The party agreed that
they needed to head toward the crater right away; what they disagreed on was
how to get there. Nyridius and Optimus
split off toward what they believed would be a shortcut, while Lim’Dul,
Azkadelia, and Little Rock headed straight up the path.
The party of three
approached the crater to find a strange scene.
They could hear voices in the crater, but they couldn’t see anyone. After some brief searching, they found a
laptop that was broadcasting a invisibility field around the area. Unfortunately, their only techie (Optimus)
was at parts unknown, and the three swatted at the contraption like perplexed
chimpanzees. This got the attention the cloaked
individuals, who opened fire on the team.
Frustrated, Lim’Dul bashed the laptop to pieces with his stick. When the invisibility field dropped, the team
saw Optimus’ horse (which had been stolen by Windsor long ago). They also saw one of the thug bears, and he
had backup in the form of Furious George (a club-fisted ape) and Hypno-Toad (a
frog with captivating eyes).
Without a lick of
conversation, a battle erupted. The Hypno-Toad
mesmerized Azkadelia, but was quickly killed by Lim’Dul. This freed up Lim’Dul and Azkadelia to hop
down into the crater’s pit and engage the thug bear. Even though Azkadelia completely biffed her
jump and tried to stick an 18-foot fall on her face, the two were able to keep
the bear in check. This didn’t shut the
bear up, though; he continuously taunted the group with shouts of “AW HEELLLL
NO! You think you bad? Lemme show you
how we do it out in THA WOODS!” The tide
turned with a clever combination of mutations by Azkadelia; she clouded the
bear’s mind to grant her some peace, and mentally manipulated the horse into
trampling the bear.
Meanwhile, on the ledge
of the pit, Little Rock battled with Furious George. The angry monkey dished out immense damage
with his simian pounding, and Little Rock took the worst beating of his life.
After maneuvering around Little Rock, Furious
George kicked him off the edge of the pit, resulting in a painful 18-foot
drop. Furious George looked over the
ledge, victorious. However, he
overreached when he went for a brutal coup
de grâce: an 18-foot elbow drop with his spiked mitts. The move would have definitely killed Little
Rock, but Furious George’s attempt was a critical failure - he overshot the
jump and landed face-first in the ground.
Knowing that the bear
had valuable information, Azkadelia used her interaction skills to grind the
fight to a halt. She convinced the bear
to talk instead of fight to the death, and he shared that he received the horse
from Windsor in a trade for a large red crystal. The thug bear got hostile when the party
asked for the horse back, but Azkadelia convinced him to trade it for an
assortment of junk. Finally, they asked
about Windsor’s whereabouts, and the bear shared what he knew, saying, “He took
the crystal into that cave in the center of the crater. He said he and his men would undergo some
transformation and become ‘more powerful than god.’ He said he wanted to do this in this hole
that some idiot blew in the earth’s crust.”
“Don’t you hate it when
that happens?” quipped Lim’Dul. The thug
bear and Furious George expressed their respect for the team after such a good
toe-to-toe sparring, and left. Azkadelia
decided that the horse belonged to her, not Optimus, and named it “Gumdrop
Princess.” Furthermore, she fashioned
some battle armor for it out of her rowboat and Optimus’ inertial armor. Sufficiently prepared, the proud team of Lim’Dul,
Little Rock, Azkadelia, and Gumdrop Princess marched into Windsor’s cavern.
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