Session 80 - Slave Pits of the Undercity

2 Kaldmont 1010

General Summary

The party searches the bodies of the orcs and the disappearing act leader, finding a few nice trinkets as well as a fair amount of money. When they decide to continue exploring, they open the door at the top of the stairs where the leader was fleeing, and the first step into the next room, the staircase becomes a slide, causing them to harmlessly slide back into the room. Apparently, the boss was more worried about attackers coming from this side than where the party came from.
Once they manage their way up the ramp, they find themselves in another hallway. This hallway eventually leads to a room with narrow walkways, maybe 6 inches wide, along the top of cages, with what appear to be open trapdoors down to the cells below. These appear to be slave pits, but no creatures are in the pens (or anywhere else) at the moment. Seraphina confidently moves out onto the walkways, but from behind two pillars emerge more of the insectoids that have been encountered throughout the sewers.
Tork casually walks the narrow beams and begins fighting the left-hand insectoid. Stavos pulls out his whistle and flies over to the right hand one and quickly knocks it off balance and into one of the cells below. He flies down, continuing to whistle and fight the insectoid. Seraphina loses her balance when struck by her enemy and falls into one of the cells. Immediately the trap door swings shut, trapping her in the cell. Leo is afraid of falling, so he stays in the hallway and casts eldritch blast at a safe distance. Elincica also chooses to shoot from solid ground. Pretty quickly the insect that Tork is fighting is taken down and he moves to support Stavos fighting solo in the cell. Since Leo and Elincia do not have line of sight to the second insectoid, Leo moves tentatively out along the narrow beams. When he gets to the cell that closed behind Elincia, he steps onto the trap door - to his surprise it drops open, dumping him down into the now empty cell. Seraphina, using Shatterspike, has started destroying the bars between her and Stavos in several cells. Each time she moves into a new cell, the doors close above her.
Elincia stays out of the cell area, as Stavos and Tork have by now fully defeated the last insectoid. Her bats have moved into the room, but can't really do a lot since there are no surviving enemies. Once Tork and Stavos defeat the last Insectoid, the cell slams shut above them. This is a nuisance, but by now Seraphina has busted the bars in the cells all the way to Stavos and Tork, freeing them - though realistically, they are all still stuck in a big cell.
Elincia searches the area above, but sees no mechanism to open the doors. She sends the bats into the hallway on the other end of the room, though this is too small for them to fly in, making them pretty vulnerable targets. Meanwhile, the rest of the party is attempting to bust out of the cells below. Seraphina is eventually able to break the trap door hinges on one side by being boosted up on Tork's shoulders. Tork simply runs up the wall and right out of the cell and into the hallway. Seraphina and Stavos climb out, while Leo summons his aberation, climbs aboard, and rides it as it flies out of the cell.
in a small room to the left Seraphina encounters more insectoids, including one that seems to be controlling the trap doors in the room they just escaped from. She smites this one mercilessly, and the second that arrives from a connected room is also quickly dispatched by Stavos and Seraphina. Tork checks the hallway beyond, and gets a distinct "sewery" smell, so they decide to take the other path. Here they find another staircase down to a similar level as the rest of the underground complex. They find a storage room with nothing of interest, but also find another set of slave pens, several of which are occupied. They release these enslaved citizens, and decide to bring them back to the safe area where they had left the rest of the freed slaves before continuing to explore the remaining areas.
Once the freed slaves are all safely together at the old altar room, they return to the lower cell area, finding that it connects to the areas of the sewer by the secret passageway they had discovered much earlier. They deem the lower areas to be sufficiently cleared out and return upstairs to finish exploring the western portion of the complex, south of the graveyard area.
After some basic exploration, they find some small rooms with obviously bricked over windows and archways. Seraphina busts through these, unveiling another large courtyard area and the ruins of several buildings. As they explore the large courtyard they are attacked by another group of Wights, seemingly what is being kept out by the bricked over archways. These Wights are quickly taken out by the party, and they continue exploring. to the far south they find more rubble where walls used to stand. As they search around, they find a large number of statues in various poses in a relatively small area of the courtyard. As they approach the statues they are attacked by a pair of large, eight-legged spiny reptilian creatures, that they soon realize are Basilisks.
As they turn their glare on the party, the danger is obvious. The party boldly stares down their enemies, and for the most part this seems to be OK, though Leo stiffens, and fails to blast for a round. He soon recovers from this effect. Elincia also freezes for a round, but overall the party is able to recover from these setbacks, and these terrors are put to rest. Searching the area, they do find some Silver and Electrum near where the Wights were, but nothing too significant.
They move to explore the more "intact" buildings in the Southwest of the courtyard. They do find a secret exit out the south wall of the compound, and wind their way through passages in the walls. This eventually leads to one of the mostly intact buildings, though it is not very large. As they move in to look around, a large number of undead leap down from the area above. These ghouls, expecting to overwhelm their victims with numbers, instead find themselves being used as punching bags. The party quickly despatches the dozen undead, but find they have nothing of value.
Continuing through the linked passageways, they come to a staircase to the upper floor of an adjacent building. Here there is a large hole in the room, as much of the floor has rotted out. Across the hole is a long narrow board, and around the edges the floor also appears intact, though questionable. Tork offers to carry Leo across, and effortlessly walks across the board. Everyone else is able to safely cross. When they continue down the next hall, they find themselves looping back to passages they have already explored along with a set of stables with three horses. They consider that these horses could be very helpful for the freed slaves.
It seems the dangers of this area have been dealt with, so they can return to Halag after picking up the slaves from the safehouse. They are all happy to be escorted back to safe, now slave-free, civilization by the party.

Report Date

16 Dec 2023