a cooked breakfast

We settled into our camp uncomfortably close to the cavern. I went to sleep and was woken by the smell of burning meat and screams. It took a second to realise that some of them were mine!

The drow had come to fight and we still hadn’t recovered our spells. It appeared they had cast both divine and arcane fire spells into our camp and then cast a web spell to immobilise us.

I was able to call forth Your divine light but these drow were much stronger than the others we had faced and none of them fell before Your damage. One of them was at least stunned and Igbot was able to fell him with a thrown dagger, but I think he was just there for support and the loss did not hurt them much.

I couldn’t cast enough healing to help Igbot and Damien and they were slain. I concentrated on trying to keep Deathspank on his feet but even that was a challenge as the warrior he faced cut deeply into him again and again.

Eventually Kasaki was able to dispell the web and I invoked Your glory to freeze the drow warrior in place, allowing us to grab the dead bodies and flee the scene.

Both Janne and I were forced to abandon our armour as we fled and it was some hours before we stopped to even rest. We kept going back to the dwarven city where we were able to geet the materials needed to raise our fallen, though it cost us almost everything we had.

We reprovisioned and then returned to the cavern oh so far away. As we entered we saw that the guards were actually alert this time, but then we were also ready to do things properly this time. We identified where the two alarm bells were and had a plan for Aeriana to cast silence spells on them. Igbot scouted and found that while there were several bugbears they hadn’t replaced the giant we had slain.

At this point Deathspank mentioned that he’d had a dream in which his grandmother had told him we should check the stables. The others said she probably meant the slave pens because the drow called the slaves “cattle” but I have to wonder whether they really believe that or they’re just trying to get Deathspank to follow their plan. I still have my concerns that we’re working from information we got from the one slave to have ever escaped from the drow.

We began our attack with Aeriana casting her silence spells after Damien had cast an extended spell of haste. The bugbears still managed to throw in a surprise though as two of them immediately started running for the fortress as soon as we engaged them.

Kasaki cast a spell and he and I appeared between the bugbears and the fortress, cutting them off and forcing them back into the battle. There wasn’t much we could do about them screaming but it didn’t last long before they were cut down.

We felt confident with the ease of our victory and decided to press our advantage, moving on to the slave pen Kasaki had previously scouted.