Planting 22, 593 CY, northern edge of Bright Desert

For one brief moment, we hoped that perhaps they hadn’t come into the cave because some sort of sacred power was keeping them out. Grundl tried to scare them off with a few gruff words, and I pulled out the wand of magic missiles, intending to see if I could activate it. I did, hitting poor Strum in the back with the first shot! At any rate, their crossbow bolts could come inside the cave, so we decided discretion was the better part of valor and quickly retraced our steps to a more defensible position.

This turned out to be a good thing, as they did follow us right in! We easily picked off the three crossbowmen, but their leader proved to be more difficult. We had placed ourselves in a room that had several entrances, and required our assailant to head down a long hallway to get to it. He had a defense of his own though– he could cast a globe of darkness around himself, preventing us from getting aim. I was having enough trouble with the wand (I hit him once, but also hit myself once), so I switched to my crossbow and decided to sneak down the tunnel past him during one of these blackouts he was providing.

This proved quite useful; my friends were still whittling him down with the hits they were managing on him, so I bided my time. As soon as he had to drop his darkness spell, I hit him in the back with a crossbow bolt. Down he went, never to rise again!

We took what we could from the four bodies: gems and a few coins, some good quality weapons and armor from the leader, and two vials that provided some healing. We didn’t feel like fighting our way through Rary’s army, still parked outside the cave, so we rested for quite some time. We had a plan to get out of the desert quickly.

Unfortunately, the plan involved me sneaking down into the camp and stealing four of the dozen or so horses in a guarded paddock. As soon as dusk fell, I silently crept out of the cave to where the creatures were kept. Though being a whisper gnome, I’m not as good with animals as most gnomes seem to be, they did not seem prone to nervousness, and I was able to get several untied quickly. In fact, I was untying more, planning to use them as a distraction when I broke them out, when I heard faint snoring just beyond their fence– the perimeter guard had fallen asleep! Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I took the four I needed and headed back towards the cave, with the plan to cast silence on the group to help our escape.

We managed to escape the army without so much as a call of alarm, and headed mainly north through the desert night. We were fortunate to come out in a small town on the edge of the Bright Desert, unharmed and carrying the Haft.

Two down, one to go.