Merdi, day 7 of Autumn, 555

Today's group was relatively few in number, but stout of heart. We had but one Mystic, Rincewind, and only Stonehead along wielding a Bloodblade.

Last trip, Rincewind had been able to see Olive and Crimson Arachnoids at the unopenned path near Camp Dred, which rekindled hope that this path was indeed the same as the unopenned path in PC7 and would eventually be a shortcut there.

On the way to the Pitch caves today, the entire group paused to gawk at the Camp Dred path while Rincewind strained to see what lay beyond.

We were all quite surprised then to see an Arachnoid of a blueish-grey color we had never encountered before.

If that is a new Noid, then this path definitively leads to a new cave, not to PC7. And that's a wonderful thing - waiting to be explored.

After arriving at the Pitch caves, we set into clearing PC1. After quickly planting our Zu walls, the group was in and ready for action. During a lull in the fighting, Michael took it upon himself to visit the pathfinder Library in the walled-off Southwest pit, since it seemed to be quiet down that way. Tempers flared some, since cutting the walls and wandering off from the group is not a good idea.

After luring out PC2, we moved on to that cave and thence to PC3. Things seemed fairly quiet there, and with some quick zu planting in PC4 that cave was stabilized rapidly too. And so we moved on into PC5 in less than an hour of fighting in the caves.

Since only Rincewind was present, we had no choice but to teleport the entire group at once, rather than an initial teleport of a runner team as we did last week.

Still, the entry was very clean, and after the runners left, only a single Pitch Noid remained in the Landing Zone. This was fairly rapidly taken down, but not before felling several exiles. Still, we recovered quickly, and then began killing Noids by ones and twos as they were lured from the Northwest. After some time PC6 was ours.

When we moved into PC7, it seemed pretty quiet, and I was able to advance all the way to the West pit to plant a zu wall there on the first try. With many Noids trapped in the pit, we had that many fewer to deal with, and fairly quickly we moved up in PC7 and were ready to move into PC8. Pathfinders were unable to slip through the path there, and Rincewind saw nothing at all on his scans - reinforcing the idea that this path does not lead to near Camp Dred.

PC8 was quiet as usual, and we quickly cleared it. All that remained was to assault PC9, beyond a path. Since we had discovered last trip that web-slinging Noids will follow an exile out of PC9 into PC8 (much as they will follow exiles through the path into the pathfinder library in PC1), we settled on a luring strategy. Elenis and Farhope took turns rushing in and out to draw Noids to the waiting fighters. This worked fairly well for awhile, but eventually the Noids accumulated near the entry area of PC9 and the lurers kept getting trapped and killed. Finally, even with several fallens right inside PC9 who could toggle when it was clear to enter to chain and lure, that space became so full of Noids it was pointless to send anyone else in. Apparently the Noids could sense us outside, and simply would not disperse from the path area.

We waited and waited for over an hour, moving to the far side of the cave and all around, but the Noids simply didn't wander away. We had not even a slim chance of grabbing anyone with dozens of Noids clustered at the entry. And certainly no chance of entering the cave en masse to try to set up a fighting area inside. It was over.

Stymied and short of time, with quite a few fallens in PC9, we realized that enough was enough.

From the remaining exiles, Rincewind took a small group home by teleporting from the PC8 Booster Stone to the mid-pass Noids cavern (South group in this sketch).

The remaining 6 exiles (mostly pathfinders, standing to the North in this sketch) decided to try a mad dash into PC9 in hopes that one hardy soul might make it further than before. It was a desperate effort, but we hoped it might prove worthwhile for at least one of us.

I went first, leading a foolhardy group of six exiles into the hell that was PC9.

I think this sketch of PC9 as I entered it during that final suicidal rush about sums up what we were banging our heads against ...

I lasted about 3 seconds and caught over a dozen webs in that time. On the plus side, that distracted the crowd enough for CJ parker and Jeepers to slip past and run nearly to the end of the cave, to the Web area in the far East.

Clearly our strategy of luring out PC9 through the path has serious drawbacks, and we will do some long and hard thinking about how best to control this vicious cave.

Click here to go back the Foothill trip index.

Click here to go back to Azriel's Main scroll.