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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 1277333" data-attributes="member: 3649">Episode 4: Return to The Undercity -or- Blood and Guts!The party consists of…Vorz, male Litorian Totem Warrior (Wolf)1/Litorian1Sellik, male Verrik Mage Blade2Kyran, female Verrik Iron Witch2Mont Nuyen, male Human Unbound Unfettered2Alayah, female Loresong Faen Greenbond2Na-Vilarus, male Giant Giant1, Champion of Magic1Rizz, male kobold Expert1 Thirdmonth 6 Mont rises early that morning and goes to pay a visit to the Chandler who is Eana’s master. He pays off her apprenticeship bond, then gives her 150 gold as starting money in case something happens to him. Eana, elevated to a free person (effectively), is more than happy to accept even while remaining apprehensive. The rest of the day is spent in happy fun activities for the pair. Vorz commissions a masterwork dire greatsword from Tel-Morn. Everyone else rests and plays for that day, before the next expedition. That night, the group hits one of the larger gambling houses near a better part of the city, in the Silver Quarter. Much money exchanges hands but alas none comes home with the group.  The group also upgrades their living arrangements. Thinking they’ll stay in the city longer than they expected, they take residence in the smaller of the inn’s two lofts; it has one exit and one small window overlooking the alley. They subdivide the space with cloth sections to provide a small amount of privacy.  Thirdmonth 7 The next day sees the party up early at sunrise, the first stop of the day being to make buckets full of ripe, stinking fish and bad rations; fishhooks are mixed up with the terrible-smelling guts to make bait for the tentacled thing in the pit. They go talk to Ia-Ka about the pit-thing, and she consults with the Steward and the quartermaster; she procures four Giant dire longspears, tipped with harpoon heads, and gives them to the party. Packing along the terrible weapons as well as fire, acid, and other things they stop by the healer’s abode near the Gate of Swords. Vorz studies Arad’s map. They look in on the woman they rescued from the temple; Iaska tells them she’s managed to abort the terrible pregnancy but the ordeal may have poisoned her; she is terribly weak in any case and may not make it. The greenbond is making more medicines for the woman, and also prepares a Healers’ Bag for Alayah. They ask for and receive some paralysis poison to use on the creature; also a small vial of antidote in case there is an accident with the poison. She figures that the poison may slow a creature of that size, providing it’s not immune to such things. If a human were stuck with it, they’d die ‘as their lungs collapsed’.  They stop off in the Lost Quarter and find their ‘old friend’ Conn; with his aid, they hire 15 men to hold ropes and pitch the giant harpoons, and who are also willing to brave the depths of the undercity. Conn and the henchmen follow the party through Crowsgate, where they then consult with the Akashic Tethya, but she knows nothing of such a creature as they mention. They then go back to the tunnels of the serpent temple and make their way through the now-vacated ruins to the pit. They fill the buckets with bait and lower them down.. the Thing comes out to eat the proffered food and is promptly skewered three times, shot with crossbow bolts and arrows, poisoned and set on fire. Screaming and howling of a sort can be heard as the tentacle thrashes about, trying to retreat down the tunnel. Finally, it rips two of the impaling spears out of it’s form and retreats. There is a sound like a rushing wind or an intaking of breath as all of a sudden air all around them moves down towards the bottom of the well. A couple of men almost pitch in, but they are roped together and stopped. The party decides to pursue and slides down silken ropes to the bottom.  They find a curious thing: the bottom of the well is covered in crushed and powdered bones. Also, from the lowest set of tunnels hang many burnt-black kobold bodies, wrapped in rope and hung over the edge via spikes in the tunnel floor to hold the ropes. Most of the bodies are now smashed into dust by the terrible thrashing of the tentacle. The party pursues the Thing, and sees the still-burning bulk of it far ahead down the tunnel. They follow, and find that the other end has been raggedly torn off, perhaps much as a lizard sheds it’s tail when caught, Up close the monster is if anything even worse. The narrow end of the tentacle actually splays open into several appendages; a thick throat is where they all meet, with rasping ridges to grind prey. The ends of the individual tentacles are tipped with eyes; multiple sucking mouths are situated all along the under ridge of each smaller tentacle. They make sure it burns and toss acid and fire on it, as much as they can pile on. They cut into the beast once they are sure it’s dead, and find little of value there, save some kobold bodies so compressed that they are like sticks of dried wood. Mont takes a couple of these to make novelty walking staves from.  Going back to the workers, they pay each of them 3 silver, while Conn gets 9 silver; three times the daily wages that could be expected. They then go to Ia-Ka to present their tale and collect what monies the Steward will give them for ridding the city of a terrible monster.  Afterwards, they go back to the serpent temple but find scratchy small quasi-kobold tracks coming out of it. Quickly they follow and rescue two small children from a swarm of fire-blackened kobold skeletons. The rest of the squatters have been brutally murdered. Taking the children and leaving them in the care of Iaska, who promises to find a home for them.  The party returns once more to the well entrance, finding that the bodies of the lizard men they’d killed earlier have been savaged by animals over time. Going down on ropes, they stop at the four-way tunnel intersection, the lowest level they know of. They pick a tunnel and follow it to a wider passageway, waiting area and set of doors, all guarded by four ogres who bear clean armor, well-made weapons, and a strange wooden token hung around their necks. The fight is a bloody one, and gets even more bloodier when Rizz manages to put the killing shot on an ogre. They give the ogre to him; he whips out his knives and disappears into the body for several minutes, emerging with a distended full belly, burping from the best meal he’s ever had. They sluice down the small creature and push through into the ogre lair. They find several caches of weapons, armors, and mundane equipment, which they repack and take. They even find a small magical dagger hidden in one of the ancient statues of the room. Pushing on through past a fall of rubble, they are surprised by two more ogres coming from deeper in the complex; they fight, and Vorz is seriously injured in the battle. Taking their loot and retreating, the party leaves without incident, and makes their way back to more civilized quarters.  They sell the weapons, and find that the marks suggest they used to be the gear belonging to a mercenary group that was wiped out a few months ago, while crossing a river ford. Sellik also commissions a masterwork longsword. </blockquote>

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