Flasks are funny things.

 

 

In the game, a flask is considered a flask. That might sound like an odd thing to say, but what that phrase means is it's not a weapon, it's not ammunition, it's not thrown, it's not launched, yet, it IS thrown, it can be launched, it is a weapon, and it is expended just like ammunition. The rules that define a flask are very poorly thought out and if you haven't figured it out by now...

 

Andrew thrives on rules that are poorly defined.

 

Now you would think, it's a bottle of something nasty. You throw it at the thing you don't like, the flask breaks, the target is exposed to the contents, and hilarity ensues. Simple enough, right? Well, that's before you start to get creative.

 

Andrew is very creative.

 

The flask itself technically does no damage, just the contents. Normally it's just a roll to hit and armor doesn't apply. The target can avoid getting hit, but all the steel plating in the world won't help you when a bottle of napalm washes over you. However, if the one attacking chooses to, he can attempt to do extra damage with a flask, then the target's armor DOES apply. This makes it harder to hit, but it does do a little extra damage.

 

This is where it gets funky.

 

The flask is normally made of glass. That glass can be exchanged for other materials. Andrew's preferred material is called Canthus or magically charged black ice from the fourth layer of imprisonment. Normally hard to get, but easily reproduced with the right transformation spells, it triples the damage of a weapon, making it one use in the process, which is not a problem for a flask of volatile materials. It takes the situation from a glass bottle being smashed over your head, to getting hit over the head with a bottle made from the frozen agony harvested from a thousand tortured souls.

 

Kinda stings.

 

Consider the top of the flask. Normally you would just use a cork and maybe a bit of wax to seal it, but there is no reason you can't use something more interesting, like a thunderstone that explodes on impact to deafen everything within twenty feet, for example. Change it into a screw-on cap with stoneshape and you have a rather interesting upgrade.

 

The bottle itself has two sides, inside and outside. Those are two different surfaces for casting spells. Now there are glyphs that just flat-out explode, but Andrew likes glyph that holds a spell in abeyance. Such spells are triggered when the surface they are on is destroyed. You can also trap the cap itself since there are spells that are triggered when an item is opened, and how more "open" can an item be than when the cap explodes?

 

Most people just use Fire Trap on the cap, as every little bit counts. However, Andrew prefers the much more useful Fang Trap. It not only bites the target with a set of giant invisible jaws, but the fangs hold the poor bastard in place for a good six seconds while it chews on him. An immobile enemy is a soon-to-be-killed enemy, after all.

 

As for the two glyph spells on the flask, Energy Pulse is Andrew's go-to trick. That particular psionic power has a blast radius of forty feet that was centered on the caster, making the caster immune. This makes it a hazard to one's allies, but when put into a glyph on a flask, that's no longer a problem as the blast happens WAY over THERE. Also, you get to choose the elemental type; cold, fire, acid, or something fun.

 

True, the target hit by the flask itself becomes immune to the damage, as it is centered on him, but everyone around him suddenly has a bad day. And hey, that's what the fang trap is for, isn't it? And the poison, of course. Did I forget to mention that you can put poison on the outside of the flask? Sorry. Must have slipped my mind.

 

A generous slathering of Miriam's venom is an absolute must if you are going to make the very finest bottle of Honest Andrew's 'Fuck You Very Much'.

 

The final question would then be, what to use inside the flask itself? What particularly nasty material would one put inside such a horrifying package? Some sort of powerful explosive like an infamous goblin ditherbomb? A terrible acid that dissolves both flesh bone, metal, and stone harvested from a creature known only as The Delver? No. Andrew preferred something... a bit more... esoteric.

 

Spit.

 

Oh, just not any spit, mind you, but gibbering mouther spit. The means of reproducing this wondrous substance had been known to alchemists for centuries and the oral ejaculate has a particular property. When exposed to air it explodes in a burst of light that blinds everything within sixty feet. It shines so bright, that it has been known to affect people around corners. Oh yes indeed...

 

 

 

Gibbering mouther spit makes the very flashiest of flash grenades.

 

---

 

Reginald was frozen in horror.

 

 

 

"Oh gods above..." He uttered with a hollow voice, no small amount of dread slathered over every word, "It's... It's..."

 

"PAYDAY!"

 

Reginald's head snapped around to look at Andrew who had exclaimed that word at the top of his lungs. His shouting awoke Miriam who was crawling out from under his hat, "What's going-Oh Hell." Her eyes had locked onto the ever-growing melee at the other end of the street.

 

Andrew ignored that, reached into his backpack, and pulled out two long tubes. Very quickly he popped the tops, removed the thatched squares, and dropped two on the ground in front of himself and Reginald. These squares looked different. Yes, it was caked with dirt like the first one, but these had blue chevrons on them. Three arrows each. Andrew grabbed Reginald by the shoulder, "Step on it and try to keep up!" He stepped forward onto his square while yanking Reginald forward.

 

After the last field test of his 'Combat form', Andrew concluded that it wasn't as useful as he hoped. It put too many eggs in one basket. In practice, he would have been better off dividing it up into several specialized squares. Thus these were the squares where he focused all his speed effects.

 

Reginald blinked as he saw Andrew zooming away. Andrew's levels in Clever Gladiator gave him a rather high base speed, so with both getting the same speed boost, Reginald was lagging behind. However, as he chased after Andrew, he slowed down to look around him.

 

Everyone was moving oh-so slowly.

 

He was easily moving three faster than everyone else and that wasn't including the boost to his movement. He felt like he was barely touching the ground as he blew past people rushing to help with the defenses. He paused and stared at one particular large man whose face was beet red, his legs pumping hard, yet Reginald wasn't even breaking a sweat.

 

Andrew paused at one hundred and sixty feet from the beholder. Autohypnosis was a wonderful skill that Andrew had maxed out because it allowed you to do mathematical calculations nearly instantly and Andrew knew a beholder's antimagic ray only worked out to one hundred and fifty feet. In this world, precision kills. From his backpack of holding, Andrew took out an oddly shaped sling called a Gnome Calculus. A device specifically made for throwing flasks.

 

It was already loaded with one of Andrew's Finest.

 

Whipping the calculus around over his head, he launched the flask while uttering a spell, "{True Strike}" just to make sure it landed on target. Ever since Andrew figured out that anti-magic didn't affect psionics, Andrew had been focusing on making more psionic-based, one-use items, and fortunately alchemy ignored antimagic as well.. He was hoping that the beholder, in its arrogance, would assume the flask was little more than acid or whatnot, something the beholder was more than likely immune to, and if it was magic, that its antimagic ray would take care of the problem.

 

The flask sailed up into the air. True strike takes effect upon launching an attack, so it wasn't an impediment when the flask entered the antimagic field. It transversed a high, lazy arc towards its target. If the beholder had been worried, he would have had to drop the antimagic ray to use its other ray attacks to stop the flask. But it was just a flask, what was the worst it could do? Instead the Beholder moved slightly to the left to avoid it, on principle of course, not out of any real concern, mind you. It was more than a little surprised when the flask had anticipated this and the spin in the bottle 'hooked' it to the left at the last moment, landing a rather solid hit.

 

A moment later, the beholder became VERY surprised.

 

A ball of light one hundred and twenty feet across appeared. Only those in the outer fifteen feet of the blast of light survived, but with the exception of any undead caught in the explosion, a full-on three-fourths of those in this outer ring were blind and staggering about in confusion.

 

Now the energy blasts were centered on the Beholder, a rather large creature, far larger than a man. Since the energy blasts went forty feet from the target, and the beholder was ten feet across, this meant that the blasts of fire and acid were ninety feet across inside the flash of light. Both blasts had been cast at full power and empowered to increase the damage an extra fifty percent. Even if the general mooks made their magic resistance check and reduced the effect by half, there was still enough damage to turn your average tenth-level fighter into a smoldering pile of ash

 

These mooks were not tenth-level fighters.

 

Everyone turned to see the flash, watch the ring of staggering goblins and orcs rubbing their eyes, and see... The beholder. Oddly enough, it had made its resistance checks and had barely been scratched by the bottle. The damage barely overcame the monster's stoneskin buff that had been cast upon it. However, that scratch was enough to allow Miriam's poison to infect what passed for the creature's blood and the giant, ten-foot-wide sphere of eyes and teeth settled to the ground among the piles and piles of burnt and sizzling bones surrounding it, apparently taking a nap.

 

Reginald had finally caught up to Andrew as the flask went off. He shielded his eyes then hopped up into the air a few times to try and see what happened, "HOLY SWEET GODS ABOVE! That'll show 'em!"

 

Andrew nodded as he started yanking stuff out of his backpack, "Yeah, it'll buy us some time to do something about this mess."

 

Reginald turned to his companion, "Buy us some time?"

 

Andrew thrust a pair of spurs into Reginald's hands, "You know how to ride a horse, right?" Then added, "And know how to make a performance check to hype someone else, right?" Andrew pulled a curious leather saddle-looking thing out of his bag that came with a harness. As he put it on and buckled it into place, the part where one would sit rested on his shoulders right behind his head. It looked like it was made for a child.

 

"Uhh.. yes on both counts. But why-"

 

Andrew cut him off, "PUT ON THE SPURS!!!" Reginald jumped slightly, then nodded as he locked them into place on his boots, "Are you going to summon a horse or something?"

 

Andrew shook his head, "Not exactly." He pulled out a scroll, held it, concentrated, then muttered, "{Girallon's Blessing}" A second later, Andrew suddenly grew a second pair of arms. The new pair of arms ended in claws as his old hands twisted and grew claws of their own. He slipped the crystal back in his backpack.

 

By now the battle at the last line of defense had changed dramatically. There were quite a number of low-level mooks that were outside of the flask's blast radius, so the defenders didn't get a chance to charge down the road to regain lost ground. However, they did take this moment of respite to unleash ranged attacks, like fireballs and lightning bolts, while others started handing out healing potions to the wounded. The defenders were taking this moment to regroup and heal up.

 

At the other end, the enemy leaders started to whip the mid-level monsters into a frenzy and herd them down the access road. Someone checked out the beholder and realized he was poisoned. The spherical abomination was soon cured and brought up to full fighting trim, quick to resume beaming antimagic down the road.

 

However, this was all taking time.

 

Reginald stared at Andrew as he grew another pair of arms, "What the devil are you planning?"

 

"I just need you to do two things." Andrew responded, "First, when I kill that beholder, I need you to make a hype check on whatever I say afterward."

 

Reginald was having a hard time following what Andrew was saying, mostly because of how impossible that outcome seemed to be. Instead, he grasped for what he could mentally follow and asked, "What's the second?"

 

Andrew pointed at himself, "{Expansion}" Andrew promptly went from being about six feet tall to about fifteen. Everything about him increased in size as well. He then pointed at Reginald and said, "{Compression}" Reginald blinked as he shrunk to the side of a small child. Andrew then picked up Reginald and put him in the curious saddle Andrew had just strapped on himself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Second, you might need to make some riding checks."