Balabar Smenk aka Navior's page

Smenk chuckles and drinks down the rest of his wine. "Clever argument, m'boy," he says as he stands up and places the glass down on the table. [b]"But the answer's still no. I'm not about to pay ye for doin' something you'd be doin' anyway. Indeed, I've just given ye some useful information to help ye perform that task. If anything, ye should be payin' me for me services. However, given the urgency of the task, I'm willin' to waive me usual fee."

He pats Venedictus on the arm and turns to the door chuckling. "I won't hold ye up any further. I know ye've got important business to attend to. Help yerselves to the wine on yer way out." He opens the door and heads through it, closing it again behind him. You can hear him laughing in the hall. The laughter fades into the distance.

Smenk laughs. "Money? Ye want money? Ha!" He shifts position in his chair and takes another sip of wine. "Listen, mate. I'm not a poor man. That's for sure. But do ye know why I'm not poor? It's because I don't foolishly throw me money around. That's why. Dourstone's guards ain't going to be bribed without a fair bit of coin. Seeing as I have full confidence that a resourceful group such as yours can find other means into the mine, it just ain't a wise investment for me, is it?"

"That's more like it!" Smenk says. He gets up and pours himself another drink of wine. After taking a sip, he continues, "I don't have a map to provide ye with, but I can give you a basic idea of the layout of the place. Ye want to make for their Dark Cathedral or whatever it is they call the damned place. Ye need to enter the mine itself. There's an elevator down one of the closed shafts. The miners are told that it leads to caverns that are being explored before mining can begin in them or somethin' like that."

He sits down again and takes another sip of wine. "When ye go down the elevator, ye'll come out in that area with the pool I mentioned. From there, there are three separate entrances. Each one goes into an area dedicated to one of the three gods they worship: one for Zon-Kuthon, one for Urgathoa, and one for Lamashtu. The only one I've seen much of is the one to Zon-Kuthon. It's like a whole blasted house of horrors under the ground. Torture instruments galore, and a training area for warriors. It's got this massive huge statue and balconies along three of the walls."

Smenk smirks. "I didn't. I supplied him with the food he asked for. Tried to turn a blind eye to their activities while I waited for me mate, Filge, to complete his investigation. It was only when Filge was killed that I told them I was out. That's when they sent me right-hand man's head as a warnin' to me. As ye can see, the Faceless One certainly ain't the kind o' bloke to take no for an answer."

"Dirty work?" Smenk scoffs. "I want to clean up this town. Ye may not like the place, but when that cult starts killin' everyone about, then I bet ye'll sit up and listen. But if ye're really the heroes ye claim to be, then ye'll do somethin' about it before it reaches that point. As for proof, I can only tell ye what I saw. There's some sort of pool down there. It's filled with...well, blackness. Not nothing. I mean unholy blackness. There was a ritual going on when I first went down there as they took me to their Dark Cathedral. Circles of robed figures ringed the pool, and beneath the robes I saw...appendages. Twitching tails, hints of feathers I think. Their chants echoed off the walls like a chorus of croaking frogs and screaming children. And the whole while, ol' Ragnolin Dourstone didn't seem the slightest bit disturbed."

He pauses again to sip his wine. "Ragnolin and the Faceless One both went on about somethin' they called the Age of Worms. 'All must be prepared,' they said, or words to that effect, 'for the Age of Worms is upon us.' I don't know what that means, but that's why I nicked the green worm. It seems to have something to do with their plans.

"Now, obviously you and I don't see eye to eye about a number of things. I accept that. Ye don't like me much and I suspect if I got to know ye better, I wouldn't like you much either. But we're both in this situation together. Yeah, they're likely to come after me first, which is why I'm panicking a little. I don't deny that. But then they'll be comin' after you, mates. They'll be comin' after each and every person in this town and beyond.

"Now, ye can run away, or ye can act like the heroes ye claim to be and do somethin' to put an end to this cult once and for all. I already know ye've got ideas in that direction, else fatso over there wouldn't have been seen at the mine trying to weasel a way into it for ye all. I've given ye some useful information. Use it or not. Your choice. But if ye don't, don't come whinin' to me when the situation gets beyond your control. I'll probably be dead by that point at any rate." He downs the rest of his drink in one gulp.

"Yes, ummm, neither am I," Venedictus says, refusing a drink.

I think a bluff check is in order for that though: 1d20+5

Smenk Sense Motive: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (7) + 9 = 16

Smenk smirks. "That ain't what I've heard me lad, but suit yourself." He sits down in one of the chairs and takes another sip of his wine. "So, you're the one's I've been hearin' about." He looks at each of the group in turn, then takes another sip of wine.

"There's an evil at work in this town, mates. And bein' the noble heroes that ye are, I figured ye'd want to know a little about it. There's terrible things happening beneath Dourstone Mine. Now, I know what ye're thinkin'. That I'm just trying to cast aspersions against me rivals, but that ain't the case. They make aspersions against themselves without m'help. No, when I say evil, I mean evil that makes me skin crawl.

"They call themselves the Ebon Triad. A weird cult that worships Zon-Kuthon, Urgathoa, and Lamashtu as some sort of three-in-one god. They believe that those three are going to join together and become some sort of supreme overgod or some such nonsense. Now, I don't believe a word of that, but whether they're or wrong isn't the point. The cult is dangerous. They're led by a bloke named the Faceless One. They call him that because he always wears a mask to hide his face. Don't know why he does that. Don't care. He's a nasty one. Believe me, I've met him."

He pauses a moment to take another sip of wine. "Now, ye may be wonderin' how I came to meet this bastard. He's runnin' his operation from Dourstone Mine, and what was I doin' there? Well, Dourstone contacted me some time ago with some ideas to further cooperation between our businesses, ideas he said would be beneficial to us all. Well, I resisted for some time, but the other mine managers were startin' to get in on it too, so I agreed to a meeting. They brought me down into the mine where I met this Faceless One. He demanded that I start supplyin' his operation with food from up here. His cultists, many of which are not human, can't walk openly in the city, so they need a supply line. He wanted me to be that line.

"At first, I was willin' to work a deal. For the right price, I could acquire food, but as he showed me around, I started to get suspicions. Fear is a rare feelin' for me, mates, but I tell you, I started feelin' it down there. Something just ain't right about those people. So I started workin' a plan.

"They've got these strange green worms, apparently from some kind of unkillable zombie. Well, I nicked meself one, and called in an old friend of mine from Kaer Maga. He was an expert in the undead. He came down and set up in the old observatory north of town to research that worm for me. Unfortunately, they must have found out about him because he's dead now. They tried to make it look like he'd lost control of his undead minions, but they did a poor job of it.

"So I sent word to them that I was out. They would get no more food from me. Yesterday mornin', I awoke with the head of me right hand man next to me. In me bed! They had somehow snuck in in the middle of the night, got into me bedroom, left the head, and got out again without anyone the wiser. I'm telling you, I ain't never been so scared before in me life!

"Mates, somethin' has to be done about that cult, and that's where you come in. Surely, fine, upstanding heroes like yourselves won't allow something like this to go on in your fair town."

After several minutes, the door opens again and Balabar Smenk enters the room. He's a rather ugly individual with a scowl on his wide face. He's not very tall, but he's thick-boned and just a little chubby so he looks bigger than he really is. He's bald on the top of his head, but has thick and tangled gray hair on the sides of his head. He positively reeks of the cologne you've been made to wear. The avatar picture is the actual picture of Smenk from the adventure.

He looks you over and scowls when he see Kullen with you. "Kullen, get lost," he says. Kullen nods and scurries from the room.

Once Kullen is gone, he heads over to the table, pours a glass of wine, and takes a sip. "Wine?" he offers.