Why are you special?

Wendy and I are invisible and staying out of it for the moment, so the two golems lay in with their spiked chains as they're swarmed.

The golems are handling themselves well, at least. Energy Immunity means opponents' breath weapons are meaningless, Medusa's bane means opponents' gaze attacks are meaningless, their own magic immunity means spells and spell-like abilities are meaningless against them, Stormrage negates ranged attacks, Ray Deflection negates ranged touch attacks, Mystic Shield plus Starmantle negates weapon attacks, Greater Shield of Lathandar soaks almost every natural attack they're hit with, and their fast healing takes care of any lucky hit that actually manages to both land and get through their damage reduction.

Meanwhile, Sakkratar's Triple Strike gives them two bonus attacks on their spiked chains plus some bonus damage, Wraithstrike means they're targeting touch AC, Opportunity means they pretty much never miss (and they crit very often), Heroics gives them Great Cleave and Whirlwind Attack, Winding Key plus an Augmented Mythic Haste means they get two full attacks in a round, and Combat Reflexes (also from Heroics) plus various stat boosters means nothing approaches them without permission… oh yes, and against this chaff, they're a quite reliable one hit, one kill setup: The simulacrums are basically just melting into puddles and evaporating en mass.

It stops being fun to watch after about five minutes: It's just mindless slaughter over and over and over.

I talk to Wendy, 《So… do you mind monitoring the situation here while I go try and sort out where all this chaff is coming from?》I mean, I could just leave a Scrying sensor, I suppose….

Wends nods - invisibly, but there's no immunity to my spells, so my True Seeing works just fine - and thinks back at me,《Sure. It's kind of mesmerizing just how wasteful this all is.》

《There’s tricks to make it less so. I don't know which he's using… while I did see him working through a giant mess of Wishes,  this isn't what I saw him doing with them. So I'm thinking there's another source. I'd like to cut it off, or maybe snatch it for myself.》Should be easy to find: Just backtrack the infinite streams of minions.

《Have fun… I kind of like what you've done with his other toys.》Ah, yes. The two golems. I suppose with the buffs they make suitable meatshields. Perhaps I should make a few of my own… build Paper Golems (they're cheap golems from Dragon Magazine that take just a day to make, but are still golems) and use the Transmute Golem spell to make them into an Adamantine golems. Maybe get the Rudimentary Intelligence feat so I can give my golems an intelligence score and some feats… a thirty hit die adamantine golem can be turned into a 15th level spherescaster that way, and can be advanced to 45 hit dice and a 22nd level spherecaster. Trompe L'Oeils will probably be generally better, but take longer to make…

I muse as I backtrack. The walls here are stone, so Earth Glide lets me walk through them unhindered and Tremorsense means I can tell where the chaff is despite the walls.  Soon enough I find an art gallery, where three extraordinarily ugly women are chanting, causing a creature to form, which they then briefly give some instructions on where to go and who to fight, and off it goes.  This one is an iron golem.

Each woman is unique. The first's hair, claws, and teeth crackle with sparks of electricity. Her windswept hair billows up from her brow like a thunderhead. She's a Storm Hag, and she stands directly in front of a painting of an empty beach with a storm-tossed sea. The next woman has black, frostbitten skin, white hair, and a black ice staff decorated with bones and gems. This one is a Winter Hag, and she stands in front of a painting of a snowfield. The third has empty eye sockets and jagged teeth punctuating the palpable hate that roils off her twisted, gray-skinned body: A mute hag, she stands in front of a painting of a burned-out circus.

Looking a little more closely, I notice each of the three hags seems to be made of layers of paint, and I put it together: They’re Trompe L'Oeils themselves. Constructed creatures utterly loyal to their creator, imbued with magic that duplicates the creatures they appear to be: Hags. And they've formed a coven at their master's bidding, and are using the power granted a hag coven to work together to cast certain spells as a full round action from all three hags, at will: Animate Dead, Commune, Mind Blank, Reincarnate,  Vision, and more; the Mute hag boosts the power of the spell like abilities (she has a caster level of fourteen, rather than the normal ten), while the Storm and Winter hags add options… of particular note at the moment, the Winter Hag adds Simulacrum… which is normally an eight hour casting time with expensive components… but as a spell-like ability there's no components, and as a hag coven ability it's just a full-round action from all three.

I wonder which dungeon is going to go haywire from this? That seems like it should be a pretty considerable draw, as they’re magical beings using magic to mass produce more magical beings.  Good thing we're trimming them… but I need to put a stop to this.

Hmm… OK, so I can control these the same basic way I stole the adamantine golems, but they'll revive on destruction, and it's not clear if my control spells would continue to the new body.  That's a risk I don't want to take, so… I get a surprise round when I attack, getting two Disintegrate spells off (I get double actions, and a surprise round is normally only good for a single standard action by default) reducing two of the fake Hags to black dust. For the actual round, I blow away the remaining hag on initiative, and then blow her away as well with another Disintegrate. Three more get rid of their paintings.

They won't be back. But I know the trick, so could make my own… not that it matters: I can make simulacrums faster. And Ice Assassins too, for that matter, which is a much stronger version of the same spell: They have full strength, not half, and a few boosts besides.  In fact… I make one, right now, of Fred. I only need a piece of him as part of the material component line, and I get to ignore that thanks to Telepathic Caster.  The result? An ice sculpture of me. Naked.

At least, that's what it looks like to me.

It's a clause in the spell description: Everyone else *should* see Fred, naked, but I'm the source, so… ice sculpture of me. That should just be visual, though.  "Hold still…" I command it, as I reach out to feel up my creation… yes, it's just a visual effect. Although… exploring with my hands, I find… yep, female.  Great… my curse again.  An always-female copy is generally going to be less useful… still, should be fine for this.

I am curious… "Do you have the memories of your original?"

She answers instantly, "Almost none; I think I just know what you do? … and I'll need some buffs to stand a chance against my original."

Pity, "Do you know your levels and abilities?"

The ice sculpture considers, "Seems I do! I'm a Fighter-2, Arcanist-8, Eldritch Knight-10 with Prestigious Spellcaster to make up the lost caster level, and thus get both 9th level spells and the base attack bonus of sixteen needed to get that fourth iterative attack... also the two-weapon fighting chain and some archery feats. Lots of attacks, no metamagic. Also, I'm Mythic, dual path Archmage and Guardian, tenth rank. So… I need time to prepare most spells, also a spellbook, but I can get several off from Wild Arcana. Oh, I also rolled all eighteens on my stats, and max on each hit die."

Great: So it takes a critical hit from an Artifact to kill him. And mine isn't a weapon… and I don't have Godripper yet. Ugh. Storage it is… at least I know his hit die count, that will make it easier for certain spells.

I nod, "Well, lets make you useful, then…"

I take some time and buff up my ice sculpture, giving her weapons, defensive spells, stat boosts, and so on, basically copying my own loadout, although skipping anything that's not useful for her: As an Ice Assassin, she can't heal, so anything related to healing simply doesn't work on her. Likewise, she explodes when she hits zero hit points, so Delay Death does nothing. I do load her up with a few post-death boom spells, though.

No clothes; I like the view, and expect it will really mess with Fred to see a female version of himself out for his blood, not wearing anything. Actually, it's probably been quite some time since he was with a real woman, "By any chance could you bluff your original into thinking you were coming onto him?"

The ice assassin considers, "Do you really think he'd go for it? I don't."

Hmm. Drat. It might be fun to watch… ah, that libido… "OK. Well… let’s go trap him…"

My ice sculpture pouts, "I don't get to kill him?"

I smile, "Not yet, we need a suitable weapon, first. But if we trap him, we have time to find one, don't we?"

That brings a smile to her face, and we go searching….