Current Training: Swengus.

Donations: Daangrus Diggins (40-50%).

Exploration: More Orga Stronghold.

Gradi, day 54 of Spring, 564.

Pathfinders have been congregating at the Stronghold path to try to learn it, both the entry and (quite a bit more hazardously) the exit.

The discovery of the Orga Stronghold itself comes at the twelfth anniversary of PAGs founding, way back in 552.

That makes us all rather old, so it seemed somehow appropriate that we could now legitimately call ourselves SAG.

PAG's recent trips have all been quite eventful.

First, we ventured to Slate Cave 5, to find that the crumbling web had finally crumbled, openning up the ladder leading down.

Downstairs is a new Arachnoid-filled cavern that we are calling SC11.

We didn't get very far into SC11 on our only trip here so far, but have a rough map to work with now.

I am ready for more pathfinding training, or at least a way to reduce my burden of Skeins of Silk.

On our next trip, we tried to take advantage of an odd situation.

It seems that certain pathfinders had discovered that it was possible to lure Arachnoids out of SC1 into the Foothills cave at Camp Dred, and thus hunt them in relative safety.

Of course, once out, if they aren't vanquished they also lure into Camp Dred. And the Foothills. And Dredwood.

In a word, this is a mess waiting to happen.

But before we realized how bad this could get, PAG tried to enter the Slate Caves this way, using a combination of lures out to the Foothill cave and runners into SC3 and the deeper Foothills.

Things seemed to be going fine, and we were on the verge of moving on to SC4 when disaster struck - either someone mistakenly went into SC3 and lured all the accumulated Slates back on us, or we had the unluckiest Slate spawn ever.

But in a word, we were inundated with Slate Noids, and the group was cut in half.

Most fell were they were, deep in SC2, while a few of us managed to run out to the Foothills cave near Camp Dred, hoping to recover and rescue our comrades.

Except that some dozen or more Slate Noids followed us out, killing the last of us and then taking over Camp Dred.

Sad to say, PAG was unable to immediately clean up our mess, and Camp Dred was dreadful indeed for some days before things were put right by vanquishing these unwelcome Slate Noids.

We won't be trying THAT route again, and decided that the possibility of hunting Noids this way was not worth the inevitable mess either.

On our next trip ( a weekend trip I missed), PAG managed to teleport to the deeper Slate Caves to discover that the ladder in SC10 leading up toward Orga drums was finally open as well.

The group managed to explore a number of new snells in the relatively lightly protected back end of the Orga Stronghold before finally being wiped out by attrition (many Razzias to cart away unattended fallens) and powerful lightning.

On the next trip, I was eager to see some of this for myself, and found out firsthand that "relatively light" defenses can still be rather substantial.

We managed to complete mapping of a couple of snells seen on the previous trip, as well as conquer a new snell that appeared to link to a new section altogether.

The new section, reached through a difficult path, wiped us out almost immediately.

The scout we sent in reported that things seemed calm enough, but when the group entered it was fried en masse.

Try as I might to reach the exit path, it was jammed with newly entering exiles trapped tightly behind a wall of their fallen comrades who entered earlier.

Still, it was a successful effort, and I look forward to further adventures exploring this newly discovered Orga domain.

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Click here for my report on the next storm.

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