Air Spiral (Wizard Spell)

An air spiral spell creates an upright, helix-shaped, revolving staircase in the air. It appears with one of its treads firmly under the caster's feet. The caster can choose to be at the top or bot­tom of the stair, or anywhere in between. The staircase itself can rise or descend at a flying movement rate of 9, Maneuverability Class D, as the caster wills. It revolves in an area 90 feet high and 20 feet in diameter.
Although the air spiral cannot move through solid objects, it can pierce all known magical barri­ers (such as forcecages and prismatic spheres), opening permanent safe-passage holes in them as large as the stair-spiral. A being on the stair could safely pass a barrier, but one clinging to the outside of the stair rail would be subject to the effects of contact with the barrier. When an air spiral strikes an immobile solid object (such as the ground or a wall), it does so gently, in the same way a feather fall spell minimizes the shock of a landing.
All beings who can reach this staircase can stand on it, cling to it, or climb up and down it. While in direct contact with the air spiral, beings can breathe underwater if the stair takes them there, and they are immune to the effects of heat, cold electri­cal discharges (including all sorts of lightning), and all crashing or constricting attacks (including water pressure and spell or monster attacks).
In any round the caster can work only one of these effects, and can affect only one creature.
The caster of the air spiral, whether on the stair or not, can, by force of will, banish any extraplanar crea­ture in contact with the stair instantly hack to its home plane. Such creatures get no saving throw.
The caster can also force any being touching the stair back into its true form, thus, ending any curses, shapechange magics, illusions, and dis­guises of less than demigod power that mask the being's real appearance.
The caster can also make the magic end and the stair vanish at will, or cause it to explode in whirling eddies that occupy the same volume as the spiral, but have the following effects:
They extinguish all flames instantly.
They destroy any air elementals on contact, or they banish any other sorts of creatures from the Plane of Elemental Air back to that plane, and bind them so that they cannot reenter the Prime Material Plane for one lunar cycle (about a month) per level of the caster. (Such creatures can travel freely to and among all other planes if they normally have the ability to do so.)
If they have not been used upon creatures from the Elemental Plane of Air, the eddies inflict 1d12 points of damage plus 1d4 hit points per level of the caster on any other single creature, and force a system shock survival roll upon all beings of 7 or less experience levels or Hit Dice. Failed system shock rolls result in death.
This spell is often collapsed instantly into its whirling eddies aspect by casters seeking to use it only as an offensive weapon or to extinguish flames.
Notes: Rare for Air mages and very rare for others in the Forgotten Realms setting; virtu­ally unknown elsewhere.
Category:Wizard Spells
Category:Spells from Wizard's Spell Compendium
Category:Spells