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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1444439" data-attributes="member: 15470">Issue #13: The Rat Man Warren, Pt I - Episode 4 of 5On the surface, Novalia climbs up on top of the first hut. After struggling and sliding a bit on the sloped roof, she gets up on the top of it, where she can see clearly in all directions. “I’ll keep a lookout from here,” she shouts.Goldpetal gives Swims With Fishes his chunk of the healing bread. The lizard man eats it, and his wounds magically close. Fists of Fury also, despite his injuries, goes down the hole.The room underground contains cloth, twine, and tools. It is littered with reeds, straw, flat rocks, and wooden bowls containing noxious fluids. There is a layer of filth over everything. Chuck and Red Scale guard the entrance to the little chamber, while Paks tends to the two injured. She lays her hands on Telryn and prays for healing from Madriel. She can feel the healing power course through her fingers as her prayer is granted. His flesh knits, and he wakes up. He takes his healing bread out of his pack, and eats it while she repeats her prayer over Hands of Fire. The lizard man also is healed, and he wakes up just as Fists of Fury enters the room.“Where are we?” Telryn asks.Paks gives her healing bread to Hands of Fire, who eats it as Red Scale tells him what has transpired above ground. Paks tells Telryn, “You’re underground, in the ratman warren. We fought them off above ground, but you’d been taken. Hands of Fire tried to rescue you, but he fell by your side, and Chuck saved you both.” Hands of Fire finishes eating the bread, and he looks better, if not exactly healthy. On the surface, Miriel and Goldpetal begin to search the huts. Miriel enters the first one, while Goldpetal goes to the second. In the first hut, Miriel sees dark shapes hanging from the ceiling. Examining them more closely, she gasps in horror when she realizes that they are dried carcasses, human, or maybe elven. Forcing herself to concentrate despite the bile rising in her throat, she continues her examination. The bodies have been drained of blood, which has collected in pots underneath them. Noticing tanning tools, she realizes that she is in a gruesome tannery, and in a cascade of comprehension, she recognizes the pink leather hung on the walls as tanned human skin. In the second hut, Goldpetal finds a much more normal scene. The elf finds racks of tools, scoops, chisels, picks, and hammers. He finds little interesting, and a brief examination of the tools reveals that they are, as expected, made of stone and wood. There are a few carved of bone, as well. The two searchers meet in the third hut, the one which the others have gone down into the warren through. There is brick making equipment - mud, reeds, and rat excrement, and also manacles. The walls of the rooms are covered with layers of dried excrement. It smells terrible, and there are slimes and mushrooms growing on the walls. “This is not healthy,” Miriel says. As soon as Hands of Fire and Telryn feel well enough to walk, they, Fists of Fury, and Paks come up from the underground chamber. Chuck and Red Scale stand watch over the dark opening, each flanking the side of it so that they are out of sight of any archers, and can watch each other’s back if more dead-eaters show up.Upstairs, Paks says, “We don’t have time to debate. We’ll be attacked again if we do. Chuck and I think this is the time to press the advantage. All who are healthy enough, come with me. If you need to rest, stay up here and watch our backs.”The others agree, although we’ve all been wounded, and Miriel and Telryn are exhausted from their furious spellcasting. “I’ll stay up here,” Novalia says, “But let me offer you my healing.” She comes down from her perch on the rooftops, gives Miriel her quarter-loaf of bread, and heals Hands of Fire until she has exhausted her spell-casting ability. “There, that should help,” she says. “I’m almost out of arrows. Can anybody sell me some?” Goldpetal gives her ten arrows, and she gives him two gold pieces. Paks, Telryn, Miriel, and Hands of Fire go back underground to join Chuck and Red Scale, while Swims With Fishes and Fists of Fury collapse the other two huts. Goldpetal and Novalia stand watch with bows drawn from the roof of the third hut, where they can see all of the surrounding area. Underground, the four of us and two lizard men begin walking down the tunnel. It is tall enough for the humans to stand in, but the lizard men are hunched over and uncomfortable, and even Paks occasionally hits her head. Chuck leads the group by the eerie blue light of his magical dagger. Paks follows with a lit torch in her right hand and her shield in her left, her sword sheathed. The two lizard men follow behind. Telryn starts mapping the warren as we walk, and Miriel carries a torch for him. After about ten feet, the tunnel branches in three directions. With nothing but instinct to go on, Chuck chooses the western passage, the leftmost one. As he starts down it, Paks hears voices calling out, with a Veshian accent, “Here, this way – help, help!”“Chuck!” she hisses. When she has his attention, she motions towards the rightmost passage with her head. She starts down it by the light of her torch, and the others follow, with Chuck falling in to cover the rear. Paks quickly comes into another rough-hewn room, irregularly shaped and perhaps a dozen feet wide. There are five human slaves chained to the wall. The chains let them move around, but don’t stretch far enough to let them leave the room. There are scraps of cloth and food on the floor, and the room is stifling. There is a passage leading off to the northeast and two leading off from the southwest corner. Paks steps to the double corridor, keeping her shield before her and sword out. One of the slaves calls, “Thank you for saving us! Please free us! The ratmen have chained us here.” The rest of us begin stepping into the room, and Hands of Fire guards the eastern passage. The slaves recoil in terror from the lizard men.Paks notices this, and gives a wry smile. “You’re going to be okay,” she calls back to them. “These lizard men are our allies. Miriel, see if you can unlock them.”One of the slaves is covering his eyes from the torchlight, and another exclaims, “Light! I haven’t seen light in forever!” Chuck casts about for heavy metal tools and finds a pickaxe. He passes it along to the others to break the chains. Telryn tries first, but the chains resist his blows, and he says, “I’m not strong enough. Don’t be afraid of him, Red Scale here will free you.” Red Scale takes the pickaxe and begins breaking the manacles. The first slave freed says, “Thank you, thank you!” As Red Scale frees the second one, he tries to rush out the way we came in. “Chuck!” Paks yells, “Don’t let them out until we warn the people upstairs.” Chuck restrains them as Red Scale frees the not to let them out until we warn the people upstairs. The fourth slave freed is the one which had spoken first. He says, “Thank you, kind sirs... and ladies. You’ve saved us, but we still have to get out of this swamp!”“We have friends,” Paks tells him. “We’ll help you get out after we’re done here.” “There are many slaves here,” he tells her. “We’ll save them,” Paks assures him.Chuck asks, “What can you tell us of the layout of the warren?”The slave tells us that there are two factions in the ratman hierarchy, the priests and the military. He says that the military quarters are on the eastern side, the direction we’re going, while the priests live on the western side. The area we are in is a common area between them. He points out which corridors lead to the military, priest, and common areas. He finishes with an ominous warning. “Be very wary of the priests’ area; slaves go in and they don’t come out.”All five of the slaves are freed by the time he finishes. One is having trouble walking, but the others can support her. Chuck leads the slaves out to the hut, yelling out “I’m coming up!” before he exits the last tunnel. Red Scale goes up with him to take over protecting the slaves above ground, and he sends Fists of Fury down to help us explore the warren. Goldpetal asks the slaves to help demolish the huts, a task which they are gleefully happy to contribute to. Those of us underground head down the northeastern passage, towards the military areas, by the light of Paks’ torch. It curves to the north, but only ten feet down the passage Paks steps into another room. This one is roughly twenty feet by ten, and kidney-shaped. There are reed mats hanging from the ceiling which conceal the far side of the room. There is another passage to the left. The hanging reed mats move slightly, as though there is something behind them. Paks and Hands of Fire step in. Paks keeps her torch at the ready and motions Hands of Fire towards the reed mats. The lizard man pushes the reeds aside. Behind them, he sees a bunch of female ratmen with babies, cringing and terrified of us. There are two blindfolded slaves in there. Paks gets a grim look on her face and shakes her head. She steps away to guard the exit corridor, but Hands of Fire has no such squeamishness. He lays about with his club. Neither the mothers or the children protect themselves, and he kills them all quickly. Miriel arrives as he’s finishing the gruesome chore, and she goes over to the slaves. They are clearly terrified. She removes their blindfolds, but they cover their eyes, and one cries, “No! It’s against the rules to look at the hairless children of the ratmen!” Miriel leads them back out to the surface.Telryn shakes his head at the sorry sight, and utters a prayer to Madriel.</blockquote>

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