5 Arodus
9:30am
Guardian’s Way

Entering the cave cautiously, Gath scouted ahead. Normally, I would follow slowly, a slight distance behind him.  I’m not as stealthy as he is (a breastplate and three weapons have a habit of making random noise no matter how hard you try) but if he gets in a pinch I can probably provide cover while he withdraws.  In this case, though, Qantrip took up the position.  She’s certainly much more quiet than I, but she’s not well-armored at all. Puzzled, I followed but even farther back than usual.

And we found just how stealthy we were when we heard Voz’s voice call out “they’re trying to surprise us through the north cave!  Go guard there!”

So, no surprise.  To play along I called over my shoulder in a husky hoarse whisper, “I think she heard us! I’m going north to help out.”  And then of course did no such thing, cuz good money said the battle would be right in front of me.

Oops. And right in Trip’s and Gath’s faces.

I swiftly cast divine favor followed by a shield of faith. Voz replied to the cavern, almost mockingly, “Oh no. I think they heard me. Better hurry!”

Gath very gingerly edged forward and peeked around an outcropping of rock.  There was Voz and three skeletons; one skeleton looking better armed and armored than the other two.

Trip quietly said to me, “when I say ‘now’, pull me back.”  Before I could react to that, Trip moved forward. cast a spell into the cavern, and yelled “now!”.  Immediately, the bigger skeleton stepped up and smacked Trip hard. She grimaced but still grinned. “Burning sands. Get me out of here.”  I was able to grab her and move her behind me as I waited for the skeletons to approach.  The corridor here would only allow them to approach single file.  I made sure to pull out my morningstar rather than my sword, and waited.  From behind me, Gath shot arrows at the skeletons.

As each approached, Gath hit it with blunt arrows, and I hit it with a morningstar.  My armor was up to the test as they did not lay a blade on me.  Voz did throw a fireball that caught most of us but also got two of her skeletons.  Confident in my armor, I stepped farther into the room to let others behind me enter.  Voz was now climbing the walls like a cave bug so after I and Gath finished off the skeletons, I calmly switched to my bow.

Being the better archer, Gath drew most of Voz’s wrath, including a ray of enfeeblement, poor guy, but he fought through it like a trooper.  Voz fell pretty quickly afer the skeletons were used up, but mindful now of the difference between bounties for live people and bounties for dead people, we didn’t let her die.  Not that we exactly healed her back to prime health – she only needed to be alive, not ready to run back to Breachill in record time.

We rigged a harness to drag her back, and took a quick inventory of her stuff – some healing potins, some scrolls, a magic dagger and, perhaps most useful of all, her journals with all her notes about the caves.

Dragging her back to Breachill was no treat, but it was worth it because in our absence the council had authorized a 500gp bounty to retrieve her.  (We never got a chance to ask what she was worth dead  )  We decided to spend the night in Breachill before returning to continue Voz’s exploratory.  I picked up materials to cast masterwork transformation in the morning, and also picked up a pearl of power (1st level). Those divine favors and shields of faith are nice.

Liberté mentioned he’d found a creature in a side cave near Voz called a ticktock, I think.  Kyira had said it was evil, but Liberté (or Qantrip, details fuzzy) struck a deal with it and it seemed to honor that.  (I never even knew all that was going on behind me!)

6 Arodus

During my morning meditations, I obtained masterwork transformation for my bow.  When I was done meditating, I immediately cast the spell, hoping a finer bow might result in a finer archer.

The trip back to Guardian’s Way was uneventful.  Several of us had examined Voz’s notes, and if they were to be believed, she seemed to have cleared out a lot of the caves ahead of us (well, her skeletons did, most likely).

Not too far from where we captured her, we came across a den of large black widow spiders, and in an abundance of cautiion, I drank the council’s antivenom before I helped dispatch them.  They could have been deadly had they (or we!) attacked all at once, but they weren’t that smart.  Trip threw some glitterdust into the room and that blinded a couple of them too.  There were five altogether but a cautious strategy kept us fighting only one at a time in melee while the archers shot the ones behind, and we methodically worked thru the group.

Near one of the dessicated victims, we found a magic scimitar.  This got me excited, and I offered to “care for it”. I will always keep grandpa’s family sword, but, oh this one swings nice.

In a side passage, Gath found an area where the webbing had been cleverly worked and draped.  Aemi came up and detected magic in the same area. She looked at it a bit, then called out, “Hello? Is somebody there?”  I smiled at that but stifled a chuckle when yes, a humanoid emerged and said “you could say that.”  She introduced herself as Renali, and said (essentially) she was a traveler stuck on the wrong side of the portal.  We briefly exchanged stories, and she looked angry at the mention of the Cinderclaws.

She also warned of a goblin-king Ralidar up ahead who likely would not let our group pass.  He had killed several of the Cinderclaws at their first encounter.  Her description had Liberté thinking we might dealing with a bar-guest, which sounds like a pub problem but is apparently some sort of actual demon?

Renali agreed to travel with us but not fight with us, which seemed fair enough for now.  Forewarned about the bar-guest, Qantrip played the part of a goblin supplicant and we her servants.  Ralidar is mad, I would say, or at best highly irrational.  He decided he would let us pass if we brought him a spider head mounted on a human body as tribute.  Well, in the room behind us we had exactly those body parts strewn about, so we were able to do just that.  Can’t tell if he was surprised or not, but he accepted the construct and let us pass.  For now.  I have a feeling this trick will only work for so long.

Passing by his “treasure room” (keep moving, no stopping here) we reached a room beyond him where, according to Renali, the remaining Cinderclaws were surviving.  Sure enough, we could hear some voices.  They were at the bottom of a 15′-20′ drop, though, and rather than dropping on ropes, we decided to prevail upon the soft touch of a featherfall spell to make our descent.

Gath, Kyira, Liberté and I went in one drop.  We immediately noticed two things: 1) until we moved, it would hard for the others to come down without landing on us, and 2) we were not unexpected.  I saw a priest I presume was Mallowcup, two boggarts and two cherukai.  Time to get to business.

The priest sent a spiritual weapon (dragon jaws? really?) over to me, which, fortunately was more of a nuisance than anything.  Liberté pulled a trick I’d never seen before, letting loose a stream of curses and insults so vile that it literally set our foes on fire. At that point I knew we could handle the boggarts and cherukai but the priest was a wild card.  I fought my way through to get to him and, yeah, two satisfying blows and a solid arrow from Gath was all it took to lay him down.  Well that and being set on fire.

He had this styled gauntlet that read as magic; have to look into that.  But for now, we’re getting everybody back together and taking a quick breather before moving on.