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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Damon Griffin" data-source="post: 2645725" data-attributes="member: 3568">Paladin's Journal - entry 7It didn't take us long to decide to use the main inside gate, and didn't take us long after to regret it, either.  I guess maybe Heironeous or some other god maybe decided we'd had things a mite too easy with the orcs, and decided we needed to be taken down a peg or two.  What happened was this --After Wulfgrim did his little restoration for Gerik, we started off from the orc shaman's quarters, expecting those stirges we'd been told about.  At first there was only four, but two of them latched onto Winter like he was the last meal they'd ever get, and went to work on him.  As it happened, he was the last meal they got, we did kill them all, but it was harder than you'd think.  It only took one good solid whack to kill one, but it was hard to get a solid hit.  The room we were in was a large one, with stone stairs leading down into a fissure the stirges had come from, and a large stone door carved with the face of a dwarf.  Gerik and Lance went to try opening that door, and they got a load of alchemist's fire dumped on them for their trouble.  For the instant the door was open, Gerik could see there wasn't nothing behind it but the pumps and valves for the alchemist's fire.  Between this and that poison gas trap on the statue, I'm beginning to wonder if there wasn't something seriously wrong with the previous tenants.  Gerik and Lance was both burned really bad, so Wulfgrim and I healed them best we could, and we all went back to rest again 'til the next day.  Winter was really weak from all the blood he lost to the stirges as well.  By the end of the day we was pretty well rested and found the halflings had busied themselves with cleaning up the place, and had done a right fine job, especially in the kitchen.  Their farm is between here and Blasingdell. The orcs who captured them did a lot of smashing and burning, and killed most of their livestock, so they got no place to go back to just yet.  I don't know if they are waiting for us to leave and take them back to their land, or plan to do cooking for the dwarves over the winter, but they ain't idle in the meantime. Next day Wulfgrim did his little restoration for Winter, and we started off from the orc shaman's quarters like before, and this time took the stone stairs down.  The stairs led down the sides of a natural rift and switched back and forth between stairs, ledge, and more stairs, until the rift narrowed.  After that it was more like switching between stairs, tunnel, and more stairs.  Several places along the way we could see or hear a stream.  In one of the tunnels a stone bridge had been built over the stream, where it came out from a high point on one side and disappeared down a low point on the other side.  At that bridge we ran into seven more stirges, most of which Winter put to sleep and they fell into the stream and got swept away.  We finally got to the bottom of the stairs and went into a big sparkly cavern, real pretty in the torch light.  Four more stirges was hanging from the ceiling, and Sharwyn dropped them to the ground with her colorful spray spell.  We didn't spend much time in here.  There was two other exits, one going off southeast (or so Wulfgrim and Tayla said) and one to the northeast, and we took that one.  That took us to another good sized cave where we fought two trogs and a bear I guess they kept as a pet or guard animal.  I remembered what Wulfgrim said about trogs smelling so bad, and hollered out for Wulfgrim, Braford, Lance and me to take care of them -- fighters and dwarves can handle such things better than other folk, just like clerics and wizards seem to be able to resist a lot of spells better than your fighting types can -- while the others handled the bear, preferably from a distance.  Remember what I said before about Gerik having more guts than good sense?  After that bear took a swipe and me and got a good hold of Lance, Gerik run up and jumped on the bear's back, and killed it with a short sword between the shoulders.  Then right off he started talking about a bear skin cape to replace the one his aunt give him, and about taking trophies of the claws and teeth.  I'm pretty sure he just wants to impress the girls with that stuff, but I can't say he didn't earn it.There was several exits from this cavern, and Tayla and Sharwyn worked out a scheme to block some of them with flasks of alchemist's fire while we checked the others.  That way trogs and such couldn't sneak up on us as easy.  One exit led to the little cave where they kept their pet bear, behind a grate.  One went to a dead end, one to the old orc tunnel we'd seen from outside, and two more led off south.  We picked one of these and followed it a few yards before we come to a branch.  A short ways down that branch was a room with giant mushrooms, that started screaming when we got too close.  Once they quieted down, we went real still to listen for anyone coming, and Sharwyn set one of the fire flasks at the end of the branch tunnel.  We didn't see anything, but when it got to where the noise said something was right in front of us, Sharwyn set off the fire with a magic hand spell and some kind of invisible creature started burning.  Once it was dead we could see it and it just looked like some kind of big fungus, but it walked.Wulfgrim noticed a shiny sword and helmet in the room with the screamers, so we went in and fetched them out, which started up the screaming all over again.  We knew anyone down here couldn't help but hear all that racket, so we left the branch tunnel and continued south for just a short ways, and found that both of the tunnels heading south from that last cavern met up here, and continued on south as one tunnel.  We set ourselves to meet whatever come out of that tunnel, and had another couple of fire flasks set, but we soon found out the trogs was two steps ahead of us.  We had remembered to watch our backs down those two tunnels, but what use is that when what's coming at you is invisible?  As we realized a minute later, a trog sorcerer and his pet giant lizard had circled around us somehow and come up the two tunnels at our backs, and they gave Winter, Gerik and Talya a time.  Gerik had to back off from the lizard and drink a healing potion just to stay alive.  Sharwyn had been back there too, but changed her position as soon as Winter started gagging and coughing from the trog smell.Things was pretty confused for the next minute or so.  Javelins came at us from up the south tunnel, Tayla set off both fire flasks with magic hand spells, the sorcerer put me and Lance and Braford all to sleep.  After he woke up Braford got to fight the trogs hand to hand, and him and Shatterspike wne through two of or three of them like hot butter.  I woke up from a sharp pain in my backside, and found out later Sharwyn had shot me with an arrow!  I walked stiff the rest of the day, and I just might remember this if she is ever put to sleep with a spell, see how she likes it.  Well, never mind, it did the trick.  I could see right off that I wasn't going to get many solid hits through this big trog's tough hide and breastplate, so I dropped that bastard sword we'd found down the hall, and tried wrestling with him.  He was a slippery one, and it took a while, but once Winter recovered enough to help out, I did eventually get a good enough hold on him that he couldn't cast any more spells or defend himself proper, and he was knocked unconscious and taken prisoner.  We had killed seven trogs and the lizard in this room, and was pretty beat up ourselves -- if not for the fire flasks turning the tide, we might all have been dead -- so once we had the prisoner secure and Gerik had a look to see what the other trogs was carrying, we took the old orc tunnel out and went back up to the gate level. Gerik made a bunch of good suggestions about keeping the trog sorcerer secure, and then him and Tayla and the halflings went back to skin and butcher the bear.  Wulfgrim and me went along to keep watch, him with darkvision and me with detecting evil, and Jack led the mules down to carry the bear meat.I don't know if we're done with trogs yet.  If we've seen any females yet, I can't tell them from the males.  There might be non-combatant females, and maybe young as well.  Those we can't kill, and I am reluctant to drive them off just as winter is setting in.  Maybe we'll try to get something out of that sorcerer, and anyways I will talk to Lady Athlese when the dwarves get here and see what dwarf law and custom says about this.  Maybe the dwarfs will be willing to keep the trogs captive until spring and then turn them out.  The sorcerer is a problem, too.  He is evil and I bet he's the kind to hold a grudge, so just turning him loose don't seem smart.  But unlike the orc bandits, he ain't a criminal that I know to tell, so I got no basis to have him executed.  There's no law in place here, so I got nothing to refer to.  The abbot always said "a paladin carries the law within him", so I guess I have the ability to make law where there ain't any yet, but is that right?  One of the other senior priests, a dwarf that liked to use metal and stone as examples of everything, liked to tell us that justice is like bronze, an effective combination of law and mercy, like bronze is of tin and copper.  He'd say the combination is better than either alone, but too much of either one ruins the mix, and you need experience to know how to proportion it.  I hope questions like this get easier to solve with experience.</blockquote>

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