To cut a long story short, our heroes triumphed over the massed bodyguards, killing them all except for three that managed to get away — one, early in the combat, carrying the body of its master. Tallis covered herself in ignominy by tripping over the barricade erected by the Hairies, not once but twice — fortunately, on the second try she landed on the right side of the barricade to be able to have a go at them once she'd got back to her feet. Barsh lasted a remarkably long time before being, as usual, beaten into unconsciousness.
They all chased after the last fleeing warriors, who were climbing as fast as they could down long ladders into the depths of the caves. They killed one on the ladder, but the other got away — briefly. Climbing down after him, the crew found themselves on a rocky landing, with evidence of where ladders had recently been dismounted and turned into barricades upstairs. Peering down, Tallis spotted the last remaining Hairy clambering precariously down the rock face; they dislodged him by lobbing rocks at him in a dashed unsportsmanlike fashion until he fell on to the rocks far below, whereupon one of the huge four-armed ape-creatures darted out from under one of many peculiar cauliflower-like overhangs to get the fresh, tasty, pulverised corpse.
Rather than try to reattach the ladders from upstairs, and unwilling to attempt to scale the cliff-face, our heroes convinced Pandora to turn her string (transformed from the ladders the savages used to get at them in Session 16) into rope, which they tied off on one of the large ladder-mounting bolts driven into the rock. Vallana volunteered to be first down, and in a display of bravado slid straight down, relying on her sturdy gauntlets and undead resistance to pain to prevent getting blistered palms. Alas, the rope wasn't quite long enough, Vallana didn't notice in time, and she slid right off the end of the rope and started bouncing off the cauliflower-formations into the depths below. The rest of the group heard her magnificent dwarvish armour clanging and banging for some time before she eventually came to rest out of sight a long way down. Oops.
Pandora made some more rope, and the others made their way down in a more seemly (and less deadly) fashion, only to be attacked by a four-armed ape. Justin performed some acrobatic rope-tricks that would have made Legolas look like a klutz, and between them all they killed the creature in prettuy short order, before climbing further down in search of Vallana's body. To aid their descent, Pandora whipped up a sort of portable wooden stair, complete with gilt baroque decoration, and after some time they came to the place where they felt Vallana must have stopped, in a wide passage. There was no sign of Vallana, so it was assumed that either she'd been taken off and eaten, or she'd survived the fall and left of her own accord.
The passage led off down a gentle slope in both directions from the exit in its ceiling; picking one at random, the party set off in the hope of finding their stumpy differently-alive comrade. After a considerable trek in pitch darkness (except for Pandora's little fairy-light), they came in sight of an exit, from which came a dim greenish light.
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