Mine Number Two

The group was at their temporary base, the "Two Hour Copse". This was El Cid [Shane], Moonlight [Chris], Argile [Richard], Sorrow [Jeff] and Burrito [Darryl]. Huilam [Jamie] woke up from his marmalade and joined them, but Tylin [Ian] and Lammy [Kevin] were struck down with it.

The night was quiet at first, but a few hours before dawn, there were some noises of fighting nearby. Sorrow skulked off to investigate. He got to the top of the cliff overlooking the old road. A group of orcs had been killed by gnolls. So he quietly snuck back to the party.

Day 6

When it was light, Sorrow and Burrito, and El Cid and Huilam headed towards the mine entrance (which they named "Gnoll mine") and, from that spot, Sorrow and Burrito did a 20-minute radius circle anti-clockwise around that entrance. And the other two did a 30-minute radius circle clockwise around it. 

Mr Clucky, war chicken

They were all moving with the utmost caution, of course [using STEALTH and HUNT skills], searching for any significant terrain features in this area. 

Sorrow and Burrito's search netted nothing, but El Cid and Huilam spotted a second visible mine entrance on a hill in the distance, 30 minutes away.

This reconnaissance of both teams took most of the day, so they returned to the camp, and made plans. 

It was a quiet night.

Day 7

"Mine Number Two"

The next day, they all upped sticks and shifted closer to this second mine entrance. Here they left the pack horses and the marmalading Lammy and Tylin in a suitable bunch of manky scrub, and everyone else made their way into this mine "Mine Number Two". They took Mr Clucky too, El Cid's war chicken.

The entrance had not been disturbed in years. It was a man-made mine, the walls and roof had been shored up. 

The tunnel was single-file wide and short enough that tall El Cid and Argile had to stoop, especially with helmets. The musky passage started level, but then sloped downwards, and after a while, they came across another passage off to the right. 

Down this right path, a short distance, there was a rock fall, where the shoring had given way, and there was a pair of legs protruding from the rubble. The owner of those legs was a well-desiccated corpse.

They cleared enough rocks away to get at the whole body. Moonlight and Huilam guessed it was a male human, years dead. He was in leather armour and helmet, with a rusty short sword and a shield. The shield had Scabport Knives livery on it. They looted the body, and recovered a few coins. The youngest coin was 5 years old, which gave them an approximate age.

Argile took the shield, and El Cid took the rusty sword. El Cid was sure it was a Sword of Wishes, so, for the next few hours, he tried wishing for things while holding it and doing grand martial gestures -- with no success.

Rather than excavate that right tunnel (and thus open another entrance behind them), they returned to the main passage and carried on there.

Soon enough, they came upon thick webs blocking the passage. 

"I hate spiders," muttered Argile, no doubt thinking of the scratchy Canker's black nappers box that he had held for a while.

Burrito was at the front. Moonlight, behind him, shone a beam down the tunnel with his lantern, past the webs. Burrito saw some eyes gleaming in the light, and sent an arrow flying right between them. The eyes went out.

giant spider

El Cid ordered Mr Clucky to stand down, but Mr Clucky was happily ensconced in Moonlight's robe by now.

They moved down to where the eyes had been and, sure enough, there was a dead giant spider here, the size of a Labrador. It had a greyish ichor drooling off its fangs.

With exposed torches, they cleared away the web off the walls and ceiling, and a few paces down from the first web, they exposed a vertical shaft in the ceiling overhead. 

Burrito sent an arrow up and it thunked into wood. Sorrow climbed up the shaft, torch ahead of him, to burn webs. But something dripped on him, and so he came bravely sliding back down. It was the same nasty venom.

Discretion being the better part of valour, they all withdrew back to the side passage, the cave-in and the corpse.

Huilam then spent the next hour or so supervising the clearing of the rubble from the cave-in. His TINKER skill allowed him to sturdily shore up the passage and ceiling, and avoid another collapse. There were enough pieces of old timber lying around to do this. 

Past the now-clear cave-in site, the shored passage continued, and then opened into a large natural cavern. There was a swift underground river here, thigh deep, flowing left to right, which vanished into a tunnel to the right. Unlike the exit tunnel, the river entry tunnel was entirely underwater. There was a rickety, rotting, single-file bridge across the river too.

With ropes and safeties they all got across the river. At the far end of the cavern was a large pile of husks; dried desiccated bodies of large insects, large rats, some giant spiders, and an elf corpse. The elf corpse was a similar vintage to the cave-in chap, but this one was carrying six well-oiled throwing knives and a lock-pick set. Sorrow took all this.

There was a natural exit passage here, and it was worn smooth, and had traces of coarse hair. So they all made their way carefully down the passage, Argile at the front, followed by El Cid, then Huilam, Sorrow, Moonlight and Burrito. After a bit, they heard a noisy snuffling and growling. Something big was approaching fast. Unable to retreat fast enough, Argile drew his sword and prepared.

A large creature, big as a bear, with bird claws, and a bird's head, eyes and beak, attacked. This was an owlbear, and it was mad.

Owlbear

Argile launched into the owlbear with his sword, and got in a good cut, but that only made it angrier. It attacked back, and would have raked him, head to belly, disemboweling him, and breaking his pelvis in the same blow (despite his armour), had it not been for Huilam to reach past El Cid, grab Argile by his nostrils, and, in a bout of superhuman strength, literally pull Argile bodily, over the top of the stunned El Cid in a graceful arc, to slam him down onto the ground. This saved him from the owlbear's blow. [Huilam used his one-shot Mastermind feat which allows him to PROTECT a team mate. Argile then criticalled his PROWESS Resistance roll, so, from literally dying, ended up taking no damage at all, and actually recovered one Stress!]

El Cid, now at the front, engaged the owlbear, and he showed everyone how it was is done. He punched the owlbear with his IMAG fist. The creature had been damaged by Argile's original swipe, so when El Cid punched, his black fist broke through the sword gash, and buried itself in the pleural cavity of the monster crushing the big heart [El Cid got a Critical]. The owlbear died pretty fast, and there was a lot of blood.

Burrito ate what was left of the heart. 

The tunnel continued to a fissure and exited outside. They all turned around and went back inside.

Back in the river cavern, El Cid, still on a high after the owlbear fight, decided to explore the underground river, on a rope, with a lantern, and with Argile holding the rope. Of course, the valuable bulls-eye lantern went out as soon as it was submerged, and then El Cid got tugged away underwater by the strong flow. It was all Argile could do to hold him, so he needed all the others to help pull on the rope to drag the half-drowned El Cid back. They lost that lantern.

They decided to return to the spider shaft. When they got back to the primary tunnel, they noticed that the web was replaced across the passage in the original spot.

Brave Sorrow ascended the ceiling shaft again, burning webs as he went, and got to the top, up about ten paces vertically. There was another passage here filled with webs heading both directions. In the roof above the hole was a pulley, so they guessed this was a mine lift in the past. But Sorrow didn't have much time to contemplate lifts or winches, since there were a bunch of scurrying angry spiders headed right for him! He half-dropped half-climbed back down the shaft, popped out into the party's passage, and screamed to block the hole.

Huilam shoved some wood over the hole and held it there with beams.

"I am NOT going up there!" declared Sorrow and Argile simultaneously.

The passage continued here. Twenty or so paces past Burrito's dead spider the webs stopped, and then the passage sloped down into another large chamber. On the left side, miners had obviously worked here on veins of gold on the walls years ago. And there was mining equipment lying corroded on the ground where it had been abandoned.

Away from the rock face, another shored passage headed right. After ten minutes of walking, it opened up into  another big room with a lake and a waterfall. The lake had no visible exit, so they guessed there was an underwater tunnel that allowed the water to flow through to the river chamber (with the rickety bridge). 

Argile went for a swim in the icy lake. He was out in the middle when he was grabbed by something, and pulled underwater. He had his sword with him, and stabbed at the thing, slicing it off. Then he swam free and clambered out. It was a large tentacle.

Sorrow and Argile climbed, well clear of the water, across the walls to the other side of the dark lake. There was daylight visible there, so they found another winding natural tunnel which exited out onto the hills in a similar fissure like the owlbear one.