Stripped Down & Out

## **Synopsis**

In Chapter 68: Stripped Down & Out, we crept to the edge of the strip mine south of Leopold's Garrison with a plan to ambush the pawnchaser Darmun Thorry.  An initial scouting made us aware of the two dangerous-looking bolt throwers that were stationed on opposite ends of the pit – and we identified those as our first hurdle in taking control of the fight.

With a quiet approach and a flurry of attacks, we immediately disabled one of the operators and set our sights on the other – but he resisted the effects of Safira's Drow Poison tipped arrows for long enough to signal to his allies.

The crew here was prepped for a different kind of fight, but they still had a number of tools at their disposal including potions of growth that allowed them to cover a great distance and scale the walls of the mine with relative ease.  Before succumbing to his wounds, the remaining scorpion operator was able to loose a bolt that destroyed the device Erland was stationed at – so we braced for a skirmish the old-fashioned way.

Looking to draw the attention of some of the augmented soldiers, Beezaura and Graven leapt to the ground below where they did an admirable job absorbing the many oversized blows – but Darmun and a pair of others were clever enough to flank our back line, peppering Safira and Orba with black powder explosions.

At the same time, Erland was racing around the perimeter to get his hands on the remaining bolt-thrower – but the weapon's accuracy left something to be desired, and what could have been a few devastating blows turned to harmless indentations in the walls.

Without the usual buffer of bodies, Orba and Safira found themselves in great peril as the thugs closed in.  Darmun himself was felled but his associates didn't back down, dropping the wizard into unconsciousness before Beezaura's rallying cry gave Safira just enough strength to attempt a heroic feat.

She dragged Orba to the edge of the mine and tossed her down to Graven's waiting arms, meaning that her own jump would be uncushioned and she would take the full brunt of the fall.  What resulted could only be described as a true clusterfuck – Darmun's assistant making a seemingly impenetrable last stand while the rest of us struggled to keep each other in the fight.

After some stabilizations and liberal use of healing potions that we were thankful to have saved, Erland abandoned his post up above to provide some much-needed backup – ending a pair of lives and swinging the momentum back in our favor.  The last of Darmun's bandits opted to flee, and as Erland chased after we let the dust settle and hoped it was all worth it.

A brush with death is hard to evaluate, but it was difficult to downplay the instant gratification of finding three Lightwhistle chess pieces in Darmun's pockets – one of the largest acquisitions for Beezaura since her search began.  Feeling better about the outcome, we moved to meet up with Erland who had incapacitated his target.  We wouldn't get any information from the man, but it was another loose end tied off – meaning one less thing to worry about in Navika-Pura.

Our adrenaline had carried us through the battle, but the level of exhaustion we were feeling was overwhelming – so we decided to make camp with plans to travel through the night, and used this time to catch up on recent revelations: Safira's victory, Booraj's appearance, Leto's husband and the stray mutant.  It was a lot to absorb, but there were promising leads up north.

## Trivia

* Natural one count: three natural ones were rolled in this Chapter. 1 each by Jordan, Riley and Matt.