Phew! It’s been a busy few days, and I didn’t have time to jot down notes, so I’m going to have to wing this from memory. We sent Milque ahead to scout out the pass, and what he came back with didn’t look good. The Pass of the Mouth was being held by a mixed band of giants, orcs, hobgoblins, and bugbears, and they’d strung a net across the path to prevent anyone from sneaking through. They also had some weird tubelike devices pointing at the path from each side, with piles of rocks nearby. Some kind of siege weapon was my guess, but a new kind on me. Surprising that goblins would innovate.
We talked for a while about how to get through, and had trouble coming up with much of a plan. Finally we just decided to go in invisibly, with Milque spider climbing the walls and firing arrows from above, and me blasting with the wand of lightning from below. Under cover of this barrage, the rest of the party would go forward and try and scale up the arch above the pass with a rope and grapple. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it would have to do. You’d think the fighters would have studied strategy at some point, but neither Elo nor Chicot seems much use for that, and I spent more time studying building siege weapons than strategies in using them.
Things went pretty well at first. Milque managed to cast a hold on the orcs that were manning the siege weapons on one side of the pass, giving us a clear approach up the other side. Then he got off some good arrow shots and drew their attention. When the two giants on his side of the pass turned to look up at him and started throwing rocks, I blasted them from behind with the lightning wand. Unfortunately, this made me visible. And a target for the mess of guys who were left. Sigh. I started dancing and whirling to dodge the hail of rocks and arrow fire that came my way. Mirror image helped a lot. Meanwhile, Tad got a rope up the arch and sent Elo up first (wise, as Tad was wearing plate mail). Chicot started firing some arrows as well, and drew some of the fire away from me. A little too well, as he got pretty badly banged up. After casting a hold on the orcs manning the siege engines on our side, Tad then went back to help him. From there, things started to fall apart. Milque, as per usual, snapped his bowstring before he got off many arrows. Why he doesn’t carry two bows I don’t know, because he always breaks a string at the start of every battle. I guess he needs an enchanted unbreakable string or something.
Fortunately, Elo made it to the top of the arch invisibly, but when he took a swing at one of the giants up there he completely missed. Unbelievable considering the giant couldn’t even see him, but I guess it can happen even to him. Milque started casting more spells, I started blasting with the wand again, and cast a few magic missiles at critical spots. Tad ran around healing Chicot, but got hit himself when the orcs managed to fire one of the cannons. Amazingly enough, we managed to survive. Barely. We killed off four giants, and a dozen or so lesser monsters, and did our best to destroy the siege weapons. At this point, though, we were all pretty badly tapped out and banged up, so we decided to spend the night in the headquarters barracks resting and healing.
Naturally, it wasn’t that easy. A little later that night, we heard a large band moving up the far side of the pass towards us. Not being in any condition to fight, we decided to retreat I zapped the lead two giants to make them cautious and gain us a little more time, and we started to head out. Unfortunately, they started lobbing rocks at us, and Tad got smashed hard by a boulder the size of a large tankard. Elo and I carried him off, while Milque went spider climbing to try and delay them. He let loose with the wand of wonder again, and amazingly enough he got something useful! A band of dwarves appeared, armed with picks, right in the middle of the giants. A large battle naturally ensued, and at the end of it all the giants were dead. Half the dwarves were too, but I wasn’t terribly worried about that. We were alive. We talked with them after the battle was over, and they claimed to come from a place called Moria, near a forest called Mirkwood. Neither of these places appeared anywhere on our map, and after some more discussion back and forth I concluded that we had another case of planar travel on our hands, like that Dorothy incident back in Basimar. We gave them a copy of our map, and sent them off towards Basimar, since they weren’t very interested in coming with us (not surprising). Eventually, I think they’ll make their way to the dwarven kingdom to the east.
Once again, it was time to rest. Especially with our cleric down. Chicot did what little he could for Tad, and the rest of us started taking shifts guarding him. But the next day he still wasn’t conscious.
Elo really wanted to take Tad back to the bears, but we convinced him that moving Tad wasn’t a good idea. So we waited. Naturally it wasn’t a peaceful wait. Milque was watching the pass while spider climbing the side of the cliff, and invisible at the same time. Pretty safe, he thought. Then he was suddenly visible again. So he cast invisibility again, and tried to run down the cliff and away. Moments later it blinked out again, and he was invisible. Then he was stuck in mud. He knew something had to be causing this, so he started looking around. Naturally, he spotted the very large copper dragon almost right away. At least it was a good dragon. But still, a dragon is nothing to laugh at. Well, maybe this one was. Or to laugh with at least. It was laughing at Milque, so he started laughing to. "Okay, you got me. I’m stuck."
Well it seemed Cooper (the dragon) was quite the joker, and was mostly looking for a few new jokes. Goblins not having much of a sense of humor you understand. So he and Milque exchanged jokes for a while, and then he flew back and got the rest of us. Literally. He had the ability to transform rock to mud, and to move it around like it was water. Suddenly we were riding a wave of earth! We were deposited near Milque, and after determining that we didn’t have any good jokes for him, Cooper left. Milque had given him directions to his old master, saying the man had lots of good jokes, and Cooper was going to look him up. Knowing Milque, this was probably another joke, and the guy will probably die of a heart attack when a copper dragon comes calling!
Eventually, Tad woke up, and a few hours after that he felt well enough to heal himself. After that, things went much faster and we all got healed up. A few invisibilities later and we were on our way.
We made pretty good time that day, with Milque scouting ahead of us a ways and then coming back to report. During the night, however, we had a few unwelcome visitors to our camp. A band of Trolls managed to smell us (Milque needs a bath. Actually, we could all use one), and headed right for our camp. We tried to retreat, but Chicot got separated (as usual), so he decided to go fight them. I just don’t understand him. Is he a total idiot? A lone fighter against five trolls? Later he said "But there were only two when I attacked them." Duh! And the other three were just going to stand around and watch, rather than come back and help? So of course we all ended up fighting trolls, and I got a big fire going to burn them as they fell. Sigh. More charges gone. I think the gods are conspiring to ensure that I use up all the charges in the wand before we make it to the Temple. We sure are hitting the monster jackpot on this trip.
The next day we continued on our way. The morning passed pretty uneventfully, save for the army of 700 or so Goblins that passed our way. Fortunately, we were out into the plains by this time, so we were able to avoid them pretty easily. We overheard mention of Basimar, so I imagine that’s where they’re going. It would have been nice if we’d had a way to get word back to them that the army was coming, but getting past them and back to town first might have been difficult. And then we’d have to fight our way back here again. Apparently this kind of thing happens fairly often, so while they’ll have a harder time than usual because of the plague losses, they ought to be okay. The border patrols should pick up the armies presence easily enough, and they’ll have a couple days to prepare.
We, meanwhile, continued on our way North. One of the problems with being invisible is that you can’t see your companions. And this means you can’t keep them from being stupid. Chicot again. He spotted a few giants up on the mountainside, and decided to go attack them. Alone. Without saying a word to the rest of us. The first we heard of it was when we saw the rocks he was knocking loose on his way up bouncing down the mountain, and discovered he wasn’t with us anymore. Aaaaaaah. Hill giants were bad enough, but he attacked a band of three stone giants by himself! One stone giant is more than a match for him. Actually, one ogre is more than a match for him, since he can’t hold onto his swords. Sigh. Naturally we had to go try and save him. We need a second fighter, but I wonder, often, if he’s worth it. If we live through this I’m going to have a long talk with him. Right now I’m not sure we will.
We charged up the slope and came to his aid. More charges gone. We managed to kill one, and the other two were fleeing. Naturally that wasn’t good enough. Chicot had to go chase them, ignoring our pleas that he behave like a semi-rational being. Wham. He collapses to the ground. We did our best to heal him, but Tad was already tapped out, and he was too badly injured. We did find a few nice gems in the bag of the giant we killed, but it wasn’t worth risking the whole party for. I didn’t think it was a good idea to try and move Chicot, so we set up an emergency camp right there. Bad mistake. The giants came back, with friends, and started lobbing boulders the size of small kegs at us. We packed up and left in a hurry, but not before Milque got leveled by one. Two party members down, and we needed shelter fast.
We got out of the area and started looking for a spot to hole up for a while. At least for four hours so we could get back some healing spells. We managed to find a small cave, not far from a charred spot in the earth that meant we were getting close to the temple. Blink, however, indicated that the cave was occupied. When I tried to figure out what was in there, he kept pointing to Elo. Whatever that means. I’ve been suspecting that Elo is half-ogre or something, but I don’t really know. And I’m not sure we’re in any shape to take on a band of ogres. No spells, down our ranger and archer, and darkness coming on. Not that staying outside is any choice, what with firedrakes flying overhead. Damn Chicot! Damn Damn Damn!