2020-01-07 – Mines control – Krevorg
Jan 12, 2020 19:01:01 GMT
Varis/G'Lorth/Sundilar and Sunday like this
Post by Heret Velnnarul on Jan 12, 2020 19:01:01 GMT
‘All right, Krevorg,’ says the halfling woman, ‘Shall we get started?’
Krevorg, sitting straight-backed on the well-padded armchair, looks around the expensive-looking bedroom at the halfling – Lasira Gemfinder, her name is – and then at the middle-aged human man in the corner who is now looking at her expectantly as his pen hovers above a sheaf of papers, and finally at the bed, where an emaciated young human man is propped up on a pile of bolsters and pillows. Well. It’s a somewhat unusual setting for an after-action report: clients don’t usually invite her into their bedrooms, which she imagines is something to do with her being a burly orange-skinned hobgoblin and something to do with her being a famously effective monster-hunter-for-hire. But she’s done business in stranger places. She clears her throat and begins.
‘Jolly good. Well, as you recall, I set off from your offices with those local chaps you drummed up – the musician fellow, the half-orc chap with the accent, and the young lady with the sword –’
(‘Mathew, Gegrun, Bliss,’ Lasira says to the clerk, ‘sixth day of Hammer’.)
‘Quite so,’ Krevorg nods. ‘So off we trotted, followed the road, made camp a little way off from this Stoneleaf place, passed the night. So far, nothing to write home about. Next morning, we made the rest of the way there and found a bit of a to-do going on at the edge of the village.’
‘The… guards…?’ croaks the young fellow in the bed – Heret something-or-other – with a worried frown.
‘Yes, your hired muscle were having a bit of argy-bargy with a pair of locals who were trying to get past. Young fishy-smelling chap and an elf of some sort.’
‘Eladrin?’ asks Lasira, ‘Named Faye?’
Krevorg nods. ‘That’s the one. And the other one called himself Stedd. Quite insistently, in fact. He and the other one were doing a lot of pointing at one of your “no trespassing” signs – this particular one said “no trespassing except for Faye and Stedd” – and telling your chaps that Faye and Stedd was them and they were here to help your chap Heret.’ Heret makes a sort of choking, gurgling noise that may have started as a laugh. ‘The guards weren’t having it, though,’ she continues. ‘Turned ’em away. Anyway, as we came up those two recognized the ones you sent along with me, and they all had a bit of a chin-wag.’
‘What was said?’ asks Lasira quickly.
‘Couldn’t tell you,’ Krevorg shrugs. ‘Think I heard the boy Stedd saying something about being promised there would be fish there. Got the impression the other one, Faye, might not have given him the full picture about the tentacles and all that.’ Heret sighs and rubs his gaunt face. ‘But mostly,’ the mercenary continues, ‘I was talking to your chief guard. She had a proper check of the papers you’d given me and then brought out a horse and a bag of holding and told me they belonged to your chap here.’ She nods towards Heret. ‘So I went through the bag, checked it all against the list you gave me – everything present and correct. Until the half-orc asked to have a look at the bag and promptly up-ended it.’
Lasira’s eyebrows shoot upwards. ‘You gave Gegrun the bag of holding?’
‘Must admit, I did. He was jolly curious about it and he struck me as an honest chap. And I did impress upon him that if he tried to make off with it I’d kill him stone dead. Didn’t account for him being a half-wit, though.’ She shakes her head. ‘I and a couple of the others managed to catch about half the potions, but the rest broke on the ground, and so did the bottles of acid, which dissolved a couple of those dwarven hammers.’
Lasira looks to the clerk, who nods. ‘Eight potions of rest and two Vorsthold warhammers left,’ he says. The halfling sighs. ‘All right,’ she says to Krevorg, ‘Please carry on.’
‘Well, off we went to the quarry,’ says Krevorg.
‘Including Faye and Stedd?’ Lasira asks.
‘That was your guards’ decision. They let them in on condition they brought back any of the surviving fellows who’d wandered into the tunnels.’
‘Which they didn’t,’ Lasira says tersely.
‘I suppose not,’ the hobgoblin replies. ‘So in we went, and got as far as the room with the skull before this Faye started chatting to that voice you told me about, the Lex fellow. Claimed he didn’t know what happened to your boy Heret here, and started banging on about helping him with his damp problem like you said he would, and inviting us to his study like you said he would. I tried to swing ’em all round to ignoring it and getting on with the job but I could see we were just going to be there all day arguing, so study it was. But I got ’em all out of there pretty quick and into the big hall –’
‘Through the…?’ Heret begins to ask before being struck by a fit of coughing.
‘Krevorg,’ Lasira says, ‘Could you show us on the map?’
The clerk gets out a piece of parchment. ‘That reminds me,’ Krevorg says, ‘There was a door in the study that you haven’t got on your map. In this wall.’ She leans forward and waves a finger at the sheet and the clerk makes a mark on it. ‘Anyway,’ she continues, moving her finger from place to place. ‘Study. Fireplace. Room with big gaming board. Portal thingy. Big hall. Pit. Going off the map now. Stone spiral stairs going down.’ The clerk starts jotting rapid notes. ‘One floor down, square landing, about ten feet each way. Nothing there but a door – Lex’s private suite from what he was saying. He didn’t seem to be able to hear us down there, by the way. Or didn’t reply when I spoke to him, anyway. More stairs down. Dark down there, bit shabby and damp. Next floor down there are two choices: short tunnel on the right leading to more stairs going down, or tunnel to the left. After a bit of walking in the left-hand tunnel, more stairs down, curving a bit to the right. High stone tunnel at the bottom with water standing in a channel along either side. Stone arch in the middle.’
Krevorg waves away the map and sits straight again. ‘A way along the tunnel there were a couple of kuo-toa hauling a cage out of the water with some poor chap in it. The tiefling gal tried to do some kind of routine pretending to be a god or some such. All seemed a bit elaborate to me but it distracted them enough for me to chop one in half and the elf did for the other one with a few cracks of a whip. Then I pulled all the cages up and got the people out of ’em. Five dead, I’m afraid, but young Heret here was still hanging on, and so were a couple of others. The half-wit gave him a bit of healing magic and I left ’em all to rest while I went to take care of your tentacle problem. Rather thought all the locals would stay and look after Heret, actually, since that’s what they’d all said they’d come for. But they all followed me!’ She shrugs.
'Now then, the tunnel goes on,' Krevorg continues, addressing the clerk, 'Until it comes to a big cavern, a few hundred feet each way across I should think. Stagnant pools of water dotted around. Three columns at the far end, about fifteen, twenty feet tall, standing around a kind of pit.' She turns her attention back to Lasira and Heret. 'Lots more kuo-toa in there, chanting away about the sea mother, you know how they like to carry on. And some illithids on top of the columns, except it turned out to be just one, doing a magic trick. Seemed to be in charge of the fishy blighters. Knew we were there of course, tried to invite us to join in whatever mumbo-jumbo they were up to.'
'What were they up to?' asks Lasira.
Krevorg shrugs again. 'Dashed if I know. But they had some more of your guard chappies chained up around the pit. Probably going to sacrifice 'em or something. The boy Stedd got cold feet around this point, tried to spin some yarn about being lost. Imagine trying to lie to an illithid!' She shakes her head with a mixture of amusement and sorrow. 'Well, the Bliss gal had a better idea, started getting her magic going. Turned out the kuo-toa had their own mage and he got twitchy fingers too, so it all started happening. The musician turned into a big ape, the boy got bigger, there were things coming at us out of the pools of water. I headed straight for the illithid. Always deal with the mind-flayer first, that's my rule. Didn't keep too close an eye on what the rest of 'em were up to but I did spot a chuul jumping out of a pool and tackling the youngster. Odd, that. They don't generally socialize with illithids. Maybe it was being controlled. The intellect devourer was more par for the course. Poor half-wit. Can't have taken that thing long to eat his brain. Still, ghastly way to go. At least he didn't live to see himself carving chunks out of his pals.'
Krevorg notices Heret looking even more pale than he started, so she adopts a more business-like tone and continues, 'Now, the column was a problem. Tried to stick the illithid with a couple of spears but couldn't quite get it. The tiefling had more luck with some fire and lightning magic, and eventually the ape got the idea too and grabbed the blighter off the top of the pole. I had a good go at it with both ends of my partisan but no luck, it was using some sort of mental deflection. Then the blasted thing vanished.'
She shakes her head in remembered frustration and disappointment. 'Not often a kill gets away from me and it's dashed unsatisfactory. Still, the kuo-toa were all done by then, except a couple that Stedd had knocked out earlier and wanted to keep for himself. Haven't the foggiest idea what he meant to do with them. Couldn't ask him either: there he was on the ground with the half-orc's sword stuck clean through his neck and into the ground, the poor lad. The ape musician had knocked the brain-eater out of the big fellow by then too. I chopped it up quick before it could hope into anyone else.'
'Well,' says the hobgoblin after a short pause, 'That was just about that. The young lady helped me cut the prisoners loose and we sort of herded them out. Some of ’em, anyway – I think some wandered off along the way, but you can go back and get them if you like. As for the others, well, Faye picked up the boy and vanished, don't know where. The musician somehow hefted the half-orc's body onto his shoulder too – I told him it was no good but there we are. I grabbed one of the kuo-toa too, as you know – you've got him tied up in your office now, for whatever that’s worth. Collected this chap’ – a nod at Heret – ‘and the other two on the way out, and the horse too, and here we are back again. Job done.’
The room is quiet for a while. Then Heret, who has been lying back on his pillows and looking up at the ceiling, levers himself up onto his elbows and croaks, ‘The feeling… the need to go in…?’
‘Into the tunnels? Can’t really say. When I spoke to the guards on my way through the village they hadn’t noticed any change, but it could take time to wear off. I’d wager the illithid had something to do with it, so it may depend on whether the blasted thing’s gone for good or not. A couple of other funny things – you may be able to make more sense of ’em than I can. The pit below the columns: when I had a closer look, it was some kind of vortex, smelled like sea-water and that smell you get after a lightning strike. And there was some kind of magical effect coming from the top of the middle column, don’t know what. Oh, and once I got back up to the big hall, that Lex fellow – he seemed to be under the impression that we were working for him, and he complained we hadn’t done a full job because he still couldn’t “project his senses” down there, said he was still “blocked”. Don’t know whether that’s anything to do with it.’
Lasira looks at Heret. ‘Hmm,’ she says, ‘That may be just as well. We probably don’t want Lex controlling any more of the place than he already does. As long as the compulsion’s gone…’
After another pause, Krevorg clears her throat and slaps her thighs. ‘Right. Well. I think you know everything I do now, so…’
‘Oh,’ says Lasira, ‘Of course. I’m sure you need to be going.’ She nods to the clerk, who produces a pouch of coins and hands it to the hobgoblin. ‘There’s a bit extra in there,’ says the halfling, ‘For getting those guards out too.’
‘Decent of you,’ says Krevorg, quickly counting the coins and putting the purse into her bag. ‘Much obliged.’ She stands up, shoulders her bag, retrieves her partisan from where it’s leaning in the corner, and moves to the door.
‘Good luck, chaps,’ she says from the doorway, ‘And good business.’
Krevorg, sitting straight-backed on the well-padded armchair, looks around the expensive-looking bedroom at the halfling – Lasira Gemfinder, her name is – and then at the middle-aged human man in the corner who is now looking at her expectantly as his pen hovers above a sheaf of papers, and finally at the bed, where an emaciated young human man is propped up on a pile of bolsters and pillows. Well. It’s a somewhat unusual setting for an after-action report: clients don’t usually invite her into their bedrooms, which she imagines is something to do with her being a burly orange-skinned hobgoblin and something to do with her being a famously effective monster-hunter-for-hire. But she’s done business in stranger places. She clears her throat and begins.
‘Jolly good. Well, as you recall, I set off from your offices with those local chaps you drummed up – the musician fellow, the half-orc chap with the accent, and the young lady with the sword –’
(‘Mathew, Gegrun, Bliss,’ Lasira says to the clerk, ‘sixth day of Hammer’.)
‘Quite so,’ Krevorg nods. ‘So off we trotted, followed the road, made camp a little way off from this Stoneleaf place, passed the night. So far, nothing to write home about. Next morning, we made the rest of the way there and found a bit of a to-do going on at the edge of the village.’
‘The… guards…?’ croaks the young fellow in the bed – Heret something-or-other – with a worried frown.
‘Yes, your hired muscle were having a bit of argy-bargy with a pair of locals who were trying to get past. Young fishy-smelling chap and an elf of some sort.’
‘Eladrin?’ asks Lasira, ‘Named Faye?’
Krevorg nods. ‘That’s the one. And the other one called himself Stedd. Quite insistently, in fact. He and the other one were doing a lot of pointing at one of your “no trespassing” signs – this particular one said “no trespassing except for Faye and Stedd” – and telling your chaps that Faye and Stedd was them and they were here to help your chap Heret.’ Heret makes a sort of choking, gurgling noise that may have started as a laugh. ‘The guards weren’t having it, though,’ she continues. ‘Turned ’em away. Anyway, as we came up those two recognized the ones you sent along with me, and they all had a bit of a chin-wag.’
‘What was said?’ asks Lasira quickly.
‘Couldn’t tell you,’ Krevorg shrugs. ‘Think I heard the boy Stedd saying something about being promised there would be fish there. Got the impression the other one, Faye, might not have given him the full picture about the tentacles and all that.’ Heret sighs and rubs his gaunt face. ‘But mostly,’ the mercenary continues, ‘I was talking to your chief guard. She had a proper check of the papers you’d given me and then brought out a horse and a bag of holding and told me they belonged to your chap here.’ She nods towards Heret. ‘So I went through the bag, checked it all against the list you gave me – everything present and correct. Until the half-orc asked to have a look at the bag and promptly up-ended it.’
Lasira’s eyebrows shoot upwards. ‘You gave Gegrun the bag of holding?’
‘Must admit, I did. He was jolly curious about it and he struck me as an honest chap. And I did impress upon him that if he tried to make off with it I’d kill him stone dead. Didn’t account for him being a half-wit, though.’ She shakes her head. ‘I and a couple of the others managed to catch about half the potions, but the rest broke on the ground, and so did the bottles of acid, which dissolved a couple of those dwarven hammers.’
Lasira looks to the clerk, who nods. ‘Eight potions of rest and two Vorsthold warhammers left,’ he says. The halfling sighs. ‘All right,’ she says to Krevorg, ‘Please carry on.’
‘Well, off we went to the quarry,’ says Krevorg.
‘Including Faye and Stedd?’ Lasira asks.
‘That was your guards’ decision. They let them in on condition they brought back any of the surviving fellows who’d wandered into the tunnels.’
‘Which they didn’t,’ Lasira says tersely.
‘I suppose not,’ the hobgoblin replies. ‘So in we went, and got as far as the room with the skull before this Faye started chatting to that voice you told me about, the Lex fellow. Claimed he didn’t know what happened to your boy Heret here, and started banging on about helping him with his damp problem like you said he would, and inviting us to his study like you said he would. I tried to swing ’em all round to ignoring it and getting on with the job but I could see we were just going to be there all day arguing, so study it was. But I got ’em all out of there pretty quick and into the big hall –’
‘Through the…?’ Heret begins to ask before being struck by a fit of coughing.
‘Krevorg,’ Lasira says, ‘Could you show us on the map?’
The clerk gets out a piece of parchment. ‘That reminds me,’ Krevorg says, ‘There was a door in the study that you haven’t got on your map. In this wall.’ She leans forward and waves a finger at the sheet and the clerk makes a mark on it. ‘Anyway,’ she continues, moving her finger from place to place. ‘Study. Fireplace. Room with big gaming board. Portal thingy. Big hall. Pit. Going off the map now. Stone spiral stairs going down.’ The clerk starts jotting rapid notes. ‘One floor down, square landing, about ten feet each way. Nothing there but a door – Lex’s private suite from what he was saying. He didn’t seem to be able to hear us down there, by the way. Or didn’t reply when I spoke to him, anyway. More stairs down. Dark down there, bit shabby and damp. Next floor down there are two choices: short tunnel on the right leading to more stairs going down, or tunnel to the left. After a bit of walking in the left-hand tunnel, more stairs down, curving a bit to the right. High stone tunnel at the bottom with water standing in a channel along either side. Stone arch in the middle.’
Krevorg waves away the map and sits straight again. ‘A way along the tunnel there were a couple of kuo-toa hauling a cage out of the water with some poor chap in it. The tiefling gal tried to do some kind of routine pretending to be a god or some such. All seemed a bit elaborate to me but it distracted them enough for me to chop one in half and the elf did for the other one with a few cracks of a whip. Then I pulled all the cages up and got the people out of ’em. Five dead, I’m afraid, but young Heret here was still hanging on, and so were a couple of others. The half-wit gave him a bit of healing magic and I left ’em all to rest while I went to take care of your tentacle problem. Rather thought all the locals would stay and look after Heret, actually, since that’s what they’d all said they’d come for. But they all followed me!’ She shrugs.
'Now then, the tunnel goes on,' Krevorg continues, addressing the clerk, 'Until it comes to a big cavern, a few hundred feet each way across I should think. Stagnant pools of water dotted around. Three columns at the far end, about fifteen, twenty feet tall, standing around a kind of pit.' She turns her attention back to Lasira and Heret. 'Lots more kuo-toa in there, chanting away about the sea mother, you know how they like to carry on. And some illithids on top of the columns, except it turned out to be just one, doing a magic trick. Seemed to be in charge of the fishy blighters. Knew we were there of course, tried to invite us to join in whatever mumbo-jumbo they were up to.'
'What were they up to?' asks Lasira.
Krevorg shrugs again. 'Dashed if I know. But they had some more of your guard chappies chained up around the pit. Probably going to sacrifice 'em or something. The boy Stedd got cold feet around this point, tried to spin some yarn about being lost. Imagine trying to lie to an illithid!' She shakes her head with a mixture of amusement and sorrow. 'Well, the Bliss gal had a better idea, started getting her magic going. Turned out the kuo-toa had their own mage and he got twitchy fingers too, so it all started happening. The musician turned into a big ape, the boy got bigger, there were things coming at us out of the pools of water. I headed straight for the illithid. Always deal with the mind-flayer first, that's my rule. Didn't keep too close an eye on what the rest of 'em were up to but I did spot a chuul jumping out of a pool and tackling the youngster. Odd, that. They don't generally socialize with illithids. Maybe it was being controlled. The intellect devourer was more par for the course. Poor half-wit. Can't have taken that thing long to eat his brain. Still, ghastly way to go. At least he didn't live to see himself carving chunks out of his pals.'
Krevorg notices Heret looking even more pale than he started, so she adopts a more business-like tone and continues, 'Now, the column was a problem. Tried to stick the illithid with a couple of spears but couldn't quite get it. The tiefling had more luck with some fire and lightning magic, and eventually the ape got the idea too and grabbed the blighter off the top of the pole. I had a good go at it with both ends of my partisan but no luck, it was using some sort of mental deflection. Then the blasted thing vanished.'
She shakes her head in remembered frustration and disappointment. 'Not often a kill gets away from me and it's dashed unsatisfactory. Still, the kuo-toa were all done by then, except a couple that Stedd had knocked out earlier and wanted to keep for himself. Haven't the foggiest idea what he meant to do with them. Couldn't ask him either: there he was on the ground with the half-orc's sword stuck clean through his neck and into the ground, the poor lad. The ape musician had knocked the brain-eater out of the big fellow by then too. I chopped it up quick before it could hope into anyone else.'
'Well,' says the hobgoblin after a short pause, 'That was just about that. The young lady helped me cut the prisoners loose and we sort of herded them out. Some of ’em, anyway – I think some wandered off along the way, but you can go back and get them if you like. As for the others, well, Faye picked up the boy and vanished, don't know where. The musician somehow hefted the half-orc's body onto his shoulder too – I told him it was no good but there we are. I grabbed one of the kuo-toa too, as you know – you've got him tied up in your office now, for whatever that’s worth. Collected this chap’ – a nod at Heret – ‘and the other two on the way out, and the horse too, and here we are back again. Job done.’
The room is quiet for a while. Then Heret, who has been lying back on his pillows and looking up at the ceiling, levers himself up onto his elbows and croaks, ‘The feeling… the need to go in…?’
‘Into the tunnels? Can’t really say. When I spoke to the guards on my way through the village they hadn’t noticed any change, but it could take time to wear off. I’d wager the illithid had something to do with it, so it may depend on whether the blasted thing’s gone for good or not. A couple of other funny things – you may be able to make more sense of ’em than I can. The pit below the columns: when I had a closer look, it was some kind of vortex, smelled like sea-water and that smell you get after a lightning strike. And there was some kind of magical effect coming from the top of the middle column, don’t know what. Oh, and once I got back up to the big hall, that Lex fellow – he seemed to be under the impression that we were working for him, and he complained we hadn’t done a full job because he still couldn’t “project his senses” down there, said he was still “blocked”. Don’t know whether that’s anything to do with it.’
Lasira looks at Heret. ‘Hmm,’ she says, ‘That may be just as well. We probably don’t want Lex controlling any more of the place than he already does. As long as the compulsion’s gone…’
After another pause, Krevorg clears her throat and slaps her thighs. ‘Right. Well. I think you know everything I do now, so…’
‘Oh,’ says Lasira, ‘Of course. I’m sure you need to be going.’ She nods to the clerk, who produces a pouch of coins and hands it to the hobgoblin. ‘There’s a bit extra in there,’ says the halfling, ‘For getting those guards out too.’
‘Decent of you,’ says Krevorg, quickly counting the coins and putting the purse into her bag. ‘Much obliged.’ She stands up, shoulders her bag, retrieves her partisan from where it’s leaning in the corner, and moves to the door.
‘Good luck, chaps,’ she says from the doorway, ‘And good business.’
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