COMPLETED: Bounty: Missing Friends

An anonymous bounty has been put up in the Rubi'Sarha's Adventurer's Lodge titled missing friends. Pious takes the request and is directed to meet with the quest giver in the South Side Slums.
He goes to meet a man named Oleg in some shady building that looks nearly abandoned but no more so than the rest of the buildings in this district. Pious asks about details of the job and Oleg says that some of his friends were surveying the sewers near gold district when they went missing. The reward is 15 gp a head for any brought back dead and 25 for any brought back alive. Pious accepts the bounty and goes to prepare for his dive into the under croft of Rubi'Sarha.
Deciding to risk the watchful eyes of the guard, he enters the sewers in Gold district.  Inspecting his map he determines a direction.  Eventually down one of the paths he finds a metal grate with a grilled door set in it.  The door in open and unlocked.  He takes another look at the map but fails to here the footsteps of approaching guardsmen, who notice him as he walks in his intended direction.
Halt they cry and ask why he's here.  Pious fools them by feigning gladness at the help, to which they're confused.  He then feigns disgust as they are clearly not the people he was expecting, they buy his story but wish to see some documentation.  He verbally berates them until they decide to leave locking the door behind. 
Pious keeps on his course, when suddenly he hears something foreign.  Lighting a torch to better inspect his surroundings brings him no comfort as all sounds cease.  Pressing cautiously forward he stops only just before a strange fog.  He presses into it with his rapier, something slows the movement of the blade just as the fog suddenly ripples alive and lurches forward.  Just quick enough to avoid capture Pious makes a frenzy of slashes at the creature.  Nothing even slows it's progress.  Suddenly and in one movement Pious is swept up, suspended in a viscous fluid which burns him.  He continues thrashing attempting to free himself, dealing damage to the cube at the same time.  However it would seem no attempt would be successful and this would be the end but just as the acid was clouding his eyes he managed to pass all the way through to the other side of the creature, breaking into a run gets away.
Finally free he runs until he believes he's truly escaped and could take a moment to recover.  Subconsciously however he had wound up at the location indicated on the map as the survey site.  Where before he had been traveling in worked stone corridors of sewage this was an open cavern of unworked earth, which descended gradually to a pillar of rock in the middle.  Without the aid of a torch he looked on straining his eyes against the dark when he notice a small camp site with three seated figures.
Stealthily he approached but set his foot wrong on some slick stone sending it careening downward.  Stopped dead in his tracks he hears a chittering from the stone pillar when suddenly several shapes appeared on the top of it.  They looked around in all directions but didn't seem to be particularly interested in any one thing, so Pious pressed quietly forward.  Eventually reaching the campsite he realized the people had been turned to stone only their clothes remained.  Pilfering through their pocket Pious uncovers some relationship with the Hilt.  There was no way he could recover the bodies, stone as they were, so he took mementos and returned to Oleg. Oleg heard his story and refused to pay out full price because he hadn't actually recovered any bodies.