AH just a quick clarification: harlan didn't say his magic was ineffective against the creatures. they're not like immune to magic or anything, at least as far as i know. he just said in his post that the spells he tried weren't effective against their armored shells specifically. that was because i didn't actually hash out any combat stuff with the mods, which was my bad, but here's what happened:

he tried two chromatic orbs (which are like balls of elemental energy), but the acid orb missed and the ice orb bounced off the shell. he also tried an illusion spell to distract one of them, but he doesn't know if it had any effect (since i didn't ask the mods and didn't want to interfere with keith and steak's thing). his last spell was sword burst (which makes a ring of blades explode from around his person) after the one monster grabbed him, and that hurt it enough to get it to let go so he could teleport away. i kept the details of the fight kind of vague on purpose but he's given that rundown to a few characters publicly so it's free for everyone to know about. i just don't want folks thinking they're immune/resistant to magic or something since that's not a thing we actually know.