Eleasis 2, 1373 DR, the Evermoors

We headed into the cave following the “drag” marks— Areon led and I brought up the rear of our group, with the intention of alerting the group to anything following us. Besides, if Areon ran in to trouble, I’d know about it immediately.

We had only made our way partially down the main passageway, following the sounds of cracking bones and guttural voices, when three trolls emerged from a cavern ahead of us. Areon and Rosorc met them head-on, while Beowulf and Tyan used fiery spells to damage the creatures. I grabbed a rope from Beowulf’s pack (I always repack everyone’s gear, so I know where everything is if we need something!) and threw it at one troll’s feet, then cast a spell from a scroll that would animate the rope. It worked well enough, but the troll ripped through the rope entangling his legs like it was made of thin parchment. Discouraged by that, I used the wand I’ve been carting around to shoot some rays of “enfeeblement” at it. That worked quite nicely, and Tyan was able to finish off two of the three with a spell. Deitricha spent some divine energy to heal the dwarf— apparently, trolls really hate dwarves. Good to know.

We’d bunched up in a small alcove while fighting the three attacking from deeper in the caverns, so two were able to come around from a different tunnel to attack us from behind. Deitricha was looking rather beat up at this point— nearly as bad as Rosorc. I enfeebled one of those newer assailants while Areon filled another with arrows and I saw that someone had lobbed fire at it as well; it went fleeing from the skirmish. I took out the last one with a well-placed bolt, and then had to stab it until someone could light it on fire to prevent it from regenerating.

A few dozen feet further up the passage brought us to a room with several exits, and the carcasses of several horses and humans. They were fairly recent kills, so we had to assume they were from the caravan. Much as I hated to loot the dead, I had to be practical— searching for any clues or bills of sale to show were their goods were to be delivered, or who they were. The trolls had stripped the bodies of anything valuable though, and as a result, anything to identify these people.

We decided to keep searching, and turned to a darkened area to our left. Areon and Rosorc went in first, though it was too dark for them to see much of anything. Areon held out his torch and saw that there was the outline of a door, partially ajar, at the back of the cavern, and smelly sleeping pallets scattered about the floor. Before the rest of us could get much further into the area, four trolls leapt down from ledges further up the shadowy walls and attacked. One was the troll that had escaped our last confrontation, mostly regenerated. Another wielded a greatsword using one hand, and seemed unafraid of fire.

We continued this combat in pretty much the same way as the last one, though we were leading the trolls back into an area where we could fight them one at a time. This time though, one of the trolls hit Areon hard enough that he went down. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the feeling of doom I get when he’s that badly hurt! I screamed and barged my way through my friends to pull him to safety, though Beowulf was already stepping up to heal him. Moments after Areon fell, he was already standing up and shooting arrows back into the fray; I continued to try and drag him backwards while simultaneously attempting to activate the wand of healing that Dante had left us. By the time I’d managed to knock a few charges out of that into Areon, the battle was over— three trolls lay dead and smoldering, and the other had disappeared through the door at the back of the “sleeping” cave.

I hadn’t been wounded, but nearly all of my friends looked to be in bad shape, so we didn’t follow the escapee. We did take the greatsword from the troll that didn’t fear the fire, and Areon pulled a ring off the dead creature’s hand— likely ensorcelled to prevent fire damage. We then turned down the tunnel we hadn’t followed before, finding an amazing treasure hoard and two pits covered in grates in the floor. One pit contains a troll, and the other one appears to have two humans in it….