9th Of Bloom
Today is a healing day. It’s also an anxious one: Seanus is missing! He was supposed to find a safe place for our forlaran friend Kanagi. Hopefully he found one. With nothing else to do for the moment, I go to work at the Delver’s Guild, where my mentor tells me that our “peely-faced cat-dog” is actually something called a krenshar. Gorti Jurgen doesn’t know where I can sell the carcass, though.
Barbatos is off studying magic today. Some of the others try to sell our loot from the bugbears. Myraeth tells them that the bone ring we found on one of them is a means of tracking a member of the Pactlords of the Quaan. We destroy it. However, we decide to go ahead and sell the leader’s evil magical staff. Morals are all well and good, but we need the cash if we’re ever going to buy this shop!
10th Of Bloom
Thank heavens, we receive a message from Seanus today. He and Kanagi are safe. Our friends are recovered, so we head back to the Delver’s Hole. Calista’s wearing shiny new ultralight armor (it’s hard for her to wear something as heavy as my heavy brigandine). We retrace our steps to a grand staircase going down. I mark our trail, just to be on the safe side. Something’s been eating the bugbears’ corpses, we can tell, but we try not to dwell on the thought.
Following Salsan, we come upon an old festhall partially blocked by a wall of rubble and debris. Looks as though the residents of the Slave City are trying to keep people out. We quickly clear a path but soon reach another blockage. Attempting to clear it, we meet a huge snake with sickening eyes. It’s huge! We battle it in a chamber beyond the rubble, but it grievously hurts Tharn. It was wrapped around a statue of a dragon. We see dwarf runes here, rusted tools, and hammer reliefs. Nearby is a door into what must be Dwarvenhearth, the ancient dwarven fortress. We can’t get through, however.
Our path onward leads us down a side staircase and through a burrow to a huge chamber with checkered floor tiles. Large wood and bronze war chariots stand here, unused. This place looks quite different from the dwarven area we passed. A mural here shows charioteers in battle with dragon-men who stand eight feet tall. There is lots of silver décor here. Salsan says we’re getting close.
We reach a gravity-free chamber where volts gravely wound Archinemus and Tharn with their wicked bites and electrical tails. We pass through a curtain of sparks that removes magic. A boat made in the style of the war chariots lets us cross this gravity-free area. At the other end, the checkerboard pattern picks up again. Peering into the next room, we see some sort of haze or distortion. It’s an invisible barrier! Exploring a little more, we find we have entered a labyrinth with invisible walls of force. After I bash out a section of the wall, we realize we can test the outer wall, and we find a hollow spot with a secret door. There we enter a humid passage with statues of two beautiful, regal women wearing silver-plated jewelry. The pedestal of one says “Karanosin” and the other says “Karalada.” They look like sisters – twins, in fact. We pass through a sigil-marked door into a cavern with a lake of steaming water. Four little towerlike structures connected by a narrow walkway emerge from the lake. Lightning spheres give us plenty of light to see.
“Thissss iss it!” exclaims Salsan. “The sssteaming lake!” Where do we go now, we ask our guide. The lizard man points straight down.
11th Of Bloom
We are faced with the challenge of crossing a narrow catwalk across a steaming lake. As we begin, a woman approaches us. Introducing herself as Taevel, she warns us that half a dozen guards are approaching. Taevel looks half starved. She just managed to escape from the Slave City, she tells us. She has extremely poor vision. She tells us that two people have all the power in the city: Eyvind, a human wizard, and Ssethenus, the city’s lizard man leader. When we explain our mission to find our friends’ tribemates, she tells us that the only litorian there is a woman. Taevel was once an Ennin slave, so she’s spell-marked now. She’s afraid to return to the city, because if they ever find her again, they can identify her easily.
We describe for Taevel the place we just passed through, with its large war chariots and statues of sisters in silver-plated jewelry. She says she knows a story of these Silver Sisters, Karanosin and Karalada. Long ago they imprisoned dragon-men here beneath the steaming lake. This whole area was their stronghold. The dragon-men came here long ago looking for something under the city called the Black Grail, but the sisters beat them off.
The actual Slave City is built within a column that juts down into the lake. She said it used to be a good sanctuary for escapees like her, until the coming of Ssethenus. Then came the wizard, who arrived to look for the citadel’s magic. Taevel gives us a rundown of the city’s security forces: a dozen unwilling ex-slave guards and eight eager lizardfolk. We’re at the citadel’s back entrance now, she says. It looks very defensible, with its four towers. A former slave named Moondros, a druid captured in the city, has heard of a way to teleport up to the city from the lowest level of the citadel. We make a plan to sweet-talk our way in. Taevel casts spells on us to help. Our story: We are mercenaries interested in freeing slaves to send here in exchange for a bounty. We hope this can get us in to see Ssethenus.
Wishing Taevel well, we advance to a gallery with a big glass wall. Through it we can see a globe with electricity and a prisoner inside it. Is this one of the dragon-men?
Ssethenus, the “King” of the city, arrives in armor to greet us. We soon see for ourselves that this so-called city of freed slaves offers no freedom at all: only a new sort of servitude. Ssethenus (Salsan’s former chieftain) rules this place with an iron fist and doesn’t seem inclined to let anyone leave. We offer him our “mercenaries” story, hoping that flattery will get us in good with him. The king seems interested in the idea, then introduces us to Eyvind, whom he calls his advisor. The wizard, not liking the looks of us, suggests to Ssethenus that we should be killed! The king holds off, though (mostly thanks to Salsan’s presence), and tours us around town instead. We pass an obelisk filled with lots of leftover magical remnants, as well as more murals of the Silver Sisters, of the sort we saw on our way here. We emerge at an overlook where we can see the city and its residents. It was beautiful here once, but no longer. And everyone seems cowed by Ssethenus.
Then Eyvind departs, and we manage to work out an arrangement with Ssethenus. Meanwhile, Calista and Tharn follow the wizard, hoping to turn him into an ally. Calista later explained to us that he was studying to find the secret to this place. This wizard really seems to be the one in power here, not the king. Calista told him our real reason for coming here: to speak to the litorian woman in the hopes of tracking down our friends’ tribemates. When she implied that we’d be willing to battle Ssethenus to leave the wizard in full control of the citadel, he agreed to let the litorian woman go with us, if we can locate her.
The rest of us do indeed locate her, but she is gravely ill. Diethan said he can heal her, thank goodness – it’s only a mundane disease. The old litorian lady, Norba, confirms that eight litorians from the tribe of Malethar were about to escape the slavers a while back, but the Shuul bought them before they could. The Shuul buying slaves? That’s odd. Slavery’s illegal, and the Shuul technologists are adherents of law and order. Perhaps the old lady’s delirious with fever. As we depart with her, we’re amazed at the size of this place. We pass many doors, and go down many grand staircases. This Slave City is huge! On our way, we have to dispatch two lizard man bodyguards.
Meanwhile, Eyvind has learned of our “deal” with Ssethenus, and warns the king that we haven’t been honest with him. That doesn’t really matter, though, because by now we’ve raised an alarm among the Slave City residents and have armed many of them for a clash with Ssethenus and Eyvind. We’re victorious in this clash, but it takes its toll on us: That wizard put our two litorians to sleep, staggered Karaal (our champion of freedom ally) and me, and blinded Diethan! But hoorah for our new ex-slave allies – they’re willing to fight and follow us out of the city to freedom! As we’re mopping up, we locate a captive druidess, Moondros, a beautiful winged fey. We free her from her bonds (the wizard Eyvind had kept her prisoner). She’s blind too. However, she’s willing to lead these people as free folk, making this city a true refuge once more.
We take the last three lizard man guards captive and find a storeroom of food to feed the ninety-eight ex-slaves left here. Salsan informs us that he’s staying to be captain of the guard – our three lizard man captives agree to follow him. We distribute Ssethenus’ gold to each slave and take Moondros back up to the surface city in the hopes of finding her healing magic for her blindness. Joining us are any ex-slaves who wish to leave the city. Some are afraid that if they return to Ptolus, their old masters will find them again. Karaal decides to stay to help protect the ex-slaves. I will miss him – I found his devotion to the cause of freedom truly inspiring.
