Nashkel Mine

Round 4 Summary

Mulahey roars in anger as Stella rises, wounds healing. Before he can focus any ire on her or Aiwe, however, he's assaulted on all sides by the rest of the party. He parries, he blocks, he accepts glancing blows, barely keeps from being set aflame, but for all his effort he only manages to wound one hero, Runeson, with a blast of poison magic (Runey-boy takes 13 poison dmg).

Breathing heavily, blood pouring from many wounds, the half-orc priest begins another spell, one that warps the air with spirits of darkness and malevolence. It looks to be a powerful conjuring, one meant to rain destruction all about him.

"No! I won't let you hurt anyone else!" The cry comes from Imoen. The slight, pink-haired girl drops her bow and jumps forward, hand fumbling around in her cloak for something. Mulahey looks on her with eyes turned black with fell power, sure to rip her soul from her body for her insolence.

But Imoen finds what she's looking for. She pulls out the wand she "borrowed" from some wizard in Candlekeep and points the end up at Mulahey's face. "Take THIS!"

Nothing happens, and Mulahey chuckles darkly, reaching for the girl with his gauntleted hand. Imoen holds the wand with both hands and tries again, tears of anger and desperation falling from her eyes.

"GAH!!!"

The wand lights up, the red gem on the end flares to life, and a stream of crimson lights blasts from it, each one slamming into Mulahey with deadly force (Imoen expends every charge in the wand to cast Magic Missile as a 7th-level spell). Armor dents, bones crack, and Mulahey wheezes as the air is smashed from his lungs. Magical protections fizzle and fail, and not even the resilience that orc-kind is known for is enough to save the evil priest. The magic hurls him against the wall, cracking the stone, and when finally the stream of magic ends, his body falls limp and broken to the floor (Mulahey takes 34 force damage and dies).

Imoen falls to a sit, exhausted, and then flops onto her back, breathing heavily and staring at the ceiling.

The fight is over.

I graciously accept a healers kit from Stella and apply it, while helping set up camp for the party to rest.

Sheemish’s eyesight and hearing return and he sees the aftermath of the battle. Heavily injured and exhausted he takes a mental inventory

senses, fixed
Stitch, fixed
Armor? He looks at his armor again and gets a better understanding of the malfunction. Simple overheating. Fixable.
Mental state? Not too good. Even with the help of friends and motivating words, They are still down here in this wretched place (which they should probably have to rest in). He had momentarily lost stitch, his equipment, and his senses. And now they had picked up a new companion . . .

Sheemish’s left arm aches and his fingers feel numb. With Stella setting an alarm, the artificer distances himself from the group and inspects the new rooms they found. There had to be some other kind of entrance or exit on this side and that would most likely need an alarm as well when they rest.

Sheemish's exploration of the rest of Mulahey's rooms yields several new developments.

There's a rather nice desk with some papers on it. The artificer's keen eye quickly picks out a diagram of the mine, some reports on the mine's progress, and some alchemical formulas. And two letters written in bold handwriting, rather different than Mulahey's spidery script.The exit is easy enough to find, a couple of chambers back, and sure enough, it empties out onto the mountainside. From the outside it's well-hidden, and Sheemish doubts that any but the most determined outdoorsman would have been able to spot it.

As he makes his way back through the rooms, the artificer notices something he somehow missed on his first pass: a prisoner. The elf is quite bruised, and his wrists are severely chafed from the manacles suspending him from the wall. His breathing comes in ragged gasps, slightly blowing the long dark hair over his face, but he's so still he must be unconscious. His robes - once a deep purple with fine silver embroidery, is torn in several places and stained with mud and blood.