Well, we have spent the last day crawling through a bunch of tunnels, looking for the creature that was terrorizing Smallville. After we dispatched the drider, we took off after the white-armed creature.

As Pockets’ dog was pretty useless, Fingers had to lead the way, sniffing out the creature’s scent. He soon led us to the entrance of a small tunnel that branched off from the passageway. Much to my dismay, the entire party decided that the best thing to do would be to crawl into the tunnels after the creature.

Not long after we began to crawl, Fingers came to a halt. He had lost the scent of the creature. As we wondered what to do next, Pockets saved the day by getting snatched by the very creature we were chasing. How resourceful!

Following the creatures trail for what seemed like days, but was probably only several hours, we finally came to a chamber. Pockets was “stacked” up against a wall, and the floor of the chamber was covered in bones. Drusilia immediately went to help Pockets (who had been paralyzed by the creature’s touch). No sooner had she done that, than the creature began to attack us! It would pop out of a wall, attack one of us, then run away.

Pockets, in a moment of intense stupidity (and perhaps wanting to make up for his earlier usefulness), decided that now would be the time to deafen the party. He whipped out a couple thunderstones and slammed them together! This didn’t affect the creature at all, but it did a great job of deafening me!

At this point we all just sat and waited for the creature to attack again. From what I could tell, there was a lot of bickering amongst the rest of the party, but I couldn’t tell for sure, as I was DEAF! Drusilia did manage to tell me (through Fingers) that she could remove the deafness tomorrow, so I just sat there trying to rest and study spells while everyone else bickered.

After a period of time, Aramil came and tapped me on the shoulder. Apparently the rest of the party had decided to head out into the tunnels again, and he was the only one who thought to tell me. What great friends!

In any case, we followed the tunnels to the outskirts of town, where it was apparent (to me) that the creature had escaped. I say apparent to me, because not everyone shared this view. The rest of the group found ANOTHER tunnel to follow, and immediately dove in. Having had enough of crawling around, but not wanting to leave them to be killed by their stupidity, I polymorphed myself into a giant weasel, and followed after them. (Luckily the spell worked... since i became deafened, the ratio of successful spells had only been about 50%!).

We followed this tunnel for about 4 miles before it finally came to a dead end. Not wanting to crawl all the way back, I began to tunnel to the surface. Apparently Aramil had the same idea. Unfortunately, he was not a dire weasel.... he only had a shovel! Instead of making actual progress, he only succeeded in burying the party alive.

Luckily I noticed this and was able to rescue them in short order. Once we made it to the surface, I convince Drusilia to pray for more spells, and she cured my deafness. I then immediately headed back to town, and the rest of the group followed.

I hope we have scared the creature off for good. We will need to leave soon on our quest to destroy the Heart of Nerull, and while helping the town is a noble goal, if we fail to destroy the Heart, all of Oerth could be be destroyed! (I also suspect that it may be our very presence that is causing the town so much trouble - the sooner we go, the better!)

~=Fafnir Flamebrewer=~