Charlie Company takes an expedient rest to plan their next move against the most powerful soldier yet, prodigiously egg-laying throughout the mining complex below Mithral Hall. An elfy voice from the darkness inquires whether it has located friendly forces of Quastarte. Startled Hops blesses some sugar snacks. Charlie welcomes Morsandoriash Siannodel who was hours ago detached from Echo Company when the super soldier, which they were also hunting, irreversibly killed them all.
Briar, mindful of his recent brush with mortality, uses Echo Company’s rope to tether each party member to hub Hops in a star configuration. Hops makes a pile of glow stones for illumination of dark corners, blesses the meat shields with extra health, and wards the healers from death. Charlie Company sallies forth, prepared to meet dangers from above, below, and sideways,
Ash tracks the super soldier where it has clawed across rock and leapt the gaps over depths unknown. He longbows a couple of egg sacs across a significant jump. The arrows are consumed by sac acid. Hops looks for routes that minimize jumping and uses the safety rope to brace the party when jumps, and falls, are unavoidable. Barika and Sqyylarr engage hounds that Ash locates ahead while the rest of the party completes the jump.
The party fights its way north into an egg sac room defended by a few hounds and some stranglers. Stranglers hatch and join the fight immediately. The room is cleared of hounds, stranglers, and unhatched sacs. Another expedient rest provides the opportunity for bandaging bites and salving tentacle slaps.
Ander uses firebolts to cull the sacs in a dead end ahead leaving no stranglers behind. Hops moves to the center of a long parallel span so that the adventurers can, without untying their safety lines, maneuver around a couple of rock faces where there is no safe path. The trial goes very well for most, especially misty-stepping Watc, but Ander just can’t find his footing. Hops slings scrunched Ander onto his back and totes him around the obstacles.
Ash scouts ahead, and the twang of his longbow alerts the party to more hounds. The hounds charge into the party as Ash falls back to range, sneaking a fatal bowshot on one while Barika critically axes the other. Sqyylarr sends the rest running with a mighty, slung bullet.
The hounds’ apparent retreat may have less to do with Sqyylarr’s intimidating sling than the largish arachnoid who emerges from the depths and acid webs frontliners Briar, Sqyylarr, and Barika. It hides down the chasm.
Ander’s artificed soldier armor protects Sqyylarr from the acid. Sqyylarr and Barika break free of the web and run down a pair of the hiding hounds. The arachnoid tail spears Hops across the chasm and hides again. Ander evokes a shatter over the arachnoid’s hidey-hole but no one hears a falling spider.
Briar remains stuck despite Hops and Watc attempting to free him. The hounds are quickly dealt with by Sqyylarr, Barika, and Hops. Ash, Ander, and Watc prepare volleys for the lurking arachnoid and nail it when it pops back up. Ash’s entangling shot prevents further escape. Briar misty steps to the nasty arachnoid and smites it dead with his battleaxe.
Charlie Company, deep in the caverns and taxed on resources, takes an uneasy expedient rest while Ash picks up the trail of the super soldier.