NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spyscribe" data-source="post: 1713254" data-attributes="member: 5808">Part the Fifty-FourthIn which: Stirge, stirge, stirge.  Stirge is the word.Thatch winces as a stirge sinks its sharp stinger into his flesh.  The creature’s several claws sink into his skin, and it begins to drink deep of his blood.  Thatch begins feeling a trifle light-headed.  Unable to swing his sword properly, he uses the hilt as a club, squashing the creature and sending blood spurting everywhere.  He wastes no time but cleaves into the one next to him, which is still hovering, trying to get a shot at Benedic.The creatures have taken them from above.  Several have their stinger sunk into various members of the party, and are feasting away on their blood.Zrod makes short work of the stirge attached to his arm and Anvil is equally successful at destroying his attacker.  Once the stirge is dead, he takes a minute to pick its stinger out of his flesh.  He pockets the narrow tube in case it might come in handy later.Stubbornly ignoring the pain in her shoulder and the wings flapping in her face, Lira casts.  She brings her hands up on either side of the stirge’s expanding abdomen, speaks the final words of the spell and lets fly with two glowing magic missiles.  >Bomph!< The only thing left of the stirge is a fine red mist.Hue is not so fortunate, and is unable to concentrate well enough to complete his spell.  Luckily, Benedic—having had the stirge in front of him split in two by Thatch’s sword—is able to come to the small man’s aid and the stirge is quickly dispatched.  Dennis puts a dagger into another one which pops with an audible >sploosh<.  Neither Eva nor Reyu can hit the last two remaining creatures, but fortunately, the stirges can’t hit them either.  At last, Dennis and Eva get one between them and together carve it to bits, Eva striking with the viciousness that only a city-girl under attack by nature can muster.The last stirge sinks its stinger into Reyu, and the elf then uses its relative stillness while attached to land the killing blow.After ascertaining no more aerial invaders are on the way, the adventurers take stock and mop up some of the blood spatters.  Thatch grits his teeth as Anvil probes for the stinger still embedded in his flesh.  Reyu is equally unsuccessful trying to remove the one from Lira’s shoulder, though she does manage to produce several loud “ow!”s from the sorceress.  Reyu stops her ministrations.  Euro squints at her.“Anvil, why don’t we try switching?” she suggests.Anvil shrugs, “Fine.”  He comes over to Lira and has the stinger out in one smooth pull.  Thatch kneels so that Reyu can easily see his injury, and in equally short work that stinger is also removed.“Right.  Where were we then?” Dennis mutters.“Stopping for the night,” Eva says firmly, and sits down against the wall.  She glares around at the cave, as if daring it to attack her again.They make camp in a corner of the cavern, lanterns lit but shuttered.  The night passes uneventfully and everyone wakes much refreshed.  Eva is not quite fully recovered from her brush with death in the pit-trap, but even she seems less stiff as they prepare to move out.**********It is some hours later.  Zrod has warned the others that they will soon reach goblin territory proper, and they should stay vigilant.  But first, they have one more natural obstacle to overcome.  For several hundred yards, the passage they have been traveling through has become more and more tilted to one side.  Zrod keeps them to the high ground, but now the passage has become nothing more than a narrow ledge dropping off sharply into a dark chasm.Reyu attempts to cross first.  She walks carefully, holding onto the sheer wall for support, but only gets a few yards before losing her footing and tumbling roughly to the bottom of the crevasse.“Are you alright?” Thatch calls.Reyu casts cure light wounds on herself.  “Yes,” she replies.That starts out onto the ledge.  “Stay where you are.  I’ll throw down a rope.”Reyu’s voice floats back upward.  “Actually, I think I’ll see how far I can get down here.”Thatch, who spent most of his young life climbing trees, follows on the ledge without difficulty as Reyu makes her way below.  The way is narrow, she finds, but fairly flat and for someone like Reyu, narrow is not much of a problem.  She moves forward cautiously and soon comes to a perfectly round hole in the ground, seemingly the top of some kind of shaft.  The lip is perfectly round and smooth.  Looking down it she can see nothing but blackness, and she senses a faint cool breeze flowing through.Steeling herself for a hand or tentacle reaching up to snare her ankle, Reyu jumps across the 5’ gap.  Her foot kicks a loose pebble that she can hear bouncing downward, but nothing happens.Soon, the sides of the crevasse come together at a point in front of her, making further progress impossible.  Thatch throws down a rope and hauls her back up to floor level.  He then ties off the rope and crosses back to the others, leaving the rope stretched against the wall as a hand-hold.  With this in place, most of the rest of the party crosses without incident.  Lira nearly loses her footing a couple of times, but her white-knuckle grip on the rope keeps her from going down.  Zrod and Hue are not so lucky and both take a tumble.  Thatch, gathering up the rope behind the last crossers rappels down the crevasse to help the others across the hole.When everyone has safely reached the far side, they continue quietly on their way.*********After less than an hour, Zrod stops them.  The tunnel turns ahead and the faint glow of a torch can be seen around the corner.  “Goblins,” he whispers.  “Here we are.”“Good,” Benedic murmurs, tightening his grip on his bow.“How many are there ahead?” Anvil asks.Zrod shrugs.  “It’s just a guard post.  Probably not many.”“We could take a closer look,” Hue suggests.Despite Euro’s protests that he is the better mustelid for the job, the Ferret is sent ahead to investigate.  He relates through Hue that there are five goblins playing some kind of card game at the intersection of four tunnels up ahead.  The goblins are armed with javelins and morningstars, and some kind of horn hangs on the wall behind them.  Zrod confirms the horn is there to sound the alarm, should the goblins have a chance to do so.Quickly, the party plans their strategy.  First, Anvil comes around the corner and casts silence on a point above the middle of the card table.  Then, the melee fighters charge in, leaving the archers to take positions along the 20’ passage.  Between those first two waves, by the time the spell-casters round the corner, carefully staying out of the area of the magical silence, only one goblin is left alive.  A magic missile spell from Lira remedies that situation quickly.  The goblins didn’t even have time to get up from their game; only one had time to be surprised that he couldn’t hear himself scream.“Right.  We’re in it now.  Let’s move fast,” Zrod says.</blockquote>

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