16 Ready'reat continued.
Just as I had finished healing Verana, we heard a commotion in the mask-hung hall behind us. Apparently, two skulks had snuck up behind Rassi. She later described them as having appeared in the room. Apparently they had been hiding by means of their color-shifting skin. We'll need more careful vigilance to spot them in the future!
Maeglin ran into the fray and began to engage one of the skulks in combat, but Kyrin dropped it instantly with another powerful bolt of magic from his fingertips. The other skulk then backed off, dropping its rapier, pulling out a crossbow, and firing a bolt into the stone wall. Before the skulk could fire again, Tarik dazed him magically. Despite this, the skulk had no trouble dodging my axe as I charged into melee. Thankfully, Verana and Maeg were able to surround the skulk and kill it; Verana with a well-aimed stab from behind, and Maeglin with the finishing blow.
We took the weapons from the dead skulks. I volunteered by pack and dwarven stability to carry our gains; Two rapiers, two crossbows, and 39 bolts. Kyrin searched the wall and found the bolt that the skulk had fired at us. I'm not sure why he bothered, but there you go.
As I packed our loot, we noticed the corpses of the skulks shifting color and pattern to match the rock floor. We briefly discussed the possibility of skinning them and perhaps creating a cloak of camouflage, but decided that time was of the essence, when missing children are on the line.
We squeezed passed door with the deactivated glyph trap, reasoning that this is from whence the skulks had come. We found a crude skulk-barracks with discarded cloaks and ten cots. The cloaks were disgusting an urine-soaked, but in their midst was a sunrod, which we took. We also noticed two tunnels that must have recently been bored. I inspected them closely, noting that the rock had not been hewn by pickaxe nor shovel, nor were these tunnels made by beast or natural means. Some strange machine I have never encountered must have made them, that is all I know.
Based on the locations of rubble, I guessed that south tunnel was the one that was dug into this room, while the other tunnel had been dug out of it. We take the south tunnel, reasoning it might lead to the home of these foul underdark fiends.
Maeg took point, the alien burrow led him into a small gnomish closet, in which a skulk was waiting to surprise him. Maeglin was able to dodge and slay the thing without so much as a scratch. Verana and Maeg noticed an peep-hole in this room. I think the skulk was using it to spy on the next room, an old armory. Verana pulled at the eyehole and found that it opened a secret door. Meanwhile, my companions and I were squeezed in a single-file line in the tunnel, with Rassi guarding our rear. They passed the dead skulks rapier, for me to stow, finding a small chain with a silver key at the same time.
When Maeglin peeped through the peephole, he saw a 15ft room full of empty weapon racks. There was a chest on the floor, atop which sat a silver cage with a star-browed rat inside. Keygan Ghelve's familiar Starbrow!
The Telemmaites carefully entered the room. They were consulting Ghelve's map to find our place when the treasure chest spoke!
"Hi, how are you?" it said.
"I'm doing well, talking chest" said Maeglin, somewhat warily.
The chest and Tarik had a somewhat extended conversation. I wasn't able to hear all of it, but we were able to pick up some interesting tidbits of information be feeding it some trail rations. The chest idly mentioned that it had eaten some adventurers at one points, and they had carried trail rations, which it considered a "chewy center". It must have noticed Tarik's disgust because it clarified that it had been fed corpses of adventurers by its hobgoblin employers.
It told us that the hobgoblins call it "One", and that there was another thing called "Two" under their employ. Apparently they are some form of underdark shape-shifter, not a magical construct made to look like a chest, which I suppose explains its ability to eat rations, though not its expressed desire to eat gold.
He was very loose-lipped for a guardian. He told us that an individual named Kazmojen hired the hobgoblins and Dark Stalkers to steal people from Cauldron and take them down via stairs or elevator to a Dwarf-made stronghold below these ruins. He also mentioned that the leader of the Dark Stalkers was called Yuathyb. Ghelve had mentioned that the dark ones would only ally under a strong leader.
One also told us that the Common name for his species was Mimic, which makes sense. When Maeg asked for the rat cage, he said that mimics emit a viscous substance, but he could remove it to let us take it.
With Ghelve's familiar in hand, and no threat of violence, we decided there was no need to attack the mimic. There was some argument (back in the Skulk barracks) on the matter, especially from Kyrin and Verana, but I suspect they were more motivated by gold than by the desire to exact justice. They said that the mimic was complicit in a slaving operation, and therefore an enemy of morality and justice. That was a good point, so I agreed that if we told the mimic we were here to stop the slavers, and it attacked us, we would be morally obligated to destroy it. In the end, we decided to leave the mimic for now, and explore the rest of the forgotten city.
We followed the other branch of the tunnel and came to a spacious and majestic hall, held up with gnome-shaped pillars, lit with dancing torchlight, and decorated with murals of gnomes cavorting. On the south end there was a statue of a gnome vomiting water into a circular pool. I noticed to piles of rubble near more skulk-made tunnels.
We heard a thunderstone go off, and before we knew it, Maeglin was surrounded by a pair of skulks. Kyrin, Maeg, and Verana took care of one with magic, rapier, and crossbow, while I cut the other one down with my dwaraxe. Everyone but Maeglin got through the melee without a scratch.
Collecting the loot from our victory, we acquired bolts, rapiers, and thunderstones. Verana spotted a small engraved box with lapis lazuli and silver figures, and a crank. We'll have to inspect that more thoroughly later.
Tarik told us that the rule of thumb for dungeoneering is to always take the nearest unexplored left passageway, as we abided by this rule, we (rather, Maeglin, being the one in front, and the passage being narrow) came to a room with an octagonal pool of water fed by more vomiting gnome faces. The room had a narrow stone ledge around the wall near the ceiling, and was filled with large spider's-web. There was a humanoid corpse (later identified as a skulk, so worry not) dangling over the pool, caught in the web.
Something told us that there just might be giant spiders waiting in this room, so we concocted a plan to burn them out. Our map told us that there were two entrances to this room, so Maeglin and Rassi approached the room from either tunnel, with the rest of the party spread out such that we had indirect line-of-sight communication with every member of the party at all times. (It is never a good idea to actually split-up whilst dungeoneering.)
Unfortunately, as Maeglin tried to torch the spiderweb, he was leapt upon by a man-sized spider. Several gnome-sized spiders also appeared, but all of them were soon cut to shreds by Rassi and Maeglin.
After the fight, we noticed that unlike the pool in the large hall, the water here was illusory. Standing on my shoulders, Rassi cut down the desiccated skulk-husk. We found some gems, and a strange stone that Tarik and Kyrin say is a dead ioun stone. Kyrin sets the stone orbiting about his head.
Verana found a secret door behind the illusory water. It led to the upper loft of a storage room filled with rotten soap, expired ale, and other useless wares. We did find some strong hemp rope and nine serviceable torches, which we took.
Next we came to an illusory theatre of some sort. It looked as if the gnomes had put on a play and somehow recorded it magically, allowing them to play it back later. I can't imagine the players' guilds standing for this sort of thing! Imagine only having to pay actors once for infinite performances of a single play! We watched as a gnome in a bear costume did a sonnet, then slept whilst female gnomes dressed as fairies danced. Apparently this was the tale of Willobough Silver Arrow, a dryad that falls in love with a Ranger, only to be carried off and ravaged by his bitter Wereboar nemesis; Moon Tusk.
This was the somewhat disturbing scene playing about us as Maeglin opened a trap door he had noticed on the stage. A non-illusory tentacle reached out and grabbed at him. He deflected it with his shield, only to be pulled down into darkness by another tentacle! Verana managed to slash one of the tentacles with her rapier before they both disappeared back under the stage. Without thinking, I leapt in, swinging my dwaraxe at what I saw in the darkness looked like a fiendish Halfling with mottled flesh, pointy teeth, and razor-tipped tentacles! Tarik and Kyrin fired magic bolts at the thing from above us as it slashed Maeglin with a tentacle-razor. Verana hit it square in the shoulder with an arrow, distracting it long enough for me to decapitate the thing.
Tarik and Kyrin said the creature was a choker. I wonder where they learned about all these abhorrent things? Are they related to Halflings, or do they just look like it? The thing had been guarding a wooden chest, which contained a fine cloak, a small locked spellbook, a six inch wooden wand with doors carved on the sides, and a five inch notched steel rod with a Gnomish “J” rune carved on it. This last object was a key to one of the strange circular doors!
Rassi and Maeglin were rather injured, so we decided to retreat to Ghelve’s shop and rest. The two warriors drank healing potions, and I invoked the divine mountain once more, to further repair the wounded barbarianne.
Verana discovered that the silver key we had found fit Starbrow’s cage, so we released Ghelve’s familiar into his shop. Then we slept.
We marched to the theatre once again, encountering no additional resistance. As we nosed around, Rassi squealed about seeing a cloak and mask hanging in the other doorway. Before we could do anything, she charged almost out of sight, stopping only to receive a hot spray of blood in her face. Whatever she had injured took flight, and she pursued. We caught up to her standing over a dead skulk, but this one was different. It had been wearing a cloak and a mask, perhaps to hide the fact that it was almost transparent! Could this be a symptom of the curse the gnomes called The Vanishing? If so, was it caused by the rooms here? Or perhaps from the cloak or mask the skulk wore?
We picked up a fine quality mandolin in the room with the fallen, Vanishing-infected Skulk. I took this opportunity to ask Kyrin and Tarik if they knew the word "oompacka". The word I had heard the female Last Laugher say as she fled from us. Kyrin said it was a draconic word, probably a command word for a wand. I suppose if we ever encounter the woman again, and manage to put her in prison, where she belongs, we can confiscate and use her wand now. As long as its purpose is not too nefarious. Why am I worrying about this? I’m sure it will never come up again!
Ask I chatted with Kyrin, Verana found a secret room full of props, costumes, and mannequins. We searched for anything of value or use, but didn’t find anything. Perhaps we can come back later and collect them. Even a little bit of coin might help us outfit our company better.
Soon we came to a door marked with a Gnomish J. We decided it would be prudent to wait and open it later, first exploring the open areas. We all had a hunch that the Skulks lacked keys to these doors, which was why they were tunneling about, so we would be more likely to find the route to the Malachite Fortress sooner by keeping to the open areas. Some of us were also worried that the magical traps would go off even if we had the proper keys, but that later proved to be a little too paranoid.
We did walk around the halls, and came to a room that our map told us was the room we would have arrived in, had we unlocked the J-Door. It was a high, octagonal gallery shrouded in web. It looked to have already been looted by the Skulks, but Verana found another secret room. This once appeared to be empty, but she bumped her foot on something invisible lying against the east wall. She pulled at it, and a large cloth appeared in her hand. (Fine material is known to become invisible when draped over an invisible object. Look it up, it’s true!) The cloth had been covering the things in the corner, which we determined by feel to be paintings. At the time we thought they had been enchanted to hide them, but now I think that doesn’t add up. The Gnomes fled this place because of a plague, not an invasion. I think that maybe these paintings might be infected with the curse of The Vanishing. If indeed the curse makes objects and creatures fade into invisibility, as our encounter with the Skulk suggests. At any rate, we decided to leave the heavy paintings safely hidden in the secret room, to be looted and sold off later. Now I think we should study them thoroughly.
We decided to try unlocking the J door from this side, as an experiment. I volunteered my robust Dwarven constitution as a precaution against any magical effects, but of course, there were none. Armed with this knowledge, we followed another Skulk-tunnel out of the gallery.
This led to a small room with a wooden lever in the wall. Our map showed us that the lever was just on the other side of the trap that Verana had fallen into yesterday. She played with toggling the lever, listening the clicking and rumbling it caused, and leaving it in the position we assumed disabled the trap.
Another tunnel led us to a throne room of sorts. A graven throne sat atop a marble stair. An old gnome sat in the throne, snoring away. There were several tree-shaped pillars with frescoes of gnomish faces. Tarik magically divined the nature of the magic in the room, to confirm our hunch that the Gnomish King was an illusion. This was confirmed, and he also informed us that once of the sculpted faces was enchanted.
This information became redundant as soon as the fresco spoke to us. It told us that if we wished an audience with the King, we were to put our finest coin in its mouth. The best we could do was gold, not yet having found any of Jzadirune’s platinum coins. It consumed the coin but then said nothing. We approached the illusory King, and it mumbled something along the lines of: “Betrayed we are by our own magic. One by one we fade away. Jzadirune is lost. Oh how tragic. We curse the Vanishing day.”
“One by one we fade away.” As I write this I am even more convinced that the Skulk Rassi slew had been infected by The Vanishing. I have platinum now, and I think perhaps we should revisit this room…
Verana searched the throne, and found a compartment that opened to reveal 76 gold pieces and two key-rods, marked N and E.
We hiked around after that, filling in our map by opening some nearby N and E doors. We found a room with a large and faintly glowing map on the wall, that matched the map Ghelve had given us exactly.
Some more exploring led us down a narrow tunnel, where I heard my companions ahead whispering, shuffling, and then a sharp, alien gasp. Verana had slain a sleeping Skulk. Perhaps not the most metahumane act, but nothing has yet led me to believe that these things are anything but evil monsters.
Looting the Skulks sleeping quarters, we found a silver ring, and a ewer.