Situation Report Eighteen

General Summary

We rest up for a couple of hours at the Elgata Estate after revealing what we have learned to House Elgata and resolve to return to the Cisterns to complete our exploration.
At the start of the fourth bell, we collect the hidden row-boat and launch it into the cistern once again. We spend some minutes mapping out the still waters of the vast underground cistern before heading up a Northern passage. The doors we discovered leading to the original wider Eastern route are now closed. Someone is still down here.
We discover some branching passages East and West and some locked doors (some are ancient, some with much newer locks). Cherry unpicks a door as we wait in silence, noticing an overflow cistern to the West. Through the door Cherry unlocks we enter an empty trunk pipe pumping room, which leads to a short corridor.
As I open the door I'm assailed by three quarrels, which strike my shield and send stone chips flying. One also unfortunately skewers my calf. I leap to engage the northern-most bandit, but stumble as I swing my Kynac and punch the wall, jarring my hand. Cherry steps up and hits the southern bandit in his thigh with a well-placed arrow before everyone reloads – she follows up with another great shot that causes another foe to drop his cross-bow. Nice work girl!
I shove the bastard back up the passage with a shield bash and follow up after him, in an attempt to get some cover from the cross-bowmen. I follow up with a slash across the bridge of his nose with a vicious swipe of the Kynac. As blood splashes across his face and into his eyes I know that he's unlikely to offer much resistance now. Sounds of screams and quarrels pinging off stonework are a reminder of the fight behind me, but I'm all-consumed by my foe and, with a feint with the shield I distract him and stab him under the arm with the Kynac, severing tendons in his arm. He drops his dagger and slides down the wall, his face deathly pale.
Ugnan moves up to assist the sorely wounded cultist so we can question him.
There's one left on the rubble. I lash my shield to my pack and sheath the Kynac – Sylke casts a Leaping spell on me and says, "Go for it Cran, you'll make the leap to the rubble with ease." I make the leap but miscalculate and leap slightly past him onto the rubble, stumbling into the water before I right myself. The fellow I was about to fight looks all done in, and my size 12 boot pushes him off the rubble to float face down in the water.
Well, that was quick. I wade into the water to grab the skiff, which was drifting slowly away from the rubble on blood-stained ripples and row, wincing, back to the crew.
We note that the corpses all have serious burns on their right arms, and are masked with a thin laminated leather masks. Sylke questions the survivor and discovers an apothecary to a Northern chamber, a minister, and a work-party dispatched to some more caverns in search of more rock. What are waiting for?
We creep to another cistern with a two-layer walkway around it, although the three cultists put us off mounting an assault, and we retreat South to the circular room we discovered last night. A hefty lever of the crowbar opens the northern door and we discover a poor little kid who has starved to death in a cell. Right. No one will live in this cultists lair. Grimly we head South and Cherry unlocks the red-hot door to reveal a fiery temple.
Some fire-elemental appears to have been bound to a portal in the temple, and tendrils of white-hot flame lash out across the temple. We plan to fill a skiff with water and drag it to the room so Alyssa can douse the elemental, supported by Ugnan with a water-wall dumped on top of it. Finally, Sylke, Cherry and I pepper it and the mirror constraining it, with arrows and a shock-bolt. The brutal barrage causes it to shrink, and we leap to melee it.
A couple of meaty blows with arrows and my axe and the elemental disappears into the mirror. We smash the damned thing and breathe a sigh of relief as the room begins to cool.
On the alter we discover a thin roll of copper with ancient elven script containing runes that summon a fire elemental. On the bottom, in common, are the words, "Here says Larkrise…"

Report Date

28 Dec 2018

Primary Location

Sel-kai