Making the world safe for Sleestak

We had another session of Justin's Vaults of Ur game on G+ last night, and things went really really well.

The players were myself as Thidrek the Sleestak, Dean as Father Karl, and Jeremy as Ripper the Orc.

First off, Dean got a bit more characterization going, and is now officially a follower of the Great Bear Deity.  Jeremy had Ripper hire us an NPC crossbow wielding beastman to come along and help shoot things.  Blasco was his name.

We spent a little time going over equipment lists.  The disparity between the old Labyrinth Lord version's armor and the AEC (and I assume the new regular LL) caused a few laments.  Jeremy and I had both purchased better armor at the higher price before the previous session.  Oh well, water under the bridge.  We'll be using the updated prices in the future.  I never did like the inflated armor prices anyway.

We also learned that our efforts have been making a difference.  The way between Fort Low and The Hive is now more or less clear of monsters.  The march of progress continues.  Law is pushing back Chaos.  

We headed back into the Hive, but got a colder reaction than normal.  They also had a lot more guards at the end of their tunnels.  They were still friendly enough to share some healing balm with us, but Thidrek was running out of translation powder, and they suggested he go deep into the center of the Hive to get more.  He did, on his own, and saw some things man was not meant to see.  Luckily he's a Sleestak and not a man.

He also found out that the extra guards were there because of "cold worm" attacks.  Promising to look into it (and hoping he'd meet nothing of the sort!) Thidrek got the translation powder and headed back to the others.

We descended into the caves we'd been exploring, and found the place reeking of rotting troglodyte corpses.  And of course what comes down to attack?  Carrion crawlers.  The first wave was three juveniles, each about 4' long.  We got +2 bonuses to save vs. paralysis on them, but it was a tense battle.  Ripper got paralyzed in the first round, then Blasco the NPC, and then Father Karl.  We were down to the last crawler and Thidrek.  Thidrek got initiative, made his hit roll, and slew the beast.  We were really close to a TPK.

Gathering up all the bodies, we burned them at the Rhagodessa bone pit, and waited on the ledge to see what would come.  The momma Carrion Crawler showed up, of course.  We did better this time.  All four of us scored hits with missile weapons on the surprise round.  Ripper got paralyzed again, but Father Karl was waiting with a Cure Light Wounds spell to free him.  Ripper then drove his sword through its mouth into its brain.  We burned it, too.

We got to the next chamber, worked stone, were we also had fought troglodytes.  Burned them, and the carrion crawler maggots there.  And finally we got into the sarcophagus room just beyond, which had tempted us at the end of the last session.

Just beyond that room was a pit, containing a 10' tall metallic hand-shaped symbol on the wall, with a statue of a warrior holding a mace in the air in the center.  Something to investigate next time.  We opened sarcophagi, and found plenty of golden grave goods.  We also got attacked by a trio of ghouls - the same ones that Thidrek had encountered in the Zoo (and that killed Kullpetal and Danyael).  So the caverns we're in now connect to the ones under the Zoo, apparently.  More stuff to check out on a future expedition.

Loaded down with lots of loot (finally!), and with a carrion crawler head to take back to The Hive, we headed back up and after getting a small reward from the Hive, headed back to Fort Low to celebrate our success.  Our NPC hireling looks willing to come along next time, too.