Subtitle: Out of sight, out of mind

Alternate title: Rhorja experiments with mushrooms

A strange, warbling bird call pierces the dawn air and draws the attention of Sergeant Ingmar and Gormless (for different reasons). Ingmar casually strolls off into the bush. Gormless makes his own path into the forest hoping it is a new animal he can befriend. What he hears instead is a language he can almost make out. It is a conversation in Elvish between the ranger, Trivike, and the Sergeant. Gormless attempts to imitate the call to see how they react but is quickly caught by Ingmar. The man smiles when he sees the boy, not totally displeased with the intrusion. It was his intention to find him and the rest of the group and send them out of town and away from trouble for a spell. The druid agrees and runs back to the village to gather the others.

True to his word, Sergeant Akmoore is on the prowl for Bellamin and Alistine the next morning. He spies Barton as he does his morning chores and calls him over. "Those two brats that drew steel on my men last night, you will tell me their names." "I don't know their names, Sergeant. But I do know where they can be found. If you would like to leave a few of your men behind I can show you where they are likely to be. I know you are a busy man" Barton replies as he thinks about all of those defenseless farmers the man is probably on his way to extort. Akmoore leaves two men behind and gives Gormless a contemptuous look as the filthy child runs up to Barton. Gormless relays the message about the work and goes off to find Rhorja. Barton sets about tracking down Bellamin and Alistine and offers to let them hide in his room. They scoff at the woefully inadequate hiding spot but agree to meet with the group just outside of town. Tahm has lost all interest in adventuring and declines to join the group, leaving it up to the five of them.

Rhorja had spent his morning visiting the local cleric to see if she can shed any light on Anoji's disappearance. The only thing she could tell him was that it had happened before and that he had reappeared on his own a few weeks later and refused to say a word about it. Another mage had tried unsuccessfully to heal him and had come away from the experience changed himself. Anoji's mind seems to be fractured, compartmentalized, and on multiple planes of existence all at once. The only other help she could offer was in the form of a minor divination spell that she could help prepare with the proper ingredients. He considers this, thanks her, and returns to the hut. With no one in the village able to help with Anoji he decides to try translating the scrolls to occupy his mind. Gormless intrudes on his musings a few hours later and Rhorja happily agrees to come along.


As they converged on the village square at midday, they noticed the large caravan of wagons and crowd of miners preparing them. Three Gnomes were also hovering around as part of the expedition. Their leader introduced himself as Snertlingmarengiren. They are engineers who are there to assess the mine. After a short time Snert gives a sharp whistle and the miners start pulling the wagons. Gormless leads the group back to the mine with Bellamin and Alistine joining them on the way. Eventually they reach the mine and Barton, Aistine, and the miners set up camp. Bellamin questions Gormless about plants and Rhorja about magic. Both intentionally perplex him so they can go back to what they were doing (which was scouting and being snarky, respectively). Gormless finds a decent entrance for the carts. They decide it would be best to wait to enter the cave in the morning and set up next to the hole. The group pesters Snert to teach them some Gnomish. The night passes without event and the next morning they descend into the cave. As they debate who gets to go first (except for Rhorja), Bellamin grabs the rope and jumps in.

He proceeds to loot as much of the small cavern he finds at the bottom as possible as the others slowly climb down the rope. He sets off a trap and suffers minor burns for his trouble. As they all spread out, they find ruts in the ground and follow them to a collapsed entrance that will allow the carts access to the mine without being lowered. Snert is excited at the find and immediately gets to work planning the logistics of making a hole through it. Alistine also sets off a trap, this time a poison one. Rhorja fortunately has some plants that will help and applies those to the wound. Barton and Gormless keep exploring while the two lovers bicker about how to best open the chest while Rhorja watches them, bemused (he has done his one good deed for the week and feels no need to help further). Barton and Gormless squeeze through another small cave-in and come back to the area where Tahm had fallen in during their last visit. Now that they are back in familiar territory the group gathers together and at the last unexplored area: a deep crevasse. They descend into it and encounter a strange mold that explodes when warmed. So they need to find a way to kill it with cold. Alistine opines that if Bellamin stands close enough to it his heart will do the trick. They are having issues, it seems.

Bellamin and Alistine go back to Snert to see if he has anything that can help them. Basking in the quiet, the others check out the rest of the area still accessible. They find a skeleton, and a cave fisher. It decides that Barton would make a tasty snack and snares the young man as he examines the skeleton. Rhorja's magic missile doesn't do much more than make it angry and it proceeds to haul Barton off into the darkness. Barton eventually manages to struggle free and proceeds to take his revenge. Gormless tries to make friends with it to no avail (probably because Barton is hacking it to pieces). Bellamin and AListine hear the battle and manage to rejoin the group just in time to see Rhorja smack it to death with his staff.

They dissect it after a short bit of trouble where nearly all of their weapons get stuck to the web. Among the treasures they find are a nicely balanced sword for Barton and some guts for Rhorja to experiment with. The viscera of the creature helps get everything unstuck. Bellamin brings back some acid from the Gnomes just in time for it to not be useful. Oh, well. "...Alright. Wake me up when I can be moderately useful," he says and sits. And quickly stands as he realizes he can use the fisher's web as a rope once all of the adhesive is washed off. Then he gets his hands stuck to it and needs help. Gormless dumps a bunch of guts on his hands and lets Bellamin do the rest himself. Then he heals Barton from the fisher bites. Barton is more worried about the beautiful sword that somehow went missing in the water when no one was looking. *cough*

Meanwhile, Rhorja takes the acid and tries to dissolve the mold with it. Instead it eats through his quarterstaff and the cloth he soaked the acid in. Experiment number one is a failure. He moves onto number two, which is to wash it away in the stream. With the help of the Gnomes they devise a plan to wash it away with buckets of icy water. It goes off without a hitch and the mold slowly gets washed away. Rhorja had started to fret about the laws of thermodynamics but everyone just ignored him. As the Gnomes work on this task, Gormless keeps exploring. He runs into yet more mold and shrieking mushrooms that cause everyone to grab their ears. The can see another skeleton underneath them which gives off a faint magical aura. Barton rushes in to try and grab whatever is magical and gets lashed with mushroom tentacles. They aren't sticky, but they are poisonous. Barton immediately feels ill and Gormless assists him in retreating. The mushrooms advance and keep attacking. Ranged attacks were sufficient to kill the creatures without putting anyone into more danger.

The skeleton had bracers and a ring on it, both magical. Everyone spreads out to finish mapping the cave and Gormless finds even more mushrooms (glowing ones this time). Fortunately they don't try to attack him and Rhorja is able to identify them as useful for potions. Nothing else of note is found and the group decides to break for a much needed lunch back at camp. Gormless discovers another hole that leads into an unexplored section of the cave. They decide to leave it alone for now and focus on the cart entrance. "Beal and Aylie" go down first to find a path at Gormless's suggestion (he has yet to learn their names properly) because they are the best climbers and it would be something they would enjoy. Barton hacks a path through the brush. Gormless stands gard. Rhorja stays back to study but ends up daydreaming about Tahm instead. He asks the poorly socialized druid for advise on if he has a shot with her and gets a confused response of, "Have you asked her is you do?". Rhorja is stunned by the elegant simplicity of that approach and thinks it over.

Bellamin hears something moving during his reconnaissance and finds an arrow lodged into the ground. He reports back to the group worried that it might have friends. Snert is adamant that they get the entrance cleared and carts moved in before nightfall so they have a more defensible position. They all get to work. Gormless comes across the blind where the arrow was fired from and finds a few sets of Kobold prints that are too sporadic to track anywhere specific. The group settles in for the night. Squire Lee steals the dice Bellamin, Alistine, Barton, and the miners were using to gamble, mistaking it for a nut. Rhorja offers sarcastically to magic missile the little pest. Eventually they all sleep and leave two to watch in shifts. Shortly after midnight they are attacked. Barton impatiently charges off into the darkness after they get peppered with arrows. The miners and Gnomes stay behind to guard the carts while the rest chase after him. They can't keep up and are soon split as they chase after different targets. The Kobolds are being led by a massive, dual axe wielding creature with 4 arms and the head of a bull. Barton charges after it with Bellamin and Alistine following behind as he is their only source of light. Gormless comes upon one of the archers and wounds it enough to make it run. Rhorja stays back and tries to charm the "minotaur" but is unsuccessful. The spell does draw the beast's attention and it directs the nearby archers to fire on the mage. Bellamin and Alistine quickly dispatch all but one of the Kobolds and the last flees. Everyone lost sight of their leader in the battle so Gormless tries to chase it down in the direction it was last seen. Instead he finds the last Kobold and manages to tackle it. The group binds him and takes him back to the camp for questioning. It won't respond to anyone but Rhorja. He manages to bond with it and convince him that they are the best of friends.

Meanwhile, Barton and Gormless are inspecting the tracks that lead away from the battle. They follow it until they see the heavier, deeper tracks split into three pairs of normal Kobold tracks. Disturbed by this, Barton returns to camp with the discovery while Gormless presses on. He is more comfortable alone in the wilderness anyway and can move much more quickly on his own. After walking all day he comes to the edge of the Kobold's camp and sits down to wait. Even after they fire arrows at him he refuses to move until he is finally addressed. He requests to speak to the Shaman of their camp but has to make do with the leader of the boundary guard. He requests that they stop fighting each other and focus on trying to repel the Blackcloaks from the region. During his walk Gormless had time to think about all of the strife in the region and realized that the Cloaks were behind it all. Everything was out of balance and it was his duty as a druid to stop it. He promised to return to them with a bunch of coins as a good faith gesture. Which only leaves him to figure out his to convince his friends to not slaughter them on sight. He returns to the camp and is able to catch some of the conversation between Rhorja and the Kobold. Rhorja is trying to point out they could be allies but the Kobold claims his tribe could never be friends with allies of the Blackcloaks. Rhorja takes exception to this. Gormless notices and leads the mage outside to help him hatch a plan to return their prisoner to his village and earn some goodwill. Rhorja agrees.

Unbeknown to them Barton is also trying to free the Kobold during the night. Before any of these things can play out they are interrupted by a scream in the night. One of the miners got dragged into the back tunnel of the cave during his watch. With mounting exhaustion they once again gear up for battle. The screams lead them into a spider's nest. Gormless tries to befriend one of them and would have succeeded but the others decided a spider is not a pet and hacked it to death first. Bellamin really hates spiders. Rhorja also manages to magic missile one of them in midair as it leaps at Barton in the dark. The last one flees and Gormless follows to find a room filed with a tangle of webs. The others stay back and try to save the dying man. Rhorja manages to slow the poison with more herbs and they drag him back to camp before returning to burn out the nest. The last spider is nowhere to be seen. They divide up the odd coins they find and leave the pile of Kobold skeletons where they lay. After this they are finally able to rest and recover from the eventful series of nights.

End Adventure 3