Ash tracks the super soldier east and verifies the mine car bridges are sturdy enough to cross. The mining caverns evolve to worked dwarven ruins going eastward. Ash and Briar find hounds waiting in ambush ahead. Briar bear shifts to meet the challenge. Enraged Barika and slinging Sqyylarr engage the hounds. Ash claims the first hound, but more hounds swarm around the chamber’s columns. Arachnoids descend upon the party with spearing tails and acid webs. Hops keeps the party alive in between dual smashing hounds. Ash’s sneaky longbow and Ander’s and Watc’s firebolts go to work on the arachnoids engaging from high on the columns. Sqyylarr, Barika, and Briar try to hold the hounds at a perimeter.
Ander’s draconic shield stops an arachnoid, but he catches the void death from a hound. Hops slaps some curative goo on Ander’s tired, achy face, and he feels better. Raging Barika puts the pain on the hounds and advantageously inspires others to do the same. Sqyylarr finds the skull-cracking, critical sweet spot of her magic maul and wrecks eyeless face. Ash slays prey. Watc takes a tail spear and hangs unconscious in an acid web. Briar cuts her out, and a with healing word from Hops grants she disengage from the melee. Ander’s firebolt and Sqyylarr’s maul eliminate the last two arachnoids.
While the party takes an expedient rest, Ash explores a hidden control panel that may or may not retract a bridge across a chasm to a dwarven structure east. The super soldier’s trail ends at the bridge, but Ash supposes the aberration can leap the chasm when the bridge is retracted. As this seems like the final bridge leaving the mine, the safety lines are packed away.
The refreshed party files in breaching formation along stairs up a 10’ Dias to a door into the structure. Ash makes a thorough examination of the perfectly ordinary door. There is no evident danger other than an ominous “H-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-” rattle of murderous chitin on the other side. Bear-shifted Briar opens the door.
Unhatched egg sacs dot the matrix of columns in the room. Barika goes to work smashing eggs which seems to provoke earnest shrieking. Sqyylarr, Hops, and Ander join in the smashing. A soldier drops on Hops but falls critically prone in the botched attack. The failure is systemic as a second soldier falls critically prone on Sqyylarr as well.
A disapproving “H-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-” from the darkness convinces Ash to favor Briar with a bit of protection from all aberrations, good and evil. Briar comes to Hops’s defense with a restraining entanglement of vines around the soldier. Barika critically rages on the soldier. Hops adds some critical cleric damage. Sqyylarr pounds her own prone soldier. Ander and Watc toss in a couple of firebolts. Super soldier mama emerges from the shadows to super grapple and super bite Sqyylarr. The bite damage is undone by Hops’s preservation of life and Sqyylarr’s second wind.
Briar polishes off the surrounded, entangled soldier and quickly joins Sqyylarr in contact with super soldier mama. Ander critically scorches it with rays. Super soldier mama lashes out at Briar, but finds him disappointingly protected. Watc expeditiously excuses herself around Ash long enough to drop a fireball in the room that catches super soldier mama, a bunch of eggs, and a wounded soldier hiding in the corner of the room. Super soldier mama takes it out on Barika with a bite that ends up being not so bad thanks to her enragement. Hops repairs the ouchie and Barika has another go at it.
Ash searches for likely vulnerabilities; it has none. It shrieks fear into Ander, Barika, Ash, and Watc. Irritated by a second fireball, super soldier mama crosses the room and bites Watc unconscious. Hops favors Watc with a healing word. Watc disengages while the party attempts to regain combat momentum, surrounding it again. It doesn’t give up on the dream of killing squishy Watc and pursues her out the door. The party chases it out, jumping off the dias to keep the pressure on. With a bit of well-struck cleric damage, Hops slays super soldier mama. It crumbles in acid-etching death.
The party makes a final sweep of the caverns, eradicating the remaining egg sacs without further opposition. They recover Ash’s fallen comrades in Echo for proper memorial and burial. After convalescing in Queen Waybeard’s hospitality, Portent Order assigns Ash to Charlie Company and debriefs them.
The caravan will be reconfigured. The civilian evacuees will remain in Mithral Hall and the wagons combined in a single, leaner train of the three remaining companies, Alpha, Charlie, and Delta. Destination: Silverymoon.