Terrdi, day 19 of Winter, 555

A very odd trip again today, but in completely novel ways.

We had a bad start when we lost Yor in the Meadow right before we were scheduled to leave. He simply vanished without a word. Talin and I got elected to wait for him while the others pressed on to Hatred Hollow. Yor eventually did return, but he quickly dozed off again in the Orga Camp. By that time, the group had taken Hatred Hollow and was waiting, so we were instructed to press onward without him.

In the meantime, Nesse got lost and fell in Snaggywood, so Talin and I looked for him. Along the way talin got a message that the rest of the group had him, so we hurried on to join the group, only to find upon arriving that he had not been found. Kiriel went and did retrieve him. Finally, the group was reunited at the Trainer Grotto.

Today the dred Passage was not too bad, although we found 5 Dredlocks in the South pit as we breached that. Quite a few exiles reached the Foothills on chains, but we all made it.

By that time, Yor was feeling much improved, and the Mystics were allowed to do a quick tag team teleport to retrieve him. Since Phiros had marked the Meadow, he and Zorton teleported there, grabbed Yor, and Zorton teleported them all back to the Foothills in an eyeblink. Quite remarkable!

We had no further serious difficulties, and by doing a quick hustle through the Foothills and Dredwood, we reached PC1 in a decent amount of time, considering all the distractions.

Today we had a very clean entry into PC1, and quite rapidly advanced to PC3.

Nightbird and I lured out PC4, and the initial Kudzu set-up in PC4 was very clean and quick, trapping a large number of webbers in the North part of that snell. Still, we got stuck in PC3 a very long time due to respawns of Noids in PC4 just about every time it seemed clear, and due to the heavy web barrage from beyond the Zu wall trapping lurers. Finally the zu wall became overgrown and started to die out, so we ended up clearing PC4 entirely before finally passing through, and were being greatly harassed from behind by webbers accumulating behind our wall in PC3.

Finally, we entered PC5 again.

Since we had 2 Mystics and 2 Stones, we considered our options. It was decided to once again try a two teleport scheme, where the first Mystic would ferry only the initial runners, and the other Mystic would then ferry over the rest of the group into the (presumably) nice and empty Landing Zone.

Phiros was selected to do the first teleport, bearing Yor and CJ parker as runners.

When Phiros attempted to teleport, instead of the small group glowing as usual, he alone shuddered terribly instead, and no one went anywhere.

Apparently he had insufficient mental energy for the teleport, despite the small number. Thankfully his stone was not broken!

Since two Mystic ferrying turned out to be cursed yet again, and we were running short of time due to the slow start and long time in PC3, we ended up teleporting as a single group anyway.

Zorton did the honors, and got us all to PC6 without a hitch.

Upon landing, we found the PC6 Landing Zone was nearly empty, so things looked bright. The runners ran well and left but a single Pitch Arachnoid and 2 Malachites in the LZ. The Pitch killed a number of folks though before we got organized, and all the wounded folks drew webs everywhere instead of letting them settle on the rods. Pretty quickly, a large number of folks were fallen. It always amazes me how much damage one lone Pitch can do when we are disorganized!

After that Pitch Noid was killed, the remaining folks began collecting the scattered fallens and then gathered in the East as they should.

Unfortunately, the remaining healers seemed too uncoordinated or spread thin to manage both rodding and concentrating enough to raise even 1 exile at a time. Wounded healers were walking among piles of fallens testing their Horus training, and attracted more painful webs onto the fallens. Pretty much no one felled during the initial Pitch rampage was raised due to insufficient Horus and accumulating damage, and we really suffered for the early leave-taking by a couple of healers, but especially of Sai with her mega Horus training.

Once further Arachnoids began filtering back into the Landing Zone from the Northwest, it was pretty well over without a stable rod in place and enough healing power to keep the mobile fighters up or raise any of the fallen ones, particularly the two Bloodbladers.

It seemed a remarkably good entry, but we just didn't have all the pieces in place for success today.

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