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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 1506" data-attributes="member: 150">Brindinford (speaker in dreams part 1):The heroes entered Brindinford, trying to fight their way through the throngs in the street. Although there were a lot of halflings in the crowd, it was still quite difficult to see very far in this crowd, as the tallest member of the party was the elf, Eli, who as something just over 5 foot. It was going to be a long search (they are still looking for hewit and fiver). It also became clear fairly quickly that looking for a bard in the middle of a city-wide festival was also going to be a bit of a challenge as well. After just a little asking around they’d been given several false leads, although it did seem that the song of their exploits had made it’s way top Brindinford. They heard their song sung to them in several taverns, and had several locals buy them drinks, but other than the song there was little or no sign of Hewit and Fiver.A few hours hours after beginning this search - and after some shopping with the local merchants (Pah’s player read the fine print on her character sheet, and discovered that she was proficient with blowguns - so suddenly she had to buy a blowgun, and wanted poison. She was able to buy a simple blowgun, but not the poison so far.)Pushing their way through the crowd, suddenly they heard a commotion ahead, but could not see what was going on. Eli jumped up on top of a merchant’s cart to try to see better (while the merchant swore at him) while the two halflings hid behind Urk, who struggled to force his way towards the commotion against the tide of people running away. Eli tried to make a jump from the cart he was on - where he did not have a good view of what was going on up ahead - to the next cart up the road, but didn’t jump far enough, falling to the ground and catching his chin on the cart he’d meant to jump to. Eventually they came to a place that was clear enough that they could see what was going on - a handful of dire rats and ratmen were attacking merchants and a few guardsmen in the area. The party jumped into action. In a few rounds of quick action several of the rats and ratmen were webbed up, while the leader and a few other ratmen raced forward to attack the party. The ratmen who charged only fought long enough to protect the ratmen who had been trapped in the web - when they ran off, on the far side of the web spell, the ratmen and their leader split up, running down small alleys, all far faster than the heroes were able to go. The characters had noticed that the only weapons that had made scratches on the ratmen had been magic weapons, like Urk’s axe. This was enough to convince them that what they were facing was Wererats. But as most of the party was quite slow, pursuit was out of the question. Eventually the town guard turned up, questioned the players as well as the merchants and guardsmen they had saved. In the process it came out that the players were the heroes of Spittlemarch. That turned into a rousing chorus of their theme song (which is really starting to get old by now) and then the players were allowed to go on about their business, armed and unfetter with peace-bonds -- or any real leads, for that matter, except for some odd rumors about bloody murders going on in South Gate area. In south gate them came upon a bad street theater performance, which was thankfully disrupted by an attack of strange, savage, blind humanoids, swinging huge stone axes and expressing their displeasure with the performance. This time the heroes managed to kill a few of them before the rest took off running. With a little examination and asking around a bit, they were able to determine that these creatures were Grimlocks. Eli tried tracking the grimlocks, but lost the trail almost instantly. Talking to the guards, who eventually turned up, and a bit more investigation, left the party fairly sure that the grimlocks were in one of the many abandoned warehouses in this part of town, but they had some trouble deciding which one. So they started a systematic search. Eventually, deep in the early hours of the morning, they got it right. The party threw open the 20’wide loading doors on one end of the warehouse, and saw the Grimlock nest on the far side of the building, in and around a 7’ high platform. In side there were four grimlocks and a larger female grimlock that looked like trouble. The party started to get ready to face the grimlocks coming off the platform, but then the fight got interesting - Felga, the female grimlock, cast a spell, and the whole warehouse went dark. They were not sure what to do. Eli paused. Pah tried to pull back, looking for some sort of position where they could fight outside the pool of darkness. But Urk wasn’t going to let a little lack of visibility get in his way. He charged headfirst into the center of the darkness, hoping to find something that he could hit with his axe. The grimlocks were happy to oblige. The lone dwarf was quickly surrounded by four grimlocks, all slapping him around with their big stone axes. Felga was not apparently taking part in the ‘dogpile on the dwarf’ right away, but a few rounds later she stepped in and took a cheap sneak attack before pulling out again. Urk, battered but not affected by her poison, fought on, hollering for some help from his companions. Of course, the other three were not idle. Uri tried casting glitterdust, but it had no effect. Eli circled around the edge of the building, sticking to the inside wall, hoping to find some visibility. And Pah pulled a crossbow out of her bag of holding, and started plinking away at the noise she was hearing, without much effect. Things started to look up momentarily when Uri got the bright idea to cast a web spell centered on Urk. It sounded crazy at the time, but Urk managed to make his saving throw and stay active while two of the grimlocks failed, cutting down the threat to Urk. Then Uri took his cloak of arachnia on a spin going up the wall and even across the ceiling to try to find a safe place to cast from. What he didn’t know was that Felga was still out there looking for trouble. She cast spider climb on herself and joined Uri on the ceiling. While he was up there trying to figure out what he might do next, she closed in and reapplied some poison to her axe. Just when he though he was in a safe spot, just above where he thought the platform had been, she attacked. Pah and Urk were finally taking out some of the grimlocks (some had freed themselves, so in effect Urk continued to face two, missing a lot thanks to the darkness. Eli had circled to the far side of the room. He was luckily in the right place at the right time. Uri had been attacked by the female, who hit him several times - he’d failed his poison save, then been hit a few more times, been knocked unconscious, and fell into the ragpile that was the grimlock nest. Eli was there to give him a quick potion and bring him back to consciousness, but the next round Felga dropped down to the platform and started to smack Eli around with her axe, and he had to defend himself. Urk and Pah finally finished the Grimlocks they were fighting, and Urk tried to run around the area of the web spell to come to Eli’s aid. Of course, navigation was still difficult in the dark, and he managed to run through some of the web and get himself caught for a few rounds. Uri, after chugging down a few more potions, got the idea that there might be some help for the party in the chest they’d seen just before the lights went out. He though he remembered it beneath the platform so he dropped down to the lower level and started to paw around for the chest. Meanwhile Eli was taking a beating. Urk and Pah eventually made it to his side on the upper level of the platform, and the three pressed their attacks on Felga. After a round or two of being backed up against the wall by three opponents, Felga felt the need to get out of that situation and go back to taking advantage of the darkness. She tried to bolt past the three heroes to open ground. Each took an attack of opportunity on her, all missing, except Urk, who made a powerful backhand stroke that caught her in the spine, cutting her nearly in two. (He got a critical hit; in the end he did a total of 35 points of damage to her with one blow. She had 33 hit points at that point).Uri, down below trying to open the chest he’d finally found, suddenly felt much more sick, and collapsed, shivering, sweating, and barely able to lift his head (failed his save, lost even more strength, down to a strength of 2). Uri’s friends, pawed around, trying to find him, following his trembling voice, and pulled him and the chest out into the moonlight outside the warehouse, where they gathered the meager loot they’d taken from the grimlocks and carried Uri away to find help.Next time: Things will get better soon in Brindinford, really. Honest. For sure. No doubt about it.</blockquote>

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