A Miner Problem – Sheryl, the Fae-Touched – 30.04.2020

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Satchel over one shoulder, rapier on her left hip and harp by her side, Sheryl arrives early in the morning to Portal Plaza, anticipating the mission to Vorsthold. She has stopped calling these jaunts through the transportation circle adventures… She doesn’t know how long ago.

Maybe I’m getting wiser?

The thought makes her laugh. Sheryl knows she is many things, but wise is probably not among them.

“Jenna! How goes?” she says, coming up to the red-haired mage.

“Sheryl,” Jenna says, with a nod. “It is alright. Busy.” She starts drawing the somatic shapes in the air for another party of people who are about to depart. “Doing another job for the Council?”

The bard nods. “I’m off to Vorsthold this time.” Sheryl looks around but doesn’t see anyone else who would be part of the group just yet. Jenna softly chants the spell that activates the circle and it reminds Sheryl of something.

“Say, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I read this really interesting fiction book the other week – least I’m pretty sure it’s fiction.”

“Oh?” Jenna glances at her quickly, interest clearly piqued, but she maintains concentration on the active spell.

“It was about these mages, but their magic comes from angels.”

Jenna looks at her as the last of the departing people disappears and she closes off magic. “They use angels in their spells?”

“It was more like the angels did the magic for them, but doing so aged the mages who were controlling the angels. So a person might appear to be 50 years old but is actually only 25. It was quite fascinating.”

Jenna’s face abruptly changes from one of interest to closed off, which takes Sheryl aback. Maybe it was because she had seen Jenna enough times in recent weeks or perhaps it was her intuitive and empathetic heart that she was able to pick up on it, but Sheryl could tell something about what she had just said made Jenna uncomfortable.

“It’s not my personal favourite work by the author, only their latest publication I believe,” Sheryl continues, as if she had not noticed the sudden change of mood.

“Are you talking about books?” asks a low, distinguishable voice.

“Bones!” Sheryl exclaims happily. “I was talking about my latest fictional read, yes.”

“I much prefer histories,” the aarakocra says dryly.

Jenna seems to sniff and mumble something about fiction being better than non-fiction but she doesn’t engage with their conversation as the rest of the party starts to arrive. Ghesh, the black dragonborn barbarian, and Kalta, a half-orc fighter, are the next to walk up. Ghesh talks about the library of Daring Academy and how he really enjoyed doing research there for a friend. Then Mace and BB show up, Mace talking to BB about the importance of having a green thumb when it comes to growing anything, particularly flowers of other planes.

“Sheryl! Hey,” the big blue firbolg says, as she catches sight of the fae-bard. “I didn’t recognise you… You’re back too! And with some new jewellery I see. It looks nice.” She eyes the circlet Sheryl wears. “How have you been?”

“I am well BB,” Sheryl says with a warm smile. “It is good to see you.”

“Are you all here now?” Jenna cuts in. “Got to get you through before we can have the next group arrive.”

Sheryl and the others make ready and step onto the teleportation circle. As Jenna starts to chant the spell she catches Sheryl’s gaze just as the magics sweep them away from the morning bustle of the city’s centre. It was a strange sensation, standing still and yet feeling the wind whip around them as they got transported a great distance.

It’s almost as good as flying, Sheryl thinks to herself.

It takes a moment but when she finally registers what she is seeing, the sight takes Sheryl's breath away.

“Wow…”

Towering oaks reach up to the sky all around them but these natural sentinels are dwarfed by the beautiful, majestic, and jagged mountains rising up behind them. Ghesh steps forward, saying he knows the way and they follow. Sheryl is lost in the beauty of the nature around her, the forest, which isn’t too different from the ones in the Summer Court, just a bit more mundane, is still and warm in the mid-spring sun. She breathes it in and feels the gem in her circlet warm against her forehead.

After some time they reach the base of the mountain and see the fortress that connects the surface world with Vorsthold – Sunfast Keep.

“I have been really looking forward to this!” Mace says, a hungry gleam to his eyes.

“Is there a place you haven’t looked forward to going, Mace?” Sheryl asks, ironically.

He considers her question for a moment, then looks at her and with utmost seriousness says, “Faerûn. That place is so overdone.”

The black-scaled dragonborn stops just as they are about to enter a vast cave entrance in the mountain’s face. Turning back to them, Ghesh says in a quiet voice, “Follow along with what they ask us to do. They are very wary of outsiders and do not trust easily.”

The seriousness of his tone coupled with the imposing fortress they were about to enter holds back any quips any of them might have had. It was new territory this place, and none of them wanted to get off on the wrong foot with the fierce Vorstborn.

The guards that greeted them at the fortress’ gate had a stoney countenance to say the least, and it seemed that not even Mace’s charms could break their wariness. Looking up as they passed under the heavy stone doors it took Sheryl a moment to realise what she was seeing. The hall they were lead through was dotted with murder holes – arrow slits, drains for hot oil, portcullises and all manner of defences. Then they were asked to step exactly where their guard escort walked so they didn’t trigger any traps. It seemed a bit excessive but she followed his foot path to the tile. From the little she knew of Vorsthold from Bodar and Themyra, Sheryl wasn’t sure what to make of it all but it certainly did not surprise her how fortified the place was.

As they descended deeper underground, the light got dimmer and Sheryl could feel the creeping unease that always liked to tickle the back of her mind whenever darkness persisted in unfamiliar territory. She had to Light her iridescent split cape in order to see but it soon became unnecessary as they reached the enormous cavern that was the heart of the dwarven city.

Stalactites and stalagmites bursting with glowing crystals and covered with bioluminescent fungi give the two mile wide cavern an extraordinary grandeur that takes Sheryl’s breath away. What was more, there was a small mountain in the centre of this wide space, and it was carved into defensive perfection. Each terrace, each rooftop, every bit of wall and surface was built to be used for military defence and the tiered city built into and on top of this smaller mountain was divided into five regimented districts.

It truly is a military marvel! Sheryl reflects in wonder. I wonder if Varis would appreciate the structured eloquence of it all.

The sounds of distant battle, of metal clashing against metal, and the reverb of distant but distorted voices, finally reaches past her awe and Sheryl sees the others have moved on without her. She runs to catch up with them as they are taken into the city proper.

Brought to a castle-like structure which could only be the Vorsthold Council Building, the six of them are ushered into a rather utilitarian office, which makes Sheryl once again think of the Grandmaster. Waiting inside with a pleasant smile on her face was the mayor herself, Carrie Grimblefoot.

She explains the situation.

“Our main mithril mine, Stargrave, was lost to us 3 days ago. We had sent a scouting party down there, but only one of them came back. She was… incoherent, babbling, her mind broken. She threw herself off the roof.” Carrie pauses for a moment. “Even in death, her soul was lost to madness and we were unable to question her.”

Everyone exchanges confused or worried glances with each other. Sheryl shares their concerns, but she knows what the mayor is referring to.

“We need you to establish what happened down there, and if possible fix it.”

They set off with a guide from the Umbersteel Raiders, Vistra Ungat, to lead the way. It was explained that Vorsthold were at constant war with the duergar, grey skinned dwarfs from the Underdark, and this mine they were setting out to recover was the main source of the Vorstborn’s mithril, the precious metal used to craft their armour, weapons, ballista, everything they need in order to defend their city. There were twenty to twenty-five miners with just as many soldiers down there, but the mayor did not know if any of them were even alive anymore.

“This sounds eerily like Stoneleaf…” BB says to them as they depart.

“What’s that BB?” Sheryl asks.

“It is a mine back in the Dawnlands. Until recently it was occupied by mindflayers trying to bring their elder god into our realm. But it started out like this, with the miners going missing…”

Vistra leads them out of the city towards a tunnel entrance that is darker than the large cavern containing the city. Sheryl sees it and her steps slow momentarily as she felt whispers of old, half remembered fears come to her mind. She takes a moment to steel herself and casts a soft yellow Light once more into the iridescent spilt cape where her wings once were, and she feels those nightmares retreat like the shadows which she now illuminates. Vistra looks back at her and scowls, but Sheryl just lifts her nose and does not apologise.

As they make their way through the Underdark Sheryl looks to Bones. The one other person she thought would have as hard a time as her seemed unaffected by the darkness they walked through. For an aarakocra, he certainly had some interesting reactions to different situations. Sheryl sees him working on sketching out a map of their path and wonders if that is how he is coping.

The hours pass and none of them speak. Every now and then they hear Mace and Vistra’s hushed tones from a head in the dark but that’s it. BB silently points out the different animal and plant life she can see, clearly surprised that there is so much of it underground.

Eventually they reach a stream that has a faint green shimmer to it’s waters. Curious, Sheryl lets the Light she has been creating fade away. There is a moment of utter darkness and she feels branching hands reach out to brush her skin and grab at her hair, tugging at her clothes–

“Woah…”

BB’s soft exclamation makes her open her eyes.

The faint green shimmering stream is now a beam of flickering light as its waters run past them. She looks up and for the third time that day her breath is taken away as she sees the stars.

No, not stars. Thats…

The bioluminescent fungus they had seen in the large cavern where Vorsthold resides is nothing compared to the brilliant lights surrounding them now. Sheryl feels the stirrings of a song start to form in her mind as a child-like wonder fills her heart, when Vistra suddenly turns around a look of alarm on her face.

“Quick, get to cover!”

Sheryl stands there a moment confused, but with Mace’s help she and the others hide just before the steady march of boots reaches her ears. Not a moment later they see them enter the pocket cavern they’ve stopped in.

Grey skinned dwarves enter through the western side of the small pocket cavern they are in, not spotting them as they cut across the open space to head north. They hear Vistra swear softly in dwarvish but wait for the last of the battalion to clear the cavern before she speaks to them.

“Those duergar are headed towards the Umbersteel. I must warn the city as they will be unprepared for the attack.” She points downstream. “Follow its path for another thirty minutes or so. You will see the Stargrave mine entrance at its end.”

“Good luck,” Mace says to her. She nods and then disappears into the dark.

They take a few minutes to gather themselves; Bones using the Light in Sheryl’s relit split cape to finish his map, Mace to gather some poisonous mushrooms, and BB to take some of the luminescent fungi. They cannot delay though and so thirty minutes later they find themselves at a smaller version of the Vorsthold gate. It is immediately apparent something is very wrong.

Within thirty feet of the entrance she could smell it, the unmistakable copper smell of blood. But there was something underneath it, something sour and rotten. The unmistakable smell of decay. There’s a flash and unknown memories flit through her mind, too quick for her to make sense of. But the feelings they leave behind makes her heart race.

“Do you smell that?” Sheryl asks Ghesh.

“I do,” the black dragonborn says. “It’s not good.”

Sheryl thinks for a moment before turning back to the others. She explains to them that because Vorsthold is constantly at war, they rely on two types of soldiers to defend their city. The clerics and paladins who fight using their military tactics, and their wizards, who raise the fallen so they may keep on fighting and protecting the city even in death.

“We may find more than corpses in there…” she cautions.

BB asks Blue, her fae-magpie familiar, to fly ahead and take a look. She rests her soft blue hand on Sheryl’s shoulder as her eyes glow softly, the arcane link between them active. It takes a few minutes but soon Blue appears in front of BB, flapping in her face, absolutely terrified.

Erring on the side of caution they go in. Right away they see smears of blood everywhere as if something has been dragged or moved through them. Mace and Sheryl go to investigate the side rooms. The armoury, dorms, mess hall, and storage rooms are all empty, except for the signs of struggle everywhere but even in the destruction there is no evidence as to why it happened.

Coming back to the main room the two try to take a closer look at the bodies but something about the half eaten corpses makes her stomach churn and bile rise to the back of Sheryl’s throat so she has to turn away. The tiefling however notices that some of the corpses have been dead for longer, and those ones clearly chewed on the fresher corpses. But there’s another set of bite marks that confuses him as he says they look like cow’s or sheep’s teeth made them.

“There was no forced entry either,” Ghesh points out, and the unease settles in deeper.

“Then how did this happen?” Kalta asks.

“It’s possible one of them,” Sheryl gestures to a less decayed dwarf corpse, “lost their hold on these ones,” she gestures to the more zombie-like dwarves. “The wizard I met from Vorsthold before, Themyra, had to recast her spell every so often to maintain control. Otherwise…” She spreads her arms wide, indicating the carnage they stand in.

“What should we do now?” BB asks, an underlying note of fear in her voice. She has not let go of Blue since they came back to her.

Sheryl looks towards the end of the hall as the others start to talk and slowly makes her way forward, dimming the Light in her split cape to a soft glow that matches her circlet. She comes to a small room with steps leading down from one exit and a wooden bridge from another. Kalta and Mace come in, the tiefling taking a quick look at some green viscous liquid that’s puddled in the corner, pointing out that it is acidic and to not touch it, before going out onto the wooden bridge. There’s a moment of silence.

“Ah crap,” Mace says.

Then all hell breaks loose.

Sheryl hears Mace mutter some words as he casts a spell, whilst Bones moves out and points his finger at something she can’t quite see. As a Ball of Fire explodes it lights up the entire cavern, showing three goatmen figures outlined in Faerie Fire, and a pile of half eaten dwarf corpses.

Well we found the rest of the Vorstborn, Sheryl thinks grimly.

Ghesh charges forward. The rage he uses to wield his mighty axe has him diving headfirst into a frenzy, slicing down on an animated corpse that just stood up, followed by Kalta who tries to hurl a spell followed by two arrows. Sheryl stands back, seeing what the others are doing and notices not all of the magic seems to work to the fullest effect. She was about to run down the stairs to cast one of her own signature spells when a tendril from what she thought was a pool of acid shoots out and lashes at Ghesh.

Realizing the bigger threat is probably the slime, Sheryl changes tactics, right hand plucking three strings on her harp. As she does, the sound lessens where she is and instead grows into a concussive reverberation in front of the acidic slime monster, which explodes outwards, catching it and the goatmen in the blast.

“Let’s make sure that you get the rebound!” she sing-shouts to Ghesh, inspiring him as she draws her rapier, the magic in its metal starting to hum as the battle chorus builds around her.

BB, the last to join the cacophony, steps out onto the wooden bridge, gesturing to the collapsed stalactites and stalagmites around the goatmen and undulating acid pool, bringing them to life with her strange magics. Sheryl sees her arms start to glow as the rocks rise up to form two large and one medium Animated Rock Objects that start to batter and ram into the four enemies.

The slime flashes and a gangly, single horned creature charges straight for Kalta. Mace sees it’s vicious intent and shouts some commanding cutting words that seem to distract its first attack but not it’s second. The hit does more than damage the half-orc fighter, it seems to drain the very life from her.

With a flourish of her blade Sheryl comes around from behind, slicing it up it’s boney back. The creature howls and her rapier seems to sing in her hand as it knows the creature it struck is not meant to be here. Glancing back at Ghesh who is shaking his head as if to clear it, she says, “Faenya, Ghesh!” hopefully Healing him enough to help him.

A streak of blue-white lighting comes from behind her and she sees BB’s clasped hands pointing towards the horned horror and one of the rotting goatmen that has come up behind Kalta. The stench of their sizzled flesh burns Sheryl’s nose but at this point it’s just another smell added to the mix of rot and blood filling the cavern.

An acidic tentacle lashes out at her small form and Sheryl feels the burn down her leg. The gem in her circlet glows as her face flashes, her features shifting to be more ethereal and fierce as the battle rages around her.

But then she hears it, a buzzing that sounds like the shifting of leaves under her small feet as she runs through a forest, dark and deep. The buzzing becomes the whispers of sharp toothed mouths as they speak in a strange language, their claws against her skin and rough hands pulling at her, tearing her clothes making the whispers grow louder and louder until they become shouts as they laugh and yelp and howl out to her, chasing her, playing with her as they hunt her.

“Ahhh!” she sing-cries out.

Sheryl spins around, slicing the hamstrings of the ebony death demon so it falls to its knees. Her rapier leaps from her extended hand and it flies out, whirls around in a tight circle, and then viciously and effectively slices through the demon, decapitating it. As the head thumps to the floor and its body collapses down the dancing rapier flies back to Sheryl’s open hand. With a flourish she swivels around, her face pure fae-wickedness as she says to the slime acid, “You’re next.”

But before she can follow her words with actions the acidic slime creature lashes out once more at her, this time catching her arm. As it clings to her the confusion of what plays through her mind, the visions of unseelie fae are chasing her through a dark forest mix with the battle playing out in the cavern and Sheryl is unable to move or help her friends…

With its third attack on her, the pain of the acid burning, some part of her is able to push through the horrible vision. She simultaneously feels the warmth of the gem in her circlet and sees the light it is shining calling her out of the dark. She reaches forward, clutching onto it, drawing it into herself.

The moment her vision clears she sees Kalta and Ghesh slashing at the slime, it’s form much diminished. The undead dwarf and rotting goatmen have all been taken care of. It is just the one enemy left. Breathing in from the depths of her soul, feeling that warmth within her, Sheryl sheaths her rapier, pulls her harp up and drags her right forefinger, then her left, up the strings towards her in a glissando. At the highest note she captures it in her fingers, the magic glowing bright and sharp. Then she opens her lips and sings a note that explodes by the acidic slime monster. Sheryl saw it was still undulating after that attack, but barely.

“Come on BB! Get your head in the game! Let’s finish this,” she shouts encouragingly. The words seem to reach her firbolg friend because she stops whatever the creature was driving her to do, which looked like some sort of mad dance.

Bones was the one to get the finishing blow, taking Sheryl’s lead and dealing a Chromatic Orb of Thunder damage that the fae-bard sees harmoniously ripple through it’s form. With the final creature dead all was silent again in the stone halls, the six of them shaken, but alive.

---

They tried to bring back evidence of the demons as Mace informed them, but the creatures started to deliquesce turning into smelly puddles of black ichor.

“Bulezau,” Mace infomed them. “And that one,” he pointed to what little remained of the acidic slime, “is called an Alkilith, a portal demon.”

Checking the area for any clues they found the remains of a small black flask the size of an orange, burned and etched with corrosive damage on the inside, covered with glyphs written in some dialect of elvish on the outside. BB took a closer look at it and Identified that it was used as a containment or binding spell, a dark one.

“A job well done all around,” Mace said to them all. “I had no doubt we would be successful.”

“It is still worrisome. We don’t know who was responsible for this, only that it happened,” Sheryl says, a crease in her brow.

The six of them cautiously make their way back to the dwarven stronghold, using Bones’ detailed map as a guide. When they told Carrie about what they found, providing the evidence to back up their claims, she was both impressed by their strength and greatly troubled by their report.

“I understand you are careful with whom you share the information to,” Sheryl starts, “but if you are worried and see Vorsthold needing more aid in the future, perhaps you may consider sharing your Teleportation Circle sigils with Daring Heights… in the future.”

Carrie looks at Sheryl, appraising her intention. “Thank you, we shall take it under advisement.”

Sheryl nods and leaves it be.

---

Since Vorsthold would not allow them to use their Teleportation Circle, they left the Sunfast keep and made their way into the forest at the base of the mountain. BB kindly offered to cast the spell herself, using her own supplies of chalks.

The others had slowly outpaced her, but that didn’t bother her. Not this time. Sheryl was thinking of a song. As she concentrated on it, the gem in her circlet started to flash and whorls of magic swirled out from it to wrap around her.

As these tendrils embraced her Sheryl found herself smiling, her heart racing in excited anticipation. She closed her eyes and in her mind sang the song that called her home.

“Alright that’s done. Now let’s all- Wait where’s Sheryl?” BB asked, searching for her friend.

The others turned around but all they heard were the fading notes of some indistinguishable song on the wind.