Coldeven 5: Bugs in the Fog (Day 3)

Despite my increasing pessimism at our prospects, today has not been a total waste. In fact, four things have happened today that are good enough that I think I should record them.

Firstly, the group of orcs led by the mysterious wizard in red has lost a few more of its number. We found a room where a battle took place between orcs and dark mantles. Since the orcs bodies hadn't been looted, it seems safe to assume that the dark mantles won, but the sheer number of bodies would seem to be a good thing since I'm not anxious to deal with a large group of either.

Since the bodies hadn't been looted, we took it upon ourselves to do so, and actually found a fair bit of stuff, mostly little bits of gold, silver, and semi precious stones, but we did find some ivory knucklebones, which neatly doubles our recreational options during down time, so I'm counting it as a win. I also took the best of the orcs falchions and tossed it into the portable hole, figuring that a backup weapon might come in handy.

Nearby, we found a lone orc survivor named Tirag. Needless to say, he was eager to offer us the benefits of his experience. After we'd asked him what we could, and learned what he knew (not much), we sent him to wait with the Ogre, figuring that we'd at least know where they both were that way.

But the best news is that we found an area that seems significant, and which will hopefully offer up some answers.

So far, this place has been full of nearly identical doors. Most of them are of iron-bound wood, and very solid and well built. They are maintained, so despite the apparent antiquity of this place, they are mostly functional and in good repair. I stressed the importance of not killing anyone or anything that seemed to be doing maintenance to my friends, as whoever is responsible for maintaining these doors must know something of this place's layout and purpose.

Anyway, today we found a door that was very different. It was stone, and had a huge eye/sun thing sculpted into it. Beyond it lay a trap, further heightening my anticpation that at last we had found something that might offer clues or escape. This area is also lit by magical lanterns set into the ceiling, which I take to be another sign of its importance.

What we found was a large room, with foggy mist covering the floor, many corridors criss-crossing between mighty pillars of rock, each of which has writing in a multitude of languages. The room was occupied by many horrible insects, and our explorations attracted yet more, yet the fighting, though hard, gave us a chance to work as a team, which is an experience I think we were all needing badly. In all, we were attacked by 5 halfling-sized beetles, 7 man-sized insects with horrible stingers poised above their bodies, and 3 man-sized spiders. While feriocious, they were not intelligent, and we were able to put a doorway between us and them so that they could only come at us one at a time, an advantage we employed mercilessly.

As I believe I mentioned before, tempers had been becoming a bit frayed, and I think the need to work together quickly has done some of us good. I'm not used to fighting with groups, and I think K. comes from a tradition of mindless ferocity, so most of the sound tactical reasoning came from Lo-Kag, but his shouted orders came at the right time in battle, and when the last of the insects fell, while many of us were injured, not one of us was seriously hurt. Hopefully our shared victory will keep us from sniping at each other when we continue.

A few of us are sick from spider bites (albiet not myself), and Eaora is looking at the writings, so we're staying here for at least a little bit. It's possible we may make it into a permanent camp.