Fordi, day 76 of Winter, 555

Because of today's server load test, there was some delay in gathering, and we ended up with a relatively smallish group of about 20 exiles. Despite a late start, we arrived at the Pitch caves very quickly.

At PC1, things quickly deteriorated. CJ parker fell before reaching PC2 on her lure run, so Kiriel tried and succeeded in drawing Noids East. Larno ran more Arachnoids into the Southeast pit, and the Zu teams ran in to block them off. I Zued off the Southwest pit, and Yor and Nightbird headed Southeast. Things seemed fine, but something happened in the Southeast so that a gap remained in that wall. Nightbird fell there. When I tried to circle back to plug it, I got trapped too.

After a bit, some Zu grew to plug the hole, but the damage was done: many Noids were roaming about in the main chamber. With Zu walls in place, there was nowhere to trap Noids. Additional runners drew more webbers East, but the mass of Olive and Malachite Noids kept the remaining exiles from establishing control. I waited fallen a long time.

After an hour of chain runs and fighter attacks, eventually the original Zu walls died down and Noids were lured South into the pits and trapped. Finally we had control of the cave.

But so much time had passed that pressing on toward the deeper Pitch caves was deemed impractical. Instead, we stepped into an Ethereal Portal for the trip home through the Ethereal Plane. Yor quickly fell to a Cloud, and he called for us to escape quickly. I immediately opened a portal and stepped through - and found myself on Portal Isle instead of in Purgatory ( a recent change). But almost no one else followed because CJ had then called for folks to remain in the Ethereal Plane to rescue Yor. Oops. By the time they killed the Cloud and got control, Yor had departed. Everyone else then passed through a portal to safety.

So, yet another unsuccessful trip in a growing string of unsuccessful trips. We are due for some good luck!

The one good point was that we cleared the entire Southeast pit, so I finally got a good, careful look at the rock wall there. I saw no paths. I had been hoping there might be one (and there may well be one far too difficult for me to see yet) because I find it quite curious that this rock wall appears to be exactly over PC4/5, so that one might be able to use a crack here to slip right down into PC5. Oh well.

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