Shadowmaze -- Session 42

The morning after their return from the shadowmaze, Wyz gathered his companions in his cramped room at the inn. The goblin’s scarred fingers trembled slightly as he worked the clasp on the scrollcase they had recovered from the rats’ nest—whether from anticipation or exhaustion, none could say.

“Stand back,” Wyz commanded. “And try not to breathe too heavily. You’ll contaminate the arcane residue.”

Perch snorted from behind his fish-head helmet. “We’re standing in the hallway, Wyz.”

“Exactly where minions belong.”

The case opened with a soft click, and Wyz’s yellow eyes went wide. Three sheets of vellum lay within, each covered in the intricate sigils and notations of magical formulae. The goblin’s breath caught in his throat.

“Magic Missile,” he whispered reverently, touching the first page. “Floating Disk. And… Web.” A grin spread across his face, revealing rows of pointed teeth. “The shadowmaze provides for those worthy enough to take from it.”

Alandor peered over Wyz’s shoulder. “You already know Magic Missile, don’t you?”

“Obviously.” Wyz rolled the first scroll carefully. “Which means we can sell it. Mazzah will pay handsomely for such a specimen.”

“Mazzah?” Perch asked. “That grumpy old wizard who charged us ten gold just to tell us a sword was rusty?”

“The very same. But Alandor here has a… connection.” Wyz fixed the old roustabout with a calculating stare. “You went to school together, did you not?”

Alandor shifted uncomfortably. “That was decades ago. We weren’t exactly friends.”

“Friendship is irrelevant. Access is what matters. You will get us through his door.”

The visit to Mazzah’s tower went better than expected. The high wizard, though perpetually irritated by visitors, softened slightly at the sight of his former schoolmate—or at least stopped actively scowling. After considerable haggling, during which Wyz demonstrated a talent for mercantile ruthlessness that bordered on the theatrical, they walked away with eighty gold pieces.

“Eighty gold!” Perch exclaimed as they stepped back into the street. “That’s more than I’ve seen in my entire life!”

“And yet somehow still not enough for you to afford a decent set of armor,” Wyz observed dryly. “Morrigan, give him ten gold from your share.”

The thief raised an eyebrow. “My share?”

“He’s our primary defensive asset. An investment in his survival is an investment in our continued existence. Besides,” Wyz added, “you can steal it back later.”

Morrigan’s expression suggested she had already considered this option. She handed Perch the coins with surprising grace.

Back in his room, Wyz spent the remainder of the day hunched over the remaining scrolls. The Floating Disk formula seemed straightforward enough—a simple manipulation of gravitational forces to create a hovering platform. Child’s play, really.

Three hours later, the scroll lay in ashes on his desk, and Wyz’s eyebrows had been singed clean off.

“The notation was… unconventional,” he muttered when Alandor knocked to check on him. “The original wizard clearly had no formal training.”

The Web spell proved more stubborn still. Wyz’s first attempt produced nothing but a faint smell of sulfur and a persistent ringing in his left ear. He sat in frustrated silence for nearly an hour, reviewing his mental notes, consulting his own spellbook, and muttering dark curses in Goblin.

When he tried again, something clicked. The arcane energies flowed through him like water finding its proper channel, and he felt the spell’s structure settle into his mind with a satisfying permanence. He could see it now—the web of sticky strands, the intricate lattice of magical force, the way it would spring from his fingertips to ensnare his enemies.

But when he reached for the power to actually cast it, he found… nothing. The well of arcane energy within him was simply too shallow. He understood the spell perfectly—every gesture, every syllable, every thread of magical force—but his body lacked the capacity to channel such power. Not yet.

“The knowledge is mine,” he said to no one in particular, a hint of frustration creeping into his voice. “The power will follow. It is only a matter of time.”

The next morning, Perch made his case over breakfast.

“I need real armor,” the dwarf said, gesturing at his battered chainmail. “Plate. Something that won’t collapse the first time a skeleton sneezes at me.”

“Plate mail costs a fortune,” Alandor pointed out. “Where would we even find a smith capable of fitting a dwarf?”

“Ironguard Motte,” Morrigan said quietly. She had been unusually subdued all morning, picking at her food and avoiding eye contact. “It’s a trading post to the east. Smiths there can outfit anyone, for the right price.”

Wyz considered this. “And how do you propose we travel there without being robbed, eaten, or both?”

“Caravan guard work.” Perch sat up straighter, clearly having thought this through. “Merchants need protection on the roads. We get paid to travel, and I get my armor.”

The goblin wizard drummed his fingers on the table. Getting paid to walk somewhere he needed to go anyway held a certain appeal. “Very well. We shall escort some hapless merchant to this Motte of yours. Try not to embarrass me.”

The journey to Ironguard Motte passed without incident, though Morrigan spent most of it with her hood pulled low, scanning the horizon with unusual wariness. When Alandor asked if something was wrong, she simply shrugged and said, “I prefer not to be recognized.”

Ironguard Motte proved to be less of a town and more of a fortified trading post—a collection of shops, inns, and services clustered around a central keep. Merchants and travelers of all races mingled in the muddy streets, conducting business in a dozen languages.

Perch made straight for the smith, a burly woman named Hilda who took one look at the dwarf and started taking measurements without being asked. “Plate mail for a dwarf,” she said approvingly. “Don’t get much call for that. Custom work. Come back tomorrow.”

While they waited, the party explored what passed for commerce in Ironguard Motte. Perch wandered through a curiosity shop, emerging disappointed and empty-handed. But Alandor’s eyes lit up when he spotted something in a dusty corner.

“Is that…” The old man approached the merchant’s stall with reverent steps. “Is that a griffin’s egg?”

The merchant, a thin man with calculating eyes, smiled broadly. “Ah, you have a discerning eye, sir. Genuine griffin egg, recovered from the Cloudpeak Mountains at tremendous personal risk.”

“It’s a rock,” Wyz said flatly.

“It’s a GRIFFIN EGG,” Alandor insisted, already reaching for his coin purse. “I’ll take it. And I’ll need a chest to protect it. Something sturdy.”

He also purchased a shield, emblazoned with a cult symbol of two snakes facing each other. The rest of the party warned him that he might have to cover the symbol, but the price was right; the cult symbol made it hard to sell, and Perch went through shields rapidly. The shield would make a fine gift, as long as the priests of St Ygg never saw it.

Wyz watched the transaction with theatrical disdain, but his keen eyes caught something more interesting: Morrigan had noticed several rough-looking characters taking an unhealthy interest in Alandor’s purchase. The thief drifted toward them with a casual ease that Wyz recognized immediately—it was the same way a spider moves when it senses another spider has wandered into its web.

Her body language shifted subtly, and she exchanged a few quiet words with the men. Wyz couldn’t hear what was said, but he didn’t need to. He had studied enough about the underworld to recognize thieves’ cant when he saw it being spoken. The men backed off with grudging nods, and Morrigan returned to hovering near Alandor as if nothing had happened.

Interesting, Wyz thought. Our thief has connections here. Professional ones.

That evening, they sought dinner at The Bloated Halfling, an establishment whose name proved to be aspirational rather than descriptive. The menu featured dishes that made even Wyz’s goblin palate water: roasted pheasant with honey glaze, braised boar in wine sauce, fresh bread with butter imported from the capital.

Perch studied the prices and went pale beneath his fish-head helmet. “I… I think I’ll just have water.”

“The water costs three silver,” the server informed him.

They ended up at The Black Dragon Inn instead, a considerably seedier establishment that Morrigan had suggested with suspicious familiarity. The common room was full of hard-eyed men and women who sized up the party with professional interest—the kind of interest that preceded either robbery or recruitment.

“Charming place,” Alandor muttered, clutching his chest to his body.

Wyz noticed how Morrigan’s posture changed the moment they entered. Not fear—recognition. She knew this place. These people. She excused herself briefly, slipping toward a shadowy corner where a heavyset man sat nursing a drink. Coins changed hands. Words were exchanged in low voices.

When she returned, the predatory attention had vanished. The other patrons now studied their drinks with studied disinterest.

“We should be fine here,” was all Morrigan said.

Wyz said nothing, but filed the observation away. Guild dues, he thought. The thief is paying tribute to stay in good standing. Which means she’s either a member in arrears, or buying safe passage through someone else’s territory. Either way, it was useful information. A minion with underworld connections had value—provided those connections didn’t become a liability.

Wyz examined the egg in Alandor’s chest with theatrical disdain. “You know,” he said loudly, “this is clearly a goblin egg, not a griffin egg. The shell pattern is all wrong.”

“It is NOT a goblin egg!” Alandor sputtered, his face reddening.

“I’ve seen dozens of goblin eggs. This is definitely one of them. Congratulations, you’ve purchased a future minion for yourself.”

Alandor clutched the chest protectively. “You’re just jealous because you didn’t think of it first.”

That night, Perch lay awake in his room, still buzzing with anticipation over his new armor. Around midnight, he heard footsteps in the hallway—soft, deliberate, pausing outside his door.

He reached for his weapon, heart pounding.

The footsteps moved on.

In the morning, nothing was missing, and no one mentioned anything amiss. But Perch couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been testing the locks.

Morrigan appeared at breakfast looking tired but satisfied. When Perch asked where she’d been, she simply shrugged.

“Couldn’t sleep. Went for a walk.”

Wyz noted the faint bulge in her pocket that hadn’t been there the night before—the shape of a folded letter. He also noted the way she’d cleaned under her fingernails, as one did after handling something one didn’t want traced back. A courier job, he deduced. Someone gave her a message to deliver, probably in exchange for passage or payment. The guild is using her as an errand girl. He filed this away as well. Leverage was leverage, after all.

They collected Perch’s new plate mail from Hilda’s forge. The armor gleamed in the morning light, and the dwarf practically glowed with pride as he strapped it on.

“Now THIS is proper protection,” he declared, clanking around the smithy. “Let’s see those skeletons try to bite through THIS.”

“Wonderful,” Wyz said. “You’ve become even louder. The undead will hear us coming from three chambers away.”

With no caravan heading back toward Helix, they were forced to make the return journey on foot. The roads were quieter than expected, though the nights were filled with the strange croaking calls of giant toads. Occasionally, they spotted green glowing patches in the darkness where the sounds originated, and gave them a wide berth.

“What do you suppose those are?” Alandor whispered one night, watching the eerie lights pulse in the distance.

“Something we don’t want to meet,” Morrigan replied. “Keep walking.”

They made it back to Helix without incident, richer in experience if not in gold. Wyz retired to his room to study his new spell, already planning their next descent into the shadowmaze. Perch admired his reflection in every available surface. Alandor cooed over his egg.

And Morrigan slipped away at dawn to deliver a letter to someone in the shadows, returning with a few gold coins and a knowing smile.

Morrigan

Alandor and I peeked through the mostly closed door as Wyz opened the scroll case, not trusting the goblin to not make the inn explode. He was delighted to find three spells. He didn’t need one, so Alandor talked Mazzah into buying it, having known him when they were younger so Mazzah would actually let us in. Spell scrolls are worth a ton. I was tempted to pick the goblin’s pockets for the other two pages, but I’d have to bend over double to reach his pockets, and it’d be obvious, so I refrained. Feeling bad for Perch, I gave him 10 of my portion of gold from the spell so he could get cured by the stuffy St. Ygg priests. I was feeling better by the time I got to town, so I didn’t need healing.

We wanted to adequately equip Perch, since he’s our meat shield, so we agreed to travel with him to Ironguard Motte so he could buy platemail. We signed on to guard a caravan. Might as well get paid to go there, but I’m used to being guarded, not doing the guarding. The trip there was uneventful. I stayed unobtrusive – it’s barely a town, but Ironguard Motte has enough traffic that there was a slight risk of being recognized. I don’t want to get dragged back home when my adventure just started. I hovered while Alandor shopped, buying of all things a gryphon egg. I kept hovering, because people were eyeing him. I made the local thieves back off from Alandor with a quick cant conversation.

We stopped in the Bloated Halfling, and the innkeeper described an amazing menu. But nobody wanted to stay there, so I unhappily followed the rest to the cheap Black Dragon inn, which was filled with my kind. I neglected to mention it to the others. Payback for depriving me of good food. I haven’t eaten well since I ran away from Theshold. I did, however, pay the guild dues so the denizens will leave us alone, especially Alandor. Because the guild really wants that chest. I’m back to being poor now. I did politely ask if I could bring anything back for them, and received a letter to give to the Helix contact. Wyz said it was a goblin egg, not a gryphon egg, pissing Alandor off.

Alandor opted to sleep in the same room as me. I checked under the beds, but didn’t find any trap doors. I jammed his shovel in the door to block it. I took first watch, and listened to activity below. No one bothered us, so at least this guild honors the dues payment. I did have to warn off some more toughs that Alandor was an old fart who bought a bunch of fake shit and put it in a fancy chest. There wasn’t another caravan, so we had to walk back. Perch looked intimidating in his new plate mail. We heard lots of giant toads talking to each other on the way. We saw green glowing spots where the toad sounds were coming from. But we made it safely to Helix.

In the morning, I delivered the letter to the guild contact. He gave me a couple gold.