Kapel Kaput 2/7 - Bugs, Blood and Goblins

Well I'm not sure that could have gone much worse to be frank Portia.



I have just suffered through what can only be described as an entirely unnecessary amount of mental strain. I am also likely to be pulling insects out of orifices I wasn't even aware I had for the next month.



I shall explain.



I met up with a number of other individuals within a drinking establishment known as The Three Headed Ettin. We were all responding to a written plea pinned upon a board within that very same pub. I must admit I might have skated over a couple of the more important details on my initial reading of this plea (it involved a hole...or pit...or chasm… something about monsters and kidnap...I was terribly tired Portia) but my eyes immediately alighted upon the mention of the word 'pay'. Weighing up a far-too-light money pouch in my hand, I decided to give it a stab.



I think it's fair to say that as a party we were an odd lot.



We consisted of a hard liquor chugging Teifling girl called Bubbles, a lute aficionado human man named Matthew, a particularly shifty looking tabaxi who introduced himself as Kritter, a slightly brusque wood-elf male named Andariel, and a Half-Drow female called Ingrainne. This last was looking at my own questionable Elvish complexion with a little too much suspicion. She immediately started interrogating me as to where I came from and if I was in fact a Drow. I respectfully informed her that I was a High Elf of the most hallowed of High Elf ancestry before quickly becoming overly interested in the details of my own shoes.



After quite the impressive display on the Lute by our grinning bard (a rendition that earned him a potential job offer by the proprietor of the bar) we soon headed off to meet up with the author of the plea. One Cede Verhof.



It was here that I started to suspect I might have been a smidge out of my depth. It turned out that Cede’s husband Kapel had taken it upon himself to start something of a ‘Chasm Transportation’ enterprise. Open to any and all adventurers who had a burning desire to go poking about a creeping, crawling underdark. Each to their own I guess but apparently this is some individuals idea of ‘fun’. The entrepreneurial Kapel went missing however with the overriding suspicion being that some fowl thing had belched its way out of the mouth of the chasm and snatched him up.



At this point I’d somewhat mentally decided that what I’d prefer to this dangerous escapade was a nice hot bath. Perhaps with a goblet of wine. And something pleasant going on that involved bacon. Cede however was not the only individual briefing us; there was also Lasira Gemfinder the head of the Kantas branch of Olem-Muldevaar Trading Company and it was Larisa who convinced me to see it through.



Admittedly her mention of giant spiders snatching up members of her staff from within the Chasm didn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm. 50 gold apiece just for going down there however evaporated the bath daydream from my mind. She also promised a further 150 split between the party for the successful rescue of Kapel, as well as a further reward for any additional information on what exactly was going on beneath the ground. What was an undoubtedly noble (yet skint) Elf to do?



The party were in agreement. We bade farewell to Larisa and Cede and headed for the chasm entrance.



After being granted a slightly hostile reception by Sergeant Grimes of the City watch on the perimeter of the chasm we were introduced to the kidnapping’s only witness: a young Drow girl named Lido.



It was becoming increasingly apparent that Igrainne’s interest in this little escapade was centered almost entirely around Drow and the underdark in which they occupy. She was particularly vigorous in her questioning of the girl. Not that she was alone of course. The whole party attempted to either scare or charm the Drow into spilling all she knew.



It turned out that Lido was of an adventurously rebellious sort and had made her way near to the surface purely for the frolick of the thing. It was here that she had seen poor Kapel dragged off by what appeared to be three Goblins. Incidentally she had also let slip that she worked for an organisation known as the ‘Sisterhood’ which was run by somebody named Liya. I could make neither head nor tail of this but it certainly seemed to peak the interests of some of our party.



Lido agreed, rather jovelly, to be the party’s guide into the chasm and so we began our descent. (As a side note here the rather roguish looking Kritter seemed to my eye rather smug about something at this point. Whether or not this had anything to do with the slightly lighter nature of Sergeant Grimes’ money pouch is difficult to say.)



Stealth was the order of the day once inside the chasm. It was here that our bard Matthew and the Tiefling girl Bubbles displayed quite the impressive and unsettling trick. Surrounded by the erie dank dark of the chasm I started to hear their voices inside my mind! I’d never experienced such a thing before and very almost had an incident of the trouser variety. They calmly informed us however that they had the ability to speak to us within our thoughts and suggested that perhaps this would be the wiser course of conversation as we were attempting to stealth. The party were in agreement and we made our way into the black.



I believe it was either Andariel or Ingrainne who spotted the tracks. Blood. Only a couple of days old and dragging through the dirt into the depths of the chasm. This seemed to be our Kapel’s path. The cold of the chasm gripped tighter on the back of my neck as our party followed the little dark elf further on.



Bubbles’ voice inside my skull somewhat snapped me out of my anxiety at this point. She asked what was wrong with my face. Which I felt was particularly petulant and decided to feign mind-deafness as a response. Once again I became fascinated by the design of my own shoes.



It wasn’t long before Lido informed us that this is where the tracks veered off from her usual route. The blood led into its own tunnel. A short travel into this route and we started to hear the echoes of voices.



I felt the dark weigh heavier on me. The indistinct voices bounced around the black and seemed to fill the space around us. Sinister and alien. Every eye in the party wide and unblinking. My mouth dry. Palms slick with sweat. Every nerve bent toward the echoing sounds, praying that the pounding heart in my chest would quiet its racket.



It was here that Matthew decided to stare at a spider.



The party, understandably perplexed by his actions, watched as the spider seemed to get overly excited by this attention and ran around in circles. Matthew greeted this response with more intent staring. The spider excitedly scurried off.



I confess I feared for our Bard’s sanity.



Matthew however informed us that he had attempted to employ the spider telepathically as a spy to discover the source of voices and he was very confident that he little eight legged friend would be back any second now.



Our party waited.



And waited.



Slightly tiring of this I decided to employ a trick I had picked up from the road and cast a minor illusion in the shape of a spider scuttling back to Matthew to try to convince him to let us move on. The Bard was not convinced by my ruse. But the party as a whole had lost patience at this point and decided to barge in ‘all crossbows blazing’.



What we faced as we strode forth were three Goblins gathered around a campfire with a human male hanging from chains at the far wall.



It was here that the stoic Andariel came into his own. Quite silent up to this point the Ranger was the first to launch forward, Scimitars in hand, straight toward the largest of the Goblins in an attempt to cut him down.



Ingrainne followed into the fray, with the rest of us offering ranged support.



The first action of the largest of the Goblins was to throw a large sack out in front of our party. The turned out to be a swarm of intensely grumpy insects.



Me and these insects would turn out not to get along.



The rest of the party turned out to be a truly impressive bunch. Bubbles seemed to be ordained with a dark, serpentine magic that caused all manner of mischief, Kritter had skills with a crossbow that beggared belief, Andariel and Ingrainne had melee skills that were like a blur and matthew inspired all with his lute.



It was at this point unfortunately that a cloak hanging against the wall came to life in the form of some sort of strange flying manta ray and decided to give our Bard a hug.



It was not a hug he seemed to enjoy.



This was my moment Portia. My moment to shine. I felt the strange energy, the power that I had felt coursing through my veins these last few months build up inside me. An incantation flooded my brain from an unknown source and a crack of green energy flooded around my palm. I stepped forward, my chin raised, my hand raised, ready to unleash hell onto the beast that smothered our Bard.



But the f*&king bugs.



I’d forgotten about the swarm unleashed by that damn Goblin. My spell fizzled out in my palm and I spent the rest of the fight covered in biting cretins.



I admit that by this point I’d rather lost track of things. My contribution to the battle from then on was something of a high-pitched squeal and I tried in vain to swat the wretched insects off of me. I ended up running back into the tunnel weeping in somewhat of a cowardly nature.



I understand that the rest of the party defeated the evil beasts and rescued the human from off the wall (who did indeed turn out to be Kapel). Whilst I grumperly made my way back up to the surface sporting a series of violent insect bite marks on every inch of me.



I collected my winnings.



I had my bath.



It was not my best day.


Yours faithfully

Theo