Pitch Cave/Foothills Trip
Thursday 18th October 2003

A round of thanks to Exiles

A hunt to the new PF trainer took place, led by Yor. 60 exiles went on this trip and we succeeded in getting to the PF trainer. Thank you to everyone invloved, especially Yor and Zorton.

Firstly let me say thank you to everyone who turned up for this my first organised trip to the Foothills to visit the Path finding trainer. I walked into the docks and I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes, I hadn’t seen this many exiles in one place since Drakesblood invaded Puddleby, and before that i cant remember when.

Special thanks to Yor for leading, Zorton for teleporting, Gurgi, Elenis, Natas and a few others for leading as various exiles were felled. Special thanks to Kalian for his suicide run and a few more thx to the exiles we couldn’t rescue due to time restraints and the hellish nature of the Pitch cave at that time. I’m sure I missed many out but thank you all the chainers, zu farm maintainers, healers and fighters who were there. We had no mystics, which is where we were a bit short on the boosting aspects, so feel free to take along next time :-D

Exiles accounts of the Foothills Trip

I’ll be writing a brief description of the trip from my eyes, and many other more talented exiles have written journals much better than I could. There are already some fine scrolls detailing others tales of the time there. Read about Hors or Azriels trips.

My account of the Foothills Trip

The trip started in the docks where we all fell by the seas allowing us to be chained to the meadow. There Zorton teleported us all straight to the foothills, unfortunately he then had to leave us. The remaining group made quick progress through the foothills to the various caves. The first cave through the waterfall we made short work of as we did with the other caves we encountered. We then came to the Pitch Cave.... somewhere I had never been before.

Yor has been working on a new tactic here, we all observed his scrolls on this and attempted to put the plan into action. All went well at first with the runners luring the Noids to their respective corners and the zu teams blocking them in. Then the rest of us entered and set up trying to lure the Noids out, whilst the majority of the healers were rodding the web throwing Noids in the south. Things were going well until the Albino Noid started to get the better of us, it felled a few of the tougher fighters and with the rod teams in the south we didnt have enough healer power and things started to go wrong and somehow, no-one quite knows how, the Noids were breaking through the zu, or had respawned very quickly. Retreat was in order and not too many of us made it with some of the more powerful healers being trapped south and having to be left behind.

Well from then on it was a rescue, time after time we sent in runners and chainers until we were down to less than half our strength (23). This was due to the sheer number of Noids, with many Albino and Pitch Noids around too, and the fact that with some many webs it was becoming extremely difficult to chain people out without being webbed or hit.

There were several times I had almost given up hope, but many exiles refused to give up, especially Sor who I must thank for making me stay and keep on trying to rescue people. You must remember that we had been fighting the Pitch cave for nigh on 3-4 hours (OOC) a damn long time and many people were getting extremely tired. Exiles couldnt see any way out and wanted to try and get home whilst we still had a chance.

However our desire not to leave so many exiles behind got the better of us, we persevered and eventually got a fair proportion of out number back with careful chaining of 1-2 at a time rather than being greedy. We then concocted our last plan to try and get as many Pf’s to the trainer and chain the other fallens out. Kalian agreed to do a suicide run for a few coin ;-) and the chainers and pf’s lined up. A mad rush was made to get fallens and a run to the trainer. Nearly everyone made it and we all trained with the advanced trainer, with some staying behind to do so (Maybe next time we'll use this tactic first and then attempt to take the cave afterwards ;-). Because it was such a quick run and the chainers had been successful we then made a run for the exit and again nearly everyone made it, a few more quick chain runs and we had all that we could back up and breathing.

Its was with a heavy heart that we had to leave some exiles behind but time had beaten a vast majority of the exiles (6hrs OOC) and we had to head back, there was no telling how long it might have taken to get the others out if at all.

Back we travelled through a portal without much mishap, except a fair few fallen in the ethereal plane, but they were quickly chained to safety. Then onwards to town.

Some pictures and stuff

You can see some pictures I took below, and I’ll be planning another trip soon.

Please find some of my snapshots below. I havent got any good movies, but if anyone has and can edit then down to show some good bits ill add them here (im still o OS9 so cant use revision stone!). Please mail them to me.

Pictures from the trip
A pose for Thoomcare	Getting ready to leave	Ready to teleport
Arriving at out destination	Fighting our way through the Foothills	Kalian preparing for his sucide run closely followed by chainers and pf's
The survivors heading back home