Soldi, day 44 of Spring, 555

A trip that started with the seemingly usual bad luck turns into one of the truly epic adventures of our age. No new advances, but with several hours of effort we reached PC8 and sent runners into PC9.

In the beginning, this group set out for the Foothills. Things got off to a slow start when Mjollnir refused to wake up, and by the time he had woken, latecomers Nesse, The Black Dove and Sagramor were also en route. Once again, the bulk of the group held Hatred Hollow while Yor and I shepherded stragglers through to catch up.

Once the group had reassembled at the Trainers Grotto, we had our second incident. Tonoto failed to move when the group headed toward the Dred Passage, so one again Yor and I waited to see if he recovered. Unfortunately he did not, and poofed, so we prepared to rejoin the group when I got a nasty shock. I was unable to open the Grotto path!

How embarrassing! After passing through this path at least once a week for nearly a year, I take a week off and suddenly I can't open it! Blasted pathfinding ...

Of course, this also meant Yor and I were far separated from the group. Although we had two Mystics along (Drablak and Phiros), we had only one Strange Stone, so a teleport relay to bring us to the rest of the group at the Foothills (as was done two weeks ago) was not an option. Instead, we decided to run through some dozen snells of the Outback to rejoin the group at the Dred Passage tree. Yor, of course, made it through with hardly a scratch, whereas I lost about half my health on the way, but we did make it safely.

The Dred Passage itself was fairly easy, since the fighters had been doing repeated clearing runs while waiting for us. As is our way lately, we ran right through the Dredwood without really clearing anything, and moved right in to attack the waterfall barricade.

The falls of a couple healers on the North edge of the rod should have been a warning that trouble was waiting, but we rushed in trying to overpower the Orga defenses. I myself went first to the South pit and killed a couple Hemlocks and Warlocks, then headed to the North pit. Instead of finding it cleared, instead I ran past the stalled rod and into an impressive 5 Orga Dredlocks. We killed all of these, but with the loss of many fighters (including me), but just then a pack of Large Death Vermine appeared and quickly targeted the healers. They made short work of the unprotected healers. Natas and Yor managed to retreat into the Western cave with Kojiro on a chain, and were lucky enough to find it fairly quiet instead of full of Large Death Vermine as well. Unfortunately, not a single healer made it to safety. All were killed.

Well, all the fallens departed (Yor and Natas stayed put), but since the hour was still early, we regathered at the Meadow to see if there was interest in starting out for the foothills again. Most folks opted in, and we set out once again, an hour late and hungry for success.

That hunger translated into better attention, and we arrived at the Pitch caves in good time and without further incident. Without much break, we pressed on into the Pitch caves.

When CJ parker first ran in to draw Noids East, she saw no webs but got stuck in a gang of Malachites near the ladder, so she ordered all the fighters in to kill them. We jumped in swinging and killed a few, but the webbers were not far off, and many fighters got snared in the webs and fell. A period of chaining ensued, and folks were rescued and the pits zued off as usual.

We spent quite a bit of time getting PC1 under control. So much so that there was some discussion as to whether we should press on or leave. Given the hour late start, several folks were reaching their limit. A couple folks did leave (Talin pendanted out, I saw), but the majority wanted to continue onward.

The march from PC1 to PC5 took a bit of time, but in the end we did reach PC5 successfully. Again the lateness of the hour led to discussion of leaving versus heading deeper, and again we decided to try for more. Why come all this way to turn back at the last minute?

Rincewind teleported 22 exiles into PC6, and the landing zone seemed pretty quiet overall. I chased CJ and Farhope out to help zu, and neither had any Noids trailing them until they actually reached the Northwest pit. At the Southwest pit, I ran into a several Malachite Noids as I was planting the zu wall there, and completed the wall with my own body. Meanwhile they fighting in the landing zone eventually settled into a more controlled hunt, and Natas and Nightbird began luring Noids from the Northwest to clear that area. Eventually, Natas was able to drag me out of the Zu wall, which was a chore since it grew all around me by then. Soon after I was raised, we were ready to move on to PC7.

The entry into PC7 seemed empty, so we all moved in. Attempts to zu off the West pit there were initially unsuccessful because of loose Noids nearby, but after some luring Yor was able to close it off. Unfortunately, he fell right by the wall, and Natas and I attempted to drag him away many many times but always lost him to the webs that seemed to target him before us. The net effect was that we spent over 30 minutes trying to chain him out while luring Noids from the North chamber, and he took a fierce pounding all the while. When the cavern was finally seeming empty, we managed to grab him successfully, just in time for some respawns. Of course he was far beyond healing by then, as was Nightbird, who had fallen beside him during some chain attempts using a web lurer running past first.

After a long while, we did manage empty the cavern and move forward to the main Northern chamber, but not before some whining set in at our stalled predicament. When we did move up, we caught a lot of webs from the zued off pit. that, plus the real lateness of the hour, made us hurry to enter PC8 instead of luring it out into PC7.

At first, it seemed a good decision, because there was little opposition in PC8. But more Noids kept filtering back to us from the Southeast pit, and eventually an Albino appeared that killed many and forced the others to retreat into the small East chamber of PC7. Of course that prompted the flinging of many webs from Noids we had already bypassed, and more folks fell there. Quickly enough we reached a critical level, and the arrival of that Albino from PC8 finished us off.

Depart #2 of the trip, almost within sight of our goal.

On the plus side, we managed to break our string of bad luck trips by turning bad luck on our first FH run of the day into energy for the second attempt. We reached PC5, teleported well to PC6, and grabbed and maintained control there. We advanced to PC7, fought as long and as hard a continuous battle there as I ever have in exile, other than the Ripture war. The pathfinders got another look at the PC7 path, without luck in opening, and Rincewind scanned it and saw no beasts at the other end (which makes me question the idea that it leads to the cave just before Camp Dred, at the difficult path there, which always has small arachne milling nearby - maybe it is a safe area, if a hard-to-reach one). We advanced into PC8 as a group and under control for just the second time. An advance party (Sa'Wrap, The Black Dove, Sor) tried a run through the PC8 path into PC9, but didn't get far. After 6 hours of near-continuous effort, that is quite an achievement for the group.

All in all, a great trip.

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