Outoftheabyss

Alamar

Alamar

We fought the “puppies”, which turned out to be gnolls. They mentioned Yeegnohu before they died. I ate one of their souls, but still felt unsatisfied. Empty. I was craving… something. Pickles? Ice cream?

After a short rest we resumed our journey, and eventually reached a large cavern filled with webs. Two goblins met us at the entrance, Spiderbait and Yum-Yum. Whoever named them had a truly morbid sense of humor, but they didn’t seem to care, merrily using some sort of special grease to surf the webbing around the cave. They told us their might be spiders. We all rolled our eyes. Of course there are spiders, look at the webs. But then they offered to guide us past the spiders in return for a red bloodstone we found on the gnolls.

Alamar

Alamar

The guards escorted us out of the city, actually putting us out in front of a group of drow. Drow who happened to be looking for us. Well, me. And Creg, I guess. Of course I had already put them out of mind, and they attacked us immediately after leaving the city. In sight of the guards at the gate, even. We killed them, of course. I killed four myself! The rest only managed to kill one. The other one they let live, after telling him where the bodies of my ex-slave-friends were in the hopes he could convince the other drow we were all dead and he was just short two bodies. I’m not sure that was wise, but what do I know?

Alamar

Alamar

We didn’t really remember the questions we were supposed to ask the derro Drogi. Well, I mean, mostly I didn’t, because I’m not used to handling that stuff. The boss told me to go find Drogi, I found Drogi. Creg remembered a little. Mostly I remembered that the dragon, the dragon priests, and the guard captain all wanted Drogi, but for different reasons. The rest of the group really had no idea of any of this, but they wanted out of the city and out of the underdark, so they were following my lead. Which is weird, and I’m not used to it.

Alamar

Alamar

I woke up 15 minutes later inside a bloody cave bear’s guts. No one found me so it all went according to plan.

So all of my friends… well they weren’t really friends… are dead. I can say that now that they are dead, right? They were useful, and now they are not useful. Well, not completely useless yet; let me go check their bodies for useful stuff. Back in 5 minutes.

map

Alamar

So the dragon gave us 31gp (each) for the dragon egg. Damned stingy dragon.

We explored further in the underground complex after delivering the egg. I volunteered to take a mushroom and explore the small tunnels, since I can actually hide, unlike Alia.

I found zombies, watched over by a humanoid figure of some kind from the top of a cliff. Alia and Thea went after the watching figure, leaving the zombies to Craig, K-9, and my small but still incredibly potent eldritch self. We made short work of the zombies after a tense moment when K9 got himself surrounded. But he should get used to it. It’s his role, to be loud, obvious, and attention-getting. Not at all like my subtle, shadowy, seductively charming role as party leader, rogue extraordinaire, and sex object to the ladies.

Alamar

Alamar

We wondered around the caverns below the Derro section of the city until we found a large cavern with two multi-tiered mesas. One held a large red egg, which I immediately assumed to be a red dragon egg given my recent memorable encounter (thankfully, not a CLOSE encounter) with one. The other held a derro woman conducting some kind of ritual. She appeared to “summon” a shiny object of some kind, reacted joyfully, and made notes in a book.

Alamar

Alamar

We went poking around the section of the city where the derro are supposed to stay, and where our particular derro might have a home or someplace we could find him or at least we could wander around hoping to see him by chance, which is what we ended up doing after paying street urchins to look for our derro while they urched. Some of them had seen him, but not recently, or at least that’s what they told us. It’s what I would tell a bunch of strangers spreading money around looking for a neighbor, so it’s not unexpected. We went all the way to fhe far end of the main street – conveniently, only one street in derro slums – and turned around to come back. On the way back we noticed a cave entrance hidden off to one side, and because we were bored, decided to explore it. It had some water, a couple side caves we are definitely too big to explore, and another side cave filled with strange bones arranged in ritual patterns and one of our fellow former prisoners who wanted us to worship him? Weird. We killed him instead. No regrets.

Alamar

Alamar

In Grindlebuck we bought some clothes (and I bought a glaive) and were promptly attacked by a stone giant with two heads who didn’t enjoy our fashion sense. We hurt him badly, particularly Alia, who seems quite effective with a bow. I’ll have to make sure to steal her bowstring before trying to steal a kiss. But the fight attracted attention from the guards, who subdued the giant while we returned to our inn. Where the guards were waiting to arrest us for drawing weapons in the streets or some such stupidity. I was the only one smart enough to hide and pretend not to know any of them, but I did follow after the guards left, so that I could meet up with them when they got out of prison, or maybe until I got bored and left. If there was a public execution maybe I could stage a rescue. Or wave at them and disappear into the crowd if there were too many guards. Come to think of it this is a dwarven city. I’m taller than all of these dwarven fucks. Hiding in crowds will be a problem. Maybe if I shave one and crouch?

Alamar

Alamar

We finally got to Grindlebuck or whereever we were going, a city filled with dwarves, which is only marginally better than a city filled with fish that got ate by a demon. The first thing we saw was someone get murdered, so of course Alia took their purse. He had only 17gp so he certainly wasn’t killed because he was rich.

Getting there was a bitch. We scared off the stirges, or maybe exterminated them entirely (I hope!), but we ran into some underwater spikes that damaged our boats. That forced us to stop and repair our boats with … some kind of cactus that functions sort of like wood? Well, beggars can’t be choosers, and we’re begging. So now our cactus-canoes are tied together with rope. How is that watertight? Answer: It’s not, really. We’re bailing water out constantly.

Alamar

Alamar

I hate the underdark.

We fought stirges, mermen, a water weird and it’s pet soggy mummy, and something else that I can’t even remember on our way between two cities that I definitely can’t pronounce. At least the mummy had treasure, even if the tapestries were waterlogged and probably now worthless. Do people mummify their ancestors, stuff treasure into their sarcophagi, and drop them down wells? Is that a thing?