Juraan continues to double move up toward the other set of stairs.
"With any luck, Magigold, Kikinnin, and JJ are holding their own."
Maxim continues to hustle toward their destination;
"Am hopin' so Drakblood. Those three are mighty resourceful, so we got to hope they're still in the fight!"
AC = 23
HP = 25/64
Weapon Equipped = +1 Dwarven Greataxe
Condition(s) = Fatigued
Kikinnin tightens his grip on his Axe, almost stunned into dropping it in the middle of Abadar's work. "Feels like your magics are slowly weakening, Brilmara. Your god will only support you so long in a day, and the day's shorter and shorter by the moment. Surrender to your fate, already. No other doors in this room, I see. You have nowhere to go."
The black-beard stops trying to swing hard, to place his blade more accurately. His arms are growing more and more tired, too. He waits for JJ to peel away the fake image, so he has a better chance to strike true.
The young swordsman clasps his wrists to his ears just in time to avoid the worst of the dwarfs magic.
Then, realising the priests defences are too tough for a full all out assualt while she is protected by the door, and he is so tired, JJ concentrates on just using his magical sword, trying to edge his blows around Kikinnin.
But the priests positioning defeats his assault.
Seeing that JJ is having difficulties now that Brilmara is in a slightly more defensible position, Marigold turns and bestows what little divine guidance she can on him as well!
______
Ryan continues to run toward where the jailer disappeared earlier waiting once he reaches the steps for Jura an and Maxim to catch up.
While Maxim, Ryan and Juraan keep moving forward as fast as they can, the fight at the other side of the Wall keeps going.
Once again Kikinnin manages to find Brilmara's image with his axe, effectively deposing it.
JJ finds the angle through the door wall too difficult and lands all his attacks on the stone.
Marigold brings further guidance on JJ.
Brilmara casts defensively yet another spell on JJ "Retreat now before my army comes back and I will not pursuit you"
She then duplicates once again.
"Stop with the mind games, Witch" says JJ, struggling to keep moving under the onslaught of her magic. Deep within him though he "sees" the well of celestial light that spills out of his flesh when wounded. Just as he thinks he can't move his limbs any more, he imagines that flowing up and restoring motion.
"Arrghhhhhhh"
<- not sure if this will also knock out an image
His sword slams into her, surely gutting the dwarfs dark heart. But rather it is the image than vanishes.
"Curse you fiend!"
Brilmara shouts in terror as JJ's sword menaces to stab at her inner vitals. She does seems relieved when it only finds her decoy duplicate.
Now that her companions seem to be faring a little better against Brilmara and her images, Marigold attempts to provide further aid by distracting the lady duerger with her longspear!
Juraan continues to double move, arriving at the top of the other set of stairs.
"I sure hope this leads to the other room quickly!"
AC = 23
HP = 25/64
Weapon Equipped = +1 Dwarven Greataxe
Condition(s) = Fatigued
Kikinnin tires of the fight. He takes his two swings, and steps out of the doorway, allowing JJ a chance to take Brilmara to task directly.
"I'm done. JJ, make it quick. I'm about to drop my axe, for lack of strength. I only hope she's done for, as well."
The black-beard eyes the floor, possibly looking for a place to sit, and take his rest, damn the circumstances.
Grim set and determined, Maxim continues to hustle after his longer legged companions;
As Ryan and Juraan start to descend the stairs, they feel a strong heat raising in the air. Bulbous lava lays ahead shedding the whole chamber into dim light.
When Kikinnin fails with his axe Brilmara smiles content "So that's all? I see you are weak. And you will pay for ruining my plans and rejecting to run away!" she draws her mace and attempts to crush Kikinnin with it.
And fails stoically.
JJ gasps, having not seen Kikinnin in such a state before. Taking his life in his hands he dashes through the door way and circles around behind the dwarven witch.
He offers a single quick attack, to keep her attention on himself.
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Ryan holds his shield up reflexively as the heat from the boiling magma assails them coming down the stairs. Looking back to Juraan and Maxim.
"Professor, perhaps we should pass through before Maxim, that powder of his might blow us all sky high."
Moving forward with a purpose, Ryan scans the magma and moves quickly to the other side if its clear.
Juraan thinks about Ryan's concern for Maxim's black powder.
"Shouldn't be a problem. We are well ahead of him already."
"And his powder shouldn't go off unless exposed directly to fire."
"But, just to be on the safe side:"
And he shouts back at Maxim trailing behind:
He then casts a spell on Ryan:
« აღუდგეს ცეცხლს » . .
"There! That will protect you nicely from a fair bit of heat."
"You go now. You'll be better fighting Brilmara than me."
"I'll follow once I can see if I need to to use that spell again on myself or Maxim."
"But I can only cast one more like it because of our fatigue."
"thank you, see you soon" Ryan says as he continues forward, trying to reach their trapped companions. with luck and Abadar's grace it won't be at Pharasma's judgement seat."
Brilmara pushes back JJ as he passes through the door and tries to go over her.
Giving a look at the magma room as he passes by, Ryan observes a small portable smith is here installed to molten duergar tools and weapons. Manacles, picks and shovels half-made hang from the walls.
Brilmara attacks twice at JJ, bruising on his left shoulder "Retreat Damn fools!"
Pressing ever onward Maxim hustles through the caverns.
At Juraan's shouted warning, the dwur pushes on , then pauses for a second on the winding stairs to give answer;
"Fair waarschuwing gegeven draak-bloed! 1'll neem mijn kansen!"
"Fair warning given Dragon-blood! I'll take my chances!"
AC = 23
HP = 25/64
Weapon Equipped = +1 Dwarven Greataxe
Condition(s) = Fatigued
Kikinnin watches the boy bounce off Brilmara like a newborn pup, so brings a gloved hand up to pull on his face. "Don't let her best you, JJ. She attacks with the blind rage of a rabid dog. Her work is done here, and she acts as if she doesn't know it."
The black-beard takes listless swings around the door. "What's the point here, Brilmara? That you're willing to die for your god? You don't strike me as someone willing to die for her fellow Grey-Faces."
Kikinnin goes through the motion of threatening the female, but his heart isn't in it. He longs for other places, not ratting a duergar settlement. He looks on Brilmara with something like pity, as she tries desperately to survive this encounter.
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Directly in front of the door now, JJ uses his position for maximum advantage and again switches back to attacking with both weapons.
His swordsmanship finally pays off as several of the blows, surely, must get through her armour.
"It is you that should have run away." he says to the bloody witch.
Kikinnin nods, looking down at the floor while catching his breath. "The boy's words will be the last you hear, Bril. You had your chance, and you went and bludgeoned the boy. There's no surrendering now."
Brilmara laughs as Kikinnin fails his attacks. The duergar is not expecting JJ's combat precission, whom with three near perfect stabs on Brilmara's neck ends up with the Droskar cleric. She looks at the young man with wide surprised eyes as she falls to the ground.
Ryan, Juraan and Maxim reach what seems the exit of the pits, then following into the entrance they do find a long hall full of proud duergar statues with their axes in aggressive positions. A last final door and they do find their companions who just seconds ago finally managed the duergar priestess.
scroll of cure critical wounds
scroll of see invisibility
+1 heavy mace
mwk light crossbow with 20 bolts
silver unholy symbol of Droskar
spell component pouch
faerie's cage keys
321 gp
chainmail
warhammer
light crossbow [20 bolts]
jail keys
Party gear
Sarcerm’s headband of inspired wisdom +2
JJ’s cloak of arachnida
Maxim’s ring of protection +1
Juraan’s amulet of natural armour +1
Kikinnin’s cloak of Resistance +1
Marigold’s mwk breastplate
The priestess just made her last stand on her own chambers.
A short bed and a chest lies on the eastern side of the chamber. A workbench is installed on the northern area. There a small cage is found with some faeries jailed within. The workbench has some half-made gears and other mobile pieces. There are two tomes over the workbench. One seems an operations log written by Brilmara while the other one is much older and written in a strange language.
Kikinnin takes his Cloak back, turning to see the new entrants to the room. "You just missed JJ's fine bladework. The female didn't have much chance once I stepped out of the boy's way." The black-beard nods his respect to the dual swordsman.
"Looks like the fey didn't die for nothing." Kikinnin takes the set of keys, and tosses them to JJ.
"Have we cleared the halls? Did you see any further threats?"
"They appear clear best we can tell, there is a set of stairs in the Duergar hall of fame perhaps they lead to something." Ryan replies
"Nice work JJ, the only thing left in here is the door they blocked off, I'm guessing there's a really lousy surprise located behind it."
Looking around at what is left behind Ryan picks up the headband returning it to his head after wiping it down with a cloth.
"I can't read the book, how about you Maxim, Professor, anybody? If we rested I could try reading this in the morning and see if it's worth keeping. If not we can toss it in the lava pool, that's bound to make it hard to get to at any rate."
"Yes, well done, JJ. That stone wall Brilmara put up forced us to come a round about way."
As he puts on his Amulet of Natural Armour, Juraan says "That's better."
Juraan will also try to look at the odd book of Brilmara's to see if he can at least figure out what language it could be:
"Actually, I think we should keep both those books."
"Both Brilmara's log and this other book might have useful information to use against the Duergar. Or others."
"Even if it would take time to translate."
"Maybe Backbus can help us with it before we press on?"
"As well as that door , there might be a way out in that chamber we came through," says Juraan, pointing back to chamber 1.
"we just didn't have the time to check that chamber carefully on the way here."
"Since we seem to have run out of Duergar to keep us company, I think we're all long overdue for a nice lie-down!"
"F-finally..." Marigold huffs as Brilmara is felled and the rest of the group comes barreling in through a nearby door. As everyone regroups, she unbuckles her breastplate from the duergar's fallen form and straps it back on.
"Looks b-better on me anyway..." she grumbles.
"A-Anyway, now wh-what? There's a s-scroll here to m-mend wounds and b-both JJ and K-Kikinnin took a b-beating just now."
JJ blushes, panting from both the stress of the fight and the ongoing fatigue of their imprisonment.
"Thanks, but it was a team effort."
He looks to the cage with the fey inside it.
"I think I picked up a bit of their language over the last week..."
He takes out the keys and starts to unlock the cage.
"I seem to be the only one who hasn't taken a savage beating. As yet."
"We should still have five or six healing potions left from our recent fighting, shouldn't we?"
How about Frisian from NE Germany and NW Holland?
Since we're already using Dutch for Gnome.
Using JJ's text, here's the same in Frisian via Google Translate:
« Hi there Hallo, dyn freon fertelde ús jo waarden finzen nommen. Hy holp ús komme te frij jimme, mar spitigernôch foel ta in ôfgryslike skepsel krekt juster. »
« 1 AM Ik bin JJ en wy binne freonen ... »
Looks like you have to avoid colloquialisms and contractions to prevent strange results.
Probably because Frisian isn't as heavily used in Google Translate.
Someone here was working on building a mining construct based on construction plans from Jzadirune. The construct would resemble those artifacts the gnome put to work decades ago in the old Jzadirune that you have found and faced in your exploration of the cursed dungeon.
The author of the diary is Brilmara. Apparently they have been buying slaves to Kazmojen’s Life Bazaar in order to mine mineral resources for their people. Although Thangardt is theoretically at charge of the settlement, Brilmara despises him, because he is a drunk and f**$er who does not care about effort in life.
Although the public goal was to bolster the dwarven economy and pay homage to Drokstar’s credo, Brilmara seemed to have the plan of building large amounts of weapons, conventional and unconventional ones, to create an army of her own and conquer a nearby rival hobgoblin town. Repeating the deed that recent duergar made retaking the large city of Fellstrok from orcish hands below the Hold of Belkzen, Brilmara expects to impress the Seven Patriarchs of the duergar and gain reputation in the capital of Hagegraf.
Recently the slave market has stopped and Brilmara has lost many explorers until she has find out the dwarven have retaken Malachite Fortress. After weeks of desperation, she considered to bind more earth elementals to work the mines, but that seemed expensive and dangerous to her for some reason. Recently, she has designed a plan to create an automaton force able to mine for metal and fight alongside duergars. She based her thesis on research over old Jzadirune engineering blueprints previously obtained through trade with Kazmojen and his skulks, and an old tome she claims it has been written by an ancient race she calls the Dreamweavers.
Her initial attempts brought the attention of Thangardt, who enraged by Brilmara’s attitude and scared her success might overtake his leadership, faced the cleric. After a convoluted time, Brilmara’s followers finally succeeded and Thangardt was killed. Apparently Droskar was not fully satisfied by Thangardt overall effort in life, because the god sent him back to the Slave Pits as a Forge Spurned. The spawn of Droskar claimed many lives before Brilmara succeeded to imprison him in the room north of Droskar’s temple.
Free from Thangardt attention, Brilmara has kept advancing on her projects. Without access to gnome magic, the cleric has been looking through the Darklands for feys. She recently was able to capture some faeries she hopes to exploit for magical dust in order to provide the magic the Jzadirune machinery needs to work.
There is a late reference on a party of surface dwellers recently captured. Brilmara is apparently happy to have fresh slaves to improve the mines output while she finishes her wok. A final note catches your eye ‘It is lucky there are two dwarves among the new prisoners. I will be able to test the Spellweaver life binding techniques without the need to spend worthable lives.’
You do also notice along her scribing Brilmara was obsessed about being able to see the invisible. She was scared about being stabbed by an invisible follower of Thangardt or other aspiring priest. Thus, she went far and required special glasses to see the invisible, carried always a scroll to see invisibility and day after day made sure to pray for purge invisibility blessings.
After studying the old book, you come to the conclusion it was written in an ancient language by a Spellweaver. It is difficult to extract information without real knowledge of their language and culture, but you do recognize some names, it talks about some place which is related to the Demonscar.
Weeks study with a large library equipped with old tomes related to the Spellweavers might provide further information.
The faeries seem exited and happy to be free by JJ.
Reunited with his companions a weary Maxim offers each a hard smile and clap on the shoulder to each of them;
"Well fought... Hard fought. We'll be needin' to ward against such barriers in the future... Can't have you lot havin' all the fun eh?!"
As the group rest and pick over the items recovered and claimed, Maxim eyes the workbench with interest;
:
He furrows his brow, unsure of what he is looking at for a second, then nods;
"Thought this looked familiar... Reckon the Grey-Faces were buildin' a construct o' some kind from old Jzadirune plans... Looks to be for minin' purposes or such."
"This book is no language I have studied.[/]b" sighs JJ.
As the fey are released he introduces them to the group.
"Wy steane fierder yn om te probearjen en te freegjen guon oare finzenen. Wylst jo wolkom binne om mei te kommen, is it tige gefaarlik. As it bliuwt bliuwt soe wêze. Jo kinne wolkom wêze op 'e Machalite-hûs, of op it oerflak tichtby Kessel, mar ik praat net foar ien fan dy lokale autoriteiten."
"With the hold safe for the moment, maybe we should head back to the others, and plan our next move?"
He glances through the dwarven book.
"Or do we need to deal with the undead dwarf on the other side of that door?"
"What undead? The book tell you that?" Kikinnin livens up, visibly unhappy that there might still lurk something unholy, nearby.
"I can't see us resting, until we can say for certain we're secure."
The black-beard moves to the barricaded door, and gives a listen.
"I don't hear anything, JJ. You sure you read that?"
"Here" says JJ, pointing out the witches diary to Kikinning.
"My initial attempts brought the attention of Thangardt, who was enraged my attitude and scared that my success might overtake his leadership. He faced me down. After a convoluted time, my followers finally succeeded and Thangardt was killed. Apparently Droskar was not fully satisfied by Thangardt overall effort in life, because the god sent him back to the Slave Pits as a Forge Spurned. The spawn of Droskar claimed many lives before I succeeded in imprisoning him in the room north of Droskar’s temple."
They have confined it, and we are well and truly pushing our luck with exhaustion. Perhaps we should block the door with one of the many statues and then rest. a yawn escapes Ryan before he can continue. then we'll destroy it in the morning. Besides it's been up for a while, Brimhala had time to prepare those dead druegar we saw earlier.
"B-Bet he's the s-surprise behind the d-door she kept trying to g-get us to g-go through," Marigold remarks sourly. "I think we sh-should try and p-put an end to him b-but not until we've r-rested a b-bit."
Kikinnin reads the portion pointed out to him, nodding. "Alright then. Let's get some rest, and ready ourselves properly. We've got the rescued to return, as well as a dwarf to retrieve. Not sure what comes first anymore."
He finds a place to sit, and waves to the rest. "Go on and get to resting. I'll stay up first."
"Ryan is right; fighting undead duergar now would be foolish. At best."
"Once we're rested, we can deal with it nicely, I'm sure."
"Then we can reconnoiter this complex safely."
"Before resuming our search for Zenith, of course."
"JJ, can you ask our new faerie friends if they can guide us safely and quickly back to where we found them?"
Stifling a yawn, Juraan says "That's it for me. Time for a kip!"
"Someone wake me up so I can take over from Kikinnin."
"Night-night!"
"We should tell the others the way is clear for the moment as well. They will be worrying back in hte cells." notes JJ.
He wearily picks up a pick and starts to smash a hole in the new wall.
"That will be inconvenient."
Maxim nods repeatedly at the wisdom, before adding his own thoughts;
"Aye Surabar has the right o' it. We'll be needin' to secure them other folks first afore we lock horns with an undead dvergr."
The gun-mage looks toward his more pious companions;
"Any o' ye kirk-fairing folk heard o' these Forge Spurned mentioned in the journal? Would be good to get an inklin' or what we're comin' up against..."
Maxim does not find the prisoners in the cells. Having a quick search out the complex, he finds them hiding in a platform below the nearest cliff. They do not want to wait more, but are finally convinced by the dwarf and Hackbus to have some rest and wait for the morrow.
Meanwhile JJ works with his pick a whole through the wall. It takes him a large while, but he finally succeeds to demolish the structure.
Exhausted, the party quickly falls into the hands of Desna. The rest time goes without incident and everybody wakes up after more than 10 hours rest. That tired everybody was.
Finally refreshed the party has a breakfast, chat and time to train and prepare spells. Then, JJ and Kikinnin break the northern door barricade and make the signal for the assault.
"Much, much better!" says Juraan after coming around.
"Okay, time to prepare to fight a duergar that ought not be in the land of the living."
Juraan then uses his wand of Mage Armour on himself .
Then he casts a spell: « ערלעכקייט בויגן » . .
"Don't know how much use a bow will be in this fight, but at least mine will hurt more than normal."
Kikinnin wakes from his sleep of the dead, taking his time to don his armor, before sitting down to eat something and calm the rumbling in his belly. He looks for the recently-freed slaves and fey, unsure if they remained during the long night's recuperations.
"Any o' ye kirk-fairing folk heard o' these Forge Spurned mentioned in the journal? Would be good to get an inklin' or what we're comin' up against..."
The black-beard gives it some thought. Whatever he might pluck from his lessons, he lays out.
When he approaches the barred door, he considers a moment. Brilmara had effectively walled off part of the complex with stone, but hadn't decided to do it with the undead's door. He tries to understand that, and mostly fails to get inside the mind of the twisted Grey-Face. For undead to remain, he'll have none of that, so he readies his Axe, and helps to unbar the door, to see what lies beyond.
Exhausted, and worried JJ doesn't sleep well at all.
While one responsibility, that of freeing the fey, has been lifted, it has been replaced with getting the Cauldronites back to their city, along with the Fey to a safe location. All in all he tosses and turns without getting as much rest as he hoped.
His dreams too are strange. Dwarven witches dance around stone circles with elves and fairies. He watches, amused, while sea creatures emerge from ponds and Marigold, a huge and sinister presence looms like a sinister shadow over the gathering.
All in all he has had much better sleeps than this one.
When it comes time to sleep, Marigold curls into a small ball in her bedroll and falls into a deep, exhausted slumber. If she dreams, she does not remember them. When she wakes, she finds herself feeling better than she has in days. But as to the nature of what they're about to face, she finds herself largely in the dark.
"I'm af-fraid I don't know m-much," she sighs. "Kikinnin or R-Ryan probably know m-more. B-but what I do know is that w-we need to m-mend up before we g-get started."
______