Adventurers
- Elixabete (Thief 3)
- Major Ursa (Magic User 1)
- NPCs: Bairstowleigh (F), Berros (F), Negu (H), Uralde (F)
With a number of their companions absent, Elixabete and Ursa invested in the services of three more retainers to join Berros before setting off again in search of the third kidnapped child. They nearly lost the services of Negu on the way when a giant hawk tried to swoop him away as a snack, but the party had stocked up on ranged gear and brought the bird down before it could carry the halfling to a lethal height.
They entered the gatehouse and made their way to the hall of mushrooms, opting to explore the corridor that Snitz had said would contain more of the hairy ones. The hope was that they had taken out most of the Gecko clan with Ursa’s Sleep spell on their previous delve.
Skirting past a deep hole in the ground down which they could make out a dry waft of heat, a yellowish glow and the occasional sharp crack, the adventurers scoped out the corridor, noting its various doorways leading out, before coming to a joined pair of rooms. They spied a hairy one occupied with spearing some ants, and then turned their attention to some odd flooring they’d spotted. Elixabete examined it further to find slightly sunken flooring running wall to wall.
Deciding against stepping upon that flooring, they turned back to find that the hairy one had disappeared. Quickly following to where it must have gone, they found two doors and heard voices behind one.
Guessing this to be a bastion of hairy ones, they ranked up and burst through the door, quickly cutting down the ant-hunting hairy one but struggling against the larger specimen with an air of authority and a smell of alcohol.
It held them up long enough for a collection of hairy ones to burst from the silent room and attack the party in the rear. Elixabete took a nasty blow and scrambled from the back rank to the middle, but eventually the higher-quality equipment of the adventurers gave them the edge and they cut down their ambushers, the chief finally falling beneath the injured Bairstowleigh’s strike.
However, the fallen clan leader’s warhammer started to glow, and a spectral version of the hairy one rose up with a menacing aura. The party turned tail and fled.
They tried breaking through one of the doors they’d passed through which they’d seen daylight, only to be confronted with a balcony occupied by two young griffons and a gliding adult plunging towards them. The spectre grabbed hold of Uralde and the fighter fell to the ground, a withered husk.
Abandoning their formation, it was every adventurer for themselves as they fled through the mushroomed chamber back for the stairs. The injured Bairstowleigh was slower, and the last the party saw as they took their lantern light away was the looming presence of the spectral hairy one swooping down upon the stumbling retainer.
The rest of the survivors were able to get back into the open and back to civilised safety to recover from their adventure.