Dramatis personae
Angelista, slayerPoklov, Town Watchdwarf
Felcanis, cleric
Honsou, bowman watched by the Town Watchdwarf
Quid occurrit
Honsou searches the wardrobe and finds nothing. Felcanis sees the bedposts are intact and the frame is mostly intact, but otherwise it doesn't look too comfy.
They leave and back down the hallway. After walking past the room with the secret door, they find a door on the left side of the hall. Honsou unlocks it, and they find themselves a room with three green copper slabs about knee-high on the other side. They check them out, and see holes cut in the middle, about 18 inches across. Honsou looks down the hole of one of them, and there's a faint smell of … ewwww.
"Latrines," says Angelista.
Since there is nothing in the room but ancient shit, they go back down the hallway. After some twists and turns, the hallway stops, and they see trapdoor above.
Angelista asks Poklov, "Are you sure you want to get up there?"
Poklov shrugs. "It looks like a nice hidey-hole. There's gotta be something fun there."
Angelista shrugs. "I do not recommend messing with that but if you say so"
After some chatter, Honsou stands on Poklov's shoulders, and tries pushing the trapdoor above. He cannot shove it as there seems to be something atop it. Angelista tries, and finds she can push it open; a few barrels fall off it as she pushes. She lifts herself up after Felcanis casts Continual Light on her helmet.
The storeroom is about 60 feet square, with a way out on to their left. Loads of barrels are near where Angelista is. She lowers it for Felcanis, but she falls and cripples her left leg. Poklov starts bandaging her, but Honsou climbs up.
Angelista and Honsou wait as Poklov bandages Felcanis, trying to find out how they will get Bill up through the hole. After a few minutes, Honsou hears some skittering to the northeast. They get up, and see what looks like two big centipedes at the edge of the light. Honsou readies his bow and arrow, and Angelista misses when she throws her javelin at a centipede. The centipedes move towards them, and Honsou shoots one. His arrow hits, but the centipede's chitin looks like it stops a lot of the blow.
Angelista pulls out her sword, and swings when the centipede Honsou didn't shoot gets next to her. However, she doesn't get a hard blow, so the centipede's chitin stops it. The centipedes make hasty bites at them, but miss. Angelista yells for Honsou to get back down, but he has trouble grabbing the rope. Angelista's swing misses a centipede, and she steps back from their blows. Honsou still has trouble trying to get his footing to go down. Angelista again swings at a centipede, and this time hurts it. However, she doesn't block its bite, and some of its poison gets into her blood. She does parry the other's bite, however.
Honsou slips and falls into the hole, and cripples his right leg as he lands. Angelista backs towards the hole, but can't get her grip right. One centipede's bite can't get through Angelista's armor, but the other does, and puts more poison into her. Although numb from the poison, she gets her grip on the rope, and gets down it.
The centipedes start scurrying down the sides of the hole. Angelista grabs her sword again and hits a centipede on the wall. Poklov can't get his axe out fast enough to smack the other one. That centipede likewise misses Poklov as it gets to the ground. Honsou crawls out of the way as Angelista takes out a centipede. Poklov lands a blow on the other centipede, which then tries to get away. It can't do so in time to get away from Angelista's sword, killing it.
Felcanis casts Stop Bleeding on Honsou and Angelista. Then she casts Neutralize Poison on Angelista and Minor Healing and Major Healing on Honsou, letting him walk again. After Poklov gets done tending to her leg, Felcanis swigs a Minor Healing potion, fails to get her Major Healing spell to heal her, gets her Minor Healing spell to heal herself, falis on Stop Bleeding, then succeeds on her second Minor Healing spell.
Angelista pulls herself up after some trying, then pulls up Felcanis. Honsou follows, and Poklov puts the rope around Bill to let Angelista lift him. She tries, but pulls a muscle in her shoulder. Felcanis casts Stop Bleeding on Angelista, and she tries again, this time getting Bill up. Felcanis casts Major Healing on Angelista, and Poklov follows up, bringing up the gear they took off Bill.
This storeroom is filled with bugs, but one small chest is still there. A hidden drawer has 60 copper farthings and 10 silver pennies. One of the barrels has 20 animal horns. They take the money, leave the horns.
They take the only way out, a hallway on the end of the left wall, and find themselves back in the big chamber with the stairs up to the first level. They turn right, and find a big throne at the wall. Honsou thinks that if he pulls the throne forward, it will do something to the wall. He does so, and it opens to a hallway going left and right. They follow it right and after some twists and turns, the hallway stops, and they see an open hole above and two dead big centipedes at their feet.
This springs the line of the Erstokkian sage Yogībêra: "Déjà vu all over again."
They turn back to the big room, and leave through a hallway on the other side of the stairs up. After a couple of turns, they reach a big room about 20 ft. by 30 ft., with a latrine on the right side and a hallway out on the other side. More importantly, they see a gaggle of 3 ft.-tall humanoids with tiny heads, misshapen features, bugged-out eyes, and swollen bellies. They sharpen their teeth to points, and look hungry.
Angelista thinks that if the heroes don't attack these humanoids they won't hurt them, so goes towards to the latrine to check it out. As she does so, most of the horde pygmies run down the other hall, though seven move between her and the other murderhoboes.
Once Angelista is near the latrine, the horde pygmies blow darts at her. Four of the horde pygmies miss Angelista with their blowdarts, two hit but do not get through her armor, and one gets stuck into her shield. Honsou tries to shoot one with its back turned towards him, but misses. Poklov kills one with its back turned, but the other caught sight of him through the corner of its eye and got away from his axe. Angelista launches her javelin at the closest target, killing it.
The other horde pygmies run towards their fellows.
Res aliae
I was a little too permissive with Climbing in combat. Angelista got active defenses when she would have logically made her sword and shield unready, though she failed both anyways. Time might have been an issue I shouldn't have overlooked: the Basic Set gives the climbing rate of rope down at two feet a second (p. B349), and this was a ten-foot drop. However, this was only a ten-foot drop, so a Climbing roll is a little more like a controlled Jumping roll.
The fight with the centipedes was a challenge only because they split the party. To be fair, Felcanis being a lousy climber didn't help matters, but Poklov chose to bandage her below with the other two up top. I asked if they were sure they wanted to do this a couple of times and yes, they were sure.
State of the healing spells. Below is how many of each healing spell Felcanis has cast on each PC during this day. I keep having to scroll back and find this, so I'm putting this out on the blog:
Minor Healing: Angelista, Felcanis 2, Poklov
We didn't game yesterday since Brandon (Poklov) was going to be gone and John (Felcanis) was going to be mostly gone. It might happen this coming Sunday (the 18th).
