Chapter 1-22: Beneath the City
General Summary
The Party made their way through the sewers, following Faila's directions, to the mysterious blind junction.
Ramas sent his raven familiar through the wall, revealing it as an illusion, Aetilius decided to follow the raven, finding himself in a further sewer tunnel. About 15ft in front the tunnel curved left, and in around 10ft a second tunnel joined from the right. On the wall up ahead, opposite the adjoining tunnel entrance, Aetilius saw the Aboleth glyph crudely drawn in white paint.
Aetilius walked towards the symbol, to examine it. As he drew alongside the symbol, he started to cough uncontrollably. His lungs began to fill with liquid. Unable to catch his breath, Aetilius collapsed onto the sewer floor, clutching at his throat. The rest of the group raced through the wall to try and rescue him. Keeping their distance from the symbol, Miaug threw her rope arrow with surprising accuracy, just over the drowning paladin's shoulder. Triggering the spring loaded prongs caused them to latch onto the edge of his armour.
Miaug struggled to move the heavy tiefling, but Ryoko leant her strength and between them they hauled Aetilius back from the glyph. As he moved out of the range of the ward, Aetilius immediately began to cough up a foul brown liquid
While he was unconscious, Aetilius had a vision of Selune, who ordered him not to interfere with things in Neverwinter. As he regained consciousness, he explained his vision to the party. The group elected to ignore it, believing it to be a ploy of the Aboleth.
Following the instructions in the scroll from Perry Topletter, Aetilius cast Detect Magic, and was able to see the boundary of the ward as a shimmering haze. Ryoko cast her Flame Blade, and Aetilius guided her hand to carve the counter-ward on the invisible boundary, destroying the glyph and allowing the party to pass.
Ramas sent out his raven again to map the sewers, and found a tunnel dug into the sewer walls, heading downwards. After a brief discussion, the party went into the tunnel.
The ground was treacherous as the group picked their way down the steep incline. Loose stones and scree giving way beneath their feet. After around 50ft the crudely carved passage broke through into a long, winding natural tunnel. Ryoko's unerring directional sense told her that this tunnel ran almost exactly east to west.
The party decided to split up and explore a shirt way in both directions. After it became clear the tunnel extended a fair distance both ways they decided to regroup and struck out west.
The darkness was complete, outside the flickering aura of Clootie's light. The absolute silence, and the oppressive weight of rock hanging overhead caused Miaug and Ryoko to suffer panic attacks, but they were soothed slightly when Clootie began to play a familiar song. After about an hour of travel, the group came to a massive cave in, effectively preventing any further travel west.
The party doubled back, making their way back to the downward tunnel, and continuing east for another ten minutes the tunnel widened into a massive natural cavern. Up ahead, torches burned on the outside of a squat black stone ziggurat, at it's base easily 100ft wide and spanning six storeys. In spite of this impressive scale, the structure didn't come close to the roof of the cavern, which remained shrouded in darkness. Torches burning at the corner of each level illuminated the structure clearly.
In the far right corner of the cavern, behind the pyramid, a small waterfall cascaded in from high up in the cavern wall. The water landing on the third level, flowed across the structure and down the nearside face, a short distance to the right of what appeared to be the entrance. The water collected in a small depression in the cavern floor, before disappearing down below through a small crevice.
The party cautiously approached the entrance, and notice the flowing water has begun to carve a channel in the stone of the structure. The group noticed that based on the evident age of the stonework, the water is evidently much more recent than the building itself.
Some runes were etched into the wall above the archway. Miaug recognised them as Abyssal letters, which she translated: Belief, Patience, Sacrifice.
After a surprisingly long discussion, the group eventually went through the doorway.
The narrow doorway opened into a massive room. A 10ft wide ledge behind the door gave way to an enormous black chasm - easily 100ft across. On the far side of the chasm, stood a matching ledge and archway.
Looking closely, Ryoko noticed that protruding from the ledge directly in front of the door was a narrow walkway - around 1ft wide - which ran across the chasm to the far side. In a trick of forced perspective, the walkway had been intricately carved to blend in almost seamlessly with the opposite wall.
As soon as Aetilius stepped onto the walkway, the room shook with the grinding of gears as a hidden mechanism burst into life. A short distance across the chasm, two massive steel blades began to swing like pendulums across the walkway. Behind the blades, three massive columns crashed down onto the walkway in sequence, raising back up into the roof before crashing down again. Beyond the columns, three bursts of flame erupted from the walkway, illuminating the room with bursts of searing light. Finally, just ahead of the far side ledge, a enormous spiked roller lowered from the ceiling and began to spin a few feet above the surface of the path.
Aetilius was sent ahead first as the party thought his armour would provide him better protection against the traps. As he dodged the first swinging blade, he overbalanced and fell off the walkway. After falling only 20ft, he landed with a jarring impact on sharpened spikes - though his armour took the brunt of the vlow. Ryoko guessed that all the traps and the chasm were was illusory, and poked the first blade with her staff. When the blade passed through the staff, her hunch was confirmed. Miaug lowered a rope to Aetilius and the group made their was across to the far side. Through the far archway the party found a staircase leading upwards.
At the top of the stairs the party found a blank stone wall, with a low archway carved into it. The taller members of the party (Ryoko, Ramas, Aetilius) needed to crouch to shuffle through the gap. Beyond the archway the group found themselves in a large square room - roughly 30ft by 30ft. In the centre of each wall, further archways led onward in the four cardinal directions - North, East, West, with the South wall being the archway they had entered by.
Looking through the other archways, the group saw other identical looking rooms to the North and the East, while the West archway opened on a blank slate wall. Clootie also noticed that carved into the floor of each room were symbols - appearing to be numerals.
Ryoko transformed into a dire wolf and headed through the east archway. The moment she crossed the threshold, she felt her hairs begin to stand on end. As she moved through the room, the feeling of anticipation built up, until a blast of lighting erupted from each wall of the room, striking her in the chest. Clootie followed Ryoko into the east room to try and help her, and was almost overwhelmed by the smell of singed fur. Suddenly the party was surrounded by complete darkness and icy cold. Beyond pitch black, it felt more like the utter absence of everything. As quickly as it began, it was over and the lights returned to normal.
Looking through the archways again, the party realised they had lost each other. Ryoko and Clootie were no longer next to the rest of the group. Ramas sent his raven through the northern archway - but as soon as it passed through he lost contact with it. Looking through the archway he saw the raven, appearing frozen in the middle of the room.
Miaug looked through the west archway, which now seemed to lead into another room. She decided to explore. As soon as she crossed the threshold, she stopped - frozen in place.
The party was once again plunged into complete darkness for a moment. When it cleared, Aetilius and Ramas noticed that the archways in the entrance room now seemed to lead into a well lit corridor.
