Chat Summary for 14 April, 2000

A rather surprising turn of events last Friday. Both the party and the dragon suffered setbacks, but overall the party has made a lot of progress.

There were two main areas of activity - near the tunnel mouth and back in the cavern itself. We’ll take the two areas separately.

Sane and Nikki were the main players near the tunnel entrance, with Kat joining them once she arrived. Sane created several illusions to try and confuse the dragon. While his first one worked for a short time (an audible glamer of Nikki and Diana reading a spell from a scroll), his second one didn’t fare as well. His second illusion was of himself flying down the tunnel away from the dragon. Sane, who was invisible, planned on following his illusion down the tunnel. The plan hit a snag when the dragon reared up and used its wings to create a strong windstorm, forcing Sane to abandon control over the illusion and concentrate on his flying. Even worse, the wind kicked up the dust from the floor and mixed it with the fog from the cavern. These two things together created a thin coat of mud all over the invisible Sane. The dragon saw this (and that the illusion wasn’t coated with mud), figured out what was going on, and proceeded to pump five magic missiles into Sane before the kenku could get away. The magic missiles took Sane negative. He managed to stay conscious long enough to land safely, but then passed out.

Nikki turned around at the beginning of the session and moved back towards the cavern. Once she could clearly see the dragon she changed back into human form, cast Mirror Image on herself (just in case) and proceeded to try several Reckless Dweomer spells to enhance her defenses. None of the RDs worked, but she was saved from some interesting surge effects by her Chaos Shield. Unfortunately for Nikki her Wraithform ran out just as the dragon started chasing the fallen Sane. The dragon saw her and attacked, but not before Nikki went invisible. Once again a stoneskin spell probably saved a party member’s life. Nikki was then able to flee when Katrina distracted the dragon from behind. She got to Sane and stopped what little bleeding he had and then directed Katrina to her and Sane’s location.

For her part Katrina spent most of the round moving around the edge of the cavern toward the tunnel. She reached the mouth of the tunnel shortly after the dragon brought Sane down. She notched a magical arrow that made it easy for her to hit the dragon and started shooting. After only a few hits the dragon spun around to attack her, but didn’t see anything (Katrina had used Dust of Invisibility before she started forward). Hurting very badly the dragon took off and flew into the fog, heading into the cavern. A few rounds later Ariessus heard it fly past her into the tunnel joining the two caverns. Ari tried to take a shot at it but fired too early and hit Amber instead.

The second group was made up of everybody else except for Shadow. Shadow had made it half way to the tunnel when the dragon appeared. She stopped, hid, and held tight, waiting for the others to come up behind her.

As for the rest of the party, they exchanged several healing spells and then started forward at a safe speed (i.e., walking). That all changed when Sane went down and the party felt his fall through the Combat Empathy spell. Most everybody picked up the pace, and most everybody managed to fall at least once.

Shortly after Sane went down something else happened to spur the party forward. Shadow was attacked by "something". She couldn’t really see what it was in the fog and the darkness. She barely managed to get away from it. Thengal and Castinar hurried forward and were able to cover her retreat. They were then attacked as well. While the two fighters couldn’t see what was attacking them, Finslayer could. Through his sword Castinar saw strange shadowy figures, vaguely humanoid in shape. Something else interesting was that one of the shadows attacked Castinar but couldn’t harm the ranger, and in fact jumped back in pain when it attacked him. The next round Xaveus and K’harn arrived to provide support. That’s where we stopped.

So, in summary the party is in three locations. Katrina, Nikki, and Sane (who is still unconscious) are on the floor of the tunnel, about 200’ from the cavern entrance. Thengal, Castinar, Xaveus, K’harn, and Shadow are all about 1/3^rd the way around the cavern facing the shadow creatures. Ari, Amber, and Matar are still slowly making their way forward. Diana is still ethereal in "bug-out" mode.

We won’t be doing an e-mail turn before next Friday’s chat session, but if you have any questions please let me know.

Saif