"We have at least 4 more deurgar to deal with, Juraan's missing jailer, someone or someones strong enough to appropriate our gear, and their guards, I figure at least 2 if not more. The magic of my locator spell is finished but it indicated my headband was to the east through the tunnels."
Kikinnin nods as the priest speaks of numbers. "I say we leave these folk locked up, until we've purged this area of hostiles. No sense in them getting trampled under another beetle, or worse."
"You do not want us to fight, do you?"
The black-beard shakes his head. "No, that wouldn't be proper. Too steep a risk for any of you. Your place is here, behind the iron. We'll come fetch you when we know your exodus will not be plagued by Grey-Faces."
"Even more folk to protect now. Without us I can't help thinking Cauldron's population would be halved by now."
"Don't go herding cats. Leave them, for now, and let's seek out the named Grey, so we can deal with them, while these Cauldronites remain safely out of harm's way."
Kikinnin points to Ryan, to indicate to the priest that he should lead the way. "You got a sense of where the rest of our belongings lie, that might bring us 'round to their leadership. Let's go snick the head off the snake, and scatter the rest."
He agrees with pushing through Area 15, and purging east, until they've taken down Brilmara and most of her underlings.
To those just liberated
"Both Kikinnin and JJ and Juraan are right. You should arm yourselves, but you have not the skill too join in planned combat. In defense of your own selves that is another thing, and the darklands are full of danger, not just the deurgar slavers you've met here.
Arm yourselves and wear the armor if you think it will help and you can move with it on. But stay here where you can see trouble coming and it can't circle in behind you until we return."
In response to Kikinnin
Adjusting the straps on his shield and taking a few experimental rotations of the heavy mace, Ryan nods before saying a short prayer
"Abadar guide our hands as we seek to restore that which was stolen."
with ioun stone circling his head to provide light Ryan moves down the corridor
"I don't want to put too big a fly in your ointment, as it were."
"We do have to be sure there are no duergar left here first."
"Well, none that are still breathing, anyway."
"AND there is the matter of food and water here until we get back."
"Hackbus. Can you set up any sort of magical traps around here to safeguard our friends?"
"Oh yes. Before I forget. The rest of you can also use these …
Juraan then offers the freed prisoners his seven vials of homemade acid flasks.
"These are acid flasks I made and burn duergar nicely if used right."
"But but also anyone else who gets too close to a breaking flask."
"If you have to use them, use them sparingly."
… and will give them more detailed instructions on acid flask use.
Maxim listens to the planning and shoots first a concerned look toward Kikinnin, then Hackbus;
"My bror has the right of it. You're all free but best you stay here - albeit armed and ready for trouble."
The gun-mage taps his pistol, then unholsters the weapon and hands it toward Hackbus;
"Hack. Stay here an' use this if needbe. I've powder and ammo aplenty - reckon it'll be more useful in your hands if necessary. I've my blade an' a few other tricks I can use."
The dwur flashes a hard look at the group;
"Remember folks we're still dog tired, an' low on magicks an' such. Will be a tough scrap with the remaining Grey Faces..."
"R-Right...we c-can't ask anyone to r-risk themselves with us," Marigold nods. "St-Stay here, p-pretend to b-be locked up st-still. We'll c-come back f-for you when we're d-done here. I p-promise," Marigold adds, giving the 'prisoners' a very solemn look.
Securing the promise to remain put from the prisoners, Kikinnin walks back towards the further reaches of the Grey-Face compound. On their walk back, the black-beard inquires with the others. "Bringing the prisoners back to Cauldron, that's gonna take us some time. Even if we only bring them as far as Malachite. We sure we don't want to delve deeper, retrieve Zenith, then bring them all back at the same time?"
Kikinnin walks with a deliberateness, not pressing the advance, for the tired state he continues to wear. The Darklands are quickly becoming synonymous with sleep-comes-hard-in-these-parts...
"Well...m-maybe if we can c-clear all of the d-duergar out and know for a f-fact that there won't b-be m-more to c-come stomping in t-two days after we l-leave," Marigold responds as she plods along after Kikinnin. "If we could m-make sure of that then they could p-probably stay here and w-wait...there's s-surely enough p-proper food here s-somewhere for them to eat..."
"Oh.." says a crestfallen JJ.
"I was kind of thinking that Zenith maybe was here. I think we have to offer them a choice. Staying here may not be an option for them."
"I doubt they'll be willing to stay here a moment longer."
"Even if they do know that leaving unaided is kind of, well, fatal."
"And who can blame them, really, after all they've been through?"
"Well, maybe with a great stroke of luck we can find Zenith here, JJ"
"Could happen, I suppose. We didn't expect to find Hackbus here."
"Or m-maybe this B-Brilmara knows m-more about his wherea-b-bouts if he's not here," the halfling adds, trying to be helpful.
"Anything is possible, had you asked would we survive the purple worm attack, I'd have said not a chance. At least not standing toe to toe with it, but the gods have seen fit to keep us on our path. We should continue moving forward. Brilmara first, then where the path leads. The path here was fraught with twist and turns, and likely will continue to be so. Let's find our gear and confront the what-ifs once that is done."
The prisoners get convinced by Ryan's words and get armored with Juraan's flasks.
Returning to the storeroom, the group descends the stairs to the East.
A large room with duergar statues in heroic fighting position circle the walls. In between the statues there are the corpses of no less than fourteen dead duergar being prepared for funerary rites.
Dwarven inscriptions in the walls excerpt passages of life and death, the effort and hard life.
JJ follows Kikinnin, keeping the candle stub alight in one hand as he ensures his enchanted sword is ready in the other.
"I hope there are only a few of them left." admits the youth.
"All this time underground is starting to feel..oppressive."
"These duergar certainly don't understand the word 'fun', if nothing else."
"All this time underground is starting to feel.. oppressive."
Kikinnin stretches his neck, touching ear to shoulder twice. "Eh, you haven't spent enough time in healthier company. You'd lose that sense of oppression after a week living among the good people of Malachite." The black-beard claps the boy on the shoulder. "You wouldn't forget the sun, but you wouldn't pine for it much, either."
Kikinnin looks down the stairs, then over the bodies as they come across numerous dead duergar. His face is a hard read, not gloating, but not sympathizing either. "Abadar shines on us, with all these enemies laying down well before we got here. Wonder why there are already so many. They can't be fighting that much among themselves. That's a madness."
"These duergar certainly don't understand the word 'fun', if nothing else."
"Not like you understand it, sure. I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate what they think 'fun' is, to them. They revere their dead, at least, so they're not totally inhuman."
Kikinnin thinks his next thoughts. Unformed as they are, he doesn't want to voice them, and risk having to elaborate or explain. Suppose the drow look on the elves as hatefully as Greys do the dwarves. The Darklands pervert its inhabitants, almost to a one. Seems like the very thing that Abadar opposes, and I understand it more deeply than I have until now. An education most would decline, as would I. Suppose it couldn't hurt to pick up a book every now and then...
"D-Didn't Hackb-bus say that the d-duergar had had s-some s-sort of trouble recently?" Marigold asks as she stares at the numerous bodies laid out for funeral rites. "S-something about how there weren't as m-many here as there had b-been. I w-wonder what happened to them?"
Unable to quell her curiosity, she cautiously approaches one of the bodies and gives it a closer look, to see if she can determine how one or all of them might have died.
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Kikinnin recognizes Marigold's enthusiasm a little slowly, so picks up his pace to keep close enough. He looks over to JJ, giving the boy the space to hover over his halfling.
"What do you think, miss Marigold? Fighting did them in, like Hackbus said? They got any disease about them, that would addle their thinking?"
"I wonder if it was something like the Vanishing?" muses JJ.
"Of course down here it is probably an everyone-enslaves-everyone world..."
"Likely as not down here, it is rule by strength. Whomever is strongest is the ruler, much like the orc nation. Although I wonder if perhaps our Brilmara might not be a cleric, from these being prepared for their passage." In response to JJ's comment. Moving over he inspects one of the dead for cause of death.
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Hackbus smiled at Maxim while rejecting the gun and showing some improvised and ill dangerous powder bombs.
------------
Marigold discovers the duergar died violently. Ryan can add they died one week ago and are magically preserved. Most died to hammers and axes, but some show injuries like if earth itself came on them. There are two with faces of fear and marks of metallic links, perhaps a chain, on them. Both are females.
This is Drokstar traditional death ritea.
One seems a leader.
Kikinnin pulls through his beard with a gloved hand, ruminating on Marigold's and Ryan's findings. "So, might have come to blows over a cave-in, during their mining work. Probably only one of many ways of looking at that, but it suits me."
The black-beard readies to continue pressing forward, his Axe at his side, his senses seeking things in the darkness ahead.
"Seems quiet enough. Let's keep moving. The sooner we can clear this place, the sooner we can return to our oath's work."
Maxim eyes the dvergr dead with a hard stare;
"Ain't so sure bror. Grey Faces ain't like orcers though... Brutal order is their way o' things... Somethin' ain't right here... Civil war maybe..."
The gun-mage instinctively taps the handle of his pistol as he mulls the corpses and the challenge that awaits;
"Best we stay sharp as Surabar's blades eh?"
He walks by his fellow dwur's shoulder, lending his own eyes to the way ahead:
:
"Hammers and axes... sounds like dwarf work.." mutters JJ
"So either they fought themselves, or there are other dwarves about."
He helps search the bodies.
"D-does 'Drokstar' m-mean anything to anyone? Th-This looks like s-some kind of traditional d-death rites for him b-but I don't know m-much more than th-that," Marigold asks, looking somewhat puzzled.
-
Ryan studies the bodies again wracking his brain about Droskar ...
"The dwarven god of toil, hence the pictorials around here. Something bad about him but, what was it Ruphus said, something about they always pushed their summons and prisoners too far."
"Civil war is a possibility, I suppose."
"The others did tell us these duergar have been on edge for a while."
"Funny some of them looked fearful."
"As nasty as they are, they don't strike me as easily frightened."
Juraan also searches the make shift mortuary for anything else of interest.
You notice one of the bodies is perhaps a male leader, but nothing else of use is found in the bodies.
"Looks like these duergar are just as austere in death as life."
"If they are all dead, that would be helpful. We could rest up here. But somehow I don't think we're going to be that lucky."
"If they w-weren't all d-dead b-but just m-mostly dead then w-wouldn't they have gotten up and attacked us b-by now?" Marigold asks, looking a little puzzled by JJ's remark.
"I think JJ means the ones we have to find that have our gear Marigold, not that some of these might not be dead.
Might not be dead... that's what it was Ruphus said, Droskar was known to send souls back form the dead to collect more souls for him. They were called the forgeborn? no that's not it, the forgespurned.
I always thought is was a fairy tale like those about the lake monster in Cauldron. But seeing the look of abject terror on these faces and chain marks on their injuries....
Perhaps my mind is running wild being down here in the dark, but the druergar are not known to be particularly afraid of anything. Although I guess they are as subject to it as any other race."
JJ skirts away from the dead bodies and towards the rooms exit.
"Let's leave this place and press onward. Unless you can chain up those bodies? Do you think cutting off their heads would stop them rising in our rear?"
The group follows the way east descending the stairs into a columned room.
The long room is lined with well crafted stone columns. The walls behind show different images of duergars hard working the stone and the smith, and forcing others to do so. On the ground in the center of the large room, there is a symbol depicting a stone hearth with a vivid flame encased within.
This is a temple dedicated to Droskar, ‘The Dark Smith’, ‘The Master of the Dark Furnace’. He is a neutral evil god, the god of Toil, Slavery and Cheating, followed by duergar and some dwarves. He believes that sufficient toil leads to eventual success, and that those who fail simply weren't trying hard enough. In the pursuit of this goal, Droskar believes that one should be free to do whatever is necessary to accomplish one's goal, even if that includes lying, cheating, the exploitation of others, or even worse crimes. His symbol is a stone arch with a fire burning beneath it, and his favored weapon is the light hammer.
Originally one of the greatest student smiths of Torag, it was discovered that he had been copying his work from others whom he had enslaved. For this he was cursed by the Father of Creation to never be able to create an original work and cast from the pantheon. Rejected, he searched for followers of his own, promising them salvation in return for ceaseless work or simply enslaving them. None of these helped him, however, or inspired any originality within the god.
Beyond the light, and thanks to your darkvision you are able to spot three prisoners standing in the middle of the temple main area.
"Huh...wh-what s-sort of symbol is this?" Marigold asks, unable to make heads or tails of it. "Is it imp-portant?"
Juraan scratches his head.
"Doesn't ring any bells for me."
Studying the room a moment before nodding.
"The Dark Smith, once a student of Torag, cheat. No matter hard hard he tries, he will never achieve his mastorwork. Yet he teaches his followers to do anything to achieve their goals"
"Anything except hard work.."
Wouldn't that be you? But running with the laugh was more for fun than to avoid hard work. Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.
JJ cautiously advances into the room, holding the candle up high..
"oopse... company... "
:
Maxim nods at Ryan's words, vaguely recalling the hearth tales of his childhood about the fell god of toil.
"Bad business. Best we stay sharp like before..."
As JJ seems to notice figures, the dwur moves away from the candle light allowing his own darkvision to survey the potential threats;
:
As the group approaches they come into view of three more prisoners. The woman in the middle reacts when JJ approaches with the light "Oh! You are here finally! We heard you are freeing the prisoners! Let's go, help us out too please, before the duergars come back"
Kikinnin continues to stride forward, watching for more Grey-Faces. When he sees more prisoners, he snorts, moving past them and towards the next door. "How many Grey-Faces you remember seeing? Did they come and go through this door here? Or that one? Were they just here, and abandoned their overwatch?" The black-beard circles the prisoners warily, heading towards the first door he can access. He doesn't take his eyes off the three, especially the one with a beard. He looks the shiftiest.
"Oh! S-Sure thing," Marigold agrees as she moves to help free the three prisoners. "The others are w-waiting just b-back that way, the w-way we came," she adds as she points over her shoulder. "We're g-gonna try to g-get everyone out at once!"
They are just chained on their feet, without any tool on them.
"They just left there" the woman points to the north door which is barricaded with nailed boards "We tried to close the way so they do not return, but I do not think it will hold them off long"
The dwarf looks back at Kikinnin with a disgusted expression.
JJ looks suspiciously at the woman.
"How did you hear we were freeing prisoners?" he asks.
"Nobody has gone ahead of us..Marigold stop!"
He jumps forward.
"W-wait...you th-think...?" Marigold stops, eyes widening and then narrowing with suspicion. "He's g-got a point...although the one that r-ran calling for B-Brilmara m-might've passed this way..."
"The duergar said that" explains the woman while pointing to the northern door "Can you take us out with the others?"
The woman is saying truth about the duergar, but you do realize she is trying to lurk you to the northern door. She is sure laying about the duergar moving there.
"Hey. What's your story, stone-brother? No pick in your hand, so they weren't using you for labor. Foot chained to the floor... not sure why they've got you in such a state. You're not like the other slaves back there. And as dwarf, you're still sucking air. Us three got lucky, eh?"
"Grrrmbl" grumbles back the black scaled dwarf as the only response.
"Ah, some might say our destiny was softer. We indeed are chamber prisoners" the woman points to the room at her back "We were aiding Brilmara and the other duergars with their things"
JJ eyes the captives warily.
"Perhaps you should tell us how you were aiding them. So jus the one ran through calling for Brilmara. And he stopped to tell you that we were freeing slaves.."
When did you become so suspicious of everyone?
"How many Duegar are there through there?"
Marigold scowls at the woman, suddenly realizing something. "Wh-why s-so insistent that we g-go that way?" she asks, pointing towards the barricaded door to the north. "I th-think the d-duergar did leave b-but I th-think you're l-lying about which w-way they w-went. Wh-why?"