The Rescue

Jacinta Whiteface, paladin

The Budgie Smugglers (Huilam [Jamie], Tylin [Ian], Burrito [Darryl], Lammy [Kevin], El Cid [Shane]) plus three of of the Billet six (Jacinta Whiteface, Samuel Chad, and Morgan Leaf), were down on "Level Two" of the gnoll mine waiting for Sorrow's [Jeff] final reconnaissance of Level One. The marmalading Argile [Richard] and Moonlight had been left up by the top of the shaft. Argile woke up from his malady, wiped his mouth, and clambered down the rope ladder to join the others in the musky Level Two tunnel. Moonlight lay on the grass by the shaft and drooled.

It wasn't long before Sorrow joined them, and then gave the "go" order. So, he lead them back up the rope ladder to Level One. But, unluckily, while they were in the middle of all climbing up, two gnolls happened to wander past in the passage. Lammy was already up, so he let loose with a Sleep; they both dropped. Sorrow and El Cid scurried out and killed their sleeping bodies, dragged them to the shaft, and dropped into the water, five storeys below. 

The rest of the group ascended, and Sorrow took everyone down the passage to the slave room. Here, he helped to SNEAK some in for a surprise attack. There were six gnoll guards in the room and four chained slaves. Lammy's multiple Sleeps again dropped three of the gnolls, and the other three were polished off with arrows, Argile's sword and El Cid's IMAG fists. El Cid almost got killed by a gnoll spear thrust, but he ducked just in time [he expended his Special Armour, and used his Tough as Nails feat]. 

The allen keys were used to free the four slaves' manacles: Khartoum, two half-elf girls and male elf.

Sorrow scouted down the tunnel to the next chamber: the stamping mill room. Luckily, none of the battle noises had got down there. There was a single gnoll obliviously preparing the stamping mill for the morning shift. On the side wall were the hyena cages, with eleven hyenas. This cave had the main exit to outside, a long wide tunnel, and the tunnel to the mine face where they got the quartz.

Day 12

Light! It was morning and daylight flooded in down the wide tunnel. 

heinous hyena

Sorrow waited a bit and observed a patrol of two gnolls and four hyenas arrive back. This brought the hyenas number up to 15. In the distance, down the exit tunnel, he could see another two gnoll guards. The two patrol gnolls caged their hyenas and headed down the other tunnel (to the mine face).

The single gnoll (who was tending the stamping mill) then headed towards where Sorrow was crouched, so he quickly withdrew back to the prison room. Lammy used Sleep on that gnoll.

Just as Sorrow returned to the stamping room, he had to about-face. The shift change happened, and seven prisoners (Betsy, a half-elf, and five farmers) started to file in to the prisoner tunnel. They were escorted by four gnolls. These four were ambushed in the prisoner room, and killed, but not before two of them managed to sound the alarm!

Now that the game was up, the party rushed to the stamping mill room with all eleven freed slaves in tow (seven still chained), and then paused. El Cid and Argile quickly moved to block the tunnel to the mine face, and fired several volleys of arrows blindly down that tunnel. This was enough to slow gnoll reinforcements from that way.

Sorrow, Burrito and Lammy headed to the mouth of the entrance tunnel to look for the two guard gnolls, but they weren't there and instead there were now six gnolls. They were all in defensive positions among the old mining equipment outside. Their powerful gnoll bows would make leaving the mine tunnel suicidal.

While they did this, everyone unoccupied used the allen keys to free the seven prisoners, and then they all set about killing the helpless 15 hyenas in the cages. 

Sorrow & Co returned to report, and the whole group tossed up the difficult decision of whether to go back to shaft and up the rope ladder, or to chance a rush outside and run the gauntlet of gnoll arrow fire.

While the others argued, Sorrow and Tylin checked the tunnel towards the shaft, and found that way was blocked after all.

So, Sorrow lead a group-action SNEAK outside with Burrito, Argile, El Cid, and Lammy. (Jacinta and Samuel replaced Argile and El Cid shooting down the mine tunnel to keep the gnolls at bay).

The plan, then, was for everyone else to give the sneakers a few minutes and then to rush out too.

gnoll archer

Sorrow managed to get his four close enough to engage the gnoll archers. Even so, it was touch and go. El Cid was almost killed, twice, and Sorrow almost killed once [they had to make resistance rolls].  And Argile did a magnificent save [using his Bodyguard feat], to block an arrow destined for El Cid's black heart.

All the gnoll archers were killed and everyone then fled back to Billet Copse. There was no immediate sound of pursuit. They decided that Billet Copse was not safe, so they needed to return to the owlbear cave, an hour away. But they wanted to recover Bertha's impaled body from the spike, and recover Moonlight's marmalading body from the top of the shaft.

So they split into two groups. Tylin lead Jacinta, Morgan and Khartoum to collect Bertha's body.

Sorrow and Burrito lead everyone else to collect Moonlight's marmalading body. They sensibly did not waste time to retrieve all their ropes and rope ladders from the shaft.

Both teams returned to Owlbear cave by noon with no problems, and here collected John Red-shirt, the pack horses and Mr Clucky the war capon. One pack horse carried Moonlight's marmalading body, and the other one Bertha's rotting body.

Loath to rest even a little, they left the cave and headed into the hills, away from the mine entrance, towards the upper reaches of the battle branch of the Siren river.

Night fell, and they kept travelling into the night, and waited until midnight before stopping to rest.

There was movement seen during the night on a distant hill, but they wisely stayed put.

Day 13

A couple of hours into the morning, they spotted a stationary black sphere in the centre of a valley on their route. Rather than approach it, they spent a few valuable hours to skirt it at distance.

Eventually, they got to the Siren river (battle branch) and headed downstream walking beside the river. It was much flatter here than the rough hills, so they made good progress.

Up ahead, on the water's edge, there were four buildings, with a jetty out into the water. In the old days, this would have been the loading site for barges to supply the mine. But it seemed to be in use again; there were a few carts around with crushed quartz in them, and some horses.

Two of the buildings had two large spheres of darkness.

The group tried to skirt this site, but there wasn't much cover. Two smaller black spheres emerged from the nearest larger sphere and headed directly towards the group. These were each the size of an IMAG priest's sphere, so the group let them approach and didn't just shoot them down. After all, when you bear an IMAG mark, milk it.

Raspy voices spoke from within "Greetings brothers, may IMAG's darkness envelope you always."

This was obviously intended for the IMAG-gifted Sorrow and El Cid, who stepped forward. Jacinta sniffed, and turned away in disgust.

Sorrow and El Cid posed as leading the ragtag bunch, and then made up some cock-and-bull story about working for the Scabport IMAG Foundling on some secret need-to-know mission. It was so outrageously over-the-top and cringingly preposterous that the rest of the group fingered their weapons in preparation for an attack. But the naïve IMAG priests seemed to accept their lies. 

So, the group carried on past, and followed the river bank downstream. 

Then they saw a barge heading upstream at walking pace, against the flow of the river (and not pulled by horses; what was powering it was a mystery).  It had a large black sphere on what would be the wheel-house. The barge was empty, presumably heading to get a load of quartz.

Four bowmen rushed out of the sphere, and crouched down ready to fire. The party made no suspicious movement, and the barge carried on upstream past them.

An hour before dark, they passed the point where the battle branch of the Siren joined with the main tributary of the river. It got really wide here. They continued.

Just on dark, they came across a fortified farm house by the river, with its own jetty. A farmer and daughter came out to say hello, just as another barge came downstream. This barge was the daily Siren river ferry, and it was heading downstream to Sirensville on the coast.

So, they hopped on board and took the trip to Sirensville, to arrive by morning. They slept on the boat.

Day 14 

The ferry arrived in Sirensville at light, and moored at the docks on the battle side.

They disembarked, left Sirensville and headed off towards Winjammer. This trip was on the well-travelled coast road, so was uneventful. 

At Winjammer, they headed straight to the Copper Kettle and found Chang Billet, their employer. He was rather pissed-off at them not bringing the Staff of the Phylactery. But he grudgingly agreed that they did return Jacinta's party, and that was on the contract, so he paid them the 12 COIN after all.

As the group were saying goodbye to Jacinta's team (who had REAL business in Winjammer), Huilam remembered that he still had the annoying 4 COIN promissory note on him from the pirate king (from many missions ago). He had a cunning plan to fob it off by surreptitiously secreting it onto Jacinta's person. But, there was a problem. When he got it out, he noticed that some new words had mysteriously appeared on the magical paper: "paid in full".

"Oh dear, that can't be good," someone said.

They first rushed to the Winjammer Wizards' Guild to check their three chests (3 COIN) were still safely secured. They were. 

Then they rushed down to the docks, to the Winjammer main wharf, and to where they had moored their shallop boat the Smoking Loon. It was gone !

They went and spoke to the harbour-master. He was surprised to see them.

"I thought you buggers had left," he said. "'Bout a week ago. The Loon's gone."

"Well it wasn't bloody us!"

They asked about other boat movements at the time. It was the same day that the pirate schooner Debonair had left. 

"Well," demanded Huilam. "You can pay us for a new shallop then!" 

"I jest said we'll keep 'n eye on yer boat," the harbour-master said. "Tell yer what ... I'll speak to the Winjammer council arses 'bout this."

They grudging left, and returned to the Copper Kettle for the night.

________________________

The next morning, they hired a wagon. First they ferried all 12 chests from Billet's coffers to the Winjammer Wizards' Guild in a few trips. Here, they took the heavy chests down to the root cellar to join the three chests that were already stored there under a sheet of tarpaulin with "Lammy" scrawled on it in chalk. 

A wagon can carry six chests (6 COIN), so, from the 15, they loaded it up, and then left Winjammer for Sirensville. That trip took all day.

There, in Sirensville, they established a new base (using the chests). A new base meant that they could train, and it had a secure vault where they could store four chests.