TTB: C1E20 - Mesym's Fall Continued Report

General Summary

Moving deeper into the slavers' cave, the party followed winding tunnels that were occassionally crossed by a small, underground stream. Eventually the tunnels spilt out into a large, open cavern. As DIGE stepped out into it, two bolts flew past him, one from the right and the other from the left. Glancing to either side he could see their quarry, frantically trying to reload their crossbows.   As Ceasar Andit moved past DIGE and Katrina Runesong to the center of the cavern, he turned back to face the tunnel he had exited and fired an eldritch blast of energy at the larger of their two adversaries. It struck him in the chest, leaving singe marks in his leather armour. With Katrina and Chance joining the fray, the party quickly gained the upper hand.   While the others finished securing the one slaver that surrendered, Ceasar went to investigate the cries for help that he had heard as he entered the cavern. He found three large cages with wooden tops and bottoms and iron bars. Inside were a half dozen humanoids. All of them looked disheveled and dirty, but none appeared to be hurt or mistreated or malnurished. As the other party members joined him, they asked the prisoners if they knew where the key to their cages was kept. "It...the half-dragon keeps it."   With a sigh, Ceasar offered to return to the front of the cave to unearth the half-dragon's corpse and search for the key. While he was gone, Katrina attempted to force the bars with her crowbar, but she fumbled it and accidentally launched it into one of the cages. Chance retrieved it with his mage hand and admonished Katrina to be more careful with it. DIGE then stepped up with a pair of bolt cutters and made short work of the padlocks on the cage doors. As Ceasar returned with the key, he found that the prisoners were already free.   In questioning the now freed prisoners, the party determined that there were likely one or two more slavers left somewhere further inside the cave system. Ceasar offered to lead the prisoners to the safety of the cave entrance, and to also guard that entrance to make sure no slavers managed to sneak around the rest of the group and escape. Meanwhile, the remainder of the party discovered a weapons cache and DIGE quickly packed up what he could in a large chest that was in the cache and took that to Ceasar and the prisoners so that they would be armed to defend themselves if need be.   Continuing deeper into the cave system, Chance, DIGE, and Katrina (along with Uri) came upon a fork in the tunnel. Katrina and Uri headed down the western tunnel, while Chance and DIGE headed north. To the north they found another large cavern, with a raised platform containing a desk and a bed in the northern end and a small tunnel exiting to the northeast. As they investigated these areas a section of the northern, stone rockface began to ... move. Watching in shock, they saw it bulge out and form into a vaguely humanoid shape as it turned to attack them.   Chance quickly descended from the platform and hid behind DIGE, just inside the northeast tunnel opening. DIGE then closed with the stone defender and began to assault it with his hammer. Watching the melee, Chance caught the faint sound of a boot scraping on the floor behind him and was able to turn slightly to lessen a blow from a scimitar that would otherwise have caught him completely off guard. He returned the favour in kind and assaulted his attacker with dissonant whispers that manifested, as all his spells had begun to do, in shadow; his attacker fell to the stone floor, dead. DIGE continued his assault on the stone defender, which continued to take slow and ponderous attacks on DIGE, while DIGE deftly avoided them. Chance moved to the center of the cavern, just in case any other sneaky slavers were hiding down the tunnel, and began to assist DIGE in the fight. Eventually, Katrina and Uri heard the commotion and joined the fray, with Katrina quickly landing a heavy blow with her halberd and turned the stone defender to a pile of rubble.   After the pitched battle, Chance went back to investigate a pile of papers he had seen on the desk, but they were horribly disorganized and he couldn't really make heads or tails of them. Some of the party also investigated the northeast tunnel and found that it came to a dead end, eventually realizing that it was a watch post and that the stone wall that formed its end was man-made and had several place where the stones were loose enough to allow one to look through and see a section of tunnel near the entrance to the cave system.   The party made a final, thorough sweep of the cave before beginning the journey back to Scardale Town, where they planned to get the slaves to safety and to try to hire some mercenaries to help them assault the slavers distribution camp. Arriving around dawn the next day the party split up. Ceasar went to find a shop where he could offload the various equipment they had liberated from the slavers, Katrina stayed with the slaves to make sure they were safe until the party could help set them up with a new lease on life, and Chance went to see about hiring some mercenaries at the guild house.   Chance managed to register the party as "The Vault Raiders", a group looking to hire muscle to help clear out an unsanctioned bandit and slaver...wait, just bandit...camp in the vicinity. The clerk at the registration desk of the guild house took down the information and informed Chance he could return the next day to see what interest his offer drummed up.

Rewards Granted

1,900 cp, 500 sp, 50 gp 10 gems (10 gp each)   ~ 1,100 gp worth of equipment.

Missions/Quests Completed

Rescued the slaves from Mesym's Camp.

Related Reports

TTB: C1E19 - Mesym's Fall Report

Notes

Discovered that slaves from Mesym's Camp are transferred to the distribution camp inside Cormanthor every 3 to 4 weeks - essentially whenever Mesym Bourne could acquire a full complement of slaves.   Discovered the slave ship they had intercepted in Ravens Bluff had been bound to bring its shipment of slaves to Mesym Bourne.   Katrina Runesong slit the throat of the remaining slaver when he chose death over having his tongue removed. As she did so she flashed back to her years as a slave, first with the Shadar'kai, and in later years with the Red Wizards of Thay.