RPG Recap: Beyond the Temple of the Abyss, 2012-07-28
Sometime during the Red Moon, 937
Having only barely escaped the gator attack with their lives, Rigby and Delian continued their steady flight from the zoo sewers, passing by a few strange sights before coming to a tunnel entirely blocked off by a throbbing violet fleshy growth. An old man stood nearby considering it, but the pair ignored him and tried to hack their way through. The wall immediately sprouted pseudopods and attacked back, but Delian and Rigby got the better of it.
They tried to extort a toll from the old man, but he suggested that they should think again. Reluctantly, they agreed to let him pass unmolested.
After more walking through the sewers, the two found an exit: a set of metal rungs led up to a covered opening. Testing the cover, they found it partially blocked. They could only open it an inch or two, and there was movement and talking outside. Rather than call for help immediately, they decided to spend the night down below to rest up. All their torches exhausted, they set up their blinking, beeping tent and settled down for the night. Another small group of torchless adventurers cautiously negotiated passage, and a tiny glowing humanoid flew past them, but on the whole they were untroubled until hours later, when an earth-shaking noise from somewhere to the south sent hundreds of rats scurrying toward the campsite.
Delian casually negotiated with someone aboveground to get the door unblocked. When he returned down the ladder to get Rigby, the two were both swarmed. Only Delian made it out. When he reached the top of the ladder, he was hauled out, still being bitten, and found himself in the midst of a dozen or more caravans, parked near a large round structure filled with colorful statues of insects. Just as he took in the sights, though, he passed out.
When he came to, he was lying in a heap in the old market, his load lighter by quite a bit. Fortunately, not all his valuables were gone. He still had some of the magic seeds from the Gladwell place, and he worked out a sale of them to one of the city’s many wizards for over ten pounds of platinum. Suddenly fantastically wealthy, he then negotiated a tight-fisted rate of pay for three new hirelings: Heron the Medium, Thordis the Soldier, and Rob-E the Automaton. (They got 10 gp per day, a week up front, and would split a third of all the treasure recovered.)
He also made a donation to a cleric of Haarg in return for her services casting Find the Path from their scroll. It led them southeast from the city toward Edgwold, and when the spell’s duration ended, they continued alone and on foot.
After not too long, though, they were set upon by small but vicious wolves, and might have been killed to a man, had Heron not produced a pouch of wolfsbane and chased them off. Delian was badly injured and unable to walk, so Rob-E was sent back to the city to buy a (single) horse. This was a success, but more trouble arose after another hour: the group came to a broad river and was unsure how to get the horse across. They were sure that a floating disc wouldn’t be enough to carry him, and struggled to come up with other ideas.
Finally, they decided to send Thordis back to the distant trees to fell one and bring it back to make a raft. After some strenuous objections about being forced to use his sword for such a task, Thordis was promised a replacement and grudginly accepted. Rob-E returned to the city (again) and bought more rope. Eventually, with Heron’s expert help, a raft was constructed. Thordis and Rob-E crossed the river and prepared to haul the raft across, on which Heron and Delian would be maintaining two floating discs, each bearing half the horse’s weight.
Things went fairly well until they’d gotten a bit more than halfway across. The raft rocked more violently and the spellcasters, unable to retain their footing, fell. The discs dematerialized, and the horse fell into the water, where he splashed for a few minutes and then swam to the other side.
The group soldiered on to the southeast…
XP
Delian = 1852 + 1115 = 2967 (Level up at 4000)
Heron = 0 + 5 = 5
Thordis = 0 + 5 = 5