Session XLIX: The River Of Despair

Still lost and trapped in the caves beneath the palace of the hobgoblin king, our party of fearless mercenaries were face to face with a swarm of Steam Weavels and a Lava Lizard!  The insects swarmed the half-orc Arg but Gnarly the druid called forth a ball of flame which attracted the swarm to the heat and he tossed them down into the steam vent.  With Arg free he lead the charge against the Lava Lizard and soon hacked him to pieces with the only loss being a melted sword.

As they decided what path to take to find a way out of these caves, they cut the lava lizard up to make armor out of him if and when they ever escaped.

Exploring more tunnels they ran across another lava lizard then some Piranha Birds and eventually found a large cavern with a running river through it an out into a larger cave opening.

Thinking it best to backtrack and cover all their ground in hopes that they have maybe missed an escape route, they found a secret room guarded by some hungry striges guarding three chests of valuable treasure!

Not finding anyway out of their situation short of trying to build a scaffolding to gain entrance to the pit that sent them down here they headed back to the underground river.

To their right was the roar of underground rapids while to the left the river meandered deeper into the underworld.

Thinking that the traversing the rapids would lead them up towards the surface they began walking against the current but the further they traveled the stronger and more treacherous it became until one by one, they were being knocked down and sent tumbling back to the main cavern.

Hopeless and wet, they decided to travel downstream in the warm shallow river occasionally finding a dry shelf to rest upon.

Alas, being wet, wounded and lost was too much for the mighty Arg and he succumbed to fatigue and broke down and wouldn't leave the shelf.

At a loss of how to keep moving forward with an unwilling half-orc, Gnarly sent Tuk the owl on ahead.  Further down the river, the owl spied another shelf, larger with a cave opening and with an armored lizard-man standing guard!

It was here that the party decided to rest; on a tiny shelf, inches above an underground river hundreds of feet below the surface, wounded and wet...

This was our last RPG session of the year as the holidays become too hectic to gather together.  I was hoping to finish with more of a bang, and those of you who know the adventure know what I'm talking about, but, as usual, the players didn't go along with my unspoken plan.  So we ended on a bit of a grim note.  Not a bad thing by any means, actually.  It kind of felt like the ending of the middle of a trilogy.

So, a break for now and when we return there will be plenty of action and perils ahead!