In our last session, the party pressed on in their Underdark travels back towards Pedestal. Skarr fell in battle against hook horrors and gnolls. A new ally joined the group, Fletcher, who has ties to Caill Dafad! And Jubi learned that there are, indeed, those in the Underdark who are successful at romance…or at least have a date with a drow. By the end of the session, the party had just arrived at the entrance to the drow outpost, Velkynvelve and that is where we pick up after the break.
This recap is from RJ. Everyone was at this session. Jubi’s comments, again, are in [brackets and italics].
There are possible spoilers for part of Out of the Abyss from Wizards but much was changed.
We arrive at a large cavern with stalactites and webbing all across the ceiling, the webs are about 60 ft. up. We decide to scout out the situation before running in. Dench turns into a giant spider and goes into the cavern. He climbs up the wall to use his ability to ‘web sense’ to determine where someone is on the web. He touches the web but does not sense anything and climbs back down. He follow the cavern to the left and sees a stairwell leading up along the side of the cave that heads straight into the webbing.
He continues on down the left side towards the sound of a waterfall. About 150ft in he reaches a large pool of water, with a waterfall, which stretches from one end of the cave to another. He starts to walk next to the water hoping to find a way across. He hears a splash and then is hit in the back, his back starts to burn. He turns and sees a Jubi like creature, but bigger. The creature hits him again and he has to turn back into his half-orc form. He scrambles back and turns himself into a horse and rushes out of the large cavern back towards us. He looks back and does not see the creature chasing him.
[Who’s Jubi? Is she cute?]
We start to hear a noise coming toward us and prepare to attack, we see it’s a horse charging at us. Dench turns back into himself and we put down our weapons. He tells us what happened and Jubi comes over and thinks to Adran ‘what is that intoxicating aroma Skarr’ and starts to head out into the cavern. We try to stop him but decide that he can handle his own.
[Oh yeah, love is in the air! It smells even better than BBQ!]
There is a discussion on what to do next and the group decides we need more information. We decide to make Rory invisible, Fletcher casts his spell and she heads into the cavern. She decides to check the right side of the cavern and hits the water on that side. She comes back the way she came and decides to check the stairs.
She goes quietly up the stairs, they do go through the webbing and she sees a wooden platform on top of the webs. She sees about five drow, on alert, with hand crossbows, and looking in her direction. She doesn’t move, but observes that the platform continues on and, she assumes, over the water. She sees several stalactites with doors in them, she waits to see if anymore drow come out but feels she is pushing her luck and quietly backs down the stairs. She exits the cavern and when she reaches us, alerts us that it is her, and tells us what she saw.
[Hey baby! Come here often? You do, really?]
The group votes to go up the stairs and parley with the drow. Maybe they will want payment for crossing and we can get across without incident. We start up the stairs, Verrak starts talking, letting them know who we are and that we just want to cross the cavern. A voice calls back down and tells him to come up. Verrak does and there are several drow with hand crossbows pointing at him.
Verrak introduces himself and tells them that we wish to cross the cavern.
[So can I get your digits?]
A drow in the middle starts to ask questions, “What is a surface dweller doing here?” Verrak answers that he is studying Dworcs.
“What is a Dworc?’”
Verrak goes on to explain what a Dworc is and how fascinating their culture is. The drow responds “an abomination.”
Verrak goes on to explain some more and then goes on to compare drow and elves.
“You compare us to them?”
“No, of course not,” Verrak responds.
The drow asks “How many of your are there?
“Five,” responds Verrak.
The drow asks, “What about your horse?”
Verrak responds “We don’t have a horse, hand to my heart.”
The drow tells Verrak “You need to move your hand to the left a little, right about there, that’s where we would put the knife at an upward angle to reach your heart.” Verrak thanks him for the correction.
Verrak offers some gems for the passage but the drow wants to see them. Adran comes up and hands Verrak the bag and he pulls out the gems and hands them to the drow. He says, “These are pitiful,” and throws them out onto the spider web. Verrak asks “What kind of payment do you prefer?”
“Slaves. Leave us one of your companions and the rest can go on.”
[Um, wow. Those are quite some digits.]
Verrak politely declines and asks if gold would work, offering 100gp. The drow responds, “For how many?”
Verrak states that there are five of us and a deal is reached at 200gp.
Dench comes up and starts to ask the drow a question. The drow repsonds to Verrak, “Is he addressing me? Collar that beast. I will even throw in the collar for free.” He motions to another drow, “Go get a collar.” Verrak goes over to Dench and pulls him down to him, telling him it is important to go along with this to get us through this predicament. Dench reluctantly agrees.
Verrak turns back to the drow in charge and tells him that we do have an elf in our party. The drow tells Verrak to bring this elf forward. Meri comes up the stairs and is looking daggers at Verrak. “fortunately for you,” the drow says, “your master Verrak is civilized and has arranged for your passage unless you have a problem with this.” Meri just stares at him and doesn’t respond.
The rest of the party climbs the stairs and there is a clamber on the steps and Fletcher feels a bump on his back and Rory appears, “You guys left me for dead!” The drow looks at Verrak, “You surface dwellers seem to do math incorrectly.” Verrak responds that we had lost her in one of the caves and didn’t think she made it. The drow is not listening and looks more closely at Rory, “Hold up your hand. Where did you get that?,” while looking at her tattoo. Rory tells him that she was asleep and woke up with it. He continues to examine her and states, “the price for the additional person will be her armor,” pointing to Rory. After trying to bargain with other items, Rory reluctantly agrees. She takes off the armor. The collar arrives and is placed around Dench’s neck with a leash that Verrak is holding.
[Um, well, I guess your place. I’m not even sure how to get back to mine. Plus my dad might be there because Tyr stole a bunch of stuff from his temple and I’m guessing that dad might come back to get it.]
The drow tells us to follow him and several drow surround us and we walk on the platform. We see more stalactites with doors, go thru one (perhaps a guard tower), and come to a rope bridge. We cross it and on the other side is a metal gate that has several humanoids in there. Around 6-10 slaves, different races, and staring as we start to go by. There is another rope bridge to cross in front of us and the drow states that is the way out and says in elvish “Good bye.” We start to cross the bridge and some of the same furry beasts with the drow we fought days earlier step out of door on the opposite side of the bridge and start to come on the bridge. More drow come out from the side we came from with a female drow who says, “Oh, I am sorry. He doesn’t have the authority to let anybody cross. Surrender or die.”
Verrak tries to argue with them that they may regret this, she asks “Do you wish to fight or die?” We pull our weapons and attack. A globe of darkness falls on us and Rory is attack by something on right next to the bridge. Verrak charges out of the darkness and attacks the furry creatures in front of him.
Dench casts daylight and the darkness disappears. There is a spider on the side of the bridge attacking Rory and Verrak is blocking the way for the furry creatures and another spider comes up next to Verrak. Adran casts fireball and takes several drow out. Dench goes to help Verrak as he is thrown off the bridge and on to the webs. Rory and Meri takes out their spider and move to their side to engage the drow. Adran throw another fireball and takes out several of the furry creatures this time. Another squad of drow come in and a female drow casts some kind of spell and serveral hundred small spiders are all around Rory, Adran, and Meri. Fletcher tries to stun the squad and several are but he gets hit by a web cast from one of the drow’s wand. Veerak climbs back onto the bridge and they take care of their side. Adran throws another fireball and more drow go down.
[Um, so how does this work exactly? Oh…that’s how this works. Slurp, slurp, slurp.]
A globe of darkness falls on the doorway where the female drow was. Rory and Meri take down the lead drow warrior and we start to go after the female drow that got away when a voice calls out in elvish and asks us to find the keys. Meri looks back and in the cell of the slaves there is a furry creature, looking at her and speaking elvish, “My name is Derendil, I am an elven prince, please find the keys and release me.” Meri looks shocked and says that we will be back and heads after the rest of the group into the darkness.
After checking the various rooms in this outpost, the female is not found. However, Rory’s armor was recovered. In addition, we found a pouch with a couple of vials (magical), a silver chain headdress, a moonstone, some coins, and the keys. Also, in one of the rooms was a shrine of some sort to Lolth with a rather lifelike looking spider statue. Verrak pried out the gemstone (Jet) eyes from the statue. With the place largely looted and the female drow having escaped, we turned back to check out the prisoners.
Inside the large cell was quite the assortment. The large furry creature, like the ones that had been fighting for the drow, continues to claim that he is an elven prince who’s kingdom was stolen by an evil wizard named Terrenor. A female dwarf, Eldeth, took to Verrak quite quickly when she saw Bloodcrier’s Hammer. A pair of twin deep gnomes, Topsy and Turvy, with the sister being talkative and social while her brother largely communicated with disgruntled, well, grunts. Jimjar, another deep gnome, seemed intent on trying to wager with anyone on anything. Buppido, a derro, was remarkable calm and reasonable in comparison to his peoples’ normal raving insanity. A mushroom “man” released a cloud of spores around Rory that allowed her to communicate with it. She learned its name is Stool and it has began to follow her much like a puppy dog. A kuo-toa “mystic” showed no interest or concern with his imprisonment or freedom. A rather belligerent orc tried to intimidate some of us but was quickly cowed. And lastly, there was a drow. He had, apparently, murdered one of his fellows. He was uncooperative and sullen and we killed him.
The rest of the prisoners were freed and, with the exception of the kuo-toa, agreed to travel with us. Needless to say, the group was not a merry little band. Tensions between different prisoners were quite apparent from the get-go. Lucky for us, Buppido is relatively familiar with the nearby areas of the Underdark and, after looking at the map we acquired from Mistle, indicated that he could show us a way to bypass the illithid outpost that was marked on our map as the next major “encounter” that we might face.
With that, we gathered additional supplies (mainly food) and headed out one of the smaller passages leading away from Velkynvelve.
[Slurp, slurp, slurp…
daHeadRat back again…Jubi, apparently, has gone off on his own. Well, at least none of the PCs have any idea where he might be and he wasn’t following when they left Velkynvelve.
Yes, of course the drow double-crossed the PCs. Why wouldn’t they? They are treacherous to begin with AND they felt that they held the upper hand. They were, of course, mistaken. Other than the one female who escaped, the PCs are pretty confident that they slew all of the drow at the outpost. But I do wonder where she might have headed off to.
The PCs have also acquired quite the menagerie of followers: one orc, one derro, one dwarf, an elvens prince polymorphed into a quaggoth (yes players, that is what they are called), three deep gnomes, and a sentient mushroom. I guess it isn’t all that weird considering that there are already orcs and dworcs serving at Cagair Keep. This will just add to the multicultural diversity…assuming, of course, this horde makes it back there.
Sorry…no beer log, again, this week.]
