water, water everywhere

Did you ever have one of those days when you just felt like you did a lot but accomplished nothing? Today was one of those days...

We worked our way towards the source of the river. Ren caught up with us and we often stopped to discuss the best way to proceed—the rise was quite formidable and had been severely eroded in many places to provide almost impassable obstacles. At one point we encountered an overhang which lowest point was 15’ above the ground. Jimoko tried several times before he could jump high enough to catch hold of a protruding rock from which he was then able to pull himself up and climb to the top of the overhang, lowering a rope for the rest of us to climb—it was quite impressive to see.

While we had little to drink, there was no shortage of water on our long climb—occasionally we would encounter water elementals. I tried to talk to them but they lacked the intelligence to interact meaningfully.

Valkor said there were portals of some kind linking them back to their home plane, but I could see nothing. According to him the elementals had been “called” rather than summoned—a distinction important only to him, apparently. What was important was that they were bound, and thus we could not have negotiated our way past, even had they been able to speak with me.

The first few were quite small and provided little obstacle. The next couple were slightly larger, but we were also able to take them without much damage to ourselves. We were concerned about using magic as it appeared that someone (or something?) would be at the end of this path that would require all our power to defeat.

Thus we were quite concerned when we came across an elemental even larger than the others we had encountered. It would be almost certain to wound someone gravely if it made contact.

I was sent forward to try to negotiate passage, as Valkor thought that being larger it would be more intelligent than the others. There was no way to tell what effect my words were having as I moved forward and attempted to reassure it that we were happy to pass without fighting if it could indicate a path it approved of. With the encouragement of the others I continued to step forward while talking in reassuring tones. But then I took one step to far and the elemental swirled violently and rushed towards me.

Fortunately the sudden increase in turbulence tipped us off and I was able to move out of its range and we all opened fire with ranged attacks.

It was quite a hit and miss affair—Rabinus missed with his crossbow more often than not, even Leshrac’s usually infallible destructive magic was missing occasionally. I’d already heard him complaining of being sick of blasting these water elementals, so perhaps lack of volition was also an issue. Valkor’s magical web was probably the crucial factor in the battle—he caught it with the initial cast, and completely obstructed the passable ground between the elemental and us.

It was intelligent to back out of the edge of the web where it had initially been caught and attempt to pass through at the side where the web was least dense but it was still enough to slow forward progress while we continued to pepper it and just as it looked like it was going to break free it was struck by a couple of arrows, trembled slightly, and then collapsed into a puddle.

We have been climbing now for several hours and are all dirty, sweaty, tired and irritable. The source of the river appears to be finally within our grasp, but we need to pause and collect ourselves.