His Majesty The Worm - Session 2

 

Fresh off their victory over the Vampire Voivode, three adventurers stripped down for a soak at the thermae, and to meet their next client.

• Breadrick Bravebelly, Halfling Rogue
• Gyrfalcon "Gary the Mage" Hakkapeliitta, Human Mage
• Candella Panthercoppered, Dwarf Fighter

The Dwarf mobster Matul Bentgirder lounged nude in a private bath with a handful of huskarls, sturdy bodyguards who didn't need weapons or armor to deal lethal damage. He was happy to see the Undermen Breadrick and Candella, and to meet the human Gyrfalcon. He had a job for them, a rescue mission in the Fire Giants' forge beneath the Crypt of the Vampire Voivode. It was a favor to a relative, to rescue the human Leupold Hakkapeliitta from Giant captivity. For this he'd pay out 150 gold pieces, provided the prisoner was brought back alive.

 

The Fire Giants were a hot topic in the adventuring community. Weapons that looked suspiciously like Fire Giant forgework were regularly seen in the hands of brute squads from the Temple of Swords, leading to rumors of forbidden commerce with the Giant slavers.

 

The Guild debated whose personal quest to pursue alongside the rescue mission. They decided to get a piece of fine art for Candella's tomb, since the Fire Giant Forge would probably be full of fine metalwork and jewelry. There was the little problem of the Vampire Voivode, his wives, his servants and his pets, all of whom were pissed off at the Guild for their conduct on the previous delve. But it was nothing they couldn't handle, provided they moved fast. All they had to do was move fast to the drain in the floor of the mulch room, which led down to an underground river that fed the Fire Giant Forge.

 

The entry hall to the Vampire Crypt was as they left it, with the exception of the hole in the wall. The piled rocks hadn't been replaced, but a layer of sand had been scattered on the floor. Gyrfalcon tossed a clove of garlic in and triggered a buried bear trap. Candella shoveled it into his bag and they moved into the bone room. The neatly stacked skeletons were scattered on the floor, amid red feathers from a large moulting bird. Breadrick recognized them as griffon feathers, a ubiquitous underworld pest often hunted by the nobility. 

Hoofbeats echoed through the walls, indicating the skeleton horses were back on their feet. The passage to the mulch room was clear, but a thin layer of mist hung over the chamber itself. It was lighter than air, so the adventurers dropped to the floor and crawled under it toward the drain. They almost didn't see old lady Gadma Crowell until they ran into her ankles. She looked good for a woman who was beheaded, skull stitched back on, skin so white it practically glowed. She thanked Candella for killing her and persuading her loving husband to give her the gift of immortality. To repay the kindness, she wouldn't sound the alarm and summon a host of Vampires, Vampire Brides and Vampire Servants. The Guild could climb down the drain if they paid her a pint of blood.

 

Or, they could go double or nothing and duel her one-on-one.

Gary's eyes lit up. He immediately accepted the challenge. The duel would be to second blood. Gadma filled her hands with reagents and he did the same. She shouted "Certamen" and he answered the challenge, then battle was joined.

 

Gary cast Shrink on Gadma, but she leaped off the floor and bit him with her fangs. They wrestled, Gary knocking the spell components out of her grasp. He stabbed her with his dagger. They slipped and fought on the floor. Gary stabbed her and she bit him at the same time. At two wounds each the sensible thing would be to declare a draw, honor satisfied. They kept fighting for a tiebreaker. Gary stabbed Gadma again at the moment she cast Fear on him, hoping to force him out of the arena and claim victory. The spell went off successfully but Gary inflicted the third wound at the same time. Despite fleeing the duel he was the victor.

Gadma dismissed the Fear effect and angrily remonstrated with the Guild. They were free to leave, but if she ever saw them again she'd kill them. Candella asked how they were supposed to get back up, and she told them it was impossible anyway. The side channel of the underground river led to a waterfall down into a pool in the Fire Giant Forge. They'd need to find another way up. Gary asked if there was anything he could give Gadma to repair the relationship. She asked for a Fire Beetle from the forge. He swore to get one for her. Then the adventurers lifted the drainage grate and dropped into the river.

 

The water was waist high on a human and much higher on the two Undermen. It was very cold and hard to see where they were going. Fortunately the side-channel leading to the forge was worn smooth by the water, more like a waterslide than a series of sharp rocks that could tear them to pieces. They slid down it one by one, and tumbled forty feet down into the Fire Giant Forge.

 

Gary and Breadrick quickly swam to the edge of the pool. Candella sank to the bottom, walked over and climbed out. He noticed an intake pipe in the rock, Dwarven made, carrying water into the dungeon. The water was cold but the cave was hot, the adventurers at least didn't have to worry about hypothermia. The sounds of metalwork echoed through the walls from somewhere beyond. A grindstone. A hammer and anvil. The north passage was blocked by a bronze plate, welded in place. The plate was badly corroded and Breadrick couldn't hear anything from the other side besides the hammer. Candella used his crowbar to pry the rusty plate lose without too much fuss.

 

The chamber beyond was an old tomb that smelled like sulfur. An open door led into a garbage chute full of gnawed bones that extended forty feet up to a metal shutter. Gary rooted around in the trash and found a bunch of gold, but got covered in rotting food waste for his trouble. He went back to the waterfall to wash himself and ran into a Rust Monster, which immediately took an interest in him and his possessions. He tossed a gold coin and the bug scampered after it, unable to dissolve the metal itself but obsessively slurping the impurities out of the metal. The tiny particles of silver and lead and iron. Meanwhile, Candella and Breadrick removed an old tomb door sealed with bitumen, reavealing heaped skeletons and a single standing corpse raising a goblet in a toast. They were wary of the jug holding gold coins and elected to take the goblet instead, a simple ceramic vessel stained with wine. 

 

Gary came back and the Rust Monster followed him. Candella fed the beast his bear trap, which the giant insect greedily munched on. The tomb led out into a giant-sized kennel, with big metal cages and shelves full of collars, leashes, dog toys... The next room was a foyer in the middle of a remodel, bronze plating stripped away to reveal bare rock underneath. A dead Rust Monster lay burned to a crisp and dead on the floor, next to a heap of rusty metal arranged in a ring. The stairs up to the next floor were superheated, the metal glowed almost as bright as the caged Fire Beetle which lit the room.

The door to the forge was open. Inside was a Fire Giantess, clad in bronze chains and glittering red gemstones, hair brilliant orange, hammering away at a white-hot piece of metal using her bare fist. She picked it up, rolled it between her fingers to shape it, then pounded it again. Gary was entranced. The wedding ring on her finger, her enormous spear, her tendency for enslaving adventurers who wandered into her lair, suddenly none of that stuff mattered. Only the intervention of his comrades prevented him from wandering into the room and declaring his love for her. As long as she kept hammering away at the metal, they could move around stealthily. Once she stopped they'd be in trouble.

 

The gang went back into the garbage chute. Breadrick tossed a rope up to the top level and climbed to the shutter. He heard someone grumbling on the other side in the Deep Speech dialect of the underlanguage. Irritated about his working conditions and the lack of suitable materials, weighing a trip to get the necessary reagents against disappointing his clients, who he genuinely liked. Breadrick opened the shutter and came face to face with a surly Duergar, fussing over his box of tools. 

Breadrick gave the Duergar a cheerful hello. The Duergar shoved him down the garbage chute. The Hafling deftly caught himself on the rope and dropped down the rest of the way safely before the Duergar undid the grappling hook and sent it down after him. Realizing they only had a few moments before the alarm was raised, the group ran for the stairs. Breadrick climbed up the railings and secured the grappling hook, allowing the rest of the group to climb the stairwell without touching the superheated metal stairs.

 

The Duergar yelled down to the Giantess that some mice had got in the house. The Giantess yelled to her husband in the next room, who unleashed a pack of Hellhounds. The Guild climbed the rope and rushed through the doors to the second floor, slamming them shut just before the beasts caught them. The Deep Dwarf enlarged himself magically and hefted his enormous hammer for battle. The Guild tried to de-escalate the situation. They weren't here to mess with him, they were just investigating the sale of Fire Giant weapons to the Temple of Swords on the surface. The Duergar didn't know anything about that. He was a plumber, installing showers and toilets. His work was stymied by filthy fucking Rust Monsters and he didn't need interference from piece of shit adventurers complicating matters. The Guild quickly struck a deal - eliminate the Rust Monster downstairs and he wouldn't raise the alarm.

Polokonzerva Pipefitter the Duergar plumber yelled downstairs that the mice fled through the door to the surface. Lucinda the Fire Giantess asked him to reset the trap, thanked him and went back to hammering away at her project. The Duergar got into an argument with Candella about the nature of Dwarfhood, and whether a man could call himself a Dwarf if the sun had ever touched his skin. This proved a welcome distraction for Breadrick, who snuck off to loot the Giants' bedroom, and for Gyrfalcon, who cast Enlarge on himself. He waited for the Giants' hounds to get distracted chasing the Rust Monster, climbed out of the window from the kitchen into the forge area, and pretended to be a Giant. Lucinda asked if he was from the Conclave and he said yes. She said she was busy working on orders for the filthy surface worlders, but her husband could show him the progress on his commission.

 

 

Garl the Fire Giant escorted Enlarged Gary into the next room, a workshop where a group of slaves fussed over the fine details of an ornate sword hilt. One of them was the target, Leupold Hakkapeliitta. Garl showed Gary a giant suit of armor and helmet. He explained that once it was finished, the suit would protect the wearer from psychic damage, magic and directed energy weapons. Gary nodded sagely and said he was a bit hungry, and that one slave over there looked delicious. Garl let Leupold go for a hundred gold pieces, Gary winked at the human and hefted him on his shoulder.

Upstairs, Breadrick looted the bedroom. He stole a bezoar from the medicine cabinet and a ruby from Lucinda's vanity set. He opened the cabinet and avoided the neck-breaking giant mousetrap on the cashbox, shoveling hundreds of gold pieces into his bag. Candella and Poloknzerva got into the finer points of whether the sun really destroyed a Dwarf's brain, or if the Duergar only felt that way because cave adaption made them want to puke when exposed to bright light.

 

Gary was ready to call it a day, but an offhand comment to Lucinda on the way out of the dungeon prompted her to shout something up to the Duergar. He looked out of the kitchen window and shouted angrily at Gary to get back to work. He was supposed to be killing Rust Monsters, not using magic to pretend he was a giant and flirt with the boss' wife. Lucinda shouted for her faithful Hellhounds. Caught and unwilling to back down, Gary confessed his love to her. She shouted louder for the hounds. Battle was joined.

 

Lucinda shoved Gary into the forge. He caught himself on the rim, burning his hand badly. The pain ruined his concentration, sending magical feedback through his body and shrinking him down to normal size. The surging energy removed his ability to speak, rendering his words as floating text above his head. He begged Lucinda, pledging himself to slavery. She picked him up in one hand. Upstairs, Candella quickly neutralized Polokonzerva by shoving the Duergar off the balcony, sending him tumbling down forty feet into the forge's quenching trough. Breadrick returned from the bedroom and let a rope down the balcony for Leupold to climb, Candella rushed to the staircase and held the doors shut as the dogs ran up the stairs. As money had already changed hands over Leupold's fate, neither of the Fire Giants contested his escape.

 

Gary pulled a shroud from his belt. Lucinda assumed he was casting a spell on her and threw him into the forge again. His other hand was burned to a crisp and he staggered out, swearing that he wasn't trying to hex her, he just wanted to help his friends get away. She swore and picked him up again, divesting him of his belt and backpack. Then she went to wash his wounds in the quenching trough, ignoring Polokonzerva as he grumbled and hauled himself out.

 

Upstairs, Breadrick opened the door to the surface exit and tossed a bolt up the stairs, safely triggering the superheated steam trap from a distance. The dogs couldn't break down the door with Candella holding it shut, but Garl the Fire Giant simply ripped the whole thing off its hinges and allowed the Hellhounds into the room. Candella hacked away with his ax and shielded Leupold from the beasts' fire breath, allowing him to run up the stairs. The dogs chased them up the stairs and bit Candella savagely, but were unable to prevent his escape. Gary was left behind in the captivity of the Fire Giantess.

The Guild exited the dungeon staircase and found themselves in a basement room, where a group of clerics examined a rack of Fire Giant weapons. A call-to-prayer echoed from somewhere high above, one of the spires of the Temple of Swords. The chief Cleric Kadminion asked the adventurers what they were doing there. The adventurers explained that the dungeon below was full of Fire Giant slavers, who captured their friend. They rescued one prisoner and barely escaped alive. Kadminion feigned surprise. Fire Giants? Slavery? How awful. They'd seal the hatch immediately. The Guild asked if he could keep it open for a future rescue expedition. The Cleric agreed in exchange for a suggested donation of 1/4 their recovered gold, a better rate than the Allwatch would give them. Money changed hands and the possibility of rescue through the floor hatch was left open.

 

The Elite Underman Excavation Company went turn in the contract. Matul Bentgirder met them at a cabstand in Shrine of Teeth, periodically interrupting the discussion to yell out the window at the coachmen parking their fiacres illegally. Leupold was grateful for the rescue, but didn't feel good leaving the other slaves behind. Matul paid the fee as agreed and offered his assistance dealing with the rest of the Giants. It wouldn't look good if they could take people under his protection without consequence. But the rescue mission would have to wait for the next delve. Without Chelicera's bardic talents to further burnish their reputation, rescuing a captive from the Fire Giant Forge was just enough to keep the Guild in the public eye.

 

Beaten, bruised and with his armor in shambles, Candella threw down some real flow for his upkeep. Breadrick kept his expenses contained, picking up replacement items for the stuff he broke or threw away. Candella shoved the group's wealth in the bank, Breadrick paid for archery lessons to learn the art of the Doom Eye.

Down below, Gary befriended the other slaves. They had heard of the Elite Undermen after the heist in the Vampire Crypt and assumed his presence was a secret plan to rescue him. They didn't begrudge him when he cozied up to Lucinda to get out of forge duty, using his clever mouth to convince her he was good for something besides polishing metal.