Sombdi, day 59 of Winter, 554

23 exiles gathered in the Meadow for today's trip.

After the usual run out the Pitch caves, we were surprised to find two distinct burn marks from Ethereal Portals in PC1 right by the ladder leading back up to the Malachite caverns. Clearly, someone else had been here recently and chose to leave via Ethereal Portals.

Despite the tell-tale burns, the Pitch caves seemed about as active as usual, neither better nor worse.

With some effort, we lured and killed all the Noids at each level and advanced deeper through the caverns.

We split up into small groups then gathered around Zorton for the teleport trip to PC6.

The landing in PC6 seemed easy enough, but before we had done much gathering at all, a wall of angry Noids came boiling onto us out of the Northern passage. It seems to me that folks were too aggressive at running to the Northeast (and going too far North) to gather, and re-lured the tail end of the train of Noids being run out of the Landing Zone.

Once they turned around, we were in instant trouble.

With a phalanx of Pitch and Crimson Arachnoids tearing through the still-scattered exiles, within a minute all were fallen.

This seemed to be the harshest landing I can recall, turning from promising to flattened in a surprisingly short time.

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