The constant clicking and scraping noise was barely audible over the sounds of the horses and scraping of boots on the dirt floor round cavern. This constant noise seemed to reverberate inside our weary adventurers’ heads as they trudged on mile after mile in this seemingly endless cavern underground. Naphistra, finally fed up with the constant grating on her mind, screamed out at the darkness calling it out to fight fairly. All eyes turned to her. Each of the travelers shared her discomfort, but the sound of her shrill cry to the darkness had awakened a desire to destroy the maker of the sound, and Naphistra had made herself a target. As they advanced on her, eyes filled with a mix of hate and madness; the spell broke. Like a mist rising from the water, the effects of some unknown spell lifted from our heroes and faded completely without a trace.
Just as the spell effects disappeared, a pinprick of light shown on the cavern floor before them. In the space of only a moment, the pinprick turned the size of a large fist, and larger still it grew until it was nearly ten feet in diameter. From the newly opened hole in the passage came out a beast the color of night. Covered in natural plate armor, this beetle looking creature began to eat the stone walls of the newly created passage as if the rock walls were no more than bread. Minutes passed as they ate away at the passage until one of the bugs crawled down from the new tunnel down to the cavern floor.
Slowly the beetle creature lowered himself to the ground and gurgling sounds began emanating from his abdomen area. Shortly after he sat down, his back section opened up to emit a bulge of gray matter being excreted. When he had finished, the bug had left behind a cylindrical slab of rock congealed into one piece. The bug raised himself to his full height and started back to the work on the tunnel when he spotted our adventurers looking on further down the tunnel. The bug communicated something to the other worker and proceeded towards the adventurers while snapping it’s huge pinchers menacingly.
A chaotic battle ensued. The bug creature leapt toward the party, and thinking that the horses were combatants, attacked the closest one ripping it from the wagon’s traces. Arrows were fired at its armored hide, but bounced off harmlessly. Back and forth they raged, the tunneling bugs and the armored warriors. Just as the bug had thrown Rykasha, as it had the horse earlier, an arrow shot from concealment pierced the bug through the middle and felled the foul beast. Within moments, the second bug entered the fray as well as the strange creatures known as the Gobbers. The Gobbers were half men, half tigers and came into the battle delivering blows with their daggers as well as some sort of a mind-altering attack that hit upon Gizur, Alton’s convert.
Reverend Alton and his cohorts Gizur and Eyestein focused their attacks on these new adversaries and felled one of the mighty Gobbers quickly. Demoralized, and realizing that the cavern which was supposed to be empty was not, the remaining Gobbers turned up the tunnel and ran as fast as their four legs would carry them. The last out of the tunnel cast a spell that sealed the passageway leading outside.
Once the battle was finished, our heroes looked on at the devastation wrought by these evil creatures, and also looked on to the mysterious archers who had helped them fight the bugs from the opposite side of the cavern. Introductions were passed around and our heroes met Cooter and Gaylord from Gelsmug. Gaylord quickly mentioned the idea of finding out what happened to the Gobbers and possibly tracking them to their lair. Rykasha, speaking for the adventurers from LoBan, said that she wanted instead to press on as soon as possible. Alton came over to the discussion by saying that the wagon had been badly crippled and that repairs could be made, but it would take some time. Rykasha asked for Naphistra’s help with tracking the Gobbers, and they all went up the new tunnel bypassing the illusion that covered the exit cast by the Gobbers.
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