D&D 5E Out of the Abyss IC

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It had been two days since The Flaying, as His Highness Prince Derendil liked to call it. The Flaying. They took the runty deep gnome, the one with blackest skin. Shoor had laughed his wheezing high-pitched glee at the gnome's panicked bleating about needing to live, wanting to serve. But Mistress Ilvara had been bored that day. Bored with Shoor. Bored with her command. Bored, perhaps, with the drudge of life in an insignificant outpost. The gnome lasted an hour, dinner theater, his screams stretching from the drow's dining hall, tendrils of misery creeping across the rocky cavern wall into the inky dark of the prison cell. His end was punctuated with laughter. Cat-calls in the queer gutteral tongue of the drow.

Fifteen prisoners, stuffed in a natural cavern. Iron bars and a lock the size of a fist sealed the entry. A prison. Everyone knew by now to avoid His Highness Prince Derendil. Oh, he could be urbane. Witty, even. He liked to lift a pinky finger as he talked, raised as if he were taking high tea. But, as Sarith discovered to his woe, refer to the great hulking shaggy beast as a "quaggoth," and you would know suffering. Sarith still flinched a little when His Highness drew near.

Buppido was the first to make introductions, shaking hands all around. The male derro was particular in his habits, refusing to piss near his bed, always wiping his hands in a futile attempt to clean them before eating. He was friendly, though. Harmless. A font of knowledge and information, once you got him talking. A foil to the brutishness of His Highness and Ront the Orc who moped sullen in the corner.

Inside your prison, the spark of magic died. There was no light, certainly no warmth, and it was not dry. Though your feet were free, your hands were manacled, a chain running from the manacles to an iron belt clapped at your waist. The slave collar at your neck, though. That chaffed. Just where your gear had gone, well, that was a mystery. The drow had taken it when you were captured.

And always, always, always, the sound of rushing water roared somewhere in the distance, never to be seen, always heard.

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION]
[MENTION=23298]industrygothica[/MENTION]
[MENTION=40413]GlassEye[/MENTION]
[MENTION=33284]Yavathol[/MENTION]
[MENTION=23484]Kobold Stew[/MENTION]

Kago had found his own corner to mope in, at least as far as anyone knew. In truth, he listened and he prayed. He listened to the mad rumblings of the other captives and learned plenty about them in the process, and prayed for the strength to keep from smashing all their faces in. He may need them later should an attempt at escape present itself, or at least as fodder to keep the drow from taking notice of the brooding orc in the corner.

His thick knuckles cracked as he tightened his fist, and he forced a slow, even breath to quell the building rage. He knew it wouldn't take long before this prison became a bloodbath, either by drow hands or his own. He had to get out of here!

It felt very odd, being disconnected from the Weave..Kamael could not remember a time in his life when he had not been able to feel the magic, to manipulate it with his will. He could not see anything obvious about the cavern or bars that was causing this..blindness, but he knew that it must have been deliberately caused by the drow. Part of him eagerly anticipated leaving, hoping that the connection would quickly return; but another part dreaded leaving since that would likely mean a similar fate to that of the deep gnome.

Kamael took a deep breath, and distracted himself by following Buppido's lead and talking to each of his fellow prisoners. He was accustomed to hunger and struggling to survive and knew that dwelling on his situation would not resolve anything. Instead, his mind was occupied with constructing a mental image of the surrounding area and finding out if any of the others knew where they were, and where they could go, if they got out of the cell..

Solace was hungry, and her hair was clotted with other people's blood. She didn't complain, though. This is what this world was like, and she had faced worse smells than this. Not worse by far, admittedly.

The former occupant of what she generously called a mattress had haemorrhaged profusely, and the film left behind was still wet, all these days later.

She found a routine for herself. When people returned from the torture she would go to them, offering what little first aid she could without other resources. Pressure points for pain management. Flushing wounds of contaminants where possible. She did not low what good it did, but it established a pattern so that the gaolers would not be too suspicious each time she approached that fist-sized lock. By now she knew where they kept their keys; knew the sound of the mechanism turning; sensed the resistance that the metal offered. Soon, she would be ready.

Kamael's heart lightened as he saw Solace's actions.


Even in her own misery, she was one of those rare people who thought of others and cared for them. Kamael felt gratitude for the fact that Solace was with him, and then immediately felt guilty, wishing that she was safely back on the surface. Tssh, he chided himself, deal with the situation you're in and keep trying to find out what the others here know about this "Underdark".

*Deleted by user*

Raza Thulcandra

Raza watched. The wrinkled, old halfling woman seemed weighted down by her chains and moved about sparingly, just enough to avoid the insane quaggoth and the moping orc-bloods. The quaggoth’s delusion could be manipulated, if necessary; the orcs too unpredictable to be useful.

The derro, Buppido, and the one who introduced himself as Kamael (interesting how that one watched the girl) she might be able to work with. At the least, it was fairly easy to prompt them into talking when she got bored. The others… there was time to learn about the others. Despite appearances, there was always time; like everything else, you only had to manage it.

[roll0]

Raza had been in the cell longest. In the dark, time stretched interminably, making it hard to tell just exactly how many days had passed, but she guessed it was twenty four. The pair of drow who captured her handed her off to a caravaneer who brought her to this place. The drow here dumped her in the cell and promptly forgot about her. She had been neither fetched for service at the outpost, nor mentioned in the intervening time. Left to die, a shriveled thing deemed worthless. Brinn arrived hours after Raza. However long she had been here, he'd been here the same amount of time, or very nearly. He was strange, had strange ways, and kept to himself, she observed. On Brinn's third day, a myconid sprout he hadn't noticed sidled up the Haruchai warrior. The sproutling lacked features that might permit it to form words, but nevertheless stayed closed at Brinn's side. It didn't speak, but he sensed it watched him.



Stool, Myconid Sprout
Credit: Wizards of the Coast


Perhaps ten days into Raza's and Brinn's stay, Kago, Kamael, and Solace arrived. None of the three had been conscious when the drow upended the litters to deposit their bodies on the uneven floor. There they lay, waking a day later, groggy and disoriented with poison.

The food prisoners were given, what little of it remained after Bront and His Highness helped themselves, was a thin mushroom broth in small clay bowls passed through the bars of the gate once a day. The broth tended to arrive mid-day. Solace noted the cook was a creature with features highly similar to His Highness. A quaggoth. Tall, covered in a pelt of thin shaggy blue-grey fur, forearms roped with muscle, the claws affixed to her digits razor-sharp. Cook was escorted by two drow armed with short swords, one with a light crossbow at his back. She pushed through the broth through the bars with the pair of guards stood ten feet away, then turned and left. She never spoke. Or looked at the captives, even.

Three clay chamber pots lined the open space of one of the cavern's sloping walls. Once per day in the morning, three armed drow guards accompanied by a quaggoth unlock the cell gate and direct three random prisoners to take the full chamber pots and upend them over a cliff into a pool. Each of prisoner had done this duty at least once, and so in this way learned that the outpost was named Velkynvelve, and that it sat perched high amidst large stalactites hanging from the ceiling of a chasm. Narrow rope bridges connected rooms built in secret niches carved into the hanging stalactites. At the far end of the outpost was a ledge perhaps twelve inches wide. It was along this ledge the drow guards pointed prisoners, directing them to dump the chamber pots into a pool on the chasm floor, some 100' below the outpost. More than one prisoner had contemplated the fall as potential reprieve from their suffering. So far, however, no one had jumped. The outpost relied on a waterfall in its center as a source of fresh water. It was this waterfall that produces the ever-roaring sound of water.




[sblock=OOC]Raza and Brinn have been in Velkynvelve 24 days. Kago, Kamael, and Solace have been in Velkynvelve 14 days. If you think your character would know the precise number of days, feel free to roleplay it that way. I posit that it would be hard to tell the passage of time in the dark in an unfamiliar environment. For ease of reference, however, we're going to have to use terms like "morning," "afternoon," and "evening." Those of you who have discovered a discarded item inside the cell have received a PM. Feel free to interact with the environment and with any of the Velkynvelve Prisoner NPCs listed in the Community. [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], I think it's time for Jorlan to make an appearance.[/sblock]

Solace has been able to provide comfort here and there to those inmates who have suffered beatings at the hands of their drow masters. She helped Eldeth Feldrun, a female shield dwarf, recover after a savage kick to the head. Eldeth survived, but lost an eye from the blunt force trauma of the blow.