Due to a printing problem at the Baldur’s Gate Bugle, the newspaper is going to have to shut down for a few weeks. It will take a while to get the unicorn parts out from all the presses and restore them to printing in black instead of all colours of the rainbow. The prankster that polymorphed the mouse into the horned quadruped has been disciplined. Luckily this copy got out first and I am handwriting this editorial a thousand times.
“Bugger!” said
Drogon as he realised that the fight was not yet over. Our intrepid band still had the Chimera to deal with, which was currently languishing in its own demi-plane. The group set up in the usual “surround and hack” positioning and Jude stopped concentrating on the spell and brought it back.
Even with the advantage of a stupendous critical hit from Drogon, the Chimera managed to get three attacks off at Jude, one for each of its monstrous heads. Her shield came up and she readied herself for the incoming blows, only to hear the three sets of teeth click together missing her completely. This allowed the team to chop the monster into its component parts.
Kurog lifted up the lion head debating how best to mount it in his throne room.
Griff picked up the goat head and worked the jaw like a puppet. “Hey, I’m Kurog and I killed a goat!” it said. Kurog decided not to bother and walked off.
With the battle finally over the band took stock of the room. Team Heavy Metal moved to secure the throne hall, whilst team Sneak split duties, Drogon exploring south and
Sentinel searching Snurre’s corpse. He certainly dressed like a king and had all of the trappings associated with that status. All giant sized of course, so totally useless to everyone.
Of the pieces of interest, it was documented as such:
- Very Magical Warhammer – burst into flame upon hitting its target. Shimmers oddly in the light so suspected of being made from adamantite.
- White Dragon hide cloak, with 2 ruby eyes (400gp each) – Deemed to have some protection from cold, to be determined.
- Chess containing clothing including a number of pelts (three?) worth 1000gp each.
- Set of mystic rune stones for divination
- Various weapons, all non-magical: 4 swords, 2 shields and a flail (giant sized)
- Enough Elven armour to equip @luth with half-plate, sword and shield.
Griff nudged
Jude as she was furiously taking notes of the goods, pointing to a bag of coins on Snurre’s belt. “You didn’t take account of that,” he sniffed. Jude raised an eyebrow at the wizard. “Really? A few coins?” she asked. Griff decided to lecture our cleric on the art of remaining the good
side of impecunious and that every copper piece counts. Jude’s eyes glazed over and she desperately looked to
Thorg and Sentinel for help. None was forthcoming, they didn’t want to get involved.
A search of the back walls by Sentinel revealed the secret door that the team knew had to be there and they found out how the giants had been moving around. Sadly, no trace was found of the strange elves.
The overall mission was still to clear this level and that just left the armoury, which Ombi had told the band was guarded by a Chimera. Now, the chances of there being two Chimera were pretty slim so they were confident that the armoury would be unguarded.
As they sauntered around the empty corridors, it was clear that the work of giant-slaying was pretty much done. The armoury proved to be a disappointment as they had failed to cater for smaller creatures. How selfish! Plenty of spaces were empty, giving a nod to the number of giants that had passed this way and grabbed weapons only to be killed by our heroes. Thorg and Kurog settled into an old argument over who had killed the most. Whatever number Thorg said, Kurog gruffly added one to it until Thorg reached ten. At that point Kurog just said “One more than that!” and looked a little uncomfortable with counting at such dizzying heights as double digits.
The team took a short rest to recuperate a little after their massive Throne room fight. Sentinel chatted to Luthiel and Jude snoozed after gulping a bottle of her never-ending supply of wed wine. Drogon and Griff played dice, both cheating and both losing consistently. Thorg and Kurog had a
press-up competition, which apparently is rest for the muscle types. The
Gods looked on and smiled, rest was not in the future omens for this eclectic group of misfits.
After their rest, Sentinel suggested the disposal of the magical giant battle axe and war hammer in the forge, so as to remove them from any future encounters with Giants that decided to pick them up. They were dragged and thrown into the magma, where the team watched them slowly melt. It
was here that Griff’s dreams of a Giant Weapon Emporium died, with a sigh and a tear he watched the last vestiges of magical energy dissipate. Those that had felt those weapons bite into them, were not sorry in the slightest to see them gone.
The adventurers all got into their marching order and headed down to the third level to further explore. Now, Sentinel had been down here before if you remember dearest reader and had discovered pillars that snagged and tried to eat her. So, they proceeded with caution with Drogon on point, detecting everything about everything.
They headed west towards the “singing” room that had been previously mapped by the bard. The wind whipped through the room causing what can best be described as melodious whistling. Sentinel prepared the group to resist any ill effects from this strange sound. It was indeed a strange
yet haunting acoustic phenomena, but proved to be harmless. As the group moved into the room, blobs of a greyish ooze dropped onto Thorg and Drogon.
As soon as the ooze hit Thorg’s armour It began to dissolve the metal of his plate epaulette which Thorg quickly unbuckled and dropped to the floor before it could eat anything further. Drogon, on the other hand got drenched but his magical armour managed to stave off the worst of the effects.
It did eat his belt buckle however. Nothing is funnier than a
Halfling, covered in grey ooze, screaming with his trousers round his ankles. Even the taciturn Sentinel cracked a smile and said “Bless him!”. It turns out the ooze didn’t affect flesh, which was something. The rest of the team
sprinted to the other side of the cavern to avoid the stuff dropping on them. Looking back and up at the celling they saw a lot of this stuff sat there waiting for hapless explorers.
Not much damage had been done and a poke with a dagger by Sentinel proved that stabbing the ooze was going to do little. It was noted not to go back this way. The group moved on to a further side corridor off the main cavern, only to be dropped into darkness. Definitely a spell and they were
definitely under attack. Thorg decided to head forwards to find the edge of the darkness spell, which he did along with eleven antagonists. They were all dressed in plate armour and lizard-scaled cloaks and their skin had the same grey pallor the team had seen a few times before on the strange elves.
All elven looked at Thorg as he raised his hand and cast Mirror Image. Their reply was to pull the trigger on their crossbows removing all of the mirror-Thorgs and turning him into a
Human pincushion. A few of the barbs pierced his armour and proved to be poisoned, their caustic payload
causing excruciating pain. Before anyone else could react, there was the sound of breaking glass in the middle of the group and they were enveloped in a poison mist catching all but Kurog and Jude. Kurog, Drogon and Griff managed to make their way forward and found themselves facing the same eleven as Thorg.
Sentinel put two and two together and worked out that the phial that had been thrown at them couldn’t have come from the front and they may well have further enemies behind them. And so, she went backwards through the darkness spell, Luthiel and Jude followed her. They found three
more of the Dark Elves about to ambush them coming from a previously hidden doorway. Jude ran head first into the three, to save the two damsels in distress. Not that they were distressed or needed saving, but we can all agree that there were, in fact, definitely damsels. Jude cast one of her
favourite spells, Spirit Guardians only to have a blow catch her on the head, breaking her concentration and breaking the spell.
The Dark Elves then cast darkness again on Team Heavy metal and broke away, the same for the group at the rear. Sentinel commanded one to stop which it did, allowing the rear guard of ladies to pummel and blast the
Elf according to their particular skill sets. Jude failed to grapple the elf in an
attempt to capture one of them. All the other elves had disappeared down various corridors, leaving this one. They had their prisoner, they just needed to keep it alive. It was then that the elf stopped its attempt to flee and drew its dagger. Without a pause or thought it rather shockingly slit its own throat and dropped to the ground dead. This was going to be a hit and run sort of fight.
Thorg raced down the corridor to see a couple of the elves running faster down other cave entrances in the main cave. This was very different to the stand and fight tactics they’d used with the
Fire Giants. A change of approach was going to be needed.
Griff looked left and right surreptitiously and went to the dead body, rifled through its pockets finding a medallion with the same design as they’d found on the other dead (well, half a dead elf) they’d previously encountered. He then doubly made sure that Jude wasn’t about as he raised the
corpse into an undead servant. How he thought Jude wasn’t going to notice I am really not sure.
And that, my friends, is how we’re going to have to leave this week’s tale. There is much adventure and exploring to be done but it’s going to be very tricky with these dastardly dungeon denizens popping up all the time. Perhaps they need a plan? But then again why break their habits when running, hacking, swearing and screaming has worked so well up to this point.
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