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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ilgatto" data-source="post: 9796672" data-attributes="member: 86051">Duergar & Daemons Part XVIII: The Silk Road – Continued“Do you have a queen?,” the chevalier asks the last duergar to remain standing. “Someone like it?”“Throw down your weapons!,” Sir Eber yells at him after knocking out the duergar whining on the floor. The duergar throws down his weapons and the ranger starts tying him up. All in all, there are now five dead steeders and four dead and two living duergar in the passage and Sir Oengus starts searching them all, relieving them of their weapons but finding nothing else of much value. When he is done, Navarre drags the unconscious duergar out of the secret passage and into the main tunnel, where Sir Suvali still lurks.“Rodlu!,” Navarre calls, looking about and not seeing the plump duergar anywhere.“Is it safe?,” Rodlu’s voice comes from directly behind him.“It is safe,” Sir Suvali says.“Have you ever seen this?,” Navarre asks, turning around and seeing Rodlu appear out of nothing.“What?,” the plump duergar asks. “Knock-out duergar?”Navarre sighs deeply.“A duergar like this,” he says, emphasizing every word.“Is spider man,” Rodlu says.Navarre has a good long look at the plump duergar, mulling over the fact that the creature has, indeed, proven itself to be quite useful, albeit usually after the fact when things really mattered. He has another look at the duergar on the floor, relieved of its weapons and only wearing some patchwork armor.“Anything you like?,” he asks, pointing at the… spider man.“Hey!,” Sir Eber’s voice comes from the secret passage. “We’ve found another door!”Leaving Rodlu to it, Navarre moves back to the secret passage, where the chevalier is just wiping the blood off his sword, frowning at Sir Eber next to him.“Eh, bien,” he says. “Is it going to be hitting people or talking to them?”“Left you two to talk to them, didn’t I?,” Sir Eber returns testily.“I was under the impression that we were to trade with these duergar. Buy some of their silk?”“We are down here to exterminate the evil,” the ranger growls.“Vraiment?,” the chevalier asks frostily. “Has there been some change of plan that I am unaware of? Is it to be total war?”“You talk with these Underlings all you like,” Sir Eber says. “See if I care. But I get angry when they start dousing me in burning oil. I will hurt people when that happens.”Beyond the door in the secret passage is a small room with an opening in the right wall. Beyond it, some steps lead up to a room above the main tunnel, where our noble heroes find some caskets of oil. A shallow depression in the floor runs from left to right, with a series of small holes in it.“Clever,” Sir Eber says. “Let’s go.”He returns to the others and so the company start down the secret passage in their usual formation. The passage is surprisingly clean and well-maintained and it widens after some five minutes. Half an hour later, the company reach a low door in the right wall, which, if anything, rather resembles the door of a vault of some kind. A metal chain dangles from a hole in the wall next to it, ending in a handle shaped like a spider. Several shallow, low niches are in the wall across the passage.“The pub?,” Navarre suggests when neither the chevalier nor Sir Eber take the initiative. Indeed, nobody has spoken much and the chevalier and the ranger have been exchanging uncomfortable glances at each other ever since the episode with the spider men.“Messieurs,” the chevalier starts. “An idea has come to me. I…”“And to me,” Sir Eber interrupts him, starting for the door. “We’ll slaughter the lot and then drink their beer.”“Wait!,” the chevalier cries.“Bull!,” Sir Eber says. “I know what you’re going to say. You are going to knock on the door, we go in, you deliver one of your snooty speeches and then we have a beer and leave.”“And what is wrong with that, monsieur?,” the chevalier says frostily. “That door does not look like it is unlocked.”“It won’t be the first time that I’ve opened a door,” the ranger says.After some laughter to release the tension, Navarre walks up to the door and pulls the chain. A bell sounds, followed by some clinking and clanking and then the door opens just about an inch.“We want to drink beer,” Sir Eber says. It almost sounds like an order.When there is no answer, the chevalier pushes against the door, which opens easily. Beyond is another passage, clean and well-maintained like the one they are in and with flagstones on the floor. A faint red light glows in what appears to be a window in a wall some thirty feet ahead.“Allô?,” the chevalier calls. “Monsieur? Visitors!”A duergar appears behind the window.“Eh… I have come to pick up a roll of silk?,” the chevalier suggests.“You come to right place,” the duergar says.“Aha!,” the chevalier exclaims, advancing to the window. “Monsieur, allow me to introduce…!”“This is trading post,” the duergar cuts him off. “Silk City.”“Silk City!,” the chevalier exclaims, clapping his hands in excitement. “Amice! Scaralat de Sarazin! Enchantée! Très heureux! Aha!”It has to be said that, perhaps in an attempt to gloss over recent events, the gallant chevalier surpasses even himself in the exchange that follows – so much so, in fact, that the chronicler had no choice but to listen in awe. What has been recorded is that he expresses his great concern regarding an “incident” back in the secret passage involving “some duergar falling off their steeders” and some instances of “the hurling of fire” before he changes the subject abruptly: “Therefore, mon ami, some silks of your most desirable quality, s’il vous plaît!”The duergar behind the counter shows him some samples of the spidersilk on offer, informing him that it will be fifty gold for a roll of the best quality, forty for one of the next best quality, and thirty for a roll of standard quality. All but glowing with excitement, the chevalier inspects the rolls with much tutting, hmm-ing, guffawing, and the curling of mustaches. He soon finds that the ‛standard-quality’ silk still far exceeds that of any silk he has ever seen.“One hundred gold for three rolls of the first quality,” Navarre says, who has been inspecting the silk with the chevalier.“Four hundred for ten rolls,” comes the counter-offer.“A hundred and ten and this fire beetle ball,” Navarre says, procuring said item.“Deal,” the duergar says.“A-ha-ha-ha!,” comes the chevalier’s falsetto laugh as he turns to Navarre, the swift deal having taken him quite by surprise. “Well played! Well played!”“Mon cher,” he continues, in a hushed voice. “What say you we send these silks to Sarazin, hmm? Les demoiselles seront ravies!”“Afraid not, old bean,” Navarre says apologetically. “I’ve paid for the lot with the profit we made on the wine and the proceeds will have to go to the war effort.”And so the chevalier turns to the duergar trader again and eventually has to settle for a roll of third-quality silk in exchange for one of his own fire beetle light balls.“Ahoy, lubber!,” Sir Oengus calls, stepping to the fore. “How’s about you sell us a cart?”“No sell carts,” the duergar trader says. “Silks only.”Unfortunately, the conversation between Sir Oengus and the duergar trader has not been recorded. It involved our noble hero discussing carts, wheels, and barges and the duergar trader not knowing anything about them – and it ends with him buying two twenty-yard lengths of silk rope for thirty gold and one of his endless supply of sea charts.“Much obliged, to be sure!,” Sir Oengus ends the exchange. “Now how’s to as ye be tellin’ me as to what lies ahead in the Red Cave?”But the duergar trader cannot provide him with any information on the Red Cave other than it will take him some two days to get there.“Slavers!,” he adds. “Rabble! Riffraff! Very dangerous!”“To be sure,” Sir Oengus says. “Have we sailed past the Broken Lands yet?”“Yes.”“And where does the passage outside lead?”“Silk City. Cavern of spider men.”“Spider men, you say? How many?”“Two dozen trading houses.”“And beyond that?”“More caves. Heart of Broken Lands.”“And what’s with the doors and the oil and fire back there?,” Sir Oengus says, gesturing to his left.“Is protection,” the duergar trader says. “Defend against insane priest in temple.”Eventually, the company take their leave of the duergar trader and return to the main tunnel. They make camp some eight hours later and spend an uneventful night.Night 158: Early that day, the chevalier and Rodlu notice that a section of the wall to their left differs in color from the rest of the wall.“What do you think, mon ami?,” the chevalier asks.“Is maybe secret door.”“Messieurs!,” the chevalier calls. “We have found an irregularity! It may be an entrance to pastures unknown!”He starts moving his fingers along the wall, locates a small lever, and pulls it. The discolored section starts moving and shifting and a low and narrow staircase leading down into the bedrock is revealed.The company have to crouch down and start down the meandering steps, ever deeper until they reach a small natural cavern about half an hour later. It measures about thirty feet in diameter and contains a pool that leaves a three-foot-wide ledge along the walls. The walls taper sharply to a ceiling thirty feet overhead. Nothing stirs in the water.“Attention!,” the chevalier calls, picking up a small pebble as Sir Oengus behind him starts tying a harpoon to one of his silk ropes. He tosses the pebble into the pool, creating ripples in the water. When nothing else happens for some minutes, he suggests someone tie a rock to some rope so he can use it to find out how deep the pool is.“And now?,” Sir Eber says behind him. “Walk the ledge? I’m not going to swim in it.”“Maybe this is something for the navy,” the chevalier agrees, turning to Sir Oengus at the back. “Mon capitaine?”“Huh?,” Sir Oengus replies, obviously quite reluctant to enter the pool.“Mon ami!,” the chevalier says plaintively. “I am in armor!”“Yeah,” comes the answer, “And I’m not?”“I’ll do the walking, then?” Sir Eber says.When he steps onto the ledge, Navarre moves past the chevalier and kneels at the pool’s edge. He brings some of the water to his lips and is informed that it has a mineral taste to it, quite delicious in fact, and so he starts filling up his water skin. When he is finished he steps onto the ledge and now more of the company enter the cavern.“Where does it come from?,” Navarre wonders, detecting no signs of moisture on the walls.“Is maybe connected to other water,” Rodlu ventures.Our noble hero sticks his head into the water but he doesn’t see much, the light of the company’s lanterns and torches barely breaking the surface. He finds the water to be exceedingly cold, perhaps only a few degrees above freezing, and he pulls his head back out again. He suggests using a fire beetle light ball and diving into the water to see what’s what and some rule books are consulted. Being an excellent swimmer, it is decided that he can hold his breath for a maximum of five rounds, that he can cover a distance of twenty feet per round, and that this means that he can get to a depth of fifty feet before he has to return to the surface.“Let’s put the pinnace into the water,” Sir Oengus suggests. “You can dive in from there.”“Tie the fire beetle ball to a rope,” Sir Eber suggests. “Oengus can handle it so you’ll have your hands free. I’ll hammer a rock out of the wall here so you can use it as ballast – cover more distance. I’ll lower you into the water on a rope. Pull you up if something goes wrong.”A sound plan and so Sir Oengus calls forth the pinnace and rows himself, the ranger, and Navarre to the middle of the pool.“Take this,” Sir Eber says, handing Navarre a hunting knife after his noble companion has taken off his armor.Sir Oengus activates the fire beetle light ball and lowers it into the water on a rope. On the ledge, the rest of the company have taken up positions at about the same distance from each other, missile weapons at the ready.“Et voilà!,” the chevalier declares. “Now that is what I would call teamwork!”Navarre sticks his head into the water and sees that it is crystal clear, exceptionally so in fact – there is no debris or muck in it at all and even the walls are free of algae and similar growths. In the light of the slow-moving fire beetle light ball, he can see that the pool is some forty, fifty feet deep before the walls start tapering sharply. He pulls his head out of the water and reports his findings.“Air bladder?,” Sir Eber suggests.“Takes too long,” Navarre says, now eager to go. He dives overboard and lets the rock take him as far as he can get, counting the seconds as he sinks deeper and deeper into the pool, the walls closing in on him until he can see the bottom only yards away. He has a good look around and, to his great astonishment, notices an archway carved into what would be the far wall of the cavern. It is an intricate and sober affair at the same time, featuring many strange symbols and surrounding an exceedingly smooth section of the wall.But he is running out of air. He lets go of the rock and works his way up to surface, aided by Sir Eber pulling him up. He breaks the surface gasping for air and Sir Eber and Sir Oengus pull him aboard. Shivering to the core, he wraps himself in a blanket offered by Sir Oengus, takes a swig of gnome blood and excitedly reports his findings while Sir Eber is rowing the pinnace back to the ledge.“Rodlu?,” the chevalier calls, at least as excited.“Is not of duergar,” Rodlu says.“Is it sorcery?,” Navarre asks, looking for Sir Suvali as he steps onto the ledge.But the sorcerer has already stripped down to his underwear and presently jumps into the water himself, a casting of Detect Magic in full swing. When he gets back to the surface, he reports that he failed to ‛open the door’ and that he cannot identify the nature of the runes and symbols.“They look like some of the symbols I saw in the egg,” he says. “Priest magic.”“Is maybe dragon magic,” Rodlu suggests. “Sometimes duergar find things from time when duergar built things with dragons.”“The savants can open doors!” the chevalier exclaims.“Many doors,” Rodlu says. “Is special times for opening, special keys, special creatures, gods, daemons.”“Let’s get the mad priest down here,” Sir Eber says.“One of two ways forward,” Navarre agrees. “The other would be to drain the pool somehow so that we can inspect the doors ourselves.”“Emptying the pool with the means at our disposal will take a monumental amount of time,” Sir Suvali says. “Even if we could get enough buckets from the savants.”“What about secret doors?,” the chevalier asks.“Don’t you have some spell you can cast?,” Sir Eber asks the sorcerer, ignoring the suggestion for practical reasons.“Knock,” the sorcerer says. “But I cannot cast spells underwater.”“We could also look for secret doors,” the chevalier comes again.“Unless…,” the sorcerer continues, also ignoring the suggestion for practical reasons. “I would reduce myself… get into a sealed bottle of some kind… and someone would take me down there… so I can cast Knock on the door…?”“I say we look for secret doors first,” the chevalier persists.“Brilliant,” Navarre says to the sorcerer, ignoring his noble friend’s suggestion for practical reasons. “Let’s do it.”“Why not look for secret doors?,” the chevalier – he just won’t give up, will he?“Let’s do it,” Navarre says again, extremely curious as to what might lie beyond the mysterious ‛door’ and ignoring the chevalier for practical reasons.And so the sorcerer starts making the most of the fact that he is the center of attention, spending hours and hours and hours ‛testing’ things, ignoring his noble companions, postponing decisions, and otherwise coming up with all manner of excuses why he shouldn’t just get on with it.“By Olm!,” Navarre growls to the chevalier at some point. “What is wrong with the fellow? Why the incessant need to assert himself whenever he has to do something? Are all sorcerers like that?”But the chevalier ignores him for practical reasons.Four hours later, Navarre is on his way down to the bottom of the pool again, tied to a rope and with the bottle with the miniature sorcerer in his hand. The operation goes as planned, except for the fact that the sorcerer’s Knock doesn’t generate any effect whatsoever, although this does seem to mean that the archway does not contain a secret door of some kind.When the sorcerer signals that he is going to make a drawing of the phenomenon, Navarre starts back to the surface. On his way up, he realizes that the ‛door’ in the archway is actually only large enough for a duergar, perhaps ruling out that it was made by a dragon.When Sir Suvali is also back to his usual size, our noble heroes discuss the mysterious archway some more until it becomes too late to continue their journey and the night is spent on the ledge in the strange cavern.Night 159: “Gentlemen,” Sir Suvali says after breakfast. “We still have forty days until the assault on Apple Island. Tomorrow will be the night of the full moon, when I can speak to Augustus Magister Rex again. I will ask him about the archway and the portal.”“To what avail?,” Navarre asks. “The man hasn’t exactly proven himself to be a trove of information. In fact, I do not believe he has been of any use whatsoever as far as getting information on anything is concerned.”“I will speak with him anyway,” the sorcerer says.“Can’t hurt,” Sir Eber agrees.“I say!,” Navarre suddenly exclaims. “A full moon! Maybe that will open the door!”And so the DM calls for an end to the session and starts awarding xp.</blockquote>

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