Stone Soules Summary: Ruins Exploration
Mind you, this attack took place on July, 3 2172.
We explored the city and learned that the beihir can leave it. We explored a few buildings of interest and saw some bugbears who had snakeskins for totems. They appeared to be enemies of the snake worshippers. We found a tunnel marked with the name "Tunnel" into the mountain in Runic II or III. Beithir sized. It had huge guardian stone golems.
We then planned to send in two groups from our base camp on the ridge (with everyone except the cavaliers there). The first would scout around the tunnel since we knew it was out of town currently, and the second would look around at night to see where there were lights (specifically in a library we were interested in). Both teams were to be invisible. The first team was Alegra and Elowier the mage-steward and Dari. The looked at the demonspawn a bit, but not too much interesting there. Dari fell off the wall here and turned visible. She left the city and we went around to the other side. We watched to see who came out of the "enemy" bugbear tower - this was before we knew it was bugbears. We then left and went to look at the tunnel.
Nothing was there, but Alegra shined her a continual light bead into the tunnel while Elowier stood at the gate to the courtyard where the tunnel was. Light kept reflecting back, like 1 flash then wait then two flashes then three etc. Finally this freaked out Alegra enough to leave. She went to where Elowier was supposed to be and said, "Okay, let's go." Then Elowier says, "Okay." Then another voice, says, "No, Dari's back in the tunnel." We realize that this person is speaking with Alegra's voice.
I told Elowier to leave and I started to hear the rumble of the beihir. The other Alegra is trying to convince Elowier that I am the impostor (mind you we were still invisible). I tell Elowier to run and then I started to. Elowier went for the gate. I started to run and dodge through alleys. I headed towards where the day before they had said was a courtyard when I couldn't get to the exit. It saw me when I headed onto the mainroad so I backtracked. I tried to cross a different main road but it zapped me with a lightning bolt. Only my dexterity and +1 vs. lightning from Phaulkon saved me. I took half damage and still almost died. And that was from only being within 10' of the bolt. I ran into a building and it started to bash the wall. I then ran into one across the street in the courtyard, one my character had never been to but they had explored yesterday. Basically here the beihir looked in and lightning bolted the room but the metal framework around it reflected it a bunch of times. A large golem-construct-robot thing came down and started attacking it. There were automatic guardians at the arches leading further in so I skulked around. I wrote my name on the wall at one point and placed objects around the room to distract from me. I was sure Alegra was toast.
The beithir is taunting me and telling me I can't wait in here forever, considering that I was alone. I couldn't spell cast if I wanted to stay invisible. I had some iron rations and I had already eaten some of Dari's goodberries. Some bugbears came in after the beithir left and 1 got toasted by a guardian in an arch when it saw I thrown something beyond. They scryed on me at this point and they saw the room and recognized it but not much else. They saw the writing on the wall and knew I was alive from a locket they had.
They developed a way to rescue me. Gerald was involved. They sent Grien to me to send a message and some goodberries. Grien almost died and through very complex circumstances, crash landed on the front steps. I managed to save Grien, get two Bugbears toasted by security and scared them away. I read the message and wrote on the wall with my ink. They read the message through scrying and developed the final plan. They surveyed with Dari's crow and realized that there were 3 bugbears and 1 "human" - a demonspawn outside with a snake head and two snake arms. When they got to the city, Gerald, Theo, and Eli went in invisibly. They crept up on the demonspawn and Gerald and Theo hit it once each and killed it in a segment. Then, Alegra ran out of the room and Eli slept the bugbears (and Grien, but he was unconscious anyway), and Eli grabbed the head of the demonspawn Gerald had cut off, even though one of the snake arms Gerald had cut off bit and poisoned Gerald. Then Eli grabbed the pouch and weapon and headed off to the wall. He turned himself invisible. Gerald went off in a screwy direction for stealth and we all made it to the wall. We started climbing over then Gerald was last. The poison hit him as was going up (he took a total of 35 points of damage from it) and he slipped, but pulled himself over. We then booked it out of the city. All told, it took maybe 30 segments for the whole operation. The Sphinx relayed a message. Mind you it was pouring rain. "We will pay in kind for this." We think they will attack the town, Middle, but we're going to attack them first. We made it back to Middle and that is where we stand now.
Confused? I was, too. Barely made it out alive.
Kyle