Still the 27th of Growth
After our inadvertent release of Destor’s Minion, we decide to high-tail it out of the Generator Room. I toss a couple wrenches into the last operational capacitors, causing the generator to spark to a halt, and follow my friends out — just in time to be welcomed by cannonfire from those damn dwarves across the way. Shuul guys buzzing around on flying dragonfly-shaped constructs continue to harass us, but Calista stymies one with a wind spell. Diethan leaps astride the dragonfly and it dives straight down toward the water below. In the nick of time he manages to pull up and flies crazily toward the ceiling far above. He leaps from the saddle moments before the bug impacts on the ceiling, and Archinemus manages to grab hold of him and pull him onto the catwalk again.
Meanwhile, Tharn and Calista take out some dwarf cannoneers and a boar rider and I get a cannonball in the gut. Then Archinemus shoots a lightning bolt from Destor’s wand at two other cannoneers across the way. We race toward the back of the cave, a gunman suspended from a wire above sniping at us as we go.
As we approach the tower beneath which lies Feegus’ lab — and, we hope, the captive litorians — a troop of Shuul knights runs out to meet us. Archinemus lays into them with a chaos hammer spell from the skull we acquired beneath Pythoness House. Barbatos uses his skull-tipped rod to speak a word of chaos, and they drop like flies. We run down the stairs inside the tower, following some cables. Nos the skulk returns from reconnoitering. He didn’t find Shim but he did pinch some potions and scrolls from the mages’ quarters. He thinks Shim could be in the corner of the cave, in the central castle complex, or here.
In this tower, Tharn discovers a litorian from his tribe in a cell! This guy, Vardan, looks not ill-handled, but tired. He tells us they have been “changing” one of their compatriots down in the lab. We arm Vardan and head with him through the door and into the lab, protected by a powerful anti-law spell from Pythoness House.
We enter the lab. It is the strangest place I have ever been in, full of pipes and cables and mechanisms. I could really like it here, if it weren’t for the taint of slavery. A large round central chamber with glass walls holds a sickly-looking litorian (named Nothell, Tharn tells us), and more glass cells along the back hold more of them. All of them look desperate to get out. A vast machine runs along the back near the cells. However, all the devices in here appear to be inert. Aha — we shut down their power by taking out the Generator Room! I’m so glad we didn’t have to come in here when these devices were bristling with energy…
Confronting us are four creatures that look to have been dwarves once. Now they are well-armored and scary, with sluglike lower bodies. Something about them reeks of formidability. Nerlene Camus is here playing with one of the machines, and standing atop the central chamber is a bald, paunchy man in a long gray coat: Dr. Feegus. “Try to leave the litorian alive,” he calls out to his Prajdall, surveying us.
The Prajdall are tough, hard to hit, and very solid. When you manage to harm one, it heals itself, and if you finally kill one, it explodes! We try to gang up on them to foil their regeneration ability. My chaos spear deals grievous blows, and together we hack at them until they detonate. Calista saps the strength from each with a magic ring, and Barbatos strikes at them with his wand of cold. Feegus cries out in denial when each one falls.
We push through to the stairs leading up to the cells and best a dwarf in powered armor. Nerlene sends a cloud of black smoke at us to blind us, but Calista magically blows it right back at her.
Nerlene throws acid flasks at us as we climb the stairs to the platform where the litorians are held in their glass cubicles. Archinemus and I battle another Prajdall. Tharn, Vardan, and Diethan climb up to the platform, where Vardan starts yanking on levers to release his tribemates. Tharn goes after Nerlene and slays her while Diethan bull rushes a confused Feegus right off the platform. (That cloak of chaos spell from Pythoness House certainly has done well for us, confusing any who hit us!)
All of a sudden a new creature pops into being on the platform above: The “tentacled master” we’ve been hearing about. Like a snake sliding across our brains, its voice sounds in our heads. “So, now we know who’s been sending the shadow creatures to spy on us. I see, Feegus, that you can’t even maintain your own lab.” Feegus trembles. “These invaders have the stink of Shilukar upon them,” it says in our heads.
Barbatos casts grease on the floor where the tentacled creature is standing. The creature tries to command Diethan to kill his friends, but our protective chaos spell saves the day again. It then tries to probe Tharn’s mind but succeeds only in getting sliced open with Tharn’s sword, Wolf-Brother. Barbatos wounds the creature grievously with his wand. Calista drinks a potion of levitate and floats up to obliterate it with a coldscream scroll. “Cephalyx” is the last thing it thinks before it dies. What do you suppose that means?
Meanwhile, Feegus clutches a syringe and mutters crazily to himself, “We’ll rebuild the lab and get some new subjects, and then everything will be all right again.” Tharn seizes the opportunity to break through the enormous glass cylinder and free the pitiful litorian subject inside. She’s covered with boils and purple patches of sick-looking flesh. She can only crawl toward her rescuer.
I finally manage to take down a demoralized Prajdall (“Master? What should I do? There are so many of them, Master…”), and then we — with the help of some of the freed litorians — finish off the deranged Doctor Feegus. His final word, looking at me, was, “Titan?” Hmmm….
The litorians go medieval on the bodies of the fallen Shuul. They are definitely not the same people who went missing some months back — slavery has changed them. However, one litorian is still missing. The group has not seen that one, Sallam, since the slave pens, we learn.
We cripple Feegus’ Prajdall machine with a stolen Shuul detonation device and strike the evil doctor’s head from his shoulders, since Shilukar once promised us a 1,000 gp bounty for it.
Nos returns. He didn’t find Shim, but he thinks he is inside a large structure in the center of the cave. He also located a place where we could rest. More Shuul are on their way here, so we gather up a bunch of tools and other supplies from a storage room and head out with the former captives.
The skulk takes us through a small door in a quiet office, where Barbatos swipes Feegus’ journals. We pass through a low corridor threaded though with large pipes. We emerge into a massive natural cave, almost at the level of the water. We can see the lights of the big cave far above. We rest on a safe ledge by the water, and the litorians tell their story. They are Vardan, Barris, Nothell, Wayvor, Keth, and Mowran.
They were all part of a hunting party ambushed on the plains and brought to Ptolus. The slavers who took them were the Ennin. They’ve almost always remained underground since arriving in the city. The six of them (the Shuul only wanted six — they didn’t buy Sallam) were purchased by a human man, and other humans brought them through underground passages into a new place, where they first saw the bald, black-garbed humans with strange things on their eyes and dragon pistols. Since arriving here, they were kept in the cell where we found Vardan, but one by one were taken into the room with the glass cells. There, lightning bolts and strange lights were used to change them. Something led the Shuul to think they’d get better results from the women. This went on for weeks. They hope Sallam has met a better fate than they. They had feared no one would ever come for them.
Barbatos learns from the purloined journals that Feegus was paranoid but very smart. He was one of the Farrowers, a group of Shuul interested in creating new living things. Other groups within the organization are Gearsmiths and Lightningsmiths. There are also four political groups of Shuul:
- The “let’s destroy chaos and all Galchutt remnants” group. They are partially backed by more of the mind-reading tentacled creatures we met earlier; apparently they rebelled against their former Galchutt masters eons ago. Feegus lists a bunch of info about their life cycle and variations, as he does not trust them. He cites a long-term war with the dark elves and a long-term hatred for the Hu-Charad, also called the Ancient Titans (!). The creature we fought was named Xilaranatak. We’re still not sure what “Cephalyx” means. It appears to be the name of someone who has another lab, and Feegus really seemed to fear it.
- The “let’s control the Empire” group. These guys work with Kevris Killraven’s people (particularly one Terris Brunchart) to get their slaves and accomplish other stuff. They also work with the Sorn, a mages’ guild (some members work as assassins).
- A group of religious fanatics who ally with outsiders called the iron angels. These Shuul do anything the angels tell them.
- The largest group wants to bring rationality and justice to the world in the name of progress and science. They want to bring ease and comfort to the world but seem ignorant of the other three groups. This group doesn’t include anyone in a position of power, unfortunately.
None of the groups are all that interested in law and social order. They just want to further their own goals.
On his watch that night, Tharn hears an organized search going on for us far above. Barbatos uses a wand to create the image of a rock shelf over us to shield us from the eyes of the searchers. They come within thirty feet of us, but they don’t see us. “Let’s get out of here before those oozes show up,” says one of the searchers as they depart. I keep a weather eye out for oozes with Tharn until it’s Archinemus’ watch.
In a little while, Archinemus spots a grey ooze on the water making its way toward us. We head up to the passage above again, defending ourselves from it as we go. We rest for the remainder of the night uncomfortably in the passageway. We awaken ready to go out and find Shim and then get out of this wretched place.
Back in Dr. Feegus’ office, all is quiet. We silence a workman on his lunch break outside the lab and head upstairs to the bridge that will take us to the central castle…
