Adventurers:
- Carbel Sweetleaf (Halfling 3)
- Dasseck Corundum (Dwarf 1)
- Firstleaf (Elf 2)
- Jebediah "Grits" Calloway (Ranger 1)
- Kelro Mist (Elf 1)
- Maistlyn Rajare (Magic User 1)
- Mike (Cleric 1)
- Major Ursa (Magic User 1)
Having left the freed captives with their hairy allies in the dwarven level of the dungeon, the party descended en masse down to the mining operation. Hoping to make the most of the owlbear’s rampage, the sound of which they thought they could make out echoing down the corridors, they charged through the furnace room they’d entered once before, now suddenly emptied of occupants.
There was a cavern full of bats marked on Giain’s scrawled map, so rather than disturb the large clusters hanging above, they doused their lights and crept through, holding onto a rope guided by the infravisioned elves.
While the dwarf Dasseck kept a wary eye on several treacherous-looking tunnel ceilings, the band of adventurers worked their way through several rooms with slaves abandoned in the dark, their overseers suddenly called to deal with other matters. One of them they identified, finally, as the young lad they’d been seeking to rescue for the village, and so they had Ursa’s retainer Antxone escort them back up to the rest of the recently-released workforce with the hairy ones.
Hearing the sound of scuffling ahead, but no longer the roars of an owlbear, the party sent Kelro to scout ahead. He saw two ogres pummelling each other in the midst of an argument, a third one nursing a badly-clawed arm and the body of the owlbear surrounded by a pile of cat heads and hairy ones. One foot-high figure stood to the side, watching the fistfight.
Carbel activated his ethereal armour and advanced, torch in one hand and the sachet of lethal magic powder in the other, the latter of which hurled at the largest ogre. It toppled over and a crash, and a few moments later staggered to its feet as a zombie and attacked its former brothers, one of whom fled into another chamber while the other fought back.
At Carbel’s signal, the rest of the party charged in.
The angry foot-high figure, frustratedly hacking at but failing to do any damage to the incorporeal Carbel, was quickly overrun, but the ogre took much more work to bring down, finally falling to Maistlyn’s magic missile just as two ogres emerged angrily from the side chamber. They gave Firstleaf a good old whack before he scurried away. Ursa sent one down in a magical slumber with his own incantation to have its throat quickly cut, but the final brute fought angrily to the last, nearly taking out the sturdy Grits before it too was finally killed.
There were more captives to be rescued, so the party led them back after pilfering some gems from around the ogres necks and some copper bars next to a winch leading down to the river way below. Leaving the freed hairy ones with their Tiger Beetle clan allies, the sizeable collection of humans returned to Fourtowers Bridge to a warm reception from a grateful community glad to have its three kidnapped youngsters back safely.