We're approaching the entrance to the Cloakwood mine. It has been a long hard slog through Wyvern ambushes, so many, many, spiders, and lesser threats. We even took a week off to go sell items and resupply and return to finish our task -- to halt the operations of a secretive organization we're just now uncovering.
Feeling the rain fall upon our brows, we briefly confuse it with our own sweat. We have Janice, Gorian's ward, an inquisitor of some renown at this point. Accompanying her is Minsc who shields the pocket carrying the Miniature Giant Space Hamster, Boo, with a mighty tower shield and crushes foes with his mace of stunning. Branwen takes the third position, alternating between melee combat and her sling plus spells. By this level (6), she's built up a handy repertoire. Kivan, equipped with a beautiful longbow snipes from the fourth position, and swaps it out for an overly large halberd if threatened up close (so to speak -- it's still a halberd.) Imoen, having gained serious magical skills from dual classing at level 5 thief, is *so* close to getting her skills back as she is almost Mage 6. For now, she casts our evocation spells when she's not lopping rocks at people or protecting her own hide with blur and friends. Xan, of course, takes up the rear with his moonblade reserved for flanking when no retaliation is expected and throwing knives otherwise. He of course casts Sleep 314 times a day when he isn't casting Charm Person. Xan complains that he will never taste the magical end of a day until his own death, being immune to sleep spells as an Elf.
We're ready to explore the depths of this mine. However, some mouthy assassins stand in our way. (Are they really assassins if you have to come to them though?) We've steamrolled Wyverns at this point; we're not really worried about some poser in a parka and his goons. Knowing they are surely above level 4, sleep isn't going to help here, "ultimately nothing will", Xan informs us. That is fine, we have magical steel, wands of paralyzation, some monster summoning wands, flame arrows (the spell), and Kivan who turns virtually anything into a pin cushion. We plan to take this one nice and easy.
Well, that may have been a mistake. We get to roughing up their mouthy leader whose name we didn't bother to memorize given how fast he was going down. But uh, failed to interrupt at least one of their spellcasters. They've got mirror image up at least. No problem, Janice quips, and instantly shouts out the exact "real" mage's location with her true sight. Unfortunately someone in their group managed to fear our group. Luckily we have Branwen with remove fear and... wait, Branwen was among those feared? Aww, crap. Well, let's just Dispel Magic! Oh, that's on Janice. Well, no matter, surely Xan memorized... he only took the Remove Magic offensive version??
We've summoned a bunch of ogres who are running around like chickens with their heads chopped off. We've got Janice, and Branwen, bouncing around like pinballs. Janice is bleeding badly. Some heavily armored freak named Genthore keeps hitting her with something. Xan is with us, and has a Flame arrow spell, nails the troublesome mage but doesn't finish him. And the timing sucks because he casts fear AGAIN, but this time only impacting Xan. Xan starts running away, and we haven't even seen Minsc in ages.
So it's just Imoen, short on useful spells, and Kivan. We're tired of mage-casting-fear so Kivan gives him an arrow through the throat to finish him off. Some person in the back seems to have died to the summons earlier on or something. No one even remembers who killed that guy.
Mouthy bad guy is almost dead so Kivan adds another arrow to his stomach and calls it a day. Bad news though, big armored guy with little injury is closing in melee. Kivan does have his polearm but it's really really big, and he can't swing it very quickly. We also somehow have a summoned Ogrillion chasing Imoen around.
Imoen backs up and outpaces the Ogrillion, as he can reliably hit her otherwise. She zaps the heavy armor guy with the wand of paralyzation again (it didn't work earlier.) This time it sticks! Kivan moves to help with Ogrillion. Imoen is getting cornered but has enough time to try the wand on the Ogrillion -- it works! We chop up Ogrillion into some signature Orgrillion steaks and giblets. Then it's cleanup duty for the big armor guy named Genthore. We get his health low, smiling through the rain as we know he'll be a huge XP payout. Just then: the combat log rings audibly through the 4th wall:
Genthore: Lightning : Genthore
Genthore: Death
He was hit by lightning as the last step of this entire combat! Stupid rain! I wonder which deity claimed his XP.