The Underdark is a bit overwhelming for a crew of surfacers like us. It is teaming with alien life, and its not at all quiet. We would all stick close and watch each other’s backs.
They were friendly. Of course that’s partly the nature of merchants, they want your business. But whatever the motives, we were happy to have a familiar sort of moment. They had some potions and scrolls we bought. I was particularly glad to see Aerie had something else to think about for a time.
We had a few combat encounters after this, things that were within our capabilities. We slew a small group of Illithids, rescued an imprisoned mage, fought a Drow patrol, a few others.
That was not a hard battle, but the toxins raised by the Spore Colonies briefly caused Amyntor and Imoen to be dangerously confused. That is one of my least favorite things to encounter, and several types of foes can cause it. But when those dearest to you can suddenly not tell friend from foe… the rest of us just ducked and hid, hoping Amyntor and Imoen wouldn’t suddenly decide they were deadly enemies.
In a minute or so all was well.
They are both evil and insane, which at least makes their response to us predictable.
From here, we moved up towards the Deep Gnome village. It was mostly empty, except for a few patrols. They directed us to thier leader, Goldandor Blackenrock, who explained the empty village. They had recently dug too deep and awoken something they did not want to.
I’m pretty sure a village of Deep Gnomes could have figured out how to deal with a cave bear. We all knew it would be something more dire. Indeed, something demonic had been disturbed.
This was a more powerful sort of demon, that needed more powerful sorts of magic to harm it. My flail, the Flail of Ages was effective, and Keldorn’s sword Lilarcor could hurt it. But otherwise only one of Amyntor’s maces, and the magical arrows from Imoen’s bow were effictive. Skie had nothing to help with. Aerie took a more involved method and cast “Lower Magic Resistance” then Magic Missile. But we had the beast almost down by then. It served as a reminder we are still less in some ways than when we fought Belhifet a couple months ago.
The Gnomes were deeply appreciative of our help. Funny, part of our reward was a valuable mace that Amyntor could have used in the fight. They also had a “Light Gem”, that would help us find our way to Adalon, some “beautiful being of great power”. The knowledge attached to this was even more important. Irenicus and Bodhi were thought to be in the nearby Drow city of Ust Natha. Adalon could possibly help us enter the Drow city.
They had also found a spellbook belonging to the mage we had rescued earlier. He was deep in some sort of elemental interdimensional research, and we had agreed to try and find his book. So here it was.
We helped him more for a little while, battling elementals as he made some brief extra-planar trips. It was actually pretty mundane on our end.
From here we also found and cleared out a large cave of beholders, and one of Illithids. Both of these could count as bigger fights, and challenging in their own ways. But truly, they were diversions. We are here for Irenicus.
Continuing on again, we came to a narrow foot bridge crossing a great chasm.
Such groups could be dangerous if we weren’t expecting trouble around every corner. Just across the bridge was a cave of impenetrable darkness. We pulled the Light Gem from a sack, and we could see our way forward.
No doubt. And sort of funny. Such metalic dragons are good, but like all dragons they are proud. Which makes all such encounters a little challenging. Adalon was not “friendly”, although there may have been a special reason. We learned her eggs had recently been stolen. She knew they were in the city of Ust Natha, and she had already been threatened with their destruction if she entered or interfered within the city in any way. She would task us with their retrieval. Utmost care was called for, the Drow could not know we were there for the eggs until we had secured them.
This was agreeable to us. The abduction of the eggs was obviously an evil and inexcusable act. We would rescue them.
Adalon would help us with some powerful dragon magic. We would be to all appearances, Drow. We were given a backstory, I would be Veldrin.
We were ready for Ust Natha.
*****
I haven’t done the whole team in Drow renders for the last few runs. But now, thanks again to a more powerful renderer, it was fun to take another run at it. The next update will be the Drow adventure!
Leave a comment