The four of us, Alan, Kivan, Edwin and Branwen headed for the mines the next day. Nothing I said managed to dissuade them, they had smiting evil, righteous battle and gold on their minds and me having a really bad hangover just didn't work as reason enough to stop them. We were waylaid by a group that contained the big half orc I'd seen as the Friendly Arm Inn. They were having their own internal bust ups, it sounded very bitter, all sorts of betrayal going on. We helped the half orc kill the others as they had attacked us. The half orc asked if I was "Ayla". Told him not to be silly, do I look like a woman, I'm Alan, he must be thinking of my distant cousin Anne of the Lincolnshire Patridges (who always looked a bit ambiguous when it came to gender, the family never liked to talk about it). I think I got away with it especially as later Edwin asked if my cousin was, how shall we put this, "open minded".
How are these randomers seeing through my disguise?
We found the sculpter Prism who had stolen the emeralds, chipping away at a vast stone head. The emeralds were for the eyes, (ridiculous, they were totally out of scale). Prism was in love with her yet had never spoken to her? Kivan went off on one about true love being about never speaking to the true love or somesuch, (elves what can you do?) Then the bounty hunter Greywolf turned up for the emeralds. We said, no way we found them first, he attacked, we killed him, Prism died (drugs, just say no).
Personally I thought the carving was pretty hidious and who the hell is going to see it in this backwards neck of the woods? The emeralds are nice though, shame I don't get to keep them. Edwin was just dissappointed it wasn't full length. Branwen insisted we check to make sure it wasn't another petrified woman. Though as Edwin pointed out, it was just the head and bloody huge and if it was a real woman she might be very pissed off if we resurrected her and she found out she's been decapitated.
So then we headed into the mines and this is where my sense of humour went missing, I began to make Kivan look cheerful.
Kobalds, hundreds of kobalds, hundreds of kobalds with bows and flame arrows, hundreds of kobalds waiting round corners to ambush you with bows and flame arrows. So we struggled on, a step at a time, Branwyn at the front with shield up. Didn't do much good, the buggers still caught Edwin with a one shot kill (would have helped admitedly if he had cast armour but "he" forgot). So back to Nashkel and a quick visit to the temple. Dropped off the emeralds, gave Edwin his share of the gold as a bribe to go back to the mines.
Agonisingly slowly we crept our way down through the mines, we tried to recruit some miners as a human shield but they weren't having any of it, ungrateful curs. I scouted ahead, disarming traps and spying round corners, inbetween running back to the others and telling them this was really a bad idea and can we go home now. We found a "grease" spellscroll, now we're talking. Combined with Edwin's horror spell, things got a lot easier. First you make the hoards of kobalds get stuck and fall over, then you scare the bejesus out of them so they run around in panic. Picking them off with arrows and sling bullets was easy after that.
At the bottem of the mine we found Mulahay, the mastermind behind all this disruption, holed up in a small bijou cave (I think he was going for ethnic come arts and crafts, but in a mine? What an idiot) The fight went much better than expected. We spoke to him and bluffed our way past his defences. He invited us to check his accounts, promising everything was in order and that the petty cash was accounted for. Then he went nuts, turned on us and summoned a hoard of yet more kobalds with some skeletons added in for variety. What he didn't know is that we had done some earlier preparations. Outside the cave there was a grease trap set up and quite a few snares. Branwen had a skeleton helper of her own, and between Kivan's arrows, my katana, Branwens mace and Edwin's spells he didn't last long. Amongst the papers we found evidence that this is all connected to the bandits, Tranzig and Tazok were mentioned. So Kivan and Branwyn went off on one demanding all sorts of retribution. Me and Edwin were looking at the cusions, lovely embroidary.
We found an elf in a side cave, even prettier than the one we've got, even more miserable than the one we've got. A kind of Superelf version of super elfishness. He blushed attractively at the compliments being sent his way from Branwen and Edwin, though looked a little nervous when they argued about who would walk next to him. His name's Xan and he's a mage, Edwin immediately offered help with his "spells", yeah sure Edwin.
We made our way back through the mine to the entrance, much rejoicing (and surprise that we were still alive) at our appearence from the guards, not that they had lifted a finger to help. Then back to Nashkel for the rewards. The mayor proclaimed us heroes, gave us gold (good), said we would be famous (not so good).
Back to the inn for well needed rest and booze, and then a bounty hunter appeared and bloody rcognised me again. What the hell, I'm beginning to get stubble (OK a bit of fluff , but if you catch it in a certain light, it could be stubble). "Death come for thee", oh purleese.
We scattered, we shot arrows, some of us hid, we took him down with a wand of frost. Funny thing was the kick boxing nutter seemed to be able to see when he was invisible, that helped a lot. People round these parts have really good eyesight, nothing gets past them, magical disguises or invisibility.
