Scene 3: Knifepoint Gully
Leaving the spire, the party ventures into Sighing Valley . Locating the hooded figures entering a crevice on the opposite side of the valley, they head in the direction to explore.
Crossing the valley didn't prove to be much of a challenge, crossing in a straight line, and they arrived after a short day's travel.
A narrow fissure in the canyon wall leads through a gully choked with pale brush and shrubs. A swift breeze passes through the fissure. At the end, a dark, jagged crevice awaits them.
An enormous chasm splits the earth as far as the eye can see in the pervasive subterranean darkness. A crude, narrow stairway hugs the rock alongside the chasm, twisting madly in hairpin turns around sharp outcroppings. Jagged and uneven, the stair threatens to spill travelers into the chasm's mouth. After several treacherous miles, the stairway terminates on a broad, flat landing that juts out over the immense black chasm. In the gloom, lays ruins beneath the glittering cavern vault. Broken statues stand in the midst of empty plazas, staring sightlessly into the darkness. A huge step pyramid rises at the edge of the precipice, and from the moat that surrounds it, a misty waterfall whispers over the chasm's ledge.
Descending and approaching the flat landing, the party arrives at what appears to be a doorway of some sort.
The carved reliefs of two dwarves face one another in profile to complete an arch beyond the ledge. Through the arch, the blocky contours of a lost dwarven city sprawl in the subterranean night. From somewhere within comes an agonized wail, followed by a breathless ramble of whimpering pleas. Then the whole city seems to join the chorus with the screams of creatures mad from torment.
The party finds the source of the sounds to be Kenkus hidden in the walls, eyeing the arriving party through arrowslits on the side of the entrance tunnel.
Entering further down the caverns, the party takes to explore the cavern system. In the process, they fought more battles of cultist underlings and found enslaved commoners within the caverns.
The cultists also seem to have chained up some of their own people, starving them almost to death. The victims, however, did not seem to have lost any faith in their beliefs, despite being chained up by their own people.
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