Wizard Mountain Summary #14: Bugs, Boredom, and a Bugbear
Party Roster:
Standish (Katherine)
Brigling (Katherine)
Schreck (David Bjorlin)
Tolangardh (Jay)
We paid a sage to research for a total of 8 days to figure out what
was draining the life's blood out of sleeping characters near the
mushroom forest (which was missing from Edwin's notes in some strange
fashion). It is an invisible cave slug that sneaks up and
drinks all of your plasma. You can protect your campsite with a
circle of expensive salt. We bought an emegency can in case the party
MUST camp in the cave..
We decided to go looking for "new" trouble. After MUCH debate, we
went to the toll house. We found cookies, but they were sent back to
the originating server. No. Wait. That's not right.
We went to the toll house/booth/death trap. The road up the face of
the Mtn hugs the cliff and drops off sharply on the right side. The
house straddles the road. As we approached we could see that there
were a number of arrow slits in the house on the right portion and
across the span.
Inside the arch, there is a door on the left with no apparent way to
open it. Above, a number of holes (I can't remeber the term right
now) would allow for liquid death to rain down. Brigling (I think)
climbed around on the outside of the building.
He saw that the room on the right (with arrow slits) is very well
furnished. The upper level arrow slits are covered with tapestries.
He could hear voices speaking in an unknown language (perhaps a giant
type). The roof has rocks piled on top and there is another door
towards "the left" that leads into the cliff face above the house.
This one has a ring, but is barred from within. We gave up.
We then decided to see if there was another undiscovered country, I
mean entrance to the Mtn. We followed the trail into the swamp and we
got ambushed by a nest of centipedes. Giant centipedes. One of the
dogs got bitten and Standish ordered Tol to heal the dog. Meanwhile
all of the other people (except Tol) cut apart one of the centipedes
each. Tol decided "screw the pooch" and shot two magic missile in 6
seconds and went back to healing the dog. Thus Tol had a higher kill
total for the fight (there were only 5) than ANY other party member
at that point (they only had 2 HP each). The dog was fine.
We continued flirting with Death and her minions by continuing along
the path. It ended at the edge of the swamp near a creek. We decided
to follow the creek up to the Mountain. Lo and Behold! We found a
creek bed. There is also an entrance into the mountain. After a
little distance, there are two sets of stairs flanking a small water
fall. We climbed the right set and went downstream. The water fall is
due to a small overflow at that point. {{{I just had an idea. What
would happen if we smashed the stone at the overflow point. It would
make it more difficult to pass through, but it might also have
interesting effects on the dungeon.}}} The main flow proceeds from
off to the left to off to the right.
As Edwin observed, at every juncture where we could have chosen
"interesting" or "boring," we chose boring. We followed the river,
bypassing a couple of passages on the left (following the WM
right-hand-rule) and found some 3 ft high tunnels on the right.
Brigling investigated a few of these while invisible and we have a
partial map. We eventually found three Xvarts that tried to convince
us to go fight the kobolds and leave them alone. We went home, got a
full load of spells and came back and let them knock Tol unconscious
(to lull them into a feeling of superiority) and then Brigling back
stabbed one (on the second try) and Tol Slept the other two. We
continued to explore the 4 ft tunnels and found a room with some
defensive emplacements and then a room with about 100 xvarts. We
parleyed a bit. They said the kobolds were out the other side of
their lair and we decided that we didn't have enough firepower to
kill all 100 of them (Tol could only hit 10 at that point, then they
would have swarmed all over us).
We surrendered to the late hour and watched the Bugbear fight (in his
first match I think). He fought a giant lizard. Brigling wagered our
beer money (our paltry 4gp take for the adventure) against the
Bugbear. Schreck wagered 50gp for the Bugbear. As usual it was a
whiff fest, but after a while each combatant was down to 1 HP. The
lizard had a better chance to hit the Bugbear, but the Bugbear had
more damage dealing capability. The Bugbear had one last chance to
finish the fight, but missed and got crunched for failing to do his
duty.
At least next time, we won't have to decide where to go.
=====
Jay