* * * PARTHIA – SHARK’S BANE ADVENTURERS’ PARTY * * *
Having learnt as much as they could, Sildanus and his friends decided to leave Blue Lagoon. They approached Altor about the possibility of him opening a inter temple gate to their home temple in Tarasand. They gratefully accepted the discount he offered them in return for delivering two letters.
The first letter they had to deliver was straightforward as it was for the high priest of their home temple. The second would require some travel on their part. They decided to visit the local Adventurer’s Guild office to check the news and to see if they could pick up a quest that would take them in that direction.
Before they left to deliver the letter, Froomar decided to check with Cartem, his favourite armourer to see about repairing the circular holes in his armour.
Emerging from the submerged part of Tarasand Froomar made his way to the metalworkers quarter. It was impossible to miss; just the smell of hot iron and the clanging of hammers beating on iron announcing his arrival.
He found Cartem sharing a pint with his apprentice while they waited for a sword blade to get hot enough to work. “Morning, lazing about bas usual?” joked Froomar.
Cartem spluttered with indignation, “What do you mean, lazing? It’s you adventurers that laze about all day, not hard working smiths like us.”
Froomar grinned with amusement, “So this is how you work hard is it, leaning against your anvil and quaffing ale.”
Cartem elevated his nose and replied, “We are appreciating good dwarven craftsmanship. Silver Cliff Ale is second to none, as everyone knows.”
Froomar hauled out his damaged armour and laid it on a convenient workbench. “You know this armour you said was unbeatable, well it had an encounter with some fish and came of second best. Can you fix it?”
Cartem spluttered in indignation, “Fix it? Fix it? ’Course I can fix it, I can fix anything.”
Putting his empty tankard down on his anvil, Cartem moved over to inspect Froomar’s damaged armour. “What on Parthia did this? I’ve never seen anything like it,” he asked Froomar.
Froomar promptly launched into a highly embroidered tale of his exploits. All Cartem the dwarf heard was lampreys with mithril teeth, enough teeth to cut ten centimetre holes in his enchanted armour.
When Froomar came out of his story telling trance, he remembered Altor’s amusement at the dungeon’s observation, ‘no need to attack the tin can’.
“On second thoughts Cartem, how much would you give me for that armour and could you design something a bit lighter that still gave good protection but allowed greater ease of movement?”
Cartem was recalled to reality by this challenge, after some haggling he agreed to have the new armour ready by the end of the week.
* * *
Whilst he was present at the Guild Sildanus arranged to have a meeting with the local Guild Master. He sought permission to set up a branch of the Adventurer’s Guild on the underwater hill he and his party had found. He had precedent on his side, though he did have some difficulty as his proposed dungeon town would only cater to under sea dwellers.
Tarasand being the town that it was facilitated his task when he sought to recruit someone to build a tavern in his propose settlement. He was sure that this tavern could be turned into an inn, and if not, once the town was in existence, an inn was sure to follow. It took him several hours, but he was able to gain the backing he needed to found a dungeon town to service the needs of adventurers who wished to challenge Blue Lagoon Dungeon.
* * *
By the time the Shark’s Bane party left Tarasand to escort an undersea merchant caravan, and incidentally deliver Altor’s other letter, the news of fish that grew mithril teeth was already making the rounds of dwarven communities all over Parthia.
* * * PARTHIA – THE PIRATES * * *
Vinculus the Red sat back in his comfortable chair. He leered at the scared looking scantily clad slave girl who filled his tumbler with the finest rum. He watched her scurry out of the room, frantically dodging the grasp of the guard at the door. He gave the guard a thumbs up and they both laughed out loud.
He gazed into the depths of his glass and grinned in anticipation. He was satisfied with the progress of his plans. The fleet was nearly ready; the three mercenary companies were present and eager to do their part. And then there were the two bands of adventurers. They were salivating at the thought of mithril and other treasures. And the icing on the cake was the clan of sharkmen who had agreed to accompany him on his raid. He frowned briefly when he remembered the meticulous contract the legalistically minded sharkmen had insisted on.
Vinculus took a gulp of his rum and grinned. He was sure of his mage, the greedy so and so was still one of the best despite his growing addiction for curtrose. With the man’s magic he would easily overwhelm that dungeon and enslave it. That would give him a really secure base with near infinite resources. He would be the next Emperor of the sea realms.
Down near the docks, in the Axe In Hand, Faldadazar Flintnose rubbed his hands with glee; he couldn’t believe their luck. This was truly a marvellous opportunity, let that damn pirate conquer that dungeon, killing and enslaving whoever they wanted. While the pirates were doing the fighting, and dying, he and his brothers would find those mithril producing fish, become famous, and wealthy past compare.
In a sea cave not far from Port Salvage Sharkspawn checked the payment he had received from Vinculus and addressed his band, “we are contracted for twenty days. We will fulfil our contract to the letter. We scout for the drylanders and maintain an escort for their ships. We will not fight for them; we do not have to protect any of the ships except for Vinculus’ own. Our services end if four sharks or two of us should die. We have not been contracted to enter the dungeon, so, unless it is overwhelmed we won’t.”
Sharkspawn and his band didn’t pay any attention to the small fish swimming nearby, and they were unaware that their mission briefing had been overheard.
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* * * PARTHIA – MARY * * *
Mary, in her dolphin avatar, danced joyfully amongst the waves of the ocean just outside her lagoon. She was happy that she would soon be able to rid her ocean of more pirates and incedentally increase the size of her nascent merchant fleet.
The other dolphins who made their home in her dungeon joined her. They had a grand time one and all.
* * *
The following day she conferred with Trisha and they refined their plans on how to deal with the forthcoming pirate invasion. Trisha was very happy to know the sharkmen wouldn’t enter the dungeon leaving the way clear for the lampreys. Their spies had confirmed that the ships had plain wooden bottoms, so hopefully their lampreys would have an easy time. Not that they were counting on that.
Plans laid Trisha asked Mary if she would consider appointing a Voice. That led to lengthy explanations as to what a Voice was and what a dungeon had to do in order to appoint one.
Mary allowed that this would be a good idea as it would allow Trisha more time to attend to her, or should that be their dungeon. She then considered her locals one by one before rejecting them, then she had a bizarre idea, she looked at it from all sides and started sniggering uncontrollably.
Trisha had a feeling that she wouldn’t like what Mary was finding so amusing. “What!”
« I will appoint Alessandrina. » Stated Mary and resumed sniggering.
“Who’s Alessandrina?” Trisha racked her brains and was unable to put a face to the name.
« She’s always visiting me when I’m doing anything in your fake dungeon. »
“Wha...!” then an image surfaced, an enthusiastic energetic little half-elf with masses of curly sea-green hair. “But... But, she’s a child, and a half-elf, she could remain a child for years!”
« Yes, all the better, she’ll be around for a long time, better yet she listens, and I like her. » more sniggers, « And just think of Danilus and Altor’s faces when they have to listen to a child. »
Mary switched her focus to her decoy dungeon and sure enough it was full of children, many were recently arrived sea sprites.
« Good morning kids, having fun? Alessandrina dear, will you be my Voice. »
“Y-yes Mary – erm, Voice...” blurted Alessandrinna.
« Excellent. Brace yourself. » And Mary started the ritual that would bind Alessandrinna to her as her Voice. Mary added a little bonus for Alessandrinna to discover at a later date.
The other children watched the light show with fascination then scattered to tell their parents and friends while Mary and Trisha brought their Voice up to date on their plans. Mary advised Alessandrinna that she need keep no secrets from her parents, but to just let them know what was supposed to be private information.
* * * PARTHIA – HELL’S MOUTH AND SANDRINNA * * *
Somewhat apprehensively, Hell’s Mouth watched the comprehensive sacking of the territory he had ceded to the lost soul. He was very glad that the adventurers seemed to be fixated on his decoy. So far, his plan was working, and possibly he would have enough time to make himself impregnable. Unfortunately, he didn’t think that was likely, nor did he believe he would be able to hide from those adventurers.
Their persistence was deeply worrying. It had been days now, and the adventurers were still camped out in his former entrance cavern. His decoy was very sensibly vacating, that was annoying, but he couldn’t blame her. He was delighted to receive confirmation that it was possible for a dungeon core to relocate.
As the adventurers seemed determined to end his decoy, Hell’s Mouth decided that he would also have to relocate. But he wasn’t going to risk his precious core to the surface world.
As a first step, Hell’s mouth decided to move the entrance of his dungeon once again, despite the momentarily increased risk of discovery. He just had to gain as much distance between himself and the decoy as possible, hopefully while she retained the adventurers attention.
* * *
As for Sandrinna, she was listening to her boss Kobold. He had proved himself to be a cunning defender. With Darkmoon’s agreement, she implemented the plan he had outlined. She sent most of her monsters back to defend the maze, both to buy time and to hopefully gain some mana to facilitate their escape. She ordered her boss to save what he could if things went really badly, and to withdraw as soon as she managed to open a new entrance to the surface at a distance sufficient to allow them a good chance of survival.
Sandrinna was more than impressed, she had used some of her hoarded mana to heal and repair all her defenders, then she granted her boss Kobold a name.
« ... my valiant defender I name you Erekosë ... »
Erekosë thanked his mistress and was seized by a sudden longing to own a black sword.
‘Craven my non-existent ass, my Kobolds are anything but craven,’ she thought to herself as she watched her defenders leave to prepare for the desperate battle to come.
* * * PARTHIA – CREEVAR’S KILLERS * * *
The members of Creevar’s Killers were feeling frustrated, they had this dungeon to kill, and they knew the pathetic thing was cowering at the end of the miserable frustrating maze that was giving them so much trouble. So far they had lost one full day, and not made any significant progress. The small size of the tunnels only allowed them to proceed in single file, and they were unable to stand upright whist traversing them.
All they had encountered so far were traps and vermin, but as they had found, even vermin could be dangerous when Horaxanna was unable to taunt them. They had settled on Horaxanna in the lead with Zashaan at her shoulder checking for the plentiful traps. They had quickly discovered that if Zashaan took the lead she suffered constant attacks. With Horaxanna in front there were no attacks only traps.
Then came Sreecator their healer followed by Warminor. Harrassan brought up the rear, where he was constantly under attack.
* * *
The second day of their assault on the nameless dungeon started better for Creevar’s Killers, they quickly traversed the mapped section and pushed on. Then they became complacent.
Erekosë smiled grimly when he saw that the adventurers had missed one of his traps, one of the ones that had to be triggered by a defender, maybe just maybe. In any case he detailed two of his remaining warriors to take the jackals and raid their camp, maybe they’d think twice about attacking his people and their queen if their means of crossing the desert were reduced.
‘Yes! They missed the ceiling trap, wait... wait... Now!” and Erekosë triggered the trap. Preceded by a few grains of sand, a large block of stone dropped from the ceiling blocking the tunnel and splitting the party in two, or rather three. Warminor started to jump forward when he felt the sand dropping but was unable to get clear of the trap. And then assorted vipers, scorpions and spiders covered his head and shoulders. It was too much, too sudden and even Sreecator was unable to provide sufficient help. Warminor died. The influx of life energy almost overwhelmed Sandrinna.
« congratulations you have earned the title “Giantkiller” as your first kill was an Elite adventurer »
Horaxanna had to maintain guard to the front as one of the Kobolds kept popping up to launch the odd arrow. Zashaan was able to deal with the assorted giant insects and snakes. Sreecator took Warminor’s memorystone. “We will raise you my friend, you will live again, this I swear on Holy Creevar’s name.”
Sandrinna shook herself out of her stupor and absorbed Warminor’s belongings. Then she used the unexpected treasure of energy to tunnel out into the open a good ten kilometres from her majestic cave entrance.
* * *
Avor and Essa had spent the entire day jumping at shadows. They really didn’t like spending time near a source of water, and thus they were not taken by surprise when the two Kobolds attacked the camp with the help of two jackals. They each grabbed their favourite camel and bolted out into the desert. They were able to collect a further camel that managed to escape from the cave.
The two Kobolds destroyed what they could, killed three camels and withdrew back to the maze carrying the spoils of their raid.
Then they received the order to withdraw. Fifteen minutes later the maze was clear of defenders. It took Creevar’s killers considerably longer to reunite, extricate Warminor’s body and return to the remains of their camp. Much cursing ensued. This did produce their wary camel mounted guides.
Harrassan blessed Creevar for finding them such a dependable pair of guides.
That night Harrassan woke suddenly, the dungeon had withdrawn its domain. A quick exploration found an empty series of caves and a maze guarded by easily avoided traps leading to an empty chamber. The dungeon had fled!
Harrassan vowed that they would be back to avenge this insult.