241106 Great Rejoicing
General Summary
This week’s instalment comes to you sponsored by the prestigious organisation, Amazoom. Amazoom, the only place on the material plane where you can order anything and have it delivered by autonomous golems. Amazoom and its affiliates (non-exhaustive list) are in no way responsible for loss of limbs, life or pride during the delivery process.
“Bugger!” said Drogon as he listened to Luthiel and Jude discuss their knowledge of the Queen Lolth. Turns out she isn’t any old Queen, but an ancient Demon Queen. As if demon queens weren’t bad enough, this one was also geriatric. At least that’s what Drogon understood by it all.
After the previous fight, as documented by the teenybopper Luthiel, the team made a thorough search of the cave system and found little. They gathered themselves and decided to press on without resting or tending to their wounds. They each in turn came to ask Jude how their cuts and
bruises looked. She looked each of them in the eyes and firmly told them “You’re fine, suck it up buttercup,” without even glancing at their abrasions. Luthiel was trying to work out if Jude really thought that or just couldn’t be bothered. After a bit of teenager whining, Jude eventually healed Luthiel a smidge.
The onward journey began to take its ever-present toll on the band, as the sense of dread and foreboding grew and began to weigh heavily on them. Kurog seemed happy enough and sang a rousing song entitled “I don’t give a sh*t!”. No one joined in. The fungi lighting the way, they trudged through the uneven tunnel, always down, always gloomy, always damp. Nearly the entire
day passed before Drogon, who was scouting, saw a shape to the right-hand side of the tunnel, a sort of bundle of rags.
He called to the rest of the party to catch up. It turned out to be a corpse, a male elf by the looks of it. The body was prodded with a staff to see if it decided to animate, but nothing. Interestingly, even though the corpse was male and a full elf, Thorg still thought to ask “Is that Sentinel?”. Now, dear reader, it may well be that Thorg knew of Sentinel’s amazing talents of disguise and credited her with dressing up as a male elf, with impressive anatomical accuracy. Or he just wasn’t thinking that straight. We’ll let him off, it was probably just the lack of light and proper meat in his diet.
Jude inspected the corpse using her knowledge of medicine and determined that the elf had been exsanguinated, like the previous one they had found. Her best guess was that this had happened in the last day or so. Griff started to look shifty and was caught measuring the corpse for armour and looking in his bag for a weapon it might use, should it start to walk again mysteriously of its own accord, for no particular reason at all. He looked at the self-righteous cleric and just couldn’t face the hours of lectures he was bound to get.
So, on they went, further into the worsening gloom, deciding to finally camp in a little side niche. They settled into their normal watch routine, with each pair on watch trying to stave off the damp chill from their bones, whilst the others fell into a fitful sleep, full of nightmares. Although nothing happened, a dark depression began to bite at Drogon and he succumbed to a feeling of malaise and dark thoughts nipped at his subconscious, leading him to wonder why they were here at all. Kurog just belted out the chorus of another song he liked called “Who needs sunshine anyway?”.
A new “day” started and so did the walking in the dimly lit, hewn-rock tunnel. Courtesy of Luthiel’s spellcasting, an invisible Drogon took on his usual Team Scout duties, sadly solo, and his thoughts further darkened as he thought of the horrors that Sentinel might be going through. Maybe she had
already met the fate of the poor elven fellow they had found yesterday? He missed her sarcasm and acerbic tongue, especially when directed at the cleric. A glimmer of a smile appeared for a fleeting second, but soon faded along with his memory of sunlight. Kurog using his terribly off-key baritone, launched into the ditty known as “Dark, damp, gloomy caves forever and ever and ever and ever!”
After a few hours, Drogon began to hear voices from up ahead, punctuated by laughter that echoed down the tunnel with an eerie reverberation. Drogon shook his head, to try and make sure the voices were real. He couldn’t tell, so continued his ever so careful sneaking further along in the
gloom. The voices were definitely up ahead, his curiosity overcoming the feeling of dread. The faintest of movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention and he froze in place. Slowly turning his head, he saw a Drow fighter close to the wall who was looking down the corridor towards
the party as they approached from the distance. He had definitely seen them, but not our careful and blessedly invisible halfling thief.
Drogon had to make a decision and fast! If this dark elf decided to raise the alarm, then things could get a little nasty. The darkness in Drogon whispered to him and he made a decision. He crept silently towards the Drow and pulled his dagger from its sheath, then quickly slammed the blade
under the Drow’s chin up into his brain, killing him instantly. Drogon helped the body fall to the floor slowly and quietly, before heading back to the team to report in. Griff raised an eyebrow at the diminutive rogue, impressed at the ruthless efficiency. He definitely saw Drogon in a new light after
his forays into quiet assassination. Maybe the Band of Tomb Raiding Assassins had finally earnt the moniker.
A quick search of the body revealed a further fighter’s talisman, bringing their haul to four. Kurog hefted the corpse and threw it down the nearest sinkhole. Thorg noted that these sink holes were the one thing the Kurog hadn’t mentioned about putting in his throne room. He wondered if the
hulking half-orc was just a little bit scared of slugs. No, surely not, right?
Carefully creeping onwards, the group found that the corridor opened up into a wide cavern, crawling with various humanoids. Too hard to distinguish of what type at this distance in the dim light. Closing the distance, it was soon easy to see that there were at least thirty Bugbears, along
with at least six Drow that they could see. There were probably plenty more that they could not see! The band settled in to the time-honoured system of talking about a plan and then changing their minds at least three times before not really having a plan at all. Team Spellcaster got into a debate about this spell or that which made Kurog’s head hurt. Thorg tried to join in, flexing his own spell abilities and nodding wisely and using the words “Witch bolt” a lot. Everyone was impressed.
What had started as a plan of subtlety and silence, turned into “make as much noise as we can and lure them towards us”. It made perfect sense to Griff, Luthiel and Jude, whilst Thorg and Kurog were struggling to care about plans at all. Drogon asked the Teenager for a further invisibility and snuck off down the corridor with a view to get past the Bugbears and do some damage from the back. What he found was actually a huge group of slaves, along with another group of Drow. The slaves had all been badly beaten and were bound and gagged, a mix of Elves, Orcs and Humans. Whilst he was contemplating this, the plan was hatched. He knew this because Jude was charging down the corridor towards the thirty Bugbears with a wide grin on her face, screaming “Burn, mother ******s!” (The author would like to apologise to his younger readers for the foul-mouthed cleric, she just cannot seem to help her potty language).
Luthiel blessed the fighters and the thief, as Jude reached a point where she cast Sunbeam, instantly frying ten of the goblinoid creatures in one round, their charred bodies sending up an acrid stink in the close quarters. Team Heavy metal marched out to meet the threats. Kurog breaking left to face off against the six Drow in a side corridor, Thorg charging up to support Jude. Luthiel maintained a perfect distance to keep the Bless spell going and waiting for an opportunity to nuke anything that wasn’t a part of their exclusive clique. Griff had Hastened Kurog and stood with Luthiel to perform his support role. Kurog, a blur of metal, anger and death under the wizard’s spell. Drogon kept still watching yet more adversaries enter the field of battle, these were definitely bigger versions of the bugbears, perhaps foremen?
As Jude fried a second line of poor Bugbears, Griff stepped out and fired a Fire Ball into the midst of the Drow harassing Kurog. Griff raised his famous eyebrow at his handy work and nodded, pleased with himself. Kurog turned to Griff mid-fight and tried to raise his own eyebrows, but both were now missing. Griff missed the social queue that Kurog wasn’t overly happy with him. Kurog took out his anger at missing portions of his mighty half-orc beard on the Drow chopping them into sloppy elven fillets.
The party spied a few new types of Drow weapons being deployed against them. Several had what looked like staves embossed with magical runes and underneath was a trigger. These staves when fired, glowed green and a missile projected from the end. One hit Kurog and he said afterwards that it had hurt. Several mounted Drow had entered the fight a-lizard-back as well, but one soon fell to the meatgrinder of Kurog’s axe.
Several of the Drow had now closed on Jude and Thorg, allowing our Eldritch Knight to ignite his sword and weave burning, bloody warfare on his foes. Luthiel kept up the nukes where she could and Drogon ran back towards the rest of the team, stopping to fire his bow into one of the larger,
more hench Brute Bugbears, proving he still had it where his aim was concerned.
It was then that a second Fire Ball roared its way past the heroes towards a tightly packed group of targets, exploding into a fiery inferno. Only Drogon saw that the fireball had caught a few of the slaves as well and that Griff had obviously been aware before launching it. They locked eyes and
Griff shrugged and they silently agreed never to mention this to anyone, ever. Certainly not to the sanctimonious cleric or the judgy teen-Paladin. What were they to do with these goody-shoe types eh?
The fight was obviously turning in favour of the heroic band of law-abiding citizens, and the enemy employed the usual tactic of Drow Darkness, trying to mask their retreat. The band executed plan Zeta-Three-Oh-Seven which had been carefully rehearsed over the last few days. The plan? Oh, it meant that everyone just ran through the darkness. It was clear that the Drow had run and run fast but not before killing a few slaves as they ran past, but they hadn’t taken the slaves with them.
Amongst the slaves, was a very much alive Sentinel, much to Griff’s relief. A familiar voice rang clear and true once her gag was removed. “About bloody time, you imbeciles!”. The team all grinned to have their compatriot returned to them. After some healing and food, Sentinel told her tale to the band. Something that perhaps should best be told by Sentinel herself, a harrowing tale it is.
The party set to the task of searching through the corpses to find any clues and treasure. On the corpse of the lizard rider, they found a new medallion type that they hadn’t seen before, this one had a spider on it. Perhaps another clue leading towards Lolth. A search of a lizard pen area
revealed the following chests:
- 50 silver ingots (100gp each)
- 25 gold ingots (180gp each)
- 5 mithril bars (50gp each)
- 25 gems (100gp value each)
- 50 gems (50gp value each)
- 100 Fungi food parcels
- 75 Meat food parcels
- A chest of mixed coins of unknown denominations and types.
Report Date
06 Nov 2024
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