Down in the Stenches

In the dark and malodorous cavern beneath Mount Sneafang, the Party find themselves trapped.
What little light there is, is coming from the flickering torchlight of the two ever-burning torches casually tossed on the floor.
The Gnome Lucas floats high above the islands of refuse and rotting corpses of children. The ‘water’ that separates these small islands is ‘pure’ sewage.
The noxious gassy air chokes and blinds, but despite this Lucas examines the downward pipes looking for a way back up.
Aside from the large central one that leads back up to the trap rooms, most of them are too small for any of them to enter, but there are a few that might allow his small frame entry. There might even be one or two that would allow his bigger teammates passage...
If they could just get up here…
Rudha-an stands alone one of the smaller islands while his spirit panther swims around the outer walls looking for a way out.
In the central island, the unseen Niema burrows further down under the decomposing slime of the dead children.
Dokan, struggles for breath as the disgusting tentacle tightens around his throat. He’s being pulled lower into the brown sludge, but with direction and purpose.
Just behind him are his heroic teammates: Orestes and Ghanash. Can they see well enough through the gloop to follow or is Dokan lost?

Treasure: Just in case I forget:
12 large opals: (Value 50gp each)
Splintered and cracked large opal bits: (25gp)

Rise of the Vedics

Turning his astute ears to the sound of the distant siren, High Vedic Leibniz calls to his underlings for an explanation.
After a few minutes, two red robed individuals scamper in.
“What’s the meaning of the alarm?”
One of the deep red-garbed underlings squeaks with fear before clearing his throat to respond.
“My apologies High Vedic Leibniz. The alarm from one of the unused secret entrances has been tripped.”
Vedic Leibniz stares at the speaker before responding…
“So Fibonacci, they got past your little test did they? How far have the pushed in?”
The other creature steps forward.
“They proved their intellectual ability by solving my colleagues mathematical problem, so they’re not just opportunist orcs or goblins, but they set off the alarm in the uncanny valley. We’ve sent some troops down to secure the final exit, but even if they beat the machines and get through the steel door, I doubt they’ll find the correct exit.”
Dark eye’s narrowing, the obvious leader hisses.
“You doubt?”
“Well High Vedic, I can only say that the odds are against them to correctly guess the right path… Considering the number of options, I’d say it was only one in sixteen!”
Speaking quietly, High Vedic Leibniz sighs.
“The trouble with probability Pascal, is that eventually, someone always beats the odds. Double the soldiers guarding the correct door… and send some guards to the outside of that entrance, just in case they find their way out of the stench below.”

No more Paper Tigers

Growl!

Just our Lucas

And then down again.
:)

Changing classes is just plain Rudha-an

The average height of the Party just went up...

Can you see the light?

Leaving the four ominous black boxes and the corpses of the human thugs and snowlbears behind, the Party ride on towards the mountain itself.
During the night, as they make camp, a constant bright light can be seen crackling at the peak of Mount Snaefang.
Dokan squints against the painful brightness…
He can just make out a smaller separate light, seemingly in orbit around the primary one. It’s path seems quite slow but takes it beyond the width of the mountain itself.
Drawing his fellow tiefling towards him, he asks Niema what she can see at the mountain peak.
“What mountain?” is Niema’s unhelpful reply.

Owlbearly alive

Waking suddenly, the paradoxical demon/paladin opens his eyes to see Ghanash standing over him. Looking past the massive Dragon-born, he can make out the mortally injured but still wheezing snowlbear lying in a pool of it’s own blood.
Dokan had foolishly let his thirst for battle, cloud his judgment. He would have been safe in the ominous black box. Instead though he almost got himself killed trying to prove himself against a thousand pounds of fur, feathers and psychosis.
Still, four snowlbears…
He’d heard of them of course, but never actually seen one.
Everything he’d heard though, had been proven true. When he looked into their freakishly oversized eyes, all he saw was unrelenting hatred. The only way a battle with a snowlbear will end is with the death of either it or you.
Niema had finished off the last remaining human. No conversation. No interrogation. Just a quick and cold assassination.
The five humans were all big, muscular men, but not particularly skilled. Niema realises though, that they didn’t have to be with the snowlbears to do their fighting for them.
Orestes examines one of the massive black metal boxes. His father had been a carpenter, so he knew the difference between good and bad quality work. The engineering involved in these boxes though was beyond the best that he’d ever seen.
The box is about twelve feet long, by eight feet wide and eight feet tall. Inside it’s divided into two compartments. The larger one for the snowlbear, the smaller one for the handler.
The cog, ratchet system was amazing. Despite the sheer weight and strength of the murderously insane animal, he was able to drag it back quite easily.
Strong as he is, Orestes realises that he’d been very lucky breaking out of their hugs as often as he did.
Inside the handler section, Orestes realises that the human’s must have been living there for a while. Each tiny cabin had it’s own folding bed and store cupboard for food and personal belongings…
Lucas settles down to go through what they’d found…
The humans all had leather armour, long swords and crossbows. Pretty standard stuff, but they also had a fairly substantial amount of gold.
Each of the five had a purse containing 50gp. (250gp total)
(Exactly 50gp.)
The four brass horns they had were worth 5gp each.
The leader also had three more things of interest.
A silver whistle, worth 10gp.
A Shortsword +2 Berserkery 5,000gp
A Crossbow +2 of Thundering. 3,400gp
Off to the side, the disturbingly thin and tall Rhudha-an laughs as he plays with the amputated claws of the four snowlbears. Suddenly quiet, he looks to the bodies of the five human mercenaries…