Adventurers
- Elixabete (Thief 3)
- Firstleaf (Elf 1)
- Major Ursa (Magic User 1)
- NPC: Berros (F), Oro (F), Meddleden (F), Mendoria (MU)
The gang reconvened a few days later and hired Meddleden, a new Fighter to take the join the front rank, and to their dismay discovered from his wheezing ascent to the gatehouse that he wasn’t the hardiest of souls. Hopefully he would at least block a couple of blows before one of them needed to step into his place.
Deciding against meeting up again with the hairy ones of the Tiger Beetle clan, opting to keep their options open should they come across any of the Gecko clan, the party crept forward to the location of their previous expedition’s final fight. The room was bare but had a couple of doors leading out. One had some unintelligible message scratched into it, and Firstleaf’s keen ears heard some faint voices beyond the other. It opened to show light peeking out around another door at the end of a corridor. Elixabete snuck up to hear three people murmuring, a human and two… humanish voices chanting and criticising respectively.
Deciding to stick with the tactic that had served them passably well so far, the adventurers tried to kick down the door and catch the room’s occupants by surprise. This door withstood Oro and Meddleden’s boots for a little too long though, and the party finally burst in upon an indignant trio of robed figures, one human and two serpent-headed humanoids.
Firstleaf’s retainer Mendoria started chanting to cast an enchanting sleep over their adversaries, but the bald, goateed man started completed a chant of his own first and the adventurers were all plunged into a magical darkness. Somehow fending off the blows of the two snakemen, they stumbled back into the first room, feeling their way along the corridor walls and finding a spot where their lantern suddenly gave off light again.
They waited to see if their opponents would follow them, but instead found a huge slug-like creature edging into the room behind them, eye stalks waving curiously in their direction and multiple gloopy limbs dragging it forwards. They tried slowing it down with iron spikes in its path but it just consumed them, so Ursa indulged in his pyromanic side and hurled several flaming oil flasks at it, chasing it out into the large mushroom-ridden chamber until it was dead. The fiery antics drew the attention of several gecko-riding hairy ones who caught a quick glimspe of the party before disappearing into the gloom.
While the rest of the adventurers pondered their next course of action, Ursa opened the scrawl-covered door and came face to face with a dwarf ghost, its one remaining arm pointing at him and screaming at the magic user to get out. He quickly did, just in time to see his companions absorb the charge of a larger group of gecko riders. Taking several bumps and scrapes, the party slowly fought through the front rank of hairy ones, and then Ursa sealed the deal by sending the rest into an arcane slumber.
The mounts scurried away into the dark, and the party quickly slit the throats of all their attackers save one, who Elixabete and Firstleaf hoisted up and threw into the ghost-occupied room to see what would happen. The hairy one’s screams of terror merged with the ghost’s stern chastisements, and it hammered on the other side of the door for ages.
Noting that nothing physical seemed to have happened to it, the party spiked the door shut and quickly scouted out the rooms and halls leading out of the mushroom chamber. One room had an ornate set of double doors flanked by two columns of great dwarven statues, and another was occupied by a sitting suit of full plate armour which had them quickly ducking back out
Time was passing and wounds needed tending, so they updated their map and withdrew back to the surface and safety.