Reclaiming the Dwarven Iron Mine -- Final Level

 

This Week's Adventurers

• Faelin Amok the Rogue
• Lucinia the Twilight Cleric Tortle
• Nimrod the Vuman, a warlock of Kas the Bloody Handed
• Gaffy the Blue, a Vedalken Watcher Paladin
• Chumbawamba, the pet wonder warg
• Nimbat, Nimrod's enthusiastic and ever-helpful bat familiar
• Dormin, Nimrod's trusty shadow spirit
  
  

The party is currently at level 5. 

The Mission

The mission this time is unchanged from last time. That is, our Guild of Bad Decisions was hired by a dwarven merchant clan to reclaim a mine that had recently become overrun by monsters and a mysterious lethal sickening of the mine workers. Their mission was to regain control of the mine, uncover the source of the problem and put an end to it. The job paid 2500 gold, and they were allowed to keep any treasures they found, but not the mining supplies. Additionally, they would gain a partnership in the mine.

The Final Level

The Bad Decisions Guild, composed of Amok the fierce goliath rogue, Gaffy the stalwart Vedalken watcher paladin, Lucinia the wise tortle twilight cleric, Nimrod the charismatic human warlock, Chumbawamba the loyal pet worg, and Nimbat, Nimrod's helpful vampire bat familiar, finished their 8-hour rest in the miner's bunker and set out to clear the rest of the dwarven forge. Lucinia passed along her twilight cleric boon, granting most of the party heavy-duty darkvision. They then repaired an elevator to the lowest level, taking care to travel down one or two at a time due to the elevator's weight limits.

Before descending, Nimrod briefed his companions on what his familiar had scouted out the day before. He summoned Dormin, his evil shadow spirit, to serve as his personal warrior in the coming fight. Amok, Nimbat, and Dormin were the first down. They spied the nasty rust monsters that Nimbus and Dormin had encountered the prior day. Nimrod bypassed the elevator by using his dark arts to teleport directly to a strategic position. Lucinia and Gaffy soon joined the fray.

Once the immediate threat was taken care of, the party searched through a nearby desk for the other half of Thidribell Birdwatcher's deed to the mine. Eventually, they found themselves sifting through a small, filthy pool of water to the southwest, where they discovered a sealed and locked chest. Inside, they found the missing half of the mine's deed.

Journeying onward, they headed deeper into the caverns to the northwest, encountering souped-up rust monsters in addition to their mundane counterparts. They crossed a rickety 10 ft long bridge, now bereft of its iron supports. The bridge broke under Chumbawamba's weight, but thanks to Amok's quick thinking, they saved their worg companion from falling to the unfathomable depths below.

Now in the deepest, western cavern, they found a few humanoid corpses (one of which, presumably, being Thidribell's) and a whole heap of rust monsters, both ordinary and extra-strong primal, crawling from a massive hole in the ground. In an attempt to hold the monsters back, the party used a combination of Nimrod's Hunger of Hadar, Gaffy's Entangle, and later Gaffy's Moonbeam. Nimrod used his powerful dual beam eldritch blasting as his dread form imposed terror on each adversary he engaged. The blasts alongside Amok's skilled sneak attacks, Gaffy's powerful melee smiting, Dormin's strength draining attacks, Chumbawamba's ferocious chomping, and Lucinia's magic were gradually overcoming the monsters. But many more monsters were climbing up from the abyss. The team was taking damage. Chumbawamba was only still alive because Nimbat had cleverly administered a healing potion to her canine friend. Still grieviously wounded, it was clear to all that Chumbawamba would not survive much longer. Time for the team was running out.

Then Lucinia conceived a brilliant plan: the monsters' point of egress was on the other side of the cave wall from the filthy disgusting pool they'd encountered to the east. There were plenty of unused explosive barrels near the slime pool. So why not use them to blow a hole in the wall separating the sections of the mine, and thereby flood the crevasse? With the rest of the party's approval, she disengaged from battle to jump back across the broken bridge and get to work setting off the dynamite in the aforementioned filthy pool.

Surprisingly, the plan worked more or less as Lucinia intended, though Gaffy narrowly avoided being carried away with the current down the crevasse. Lucinia also became ill while swimming in the fetid mine waters. Luckily Gaffy was able to use his holy healing powers to cure her malady before it became serious.

After hopping back across the 10 ft gap, they beat a hasty retreat back up the elevator to the surface. With both sections of the deed in hand, Nimrod proposed that his patron invest in the mine to help finance its reopening, and the guild looked forward to the heavy-duty crafting they would achieve in their future endeavors.