Chat Summary for 3 March 2000

We started the chat session right were we left off last week – Sane’s return to the party. He briefed them on what had happened to him and they discussed what to do. It was decided that the bulk of the party should move back down the tunnel to a secure location and rest up while a small group went forward to scout out the left cavern. (OOC: While it appeared as if there were two caverns there was, in fact, only one.)

Castinar went forward to scout accompanied by Hunter, Shadow, and Nikki – who took the form of a quasi-quasit. When they got to the cavern Castinar slipped forward in stealth mode (he has a set of elven cloak and boots) while Hunter flew in to look around. Shadow and Nikki hung back, waiting for the all-clear from Castinar.

That’s when they got lucky. The monster they were tracking (which they later discovered was a large behir) had climbed above the tunnel mouth and was waiting to ambush whoever came through. Castinar slipped by due to his cloak. Shadow and Nikki would have been behir-bait but for the fact that Hunter noticed the behir as it lay hidden above the tunnel mouth. He quickly veered away, calling a warning to Castinar. The pair returned to the tunnel, where Hunter told them what he had seen. Wisely deciding not to press the issue Castinar lead the group back to where the others awaited.

When the scouts arrived and gave their report Sane got the party moving, wanting to attack while they knew where the monster was. The party quickly made their way to the cavern. Once they got close they set up with the fighters forming a scrimmage line in front, followed by the archers, and finally the spell-casters. Once everybody was in position Sane created the bait with an illusion. He had four kenku carrying a lantern move out of the tunnel and into the cavern. The party expected the behir to pounce on them… but he didn’t. They were pretty sure he was still there because some rocks and dirt trickled down from above, but no sign of the monster.

OOC what happened is this was a rather smart behir. Two things clued him to the fact that something was amiss. First, Sane had used an illusion to escape from him earlier, so he knew there was an illusionist. Second, here were four more kenku but these were carrying a light, the universal "eat me" signal in the Underdark. To David’s (Sane’s player) defense he did have to have a light in order to be able to see his illusion, but the net result was the behir was allowed a saving throw, which it made.

BIC: Sane then tried to draw the behir out by having the kenku panic and run around. Nothing. So he created a second illusion of a Nikki-like mage wandering out into the cavern and "dispelling" the kenku illusion then looking around, frustrated. Nothing.

While this was going on the behir decided to take things into its own claws. It snuck down and look down the tunnel at the party. Unfortunately none of the party members noticed it. Being smart enough to realize that the soft ones were being protected by the hard ones up front it darted out along the wall and started running back for the spellcasters.

Well, the party was having none of this. It was a fast and furious fight that convinced me that I’ve got to stop being nice to the party if I ever want to kill anybody. The group dished out over 100 points of damage in two rounds. Nikki scored with a fireball which Sane then mimicked the next round. Kat and Shadow did considerable damage with their arrows. Once Castinar softened the rock under the behir, forcing it to the ground, Matar, Ari, and Thengal all got blows in as well.

Once the monster was dead the party split up. Sane, Castinar, Shadow, and Ariessus all went in to explore the cavern. Kat and Thengal cut the behir open to look inside (they didn’t find anything) while Amber pulled one of the beast’s fangs out.

In the cavern the party found the behir’s nest. It was a large pile of coins, gems, and jewelry. Intermixed with the riches were several magical items (armor, weapons, a wand, a small ceramic pig) and a large number of bones. Ari investigated the bones. She found a skeleton of a human male and an elven female. But curiously most of the bones turned out to be pig bones.

While Ari and Castinar looked over the treasure Sane decided to scout a little further. He entered the tunnel and started down it. After only 500’ or so of twisting tunnel he saw light from up ahead. Continuing on silently he discovered another cavern.

This cavern was quite unlike the previous one. For one thing there was light in here. But the light (put off by fungus) was perhaps more confusing to the senses than total darkness since it was first reflected off the surface of a pool of water and then refracted by huge crystals along the ceiling. The movement of the water caused pools of light and dark to constant chase each other all over the cavern, an effect which had Sane’s eyes hurting after only a few minutes. Although he studied the cavern for a while he didn’t see anything of interest and decided to pull back and let the others know what he had found.

That’s where we ended. The pile of treasure is going to take quite a while to sort through and count, but you estimate there are 20,000 coins here of various metals, with gold being the most prevalent. There are also numerous smaller gems, but no jewels that stand out individually. Castinar has set aside those items which detect as magical, except for the wand which Sane has. Check out the Resources page under the Treasure heading for a list of the unidentified magic items found.

So as things stand right now the party is split between those around the behir and those out in the cavern.

What now?