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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(contact)" data-source="post: 886148" data-attributes="member: 41">Great Delve 1This heavy, leather-bound journal is thoroughly stained by blood, particularly the last thirty pages.  This stained section, along with half of the back binding, is completely obliterated as the book has been heavily chewed upon by a dog-like mouth.THE GREAT DELVE(Being, in part, the Journal of Fatherless ‘Fernal, late of Zhentil Keep, in his Endeavors to Explore the Great Delve and Catalogue and Describe the Monsters found Therein.)-----Cursed are those who have forgotten the Great Father For they will never find home and hearthCursed are the brothers and sisters of these For they must bear with them the sins of the fallen-----Flamerule the 3rd, Dalelands Reckoning 1372What a wondrous place this is!  A mountain-town of idyllic serenity, the whole of it carved by the hand of a single dwarven craftsman by the name of Winterbeard, if the tales can be believed—wrestled from the living rock over the course of several human lifetimes.  Of course that’s what Enkil believes, and he keeps telling us that there must be a secret exit from this place, as no self-respecting dwarf would build a town with only a single bridge connecting it to the rest of the world.  I suppose that if Moradin truly whispers in his ear, he would know.We’ve had our audience now, and blood on blood!  The Lady of Storm’s Rise is nothing but a child!  Lady Tess keeps an entirely servile elder seneschal, appropriate for her station and all, but it seems quite unnatural to me for the old to serve the young.  A girl that new to her Springtime wouldn’t have lasted two days in command of anything in Zhentil Keep!The child rules the grandparents here.  This town is nearly deserted, its young lost to war and disease.  The elders cling to the mountainside like lichen because they know no other life.  The child-lady commands a town of old dodgers and wrinkled prunes.  Perhaps it is the frigid air that makes them so stubborn.This high up, the air is pleasantly cool, although my companions complain about it incessantly, bundled to their noses in their animal-skin robes.  It must be entirely painful to be cold, judging from their expressions.Selise was the first to join with me, granting her consent as I promised her gold, glamour and glory in an Eveningstar taproom.  If this young noblewoman from the Hullackswood is half as deadly with a bow as she claims to be, she’ll make me rich.  She has a strong tactical mind as well; although I believe her youth restrains her voice.  Selise is shadowed by a sprite that answers to the name Truffle.  Fey sorcery is beyond me, but I suppose faeries are lucky, and I will need plenty of luck if I am to realize my ambition to become the greatest dungeon-explorer of all times!She delights in the drying ink-- I must take care not to shut this book too swiftly, lest I press Truffle between its pages like a flower.There seems to be some mystery regarding a local band of adventurers who went into a nearby dwarven ruin, and were subsequently murdered in their sleep.  Some of the locals seem to wish that we would not disturb those ruins, apparently fearing more skullduggery.  Their concern is quite provincial and charming, but after all, if folks stopped striving every time people were murdered in their sleep, there would be no Zhentil Keep!3 FlameruleThis journal is a gift and favor for the sage Ashnern, a Monstrologist and all around likeable old coot.  His wide-eyed wizardling niece and nephew are both as gullible as the day is long, however, and hungry for fame.  Adventurer material if I’ve ever seen it!  They might be useful as replacements for the rain of fallen companions that is sure to come.4 Flamerule Enkil, the cleric of Moradin, has been on about the dwarven metallurgical hegemony and its value to the bearded folk all morning.  I think I shall strangle myself with my own moustache in order to escape his mono-rhythmic droning.  More later.-----Why, I never!  That Vendovyne continues to belittle our journeys here.  She would have me made responsible for every ill wind that blows across our path, simply because it was my vocal musings on the desirability of the adventurer’s life that convinced her to sign the Cormyrian charter!  It’s not as if I her to accept the year’s service we agreed to . . . and it is not as if I the griffon who made off with the supply mule.  After all, the hardened soldier.  Wouldn’t “stopping the 600 lb. predator” be her job, after all?5 FlameruleThe wonder of it all pounds against my heavy heart, but for now, I am writing with a shaking hand.  I wasn’t expecting the majesty of the halls, and I wasn’t ready to watch my companions die.  I am not prepared for this place.  The traps are completely beyond me, and only luck has kept me alive so far.  I dare not tell the others what I have deduced about this Delve.  Gods of All Things, is this what adventuring really is?Where is the halfling?  In Eveningstar I signed my charter, and convinced the others as best I could.  I regaled them with promises of wealth and danger, and they cast their lots with me.  But my hand won’t stop trembling.(Three pages of drawings and notes on pit-traps and pressure-plate mechanisms follow.)6 Flamerule Fitzbit was the first to go, but no one was particularly stunned.  I hate writing th (passage obscured)7 Flamerule Two days of rest have stilled my trembling hands, and regular draughts of the local’s peculiar grain alcohol and goat’s milk mixture have restored my courage somewhat. I am ready to preserve for posterity a record of our first foray into the Great Delve.We discovered the entrance at the end of an otherwise unremarkable box-canyon.  A quite natural-seeming opening proved to be anything but, and it concealed a pair of grand doors opening on to a massive hallway. Fitzbit fell to a band of dwarves guarding the entrance to the great passage.  The agitated gnome was no surprise casualty, and I think we all imagined he would bleed himself out somewhere soon enough.I do feel sorry for his sister.  Powers that Be have blessed her with boon companionship.  Even now that stunning bard Chance, and the distrustful sword-worshipper Vai console Bitzfit.Perhaps Tickler was wiser than us all, announcing her retirement (to run a bakery in Storm’s Rise of all things!).  Still, she is missing out on a life filled with excitement and wonder.I will attempt to reproduce what we have seen, but as a Monstrologist’s observation-book I fear this journal will fail.Dwarves are not a people for subtlety, judging by the sheer scale of this place.  If Enkil were still alive, I’m sure he’d say, “Would you praise your God softly, fiend?”  And I’d assure him that I would not, as if I had one.  I envy men of faith.  I hope that he is with Moradin now; although I fear there are darker winds about this Delve than just three dead companions.The passage into this place is unimaginable.   A heavily trapped highway underground, that’s what it is!  We walked for hours along a single passage, straight as an arrow, before we made it into the entry hall.When I write ‘entry hall’ my mind still conjures the receiving-room of a nobleman’s estate, or the crowded span of a Zhentarim guild house.  But this entry hall could have kept the rain from the entire Western Way Market in Zhentil Keep!  We approached from the south, and never in all my life have I seen such a place.The Great Highway opened into the chamber, its sides supported by massive statues of dwarves supporting huge pillars on their backs with the whole of their heads radiating an amber glow through their eyes and mouth.  There was not a shadow to be found in the entire room. I measured the place at over one hundred paces in width and twice that away from the entrance.  Along both lengths, a most elaborate mosaic details some sort of history of the place, and the Dwarves that built it.  Enkil examined it at length, and I’d meant to get his thoughts once we were safe.These mosaics are composed of stones so small, and so cleverly fit together as to make the whole indistinguishable from a painting at ten paces.  The forms are quite natural, and so faithfully rendered as to trick the eye; and one finds oneself jumping from time to time as a figure is mistaken for an actual being.  There is none of the flattened perspective and overwrought runic work characteristic of the normal dwarven burrow decoration.  In short, it wouldn’t even be taken for dwarven art, save for its utter dwarvenness.  If you don’t understand this, Ashnern, you will once you have seen the mosaic.In the center of the entry hall a massive compass is set into the stone floor.  A mosaic depicting the element of fire represents the direction North; South is water, East is air, and West is earth.  The meaning of this mandala is lost on all of us.8 FlameruleEnkil said that the whole of this place is a prayer to Moradin.  He called it a Dak’qis—the ancient clan-law that mandates the first and best part of all sacrifices be given to the dwarven Father.  This Delve must have been built to be the first and best part of all dwarven homes.  But if it is so grand, why have all the dwarves here done us violence, with blasphemies against the name of Moradin on their lips?  These dwarves are fearless and remorseless.  Their survivors claim allegiance to a figure they call Hepis the Great.This Hepis is said to be some sort of ancient betrayer of the right-thinking dwarves.  Enkil said Hepis is just a figure from Dwarven apocrypha, and not a historical personage.  I say that dwarven allegory and dwarven history are too readily confused in the minds of the stout little men, and neither is to be taken for fact.We fought a half-score of the blaspheming dwarves at the north end of the entry hall, along with their sorcerer.  Enkil was dead before he hit the ground, but Vendovyne bled out slowly in front of me.  I tried to help her, but our foe prevented it.  Vai we were able to save once we drove the dwarves away.We go back in tomorrow.  I cannot sleep.</blockquote>

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