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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nebulous" data-source="post: 4728115" data-attributes="member: 31465">Adventure #1: Merple's MishapPART THREEDouvan slowly grinds out his torch and retreats a short ways, watching torchlight approach from a tunnel across the watery channel. “I’m hungry,” a voice rasps.  “Where’d that sludge bat go?”“I dunno,” says another. “Shut up.”Douvan also hears rats squeaking, and a few moments later several unsavory characters enter his sight.  They’re ratmen, almost surely the lycanthrope kind, with elongated noses and twitching whiskers.  They’re armed with shortswords, and the foremost wererat carries a torch. A few filthy rats scurry around their feet. <img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/keep/sew5.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Douvan presses his back against the wall, cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.  They’re heading his way, and their vision is much, much keener than his own.  This is also their element, and he’s not sure if he can take on two of them at once.  Separately perhaps, yes, but both?  They’re filthy, cruel little monsters, and he is sorry that he encountered them.  Worse, as lycanthropes, he lacks a silver weapon to make the wererats truly howl in pain.  This won’t be easy.The wererats push open a moldy door and root around inside, then exit again and stand at the lip of the channel.  “We’ll jump,” one of them says.  “Stand back, need room.”Douvan sees his chance.  He unslings his bow, peeking around the corner from cover. The ratman has backed up, testing his footing, and then sprints forward, gaining momentum to leap over the gap.  Douvan readies to fire just as the wererat is about to leave his platform.  The arrow catches him square in the chest.  It shrieks in midair, floundering, hits the corner of the far walkway and flops into the water.  It rises, sputtering and choking and squealing as the current carries it down the tunnel.“Meazel!  HELP!”<img src="http://www.med.unc.edu/~saasha/keep/sew6.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The other wererat follows, extending a hand to pull him out.  Smiling, Douvan shoulders his bow and backtracks until he finds a hidden storage room.  Inside he finds some old mops, one of which is sturdy enough to use as a pole.  Praying for the luck of Tymora, he prods the bottom of the stinking channel, and then hurls himself across.  He thuds to the other side, safe and sound, and keeps walking.  He soon finds a new door, but it is swollen in the frame.  He rams a shoulder into it, bounces off, and then tries a better plan.Skullthumper.He takes the maul out and starts hitting the door.  Cracks appear, spreading wider and wider, and soon he has battered the door down. He steps inside a disgusting room filled with rotting bags of grain covered with tiny black insects. There is a cracked barrel that he rolls in front of the door, and then he takes some time to reapply the pitch to his torch.  There is only enough fuel left for a few minutes, but he still has the sunrods. Unfortunately, the sunrods will draw the attention of anything nearby long before Douvan sees it approaching. He finds a second door, but there is only wrecked equipment beyond it. Then he sees the ladder.The same sort of ladder that led him down here to begin with. He has just started climbing up rungs when he hears footsteps approaching!  Outside the ravaged door he sees the wobble of torchlight. Fearing that is the wererats again, he climbs the ladder double haste, pushes through a lid at the top and finds himself in a narrow drainage tunnel flooded by a beautiful thing—SUNLIGHT!There is an iron grill above his head, but once he laces his fingers through it Douvan finds that the grill is firmly secured.  He hears wagons outside rolling across flagstone streets and the neigh of horses.  He sees legs walking by, so he’s probably standing in a drainage tunnel on a main thoroughfare. “Hey!  Someone help me!” he calls out. He’s ignored for the most part, and then he hears sounds from below.  At least one person has entered the room beneath him. “Is anybody there?  I need out of here! Help!”Finally, a pair of immaculate shoes stops beside the grate.  The face is unseen because of the dazzling corona of the sun behind the man’s head. “What are you doing in the drain?” asks the man.  Douvan is VERY disappointed to find that the man’s voice is familiar. “Ah…please…ah…please help me out,” he says lamely.The other man is quiet for a moment, and then with an exasperated huff, mutters, “Very well. Stand back.”  He pulls forth a maple wand, taps the iron grid, it shudders violently, and then peels back like the skin of a soft fruit.  Thanking the gods for his fortune (and wondering at the incredible irony of his benefactor being someone he does not want to see again), makes sure his assumption is correct.It is.  His savior is none other than Balthazar of the Potion Emporium, with a rather mean-looking pseudodragon curled about his shoulders like a scaly cat. Up close Douvan sees his bushy black eyebrows, and the glint of intelligent green eyes. <img src="http://www.zikadik.com/silverymoon/balthazar.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />“Can you help me up?” asks Douvan. Rolling his eyes, the mage in the pointed hat starts to oblige, but pulls back.  “By the gods, man, you reek! No! I won’t help.” Douvan pulls himself out and stands up, turns around calmly, and fires an arrow down the shaft. He hears a shriek. “Do…I know you,” asks the wizard slowly.Douvan shakes his head.  “No. No, I don’t believe you do.”The cage with Toady had been very dark, and Douvan scampered from sight before they had a good look.  But the pseudodragon looks suspicious…and so does his master.  Nevertheless, Douvan thanks them again and then jogs into the crowded streets, putting as much distance as he can between them, and tries to remember how to get to the Green Tankard to tell Merric the story. He needs a beer after all of that.And a bath.And there we stopped. That finishes the crossover adventure from KotS, from here on out it is new material.</blockquote>

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