Operation: Revenge Party - 19/03/2024 - Mendal Recounts

Post Operation: Back Home

Mendal was sitting on one of the courtyard chairs dressed only with a towel around his waist. Kavel had mistaken this to mean that Mendal wanted to partake in the traditional gada/mace strength exercise that Kavel enjoys, wearing the traditional gamcha (loosely a towel). Kavel was mistaken. Archie, on the other hand had correctly surmised that Mendal was in a towel because he was trying to fully rid himself of any remaining sewage and blood that had covered his clothing. The evidence for this were Mendal’s clothing splayed out on the courtyard floor. Further evidence was found in the hallway and out the front door in the form of muddy and bloody footsteps. Using the Prestidigitation spell, and the help of an Unseen Servant, Archie had started his magical clean-up at the door.


“Good job Archie! That prestidigitation spell is really worth its weight in salt!” Mendal said, showing appreciation for his elderly friend’s magic. “Rae did their bit, but a second washing was worth it.”

“You’re welcome,” Archie replied, slightly vexed about the absent contribution Mendal had made towards cleaning up his own mess.

“Why don’t you pour yourself a nice brandy - and one for me - and I’ll tell you how my boots and cape got covered in blood and shit.” Archie, eager for the drink, and well deserving of one, complied. “And Kavel, get over here too. Come on, put down the heavy mace.” Kavel owned the house, and Archie was the most senior, and yet both goliath and human generally complied with their dwarven friend’s insistent requests.

When both friends sat down, and Mendal started on his second brandy, Mendal then recounted how he had ended up roaming the sewer of Kundar in search of revenge. Revenge for the adventurers that had teamed up with the Kundar Adventurers Guild in defence of Vorsthold during the mind flayer invasion. Our Dawnland adventurers found themselves either betrayed, or the victims of a near fatal accident caused by the Kundar adventurers.
With the exception of Mendal himself, all of the adventurers that went to Kundar seeking revenge, were part of the group betrayed or accidentally put in danger by KAG. The team that the Dawnlander, Rae, had put together were most eager for revenge. Alas, revenge was not found. What was found, however, was something very worrying. Something that fed on people. Something very hungry…


Operation: Revenge Party AKA Roaming Through Shit and Blood (No Revenge)

Mendal recounted the adventure, beginning with his other goliath friend, Ana’s, surprising new expertise with disguises. Surprising for two reasons. Firstly, Ana had learned yet another new skill; she was truly the most diversely talented adventurer in the Dawnlands. But also, surprising in that the disguises were so effective despite the absences of magic involved. “Keros literally disappeared under a bunch of make-up! It was like an actual bronze dragon with Keros’s voice stood in front of us!” Mendal said with his eyes open wide to convey the astonishment he felt when he saw the results of Ana’s work.
“Mind you, the work she did for me was terrible! I told her to make me look like a convert to Bahumat. Keep it simple, no need for kobold make-up for me. And so Ana painted a silver dragon on my shield. Well, it looked more like a lizard than a bloody dragon! She reckons it was my fault for not standing still whilst I was providing Moradin’s divine guidance as she worked. Excuse me for helping!”

After recounting the disguises, Mendal went on to tell his two friends about getting a permit for adventuring in Kundar from the Daring Council, to satisfy Kundar’s new rules to do with Dawnland adventurers. It is especially easy to be caught without a permit if using the teleportation circle, “and use the teleportation circle we had to!” Mendal said aghast. “Archie, what’s the bloody wizard curriculum like?! You say young Mittens doesn’t know the Detect Magic spell? Well Rae needs some spell lessons too; they don’t know the Teleportation spell! Wasn’t impressed with the absence of Feather Fall among their prepared spells that day, either!”

Rae, the bladesinger wizard, and head of the revenge party expedition, was aware of something very suspicious going on under the Kundar Adventurers Group’s headquarters. The party had vowed for revenge, and for discovering what was hidden under KAG HQ. When the team approached KAG HQ, they entered the sewer system to keep out of sight of any KAG member, and with Keros’s minotaur mind for mazes, were able to reach the spot in the sewers closest to being underneath where the KAG HQ stood. “Keros has your problem, Kavel - too thicc for the sewers, or at least his head is for entering sewers. Horns are cool, but a hazard.”

“Well obviously there was a lot of shit in the sewers!” Mendal said, stating the obvious to get it out of the way. “But what we weren’t expecting, right under where KAG HQ was, was a pit maybe a couple hundred feet deep, maybe fifty feet wide. There was another pit, smaller, like a well almost, that went even deeper than two hundred feet in the middle of the bigger pit. These small, and sometimes large red-scaly and metallic looking creatures would throw some captives into the smaller pit. Smaller pit had a magic circle around it. And get this! Sacrificial person would get thrown in, something would then tear the sacrificial person apart. Gobble them up! And a few seconds later, a fireball of sorts would shoot out of the pit, and a new scaly and metallic creature would pop out! It was like a production line of sorts. Except the raw materials were people.” Both Kavel and Archie expressed their horror at the discovery. Mendal explained how it got worse.

“We jumped down the hole!” ‘Brave’ were the responses from Mendal’s friends. “And after what seemed like fucking ages of falling, we ended up in the Abyss! Keros reckoned we were precisely on the 303rd layer - no don’t ask me how he knew, I’ve got no idea.”

“Hot like Hell, or hot like the Fire Plane?” Kavel asked uncomfortably as he remembered his own experiences in Hell, and Mendal’s stories of the Fire Plane.

“No actually,” Mendal responded, remembering being at least happy about that fact, when they did, fortunately, come out of their fall with minimal injuries for such a fatally long descent. “But, like in the Fire Plane, there was a forge of sorts. But like I said earlier, more like a massive production line. Lots of raw material limbs that had been shredded by the weird hungry thing, and lots of metal being shaped into armour set to infuse on skin, or that’s what it looked like to me. We saw a stitched together creature go through the production line, get a cart full of metal added to their body, and then packed into a sphere to be cannon fired up the pit back into Kundar.”

“Hang on, Mendal,” Archie interjected, “how did you avoid getting eaten by the pit creature?”

“Oh right. Good point!” Mendal responded, “We witnessed some hooded person seem to control a Wall of Force like spell that blocked the feeding creature from interfering with finished production items firing back up the pit. Rae worked out how to move the Wall of Force so we could safely pass by the hungry thing. We could still feel the hungry bugger trying to chomp at us on the other side of the Wall of Force though. Says something about the power of the Wall of Force spell though - get that learned fast, Archie!” Archie nodded an acknowledgement.
“Now there was one more, ‘holy shit’ moment while we were in this production centre. We saw demons eating kobold and dragonborn pieces, and then being able to shift form into kobolds and dragonborns! Makes you shit yourself about who in Kundar is actually a demon, right?! And how about this? We saw an aerotaur get thrown into the pit. So how about Kul Goran? Those KAG fuckers were in Vorsthold - might be some Vorsthold dwarves who aren’t who they seem!”

Mendal assured Archie that the team he was with went to report everything to Daring Council after they’d cleaned themselves up a bit. “Your mate, Leonida had some fancy spyglass that combined with the shiny surfaces of her daggers to let her do the Clairvoyance spell through the daggers. She might be able to report other findings.” The point was acknowledged as positive by Archie and Kavel.

“Oh! Mentioning Leonida, old boy, she doesn’t seem to give a fuck about waltzing around Kundar despite being a big prison breaker. And no one stopped her. Seems like no one’s looking for you, Archie!” Mendal said, mockingly, but also attempting to persuade his friend that he could travel to Kundar without worry.

“Was Leonida not disguised by Ana’s brilliance?” Archie queried.

“Hmm. Yeah. Fair point.” Mendal conceded, before glugging his third brandy.

“Oh by the way!” Mendal said, remembering an observation he wished to share with the boys. “So there’s been Something Buried - I remember finding that thing not too far from here in the Dwarven Quarter, and some of the adventurers experienced it too in Vorsthold. You,” Mendal pointed at his human wizard friend, “Archie, have experienced Something Lonely. And now I’ve felt Something Hungry… why are these ‘Somethings’ all horrible buggers?” Where’s Something Pleasant? Or Something Mild even?! Hell I’ll take Something Indifferent, or Something Mediocre, as improvements on the Somethings we have met. Better those than what I imagine some unlucky adventurers are going to meet; Something Pants Shittingly Scary! Or Something Fucking Fatal!”