C Series Session 2: The Caverns of Contemplation

One day after breaching the first line of Gnomish defenses, four adventurers descended into the Caverns of Contemplation for a second try.

• Grenthrum Doorknocker, Dwarven Monster Hunter
  
• Jack Fatherd, Coureur des bois
  
• Roddy Applecreek, Mad bomber
  
• Shahid, Adjudicator
  

They left their hirelings Gowonry, Grit and Barb Eric behind, and managed to convince the two Thouls to stay out of the fight for now. They'd be more valuable protecting the entrance than trying to squeeze into Gnome scale tunnels.

 

The cavern floor below the entry shaft looked suspicious and Roddy realized that the Gnomes had cast an illusion on it. He dropped a rock on a rope and triggered the flashbang runes and chromatic orb trap. The illusion blocked the light from the flash and Roddy was too far away to be hit by the orb, but the bang undoubtedly alerted every Gnome in the mine. The group debated what to do, and elected to forge ahead anyway.

The adventurers pushed into the cave system and found the mine tunnels hastily abandoned. They explored the underground monastery they found the day before, but found nothing but a little doll carved from bloodiron. They investigated another mysterious human sized locked door and found a room with glowing fungus and a handful of gems. They probed the room with a pole and startled the cave locusts hiding inside. The bugs spat foul smelling slime all over Grenthrum, but his ax of poison resistance let him tank the ill-effects. Shahid suggested clearing the door and letting the insects escape. One of the bugs jumped on Grenthrum on the way out, but with the chamber clear they were able to snag a small heap of gems.

Jack Fatherd followed footprints in the glittering red dust on the cave floor, which led to a wall at the end of a mine tunnel. Knowing the drill, the group probed the rockface with a thrown rock at the end of a rope, locating a secret door. Roddy used a grenade to breach and threw a jar of foul smelling cricket slime into the room, standing far enough back to avoid the Color Spray trap on the door. The slime didn't flush out any Gnomes and the adventurers crawled into the Gnome-sized tunnel. Roddy the Halfling with ease, Grenthrum the Dwarf with mild inconvenience, and the two humans crawling on their hands and knees.

The Gnomish base was looted and empty, like someone removed everything valuable to a hidden location. There were beds for twelve Gnomes, which meant there were probably ten still up after burning the two from yesterday. Two illusory walls led deeper into the tunnel system. The adventurers stacked up outside the most likely seeming door and opened it using a rope. Unlucky for them, the twenty-foot cube of Improved Phantasmal Force trapping the door still caught them in the cramped tunnel.

 

Grenthrum, Shahid and Jack were crushed to death instantly when the tunnel caved in on them. Roddy didn't see this, they just passed out for no reason on the floor of the narrow tunnel. He heard Gnomes jabbering in the newly-opened passage, and felt the ground vibrate with the unmistakable approach of an Umber Hulk. He tossed a flask from his belt, unleashing an Air Elemental which swept down the passage and instantly suffocated the oncoming Gnomes. He had time to wake Grenthrum up before the Umber Hulk burst out of the floor.

Artist's impression of the tunnel fight

The Hulk laid about with its big meaty claws and dealt damage. It glared with its strobing yellow eyes and dealt confusion. Jack's divine protection cleared the debuff off his friends and mitigated the incoming pain, but it wasn't enough. The creature focused him first, tearing him in half with its pincers. Then it turned on Roddy, shoveling him into its mouth and killing him. Grenthrum hid while Shahid ran away, the insect followed the Adjudicator as he crawled as fast as he could. Out of the Gnome tunnels and into the mines. He tossed three oil flasks behind him and set the tunnel on fire. Not because he thought it would damage or deter the Hulk, but because it would detonate the explosives carried by the Halfling still sticking out of the bug's mouth.

The flames detonated the stick grenade stuffed in Roddy's boot. Which detonated the grenades and oil flasks on his belt. Which released the Fire Elemental held in his flask. The explosion instantly killed the Umber Hulk and nearly killed Shahid, who barely escaped the gout of flame rolling down the tunnel. Grenthrum snuck out of the Gnome tunnels and reconnected with the surviving human. They retrieved Jack's magic items, his body, and what was left of Roddy's ashes.

Back on the surface the survivors debriefed Doctor Pleroma on what happened. He'd take care of Jack and Roddy as best he could, but they still had a dungeon to clear. The two adventurers retrieved Gowonry, Grit and Eric and went back into the caves for one final attempt.

 

The tunnel they breached led into the Gnomes' inner sanctum. They found five Gnomes suffocated in the corridor, carrying gems and auto-pickaxes that could quickly bore through dungeon stone. The Gnomish treasure room was melted as if by a great heat, destroying any valuables and sending glowing blue metal flowing out of its lead case and onto the floor. Shahid recognized the blue glow as the same that emitted from the Cerenkov Slime in the Library of Lanthorn. An abandoned office yielded no treasure except a logbook, written in a language they couldn't read. Behind the office was an escape hatch to the surface, which the Air Elemental had clearly breached and the Gnomes had followed it through, taking much of their hoarded wealth with them.

The tunnel led up into the gardens of the Fazenda. By the time the adventurers mounted the steps the Gnomes were long gone. They reported the results to the Doctor - seven Gnomes killed out of a probable twelve (if the beds in the dormitory were any indication). The Doctor told them to search the rest of the hideout and make sure nobody stayed behind.

 

The inner sanctum had been cleaned out, same as the potemkin dormitories in the outer layer of defenses, but the Gnomes had left some wealth behind. Crockery, magic appliances, precious stones incorporated into Chromatic Orb traps, a big pile of gunpowder packed into a shaped charge to trap one of the tunnel systems... The living space led into a work area where the Gnomes sifted raw bloodiron from ore crystals mined in the tunnel walls. A mine cart full of powdered stone faced the north wall of the chamber. Grenthrum searched for secret doors and found rails in the floor, hidden by an illusion, which led through an illusory wall to a mysterious shutter. Nobody else wanted to go near it, so Gowonry the Mutoid undid the mechanism holding it shut.

Inside was a room totally unlike the rest of the dungeon. A four pointed star with a lightless black disk in the center and a Gnomish warning sign. The railings on the floor led into the sinister orb. The adventurers identified it as a portal but decided against barreling through. They blocked up the shutter with rubble to stop anything coming out of the room, and went back upstairs to report their findings.

 

 

On the back porch of the Fazenda, the Doctor's aide poured more aguardiente for the adventurers. Since they killed half the Gnomes he'd pay them half the original fee, 2,500 silver pieces. That plus the treasure taken from the caves netted them a tidy profit. The Gnome plot to extract the bloodiron and send it through the portal was worrying. Doctor Pleroma summoned a mutant who could read Gnomish, and the little creature read the mysterious diary.

The logbook, written by the Clan Leader Chipchap Ianmorn, explained the Gnomes' plan: they pushed cartloads of Bloodiron through the portal made by their strange benefactor, and received magic items in exchange. A Wand of Lightning, a Cloak of Spell Turning, crates of glowing blue gold... Ianmorn says he only saw his benefactor once, when it extended a limb through the portal. The arm was insectoid and wasn’t "bread-sliced" like every living thing to go through portal.

Doctor Pleroma wanted the portal either shut down or explored thoroughly to ensure nothing awful came through - simply destroying it risked destroying the entire hospital if the mechanism proved dangerous. But all that could wait until the dead adventurers were dealt with.

The Clerics of Leper Heart who tended the patients of the asylum had converted one of the rooms to a chapel, coating the walls with wood pulp and plaster until they resembled the inside of a heart. A heavily mutated fly-creature recited a prayer and tore chunks of their own carapace off in an offering to the Heart, begging for the life of the adventurers who had sacrificed themselves for mutantkind.

 

 

Jack Fatherd stood before a table, stacked with miniatures and dice and cards. A drunkard, a woman and a skinned corpse played a complicated game, ignoring his questions. A hook pierced his heart and he was yanked away.

 

Jack woke up as the two halves of his bisected body knit together. The left side was a white ape, the right a lizard. He'd never wear armor again, and he'd need extensive physical therapy to walk without lurching to one side or the other, but he was alive.

Rody's remains swirled in the air, a column of ashes upehld by the wind. They settled back into the pail.