Bridge Over the River Aiiieeee! - 10/1 session recap

Our heroes dithered over where to sleep for the evening in Tregynon, and settled on the comfort of an inn. In the morning they set out to track the alleged kobold thieves, but were unable to find any tracks. They did find the mountain path however, and started following it.

After two hours of hiking, they came across a fork in the path with a tumbled cairn that once pointed the way to the temple of Ul-Barat. The marker was lying on the ground pointing at neither path. One was less steep and headed roughly eastward. The other was steeper and more northward. The party chose the steeper path.

After about an hour, Boreas thought he heard faint singing of a woman. The singing receded, and none of the other party members heard it. An hour after that the party came to a rope bridge across a ravine. There was a sturdy bottom rope and two handrail ropes in a V formation. As they stood contemplating the challenge ahead of them, a pot of stinking goo smashed into the rock face beside Ander. They looked across and saw a kobold with a sling cursing his bad aim.

Ander threw a shuriken, and Boreas fired a ray of frost at the attacker, and both hit. The kobold, bloodied, took cover. Two more kobolds peeked over the rim of the far wall and hurled missiles at Ander. One hit, smearing him with foul-smelling stuff, and the other bonked him in the head pretty soundly with a rock.

Xakoraki headed across the rope bridge, and got almost halfway across. Thoric wasn't as lucky, however, Dwarves are not known for their acrobatic prowess, and he promptly fell and became entangled in the thin netting connecting the handrails to the main rope.

Ander dropped out of sight when he took too much damage, and Thoric continued to fumble on the bridge. Boreas fired off some more frost magic, but missed, and Xak made it across into an ambush. Four kobolds surrounded her, each with a candle strapped to the end of a javelin. They each took a large mouthful from their flasks and spit it out past the candle flame, creating minor fireballs which scorched Xakoraki pretty well. Boreas was pelted with rocks, and failed to move gracefully across the bridge. Ander, realizing that he would not receive any healing or sympathy from Thoric, somersaulted onto the bridge and started across it. The bridge swayed with the weight, making it more difficult for them to keep their balance.

Xakoraki cut one of the kobolds in half with her greataxe, but one dodged between her and the bridge and started sawing at the handrail with a dagger. Before he could sever it, however, Boreas turned him into an ice sculpture. Ander leaped over Thoric and joined Xakoraki in melee combat against the remaining kobolds. Thoric finally found his feet, and started attackhing his foes with the burning beauty of Linitheriva. He also managed to heal up both Ander and Xak. Boreas stepped back to catch his breath a moment, then continued with his magical assault. Xak proved to be an inspiring warrior, and she and Ander teamed up to finish off the remaining kobolds. Ander seemed to favor merely beating them unconscious, but Xakoraki was having none of that, and buried the blade of her axe in the last unconscious kobold.

The party rested for a moment and then continued up the path with Ander scouting ahead this time. After about 30 minutes, he found a widening of the path and a stone archway carved into the rock face. The path continued past the tunnel off to the east, and Ander climbed down below the lip of the path to edge unseen past it. There was nothing on the other path waiting for him, and he saw nothing in the entrance of the tunnel from his perspective. He moved up closer to the archway along the rock face, and beckoned for his companions to join him on the other side of it...

The party went up to level 2!