Xvaangensleff
With an angry growl, the xvarts nearest the cage holding the elf smack the bars threateningly with heavy clubs. The elf cringes back. Still holding Vann-La’s eyes, he silently mouths,
Please.
“We have to help him,” Vann-La mutters.
The party looks around. There are hundreds of creatures thronging the slave market. Obviously, to simply attack would be tantamount to suicide. “Maybe we can buy him,” suggests Nixie. The others nod. It’s worth a try. Vann-La nods slowly to the elf and raises a finger to her lips.
The party spends some time watching the action, figuring out how the system works. Kratos, who has been concentrating on picking up snatches of the Xvart language, manages to act as a rough translator.* It seems as though there is a slaver’s guild, and any transactions must go through them. There are long lines in front of the guild’s kiosks, but they move fairly briskly. Business is obviously transacted with both regularity and efficiency; the xvarts know what they’re doing, when it comes to the slave trade.
The party negotiates with the xvarts at the elf’s cage. The xvarts don’t really seem to care why the pcs want the elf, as long as they pay good money. Our heroes bargain with the goblins, and after waiting in line, make their transaction, pay the guild its fees and walk away with a shackled elf. They mutter to him that he must act the part of a slave until they exit the city, and move on as quickly as their beetle can trundle.
The elf’s name is Rathagos. “Thank you so much,” he murmurs. “I have nothing, but I promise you, if you can take me to the city of Fandelose, out of the western side of these damned tunnels, you will be rewarded for saving me!”
“We’re going there anyway,” Heimall says grimly. “How long have you been down here?”
“A few weeks... we were trying to reach the city via the tunnels, when the xvarts fell upon my squadron. The killed or captured us, and I feared that the information I have would never reach Fandelose!”
Vann-La and Torinn exchange a glance. “What information?” asks the dragonborn.
“A ritual, to help defend the city,” the elf says. “The Six-Fingered Hand is not far from striking them, and this will help to strengthen the city’s walls and battlements.”
“You should teach it to us, if we can learn it,” Sta’Ligir suggests.
But the elf shakes his head. “I don’t actually know it. It was...
planted in my head. I am no ritualist, I am just carrying it.”
Iggy nods.
There must be another ritual, he realizes,
to put a ritual into someone’s mind like that. And perhaps yet another, to extract it again. So much to learn...
***
Speaking of rituals, as the party moves through the garbage-filled streets of Xvaangensleff, Sta’Ligir spies a ritualist’s shop. The party debates whether or not to stop. Kratos points out, quite rightly, that if they get into much trouble, they could end up enslaved. But Sta’Ligir and Torinn are insistent: without components, the rituals they do know are fairly useless, but given the material to enact their rituals, there are many advantages the party might be able to employ. “Like speaking to things when we don’t know their language,” Iggy grumbles.
Kratos snorts. “We can learn their language.
I can learn their language.”
“What if you aren’t around?”
“I agree with Iggy,” says Torinn, and the party grinds to a halt. They move quickly, buying some supplies and a few books to learn new rituals, including both
enchant magic item and
transfer enchantment.
The group keeps moving. Piles of refuse, some of them burning, slow the beetle, but it plods over or around them relentlessly. Finally, they come to the Yellow Gate allowing them to exit the city. They pay their tolls- Rathagos has one of the slave earrings on, so he costs extra- and then they are outside the city, in the slums surrounding it on the far side. The exit tunnel looms ahead and above, and they are now ascending the curving slope of the wall of the gargantuan cavern. Iggy uses a
light cantrip, and Kratos cracks a sun rod; they are leaving the city lights behind them.
The slums here are thin; it is not level enough for easy living. The party leaves them behind in less than ten minutes. Cave formations and fungal growths replace the shabby huts and sheds that they have been passing through.
“I wonder how much longer to get out to other side of tunnel,” Cook muses.
“Hold on,” Vann-La says sharply. “Over there...” She points, and the others look. Half-hidden behind some mineral growths are a pile of bodies.
“What do you suppose that’s all about?” Heimall scratches his beard. None of our heroes have shaved or bathed in almost two weeks, since abandoning Chebonnay.
“I don’t know,” she answers.
The party examines the bodies for a few moments. They are uniformed xvarts, killed by blade and arrow and club. They are puzzling over the dead when a sudden hue and cry alerts them to a party of live xvarts and rats- and the xvarts are wearing similar uniforms to the dead.
An obvious misunderstanding develops. The xvarts sic their rats on the party, and then charge to the attack themselves. Our heroes deal devastating blows, cutting down most of the enemy in a few short moments without any real harm to themselves.
“Let’s get out of here,” Kratos insists. “Let’s go. We’re almost out of here. No stopping, no searching, let’s
git.”
The party marches up into the exit cavern, leaving xvarts behind them. Nixie manages to disengage the slave earring from Rathagos, and they give him one of the xvart shortbows, as well as a set of clothes. He examines their uniforms and announces that he was in the army as an irregular and scout. He thanks them again, and assures them that, upon reaching Fandelose, General Argos will reward them for bringing him to the city.
What he does not know, of course, is that at that moment, General Argos is being arrested. Within an hour he will be in the infamous Black Tower. Things in Fandelose are, unfortunately, a little more complicated than would be ideal. But our heroes will find out all about that soon enough.
The passage out of the huge cavern does not, of course, lead directly to the surface, but it slopes so noticeably upwards that it cannot help but be heading in the right direction. The party clambers up an ever-increasing slope for hours. Finally, at the fourth hour, they encounter a crossroads. They pause, gasping, to rest and eat. No signs point the way, but one passage heads clearly upwards. It is this tunnel that our heroes take, hoping that it will lead them to the surface at last. Except for their dwarven cook, who is quite happy underground, all of our heroes crave the sun; it has been a week since they have seen it. Fresh air. Green plants.
Into a rubble and boulder strewn chamber they go; up and up, but leveling off here, where there is so much scree. And as they traverse it, they are attacked, suddenly, from the darkness, by howling, ursine humanoids wielding primitive stone axes. They hack and hurl them, and attack in a mass, stupidly.
Our heroes use tactics. Nowhere Jones and the Cook move to flank; Vann-La tangles the mass of the enemy up, while Nixie takes the beetle and wagon to safety, then starts firing
eldritch blasts.
The creatures, once bloodied, become savage, frenzied. Their blows increase in ferocity. But that just means that our heroes start hitting
hard as the enemy gets badly wounded. Soon, the last furred humanoid falls.
”What are those things?” wonders Sta’Ligir.
“Oi, they called quaggoths,” Cook answers. “Mean, Underdark bear-man. Very bad.”
“Well, apparently, we’re badder,” puffs Kratos.
A long, ululating howl echoes down the cave.
“They come in waves,” Cook continues. “Strong against poison.”
“Waves, eh?” Heimall says.
The party forms a rough circle and continues moving. The second wave comes quiclly, and this time there are more of them quaggoths. Some of them are unarmored, but they can do a terrific job of rending the heroes with their massive, strong, clawed fingers. The battle starts off looking good for the party, but rapidly progresses to a less good-looking configuration when Cook falls, smashed down by a wig-splitting blow from one of the axe-wielding quaggoths.
“Cook!” cries Torinn. Using the power of Lester, he murmurs a
healing word- and Cook groans back to consciousness.
A quaggoth savages him, and he falls back into unconsciousness. Slavering, the thing howls.
Torinn smashes its head in with his spiked chain and moves to cover Cook while he uses another
healing word.
The quaggoths are pushed back; pushed apart; pushed to wall, then cut down. Panting, wounded, bloodied, our heroes decide to hurry on immediately, without searching or resting. “If another wave hits us here, while we’re beaten up, we’re in bad shape,” reasons Heimall. “Maybe, if we can get out of their hunting ground...”
The party moves quickly. No imminent third wave of quaggoths hits them; they hurry onward for about thirty minutes before they find an open area with what appears to be a partially collapsed, partially buried shrine. The cavern it is in is full of rubble and partially collapsed; the entire cave floor is covered in jumbled rocks and scree. A tall tower in the rear of the ruin, whose entrances from outside seem to have been buried by rubble, thrusts up through the low roof.
The party halts. The tower thrusts up
through the roof of the cave.
“It’s made of wood,” Nowhere Jones says. “It fell from above.”
“If we go in, maybe we can get out through the top,” suggests Vann-La.
”Wait a second,” Heimall says. “We still need to catch our breath. If any quaggoths are following us, better to take them on now than when we might be fighting something else, too, at the same time.”
They pause, take a few moments to regain their breath, bind wounds, heal a little. Still no third wave of quaggoths.
Boldly, Vann-La throws open the tower door.
Next Time: Return to the surface world at last!
*He took Linguist as a feat.
