"The first part is what I told you about already. We prepared a fire at the top to burn down the stairs as an emergency escape. But that was an escape strategy we still had rescue the hostages. Trying that at the outset could very likely kill the hostages depending on how well the mine is ventilated. So I started working on another plan, one that would allow our small group to overcome far greater numbers."
"As I worked out a plan we scouted around a bit and eventually bumped into two tareks. They had no chance against the four of us and were quickly cut down. We kept one alive to lead us to the hostages but he tried to get away and we found ourselves in another battle with a group of cultists with strange powers. They were able to shapeshift to look like us. It was confusing but we cut them down quickly. Then we came across a pair of cult guards that tried to kill us by releasing a pair of jakhars. We tried to kill them before they opened the gate to the jakhars. We cut down one of them but the other opened the gate and fled. There was a narrow part of the tunnel just a few steps from the gate. It was good ground to hold off superior numbers so I ran there and held it. The jakhars were funneled towards me and with ranged support from my new friends we cut them down with little danger. After this we attempted to continue the search with our captive cultist. When we can to a room with a pit the stupid fanatic jumped in nearly dragging Rhogar with him. As far as I know he was dead when he hit the bottom but I have no way of know as it was blacker than the blackest moonlit night in that pit."
"That was when I decided to put my plan into action. I ran a practice run just to be sure everyone knew what to do. It worked like a charm. Rolen stripped down to a loin cloth and dirtied himself up to pass for a mine slave. Then it was no problem for him to trick a group of cultists into chasing him. Rolen ran up the spiraling stair complex to where I held a narrow area. I blocked the progress of the cultists while my three companions pounded them at range. Since we armed for ranged attacks and they weren't we effectively outnumbered them even though it was like six to four. Furthermore Jorvak was one level up and had a giant-hair rope so he could lower himself behind the enemy giving us the advantage of a vertical envelopment when we needed it. We took another cultist hostage but this one refused to talk as well. Rhogar was put in charge of question but he got a little out of control and I had to give him a dire warning about torture. We decided to give it one more try and this time Rolen pulled two cultists with powers. I think they were defilers because the cultist we had captured had said they were a cult called the Broken Builders or something like that. The two cultists started in with their weird powers and one made himself look like me.
Creepy that was. Then Jorvak showed us that he had more guts than brains by pulling this crazy swinging stunt that kicked the caster in the back off the stairs to his doom. Lucky Jorvak didn't follow him down. Anyway there was no way a single cultist, no matter how powerful, could stand against us with that sort of a trap going so we cut them down as well. After that skirmish we thought it best to continue to search for the captives. We thought it best to search among the human cultists as the fighting seemed more intense on the lower levels held by the tareks. We fought a couple more skirmishes against the cultist that don't stand out in my memory except for the fact that had strange powers even for defilers. Eventually we came to a side passage door that was tied shut with many knots. It obviously was keeping something in rather than out so we decided to search there for the prisoners. Gaul's wife was inside and another human. After speaking with them we discovered that the other two hostages were being held by the tareks on the lower levels. Rather than risk the gains we had already made I figured it would be wise to take Gaul's wife and the other hostage to the rendezvous point where we were to link up with Gaul's strike force. I had been mauled by beasts and men and I was suffering from blood loss so it seemed like a good time to get out of there. So we left the mine and traveled a short way into the desert. After a day or so Gaul showed up. Of course he was happy to have his wife back but he still wanted the other two hostages rescued. It seemed that one of the other two was a dwarf and there was no way I was going to leave him behind anyway. When we returned Rolen once again took over scouting for us. Eventually Rolen found this caved in section and he went to check it out. It seemed pretty senseless to me but as it turned out Rolen had discovered a forgotten tunnel that lead to a pit to the lower levels. We climbed down my giant-hair rope to the lower levels and it was obvious that this section had not been used in some time. The lower tunnel lead to another cave in very near where the fighting was taking place. I moved a enough boulders so that Rolen could fire on the flank of the tarek's position. The tareks cleared through the debris much faster than I would have thought possible but even then they could only come at us two at time because the cave was very narrow just behind the caved in section.
A furious battle broke out and both Jarvek and Rhogar received some serious wounds. The tareks fought well but bottled up as they were they could not take advantage of their numbers and we soon cut them all down. We were wounded and exhausted so we quickly moved the stone back into place and retreated to the pit to rest and bind out wounds."
The shade of my father looked troubled as if he did not wish to say something so I prompted him, "What happened then Father? Surely you did not just give up and leave, not when you were so obviously dominating the enemy?"
"No we did not leave, though perhaps we should have. I am not proud of what happened then, but when one finds your opponent at a disadvantage it is foolishness to hand them a better chance to kill you. I learned that in the arena."
"What was it father? What still troubles you?"
"Rolen and Jorvak were scouting ahead and they were under my orders, orders is probably to strong a word, to eliminate any tareks they found before an alarm could be sounded. Not that I was their commander in the way of the military exactly. It was just that these things made sense to me and so they listened to me. So they came upon a pair of sleep tareks, probably guards, and they did what they were supposed to do; silence them. It had to be done if they had given warning we would have all died. It just never sat well in my head that is all......... "
"After that we had a piece of luck and stumbled upon the captive I had been looking for, a fellow dwarf named Durum-Khar. I call it luck but it was more likely Rolen's skills as a pathfinder. Durum-Khar was tied up in a cave with many pieces of jagged obsidian that was probably meant to discourage escape. Jorvak took over and got the dwarf out with hardly a scratch, well hardly a scratch more than he already had anyway. Durum-Khar was pretty beat up and must have been tortured. They had nearly broken him and he lost his nerve and wanted to bolt before we saved the last hostage. I reminded him he was a dwarf and that brought him around.
He took us in the direction that he thought they had the last hostage. Soon we came to a very large cavern that seemed to be the tareks' temple. The tareks seemed to be worshipping some red hot piece of obsidian that put me in mind of the flaming obsidian pillars we had seen when we came to a few weeks ago. The captive was tied near the pillar like he was going to be sacrificed or something. One look at the terrain and I was pretty sure we could best them even though we were outnumbered about four to one. There were no exits from the temple and the choke point between the two caves was only wide enough for two to fight at a time. That was a job for a dwarf so Durum-Khar and I took the front rank with the others behind us for covering fire. At first the battle was all ours since the tareks had to cover a lot of distance to get to us and they were all strung out.
There were like two or three terraces and a lava river and the tareks had to climb a couple of short ladders to get to us. It was then that the tarek leader, a defiler, got close enough to cut loose on us with spells. I was near to calling a retreat but Rolen and Rhogar knew what to do and they concentrated their fire on the tarek leader. As soon as they put the defiler down the battle was all ours."
"Rolen rescued the last hostage who was barely alive. But as we were getting ready to pull out of there the obsidian pillar thing shrank. It was obviously a magical defiling object of some type so Jorvak threw it into the lava to destroy it. Rhogar apparently thought that was wasteful and so he used the Way to levitate the chunk of obsidian out of the lava. It was undamaged which is further proof that it is magical. We put aside arguing about what do with the thing and focused on getting out of there. After delivering the rest of the hostages to Gaul we returned to do what I had wanted to do from the beginning; we torched the staircase. It was built of wood, hides, and bone so it burned pretty good. We hung around for a while to make sure that none of them got away. From what we could see it looked like the tareks had used the confusion caused by the fire to step up their assault on the human defiler cult. By the time we left it looked like the tareks had the upper hand and were taking over the mine."
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