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In attendance:

22 March 1109

With the cloying miasma of the nearby Drow temple clouding his consciousness, Roderick convinces the party that spending the night here is a bad idea. So, they head a few hundred yards up the tunnel until they find a spot wide enough to unroll their bedrolls.

While the spellcasters rest, Kesi stands guard while the “night” passes uneventfully. After the rest period, the spellcasters prepare their spells for the “day” and ready to head out. While preparing breakfast, a squad of Trolls attacks - but as the tunnel is narrow, the party cannot bring all their attacks to bear. Nevertheless, they kill the first four - which causes the remaining four to flee. Vincent pursues briefly, but decides not to distance himself from the party too much, and so lets them escape.

The group hurriedly finishes their morning routine and Roderick casts his Find The Path spell so they can resume their travels.

Leaving the temple behind, the party heads down the tunnel from where the Trolls came. After about a half hour, they emerge through yet another illusory wall into the bottom of a small chasm adjacent to a perpendicular tunnel, whose floor is about at eye level. They follow Roderick's path up onto this new tunnel and off to the left.

Within minutes, they spot a bridge ahead that is manned by Drow guards. After a brief debate on how they should cross the bridge, they decide to simply pay the expected toll and not attempt any trouble-making. However, as they reach the bridge, Roderick realizes that the path veers to the right and drops into the 100-foot-deep chasm that the bridge spans.

Without knowing what the Drow guards will do with this kind of “non-standard” crossing, they pay the toll and then Bigby uses his Greater Dimension Door to teleport the party to the bottom of the chasm. He continues these jumps for the duration of his spell, pausing only briefly to get a bearing and verify that Roderick's path continues in the same direction each time. In the end, this serves three purposes quite effectively: They avoid pesky questions and interference from the Drow guards, they slip past a large nest of Carrion Crawlers, and they cover almost a mile of tunnel in less than a minute.

At the end of Bigby's spell, the party finds themselves in a medium-sized tunnel, having left the chasm behind a few jumps into the spell. Back on foot, they continue following Roderick's path for another five miles until his spell is finally exhausted.

Having not thought to memorize a second Find The Path spell, Roderick is forced to resort to using a scroll (his only one for that spell). However, since they fear the trek may continue on for more than three hours, they decide to gamble with higher-speed travel. To this end, Roderick casts Wind Walk and pushes the gaseous party down the tunnel at triple their normal walking speed.

As fate would have it, the party finds what turns out to be the end of the tunnel after only two more miles. Using his magical wind, Roderick pulls the party back as soon as he realizes they have stumbled into a large cavern. However, the party's loud wind and dramatic arrival alert a group of Ogres and Trolls to their presence. Roderick dismisses the spell, returning everybody to solid form. A fierce combat with the Ogres and Trolls ensues - which is soon joined by a pair of Drow Captains, a Large Gauth, a trio of disintegrating “Annihilators”, and a spell-casting Beholder.

In the end, the party is victorious against the lesser creatures and manages to drive the Beholder back into its lair and kill it. The only creatures left alive are the two Drow Captains who surrender immediately.

In addition, the party discovers that there is a major source of magic buried behind 100 feet of rubble behind the Beholder's lair. They assume that this is the portal they are seeking.

XP awarded: 3,000 for Bigby, Roderick, Aramil, Vincent, and Flint; 4,000 for Pavo; and 5,000 for Kesi.