Ludi Blog

The night in the Temple of Gruumsh passed quietly, only the occasional sobbing and coughing from the remaining 8 slaves punctuated the silence. The threat from within the temple seemed to have been nipped in the bud - but what lay below?

In the very early hours of the morning the group started moving the dead out into the courtyard where Womac found a small and exquisitely crafted figurine of a troll around about where the large beast was last seen. Having heard whispers of figurines of great power and sensing that there was magic inside this one, he quickly pocketed it. Then the group returned to the temple to prepare for the decent through the door on the floor.

The door was locked from the other side but after a few minutes of struggling the group managed to make an opening large enough for Caled to get his hands through to unlock it. The steps beyond led down to a rough hewn corridor - the air smelt of earth and contained a lot of moisture. It was warmer down here too.

The group moved carefully down the rough corridors pushing a couple of the surviving slaves ahead of them. At a 'T' junction Grogg shoved one of the slaves down a left hand tunnel with a torch in his hand, " Go see what's down there." he growled. The slave tentatively moved into the darkness around a slight kink in the corridor, screamed and disappeared into the floor amid a flurry of dust and mud - Grogg noticed strange claw-like hands pulling at the slaves legs as he was buried.

Cautiously the group moved to the right instead, Ril led with her superior underground sight - after a bend in the corridor a large cavern opened ahead. "You", she said pointing at a second slave, "walk into the room and take this torch so that the rest of the group can see."

The man did so, edging slowly forward to the entrance, fear causing him to shake and tremble. He edged further, now into the room a few feet and this time both the ground and walls erupted with man-sized ant creatures! His body was torn in two as they fought to drag him back into the walls. Ril stepped back from the corner where she had watched from.

"There's trouble down here! Ant like creatures coming out of the walls and floors so you'd best be ..." but before she could finish the sentence the same creatures erupted from around the group attacking and slashing with sharp clawed hands! The fight with antmen was soon over and the group moved further into the room finding it full of exits - the group took the largest exit to the left.

Into a room full of more ants!

The Wedding Crashers now had their hackles up and Alana started the action - casting a huge ball of fire into the centre of the ants, followed by the fighters moving in. Caled and Rill covered the fighters best they could with bow and spells respectively. Then suddenly Alana turned on Ril and Edge targeting them with her spells of fire instead of the ant men and Grogg appeared to do the same - his axe being deliberately aimed at his companions! Then with the death a larger, armoured ant man the fighting suddenly died off and all went quiet.

All remaining ant men broke and escaped down a hastily dug tunnel, leaving the group injured but not beaten and both Alana and Grogg unable to explain why they had turned on their own group. Ril suspected mind control but berated Alana anyway and finally the group moved on to investigate the tunnels further finding an exit up into a room in the temple above that they had previously discovered.

The group then approached a disused and partially collapsed sewer with a secret exit into a more built up area ... the lair of the slavers?