Fordi, day 48 of Spring, 553

After the now customary delays gathering and some last minute Zu farming, 28 exiles ventured forth from the Meadow at the stroke of Midnight. I rejoined the group already well into Hatred Hollow, after looping back to the Orga Camp to pick up one last fighter. We also lost a frozen Talin in the Snaggywood, who returned after we were already in the Foothills and pendanted out of Snaggywood safely.

We advanced briskly right through the Dred Passage, and then too briskly through the Foothills. In the Foothills, the group got very spread out, as the advancing wave failed to stop for the trailing exiles to catch up. Guilty as charged, along with many others. Too much familiarity with the route, and I myself wanted a couple of moments to stare futilely at the unopenned path in the cave just before Camp Dred (today wasn't the day either ...).

In Dredwood itself, we found quite a number of Dredlocks, and had a few anxious moments as J'jh and the main rod hopped across the barrier path into the pit while most of the fighters went around the rocks the usual way. It worked anyway (although several healers did fall in the pit), but a bit unorthodox. Not recommended.

Despite the small mishaps, we reached the Pitch Cave within 50 minutes.

The set-up in Cave 1 wasn't quite perfect, but the Zu walls were erected well enough to get us a quick foothold in the cave.

The slow step in advancing into Cave 1 was that the Arachnoids stayed bunched up near the ladder following each retreat, so we had to wait for them to disperse before anyone could re-enter without becoming instantly surrounded. I entered during one early fighter run to find myself surrounded, and fell right by the ladder along with several others, giving me a front row seat for watching the pack of Noids. Actually, the crowd behavior of the Noids seemed much more pronounced today than it has before. I watched the accumulated Noids waggle about for some time before even starting to disperse. Near the ladder in Cave 1, with the walls enclosing them too, they seemed loath to leave at all (note the empty area South of the pack). They did disperse a bit faster (but still slowly) when I got the chance to watch them closely again while fallen in the entry to Cave 4.

I'm not sure if this is a change in the intensity of persistence/cohesion behavior or not, but is something to take into account when entering a recently vacated snell.

Once we were finally set up in Cave 1, we lured and rushed Cave 2 until it was clear, then roared on through Cave 3 as well. These seemed much more full of easier-to-deal-with Malachite and Olive Arachnoids, with few Crimsons. Getting Cave 4 clear was much slower, with several setbacks during fighter runs against non-webbers, mostly due to Arachnoid pulls. Eventually, Cave 4 was cleared and we entered PC5 for the first time with Strange Stone-bearing Mystics (Hepta and Rincewind).

Curiously, as they pulled out their Strange Stones, Rincewind remarked that he was glowing strangely, although the rest of us noticed nothing.

When he and Hepta tried to set a teleport location mark in Cave 5, they instead marked a distant spot, a cavern below an Orga Stronghold! The Stronghold found at last!

We quickly settled on a strategy of ferrying, where the two Mystics would teleport back and forth bearing 4 exiles to the new cavern on each trip.

For the first trip, we sent 2 healers (Thuja and J'jh) and 2 fighters (Michael and Natas) along with both Mystics.

Unfortunately, the place they landed was not safe at all, and both Mystics fell before they could try to come back for the next load of exiles. The stranded folks ran about a bit before either falling or managing to enter an Ethereal Portal, providing us with our first crude maps of this new and distant cavern.

It's not exactly clear where this "distant spot" is from where we are standing in Cave 5, although it is certainly an Arachnoid cave (Crimsons, Olives and Malachites were seen), and it seems to be under the Orga Stronghold. Somewhere.

After we lost the teleport team, the remaining exiles (pictured here) gathered in PC5 for a trip home via the Ethereal Plane. It was not a smooth trip. Yor ran into the Ethereal Plane first and found an Ethereal Cloud and was trapped, as were the next couple of runners. In the end, we simply did a mad rush into the Ethereal Plane and then into a second Portal without controlling that area at all. Most made it, but a few exiles were lost there, and unfortunately chose to depart rather than wait for a rescue.

Still, it was a stellar trip. We now understand what we need to do to progress further, and if it seems daunting, this entire cavern has been daunting. With persistence, we will crack the mysteries here and wrest its secrets from the Arachnoids.

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