Session Six: Fantastic Slide

Picture from Of Dice and Men

Present at the session were Darwin, Ieho and his companions Geoff and Devabriel, and Bob the Cleric. The session started with the party recovering from last week's debacle. Ieho returned from Faery mostly intact, though his hair turned an unnatural shade of blue. Bob attempted to scout out the goblin warren, but was unable to learn anything new from his attempts. And Darwain relaxed. Ieho wanted to sell his sword +1, but couldn't find a buyer in Solove. Geoff looked on enviously while Ieho debated whether to go to Pechen to sell it. But eventually the party regroups. One of the rumors going around was that the Hobgoblin king was raising an army, and the Do-gooders decided they should take care of that before he can completely regroup from his losses of two weeks ago.

They made their way back into the catacombs, where they used their Dwarven intuition to figure out what passages they had not been down yet. The corridor was largely uninteresting, with two locked rooms to the west. However on the eastern side of the corridor, they found a door leading to an evil shrine. The shrine was dominated by an idol, similar to the grotesque depictions they had seen elsewhere. It had gems for eyes, which immediately led to attempts to remove the eyes for the monetary gain of the party. They looked for traps, but must have missed something, because upon removing the first eye, four carnivorous flies attacked the party! Fortunately, they were dispatched without incident.

Searching the room a bit more thoroughly, now that the obvious treasure was taken, the party found a secret door. Bursting through it, they found an evil cleric who was not only completely surprised, but very quickly dead. They looted his chambers, getting together a pretty nice haul, and just pausing to dispatch a thoul throgrin. Having found all of the chambers in this area of the catacombs, they decided to head for the hobgoblin king, to end his threat once and for all. Hopefully without dying this time. But before they could get to his chamber, they passed over a trapdoor. Geoff was able to pass over it without incident, but Bob triggered it and Bob and Geoff tumbled to an octagonal chamber in the tunnels below.

They chose to go through the northern door, using spikes to mark it. As it happened, this was the door a group of crazy berserkers were about to come through, and a combat ensued. The party won, and they continued to explore the winding corridors, returning periodically to the octagonal chamber. They were surprised by a gelatinous cube, evaded a pit trap, and fought off more berserkers (this time with reinforcements), when eventually they found a stream. The dwarven sense of direction told them that this was the best way to return to the surface, so they followed the stream to level 3.

They see a small group of kobolds here, who immediately run off to warn their compatriots. The party cautiously follows to find a room dominated by a magma flow in the middle. Three stone bridges cross the chasm, and 12 kobolds are arrayed at the other end, javelins in hand.  Missile weapons flew back and forth, and both Geoff and Bob made failed sorties, but in the end, despite reinforcements, the kobolds were outmatched. They retreated back out of the range of the missile weapons, and offered to let the party leave for 100 gp. The party responded with another flurry of arrows, and the 10 surviving kobolds retreated back into the cave.