Silverspike Mine (Mission)

"Left at dawn as per usual with Kai, Evin, Kay, and Wivaun. Headed north by north east or east by north east, can’t remember, but we ended up by that ruined tower people kept mentioning. Turned towards the craggy hills by the northern shore but ended up getting lost for a little while. Eventually made our way into the hills proper and ran a bunch of fucking bugs that tried to eat my foot. Kay was good about scaring them off and he called them “rust monsters” or something.

Short while later found a bunch of ogre tracks and found a camp with like 8 or 9 of them. Rest of the group wanted to deal with them for some reason so we camped out and planned to bait them into a trap in the morning. Try and pick them off one by one. I didn’t bother helping with the plan much cause why bother hitting the ogres when we had other things on our mind but you know.

Giant scorpion nearly made off with Kay in the night. Barely managed to kill it and barely managed to save Kay.

Wasted most of the fucking morning sitting in a gulley waiting for Wivaun to bring some ogres through to ambush. Never happened cause Wivaun couldn’t piss them off which I don’t buy. I dunno what he was actually doing but it’s next to impossible not to piss ogres off if you’re trying.

Got lost again and eventually found a way stone. Claimed the Silver Spike mine was territory of the Black Iron. Let Kai try and lead us using the stones but she got us lost for maybe five or six hours so eventually I stepped up and got us there. At one point we ran into a manticore but it fucked off pretty fast.

No doors on the place but it was clearly a duergar place. Could smell it. Plus the entrance was trapped and nearly blew my chest open. Went down into the mine and came across the trapped entrance. Walls would come up and box in anything that made a bad step and probably gas them. Couldn’t tell. Used Carl to check and found a safe path though we couldn’t find a way into one of the doors.

Made our way into one of the tunnels and followed them around for awhile before some dumb fuck ash skin shouted our location instead of ambushing us. We fought them for a bit, killing two before the real trouble showed up. Two fuckers in metal suits with these weird as fuck lances came out and fucking torched the living fuck out of us. Kai and Evin went down almost immediately. I held the line as Wivaun and Kay pulled people back. I don’t remember how long I was there but Kya put up a fog cloud to help me out and provide cover. I was on my last legs before I killed one of the two flamers and smelt the gas coming off his body.

I had to cover the rest of the group’s exit so I lit a match.

I don’t know how long I was out but I woke up and the entire place was coming down around me. I booked it to the trap entrance and found Wivaun and Evin in a bloody pile missing 3 of their limbs between em. I grabbed one under each arm and pulled them out as the rest of the mine blew and the hill came down. Barely made it out.

We took a breather for the night, letting Wivaun and Evin rest after we woke everyone up and headed back the next day.

Nobody will be crawling out of the hole anytime soon. Doubt that was the last of the duergar in these islands but now we know we can fuck them up by just lighting some matches. Would be wild if we brought an entire mountain down that way. Wouldn’t be surprised if we could."

―Wulfred Hammer-Pick's adventure log