The Gnoll Mine

The Budgie Smugglers (Tylin [Ian], El Cid [Shane], Sorrow [Jeff], Burrito [Darryl], Lammy [Kevin] and Moonlight [Chris]) were resting in the pure REAL sunlight by the entrance to Cave Four ("Undead Cave"). Tylin had just collapsed with marmalade, so he was hauled back to camp to join the marmalading Argile and the pack horses. 

Ghoul

The six re-entered the tunnels, found and defeated three more ghouls, and found a secret door (a camouflaged curtain). Down this winding tunnel was a large chamber with a mine face, where over one hundred skeletons were digging. As soon as the group entered the cave, the skeletons came swarming out after them, so they beat a hasty retreat. The skeletons lost interest and returned to the face.

It was a few hours before dark, but El Cid, Lammy and Sorrow were already very stressed, so the group decided to let the three have a Vice Break. But they were worried that there might be more vampires deeper within the caves, and these vampires would not take too kindly to discovering the destruction that the party had wrought upon their mates. So, they moved camp to be a good two hours away.

Here, the three took a Vice Break.

El Cid's indulging vice consisted of breaking things. He could not find many satisfying things to break out here in the hills, so did not relieve much stress [1 on a D6]. 

Beehive for Lammy

Sorrow's vice was "obligation to half-elves", and the only other half-elf in the group was Huilam. Huilam's face was a sticky mess of drooled marmalade, so Sorrow tended him. But it was a sad and pathetic sight with fitful dabs using his soiled hanky, and so he failed to relieve much stress [two 1s on 2D6].

Whereas Lammy, whose vice was Weird, indulged his vice with ease. He found a beehive, and broke it open. While the honey poured out and the angry bees began to swarm, he got out his peeled ginger root and mother-of-pearl napkin rings. Suitably adorned, he rolled around naked in the honey as the bees darted and stung. This proved to alleviate a lot of stress [4].

Sorrow and El Cid finished their vice-indulging just as it went dark (Lammy would take another three hours). As they were organizing the group into watches, the still night was rent by a hideous scream. It was more psychic rather than aural, and was full of despair and rage. They guessed that the defiled vampire tomb had been discovered.

 

Sorrow's powerful IMAG vision could see flying things in the distance, circling, searching, spiraling.

They waited, with Sorrow watching the four things spiraling outwards in a methodical search pattern. Vampires had superb infra and ultra vision.

"We be safe," muttered Burrito. "They no can get to us this night."

But when Lammy finished indulging his vice and cleaned up, his wizards' knowledge of classical mechanics soon put paid to those calculations.

"There are four of them," he said. "We are certainly NOT safe!"

Thorn

So, the group upped-sticks and moved.

They hurried back to Thorn's cave and to the side entrance (the over-hang that led to the sentient root cave). Here they camped, and hoped the searching vampires would not spot them.

Half way into the night, there was a quiet shuffling. 

It was Thorn. And he was not very happy with the great evil that was now in his caves (Sorrow's IMAG eyes and El Cid's IMAG fists). But Tylin consoled him [with a good SWAY roll] and he agreed to tolerate one night. The over-hang was enough cover, and so the vampire searchers did not spot them.

Day 10

Morning arrived. Thorn brought them all a mug of his delicious steaming (stress-reducing) tea. Sorrow and El Cid had left early in the morning, so, by the time they returned to their mugs, they got no benefit (the magic tea had gone cold, and tasted like asparagus urine).

The whole group headed off  toward the Gnoll mine, and returned to "Billet copse". This was the good copse that was 20 minutes from the Gnoll mine entrance, had a spring, and was probably where the Billet six had camped.

El Cid and Sorrow were still very stressed, so they had another attempt at indulging their vices. This time Sorrow was more successful - he gave the marmalading half-elven Huilam a bed bath with the spring water. But El Cid still could not find many things to break. So, he didn't de-stress much. [Another 1 ! But this inter-mission vice-indulging has a useful feature of un-ticking the once-per-mission feat tick-box. This would prove to be useful for El Cid later on.]

While the two were indulging their vices, the rest of the group searched the vicinity for other entrances into the gnoll mine.  

They found a vertical shaft at the top of the hill dropping into the darkness, with no signs of recent use. 

Plus the stream, from the spring that they were camped near, was diverted from its natural course into a hole in the side of the hill, and down a cut tunnel. Tylin crawled down here, and after 30 minutes, emerged into the ceiling of a cave, two storeys off the floor. The stream water trickled out of this hole into a bucket on the floor below, and then into a gutter in the floor. The room had one exit (gutter went that way too). Tylin wiggled back to the outside to tell the others.

They waited until night.

They wiggled down the tunnel in a tight line. Tylin peered into the gloom, and the bucket room now had six gnolls, all sleeping. He relayed this back down to the others in hushed whispers. Then they decided to sneak it. Tylin anchored and let down a rope and then they all proceeded to sneak into this room. [This was a Lead-Party-Action SNEAK roll. Three fails, and no 6s. ] 

It didn't go quite as they planned in that they made a bunch of noises, and the gnolls all awoke.

There was a fight and a massacre; Lammy's Sleep spell proved very useful. And IMAG fist and sword did the rest. The water gutter filled with gnoll blood.

Out of the bucket room was a tee onto a passage with mining noises from one direction. Sorrow went for a surreptitious sneak. The mining noises came from a large cave with 15 chained figures digging quartz on a rock face. 11 of the diggers were gnolls, and the rest were two men, one woman and one half-elf lady. The slaves were guarded by six gnoll overseers. There was an exit, large, beyond the face.

Gnoll overseer & slaves (Samuel and Morgan)

Sorrow reported back, and the group returned and attacked. It was a quick battle and the overseers were defeated. Again Lammy's Sleep proved invaluable and El Cid's IMAG fists effective. But he did get badly wounded, and so did Sorrow. Moonlight went to cure those two, but as he was doing this, the 11 treacherous gnoll "slaves" started to scream and holler. 

And very soon after, approaching noises were heard in the corridor behind them.

Tylin found an allen key on one of the downed overseers, and he unscrewed the manacles of the four non-gnolls. Then everyone fled.

They rushed down the wide passage, past mine carts filled with quartz, to a stamping room (it was night, so the stamping mill was not active). From here, they rushed down another wider passage, and down to the end. Here they could see outside and the night. But two gnolls stood at the entrance there and drew their heavy gnoll bows.

Sorrow shot at one and El Cid shot at the other. Sorrow hit and wounded his one, but El Cid didn't and would have got a heavy gnoll arrow through his eye, but fate smiled and he only got a nasty scratch. [Level 4 fatal harm - "arrow to the brain". El Cid's Battleborn feat (tick feat tick-box) reduced this to Level 3. His Tough as Nails feat then reduced this to Level 2. And his armour then reduced this to Level 1 harm "deep scratch".]  Sorrow then dropped his gnoll, and El Cid dropped the other with his fists.

The group and the four freed slaves ran out into the night, and onto the floor of the valley. The sides were steep, so they clambered up, hell for leather, and only just got over the top when the mine mouth disgorged gnolls by the dozen.

Burrito now moved to the rear and frantically started covering tracks as the group headed back to Billet Copse. This was to stop gnoll trackers. 

It was a few hours before light when they got to the copse, and assessed the situation. Three of the four freed slaves turned out to be the ones they were sent to find from Billet's group: Morgan Leaf the half-elfess minstrel, Samuel Chad the human fighter, and Jacinta Whiteface the REAL paladin. The fourth one was a farmer called John Red-shirt.

Jacinta knew about Bertha the dwarf being killed, and was interested to hear from the group that they had spotted her impaled body.

"Now," exclaimed Jacinta. "We need to rescue Betsy and Khartoum. Then we will recover poor Bertha."