Peek: Tales From the Guild

Karn looks out over his guild as he cleans a tall mug, smiling at the boisterous noise of the adventurers.  Last year, the hall was pretty quiet around this time, with no dungeons really worth delving this deep into winter.  But with Thedeim around, people still go delve while doing various upkeep on their gear and training.

And, as any group of adrenaline junkies will do when socializing, they love to trade stories.  Karn listens in as he tends the bar, glad to have his perception high enough to be easily able to keep abreast of the scuttlebutt.

"So there I was, peering into the attic from the stairs, the rest of the group at the bottom while I scouted.  Our delve had been going pretty smoothly, maybe even too smooth, so we were a bit apprehensive about stumbling into some new trick of Thedeim's.  Looking into the attic, I knew he was doing something, but I had no idea what.

"See, the chest was sitting where it always is, but there wasn't anything else in the room.  No rats, no spiders, no nothing!  I call that down to the group, and they all exchange nervous looks.  We all knew Thedeim wouldn't just kill us, but this was smelling more and more like something that would leave us battered and bereft of our loot!

"'Do we just leave?' I asked, and we all mulled it over, weighing what we'd already got versus what we might get in that chest.  If it was some weird new thing from Thedeim, we could get some good loot for it.  And the delve hadn't been that lucrative just yet anyway.  So we decided to go for it.

"I headed back down the ladder and we went up in standard defensive formation, you all know how it goes, but even once we were all up there, nothing happened.  We all looked around, trying to sense anything, but it appeared abandoned.  We were actually getting a freebie?

"Hah!  So we started slowly advancing on the chest, eyes peeled for an ambush.  I spotted it first, for all the good it did.  I was checking the roof, wondering if something might be hiding in the rafters just over our heads.  It technically wasn't hiding there, but that was its only option for getting the drop on us.  Literally.

"I'm pretty sure it was one huge ooze, but in a cramped space like that, it can be hard to tell.  I just yelled 'Slime!' and even only barely managed to get that out before we were all in the thick of it.  I don't know if you guys have ever tangled with one of those metal slimes down in the tunnels, but they're tough.  They don't do too much damage, but damaging them is really hard.

"So we're all fighting, sputtering, slogging through the ooze that just flopped onto us all, acid slowly eating away at us.  I figure it must have been in one of those shortcuts.  No way an ooze like that could attack from an angle like that without them.  Anyway, Volc was healing us the entire time, so we all figured everything was fine.  We finally get the ooze dealt with, the potency of the acid drops sharp once they're dead, and we all checked to make sure everyone was alright.  All of us were a bit sore, but not too bad, except for Volc.

"Crazy gnome didn't bother healing himself, and he looked it.  I don't know if you guys have seen untreated acid wounds but... I wouldn't recommend it.  I called him an idiot and reached for my emergency potion, when another ooze landed on him with a wet splat!

"We all swore and scrambled to do something and he was just trying to wave us off, even though the ooze was already tinted red!  We weren't going to just let him sacrifice himself like that!  Hergdo managed to free his head for an instant, giving Volc the chance to shout.

"'It's a healing slime, you morons!' he yelled before he shimmied deeper into the slime, and we all took a second look and saw he was right.  The wounds were closing and everything.  We had heard of healing slimes, but I hadn't seen them before.

"So yeah, that's the story of how we got ambushed by slimes, twice."

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Inspired by Alex Turff, who wanted to see adventurer reactions to the shortcuts