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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nebulous" data-source="post: 4763283" data-attributes="member: 31465">Adventure #5: Tunnel TrapsPART TWOWith a hard reddish carapace and clacking mandibles, the five-foot long centipedes instantly attack Merric and Douvan, while a few scuttle toward the cleric trapped under the portcullis.  Jolen pales. “You really, REALLY got to get this thing off me!”<img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/tun5.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Merric tries to dodge between them but is bitten and painful poison courses through his veins.  Douvan, Jolen, Blackjack and Nari-lana are all trying desperately to get Jolen out of the trap but they fail again and again, and the portcullis continues inflicting damage as the heroes are surrounded by hungry centipedes. <img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/tun6.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Douvan abandons the gate and turns on the monsters with his blade.  Blood is frothing at Jolen’s lips, and then he’s bitten by a centipede, poisoning him on top of his already excruciating pain.  Nari-lana the sword finally uses an encounter power, teleports into the room, and BLASTS four of the centipedes to death at once.  Smoke wafts from the tip of her sword as she wryly smiles.  There’s only one beastie left at this point and Douvan quickly cuts it in half.At last, after many, many rounds of failure, Blackjack manages to get the gate up and Jolen weakly crawls out. The group heads back up the stairs, not sure where to go exactly, and that’s when they see the rat.A single, (possibly) normal rat is clawing at the corner.  It looks at the heroes, claws at the wall, looks back at them, keeps clawing some more…so Merric inspects the wall.  Sure enough, there’s a concealed goblin door in a place they hadn’t looked.  He pops it open and sees a twenty foot long tunnel that reaches a dead end, and probably another concealed door.  Indeed it is, but before he goes in, Merric swaps out his torch with Nari-lana’s magic lantern.  He returns to the tunnel, creeps through, and opens the other end.  Another goblin tunnel stretches north and south into utter darkness.  Merric steps inside, and about then he’s ambushed by two goblins with crossbows from opposite directions. Bolts fly past his head and the goblins duck out of view. Merric runs down the tunnel as Douvan squeezes in right behind him, realizing for the first time that fighting in these goblins tunnels is going to be very, very difficult. He’s moving half speed, -5 to attack, and grants Combat Advantage to the goblin sharpshooters, which it uses against the big human.  A bolt skewers Douvan’s leg.  Growling, the ranger chases the goblin, trying to knock it unconscious so they can start herding them up for Balthazar.  That’s the plan now, to knock these guys out and take ten of them back to the wizard, but it’s a fairly long ways back to the entrance. Merric brings the fight to the archers at the south, and these were the same guys sniping them from above the centipede trap room.  The Halfling sees the nine squares holes in the floor and the cages from which the insects were dropped on their heads. <img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/tun7.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The fight is not particularly difficult, but the goblins are tenacious.  The heroes are also trying to knock them unconscious using the flat of their blades, but there is still the danger of killing them accidentally.  Eventually the little bastards are subdued, and one, cowering in the corner the whole time, screams for mercy.  They’re tied up none too gently and thrown into the centipede cages for later retrieval.  Blackjack is left to guard them.The group inspects the rest of the area and finds a large room with a winch. There’s an iron grate in the floor that doesn’t open, but it lets them look down into the river tunnel.  And behind the wall they hear the deep roar of a large, cold, black river.  It was from here that the goblins diverted the current. They also find four small jail cells, and to their surprise, there are two living creatures in them.  One is an unconscious human female smeared with dirt who cannot be awakened, almost as if she has been drugged.  And in the last cage…<img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/tun8.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />“LEMME OUT TA ‘ERE!” screams a fat goblin, his pudgy yellow face pressed against the bars (and no, he’s not armed with a crossbow). <img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/bal.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />“Who are you?” asks Douvan, standing just outside the cage.  The fat goblin wrinkles his nose.“Balgron,” he answers in thickly accented Common tongue.  “Now lemme out.  Come on!”“Why did they put you in this cage?”The goblin’s nose wrinkles again, the gears in his little brain turning circles.  “Eh, they not like me.  Me new around here.  Come from far away clan.  Now me tell you, now you let me out, yes?”“No,” grunts Merric. “Aw, come on!  I can help ya!  Grishog will tear ya to pieces down here!”“Who’s Grishog?”“Leader of dese goblins.  He not nice ta Balgron the Fat.  Threw me in ‘ere.”“Who’s the girl in the cage?”“Dunno.  Dey dump her in der not long ago.”They don’t get much more info out of the Balgron, but they don’t let him out.  Still screaming obscenities at them, they finish scouting out the tunnels and find a final peep hole at the end of a long, cramped tunnel.  The peephole looks out over the river bed and the staircases. From here, the goblins could see who was coming and which direction the party went, and release the river accordingly.  They weigh their options and decide to press on and find some more goblins.  They’re out there somewhere, drumming away in the darkness, and if the scale of these abandoned mines means anything, there could be hundreds more. <img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/gobs.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />And there stopped.</blockquote>

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