Standing about the room after having slain a gnoll leader and his followers, the party considered their options.
They might be able to climb down and somehow traverse the rabidly flowing underground river, but not knowing what else was down there could prove fatal. There was also the matter of the recently liberated dwarves. The party could try and repel down the cliff face, but it was impossible for the hobbled dwarves.
Riardon had his pseudodragon familiar fly into the rushing ravine to glance at the surroundings finding nothing but fast moving rapids and slippery moss covered rocks. The party was unpacking their supply of rope, when Sevlah heard a thunk coming from the water below. He listened and heard a couple more dull thuds in a slow secession. He shushed for the party to be quiet, and about fifteen minutes later, he heard it again.
Still not brave enough (insert Gamemaster snicker here) to try and descend the walls Riardon suggested a ritual that might grant them access to the room at the bottom of the first discovered elevator shaft. Plus it looked like a better possibility to get the dwarves out of their current predicament. The party agreed to the newly formulated Plan B.
So they retraced their steps back up the elevator, back through the mushroom cavern waterway, and finally to the room with the mechanical winch that allowed access to another unexplored deep part of the shallows.
As they descended down the elevator shaft and again faced two large iron doors, Riardon started his ritual that would allow them to enter. The party stood ready and when the magic was done, they grinned as they heard the latches fall and the locks tumble. Quinn opened the door about an inch, when he started to hear a whining creak in the door hinges, he stopped and spied inside.
Although the door was cracked a bit, it wasn't enough to get the attention of the ogre walking up the packed dirt ramp in the center of the well traveled room.
The party quickly decided to let the ogre shuffle lazily into the next room. They waited a bit when Sevah heard the thumping, trudging footsteps of yet another ogre entering the chamber, hoisting a barrel over his shoulder. The elf ranger put up a silent "halt" hand signal to the party, who were waiting in.. anticipation.
They waited for the cargo carrying behemoth to continue on his way as they slid out from behind the door and prepared themselves to launch a surprise attack while the ogre hand his hands full already. Within seconds, the melee fighters charged the large brute with thier weapons and the mage near the arrow artillery elf pummeled the ogre with projectiles. The hulking beast dropped his barrel and engaged the party, who was unaware they had been spotted byanother of his brethren in the next room. As the first ogre was dropped, the second one bound heavily into the room, heading directly for the vulnerable mage, who had been in the rear flanks.
Korgul reared back immediately in desperation to provide some protection to Riardon before the menace smashed him with his fist seriously injuring the Eladrin mage. All during the commotion, Sevah heard a muffled cry of "Heeeelp usss!" coming from behind him.
The party soon amassed together and finished off their large foe, and the silent and fast members of the party lightly stepped into the next room trying not to draw any attention to themselves. Another group of hobbled and chained dwarven slaves were looking at members of the party with pleads of help in their puppy dog like eyes. Revah quickly spotted the obvious supervisor on duty. It was one the largest ogres he'd ever seen, and it was lazily sleeping away in a connecting distant chamber.
Not wanting to waste time for it to wake up, he fired his arrows into the unconscious mass, and the other party members quickly charged into the barely waking ogre chieftin, making one of the fastest kills ever witnessed by mortal eyes. The party freed the prisoners, breaking open their shackles, discovering they too were also mining vast amounts of the Godsdream ore and having it contained in barrels with just enough air on top to let the barrel remain buoyant. Unanswered questions remained about who or what was using the ore.
The rest of the area was explored, discovering two ramp ways to deliver the ore into the rushing river as well as the deceased body of a drow supervisor who was given a heavy retirement party by his ogre co-workers in the eastern delivery passage. Within his desk were meticulous notes, but nothing revealing the ultimate destiny of the precious metal. Also in the desk drawer was a solidly constructed key which the party guessed opened up a pair of unopened large metallic doors in the previous elevator room.
After passing through the doors and crossing over a decorated marbled stone bridge over the fast flowing river, the party noticed an engraved emblem on the floor space in front of an imposing door. Riardon concluded the floor symbol of an curved chain that circled around the outside were indications that the party was about to enter a sect of the drow house of Vae, renowned for their dealings in the slavery trade.
Once again using the key, they entered unhindered.
A statue posed in a menacing stance greeted the party, while the thin passage immediately turned to the right illuminated by red lit torches. Across an immaculate five foot wide bridge, two more white marble statues stood, covering from eyesight three drow guards wearing Vae house insignias across their chest. The melee fighters charged into combat so not to be caught on the bridge, surrounding the drow guards. The rear line of the elf ranger and eladrin mage fired their volleys of arrows and magic into the fray. As the combat continued, the party noticed the guards unsheathed blades that dripped with a poisonous green venom. As they dodged the toxic swords, they heard another battle taking place in the room beyond the door that the dark elves had been protecting.
The party quickly dispatched the house Vae defenders, and proceeded through the door. They entered the chamber and found husks of drow elf bodies were scattered about the room, decimated by something unknown. Bloody footprints ushered themselves through a double set of newly locked doors to the north.
Knowing the previous guards had put up quite a long fight, the party had knots in their stomach not readily willing to proceed after the harbinger of death. Quinn suggested it might have been an Vae house dispute or another drow house acting out their diplomatic options. There was also other doors in the room, and the party decided to investigate the chamber further.
One of the side doors had another meticulously engraved Vae emblem on it, and the paladin opened it easily with the new found key.
Dim torchlight lit up the shallow stepped room as the party revered in amazement finding a small drow house armory. Shields with blacked Vae emblems sat against the wall, along with some various finely crafted weapons and two small chests also opened by Quinn's key.
While the party was delighted at the new found fortune, the question that hung in the air was why did the unknown assailants leave behind the gold and wealth?
The party gathered up their new fortune and chose to look at the remaining single door that headed east out of the chamber. While they were starting to descend down a stone carved staircase, Sevlah heard a door from far below slam close and elven voices carrying on a conversation entailed leaving someone alone to do their job.
Sevah motioned for the party to fall back to the chamber and quickly close the door.
The drow matron cleric and her bodyguards were met with the warm hospitality of arrows and heavy maces. Although the guards were tough, they were easily enough defeated thanks to the advantage of a quick surprise round. Soon after the panicking matron cleric, thinking the party had caused all the mass slaughter in the room, ran for the locked doors only to be brought down by the crushing heavy mace of the half orc barbarian.
After the fight the party proceeded down the square cornered stairs and cautiously pulled open the frail wooden door and peeked in.
Inside, they found a large storage of recently retrieved wet barrels near an archway, a large cavern tunnel that descended down opposite of them, and lo and behold a shaft of light from above with heavy iron rungs impaled into the cavern wall.
As they ventured slowly into the room, eager to see a way out for the party, Rairdon momentarily turned his gaze at the barrels. He spotted a large troll wearing a slave collar, carrying a barrel in each hand . There was a brief moment of awkwardness as each they weren't quite sure what the other was doing here.
Suddenly a voice from below bellowed out, "Where are you with that ore, you dim-witted lug!"
The party rushed to the troll and tried to circle around it. Ki-Amar called upon his powers of flame to encumber the trolls regenerative ability, while Riardon summoned up a flaming sphere that kept bumping into the abomination's body, setting it ablaze. Within a few moments the large behemoth toppled over in twisted agony, dissipating into nothing.
"I need more ore down here, NOW!" was screamed from the chambers below.
The party mustered up their courage and followed down into the unknown knowing they would finally find some answers.
The geomancer and the golem seemed to slowly left their heads up in unison and look at the intruders.
Riardon released a blinding toxic cloud into the room, and the drow soon became irritated and started coughing, meanwhile the godsdream ore golem seemed to shrug it off and started plodding slowly towards the party. The tanks, Quinn and Ki-Amar rushed in to protect the rest of the party from the oversized hunk of glowing rock. The geomancer ran out of the cloud blindly trying to find a place to breath and assault the party with his earthly magics.
After a few exchanging blows, the golem reared up both of his stone fists on the tanks and pushed his way through the ranks, pummeling all the party members in a furious rampage. Then, just as quickly as it began, it shoved it's way through back into the chamber, in a raging whirlwind of destruction.
The cloth wearing healer and mage were badly hurt from the thunderous assault. Japeth, being quick on his feet, brought out the big healing gun spells and soon breathed new vitality into all his greviously injured comrades.
Meanwhile, the drow was getting annoyed at the seemingly sentient cloud that kept following him and finally charged into hand to hand combat with the sword mage, who was eyeballing the now freshly unsheathed flaming longsword.
After a long harrowing fight, the construct was shattered and soon after his master, the drow geomancer collapsed to the floor in defeat.
Ki-Amar grabbed the longsword and proclaimed it for himself. The rest of the party did a quick search of the room, yet no more loot was found although a wave of satisfaction swept over the party knowing they had defeated a major foe and found some answers.
Soon afterward the party gathered up the dozen or so dwarven slaves and hoisted them out of caverns to the world above. Once they reached the surface and got their bearings, they squinted in the sorely missed sunlight and proceeded to hike off back towards Underwatch, glad to leave the shallows behind for awhile.
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