Morgana shakes her head, "Was thinking if we knew about a rash of break-ins, or any ... shadow guilds... doing anything untoward, we could leave behind a sign. But, I don't think we'll have time - so we need to be sure we can clean up after ourselves."
"Okay. I think this place has a dog."
Ty knocks on the front door to see if anyone is home. If there's no answer, he pads around to the back door and gets to work.
”WOOF! WOOF!! WOOOOOOOOOOF!!!” is the reply to Ty’s knocking.
Morgana winces at the bark, "Better hold a moment to make sure they didn't alert anyone... But, unless it's a large pack, I can probably put them all to sleep."
Assuming nobody comes to the door, Ty leads Morgana around back and opens the door when Morgana is ready.
Nobody comes to the door. Ty leads you around back and quite successfully springs the lock on the rear door of the distillery. Opening it a crack, you're greeted with the warm breath and vicious growl of a guard dog, but Morgana's spell puts the pooch to lalaland...for the next three minutes.
You waste no time relocking the rear door, and making your way to the cellar, and shutting the cellar door behind you. Once free to look around, you give the basement a thorough study, especially the walls on the Arch side of the building. It takes you a few minutes to find one section of cellar wall with two carved unicorns, their horns crossed in the shape of an X. After a bit more investigation, Ty reasons out that the carved eyes of the unicorns can be moved. Pushing neither seems to do anything, until Richard hits upon the idea of pushing both, and then the entire section of wall swings inwards, revealing a narrow passageway--a narrow passageway surprisingly devoid of dust. A quick investigation indicates the reason why.
Fifteen feet down, on your left, is an opening, which is indicated on your map. This small chamber has been filled to the ceiling with casks of brandy, similar to those you saw topside in the distillery. Ty has a sneaking suspicion that the owner of this distillery has found this passage himself and uses this room to hide product from the excisemen.
You follow the map for another fifty feet before the passage suddenly ends at a large pile of rubble. The rubble seems to have been deliberately placed here, though whether from this side or the other, you can't be sure. It takes you a good hour to move enough debris to make a passage you can all crawl through.
Once through, you barely make any move at all before the sound of humanoid voices brings you to a halt. You have a passage of fifty feet in length ahead of you before any branching, and light flickers faintly from that crossing up ahead.
Are you all moving as a group or is somebody scouting?
You move down the 50-ft passageway, with Ty a short distance ahead. On either side of the opening, the walls bear the white chalk ghost cartoons Ty has come to learn are the symbol of the Thin Wisps, the local thieves’ guild. It would seem the distiller isn’t the only Corentynite who has used the ancient Slaverun to hide illicit goods.
In the larger room, dozens of chests sit neatly on shelves cut into the rock walls, or wooden shelves built in the middle of the room. Two men work to carry one chest in from outside, while a third takes inventory of a second. They haven’t noticed you. You have no cover, though given how disused the passage that you’re currently in is, they would have no reason to come over and spot you.
The passage you need to take, according to your map, is on the other side of the thirty-foot wide room. Another passage, presumably leading to their hideout and from where they brought the chest, sits in the east wall.
Ty slips back to the others, very quietly explains the situation, and advises being ready for a fight if they attack, but otherwise waiting them out.
It’s a nerve-wracking ten minutes as the thieves tend their treasure room, but none of them come over to your corridor, and you aren’t discovered. Then they’re gone, and you are free to slip across the chamber and into the far passageway. Anybody care to grab themselves a souvenir?
Unfortunately, you make it about twenty feet up the far passage when you nearly bump into two boys, human, around 12 or 13 years old, coming out of a little side room, hand-in-hand. They quickly drop their hands, looking mortified, then realize you are strangers, and reach for daggers on their belts.
Let's see if they're any better than the guard dog..., Morgana thinks as she reaches to the wellspring of strange power within herself and throws another sleep spell.
The two boys fall peacefully into each others’ arms.
"Nice. How long are they going to sleep for?"
Once Ty here's the answer, he mentions that they'll probably get company soon, so they should advance as much as they can. Assuming that the next bit of the passage is safe (since the boys just came from that direction), he doesn't check for tracks for the next few minutes.
Indeed, the way seems safe. You head along the passage, sloping gently uphill for a few minutes before encountering a large opening in the floor, with a rope and pulley system installed over it. It would seem that one way the Thin Wisps move their loot is to raise or lower it into a ship that would be anchored 100 feet below the Arch. Nobody is here at the moment, so you move on.
The process of traveling the Slaverun is long and tedious. Occasional gaps in the floor (once used to dump refuse and debris from the process of creating this passageway) now let in fresh air and a dizzying look down to the water below. With your map, you're able to easily avoid getting lost or wasting time with wrong turns, as the Slaverun is not just a straight passage. Why they would have wasted time and effort to craft a maze, you don't know, but perhaps it was for the event of pursuit within the Run itself.
For the first half-mile past the thieves' pulley, thick dust on the floor indicates that you are the first to travel this way in at least a century. Then, signs of other habitation begin to appear. Some are insect footprints, though much bigger than any bug has the right to be. Others are humanoid in stride, even if not appearance.
So it's not as shocking as it could otherwise have been, when you round a corner and find yourselves face to face with a partially-decayed human. Clearly too quick to be a simple zombie, and without the smell and elongated face of ghoul. It makes no small talk, however, and its eyes blaze red as it lunges for you.
Valla casts guidance and touches Edward, giving him a +1 to his next d20 roll.
Sir Rollynd slashes at the creature.
Ty and Richard, then the creature.
Morgana says, "About 5 minutes. Long enough to gag them and lock them in a crate, in any case."
Morgana hisses, "Wight. It'll feed on your life energies. Careful."
Morgana says, "About 5 minutes. Long enough to gag them and lock them in a crate, in any case."
Ty will insist on not tying the boys up, as there's no guarantee that the group will be coming back this way to free them. And if they're found by the Thin Whisps, they could be beaten or worse.
Later, after Morgana reveals what she knows about the undead in front of the party, Ty pulls out his wand of Hide from Undead and hands it to Valla.
"Valla! Hide from undead! The command word is 'Umbramort!'"
Richard's bolt sears the decaying flesh as Sir Rollynd's sword exposes more of it to the outside air.
The wight swings at the halfling warrior.
Fortunately, his armour and shield are more than up for the task of deflecting the deadly blow.
Everybody else is up.
Edward wastes no time in drawing his sword and moving toward the abomination and attacking it.
That wound is deep indeed. Flaming bits of entrails drop away all around the creature.
Morgana, then the top of the order again.
Morgana keeps back, quickly chanting a very familiar spell, before pointing a finger and firing a ray of eldritch energy that warps the unliving.
for
Morgana's ray blasts a hole in the centre of the creature. It's holding together by a thread (of sinew).
Valla takes the wand, but doesn't seem inclined to use it now that the creature is almost dead. Plus, this enemy at least, doesn't seem to be gunning for her specifically. She renews the guidance on Edward.
Turns out if she'd used it on Sir Rollynd, the combat would probably be over, but the paladin misses, leaving it up to Ty and Richard to hopefully bring it down.
And he's right. The wight burns, falls, and continues to burn.
Sadly, the poor, misunderstood creature had no treasure to further enrich the narrow-minded murder hobos. Valla returns Ty his wand with a nod of thanks.
You continue on for quite a ways without incident, covering nearly a mile of gloomy, winding tunnels, until light suddenly floods in from below Edward's feet as the rock floor suddenly gives way. The wide shoulders of his armour prevent him from slipping all the way through to a lethal 200-foot drop to the Inner Sea below!!
The floor begins to spiderweb out from Edward's position. Clearly the rock won't hold him for long (or the rest of you in the immediate area for that matter).
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He's dangling and stuck, and the spiderwebbing is in all directions.
You could still make a run for it, of course. Just saying. It's not like this group doesn't come with a spare Iomedae paladin.
"Oh, s~~#!" Ty expresses eloquently before grabbing something grab-able on Edward's armor and trying to pull him up.
If he needs help, he'll say, "Help me pull him up!" in case it wasn't obvious.
Finding himself unable to move any which way and get loose, Edward sighs. Well, this is another fine mess I've gotten myself into.
Looking to the others as Ty tries to pull him up, "Yes, please all, help him pull me up. I would be ever so grateful. I'm fairly decent at shining shoes. I could possibly attempt a song and dance routine for any of you but it's probably wise to save that as a dying wish. As in, after you've already died. That way, if there's someone that actually comes to your funeral that you just flat out abhor, then that would be some small measure of 'revenge', if you will. I am nothing if not honest about my talent(s) or lack thereof," he admits, smiling.
Sir Rollynd scampers clear of the weakened stone, then pulls a length of silk rope from his pack. ”Loop it around your shoulders and under your arms, if you can.”
Edward will work to do exactly as Sir Rollynd instructed.
Is he pulling on Edward or the rope?
Morgana says, "Edward, hold the rope with both hands -- I'll make you easier to pull... Don't resist the magic."
With Morgana's spell, you are easily able to haul Edward out of the hole and prevent any further damage to the surrounding rock as you all scramble to safety.
Unfortunately, according to your map, there isn't another way around. The floor might hold on your way back...
Moving on, you travel to what you estimate to be halfway to the end when you hit a solid wall. According to your map, there should be a secret door leading to an area underneath First Tower, a Chelish military installation that garrisons a small group of soldiers (topside) along with ballistae for firing on enemy ships down below. The underparts are used to store supplies and house prisoners.
At least, that's what it was used for long ago. You have no idea if the military still uses it for that purpose (though you do know that First Tower is still manned).
Finding the mechanism is easy enough, as the secret door isn't meant to be hidden from this side. However, before you open it, both Edward and Richard spot a small opening that serves as a peep hole, not readily apparent because there's no light on the other side. Their darkvision is enough to let you know that the immediate area around the secret door is currently clear.
Ty gives the secret-from-the-other-side door a once over for traps. If he doesn't find any, he'll open it.
The secret door opens haltingly, as it's concealed hinges clearly haven't been worked for some time. Several crates and barrels reveal that this is a store room of some kind, still in regular use. A thick wooden door leads out: the door is not locked.
Listening at the door, you hear no footsteps or voices immediately outside, but you do faintly hear the sound of someone singing. His voice is small, so either a teenager or maybe a halfling, and rough like he's been singing for a long time. The song is a particularly unflattering ditty about what a group of soldiers and an incubus could get up to, to the detriment of both. The singing doesn't seem to be coming from the immediate area outside the door, and Ty finds no traps.
Cracking open the door reveals a 10-foot wide hallway running across your path. 15 feet to your left is a stone spiral staircase leading up to the tower and garrison. Directly across is another thick wooden door, a twin to the one you just opened. 15-feet to your right, the passage ends with an iron barred prison door. It's from inside this door that the singing comes.
"Ha!" the singer calls out as your light appears in the corridor. "Come to prove your manhood by beating up a chained slip again, eh? It's okay. I'll try not to hurt your fists with my face as much this time."
Ty replies, in the halfling language, "I don't really want to ruin my perfect fists with any teeth marks, so I'm gonna pass. In fact, if you keep it down, you probably won't draw any attention from the garrison, and that will work out bets for both of us."
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"What are you saying Ty? I don't recognize that language."
To the captive Richard says "We are not here to hurt you and hope that you have no intent to harm us. If you convince my friend here" Richard points to Ty "that you are no threat to us, we will see what we can do to release you from your confinement."
At the sound of seemingly friendly voices, the prisoner immediately stops his noise and becomes serious.
In Common, he says, ”Did Kantha send you? No matter. I won’t punch your face when I see you but I may kiss it if you’re here to let me out. I’m no danger to you and I’ll owe you an unending favour for life if you could just see it to unlock this door and these fetters.”
Then he resumes his loud singing.
Raising an eyebrow, "Kantha? Is that the one who has imprisoned you?"
"No, but if you don't know who she is, then she didn't send you. What are you even doing here? No, wait, I don't care. I really don't. Look. I won't hurt you. I never hurt anybody, I just relieved a government warehouse of some items, and got caught, and I'm a halfling, so I don't really exist. There's no trial, at least no real one, and now I'm here for the soldiers to practice torture techniques on. Please, for the love of whatever god you hold dear, let me out."
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"Well, the country of Cheliax is not the greatest place for halflings, I think we can all agree on that. So, what should we call you?"
Richard looks over at Ty
"Did he convince you?"
Turning back to the halfling
"You see, my friend here is the only one of us with the skills necessary to free you and it is really up to him."
"My name is Jax, and you aren't kidding. But some money to be made, for sure, for sure. When you aren't in a cell being some Hellknights' favourite practice dummy."
Richard doesn't sense any deception. Looking through the bars, the state of the man speaks to the truth of his words: he's been really worked over.