Just thought I would go into town and have a drink. The mead at the Blue Fire isn’t bad, nor is the ale. Bumped into Alex, Heron and Zebadire and joined them for a few, but we were interrupted by sounds outside. Can’t imagine who heard them over the racket from the dominoes party.
Turned out there were spiders out there and the weapons of some of the militia were lying on the ground. It didn’t take long for Heron and Alex to take them down, with a little help from me and also Zebadire, though he was careful to stay in the doorway. Alex is a good tactician and marshals forces very effectively. Heron seems somewhat withdrawn and taciturn, but then he is an elf brought up by monks, so what can you expect. Alex, on the other hand can be very outgoing, at least when she is fighting, during which she shouts a lot of encouragement. Both seem made for battle and seem happiest when exchanging blows to a purpose.
Meanwhile, in the inn, it transpired that something or someone had broken into the inn and carried off Dog’s daughter. (Don’t know why she wasn’t helping in the bar like she usually does). Dog’s’ wife was injured so I healed her (got to keep in with these Orcish types). But the situation meant that I had to go and fetch Buckthorn for a bit of tracking. As wolves go he is better than most at that, and led us all the way to a hole in the ground, via a few more groups of spiders, the last of which were carrying two of the militia, one of them being Dog himself. He was unconscious but alive so after we had dispatched the spiders, I was able to heal him and we sent him back to the village carrying his paralysed companion for whom I could do nothing. Wisely, we neglected to tell him that his daughter had also been carried off. He will be fairly upset with us if we don’t bring her back alive, as we didn’t give him the chance to help.
During our tracking, we also encountered bizarre organisms that Zebadire described as ‘sentient spells’, something left over from the Last War, but far from home. Wonder what drugs these wizards take. They didn’t cause us any trouble though, before Heron and Alex destroyed them, so I have no idea whether the evoker was talking nonsense or not, though I should think the chances are pretty likely.
Alex and Heron drew out the guarding spider from the hole in the ground, making mincemeat of it, and we descended by rope into a warren of narrow passages, where we were harried by a number of spiders of various shapes and sizes. Thanks to the two fighters and some fiery spells from Zebadire these didn’t trouble us too much. Did I tell you about Zebadire? He’s this kind of fire mage, describes himself as a focused evoker, whatever that is when it’s at home. I thought we were all pretty focused types actually. Still, his spells did come in very useful in the narrow spaces of the tunnels.
We did come to a large cavern with a load of fungi. Well, I’m not used to being underground much, so they just looked like big mushrooms to me. Taking my word, Alex went in to explore. No-one was more surprised than me when one of them suddenly shot across the ground and attacked her (well maybe she was). I felt a bit bad about it and obliged to offer up my remaining curing spell, which left me with little more than a few orisons. Still, whilst I might not be as effective a fighter as Heron and Alex, I can still give them reasonable back up. (Let’s hope that Zebadire doesn’t run out of spells, not sure that I would want to rely on his combat skills).
Further along the passages we came across a rock fall. While the rest of us carefully passed it by, Zebadire spotted a glove protruding from the fallen rock. (Well I guess the rest of us were on the look out for enemies rather than haberdashery). In fact it turned out to have a rather dead and fairly squashed dwarf on the end of it. A modicum of pulling and pushing extricated the body, which turned out to be carrying an untarnished dwarven axe (well that will be about as much use to us as a side pocket for a toad, as the orcs say), a potion bracer with three potions, and a strange compass thing in an ill-fitting pouch. Shortly, Zebadire announced that he couldn’t work out what it is, therefore it must be an ancient artifact defying magical identification. (Yeah, right. Must watch out for this bloke, seems to live on his own planet).
More wandering brought us to a cavern with some slumbering spiders (so spiders sleep do they?). Heron, prompted by Alex, simply went in and smote them as they lay. The rest of us took the hint and helped clear up.
Only the final central cavern lay ahead, when sounds from the most recent passage we had travelled alerted us to someone or something outside. More spiders, but this time at least one of them being fought by a rather ugly humanoid, turned out to be a shifter. He turned out to be a ranger/ barbarian called Geraint, who had been persuaded by some farmers to rescue a shepherd and some sheep. Once we had overcome the spiders, we advanced, augmented by the shifter to see what was in the cavern.
Basically, there were some more spiders, as well as curtains of webs containing what looked like trussed bodies. One of the spiders bit me rather badly before we killed them, but an extremely large spider about 15 feet across emerged from the far side. With a line of four of us, plus the spellcaster behind firing, well, fire, at it, we managed to defeat it without too much damage to ourselves.
Alex and Heron saw of another spider down the far passage, while the rest of us freed trapped people and sheep, all of them unconscious. The people and most of the sheep were still alive, and I did what I could to stabilise them before noticing that they had had eggs planted within them. Fortunately, I was able to cut these out, inadvertently killing only a sheep in the process. The mage was able to carry the unconscious people back to Highbarrow on a magical disc floating behind him. Dog and his wife will be pleased. For some reason I volunteered to stay with the unconscious sheep, while the shifter (whom I must say seems a bit guttural) went to fetch the farmers. In the end, I was glad to get back to my cave.
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