Feverborne
We met in Eastdale, hoping to finish exploring the Grotto. With Morin along, we hoped to open a door that had previously been locked and impassable; beyond that, there were areas on the second level that we had yet to explore. While the undead areas might hold serious danger, the river with the frogs seemed possibly safer. Eastdale itself was not at all friendly to elves; Pish had some trouble getting inside the walls, though she spoke little of it. The paladins of Ygg there charged me to bring proof of Ygg’s approval of my lady Closea, which I planned to satisfy by asking Forrest from Threshold (originally a paladin of Ygg himself) to write a letter of introduction. That would, however, require travel, so I put it off.
We hired several men at arms and a torchbearer, and paid for extra provisions. There was some sort of magician peddling his services, but the only thing he could do was read magical writing. While that has it’s place, Pish the elf is more capable and less expensive. One of the others, a common fighting man, claimed to be from Helix and to have seen the Barrowmaze. That gave me chills. I thought I had left that place in the distant past, aside from indulging Lyrian’s curiousity enough to get close a few years back.
Once at the Grotto, I explained the hazards to the new members. Don’t look at the pretty crystals. Beware of slimes, molds, and trogolodytes. Beware specifically of undead on an island in the second level (where Bern got his withered arm). Beware of giant frogs in the river (where Bern got that nasty bite mark on his chest). Especially beware of holding wires sticking out of the walls. And run from anything with too many mouths.
Guess what turned out to be behind the locked door? Morin got it open in a jiffy by saying “skull” three times, which revealed a small room holding a very large … slime demon? I have no idea. It looked quite a lot like the gibbering mouther, but it didn’t seem to have the same paralyzing effect, and it seemed to be held captive behind a circle of magical slime. Instead, it spoke to u-Huery, who seemed to want to negotiate with it. It wanted us to break the containment circle using acid, and the prize for that was 101 days of servitude, plus the contents of a cabinet at the back of the room.
Pish made herself useful by casting Detect Magic, establishing that the slime circle was magical, and either the cabinet was magical or its contents were.
I cautioned u-Heury against trusting such a foul creature, and reminded him of how hard the gibbering mouther had been to dispose of, but he was not inclined to listen. Eventually I walked away in disgust. He planned to set it free to roam the lower levels, eating whatever it found there, which would be a fine plan if we could trust the creature to keep its word, which obviously it would not. I planted myself and my men at arms solidly in front of the only route to the surface we knew of, resolved to fight the thing once it inevitably betrayed us and sought either escape or the nearest convenient food (ie, us). u-Heury was determined to carry out his plan to free it. This would not end well.
