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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lwaxy" data-source="post: 6005339" data-attributes="member: 53286">My name is Shala, Shala Earthdream. I'm the owner of the Saucy Mermaid down at the Freeport docks. Maybe you've heard of it- nah, on second thought,I'm sure you haven't. We ain't in the best part of town,ya see. But we got a reputation for fair prices, good food and drink, and a generally calm atmosphere with few fights. In part, that's because some of the orclings and dwarflings of the city made friends here, and everyone knows if those two races join up, then beware the force standing between them and their wishes. The other part is that the captain of the Blue Skies, a no-nonsense elf merchant with, so some say, a pirate background, has declared that we are his favorite hangout. So, there you go, now you know the Saucy Mermaid. At least, in theory. So,as I said, I'm the owner. I'm also a bounty hunter on the side. Or maybe I'm a bounty hunter and an innkeeper on the side. I'll leave this for you to decide. And if you haven't figured it out yet – hard to do with my build, no? – I'm a dwarf. A hill dwarf, to be correct. Yes, there's a difference. For one, we don't talk in a funny dialect. But that's all not important to the story you want to hear, so just let me continue. It was last year, just after the storm season. Me and some dwarf friends were sharing some drinks just after we closed. That's the best time – and often the only time –for me to sit down with friends. Dorha, my half-orc serving maid, was cleaning up, entertaining us with her surprisingly clear singing voice. But our mood was a bit sour. There had been stories about people going missing without a trace for some weeks now, but it was hardly ever clear who supposedly vanished. But the night before, a good customer and friend of many, Krag Blackhand, son of a local smith, had vanished. Just like that, on his way home from my inn. I know what you are thinking. Did we check the brothels, streets and so on. Well, for one, the young man was not known to frequent those places but yes, I'm sure his father checked, and some of us had gone through all the streets earlier that day. No one had found anything. So there we were, discussing the possibilities. Dorha heard us as she passed by the table and expressed her sorrow that she had not taken him home as she sometimes had done. But she said he had turned her down and left with a stranger. “Not one I recognized," she said,"but no chance missing him. Had tattoos all over his face like one of them wild men.”As she said that, I remembered the guy. He had been asking all kinds of weird questions about Freeport. Who the current ruler was –what a weird question, I'd say everyone would know that even on the mainlands – and if we had any good defenses. I had dodged most of the questions, as the man seemed fishy to me. Randa Longlegs, a former soldier with a bit of a limp but a good heart, was who suggested we should go after the tattooed guy to see what he knew,or if he even was responsible. Cusbath Thunderfeet, my long time mentor and friend – not to mention cleric of the God of Knowledge – heartily agreed. "If there's something amiss,we ought to find out what, not like anyone else seemed to be caring."Only Thorian Warfart – yes, he has this name for a reason, but I'm not going to tell you – our weird yet trustworthy warlock, was unsure. "We have no idea who and where the tattooed man is. And then again, nothing says the tattooed man will lead us anywhere. We could poke around in the dark forever." He's a pessimist, did I already mention that?  But being a good friend and all, he agreed to come with us. Thus, we decided to retire early so we'd have the early – relatively early – morning to investigate. After all, the inn needed tending to at midday again. Our hopes were that someone had seen the tattoo man. Curiously enough, the next morning, we heard of several tattooed people in the city. It was said they'd camp inland, just outside the city. Of course, it just had to be furthest from the Saucy Mermaid. Let me tell you, short dwarven feet used to the city aren't made for walking. "Are we there yet?" was what we constantly heard from our warlock, in a whiny tone at that. Randa got a bit annoyed with our low speed, she was, of course, used to marching. When we finally found the camp of those tattoo freaks, we weretired and had to have a drink first. From a well, too, because none of the fine inns around looked they were open already,not even to talk of their likely prices. We found the camp, alright. And Cusbath – famous scholar that he is – immediately cautioned us. He said the tattoos on those people marked them as scouts of their tribe – the so-called Moonless Tribe. Scouts who, according to him, had killed before,to top it off. But, there were only 2 of them, a man and a woman, so we were confident enough we could deal with them if needed. They were cautious when we arrived, but not hostile, thank the gods. The man who had gone with our missing customer wasn't present, I saw that at once. The other tattoos were similar, but not the same. "We'd like to ask you a few questions about a friend of ours who went missing," our priest began with one of his winning smiles. "We believe one of your friends tried to help him back home last night but he never made it there."They both nodded. The woman said her name was Slow Tongue, and that a man they called Sharp Tooth had come to get them the night before to help with a city dweller who got,as she put it "wasps in his head from fire water." She had a weird accent, too, that one. "Sharp Tooth said he passed out and was too heavy to carry. We got there, no one there. We thought maybe he woke up and went alone, or someone else helped him. We wanted to make sure but a group of other wasp headed men and women came our way and they were not friendly, so we left."We had no reason not to believe them. Yet, they could be a thread to the city. In our own language, Thorian suggested subduing the two and get them to the authorities. He said they looked like preparing an attack, by scouting Freeport out. Cusbath agreed. But first we needed to know where exactly Krag had been left,so we thanked them and asked them to show us where they had gone to. To our surprise, the man agreed. The woman said she would need to tend their camp. City dwellers, supposedly,were mostly a bunch of thieves. Couldn't very well argue with that. So we went all the way back to our inn. By the time we arrived, I vowed to do some endurance training – I'm a city woman, alright, and an innkeeper doesn't need to be able to walk a lot. Carrying barrels is more important. But I have a feeling I'll need a bit more flexibility when it comes to my other profession, and asides, it will do me some good. Krag had been dropped just a few streets behind the Saucy Mermaid. Now that it was light, there were a few details those tattoos had missed at night. The man, named Wild Eye, pointed at the ground and commented on the signs of lots of blood and a torn piece of clothing. It looked like there had been an attack after all. Wild Eye seemed truly sorry about not being able to help us further. All the other trails, it seemed, were washed away by the rain in the early morning and the constant stream of people walking through. Randa invited the tattoo barbarian back to the inn to "thank him with some food and drink." I didn't get what she was planning, until she put sleeproot in his soup. "We need to talk to the authorities," she insisted, "and hand this guy over. They are planning something, and whatever it is is not good for the city." That was the soldier talking, and of course, she was right. This was the best way to subdue one of them without hurting anyone. So, Randa went along to get someone to take care of it, and I made us all a decent meal. The cook was not there yet, but would arrive soon as the Saucy Mermaid was to open in an hour. It turned out the authorities already suspected something was up. They asked about where the camp was, and Randa led them there before joining us again. By then, Cusbath had to head back to the temple for some duty or the other, and Thorian had to attend to a customer who needed something only a warlock could provide. Or so he said. We all knew, of course, that he was fancying Larla the merchant from the upper city, and that that woman's husband usually was not around in the afternoons. But we pretended not to know about it. So when Randa came back, it was up to her to ask around about who else disappeared and where. I had to stay at the inn, as my barkeep was home sick with the southern flu. Which was as well, because I heard all sorts of rumors about the disappearances now. One thing became clear quickly. People vanished when they were alone. Not one of the rumors said they had ever been in company. Which meant, had the tattoo man stayed with Krag he might very well still be alive. That he was dead, I was sure about. One does not leave blood and part of his clothing behind unless something hungry has taken him. Or some other sort of crazy killer. Personally, I was thinking vampire, or were-something. We have wererats around, and even the goblins or the lizardmen under the city don't want to talk about those creatures. Randa came back with much the same hints. Except that she had found a woman living on the streets who insisted she had seen a bunch of small demon like figures taking an old man she was familiar with. She could do nothing but watch from her hiding place in horror as they dragged him into a sewer opening. At least, Randa said, that was her story and she sounded believable. Yet she had also smelled of wine and ale, so it might have been just a drunken dream. The sewers... I have my issues with them,and that's not because they smell bad and are dirty. That's one thing, sure. But what's worse is that it partly seems like tunnels at home,except that it is not. It's like badly made tunnels, with water seeping in and roots growing down. To a proper dwarf, it always feels as if it would come crumble down every minute now. I have heard similar thoughts from all of my dwarf friends, so I know I'm not the only one. As a dwarf, you have some disadvantages in a world mainly made for big folks. Like getting to the shelves in a store or library. Seeing what's going on in a crowd. Being overlooked and shoved aside. But in the sewers, being smaller is an important advantage. Without any big people in our group, we got around quite good. But I'm getting ahead of the story. In the late afternoon, just before the inn was in full swing, Thorian came back all upset. The husband of the woman he fancied had come home early and confronted him, and he was steaming angry at the fat old merchant, so he said, who had thrown a bottle of brandy at him. A full one, too, and he said he was lucky to catch it. Imagine that, wasting good brandy over a woman. I was about to slap him for that comment, too, but he had a point. Not that he's ever serious with any woman, mind you. In any case, he needed something to do to take his mind off the trouble. We told him and our dear cleric about the sewers, and Cusbath suggested we investigate right away, maybe have one of us go near a sewer outlet and pretend to be alone. "But we could be doing that for nights on end," he admitted. "The other option is to just go down there and see."So we did that, right through the basement connection the Saucy Mermaid has to the underground canal system. I've been down there before when I had to sneak out, pretending to be in the inn somewhere while going after bounty. I'd never gone far though, just around a bend or two to get out unseen. This time, I had no clue where to go to. Freeport's sewers are immense, and the supposed victims had come from all over the city, though the harbor area seemed to be the preferred hunting ground of whatever it was. Randa said it sounded like kobolds or goblins to her,from the one witness' description. Well, my vampire idea was unlikely now, but I pointed out it could still be wererats. There were small wererats after all, as dwarfs and halflings got hit by it, too. We had barely discussed this while trying to head into the direction, at least approximately, where Krag had vanished, when we heard a telltale sound of squeaking and scratching. Freeport has, you see, a great many rats. At times, huge swarms rush over the city and through the sewers, and no one is quite sure why. Sewers got clogged before because there are so many they get stuck and kill each other. That's what the sound clearly was, and we seemed to be right in their path. Randa, knowing as well as the rest of us that we couldn'tmake it back to the inn or even around the next bend, pointed to one of the many old doors which usually led to abandoned storage rooms or overflow outlets. She broke it open with her shoulder when she found it was stuck. This seemed to be a good idea at first, but once we were all in and the sounds of impending ratvalanche grew louder, we realized that with no way to close the room off, rats would spill into the room, which wasn't exactly big. So we took up battle stance and waited for the rats to come. And come they did. In the 10 or so minutes it took for the ratvalanche to pass, were were busy killing rats, fending them off with axe and hammer. It's not the preferred activity of any dwarf. Even being lower to the ground, we still have to bow low to catch those pests, and it's harder to hit something that small anyway. But with so many of them spilling in, it wasn't too hard at least. They usually noticed us too late. Randa had some moves to fight them off all of us, and I'm pretty decent fighting in groups,too. We didn't really have problems with the rats as such, it was the mass of them that posed a threat.I was getting worried we'd drown in rats, as they were, dead or alive, filling up the room around us. I was up to my hips in rats, no kidding. And rat blood stinks, worse than any other blood save that of some monsters,let me tell you that. Probably because of what they eat. As the ratvalanche was over,we waded out of the room. We all had some scratches, but none had been bitten. Still, rat scratches, especially from sewer rats, are bad. So we spent some time cleaning and disinfecting the scratches – we had healer kits, of course. When we were ready to move on, past some drowned rats in the drainage, we heard the sound of small feet and whispering voices in a language we knew well, although we only knew a few words in it. Goblins! We went right after them, or so we thought, but the sewers are tricky. Even for a dwarf, it's hard to guess the directions and distances of sounds. Yes, we got lost. And by the time we didn't hear them anymore, I wasn't even able to tell which way was back to the Saucy Mermaid. We could have taken the next exit, but we weren't to admit defeat just yet. So we took the second tunnel to the right where we thought we had heard them last, and checked carefully for signs that someone had come through. Someone had come through, alright, but probably not the goblins. 2 giant centipedes were eating something off the walls and hadn't noticed us yet. We could have backed away quietly, maybe, but Thorian, who is a bit squeamish at times, shrieked loudly. And it seemed centipedes do have ears. There is something to be said about fighting in a sewer environment. If you don't want to fall into the filth, you need a good balance, and in a group, teamwork is essential. We had less issues with balance but with the teamwork. Randa and me had fought together before – long boring story you don't need to hear – and Cusbath was taking his cues from our movements. But the warlock...I was just dodging out under one of those things, trying to avoid the bite. While the poison those things tend to have may not be of danger to a dwarf, it still hurts. Thorian saw me duck and thought it the right moment to let lose one of those magic blasts. It was pure luck that he didn't hit Randa with it, as she used my ducking as a chance to cut off one of those poisoned fangs. Randa can curse something awful, and she doesn't care if a cleric is there or not. But, the magic attack made the centipedes flee, at least. Those beasts may be dumb, but they aren't dumb enough to risk their lives if their prey suddenly does dangerous things. Before we could berate our warlock, Cusbath made a movement with his head back the way we had come. "Someone is following us," he whispered in dwarven. "I think it's a goblin."I decided to deal with this directly. Maybe it would help us, and if not, we might get rid of a potential thread. "Hey, you there," I called out in my bad accent goblin. "We are no threat." In common, I added "And we don't speak much goblin, so we hope you understand us." We didn't move. I hoped whoever it was would come out on their own, so we stowed our weapons away and waited. We were lucky. A large male yellow goblin with a big chunk of his left ear missing and an array of weird clothes and adornments poked his head around the bend and blinked. "No harm Gozzy?" he asked. "Gozzy want make sure no thread to our Kingdom.""Kingdom?" I wasn't sure he knew what the word meant, but he nodded wildly. "You humans  all not know about kingdoms down here. We best Kingdom, Kingdom of Slergrad!" He sounded very proud of it, too. Now we didn't know what a slergrad was, but when he came closer and described it, with waving arms and wide open eyes, we gathered that it was the goblin expression for a gelatinous cube. "It big, eats lots of things. Still can see things when done eating." It was, as it seemed, their totem, as the little fella carried an amulet in roughly the shape of a cube. He explained that there were 2 more – in his eyes less great – kingdoms down her. The names of the others were Centipede Kingdom and Rat Kingdom. All named after the most common threads down here – which told us that, while we hadn't heard of them being an issue, gelatinous cubes weren't a rare sight down here. That was a good piece of information. "Do you happen to know of folks disappearing from above?" Cusbath asked. "We're missing a friend." He tried to describe him, but Gozzy insisted that humans – his term for all people above ground, as insulting as that was – looked almost all alike to him. But then he took on a thoughtful expression. “You talk to Korth Fat Rat. He take lots of human bodies. He in Rat Kingdom.”"Takes bodies? What exactly does that mean?" As usual, when our warlock frowned, it looked very frightening, but luckily, Gozzy was looking at me. "See them sometime, dragging humans. Dead ones. From dead people place. From streets. No know what he wants with them." "Can you show us where this Kort is?" Cusbath asked, much friendlier than Thorian. "Me no like go there. Korth bad. Can take you to Big Flurx, yes? Big Flurx not so bad. Not..." he exaggerated the word "...eeeeviiil."It sounded good enough to us. So we took him up on his offer. On the way, Gozzy explained that Big Flurx was a powerful goblin, with a huge warren under his control. "Most stone, too," he said. But we make bigger with some wood we find."The area he led us to was darker than the part of the sewers we had been to. I was afraid if it would get much darker, even a dwarf would not be able to see. But that was when we arrived at an entrance to our left where two large goblins were standing guard. Their eyes went wide when they saw us, but Gozzy spoke to them in a fast onslaught of goblin I could not make out a word in. Then Gozzy was allowed to bring us in, through a large room full of goblins, whole families, who all pointed and stared and started whispering about us. No surprise, I guess. We'd do the same about goblins in one of our residences. The room after that was but a sinkhole with a narrow ledge to run around it. But the hole was occupied. By a large gelatinous cube unable to get out. "This Shiny," Gozzy explained. "We feed it good." That much we believed. It seemed they fed it goblins, among other things, as Shiny was just digesting one. Gozzy shrugged when we asked. "Bad thief want steal from Big Flurx," he explained. "Himself a-fault." He had a point there. Then we arrived at the bosses' chamber. At the center of the large room, an unusually tall goblin with a cruel looking sword sat atop a tattered bar stool. “You human come to Big Flurx’s home,” he said. "You better have good reason.”Cusbath, who was still mumbling about Shiny, couldn't help himself. "That's a nice... slergrad you have out there. How long do you have it? Did it grow much? How much food does it need? You must be quite rich to afford to feed it." While our scholar can be annoying in his quest for more knowledge, he sure knows how to flatter. The goblin's eyes lit up while he actually answered the questions. -------------------------At that point, my net connection died. We'll continue asap.</blockquote>

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