After recovering as best we could, which was actually pretty well (Possibly there’s something to this Neil’s infernal singing), we continued. On into the dark passages, On towards the Well of Demons and/or gnolls. Splug offered the fantastic idea of him going on ahead to scout. Next thing we know he takes a spear in the shoulder from a side passage. I made what seemed an obvious comment — “We’re gonna need another goblin”. But not to be underestimated, Splug failed to die. In fact he fought on.

Splug at one point used that sequestering strike – that thing where he strikes an enemy and at the same time teleports himself and the enemy. Except the enemy died instantly from the strike so what got teleported with Splug was just a bloody gnoll corpse. Which corpse toppled/splashed against Klajdu’s side in a spray of blood. Klajdu looked down and said “Joke no longer funny. Just gross”.

Carn yelled out an opening to Splug and he landed another solid hit, but apart from that Splug’s usually overwhelming strikes were less than completely whelming. Not counting Carn’s hit I think he did more damage with that weird retreating tactics thing than anything else.

Oh and in addition to the gnolls, some hounds were released and joined in the fight. Nasty hounds. and nasty-smelling too. I dropped one or maybe two I think with the wind magic. Or I screamed a lot and teleported around at least. Anyway, after the scary slavering hounds with the gnashing teeth and the spear chucking gnolls were all killed, someone had the great idea of searching inside the hounds’ cages, amidst all the piss- and poop-covered rags that the dogs had lived in. In all that they found something that may or may not have once been a cloak, and now he’s wearing it, which leads us to a relevant quote:

Splug: “Is that me, or is it the room?”
Distress, Kalystra, Shazia, Carn, in unison: “Yes.”

Next we came to a large hallway off of which there were several doors. We paused there, briefly captivated by the large number of minotaur carvings on the walls. it seemed the carvings depicted a great war between two forces. Minotaurs were in evidence, fighting in fact on both sides of the war, with one side also having humans and dwarves and elves I think. And I think on the other side there were some demons. Don’t quote me though because the screaming wasn’t too keen on any of it when it saw the demons and I pretended to be interested in my wine bottle. Not to break with precedent, we then opened a door and went into a room, the contents of which tried to kill us.

Inside was the strange spectacle of 4 hyenas circling a gigantic cage, inside of which was an injured Dire Boar. At least it looked pretty Dire. Certainly big as all get out. After we joined combat with the hyenas we noticed that far away to our left on the other side of the room and behind some haybales, there were gnoll archers. Gutless ones because they had clearly been using the boar for target practice, for the boar was badly injured and had a number of bloody arrows hanging from it’s hide. After the hyenas were bottled up by a couple of us, the others swarmed the haybales and at some point I think it was Splug who grabbed a torch and threw it on the haybale at the feet of one of the archers. Skip ahead a bit and there’s a room full of smoke and a room full of panicking dire boar.

Klajdu said “How come boar not on fire?” and probably failing to recognize this as innocent goliath battle rhetoric, I shrugged, grabbed a torch off the wall and threw it into the boar cage. It wasn’t the best idea. One dead boar and one very smoky room left behind us, we went back to the corridor. Which leads me to another relevant quote:

someone: Are you huffing the piss cape?
Splug: (no answer) (because he was busy huffing the piss cape)