Lucky Week Slevin

At the sound of the orc attacking Lucky, Auren dashed into the room, bowling over Eddi as the cleric tried to hold him back, insisting that the Beardians should stick to their plan. The monk ignored him and found his way through the back of the room to flank the offending orc. With their cover blown, the Beardians piled into the room, picking out the third of the orcs Lucky had spotted standing on a ledge. The flanked orc tried one last time, and failed, to land a blow on Lucky before sliding down one of the mining chutes to the ground. But, Auren was right on his tail and lashed out with his feet of fury, taking the orc's head in the process. The last orc, surrounded but undaunted, was still easily disposed of.

Some of the Beardians eyed this orc's gear -- the party was not above robbing corpses. A pair of longbows was dispersed between Andy the anonymous druid and Eddi, who handed-me-down his shortbow to Lucky. Eddi also traded in his breezy, summery, and very in-fashion chain shirt for one of the orcs' breastplates, one with intricately detailed abs, perhaps with the hope of future closet encounters.

The room was a dead end. As the party gathered to turn back, a small solitary platform caught the eye of K'Phalivus. He asked Lucky to investigate it, assuming that, as a rogue, she would have a high Search score. Lucky, enforcing stereotypes, discovered a secret door, only by running her fingers across the wall and finding the hidden door-frame. She cautiously opened it, discovering a passage large enough for the party to travel through single file. The passage ran a long way through darkness and after many tense minutes of expecting various horrors to snatch her away, Lucky reached its end, which opened up into a small corridor. To her left was a sturdy stone door, so resolute in its dooriness that the rogue doubted even her lock-picking skills could open it. To her right, the corridor opened into a room, and in that room was, surprise, a pair of orcs. Emboldened by the rest of the Beardians coming up behind her, the halfling launched a javelin at the first enemy and proceeded to scurry in the opposite direction fast as her little legs could take her. The rest of the party took over and as the first orc quickly gave up the ghost, the second dashed off into the darkness ahead even faster than Lucky had.

The Beardians strained into the room, another work area of the mine, and were instantly dazzled by what they saw. There, right there, where they could so easily just reach out and grab a handful and stuff it in their bags, was a big old pile of gold. Impressively, the first word to be emitted from a party member was, Trap. Lucky again became the most important member of the party, but, strangely, didn't find any hint of threatening devices. The Beardians exchanged glances, then dug in.

Buried beneath the coins was a wand, a scroll, and a potion. Eddi and Chauncey the anonymous wizard, the group's chief magic-users, managed to decipher the scroll and the markings on the wand: the scroll contained a divine spell, Faerie Fire, and the wand could cast the spell Levitate and had 31 charges left! The potion remained a mystery, until Eddi shrugged, decreed, "Bottom's up!" and gulped everything in the vial. He promptly vanished and the potion was discovered to be an invisibility potion, all thanks to the scientific method. God bless science!

Meanwhile, Lucky was, once again, scouting ahead. The cowardly orc had fled down another narrow mineshaft and, strangely, there was light emanating from the end of it. She peeked into the room at the end and saw a scene not unlike that which Charles Dickens must have envisioned when Scrooge met the enormous Ghost of Christmas Present in his living room ... only replace living room with dwarven forge and the Ghost of Christmas Present with an ogre mage staring right into Lucky's eyes. The ogre chuckled as the halfling skirted away and bellowed at his orcish lackeys to follow her.

Back in the mineshaft, Lucky ducked behind Auren, who leaped Bruce Lee-style at the nearest orc. As the monk played meatshield, the Beardians scrambled about behind him, tossing whatever they could at the monsters, who appeared to nonetheless keep coming. Finally the orcs fell and the party collectively breathed a sigh of relief -- too soon, as another orc, this one in garnished robes (garnished for an orc, at least) stepped into the mineshaft and, chanting weirdly, placed a gemstone in each of his allies' corpses. The corpses stood up.

Auren had been waiting for this. He had been waiting a long time. As his fists thudded into undead flesh he reflected on his life up to this point and decided, that yes, his singular earthly calling was to beat up zombies. Nonetheless, the creatures were quickly overpowering him and the rest of the Beardians urged him to back up into the open room where they were waiting. The zombies shambled after and found themselves surrounded and, very soon, utterly destroyed. As a zombie head groaned its last request for braaaaiiins, the invisible Eddi crept silently down the mineshaft until he could see the forge. The orc necromancer was not to be seen, but this was not unexpected -- he was probably ducking behind one of the room's many hiding places. What was strange was the disappearance of the giant ogre mage! The ogre was large, yes, and not just that -- he was... blue! Blue is a rather easy color to spot. Still, Eddi characteristically threw caution to the wind, and barreled as fast as he could into the room. In the instant he left the mineshaft, something blinked into existence to his left -- a blue form levered a sword twice the size of the cleric where he'd been a split-second before. Then, as quickly as the ogre mage had appeared, he was gone. Eddi cursed his blessing -- the invisibility spell that now protected him was also in the mage's use.

The others, having seen the little magic show, advanced technically. Technically, because none of them really wanted to be in the same room as a giant invisible mage: the group as a whole was technically advancing, while each member sought to be the farthest from the end of the passage. The advance, therefore, was by means of a slowly elongating huddle. (To quote Terry Pratchett.) Finally, Andy got up the nerves to charge into the room, where he found the necromancer chanting weirdly again. The druid's limbs began to stiffen and he realized the orc had cast a paralyzation spell on him. As he yearned for the safety of the mineshaft, he watched the ogre mage appear again and cast a devastating ice attack down the mineshaft, doing major damage to the trapped occupants. Perhaps paralyzation wasn't so bad.

As the necromancer had launched his assault, Eddi had finally un-vanished behind him. The cleric levered his greatsword and then, before the orc could react, reached out with a hand buzzing electrically with dark energy. The Inflict Wounds spell was so powerful that the orc's body instinctively decided that exploding apart would be less painful. It wasn't, but by that time it was too late. Flesh scattered across the room.

The death of his final guard seemed to dishearten the ogre mage. He sneered at the Beardians and stepped away. The party watched as the mage's feet, then legs, then torso and head transformed into ogre-shaped vapor. The ogre-cloud flew through the room and entered a large furnace -- the centerpiece of the forge. He disappeared from sight.

The Beardians had, in vague terms, won the battle. But their mission to assassinate the ogre mage was yet uncompleted and the many intense battles of the last two hours had exhausted them. With Andy a living statue, Lucky badly frostbitten by the ice spell, both magic-users short on spells, and general orcish axe-induced injuries all around, the party wondered morbidly if they would survive the trip back to the surface...