28. We Don't Need Another Hero

All We Want Is Life Beyond The Thunderdome

Encounters

Summary

The party paced about their cell outside the arena awaiting whatever was to come next. After they had a little time to discuss their situation, Noska returned to escort them from their cell and into the arena. He told them that they had the honor of fighting first. After the business Veldrin tried to pull the crowd was eager to see his blood spilled. The party stood in the sand to impatiently await their opponents.

A goblin was sent into the cells to open the door to the last cell. Hitotee, the yuan-ti, slithered forward and bit the goblin’s head clear off its shoulders, dropping the body to the floor to let it bleed out. It then slithered up to the other cages, leering at the humanoid inhabitants while its other cellmates came into the arena. The hallway became obscured by the mass of Umpok the minotaur as he stomped forward. The minotaur was followed by Charworl, an orog wearing full plate armor, and finally Groz, a huge half-ogre, stretching and yawning from his nap and heaving his huge greataxe over his shoulder while lumbering down the hall towards the blood-stained sand.

Veldrin and Aradaine took a few steps back to allow these rather large opponents to enter the ring, with Piety, Footsteps and Hamidal moving towads the other side of the ring to provide ranged support. The new combatants formed a line near the entrance to the cells, with the two large creatures taking the front. Veldrin twirled his rapiers, flames dancing up the one blade and, cloak billowing, dived headlong towards the minotaur.

His blades and body twirling, he sunk them deeply into Umpok’s soft flesh, finding a spot in between the rock hard muscles of his abdomen to poke directly at his innards. The minotaur howled in pain, leaking its life onto the sand. The crowd erupted in excitement, but not all were happy at this sight. Money changed hands quickly at the sight of first blood and the buzz in the room rose.

Seeing the minotaur hobbled by Veldrin’s precise strikes, Footsteps admonishes him for not leaving any fun for anyone else before firing off his bow from across the arena at the minotaur. Piety and Hamidal also assisted from afar, flashing spells across the arena at their opponents. Focussing their fire on the minotaur, it quickly fell dead in the sand, soaking it in more blood. The crowd is shocked to see it fall so quickly, but it just increases their hunger for more blood.

The party began to concentrate on the half-ogre, being the next big threat. With the minotaur no longer providing it cover, the yuan-ti slithered forward towards Aradaine, where it attempted to use its hypnotizing gaze to convince him to drop his sword. Aradaine briefly felt the pull of its beguiling eyes, but his hatred for these creatures quickly snapped him out of it. He snarled and lept upon it with his sword, ignoring all other threats.

The half-ogre, after being slashed, shot, and poisoned, finally fell to the sand. The orog used the half-ogre’s corpse to hide behind, leaning out to throw a javelin which caught Hamidal in the shoulder. Veldrin helped Aradaine attack the yuan-ti before looking to the orog, dancing around the corpses on the floor. The yuan-ti went down in a flash of blades and blood, but Aradaine was driven and kept slashing at the snake even after it was still.

The orog noted that his cover behind the dead half-ogre would soon be compromised, with Veldrin moving around the corpses to come towards him. Seeing Aradaine thoroughly distracted in his blood lust, the orog rushed in towards him with his greataxe raised above his head. Merle the zombie made a heroic attempt to sacrifice himself to the orog’s blade, saving Aradaine from himself, but Merle ended up bouncing off its armor, unable to overcome its bulk and speed, but it did work to throw off the orog’s attack just enough that it glanced off Aradaine’s armor, breaking him from his spell.

Veldrin tried attacking the orog himself, twin rapiers twirling, but the blows glanced off of the hard plates of his armor. Footsteps admonished Veldrin for not pre-billowing to assist with his blows. Aradaine shook himself from his daze and attempted to bash the orog with his shield, but the heavy beast stood firm. His arm buzzed with the blow, like he’d tried to ram a stone wall. He slashed out at it with his longsword and landed a blow, but it stood firm. Footsteps, Piety, and Hamidal all fired on it from afar, with only Piety hitting with her flames. Veldrin, remembering to billow his cloak before attacking, again found the sweet spot, sliding his rapiers in past the orog’s plate mail and sinking them to the hilt in its organs. The orog reeled and fell to the sand, dead before it hit.

The crowd erupted with excitement, hooting and hollering, pushing and jostling, ale mugs spilling and money changing hands. The party, hungry for round two, whipped the crowd into a frenzy. But Noska signaled for them to quiet down, and they obeyed - quickly muffling their excitement. He was not that intimidating of a figure, especially for the size of this rough crowd, but they were quickly cowed by his command. He said that he knows they’re excited for the next round, but that the party must return to their cells while they take an intermission. The crowd mumbled their dissent, and the party fretted over this turn of events, but angrily stalked back towards the cells.

His blood boiling over, Footsteps could hardly contain himself at this point, continuing his pace of the small cell. They could slowly hear the sounds of the crowd dissipate as it thins out, with most of them going to find more refreshments. As they wait again to be called to the arena, a new figure entered the cell room. Pale white skin could be seen under his equally white hair. The stranger was being followed by a strange creature called a grell that looked like a floating brain with a bird’s beak and dangling tentacles. It was unlike other beholderkin the party had thus far seen.

Veldrin immediately recognized the stranger as one of his own kind. Catching Veldrin’s eye, the stranger signed to him that it was time to go. The stranger introduced himself as N’arl, an advisor to the Xanathar who was sent by Ahmaergo to assist them. He told the party that this was their chance to complete their mission - they needed to leave the cell with him immediately while they still had a chance.

Footsteps was not happy with this idea. Leaving would mean he might miss his chance at vengeance on Ren. She had already given him the information he was after - so she was now expandable. They discussed confronting her right there in the cells, but N’arl said that any disturbance in the cells would bring too much attention and he would need to leave the vicinity if that were to happen. N’arl slowly backed away from the cells, getting nervous that the party’s focus had shifted away from the mission. He warned them that he wasn’t sure what would happen if they stayed and completed the tournament and couldn’t promise them any sort of protection.

A compromise, of sorts, was reached. Piety suggested to Ren that she come with the party instead of staying in her own cell. She was amenable to this idea - not only because of the enchantment Piety used against her, but because this seemed like her one and only chance at effecting an escape. Veldrin also invited the drow in their neighboring cell to join the party, not wanting to leave one of his own behind. This made N’arl nervous - he was meant to retrieve the party and not all of the prisoners, a larger crowd would begin to draw attention. The party convinced him that it was only these two women and that their presence was crucial for them to get on with it, so he reluctantly accepted and led them out of the arena.

There were some eyes on them as they left, the crowd curious at the party leaving. Some cheered to see the folks who had spilled blood and won them money in the sand again, but N’arl was quick to shut any such fanfare down. He led them back into the hallway where they’d been caught by the Xanathar and from there back north into the hall of eyes. N’arl stared at the western wall for a bit before finding what he wanted, touching various stone eyes there in a quick pattern, causing the wall to disappear, revealing another room or large hall beyond. This one was full of statues of various humanoids. Hamidal was the first to notice that there was something off about these statues - their poses, the looks of horror or anguish upon their faces, the slight upwards tilt of most of their heads. These weren’t statues at all, but petrified remains.

The party was all wearing the necklaces they’d received from Jarlaxle at this point and so were invisible to scrying eyes. N’arl did his best to act as if the party weren’t there at all, talking out of the side of his mouth and not looking directly in their direction when he could help it, nervously eyeing his attendant grell as they went. He led them down a long hallway, past a doorway from which came sounds of a racuous party, and past another room wherein a number of bald dwarves sat in meditation around some kind of large symbol painted on the floor. They paid the party no mind as they made their way past.

Approaching the door at the end of the hallway, N’arl spoke to Veldrin about the lair they found themselves in. Noticing that Footsteps was wearing a pistol, he asked if they knew about the fuel that such a weapon uses and its explosive properties. He asked Veldrin if he had any idea how much of such a thing would be required to collapse a structure such as this lair, alluding to the fact that he might just have such a substance in a sufficient quantity. Then he led them to the workshop of one Thorvin Twinbeard, a dwarf who was currently tinkering with a large machine in the middle of the room. N’arl told them that he had to make sure the way was clear and that they should stay with Thorvin for a few moments for safety.

Thorvin was quite distracted by his machine, but eventually came down to talk to the party. An albino gazer, a small beholderkin, floated near him, watching everything he did, adding some hesitance to Thorvin’s speech. Seeing that they weren’t locals to Skullport, he asked them about news from the surface and found that they had some knowledge of the Harpers - which he confessed to working with. Hamidal was curious about the gazer that was making Thorvin nervous. He said some things to get its attention and began studying it more closely. He came to realize that if he were to spend some time exerting power over it, he could use a similar thread of magic that he used to create Gozrien to pull this creature under his command as a familiar as well.

He asked them if N’arl had told them of his schemes to blow the entire lair up and asked that he be notified if they intended to help him follow through with such a plan so that he could make a hasty retreat. He also said that while N’arl’s plans were somewhat sound, he was not an expert in where to place such explosives and could very well do himself more harm by misplacing them. Thorvin said that he would be able to offer his expertise in where to place such things if they did intend to use them.

N’arl returned after a few moments and informed the party that the way was clear. Taking them back up the hallway, he showed them another wall that contained a secret door, this one leading to a curved hallway that led to another secret door. Opening that door, they saw into the Xanathar’s inner sanctum. The entire room glowed with a faint purple light as sparks and specks of spectral purple floated through the air. Veldrin warned the group that this was faerzress - a kind of magical radiation found in the Underdark that had been known to cause madness in those who encounter it.

The group saw no choice but to enter and take their chances. Upon entering, the first thing they saw was a massive 20-foot diameter fishbowl filled with water. Next to that fishbowl was a smaller, 3-foot bowl on a pedestal that contained a large goldfish. The room also contained a large 10-foot diameter mirror built into the western wall with an engraved frame, and the party could see scintillating light in a rainbow of colors coming from an alcove to the south. Up on the eastern wall was a large tunnel that led off into the darkness, and on the western wall was a very large silver mirror with some strange etchings around its frame.

A dwarf stood upon a stepstool next to the smaller fishbowl feeding the fish within it. He addressed the party as they entered, telling them to leave immediately before recognizing N’arl in the doorway and telling them to get on with the business of swapping the fish. They quickly got to work in putting Fin into the bowl and removing the mundane Sylgar. Hamidal was tantalized by the dazzling lights he could see on the other side of the room and moved in that direction to check it out while the rest of the crew started heading for the door. Well, most of the anyway - it seems the purple specks floating about were starting to get to some of them.

The first sign of something amiss was when Aradaine, normally a rather stalwart leader of the group, suddenly turned tail and ran screaming from the room. That was about the same time that Footsteps fell to the floor unconscious. Their prisoner, Ren, was also having some kind of issue - she was batting at the air, ducking and weaving at something only she could see. She was complaining loudly about something that was seamingly trying to attack her.

Hamidal peeked around the corner to see the source the dazzling lights - a large crystal-lattice bowl that was floating in the air above a tattered straw mattress. Turning to see the rest of the party in distress he hurried back towards the door - taking note of something strange about the large mirror on the west wall as he moved back towards the door. While helping Piety to move Footsteps out of the room, they also noticed that their new drow friend Raelynn seemed to be paralyzed, she hadn’t moved a muscle and didn’t seem interested in doing so anytime soon. Hamidal had Merle throw her over his shoulder as everyone moved back towards the hallway.

Now that the fish were swapped, N’arl was eager to see everyone leave as soon as possible.