Sid deftly draws his blade out of the bug's body and swipes at the remaining beetles as they squeeze out of the wall.
He grins at Alyna as they engage the huge bugs and she outperforms him. "That classic style seems to be quite excellent against things without swords," Sid quips in Elvish.
Sid stabs out with his sword and impales another of the large bugs while Beau tries to cut one but the beetle jinks at the last moment. Xune stands back waiting to see if the dangerous insects try and get passed as Xeno looks on the scene impassively.
Another beetle slips out of the room and into the melee. Both of them look to bite their way past the assembled exterminators with their massive mandibles.
Although Davin misses one of the beetles, but Alyna picks it off neatly with a slash of her blade. After Sid misses another opportunity, Alyna again picks up the slack and cuts another bug apart. At least one more bug looks to be squeezing through.
Alyna stays on the side of the hole, readying an attack for the moment a bug head comes out.
Beau tries to swing and hit one of the bugs, a bit angered over them moving into a lost outpost. This place deserved a better home than that!
Seeing that Alyna has it well in hand, Sid moves back from the hole and cleans his sword.
Davin backs off, leaving the fight in more capable hands.
Beau and Alyna both spring into action the moment the beetle pushes through. The elf's natural quickness means she slashes the beetle in half a moment before Beau bisects it the other way.
Xune creeps back to check on the cave door. A patrol has stopped at the base of the switchback leading up to the cave, but they do not appear to be coming up the hill, only looking at it. Then she realizes what they are actually doing is relieving themselves at the edge of the cliff. After a minute they move on circling the perimeter of the Eagle's Eyrie.
Stifflin a laugh behind his beard, Beau replies " Well now, can't really blame'em. Pointed ears cause most of the problems ye know. All that magic and crap, corrupting yer soul and such. Ah well, fer now, let us go into the shrine. See what we got here." Beau does indeed go in first, but with his shield and sword ready, keeping an eye out for anything unusual or out of place. While not much of a priest, just about every dwarf knew the basics of proper rites of the forge.
Beau enters the forge-temple reflexively whispering a blessing in Dwarvish. Signs of a battle are evident, despite the time that has passed. Dark stains on the floor and signs of weapon impacts provide clues, as does the rather disturbing sight of stone melted into slag and deep scorch marks on the walls and ceiling from supernatural fire.
Nothing seems to remain in this room that is not made of metal or stone. The forge itself, a stone work bench, and a large anvil. Atop the anvil sits a warhammer.
When the dwarf enters the hammer vibrates for a long moment, then lays still again.
Knowing that the attack was by wizards, Beau seems a bit cautious about the warhammer. Replying back to Alyna " Tis true, but how much of that is from the weapon or an ill intent towards a dwarf? And to disecrate a shrine as this. Tis no wonder to use caution." But for all his talk of using caution, Beau does approach the warhammer. Slowly but surely, for wizards are known to be tricky creatures, he carefully makes sure he is ready for anything, keeping an eye out as he tries to reach for the warhammer.
Xune is unable to find any cleverly hidden traps on either the warhammer or anvil. Beau can see that the weapon is very nearly fully crafted. An empty setting for a jewel near the pommel and the obvious need to buff the places where the crafter carved the name of the Brightblade clan with Dethek runes in the shaft show that only cosmetic touches were required to finish this otherwise masterfully forged and tempered weapon.
Once Xune clears the area for examination, a hastily scrawled dwarvish curse can be seen beneath the hammer. The intent of the curse, as Beau can attest to, was to inflict harm on any non-dwarf who sought to desecrate the room. A spatter of black dried blood on the head indicates this hammer may well have been the cause of such harm at some point in the past.
Sniffing as Xune makes sure there is no traps, Beau says a word of thanks, one for the shelter the area was to provide for them, and then for the glorious weapon. He promised to use it to bring back the former glory of this outpost. After saying those, he hefts the hammer to test its balance and swing, to find the correct placement for his hands.
" Tis be a fine instructment. I do believe I shall use it to led us through the other areas to help secure them no? Ye all have nae problem with it?" It seems Beau could appreciate some fine things.
"No, you fit to it"
Sid nods. "If anyone here should get that hammer, it's you. Take it."
Shaking his head at the elven clearly not understanding how dwarves work, he mutters " Them long ears. Always tryin to fancy things up." But he seemed to be a bit more perplex at the question of where to go next. If the shrine was cursed, what else would be? Could that explain the fire beetles? He rubs his beard as he thinks this over, before mentioning. " Ye say they had the same stones? Well, best see what is that way nae? We know the bugs probably ate anything in that area, and we know from were we came. So say corridor, then... where else was there after them bugs?"
Beau didn't exactly take command of what was happening, but since none seemed to opposed to letting him direct for the moment, he would start to head towards the corridor, with his shield ready and the new warhammer with him.
Beau leads the way with Xune right behind. Once around the corner the dwarf and elf can see a glow emanating from the large dark room beyond. It comes from something sitting atop a large, flat altar. A massive waterwheel stands motionless along one wall. The air has a heavy smell of mildew mixed with rot and blood.
Two hunched forms turn and look at you with dead eyes and bloody faces. One clutches a whole leg from a humanoid creature and has torn muscles dangling from it's rotten teeth.
UNsure how well he will adept to the warhammer, Beau tries to stand guard on the other side of the oil lit on the ground.
Xenotime crouches and his mouth pulls back, then he mutters, "I hate biting undead flesh. Bleah."
Sid draws his sword and moves up next to Beau. "That hammer might be more use than my sword on these things."
Davin presents his holy symbol and shouts, "Back, fiend!"
; fail
Init 5 with longsword
Att 2/3
Thac0 15 (or +5 to hit)
Dam 1d8+9
AC 1
Fighting offensively = +1 AC, -1 Thac0
Seeing the oil spilled onto the ground, Alyna acts fast and grabs the torch, then tosses it on the slick. A blaze immediately sparks up, consuming the undead with flames and thick black smoke.
The smoke refuses to clear, but the fire burns fast and dies away fast.
The black smoke hangs in the air obscuring the ghouls from view and everyone tenses for the inevitable attack, but none comes.
"Bleah. What a stench!" complains the dragon, leaning back on his haunches and waving his little claws ineffectually.
"We may just have to wait for this to clear up."
Beau grumbles as he places his new hammer back into its place on his hip, before stroking his beard. Surely there was a way to get the forge going again, with the air pump working properly. He never was a smith though, but he knew the basics, as all dwarves did.
" Now, iffin we git it workin, there be a pump system. No idea how they work though." Beau gruffs out, wishing he had some ale in hand and some good food. All these surprises and all on a dry throat!
After greasing the wheel with Xune help, Beau muttering while doing so " Never expected a long ears to know anything bout dwarven engineering. Ye aint havle bad" It was clear this was going to be high praise from Beau, as he seemed while not hostile to the elves, he either didn't know much about them, or had bad experiences in the past with them. However, once the airflow was going, he rumbles to the group " We got a door or the hatch. I would say the hatch, seems easiest to retreat from if overwhelmed"
"I'm sorry for the stinking. Clarity, could you perhaps help with your wings? If not, it might take days for this stinking to clear"
Alyna's common is still heavily accented, but is slowly becoming faultless.
Sid nods. "Let's see what's down there."
The group checks the ladder down through the hatch. It leads a short way down to a small cave with another ladder leading even deeper into the darkness and a short tunnel providing access to the Eyrie's north face. Any trail that might have switchbacked it's way down from here has long since become overgrown and washed out.
The passage further down has been blocked by a cave-in at the bottom of a long ladder climb. It is likely this would have provided the dwarves access to areas even deeper beneath the dales, possibly even the underdark, at one time.
Returning to the central chamber Mara reports that there are currently no patrols she can see anywhere near the mountain. With some tools and time the Harper agents manage to open the door from which the beetles had emerged. Empty weapon and armor racks attest to the previous use of the room as an armory.
Once airborne, Xenotime is easily able to spot the stream that once fed the waterwheel. Over time rock slides and plant debris have choked the small dwarven-built pipe. The dragon can easily clear the mess with only a few minutes of effort. The wheel needs some additional maintenance for full effect, but soon enough water flows to budge it. Ancient bellows and ducts cough dust which quickly clears. The air begins to circulate throughout the room and the whole small outpost.
"It will be nice to have a lair," says the young dragon, rubbing his claws together.
Beau frowns through his beard at the thumbs up, having little experience with the gesture. And now with a working smithy, he guessed it perhaps best to work on his weaponsmithing, as from the looks from the group, he might be the only one who knew anything about it. And that was so long ago, and so little worked, it might take him some time to get his skills up, secondary as they were.
" Well, I aint no genuis smithy, but I can bang out a daggers and such. With practice and this forge I might even get halfway decent. But for now I say we take a good long nap, with some good ale, and a smoke, and then start again making this place more livable aye?"
Sid sighs. His preference was treetop homes full of the sound of rustling leaves and suspended bridges creaking in the wind, but he had spent enough time with the shorter lived races that he'd become used to walls of stone. At least this was living stone. But this period would pass soon enough.
He nods at Xune. "We need to find that lord's men, the ones who are running a guerrilla campaign in the woods." The bladesinger gestures at the empty halls, the unmanned defenses. "This place is fine as a secret hideout, but it's not much of a fortress with just a handful of us here. We need manpower here as much as we do out there. Let's see if we can get some people to follow us."
"More immediately, we need to camouflage the head of that trail better. We spotted it while barely searching. If we start poking the Zhents they'll send platoons out here and they'll find us soon enough."
"Sid is right. If we don't take care to hide this place, we'll be vulnerable to ambush."
The group spends much of the day cleaning and checking the existing defenses. Over dinner there are discussions about tracking down Randall Morn and recruiting local partisans, tactical options for guerilla strikes, and exploration plans to find more resources and alternate headquarters.
Just before dusk the Zhent patrols return and the town of Daggerfalls gets ready for sleep. From the window slits, the sunset is magnificent.
Over the course of the night, things seem incredibly quiet and peaceful. Everyone is awakened shortly after midnight by a banging sound on the inside of the hatch. It only lasts a few seconds and sounds like a rock being smashed against the outside of the portal.
When opened, there is no sign of anyone. "Haunted, aye?" Mara asks. Despite the concern, there are no other incidents until morning when the half-orc goes to see if the sunrise is as beautiful as the sunset was. She quickly rushes back to wake and gather the others. "Some kind of excitement in the town! Come see!"
Although details are impossible to make out from the Eyrie, Mara is correct that some sort of action is going on in the still-waking town. Several homes have people calling other citizens. The Zhents respond but walk away uninterested.
Sid tries to see what exactly is happening in the town.
Xeno keeps to the heights, away from the town and the possibility of dragging adventurers out toward the keep. Instead he contents himself with watching other routes of approach and keeping an eye peeled for other monsters that might live in the wilds around the crumbling keep.
Sid nods at Xune. "Here, there's a pattern to the patrols. Look here," he points at a group of Zhents, "and then they come from over there... one second... now." The bladesinger nods again, this time to himself. "It should be easy enough to slip in without being seen."