[sblock=Palindrome]From your studies, snatches of adventurer's tales in various taverns, and previous memorable experiences, you know that Daunton's sewers are a vast, tangled network of interconnecting pipes, aqueducts, tunnels, and natural caverns. They are home to the usual sorts of underground denizens, though the criminal elements of Daunton find the sewers useful enough that they take pains to prevent the Daunton guards from having any reason to investigate in force.
This particular sewer tunnel goes perhaps five paces west and fifty paces farther east, capped at both ends by sturdy metal grates. There is another passage to the south near the eastern grate, which quickly empties into a larger channel flowing east to west. Without proceeding down that corridor, you can see several side passages in each direction.
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Arnest laughs at your questions, a hollow sound devoid of actual mirth. "You don't know anything, do you? I suppose I must start at the beginning.
"I first heard of the Unseen Lord through the drunken boasts of one of the L'irkash cousins at the Golden Snowflake. Rufus, I think it was. He spouted some rubbish about a ritual for binding a girl's heart and opening her legs. Or perhaps it was her purse strings. He was a drunkard and a fool, but I had always fancied in myself a talent with the arcane, so I collared him later and convinced him to tell me where he learned what he knew. He brought me here. Well, upstairs. They don't let novices down here. Rufus grew bored and left as soon as his wineskin ran dry, but I... I was fascinated by the subject, as well as by the instructor, a woman who always went robed and cowled to hide her face, but with a mesmerising voice. I stayed, and learned.
"I was careful to keep in contact with my family and friends, so as to create no suspicion of my new interests, but I spent as much time as I could here, learning. At length the instructor took me into her confidence and revealed herself to me. It was Tsasha, of course.
"For some six months I was as happy as I have ever been, learning of love and of the mysteries of Unseen Lord. Then, perhaps a week ago, the rumors started. Rumors of a rival cult, who claimed that our knowledge of the Unseen Lord was wrong, was weakened and diluted with lies. They wear a closed eye, where our sign is the open eye. The cult was said to be mostly of bugbears, primitive tribesmen under the sway of some mysterious leader. Primitive, but with power. Though monstrous, they could move undetected through the streets in full daylight. We have rituals of concealment as well, but nothing like that...
"Then came a message. An ultimatum, that before the week was out we must find and join them, or face the consequences along with the rest of the unenlightened. There were hints of a grand ritual, to summon the Unseen Lord himself onto this plane of being, to take his vengeance on those who opposed his return.
"According to what Tsasha teaches, this would be a disaster. The Unseen Lord lives in a place of shadow and corruption. It is by his perfection of the disciplines we study that he can move unseen and unscathed through that awful place. If some madman were to open a portal to that world, the things that came through it would be horrors. Perhaps the Unseen Lord might find his way through as well, but it would be too late for this world.
"Within days, we were dwindled to a handful, our members gone. Disappeared, one by one, until only a few remained; whether to join the Closed Eye, or to flee the coming darkness, or simply murdered in the streets by undetectable thugs, I know not. When you attacked, we thought you were them, come to take the rest of us by force, and began to perform our rituals of concealment, to prevent them -- you -- from finding this holy place. But we were too slow.
"Then, when it was clear that we had no hope of holding this place, we fled, thinking to continue our struggle to find and stop this Closed Eye cult before it was too late. But we could not escape you. Seeing you were not of the Closed Eye, and that you had Tsasha in your power, I... I grew weak. I chose to stay with her, thinking that you were reasonable men, that perhaps my name or my gold could spare her life. But you are madmen and fools, and there is no longer anything I can do for her. I have gambled and lost, and now the Closed Eye will be unopposed."
