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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tor Bladebearer" data-source="post: 571066" data-attributes="member: 4939">March 24, 295 YF Before the run begins, the party receives XP for the first two runs, with a base of 325 xp apiece. The party breaks camp at the base of Critias’ tower, and heads back into Gray Cliffs to gather supplies and say their farewells. It is clear that the town has been through a bit of a fight; there are scorch marks on walls, overturned carts, and clear signs of violence. When they get to get to the Aemon’s Forge, they see that much of the front half of the building has collapsed! Hasty repairs have been done to the worst of the damage. Once inside, the dwarves are horrified to see that their master’s forge has, in fact, been turned into a tavern. The once-glorious silver glowing anvil now looks completely mundane, and has been turned into a table in the middle of the common room. The tavern is busy with activity, serving as a makeshift infirmary of sorts for the injured. Several townsfolk have various cuts, bruises, or broken bones, and the few women tending them are glad to have Jakob’s assistance. Caladriel, the old elven bard, and Mayor Netter are also in the infirmary, both unconscious. To the best of his healing arts, Jakob determines that while their bodies are not that badly damaged, Lazarus has grievously wounded their minds. He is unsure when they might re-awaken. The elder Taproots are overjoyed at the return of their children. Samwell was injured in the attack, and is hobbling around the inn with the aid of a cane. Milo tells his father all about their recent journeys, and while he is disbelieving at first, he is convinced when Tala confirms it. Milo asks after the shortbow his father keeps, hoping to take it with him on their journey, but unfortunately finds out that it was destroyed in the attack. The party replenishes their stores of rations, torches, and other minor goods from the tavern’s stocks, while Elda makes sure that they at least all leave with a good breakfast in them. Both parents put a good guilt trip on Tala and Milo for leaving behind the inn, especially with the threat of unknown creatures attacking in the future, but the two are not dissuaded from their plan. Meanwhile, the new “acting Mayor”, Malcolm Preen, has come into the common room of the inn and he urgently flags the attention of the rest of the party. He has just talked to Critias, and makes it very clear to the party that he thinks the old sage’s tale is utter hogwash. He tries his best to persuade the party to keep all their tales of danger and ancient treasures to themselves, and hopes that they won’t waste any more time with Critias’ “fools errand”. Malcolm is quite concerned about getting everyone worried over “fairy tales” and pooh-poohs the party’s suggestion that he try to rally the defenses of the town. After it is clear that he will not convince the party to just drop the whole issue, he agrees with Tala that it would be best for all concerned if they leave the town as soon as possible, hoping that this will all blow over. Malcolm doesn’t score any points with the dwarves, either, referring to them as “gnomes” and generally being quite distrustful of all the newcomers to the island. As the party is preparing to leave, a very small halfling girl comes sneaking out of the back kitchen. Jacie, the youngest of the Taproot siblings, goes over to Ug and asks him to make sure that he takes care of Tala and Milo on their adventure. Ug shows her his “shiny stone” and she is very impressed. Jacie asks Ug to bring her back one, and she tries in vain to get her brother and sister to agree to let her join the group. Pouting that they get to go off and have exciting adventures while she has to do dishes, she says goodbye and scampers back into the kitchen. Finally, the party sets out to leave Gray Cliffs behind, headed to parts unknown. Milo leaves a goodbye note for his parents, along with 10 gold pieces. The party debates whether or not to bring Torix’s rowboat with them, and decide that they might need it. Loaded down with supplies and now a boat, the party leaves the town and returns to the ancient mines on the far side of the island. Tala is unsure whether she’ll be able to get her hawk, Barav Kree, to come with them underground, but after some coercing she is successful. On the way down to the portal deep in the mines, the party stops to experiment more with the two rooms with the red energy fields and glass cylinders. Tardok even tries to cut through them with his axe, but is sent flying across the hallway for his efforts. Finding no way to get into the rooms, the party proceeds to the closed-book temple with the portal. Inserting the rakalith stone into the triangular hole on the right side of the portal, the archway springs to life with flickering blue and gray energies. A high-pitched keening sound starts coming from the key. One at a time, the party leaps through the portal. There is some brief attempt to rope together party members, but those holding the rope are sucked in afterward. All the while, the keening is getting louder. Finally, Ug is the last to go, and he grabs the key… … and it won’t come out. He tries to pry it out with his sword, and it shatters into a thousand tiny pieces! The energies in the portal begin to grow unstable, whips of energy lashing out of the portal. Alarmed, Ug tosses the boat through the portal then leaps through himself. The party has the strangest sensation of being smeared out into a twisting river of energy where they can no longer see each other, or even themselves. They are disoriented by the sensation of speeding along with the “current” of the river. Without warning, the river becomes turbulent and incoherent, and then with a blinding flash of light, they lose consciousness… Some time later... Tala slowly wakes up, realizing that someone is going through her belongings! She is in total darkness, and covered with a inch-thick layer of gravel and small rocks. She quickly casts Lightand the glowing cloud of fireflies reveals a ratlike-humanoid just a few feet away, looking at her in surprise. Tala and the ratman, along with the unconscious bodies of the rest of the party, are in a room very similar to the temple with the portal they were in previously, only in a far worse state of disrepair. Most of the pillars have collapsed, and the room has filled with a variety of junk: broken furniture, piles of rock, moldy fabrics, and the like. There is a portal archway, just like the one they traveled through, in the same place in the room, and it still flickers with a hint of energy. The whole room is covered with small gravel, as if it had been sprayed out of the portal after the party came through. Torix’s rowboat lies in one corner of the room, in bad shape after its journey through the portal. Alarmed at Tala’s revival, the ratman grabs his overstuffed sack of loot and bolts out of the room. With lightning-quick reflexes, Tala throws an Entangle over the one exit from the room, and the thief is immediately caught in a writhing tangle of roots shooting up through the debris. She begins trying to wake the other party members, and soon the whole party is on their feet and attacking the ratman. After a mightly blow from Ug, he bleeds to death, trapped in the twisting roots. Milo recovers the bag of stuff, and finds most of the party’s valuables and finer items inside. However, the party discovers that all of their rations, water, and wine are missing as well. A quick search of the debris doesn’t turn up much interesting, but Milo does find a scroll case, complete with a magical scroll inside! Jakob recognizes it as Divine magic, but says that it would take some time from him or Tala to decipher it. After pausing for a moment to gather their bearings, the party heads out and finds themselves in a tunnel somewhat like the tunnels outside the temple in the lowest level of the mines, though clearly a different layout. From behind a closed door ahead, they can hear the sounds of activity and rat-like chittering. With Ug leading the charge, the party smashes in through the door, to find a very surprised group of ratmen feasting on their stolen rations! Two of the ratmen are in battered leather armor and wielding ill-kept swords, while the rest are in tattered rags just like the thief the party dispatched. Between mighty blows from Ug and a well-placed Color Spray from Fargo, the party makes short work of them all. Jakob manages to keep one from bleeding to death, but the party realizes they have no way to interrogate him, and just leave the ratman behind, tied and gagged. Me: There is rat spit all over the wine skin.Torix: I’ve drank worse. The room has similar piles of junk and debris piled in the corners, while the rats themselves were sitting on or around a few large broken tables. There are a number of small, uneven but smooth holes in the walls and ceiling of the room, leading into tiny tunnels. There are several exits from the room, and the party argues which direction to proceed next. The party waffles back and forth, and eventually Ug strikes out in one direction over the objections of the rest of the party. The party quickly follows, not wanting to get separated. Entering another junk-filled room, the party enters but sees no sign of ratmen. Once they are fully in the room, however, the piles of debris all around the room explode into action, sword-wielding ratmen leaping out and ambushing the party from all directions! Several of the weaker unarmed ratmen creep in from the other hallways as well. The combat is vicious, with even the best fighters having a hard time hitting the nimble ratmen, and most of the spellcasters trapped in melee combat. Anathor puts a Charm Person on one of the ratmen, and attempts to send him to keep the other rats from getting reinforcements. While the language barrier makes the situation unclear, the ratman does go over to the approaching unarmed ratmen. He has some sort of discussion with them, and they go scurrying back off into the tunnels. Meanwhile, the combat is raging and much of the party is wounded. Torix, distracted by the charmed ratman running around behind him, suffers a devastating hit from his opponent. The ratman’s sword thrusts clear through his shoulder, and Torix falls to the ground in a heap. Tala quickly disengages and uses a Cure Light Wounds to bring the gravely injured Torix back to his feet. It has become a running joke that being healed by Tala involves chewing on extremely bad-tasting roots. Milo manages to fell his opponent in solo combat with a few well-placed blows from the black wavy dagger found on the dead Ophidians. As the fight continued, the stabbed ratmen began to look very ill and keeled over. Meanwhile, Ug finally manages to land a brutal attack on one of the ratmen, cleaving him in two, while the band of spellcasters at the far end of the room get the upper hand over their combatants. Eventually, the ratmen are all dispatched, but not without having inflicted some serious wounds on the party. Their newly-charmed ratman friend tries to convince them to go one way, further into the "manmade" tunnels, but the party instead decides to go in the other direction, into some more natural tunnels. The ratman follows them, but as they enter a large cavernous area, he becomes quite agitated. Making some sort of arm-flapping gesture of warning, he tries one last time to get the party to go the other way, then runs off himself. Cautiously, the party explores the large cavern. The sound of many bats flapping off in the distance becomes quite clear, along with the sound of running water. Sticking to the edges of the cavern, the party finds that it curves around and is eventually blocked by a river, some thirty feet across at and least a few feet deep at the edges, moving swifty. The party decides to turn back and explore more of the ratman tunnels. They note more of the small smooth holes in the cavern wall. Returning back to the corridor right outside the portal room, the party finds a room with two large portcullises (portculli?) blocking a stairwell down. The winching mechanism is on this side of the gates, and with a little elbow grease the party raises both of them. They then decide not to actually go down the stairwell, and debate whether or not to re-close the gates. Half the party wants to leave then open, the other wants to leave them closed. Ug: Ug votes we close just one. Surprisingly enough, the party goes with Ug’s suggestion and closes only one of the portcullises. They then return to the large cavern to explore it more fully. This time they go around the other edge of the cavern, and find that it too meets the river. As they follow the edge of the river, the sound of bats moving in the distance is definitely increasing, and they are sounding more and more agitated. Midway through the cavern, the party finds a five foot wide stone natural bridge crossing over the river. Their unfortunate ratman “friend” from before is at the foot of the bridge, lying dead in a pool of blood. The cause of death is hundreds of small bites, and many chunks of flesh are ripped gruesomely from the corpse. Most of the party is having second thoughts about crossing the river, but Ug and Milo decide to set off across the narrow bridge! They are quickly surrounded by a cloud of bats that descends from the cavern overhead. While each bat bite doesn’t hurt much, and they are individually killed easily, their sheer numbers are daunting. The party, aided by a hunting Barav Kree, fights back and forth across the river as hordes of bats assault them. Torix sprints across the arch, and is quickly plunged into darkness and surrounded on all sides by bats. The rest of the party manages to battle their way across, though Tardok makes his crossing, very, very slowly and carefully. All the bats surrounding Torix are eventually dispatched, though not before he is bitten numerous times. Afterwards, Jakob and Tala use the last of their healing on the injured party. Jakob: Neris, heal this idiot who ran across and got attacked in the darkness by a lot of bats.Torix: They will tell stories of my great valor!Jakob: Yeah, they’ll tell them at your funeral!Torix: Yes, they will!Jakob: That was supposed to dissuade you! Moving cautiously through the cavern, with the sounds of many bats still overhead, the party proceeds onwards. Reaching the far wall of the cavern, they find a low tunnel, more of a crawlway, leading further. Clambering through the tunnel, the party sees light up ahead! The party comes out into another large cavern, but this one is lit from a hole several hundred feet above, with sunlight streaming down. Countless bats are flitting around the room, most of them hanging at rest near the top of the cavern. The party can see another exit from the cavern on the far side of the room, but hanging above it is a truly gigantic bat, with a wingspan of at least thirty or forty feet… Crouching in bat guano at the edge of the crawlway, the party debates what to do next. Tired and injured, they argue whether to press onwards to return to the relative safety of the ratman area. Having gone back and forth in their explorations several times, there is a general sentiment that the party needs to choose a leader, or at least figure out a more coherent plan for where they are going. Did Lazarus come this way, or did he go through the rats or down past the portcullises? Or did he come out of some other portal altogether? Are the ratmen actually his minions? With no way to return home, trapped between bats on one side and ratmen on the other, the party chooses their next move… (Run 3 ends)</blockquote>

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