Gradi, day 64 of Autumn, 552.

The Pitch Assault Group gathered for the sixth time today, just after dawn. 23 exiles were in attendance (not pictured: Snowlion).

We had a relatively easy time reaching the Pitch caves today (80 minutes from Meadow), since we had plenty enough healing power along.

Traversing the Dred Passage was fairly simple as the lightning was relatively light (the Southwest pit held only 2 Dredlocks). But the two rods ran along too close together and many folks took a lot of damage during the rush down to the Southeastern pathfinder spot. I fell to accumulated lightning hits while watching over the Northeast rod. Still, we made it through.

The first Pitch Cave was trouble right from the start. On the first reconnoiter and lure run, Tuzar Bloodblade was trapped by many Arachnoids and fell. Michael managed to Zu off the Southeast leg, but many Arachnoids were already in the North half of the cave. Fighter runs managed to thin this crowd down, but then a large spawn eliminated all our progress and then some. The next entry was planned to be with Tuzar running and fighter hit and run near the entry, but when Tuzar fell, a rush of webs from about 8 Crimsons trapped the fighters, and the Crimsons and associated Olive and Malachite Noids waltzed right over most of us. The snell was very very full at that point. We switched to rescue operations, with daring chain runs by Michael pulling in fallens by ones and twos.

At one point, we did a fighter run and happened upon a Crimson right in the far Northeast corner against the stairs. Only two fighters could hit it at a time, because whoever tried to be the third ended up going upstairs instead of swinging. We managed to kill it by pulling in two fighters repeatedly to the good spots, within the webs.

Before the group heading out for home, several pathfinders made a daring run to the Ruined Library to train with Giayl's Guide. Entil'Zha was successful, while a few others were not so lucky. Achates made it too, alone, while luring Arachnoids away for a "last" chain run in which Yor fell before retrieving anyone. Entil'Zha had chained Kestral in to the Library earlier, and Achates was able to raise her, so Kestral could train as well. Finally, we recoverred everyone except J'jh from the Pitch Cave and the 3 pathfinders inside the Library, and headed home.

We took the long way and walked back up through the Malachite caverns, through Dredwood and the Foothills, to the Orga Village and home. The Stronghold snell was a bit hairy when several Large Death Vermine attacked the healers, but we made it through. All-in-all, a successful trip, although I'm not sure we learned anything tangible about how to gain a hold in the first Pitch cavern when it is already loaded with Noids.

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