(Truly) Bazaar and Not So Common
Danek wakes well before dawn, bloodshot eyes showing the strain of dark and troubled dreams. Seeing all the others asleep, she pads over to Dobi’s corpse. There she stands for the next hour, frowningly contemplating the halfling’s existence and its sudden cessation, before exhaustion finally overcomes her and she is forced to take her dissatisfaction to bed.
Kai, having awoken with a start at the barbarian’s return to her bedroll, notes the direction of Danek’s thoughts and signals her own awareness with a long, sad sigh for the little bard. “We'll get him on his feet again soon,” she says as reassuringly as possible, though without much hope of success, to Danek.
The barbarian merely grunts and closes her eyes; Kai contents herself with hugging her familiar closer and quickly returning to sleep.
The night moves on; Cerridwin interrupts its quiet to go trolling for affection. Andy turns him away, pleading a headache. As the satyr storms away, the confused monk wonders yet again how she got to be here. As usual, her questions are not answered. Sleep proves an easier quarry.
Finally it is morning, or at least would be if the sun could penetrate earth and stone to reach this dark place. Andy tries to continue her slumber, but cannot maintain it so close to Steve’s angry stomping.
“It would be just a rental on the slippers, Steve. They really do go better with my outfit than with your coat.” Steve snorts and turns away, effectively ending the discussion. Quid sighs good-naturedly.
Andy yawns and stretches, quite unconscious of the effect this has on the tortured satyr. Ignoring his decidedly unsubtle looks, she sidles over to Rhien as the monk watches Trella wrap Dobi’s body in cloth, all the while speaking words in a foreign tongue. When she starts waving mistletoe, Andy can no longer hold hers.
“Do you think she’s doing anything?” the halfling inquires.
Rhien, ever patient, answers, “In what sense?”
“I mean, that looks like mumbo-jumbo. In the army they had priests, you know, but mostly they were there for morale. Big on the talking, but not so much with the magic.”
“Trella is very wise. I am sure her actions have a purpose.”
“But she’s like a teenager,” Andy whines, “And sooo hot.”
“All wisdom is not encased by white hair and wrinkled skin, Andy. Trella has experienced much in her short life.”
Khail drifts by as he buckles his armor. “Plus, we were magically altered a couple of times.”
Rhien smiles. “Yes, that too. But look, she’s done. It’s time to go, Andy.”
The halfling cannot suppress an audible gulp as she contemplates what that is likely to mean.
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“The web is a mess.” Trella scratches under her arm in irritation.
With only her shoulders and head visible above the carnage in the barracks hallway, Andy is more than a little on edge. “I’m not staying here!” she cries shrilly. “We have to find a way down!”
Khail peers over the edge of the chasm. “Relax, little one. Steve can ferry us all to the bazaar.”
The mighty warhorse stamps a hoof and looks at Quid meaningfully before doing just that. Quid accepts a ride without comment.
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Unlike the confined space of the barracks, the main expanse of the bazaar occupies—or occupied—a huge natural cavern. A ledge about ten feet off of the ground runs the length of the northeastern wall, and some half-dozen doors are set into the wall beyond the ledge. The cavern’s ceiling is twenty feet high, giving Steve the welcome ability to stretch his neck for the first time in a day.
Though this bazaar has clearly not operated at full capacity for many years, until recently it looks to have been occupied by a few Underdark denizens trading their wares. Now, however, all that is present are the sickening remains of creatures pounded into pulpy messes.
Trella, ignoring the ripe odor, runs over to the nearest grouping of gore and kneels at its side. A quick examination of the bodies is all it takes for the experienced tracker to deduce the circumstances of the creatures’ demise, details she gleefully shares with the rest of the party before anyone can even ask.
“My boys did this,” she exclaims happily. “Look, there’s a squashed mind flayer, and a couple of pack lizards, and three duergar, and two sentries.” Skipping further into the room, she spies additional bodies. “Hey, and over here there are two of those ice storm dropping drow, and a couple more sentries. All beaten into chunky salsa.”
Quid and Calla are amused by her enthusiasm, but are already gathering goods from the mushy pile. The former comments, “Not only that, but no one came to collect anyone’s stuff. That means we’ve made a dent in their defenses. They’re waiting for us to come to them, which gives us a tactical advantage.”
Trella looks sourly at her. “Tactical, smactical. Hurry up and gather the rest of the stuff; I want to see what else my boys did.”
Judging by the flattened bodies of arachnids littering the interiors of the nearby warehouses, their next task was to kill spiders. Only a trio of black oozes survived the elementals’ passing, and these are easily dispatched by Kai and Lenara or, more precisely, their wands of lightning.
The amorphous beings guarded a pair of doors, apparently untouched by Trella’s boys. This earns caution in their examination, which immediately pays dividends as Calla discovers a magical trap on the rightmost one. After disarming this—and taking a half-bow, half-curtsey to celebrate her handiwork—she backs away to allow the party to see what’s beyond the portal.
Khail pulls the door open, releasing an unspeakably vile stench into the warehouse. Combining the worst elements of decaying flesh, refuse, and waste, the odor is sufficient to send Buttercup running back to the outer room. Apparently, the big guy doesn’t like bad smells, surprising behavior from a half-orc indeed.
Peeking in, Kyree sees a fetid pool of slime glistening in the center of the small chamber that is revealed. Around it, a number of amorphous shapes can be seen twitching, and within it, something glows with a sickly violet light.
Cerridwin shouts, “Wait! One of those tentacled things from before is in there too!”
Lenara fires off a lightning bolt into the room before Trella can stop her. Not only does the electricity leave the presumed roper unharmed, but the only effect it has on the amorphous shapes is to double their number. Trella explains, “Those are ochre jellies; they’re immune to weapons AND electricity. The roper’s immune too.” Lenara moves sheepishly away. Khail slams the door shut.
Kai smiles and motions at the portal. “Anyone thinking what I’m thinking?” On the same wavelength thanks to long association, Khail waits for Kai’s signal and then pulls the door open as the sorceress releases a fireball into the enclosed space. The paladin slams the door shut immediately afterward, but Kyree’s elven eyes pick out the death of two-thirds of the jellies before his view is blocked.
After Kyree conveys this information, Kai shrugs. “Again?”
The paladin grins—still an odd sight for those who have known him long—and opens the door once again. Though the roper is ready, Kai beats it to the punch, and her blue-green force missiles eliminate the last of the jellies. Eager to get in on the act, Lenara mimics the sorceress’ actions, sending off two projectiles of her own.
Injured but not dead, the roper manages to ensnare Kai with two tentacles, but cannot make her succumb to weakness. Khail easily severs both with the blade now in his hand, and Lenara earns the kill with another volley.
Calla cautiously enters the room once she is sure the monster is dead, examining the pool through narrowed eyes. “This must be some dirty drow trick,” she half-whispers, half-snarls, and no one sees fit to disagree.
“It’s a symbol of some sort,” she mutters, backing away when nothing overt happens.
Khail moves forward excitedly. “Let me see; I like symbols in stone.” Kai and Trella share a look.
“Oh, it’s just Ghaunadar.” Khail seems disappointed. Perhaps to cheer him up, Lenara offers the explanation that this must be a secret shrine, hidden to prevent persecution by the locals. The paladin perks up a bit.
Calla mutters, “Whatever…stupid drow,” and unearths a small bit of monetary treasure hidden in a pair of clay urns. With the room clearly devoid of other interesting details, the party moves on.
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“Do you see this?” Trella points at the smashed watch post and beams. “My boys did this.”
“Yes, we figured that,” Quid says distractedly as she picks through the bodies of the dead drow for usable goods.
“They killed all the spiders back there too.” Trella will not be denied.
“Your boys were outstanding,” Kai replies wisely.
“That’s all I’m saying,” Trella finishes.
Kyree cocks his head to one side as he stares at the broken structure. “Has anyone else noticed that almost all the drow guard posts are devoid of chairs and tables? Their devotion is impressive.”
Buttercup looks at him strangely; Calla makes gagging noises.
Trella eagerly urges the party on down the next passageway, her botanist’s eye taking in the green phosphorescence dancing along its walls as it opens into a huge cavern. Stretching for hundreds of feet to the east, the floor of the latter is broken into a myriad of ledges and tilted slabs, many covered with carefully cultivated weird fungal growths. Others sport bulbous houses or cottages seemingly grown from giant toadstools, and these finally give the druid pause as she beholds the destruction wrought upon them and their inhabitants by her summoned elementals. Broken drow bodies spill from shattered windows and lie sprawled among the mushroom fields in equal measures, and the structures themselves exhibit sufficient damage so as to make most if not all unsafe for the return of any survivors of the carnage.
Trudging through the wet fields, the party discovers that not all the drow have been slain; a small number of commoners peek out from the sides of intact houses, watching the large, well-armed group with a mixture of hatred and fear in their dark eyes. Trella ignores them, stopping instead at the body of a well-muscled drow that has been stripped clean of clothes and personal effects. With his head caved in, it doesn’t take an expert to figure out that the elementals took care of this drow as well, and Calla lets out a loud whoop while fingering her dagger and glaring at the onlookers. Trella has to take her by the arm to get the rogue to move on.
Kyree, ranging ahead, points out a manmade ford in a stream that blocks the way ahead. Before crossing, Khail makes a quick trip to the north, where he discovers a heavy, swinging iron grate barring a passage that stretches to the northeast, into the darkness. A huge padlock holds the barrier closed. Khail withdraws an iron key he found earlier, and is not surprised that it fits the lock perfectly. The paladin files away the passage for future use and returns to the group.
The ford is easily crossed, and leads to a region much like that on the other side. More drow bodies lie sprawled in front of an eight-foot-high wall that divides the cavern in two, all stripped of their possessions. A few feet behind them, on the other side of the mortared fieldstone, a large undead spider has been pummeled into a paste. Trella can’t hold back a snicker. Snicker narrows his eyes at her.
The passage loops around to the northeast, eventually opening up into a vast cavern with a ceiling that rises more than a hundred feet from the uneven ground. Stalactites and stalagmites jut from ceiling and floor, occasionally joining to form a solid column. Dense patches of phosphorescent fungus grow in various locations throughout the cavern, illuminating the whole area in a soft purple light. Several beasts resembling small cattle or yaks roam about a stone-walled enclosure beside a large, dark lake.
From this oddly pastoral scene emerge a ragged band of thirty goblins, an equal number of underfed bugbears, two stone giants—one of which looks to be injured—and a burly bugbear clad in leather armor. The last addresses the party in crude Common. “Put down weapons. No need to fight. We work together to take over city? Or we kill you like we kill your two big rocks.” The stone giants visibly bristle at this pronouncement but do not contradict it. Trella glares at the impudent bugbear, anger blooming redly across her tanned face.