Soldi, day 89 of Autumn, 557

After last week's teleport mishap, we were all nervous about this critical step on today's trip.

After reaching PC5 in good order, we had some discussion about how to proceed with the teleporting. Since we had both Hepta and Rincewind with us today, we had options.

First, we could do our usually prefered 2 teleport option, where the first Mystic takes a small group of runners to clear the Landing Zone first, followed by the second Mystic taking the rest of the group.

We ended up deciding on a chancier landing with redundant teleport, with Hepta attempting to take us all first and Rincewind standing by to take anyone who might be left behind in a botched first effort.

There was a very tense moment as Hepta prepared to teleport us all, and her Strange Stone flaked yet again!

We were rewarded with a clean teleport however, although Hepta's stone disintegrated with the effort. Seeing it went okay, Rincewind then teleported himself to join us.

Thankfully, the Landing Zone was fairly clear and we survived without having sent in an initial runner team. The rest of the cave was not clear though, and neither runner made it to their target area. When Elenis and I followed to plant Kudzu walls, I ran into a mass of milling Arachnoids too close to the group for comfort. I managed to plant my walls but then ran North to draw the Noids away from the rest of the group. I didn't get far either, but it was far enough to keep them away from the group for the time being.

With effort, the Noids were vanquished one-by-one until the cave was ours and the fallen runners all raised. We proceeded happily on to PC7, and slowly whittled away all the Noids there too.

When we reached the Notrth part of PC7, we faced a choice: East toward Trillbane's Commentaries in PC9, or West thrugh the newly-openned path to explore there. CJ decided East, so runners were sent into PC8 to clear the way for the Zu team. Yor didn't last very long, so we sent Farhope in. She lasted a bit longer and sunstoned for the Kudzu team to follow, but the cave was still full of Noids and Elenis and I both fell before we could do anything productive other than warn the others. The rest of the group decided to chance luring Noids from PC8 into PC7, which has proved our undoing many times before. Given how busy PC8 was, there seemed no other option, although we had suggested they leave us behind to explore PC10 instead. Unsurprisingly, the lure back into PC7 was massive and overwhelming, and the rest of the group fell there.

We have decided to make a choice when we reach this crossroads next, based on a sacrifice of one runner into PC8. If it is too busy, we will simply skip it and go West to explore PC10 instead. It's a shame to come all this way only to abandon a colleague, but experience has shown that a packed PC8 is almost unassailable. At least now we have other productive options at this point.

Click here to go back the Foothill trip index.

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