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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 1700966" data-attributes="member: 1210">Grimlock Gauntlet4:20 a.m., 5/4/368 O.L.G., on the bridge in the Neversun Chasm, StrogassJawbreaker grins.  There are twigs in his beard, and there is a stick- his preferred poking stick- in his belt.  But his hands are tense on his spear.  Half a dozen grimlocks rush forward at the party.  More are coming up behind them.Jawbreaker thrusts forward with all his strength, roaring in pleasure as he connects.  The spear catches one of the grimlocks in the chest, piercing its sternum and heart.  Steaming blood bursts all down the barbarian halfling’s arms.  He roars again, quickly jerking his spear free, and strikes at another!*  This time his blow deflects partially from the eyeless creature’s ribs, tearing a great gash in it but not finishing it off.  It growls and makes to leap at Jawbreaker, but then Laodegan catches its head with his sword, smashing through its cranium and brain.  Yet another growls as an arrow from Thelonious zings into its thigh, and another still is tripped by the newcomer’s growling and barking dog.  Ethel (Federico’s dog) rushes in barking and tears another to the ground in a much more brutal fashion.  The downed grimlock hacks at the dog of the newcomer, but misses.  Meanwhile, another moves forward wearing a chain shirt and wielding, rather than the crude axes the others have, a sword surrounded by a flickering green glow.  He springs forward and slices into Jawbreaker’s arm.  The barbarian drops his spear and whips out his axe, smiling crazily as he begins to dance with the grimlock captain.“That’s the leader!” cries the newcomer.  She has somehow vanished, but she’s still audible.**Thelonious keeps firing at the others, trying to whittle the fight down to the party vs. the grimlock captain.  He is brutally effective, sending arrows into the wounded grimlocks, sinking one deep into one of the monsters’ genitals and slicing them clean off, killing the beast instantly.  Another arrow bounces off of Laodegan’s armor when it goes astray.  “Watch it!” the other human cries, even as he cleaves through one of the grimlocks and into another.“Sorry!” Thelonious yells back, continuing to fire.There is blood slicking the floor, now.  The battle is nearly done.  Only the leader is still standing, swinging and drawing another red line on Jawbreaker’s chest with the glowing sword, and then Ethel drags him down.  Federico springs up to heal Jawbreaker and praise Ethel.  “Good job, Ethel!” he cries.The grimlock manages to parry Laodegan’s strike from the ground and kicks the dog away, but Jawbreaker laughs heartily as he steps up and sinks his axe into the grimlock’s chest as if it were a tree stump.  There’s a loud chunk as the axe destroys the monster’s breastbone, heart and lungs.  The glowing sword falls from its hand.“Search ‘em,” Laodegan gasps.  Then he looks around for the newcomer.  “Where’s that girl?” he demands.  “Come out!”She reappears from the shadows, tiny and camouflaged.  “I’m here.”“Who are you?” the human demands.“My name it Lita, of clan Alexander,” she replies.  “We have to get out of here!”“We need to get past them,” Thelonious says.  “Were you down below?  What’s going on down there?”“I’m an adventurer,” she says.  “I descended into the chasm, and there are those things.”  She gestures at the bodies.  “I was fleeing... I was afraid they were going to catch me and kill me.  I couldn’t have taken them all by myself, that’s for sure.”  She pauses.  “You need to get past them?  Well, there’s a stairway that goes up not far away from the bottom of this cave.”  She gestures at the passage at the far end of the bridge.  “That was their leader we just killed, so we might be able to break through while they’re confused.”“Are they likely to send out another group?” whines Federico.  “We need to rest.”  His tail is between his legs.“We could do it in the mushroom chamber,” suggests Thelonious, but Laodegan’s glare makes it abundantly clear what he thinks of that.  “How about their side of the bridge, then?  At least over there we’ll have a little more warning.”“True enough,” Laodegan admits grudgingly.  They make camp after looting.  In addition to the sword, the leader wore a chain shirt, and they also find a little over 300 gp in assorted coins and four garnets.  Most interesting, they find 21 electrum coins.  “These are obsolete,” says Federico.  “Nobody really mints them anymore.  They don’t really have a fixed value anymore, either, but they used to be worth about half a gold imperial.”When the group divides up the treasure, Federico ‘forgets’ to include the electrum.  The others gently remind him.Then they rest at the side of the bridge farthest from the cave, setting fearful watches and giving themselves time enough to heal a little and recover from the terrible ravages of their recent adventures.Midnight, between 5/4 and 5/5/368 O.L.G.Once again Laodegan makes a futile attempt to talk sense into the mad halflings he’s fallen in with.  “I have things to do, I can’t die down here!” he tells them.  “Going into a grimlock village!  It’s madness.”“We’re not going into the village, we’ll be sticking to the edge of the cliff until we reach the stairs,” Lita says.  “I think we’ll be able to get through while they don’t have a leader.”“Besides, you keep saying you have things to do, but I think you’re making that up,” Federico says.“Hmph!  I’ll have you know that I have a letter for the Governor of Stempa Province!”“And he’s here, in the mountains?” Federico asks sarcastically.“As a matter of fact, yes- somewhere.”  Laodegan harrumphs.  “But my guide had the gall to go and die on me.”“Let’s go,” Jawbreaker says impatiently.They move across the bridge and down the sloping cave.  “We might as well light torches, since they can’t see anyway,” Laodegan comments, and they do.  The passage has obviously been hewn into the wall of the cliff here by long hard work.  Rubble is to either side of the path that our short heroes (and their human friends) walk down.  They are unopposed as they follow a series of switchbacks hacked out of the stone, descending for almost half an hour before finally, nervously, reaching the bottom.  “Carefully,” Lita whispers, and moves ahead.  The others follow her.  Outside all is dark.  Even if it were noon, it is doubtful that there would be any significant light that reached this far down.  The group knows there are huts not far away.  They swiftly follow the edge of the cliff.  There are only scattered drumming sounds from the direction of the huts; the enthusiasm of the early pursuit of Lita has faded.  Suddenly there’s a howl, and a crude javelin clatters past Federico’s terrified head.  “Look out, they’ve seen us!” the kobold cries.  The group moves swiftly, running full tilt for the stairs up the side of the mountain.  There are more howls behind them and another pair of javelins misses them.  The group rushes up the narrow stairway; it’s barely wide enough for two of them to travel side by side, and it’s too narrow to fight comfortably on.  The sounds of pursuit follow them for a few minutes, but then the grimlocks give up, seemingly unwilling to go too far up the stairway.“We made it!” Thelonious grins.“We’re not at the top yet,” Laodegan snaps.  The group climbs for several hours and finally emerges at the top in the sunlight of early morning.  Then, clearly, it’s time to break for a meal.Next Time: Our heroes finally reach the shiny thing!  What is it?*The ol’ ready action plus AoO from reach combo. **Combo of shrinking to tiny size and chameleon.  Her Hide check was something about 40, iirc.</blockquote>

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