Night Below

Chat Summary for 13 April, 2001

 

Situation:  The party has overrun a derro guardpost and is now trying to decide what to do.  Important note: the DM screwed up either on the placement of the towers at the junction or possibly in the location of the guardpost.  They should have been guarding the side-tunnel, not the main one.

 

Events:

 

Worried that the illithid that disappeared might return with reinforcements, the party quickly discussed what they wanted to do before leaving.  They decided to burn all of the bodies of the dead except that of the illithid and one of the derro.  They discussed setting a trap, but decided against it.  They then pulled back to a side cavern about six miles back from the crossroads.

 

The party rested up, with Diana and Ariessus memorizing new spells to help the party determine what they should do next. 

 

The next day they cast their spells.  Diana went first, casting Speak with Dead on the derro corpse.  She asked the following questions and got the following responses:

 

Q: "Who are the derro fighting against in the rebellion at the City of the Glass Pool?"

A: "There ain't no rebellion in the City, just those scum wandering around out here in the tunnels."

 

Q: "What do you know about the scum in the tunnels?"

A: "There are about 40 of them, including the half-dozen or so savants that lead them.  They are holed up down the tunnel.  They keep raiding us, so we built the guard post I work at..." He trails off for a second, then continues..."They keep spouting stuff about the purity of the race and all.  Fools!  Strength is all that matters, not purity!"

 

Q: "How many slavers with slaves came this way?”

A: "We usually get a group of slavers through here every couple of weeks or so."

 

Q: "Why haven't you wiped out such a small number of scum yet?"

A: "The illithid don't care about them.  They don't think they are much of a threat so they don't allow us to do what we should have done months ago and organize a single strike to destroy them all."

 

Ari then casts Speak with Dead on the corpse of the illithid, but the monster resists the spell.

 

Diana then casts a Scry spell and manages to locate the illithid who had fled from the battle.  He was laying in a comfortable chair, sleeping.  As Diana scanned around the room Kat recognized it as the residence of the illithid in the City of the Glass Pool.  Seeing the room again brought several other memories about her time captive there to mind and she related them to the party.

 

Since they didn’t find out anything new from the scry, the party spent a while discussing what they should do next.  Several wanted to approach the derro rebels about a temporary alliance.  Castinar, who’s racial enemy is derro, strongly disagreed, although Katrina started to soften him up as time went by.

 

The next spell was a Divination that Diana cast.  She asked "What will happen if we don’t talk to the rebels and head to the city?"  The answer was "The path may be more difficult.  Decisions you will have to make while on the path cloud the possible futures."

 

One of the questions that had been proposed to use on the divination was about the purple worms the party had passed a few days ago.  Diana used her Dagger of Augury (which gives only Yes and No answers) to ask "Is there any useful items in the purple worms treasure that would help us in our attack on the City of the Glass Pool?".  The reply was “Yes”.

 

That came as a surprise to the party, and they quickly decided to go deal with the worms before deciding on a final course of action concerning the derro.

 

That’s also where we left off.  The party will travel back to the wormholes, and we’ll run that combat next Friday.

 

### Important reminder.  I’ll be leaving the country shortly after next week’s chat session.  We will continue to play via e-mail while I’m gone (barring any unforeseen connectivity problems), but we won’t chat again until late May or possibly early June. 

 

See you all next Friday.

 

Saif

 

PS: Just for fun:

 

1 year ago real time the party was battling the Shadow Dragon.  1 year ago game time the party was journeying down to assault the Temple of the Slime Lord.

 

2 years ago real time equates exactly to 1 year ago game time with the battle in the Temple of the Slime Lord.  2 years ago game time the party was arranging an agreement between Queen Inzeldrin, the Green Dragon, and Count Parlfrey, and act that, in no small way, influenced the selection of Matar as a new Count.