Stoneheart met the party the next morning (rather late, thanks to all the spell memorization; Stoneheart was not pleased), and they set off down a long stairway. The stairs led to an old temple that had once been consecrated to Juiblex (and then cleaned out about 250 years ago), but Stoneheart was only taking them down to an ancient labyrinth on the level above it.
After descending about 300', Stoneheart led the party into the maze, where he was expecting to find some umber hulk activity. Silvana cast a pile of bat senses to cut down the confusion risk (at least for a while). The first room the party passed through held a pedestal with the remains of a statue (currently just a pair of bird-like legs). Stoneheart led the party past a pit that had been a favorite umber hulk ambush spot for a while (the dwarves had eventually built a walkway spanning it); Silvana spotted some snakes at the bottom. The next room held the remains of an altar and a big hole in the wall that led into the umber hulk tunnels.
The party moved into the tunnel, and after a while it doubled back and led them past the snake pit they'd crossed earlier. A bit further along, the party encountered a group of umber hulks. The grunts were unsuccessful in their various attempts to cause a rockfall on the party, and the stoneskinned leader was unsuccessful in attempting to fire a lightning bolt down the tunnel (mainly because magic missile has a shorter casting time). Eventually the party killed the umber hulks (netting Thorongil some charges for his shield), and Silvana hoped the mage was the local leader-type.
During the combat, Ganeth's own stoneskins started popping for no apparent reason. When G cast DI, all he picked up was an astral strand terminating somewhere behind him and moving with him. A few rounds (and pops) later, Beeel located a scarab planted under Ganeth's cloak, knocked it off, and smashed it. His first smack shattered an Abbathor gem on the scarab's back (hooray for bat sense -- when you see an Abbathor gem, you have a tendency to either stare at it or pick it up, and the second is especially nasty when it's attached to a scarab of death), and a few more whacks flattened the scarab itself.
People going around undetected planting scarabs at the back of the party is very bad thing, and the party decided to press on as quickly as possible (after a few rounds of healing, that is).
After walking for a few minutes, Stoneheart stopped and asked for a light source. Silvana pulled one out in time to see a grey ooze slithering along the floor of the passage. The ooze was spotted far enough away that the party could missile it to death before it closed, and Stealth used an unseen servant to clear a path through the acidic corpse.
The umber hulk tunnel emerged into a 20'x20' room of presumably older construction, featuring a several-days-dead githyanki being molested by large (i.e., 2') black spiders (with red markings). The spiders were individual spellcasters (though they might have been able to do group castings as well), but they didn't manage to get any spells off before dying. A round after dying, the corpses each exploded in a minor blast (2-5 hp within 1', 1 hp within 3').
After some examination, the party found a soft bootprint on one of the walls of the room (Thorongil thought it might be from some flavor of elf/drow) and a puncture wound on the githyanki. Whatever damage the spiders inflicted appeared to be post-mortem, so the best guess for cause of death was a wall-crawling assassin with a blowgun. The body had been looted, and several ransacked pouches had disarmed traps on them, so a comptent thief had certainly come through. (The rangers also found regular and phase spider tracks in the area.)
The githyanki had a communication device on its belt, with an open channel to Jute the druid. Silvana talked with Jute for about two seconds before passing him off to Ganeth. During the conversation, G learned that the dead githyanki was named Kikalik and was Jute's liason with some other githyanki. Last Jute had heard (about a day earlier -- interesting, since the corpse looked several days old), Kikalik was aboard a ship headed for Banzeel to meet someone called Hektor (who Jute assumed Ganeth would know -- overall, Jute was pleased that G's participation was definite, and G made no attempt to correct the erroneous assumption). Jute assumed that the spiders were responsible for Kikalik's death (perhaps having attacked his ship); G indicated that it didn't look like they had done the actual killing. When G asked how things were going in the Banditlands, Jute replied that things were under control and his finger was on schedule, but "the council isn't exactly pleased with this whole deal, as you can imagine, and my side's not getting stronger with time." Jute asked whether G would be ready to go strike in month and requested that he contact the githyanki (whose participation was critical) about getting a new liason; G said he'd see what he could do on both counts.
In the end, all Jute got (aside from the belief that G was part of whatever operations were going on) was that Ganeth had been indisposed for a while, that Kikalik's body was underground somewhere that wasn't near Banzeel, .... Jute wanted to meet G's team in person (via a tree Silvana could create), but Ganeth declined, saying that he wanted to stay in the area and keep it clear until he could determine what had happened to Kikalik. Jute asked G to second his proposal for the "alliance" to have a face-to-face meeting to help the parties involved learn to work together; G said he'd pass it along.
Silvana examined the communication box while G was wrapping up the conversation. The device was electrically trapped; removing the blue gem that powered the trap also shut down the device. (The box had nothing resembling a switch, so it was trapped whenever it was active -- unless you're immune to electricity like a githyanki.)
Ganeth spotted something small, grey-cloaked, humanoid, and invisible flitting by in the north passageway; it was gone before he could try to faerie fire it. The party headed up that passage and came to a room with a pool of dark water and a lot of slime.
- Ganeth:
- "So, what was this Juiblex temple like before it was cleaned out?"
- Stoneheart:
- "I wasn't here personally, but the high priest says that the humans tamed these slimes and had them do their bidding. Though the dwarves cleansed this area with fire, some small number of slimes (or their spores) must have escaped the cleansing."
- Ganeth:
- "Or someone's started restocking the area."
- Silvana:
- "Some of the Juiblex priests can turn into puddings."
- Beeel:
- "Can they turn back from puddings to humans?"
The party passed through that room without incident and continued down the passageway. The next room was empty except for a metal carpet with a githigram lying in the corner. According to Stoneheart, the carpet hadn't been there a month earlier. Ganeth looked at the carpet more closely and found it was technological, with wires running through the githigram. Silvana used a githyanki tool to cut a bunch of the wires; when the carpet crackled and started giving off black smoke, Stoneheart whacked it with his axe and broke it in two.
Silvana figured the party had made enough trouble for one day, so they turned to leave. Beeel and Thorongil both thought there was more slime in the passageway than there had been a few minutes ago, so Stealth rolled an Alcoreax down the tunnel to freeze the big green slime lurking on the ceiling. As he did this, a dozen 3'-tall trolls attacked the party from the room with the ruined carpet. A long and unpleasant combat followed, made worse when Zenig criticaled and hit Ganeth just as he was casting a burning hands onto four of the little monsters. And let's not forget the infighting between Frankel and Stoneheart after Frankel started to talking to the trolls he was fighting.
- Stoneheart:
- "What are we waiting for? It's just like a kobold to take a break and talk to his fellow monsters."
- Frankel:
- "In my natural state I'm 10 feet tall. Have you noticed the dungeon might not quite fit me?"
- Stoneheart:
- "I have only your word to go on. I've only seen you in your current unfortunate body."
- Frankel:
- "And I in yours."
- Stoneheart:
- "You dare insult the form of Moradin!!!? You come over here and say that, you rotten minion of Kurtulmuk!"
- Silvana:
- "No, no. It wasn't meant as an insult. It was a statement of fact."
- Stoneheart:
- "What are you saying is a fact?"
- Silvana:
- "It's a fact that Frankel is 10 ft tall in his normal form and doesn't fit into a dungeon. No criticism was intended on the builders of the dungeon."
- Beeel:
- "Unless you want to be surrounded by twelve healthy trolls in a few minutes, please get to work chopping the downed ones to pieces."
The more talkative of Frankel's troll parleyers said it had been sent by Mistress Greymantle, the dwarf who brought them to the caverns (and the only dwarf they respect). When Frankel asked if Greymantle worshipped Abbathor, he found out that the trolls worshipped Greymantle, who they believed was going to become a god. (Sound like anyone we know?) Greymantle's instructions for the present combat were to kill and eat everyone but the dwarf.
- Frankel: [trollish]
- "I don't think she's a dwarf at all. She'll use you, chew you up and spit you out. You'd be better off without her. We don't know her real name, but some friends of mine temporarily beat her once, and she's licking her wounds down here, planning her next move, and obviously using you for it. Do you like being used?"
- Troll: [trollish]
- "I don't mind being used, as long as it pays well, no. I have to earn money to pay off my loans."
- Thorongil: [common]
- "Frankel, show that you can talk and fight at the same time."
The very talkative troll survived the combat. The other troll who'd stopped fighting during the chat was eventually killed by Stoneheart.
- Frankel: [grumbling]
- "Grumpy, hero about town, attacking the one peaceful creature not in the party. Big of him. Attacking the one creature that wasn't fighting back, and wasn't going to fight back after he regenned. Big hero Grumpy!"
Stealth used an Evard's to plug the passage behind the trolls and prevent more stuff from arriving; unforunately, it didn't do anything to stop the yellow/green gas that started coming up the passageway. (The gas was moving 10' per segment, which Ganeth noted was too fast for a cloudkill, but the party still didn't to find out what the stuff really was.) Stealth blocked the gas with a windwall, Ganeth used his remaining mothballs to mix flammable gas into the stuff on the poison side of the wall, and Silvana stuck a flame blade through the wind wall to blow the whole mess (and singe all the downed trolls the party had tossed through the wind wall -- all but three were incinerated).
The party headed back across the Alcoreax'd slime, trying to get out of the dungeon. Frankel heard a soft pitter-patter from the room behind them; a moment later, everyone heard a muffled thud and a trollish scream. After that, everything was quiet.
- Ganeth:
- "Alas, poor x6. We knew it well. Actually, we didn't and we're not going to mourn, but it seemed appropriate."
As the party prepared to move back into the umber hulk tunnels, Stoneheart saw a hulk ducking out of sight up ahead. He, Beeel, and Zenig closed and saw the hulk trying to collapse the tunnel ahead of them. Stoneheart's initial strike missed but was good enough to dispel the umber hulk illusion, revealing a black pudding. He warned the others not to attack and make it split, but Zenig thought he could one-shot it with Eluna and gave it a shot. He discovered that Eluna could only do its big zap once a day, and overall he'd though pretty wrong. The split puddings were too small for Ganeth to target with spells from the back of the party, and the two pudding parts used their separate attacks to jointly kill Stoneheart. Zenig managed to scramble back and bring the puddings into range of the party, and nobody else died.
During the combat, Silvana heard someone behind the party speaking in dwarvish. She and Thorongil went scouting and spotted two grey dwarves riding large spiders and consulting a map. The spiders were contentedly munching on food from their nose-bags. The scouts returned, and Silvana revived Stoneheart.
The spiders caught up to the party and started attacking, while some ventriloquist made it sound like they were spouting stupid pro-Rakni slogans (though the effect wasn't cool enough to make the spiders' mandibles look like they were moving). Zenig identified the spiders as "steeders", which live underground, jump, have sticky legs, and are generally not poisonous. These spiders actually were poisonous, but nobody died. The duergar had cast invisibility, but neither Thorongil (making his saves) nor Ganeth (using DI) were fooled. One had a lance ready but didn't get to do anything with it (aside from drop it and become visible on a critical miss); the other was quietly focusing on an amulet that presumably either controlled the spiders or generated the ventiloquism. With a touch of irony, Stealth summoned some large spiders to deal with the steeders, and both duergar were captured.
The duergar who spoke common spun a tale of being kidnapped and forced to serve Rakni's evil ambitions, but nobody bought it. He also said that he'd die if his amulet was removed., so G removed it and the duergar did a pathetic death routine.
- Ganeth:
- "You're no Spider Monk."
- Duergar:
- "I made my save. Looks like Mordain saved me."
The party continued retracing their steps. When they reached the room where they'd first entered the hulk tunnels, Beeel saw a dead ringer for the robed figure from G's whilg vision sitting on the ruined altar. As the party moved into the room (better than getting bottled up in the passageway), the talkative duergar recognized the figure as the Shade Lord. The figure said, "Wait," the party didn't, and a bald gnome stood up behind the altar.
- Gnome:
- "I said wait! D o y o u u n d e r s t a n d s u r f a c e c o m m o n?"
- Silvana:
- "Yes. What do you want?"
- Gnome:
- "I appear to be slightly lost. I'm looking for a high elf named G. I've never seen a high elf before..."
The gnome came along with the party and the prisoners, and everyone made it back to the long stairway without anything else interesting happening.
The gnome, who was a fighter/illusionist/thief named Qwerk, had a major problem: Though he could saw some things about where he was from and why he was on the surface, there were other things he couldn't communicate (by speaking, by writing, by stomping his feet, or by any other means anyone could think of), such as who had sent him on his mission, who hadn't sent him on his mission, and so forth. (Repeated attempts to find a clever way around the block nearly gave Qwerk a heart attack.)
Back wherever it was Qwerk had come from, the local High Priest of Garl had played a little prank and pissed off some unspecified beings. Said entities then put all the gnomes into stasis, except for Qwerk, who they sent to recover the Hand of Vekannar. When Qwerk comes home with the hand, the other gnomes get out of statis. Qwerk didn't anything about what the artifact does, but the Shade Lord (who Qwerk had also seen in stasis, allowing him to generate the illusion of her -- he couldn't say who had showed her to him or where he'd been at the time, though he could say that he'd been told she was the Shade Lord; Silvana figured it was probably one of her simalcra) had chopped off her own hand and grafted this one on, so it's bound to be pretty cool.
After receiving his orders, Qwerk was dumped into the domain of Vraaka, "a `minor' demon. Minor among demons." (Ganeth recalled that the birdlike feet of the ruined statue might have been vrocklike.) Qwerk believed that the demon denizens were being held captive somewhere, making his journey possible. While in Vraaka's domain, he met Nuket (appearing as a traditional surface wizard in search of power), who told him that a high elf called G was planning to kill the Shade Lord and might let him take the hand back afterwards; she gave him a gem that would let him know when he was close to G and a ring that allowed him to speak Western Common, and she told him that Ganeth spoke gnomish. (Thus Ganeth blew his cover when he started speaking gnomish, trying to talk to the gnome in a language the duergar might not understand.) Qwerk ended up following the duergar through Vraaka's domain, and then he found the party.
Qwerk was quite curious about Frankel, since kobolds have been wiped out on his world (leaving only some stories about a kobold named Kurteelmook), and he was a little sad to learn that Frankel wasn't a real kobold.
- Qwerk:
- "Do you mind awfully if I try to punch you? You can try to parry, of course. I would be doing this entirely in friendship. It's just that kobolds have been wiped out back home, and I want to see how deeply ingrained this racial `hatred' really is. Not that I have any ill-will towards you, my friend. I consider this to be purely an academic exercise."
- Frankel agrees, Qwerk takes a swing, and Frankel parries him with 10 to spare.
- Qwerk:
- "Wow. In the legends, kobolds seemed somewhat less impressive."
Other trivia about Qwerk's homeworld: Grey dwarves there trade in black pearl (unlike surface dwarves, who pretty much loathe all manner of pearls). Water should have a healthy green glow; obviously all the local stuff has gone stale or bad. Water comes into the world through springs from the "place of water", flows to the green sea, and travels on into another world through a whirlpool at the sea's center -- but the water's pretty much used up by then anyway. Other inhabitants include halfling fungus farmers (who were "not directly, to the best of my knowledge" associated with Qwerk's quest), drow, fish men (who live near the green sea -- kuo-toa?), illithids (whose tadpoles can be found in the green sea's tide pool -- they have tadpoles?), and the occasional umber hulk. Aboleth are rumored to exist as well.
Meanwhile, the talkative duergar didn't say anything remotely useful (though he did say a lot of garbage in classic obfuscating operative style). Both duergar had a decent assortment of thief tools in a decent assortment of hiding places (though Mr. Talkative won the contest with a barbed garotte hidden in his thick but hollow boot sole), along with specially silenced chain mail, amulets, and magical envenomed daggers (tokens of Abbathor). Their map showed a maze of tunnels with various visible and invisible runes and markings; Qwerk said it looked like a map of Vraaka's domain. After Silvana summoned the Whitemoon translator, the sullen duergar confessed that they were working for Darkbeard, a powerful black-skinned priestess for whom Greymantle was a stupid name. Darkbeard had given the duergar amulets that protected them from the slimes and puddings.
Back in the dwarven caverns proper, the duergar were turned over to the local authorities, and FBD came to hear more of the business with Qwerk. Both the duergars' map (which was magical) and Qwerk's description of Vraaka's domain seemed to fit what was known about the Veins of Abbathor, but FBD had never heard anything about vrocks being down there.
The general consensus was that while some of the trolls and the umber hulk leader had been dealt with, there was still plenty to worry about. The duergar and Qwerk's presence could indicate an open gate to the Underdark, the hordlings could be coming through an another open gate, and a true shade running around below you is never a good thing.
- FBD:
- "The scarab of death with the gem of abbathor is a very bad sign. It means that Ganeth has somehow angered the highest echelons of the Abbathor cult."
- Ganeth:
- "Or I just happened to be standing in the back."
Silvana bought the Gem of Ganeth Location from Qwerk, she and G exchanged sending permissions with him, the dwarves brought out Krovac's gagged and shackled body, and the party prepared to leave before the cream of the nasties below came up lookng for them.