.
"They're not, but you were making quite the racket near where mine is," answered the Guardian, "what with your thieving and all."
An ivory tail swept along the dirt and brick surface of the courtyard, sweeping up the scattered energy crystals and collecting them in one spot, which just so happened to be located right under Kindle. She quickly seized them and added them to her paltry collection that had still remained stuck to her scaly coat even after she had been thrown across the facility. Though it still wasn't as much as what she had previously, it was enough, and she doubted she could risk getting any more.
Eyeing the Guardian before her, Kindle showed off a pointed smile, "I prefer to call it liberating," she replied coyly, "and if you'll excuse me, I have my own hoard to attend to. So if you don't mind..." Before the Guardian could react, she dropped back to all fours and immediately turned and sprinted as fast as she could towards the towering spire that contained the storm facility's generator. She leapt onto the spire, her claws sinking into its bricks as cracks formed from their punctures, before taking another leap higher up the spire. Then, with a final bound, she launched herself away from the spire and flared her wings open, flapping them hard as she flew up higher and away from the ground.
It was at this time, when she felt the wind under her wings and the shade of the facility's stormy sky against her scales, that Kindle chanced a look back down at the Guardian.
Where she was just in time to see the rising torrent of emerald flames consume her.
Like all dragons descended from those first that were hatched out of the fiery wombs of Mother's volcanoes, Kindle was incredibly resistant to the burning lashes of fire. But these green flames were not like usual flames, nor even like dragonfire; there was very little scorch to them. For it was that the emerald flames were too laced with pure magic to have the lethality that was so eternally kindred to fire. Instead, when the torrent of green flames struck her in her side like a jet stream of water, its impact momentarily pushing her just a bit higher into the sky, she felt like the flames were numbly barbing into her and pulling her apart as they enveloped her body.
Soon, all of Kindle's sight was obscured by the emerald flames, and for a seemingly indeterminate amount of time she experienced the strangest sensation of feeling like she was both floating and being tossed around like a rag doll at the same time. It was akin to being a leaf in the wind, if the wind was made out of fire.
Suddenly, the flames were gone, as was the weightlessness, and Kindle quickly found herself on the ground again as she felt her back impact against it. Opening her eyes, she saw the Guardian standing over her as he looked down at her prone form in the middle of the storm facility's courtyard with an unimpressed, bored stare.
"Oh, wow," he deadpanned so monotonously, sarcasm dripping from his tone like how venom drips from a serpent's fangs, "you tried to fly away. It's not like I've never had to deal with something like that before in my entire life."
Kindle glared up from her position, a low growl escaping her throat in response to the Guardian's words.
Seeing her behavior, a flash of irritation streaked across the Guardian's face and, before Kindle had the chance to do anything, the Guardian raised his large foot and pressed it down on top of her head, eliciting out a pained yelp from the dragoness as she quickly brought her claws up and attempted to lift the offending foot off of her skull, to no avail.
"Now, if you're done pretending that you actually have a shot at beating me, outwitting me, or whatever it is that you think you could do to gain the upper claw in this situation, may I suggest that you instead tone back whatever aggression you have directed at this city and approach this a bit a more... politely," the Guardian offered in as pleasant a tone as one could manage when keeping a foot poised over a vulnerable skull, "because considering you're trying to threaten a millennium-old drake that has to personally deal with whatever cataclysmic shenanigans that these ponies get involved with every other century or so, I don't think the aggressive route is going to work out for you," he shrugged indifferently, "but hey, if you think you can do better than that giant war golem that that crazy minotaur warlock was using to—of course—take over the world a couple centuries ago, then please, be my guest and show me what you've got."
The dragoness continued to struggle under the Guardian's heel, her claws tirelessly scraping against his thick, purple scales, "What in Mother's name are you talking about?" she growled out painfully, "I've done nothing aggressive towards this city!"
Not budging his foot an inch at the forceful ministrations attempted on it by the struggling dragoness below him, the Guardian absentmindedly checked his claws for dirt in a most casual manner, "Uh huh," he replied distractedly, "and I guess I only imagined the terrified screams of innocent ponies and the destruction of that warehouse back there."
"The ponies were not harmed," insisted Kindle between her strenuous grunts, "and I only did what I did to the warehouse so I could save the energy crystals before they got destroyed!"
"Destroyed from what?" asked the Guardian, his voice filled with accusatory skepticism, "From your goal of turning this place into a pile of rubble and broken bodies as you so eloquently put it?"
The incessant scraping against the Guardian's leg immediately stopped, the claws upon the thick-scaled limb stilling as the dragoness under him ceased her struggling and stared up at him with frozen disbelief.
"W-What? No!" she shouted with a slight stutter, confused, "I mean before they get destroyed by the titan!"
Around them, nay for the facility's rumbling storm thundering high above them and the muffled moans of the raging generator entrapped within the tower, the courtyard had become eerily silent as both dragons stared into each other.
Then the Guardian blinked once, blankly, "...What?"
Immediately, fans of fiery, red fire escaped from between Kindle's clenched teeth in agonized frustration as she resumed her tirade against the Guardian's leg in increased fervor.
The Guardian, for his part, only raised a scaly eyebrow as he watched the dragoness snarl through her tantrum.
Finally, when the dragoness ceased once more, she had her eye closed tight before breathing in deeply. Steadily releasing that breath, she opened her eyes and stared back up at the Guardian, obvious annoyance and anger being barely restrained.
"Look towards those mountains in the distance," she uttered through clenched teeth.
The Guardian did so, turning his gaze away from the dragoness under him and directing it out towards the view of the city that was provided to him from the storm facility's higher elevation on the mountain. His radiant irises traversed across the urban coverings of the city, past the larger valley of green hills and rivers that followed after, until finally settling his eyes on another small mountain range—a thick, yet paltry range that only added up to four peaks—that laid opposite of the one he currently situated himself on.
It was only when he strained his eyes further and looked past those mountains that he took notice of the massive cloud of dirt and dust rising high into the sky some farther distance away.
At the sight of it, the Guardian's eyes widened in realization, familiarity flashing before his bright green irises as memories of where that cloudy tower of ruin and destruction had originated from were called back to him.
Now, the Guardian was well-known among his own kind as one of the greediest and most fiercest drakes that there ever was when it came to one's hoard. Indeed, in terms of lethal aggressiveness, he was perhaps second only to Smog the Golden when it came to protecting his hoard. As such, Kindle had spent many a gathering with her fellow kin hearing stories of the Guardian's ruthlessness being practiced: tales of thieves being chased across the ends of the world before being crushed underfoot, and of fully-grown dragons having their entire heads bitten off for just attempting to eat a single gem of his hoard.
And while tales such as those enthralled her in her younger years, by the Guardian's next actions, it was clear to Kindle that those tales detailing the Guardian's ruthlessness may have been slightly ...embellished.
"MANTLE'S MOLTEN BLOOD!!" cursed out the Guardian loudly, his claws at his head and eyes wide with shock and fright.
Suddenly, realization struck and he twisted his gaze back down to the dragoness struggling under his heel. He then immediately leapt off of her, the ground rumbling from his bounce, before reaching down for her.
"Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! I am so, so sorry!" repeated the Guardian frantically as he hurriedly helped Kindle to her feet, his claws surprisingly gentle on her scales as he lifted her up by her shoulders, "I really, really do apologize for throwing you across the facility and almost crushing your... um... skull," he continued awkwardly, showing off a big, innocent, pleading-for-forgiveness smile as he, of all things, began brushing off the residue dirt on Kindle's scales, "It's just... the way you worded your advice earlier was very easy to misconstrue as a threat and I don't usually take those lightly, so I may have jumped the party cannon on that one..."
Kindle quickly batted the Guardian's dusting claws off of her, interrupting his rambling apology, "It's fine," she replied tersely, her pride just a little bit wounded before she began rubbing the underside of her jaw to relieve whatever remaining pain the Guardian's foot inflicted, "it's not like this is the first time I've come to blows over a misunderstanding. We're dragons. It happens."
"Er, yeah..." said the Guardian awkwardly as he rubbed the back of his neck, his claws interlocking with his large, stocky spikes, "but I try to make it a point to not act like the stereotypical brutish dragon, you know?"
"Well you're doing a fantastic job of it," commented Kindle, explicitly attaining the same venomous sarcasm that the Guardian had previously wielded, "what with you trying to crush my skull in. And here I thought you said those 'skull-crushing' stories were exaggerated."
"I said they were mostly exaggerated, and I was only being so rough with you because I thought you were going to attack the city," defended the Guardian before his green eyes widened in realization and his claws returned to the sides of his head in fright, "Oh, Celestia and Luna! The city!" cried out the large drake as he began frantically pacing back and forth in a distressed manner.
Kindle, once again treated to the unusual sight of one of the most legendarily feared and respected dragons among her ilk go through another panic attack, could only stare in befuddlement as the Guardian acted like a headless cockatrice.
"What do I do? What do I do? What do I do!?" repeatedly panicked the purple drake in his frantic pacing, the ground rumbling at the giant dragon's rapid movement, "Wait!" he shouted, suddenly coming to a dead stop in his pacing, "Calm down. Just calm down. I've gone through this kind of stuff plenty of times before," he told himself before slowly taking a calming breath, "okay... I need to warn the city. The Mountain Bull isn't here yet, so there should still be time for a proper evacuation if I hurry."
And that's when they felt it...
The shaking.
It wasn't anything overly spectacular. There was no Tartarus-deep fissures being torn open around them. None of the buildings were collapsing from some mighty tectonic shifting. Heck, the two dragons didn't even so much as stumble when they felt the ground shake. It wasn't even so much as shaking as it was just simply vibrating. The only unusual aspect about it at all was that it didn't seem to end; it just kept going.
It was as if the very earth was trembling in fear at what was approaching.
Ironically, I was just watching Hercules.
Is it epic boss battle time?
You know the meme 'That Escalated Quickly'?
Anybody know if there's an inverse? Cause we need one over here.
Excellent so far by the way, though if he gets a suit of magic armor I'm calling blatant plagiarism.
Huh. I thought it was established somewhere that the timeframe for this series was something like 500 years after the elements' original adventures.
EDIT: Ah, I think I found the part I'm thinking of. Tales of the Tutelary Spirits, chapter 2: Blue Palm Trees on a Turtle Shell.
That's probably from a past lifetime, then.
How does one fight a Titan? This is clearly a Earth-aligned lawful neutral, so some water based Chaos magic might work...
Hoard. Dragons collect hoards. "Horde" is a large number of people.
You even use the word "hoarding".
Just as a note - you have a hoard of treasure, and defend it from a horde of creatures. You were using horde where you should use hoard.
Otherwise, both excited and giggling over this latest chapter. More please!! :D
6659467
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the tales in this universe vary pretty wildly over their histories. Unless a year, time span, or past event is clearly mentioned, then you can't make any assumptions as to when stories are set, even relative to each other.
6659556 6659543
I've been using horde and hoard wrong?
FFFFFFFFFF—fixed! Thank Celestia for that find option on Word.
6659467 6659596
What's best to keep in mind is that I write these stories like how one writes a fairy tale. "Many ages after the original adventures of the Elements of Harmony..." is basically my equivalent of "Once upon a time..." The time and place of the story is immaterial to the characters and morals taking place within it.
That said, all of the main installments are all around a similar time frame, and here Spike was probably just exaggerating a bit ...maybe.
6659484
You're not supposed to fight a titan, you're supposed to get out of its way. Similar to how you're supposed to get out of the way of a tornado.
6659484
With a Terasque. What? No, that isn't like releasing a tiger to deal with a mouse. It's like unleashing the death of civilization to protect a city. Very different.
How does one stop a force that breaks a mountain by waking up? Wonder whether it can be redirected.
6659819 That's like releasing Godzilla to fight something a lot like Godzilla.
6659819 6659873
I would've preferred the phrase: "It's like getting Cthulhu to defeat Godzilla! Sure, you got rid of a walking city-buster, but now we've got that whole 'source of all evil and insanity in humanity' to contend with."
6659873 6659888
Yeah, the Titan is explicitly a threat to things directly in its path, the Terrasque is a threat to everything, ever. In some editions it exists solely to kill the gods. Should put a matter of scale on the thing. The Titan is maaaybe CR 15. the Terrasque is never below CR 25.
6660019
CR?
Ah, nice to see more of Spike's original personality after he realizes Kindle isn't the real threat. I can see the whole "brutish dragon" act is good for scaring away attackers, but its even funnier to picture giant wingless Spike picking her up and dusting her off and apologizing. Still catching up on the rest of the stories, but if she's heard quite a few stories about Spike during dragon migrations, definitely centuries.
Hm, Twilight should still be nearby, right? But then she's probably still busy, so uh-oh, things about to get worse.
6660031
Challenge Rating. It's how D&D defines how challenging a creature is and therefore how much experience Player Characters get for defeating it.
6660019
Technically, 'normal' Titans are CR21, with Elder Titans being CR30. Though with the description of the Mountain Bull, its closer to being an elemental creature. Given its size and age, its closest equivalent would be a Primal Earth Elemental, which would place it at CR 35 .
Of course, the CR system is somewhat flawed; depending on other factors, a creature with a high CR won't always defeat a creature with lower CR. For example, the Tarrasque can't do much to flying enemies; even if they don't have the means to hurt it, most flight capable creatures/characters will have a good chance of at least escaping.
6660031
Challenge Rating. Basically, what level a standard group of adventurers should be at to have a decent shot at winning. Consider that 99% of people in the world are meant to be level 1 to 3. Level 8 your character is basically already a famous hero/villain. 15 you're journeying to other worlds and dimensions and facing cosmic horrors. At 20 the only thing that can give you pause are eventual world-destroyers, or kingdom-busters. Past 20, you can go bring down some of the lesser gods in their home plane of existence. So, putting the Tarrasque at CR 25 means a group (4-6 people) of these guys who can kill threats that would wipe out any number of other armies stand a chance at surviving or potentially overcoming.
That said, Tarrasque is basically a puzzle-boss. You can't just hack at it until it dies... it negates a lot of damage, has a lot of immunities, regenerates heavily, and even if you kill it its regeneration brings it back. You have to kill it, then use a reality-warping Wish spell to unbind it from the rules of reality and keep it dead.
Unless there's been some biological discoveries I'm not aware of, pythons are constrictors and thus don't have venom glands.
A bit expository for my taste, but the jump back to action mode helps tremendously! The favorite is earned by this chapter.
6660137 I'm not sure Spike needs to apologize very hard. Kindle's response to seeing a looming disaster that was about to kill thousands of innocents was attempt an opportunistic smash and grab rather than warn anypony. Then she distracted Spike for several minutes thanks to a vague and easy to misinterpret warning. Time that he could have been using to plan or evacuate others. Partly Spike's fault for assuming he knew exactly what was going on and thinking he had unlimited time to screw around perhaps, but the share of blame on his shoulders in still slight. Spike will still beat himself up horribly for it if anypony dies of course.
6660019 This thing makes and break mountains just because.
6660221
I've changed it to 'serpent's fangs.' For some reason I wrote down pythons when I was thinking of rattlesnakes at the time, but rattlesnakes doesn't have a nice flow to the sentence for me, so serpent it is.
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Oh, it's from Dungeons & Dragons. That explains why I didn't know what CR or a Tarrasque was, never really got into D&D. Personally, I was always more of a Warhammer 40k fanatic, myself.
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Ahh, Warhammer 40k: It's like if the Star Wars universe was written by Tolkien if he had anger-management problems and a grim outlook on life from reading too much Lovecraftian lore, before binging on 80's action movies to cheer himself up ...while on adrenaline.
6660539
Straight up Imperial man, myself. Though more of an AdMech and Imperial Guard bent than Marine.
6660548
Same here, man! Praise the Omnissiah!
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6660439
I'm not saying Spike should apologize, she's not exactly innocent but she's definitely not a huge threat at the moment. I just meant it was a funny image of how quickly Spike changed his tune, and how quickly his personality shifted to closer to the show. Which is probably what his personality is, but when dealing with another dragon, good to play up the strength. Actually, Spike's panic was a bit exaggerated for his age ("What do I do? What do I do?!), but its probably only a lighter moment before the real danger arrives, so I don't mind.
6660707
Yeah... I think his panic/attitude is a little bit too exaggerated for his age/accomplishments. I don't mind him lightening up, apologizing, or being worried... the idea that he's a big epic hero, but also kind of a friendly approachable goofball is appealing. Even the way that Kindle, who appreciates dragon/griffon behavior but not pony suddenly doesn't respect him makes sense... but the outright panic makes him look like a helpless fool who happens to be really strong instead of a competent hero who has an unexpectedly friendly and harmless demeanor.
6660150
I don't know who designed Primal Earth Elementals, but that thing is still not a match for the Terrasque. I mean hell, you can take it down with death effects. The Terrasque is immune to basically all magic. Whoever crafted those things WAY over-estimated their power. Even with all that health, I'd expect a party of level 15s to take it down no problem. Hell, Banishment works on them. Although I did notice that it comes from a non-core book, so I guess that makes sense. See, the issue is that a lot of people forget- above CR10, you need to give them special traits to make them stand up to players. There's a reason dragons have caster levels.
BTW, protip? In 2e, if played as written, it was literally impossible to kill the Terrasque. Just to make a point.
6661233
Well, I did point out that CR is not a good way to gauge how creatures would fare against each other(1). Technically, if you go by RAW (Rules As Written), 4e has the most unkillable version of the Tarrasque, since it plain doesn't have rules on what it takes to kill it(2). The 3E version may not be all that hard to kill depending on how smart the players are about optimizing their characters (and what the DM allows)(3).
(1) Primal elementals are from the Epic Level Handbook and are far from the worse designed monsters in that book.
(2) I believe 2nd Edition similarly had no clear rules on killing it permanently, but my memory on that edition is a little fuzzy.
(2) Only applicable going strictly by RAW. A smart DM would be careful to keep players from utilizing any meta knowledge. Just because, you are intimately familiar of the Tarrasque's strengths and weaknesses doesn't mean your character does.
P.S The 3E Tarrasque was also a victim of bad monster design; it originally had no immunity to ability drain despite being immune to energy drain and ability damage. This has since been corrected. However, It still has lousy feat choices, slow movement speed, no effective way to attack flying targets, a lousy will save (relative to its CR) and no immunity to effects that require a will save (beyond its basic Spell Resistance).
6661423
The biggest issue with 2e is that you can only hit it on a 1. Note that this isn't automatic- you also need to roll high enough to hit. It's bullshit.
6663075
I thought that came from this statement in its 2E MM(1) entry:
"Creatures with a minus THAC0 can only be hit on a 1."
(apologies for the AD&D terminologies for anyone not familiar with that system)
Which doesn't make sense since 'THAC0' means 'to hit armor class 0' aka 'the number it needs to roll on a d20 to hit a target with AC0'
Big T has a THAC0 of -5 which means it hits a target with AC-5 on a roll of 0 (2) . Impressive, but should not be affecting a PC's chances of hitting it in anyway. He does have an AC of -3, which may look impressive, but is not much to brag about (majority of characters planning to fight the Tarrasque would be able to achieve AC-10 by then).
(1) Monster Manual for those not familiar with D&D terminology
(2) Target number to hit a target = Attacker's THAC0 - Defender's AC, so with a THAC0 of -5 the roll needed to hit AC -5 is -5 - (-5) = 0. Yes, 2E's system 'might' seem a little strange to modern gamers.
6664415
And when questioned on why it said this, one of the designers essentially hedged and said the Terrasque was "interesting". I was discussing the RAW written state of the Terrasque. Just because it doesn't make sense doesn't change the fact that, as written, it can only be struck with a natural one.
6664853
"can only be struck by a natural 1 that also beats its AC" is not as impossible as it may seem. At level 20, any warrior class (Fighter, Paladin, Ranger) can hit the Tarrasque's -3 AC on a modified roll of 3 or above; all they need is an attack modifier of +2 or above and they effectively have a 5% chance of hitting. It is however flat out impossible for any non-warrior classes to hit it (barring some truly ridiculous attack modifiers)(1). Funnily enough, if it actually said 'can only be hit by a natural 20 that also beats its AC', it would effectively mean any level 20 character has a flat 5% chance of hitting it(2).
IMHO, if they removed the 'creatures with negative THAC0' part, that sentence would still be ridiculous but would at least make sense.
(1) Assuming a max level of 20
(2) Don't even need to be level 20 actually. They only need to be high level enough to have a THAC0 of 17 or below.
6660539
My apologies for hijacking the comments section like this, its been a while since I've been able to discuss D&D stuff with someone who knows what I'm talking about.
P.S I've always seen Warhammer 40K as "Star Wars if it was written by Robert E. Howard after watching too many action movies"
6664976
Yeah, if not for that one guy weirdly dodging the question I'd probably ignore it. As it is, it's definitely intentional, so I stand by it, little sense though it might make.
6665022
It is an interesting way of making a creature near-impossible to hit though; more creative than the usual method of giving it an absurd AC
I think that 'ability' would actually make this the most difficult Tarrasque to fight; melee/non-spell ranged attacks have a 5% chance to hit at best and its either immune to or reflects most damaging spells. Flying targets would still be a problem, but you're gonna need a heck of a lot of arrows/bolts/darts/insert-ammo-type to kill it that way.
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The thing about flying near the terrasque is it'll just keep destroying the town. When run well, the players aren't prepared to fight the Terrasque. It just happens to them, and they have to desperately fight to try and let the evacuation succeed. If your players "beat" the Terrasque, you'rr running it wrong.
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Very true, most tactics I've seen for safely killing the Tarrasque rely on the DM allowing it to happen. Key word here being 'safely'; as nigh-invulnerable as it is, the Tarrasque's offenses (aside from the lack of effective ranged attacks) are far more dangerous to deal with. It's one thing to (eventually) hack it to negative HP, surviving the process is a tougher challenge.
Blatant attempt to get back on topic:
I think Spike's best option would be to try evacuating the city. Fighting the Mountain Bull would be a bad idea, even if he were powerful enough to make a difference. Such a battle (epic though it may be) would be 'landscape altering' as most kaiju battles tend to be. Trying to divert it is at least marginally less impossible than stopping it outright.
Titans = Giant monsters rampaging uncontrollably
Alondro = wordofthenerdonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/saitama.png
The Titans don't stand a chance.
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This story is here to show off Spike. He's gonna beat the Titan into the ground.
Seems Spike has been living an interesting life...
Like this chapter. And I hope, Kindle, is going to stick around for a while.
Your doing a very possible, Future Spike, great justice. Keep up the good work!
Self controlled Spike has a great self-control.
It's good to see that in a thousand years Spike is still Spike.
Nice build-up of tension. Love Spike's change in personality. He's still a sweetheart