Up through the stairs in the center of the maze and through the hall upstairs it goes to the barricade. Antarah rips it apart opening the passage into a dungeon of different make than the gnoll area.
This chamber reeks of wild beasts. About the room, wooden stakes pounded into the mud-brick walls secure several dangling ropes with leather collars. A mosaic of a huge, snarling, insect-like beast with bulging eyes and yellow mandibles covers the floor. Its many arms clutch falchions, gemstones, and screaming women.
Moving on to the west leads to a massacre site. A battle has recently taken place here—the walls are spattered with dried blood, and the bodies of what look like three men lie scattered in pieces on the floor.
Following the signs of battle leads to an interesting room. A recently repaired hole in the wall of this otherwise empty room stands partially blocked by three boulders cemented together with dried clay. This narrows the entrance.
While he rests on his hand to lean into the room to take a look Antarah pushes on a thin wire and triggers a trap. A sharpened trap door comes down and hits him.
In the room lies a large dead unchosen gnoll. A door blocks sight into the next room.
With the trap out of the way, the group moves on towards the door. The room behind has pale blue ceramic censers dangle from copper chains mounted into the ceiling along the edges of this room, filling the chamber with a faint, flickering light. A collection of mismatched boxes and clay urns lines the northern wall, while to the south, numerous rocks have been stacked in front of a pair of doors. To the west, a mound of rocks has been stacked to form a crude throne. And on that throne an interesting creature. Hulking physique with an oversized right arm but stunted legs, a missing ear and bad teeth.
Within the room are also thirteen malnourished men in rags. As the door opens the one on the "throne" crders "Kill the intruders!"
The others get up, and take on something that shall resemble a battle stance with their wooden sticks. It's a miserable band.
"What powers, where are you from? My business is totally legal in Katapesh!" Yuseifah defends himself.
So much for the hope that with Kelmarane only recently re-established it might still be almost independent, or at least plausibly so. Aith tries to frame her objections in ways that Katapeshi would appreciate to save face, “Kelmarane’s a free city – meaning, it doesn’t appreciate people cutting into its bottom line by scooping travellers off its trade routes or, worse, cutting deals with its enemies. Trade goes through Almah’s market, she gets her cut, and our alchemists experiment on those who stiff her in favour of inconvenient gnolls – or eat them. Get it?”
Free to trade in Almah’s town. Aith would make a rotten Pact Master, but there’s a bit of truth in there: they did get Undrella to agree to at least lure people off the beaten path before making them her prey, and she does eat people. Aith doesn’t (or experiment on them) but Amwyr doesn’t need to know that. She resolves to keep a suspicious eye on him until the area is secure – not that she’ll miss him if he slinks off to safer territory.
Fortunately, Antarah saves her from walking into the next trap while she’s distracted, and the sound of the sharpened door slicing down recalls her to herself in time to see the wretched muster called up by what looks like another mutant on another throne.
To the west, a mound of rocks has been stacked to form a crude throne. And on that throne an interesting creature. Hulking physique with an oversized right arm but stunted legs, a missing ear and bad teeth.
Within the room are also thirteen malnourished men in rags. As the door opens the one on the "throne" crders "Kill the intruders!"
The others get up, and take on something that shall resemble a battle stance with their wooden sticks. It's a miserable band.
“You’re neither gnolls or troglodytes,” Aith offers, stating the obvious, trying to figure out what’s going on before anyone does something rash. “Our quarrel was with the former, until we deposed the Carrion King. Why fight with us?”
"I am the master here! You bow to me, or you die!" the self proclaimed king shouts.
Yasmeena smiles charmingly. "Why not talk instead of fight? We have defeated all the gnolls and do not want to wantonly slaughter you. Some of us follow the teachings of the Dawnflower, who advocates mercy for all, even our enemies. Surely it can do you no harm to hear us out?"
Just when Tariq thought they were going to spill more blood today, Antarah and Yasmeena come with some common sense. Which is nice for a change, given what the party has been through today.
"Yeah, this" he says, backing up Yasmeena's words.
One of the men at the front drops his stick and flees through the ranks of the Knights to hide behind them. Which is the breach in the dam. All start running to get out of the room and away from the "king".
That one jumps up and shouts furiously "How dare you!" and one handedly swings his greatclub at them.
Which crushes one of the men who goes down, with a puddle of blood forming beneath him.
A dozen men trying to get out of the room doesn't work smoothly, and jams the entrance.
"Alright, we've beaten the Carrion King, all the traps, all the Gnolls, a Djann and a giant worm. I bet you wanna calm down a bit, yeah?"
Haleen drops the gnoll, pushes through the crowd and places herself between the men and the monster. As Tariq is still trying to talk she refrains from stabbing Lazrul into the face - for now.
Seeing the others hold back, Aith tries to as well, as much as she can, opting to try to blind the deformed king.
"Last chance," she offers grimly, though she doesn't have much hope that the brute will see reason, "before we turn to sharp side of our blades."
That slender woman looks as a good target to make a point. Better than that guy with his duplicates whirling around him. And so Lazrul swings his club at Haleen. That flimsy elf would be even betteer, but she is stuck in the clump of fleeing men.
But despite his impressive skill with that big club, it only brushes over the armor, doing no harm.
"You should have searched for those drugs if you wanted to talk." Haleen comments to the Knights.
And to the brute she adds "And you should have kept your slow arse on that rocky throne. You attacked the wrong woman." Then she shows that brute how it is done properly. She knows that type. Hurvank was one of them. Big, strong, and too slow for her. But also a sore loser, who tried to get revenge no matter how. She for sure wouldn't give him that chance.
Lazrul's eyes widen, his jaw drops, before his whole body follows.
With Lazrul down, the other men relax, but they still try to keep their distance and get out of the room.
"You mean skin him and wear him as a cloak? You should have done that with the Carrion King. Would have been more impressive than that." Haleen jokes, pointing to the sorry excuse for a leader at the ground.
"Anyway, hopefully we'll run out of others pretty fast."
Haleen leaves that issue to Antarah and interrogates the gnoll some more. "<Are there any more people around here? Any leaders of the gnolls that we haven't met, some more others, that fight the gnolls? Any other surprises?"
The gnoll takes his finger out of his nose and stares blankly. "<No. Yes? Maybe..., do fire salamanders count?>"
"You mean skin him and wear him as a cloak? You should have done that with the Carrion King. Would have been more impressive than that." Haleen jokes, pointing to the sorry excuse for a leader at the ground.
“I imagine the poor souls this lout was bullying are long gone by now. Do you think we should hand him over to the troglodytes along with our furry friend here?” Aith asks.
After Haleen converses with the gnoll for a while she explains that during the digging that was done on Rokova's behalf the gnolls broke through into the area all are currently in, and that in this area is a way down into an even older structure, that leads to a place where fire salamanders live. Rokova told the gnolls to stay away, after one visit, but told no details.
"What? An old place full of fire beings where even our sworn enemy didn't want to step in?" Tariq shakes with excitement. "Take us there!"
"Just a moment." Haleen objects. "We have this unconscious wannabe master, there is also that guy he beat down who could use some help and we have about a dozen people here that probably don't want to come along."
"What are we doing about this?"
Yasmeena shrugs. "Bring them to the troglodytes?" she suggests timidly. She smiles at Haleen.
"Those troglodytes are an olfactory imposition." Haleen replies in disgust to that suggestion.
Then she adds for clarification "That guy there is dying. Would someone check if that can be fixed?" and points to the man in rags on the ground.
Not that horrible ogre-kin, who is not dying, which in Haleen's perception also needs fixing, but she keeps silent about that.
"Right, yeah, let me have a look at this guy" Tariq comments, referring to the guy he can fix. The other one, the ogre-kin, he can't fix since he's no psychiatrist.
"Just a moment." Haleen objects. "We have this unconscious wannabe master, there is also that guy he beat down who could use some help and we have about a dozen people here that probably don't want to come along."
"What are we doing about this?"
“There are also those escapees holed up in the other corner of the temple grounds,” Aith reflects, doing her best to resituate herself within the entire complex, estimating distances from belowground. “They’ll probably be safer if we get them all in one defensible location before we’re ready to move on, when we can keep an eye on them.”
She considers the drugged gnoll and the ogre-kin. “And yes, these two can go to the troglodytes, I think. They might eat them, I suppose, but that would be, er, ‘on them,’ wouldn’t it?” And even that might be more merciful than throwing them out into the desert on their own to bake, depending on how good their survival skills are.
“As awful as it is, Grundmoch and company seem like the sanest people left that will be at all interested in sticking around. Otherwise, I can speed us all up again once more today, and maybe do one or two things more to put fires out, but if we're going after those salamanders right off, I'll be relying on cold lead fairly soon.”
Noticing some party members are reluctant to go check the salamanders, Tariq addresses their doubts. "I agree we might assured these guys a safe place to stay, but I strongly believe we should go see the salamanders. I'm not saying we must slay them all - we don't know if there going to be hostile. But they might know things we also want to know" he says, pointing at the scroll with his chin.
There are some things to do, but first things first. The Knights round up the guys in rags and escort them to the surface and there to the corner tower. After short introductions - as they already know each other - they stay there until the heroes are ready to lead them to Kelmarane.
The meds of the gnoll start wearing off and he concludes that his welcome might wear off too and so he gets lost on the way somewhere.
Lazrul, as you learn the name of the bad guy from the others, is still unconscious and you get the impression that he won't live to see the next day if you leave him with anyone.
The Knights priorities are salamanders before troglodytes. And so the group goes back down. As the gnoll is gone, finding the entrance isn't a given, but the number of paths is very limited. The first wrong guess is a tomb. At one end of the room, a great stone sarcophagus engraved with arabesques and calligraphy sits, displayed upon a tiered dais. The top of the sarcophagus lies broken in several pieces on the floor. This tomb was looted long ago and nothing remains inside the sarcophagus but dust and a few crumbled bits of yellow bone.
A better guess is the freshly dug path next to that room. The rough-hewn passage widens, emptying into a larger excavation site in which the upper corner of another, older structure protrudes from the surrounding earth about a yard above the floor. A sizable hole has been cracked out of its ceiling, from which protrudes a ladder of lashed sticks. The shaft itself is 200 feet deep.
It would seem best to Aith to leave Lazrul – after disarming him, of course – in the shade somewhere where he’ll be able to see the cloudy pools surrounding the temple when he wakes. Just enough not to sign his death warrant outright, and also that even a ruffian would be able to read as a clear warning to slink off and reconsider his life choices.
Not, mind you, that Aith is entirely sure of her own as, eventually, she stares with the others down the shaft where the salamanders seem likeliest to lurk.
“Right,” she says briskly, trying to work up some courage for this next bit. “I’ll be even more useless than usual if we need to carry out wounded, so if they are hostile and manage to land a few solid blows, discretion might be the better part, and so on. Then again, maybe this lot will be the one group staying here that isn’t keen on the end of the world.”
With that dubious optimism…
The shaft ends in a long tunnel that leads northward. After following the tunnel for about half a mile leads to a dead end in an alcove. A small skeleton lies on the ground. It wears a pelt cloak, and besides it lie a broken bow and a quiver full of arrows. The air in this alcove stinks.
It would seem best to Aith to leave Lazrul – after disarming him, of course – in the shade somewhere where he’ll be able to see the cloudy pools surrounding the temple when he wakes. Just enough not to sign his death warrant outright, and also that even a ruffian would be able to read as a clear warning to slink off and reconsider his life choices.
"It is pleasing to Sarenrae to give mercy to everyone, even the most unredeemable villains. Perhaps he will reconsider his path when he wakes?"
She follows through the tunnels with that peculiarly regal step she does.
"That smell, it reminds me of an old tale about a learned scholar who smoked too much pesh, and a spark into his latest concoction blew him into the heavens. I suspect it is poisonous and easy to ignite."
“Pesh as an accelerant?” Aith muses, her eyebrows lifted in bemusement even as part of her brain starts working through some possibilities. She never did much work with the narcotics squad back in Alkenstar, and what little she did was utilitarian in the extreme. “Could get expensive, but also rather interesting.” Time it right, and could you put together a pyrotechnic that stupefies the foe before exploding?
In any case, she takes a cautious sniff to smell if she can narrow things down, and now her brows nearly shoot off her head. “That’s a spirit of sour vitriol! Um, that is, an air that vents from fields of rock oil, volcanoes, some very unlucky wells. Like you say, very poisonous, very combustible. If we had a set of ovens, we could burn it safely into raw sulfur, but – er, anyway, if your eyes start to hurt, we might need to consider our options. That’s a sign of it getting dangerously thick in the air.”
She waves an idle hand in the air - a perhaps alarming (given what the others know about her tendency amenability to forcibly renovate things) offer to try lighting things up with magic, should it prove necessary.
Haleen wipes away a tear from her reddened eyes, and not for being touched by Aith's lecture. "Are we going to stand here and getting poisoned, or exploded, or what is the plan here."
Tariq agrees that mercy is the Lady's gift, and as such they should show merciful themselves.
When Yasmeena comments the story, Tariq's eyes widen. "Dammit. Shall we open it and run away until the vapours disperse?"
Haleen wipes away a tear from her reddened eyes, and not for being touched by Aith's lecture. "Are we going to stand here and getting poisoned, or exploded, or what is the plan here."
[Fort Save DC14]
“Like that,” Aith points out abruptly, waving the others back. Even as she speaks, she notices an incipient burn in her own throat.
“How quickly can everyone turn around? This nonsense is a bit heavier than normal air, so we should be safe if we clear it before looking for where it’s coming from. Comparatively.” She estimates. She’s never worked in the mines either, come to think of it. Cozy offices and labs, mostly, with a few beats that could get more exciting than they needed to sometimes.
“I can try to burn this patch out,” she clarifies, her fingers starting to move in a stylized spellcasting gesture.
Haleen grabs what looks good from the skeleton and dashes back into the tunnel. Even though she has not experienced the full extent of Aithaloessa's questionalbe decisions she has heard all the stories over and over. And once someone becomes the running gag for burning things to the ground, one can't be too careful.
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Omce everyone is behind her, covering their ears, expecting the worst, Aith lights the gas up with a spark. Which causes an explosion. The skeleton is shattered and there is a bang. But this one will not make it into Aithaloessa's incredible stories of wanton destruction. It is too anticlimactic.
One thing that is interesting though is, that part of the floor bobbed. Closer inspection shows a trapdoor.
Below, a natural ladder leads down into a significantly warmer tunnel. After a short passage this opens into a cave with an opening to the outside and two more passages leading further inside. The howling winds outside do little to cool the oppressive heat within this sweltering cavern. Reeking trails of steam and acrid smoke eddy in the eerie light shed by flickering bluish flame that pops and whistles erratically from a crack in the cavern floor. In the middle of the room, a table made of ancient oak supports a few woven baskets and a decrepit clay bowl.
Yasmeena looks pleased with herself, and grins. "I have heard stories about this place, or others like it! The 'Mountain's Maw' it is called, a place where the gods dwell. These baskets suggest sacrifices were fed to the hungry spirits, and perhaps still are?"
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Antarah is impressed with the pro-activeness of the group as he takes a while to digest the new place. In response to Yasmeena's knowledge, he says "Well, I say we don't disturb the hungry spirits. Being here could even be called blasphemous by the salamanders, so I suggest we shuffle out to... that passage"
Aith shrugs: matters of this sort of ritual are best left to clerics and other more pious folk. She’s fine with proceeding without making an offering, but then again, for all her breeziness in such matters, it’s also no problem.
“Are we quite sure the salamanders are the spirits? It would take a moment for me to prepare some goodberries. I have no objection to just going forward, though.”
As you approach the passage leading to the hotter parts of these caves, one of the rocks at the side jumps up. "What do you think you're doing? You're not simply walking into the place of my masters!"
“I beg your pardon,” Aith says politely, glad that it’s not a giant bug or snarling hyaena that’s greeting her and her friends, or other monstrous guardian or mysterious genie conspirator or… Gods help them, but this place is a bit of a mess, isn’t it? “We mean no harm. How may we obtain an introduction?”
She makes sure not to get close to the mephit, knowing that it could throw up an elemental burst to match its nature if it feels threatened.