That Harris is a right bastard, too. I thought he was just some mercenary Archie hired, but from Keef's descriptions, it sounds like he has some personal interest in making Keef suffer. I'd like to drop that fuck into Martek's bloody tomb to wander around there for eternity.
Anyway, I was rudely awakened at an inappropriate hour by Hal and company; they wanted to go down to the basement to fetch our belongings and Fergus. We did that, coaxing Fergus out of his comfort in the storeroom with a promise that he could meet Freddy Mercury. On the way back, Hal wanted to take a look at the mysterious locked door. The dungeon guard was within eyeshot of the door, so Erose, Sanjay and I went down to distract him. We asked him if he'd seen Elspeth, thinking maybe she'd met up with the night guard who she'd been flirting with. He didn't seem to think so. I further distracted him by hinting that Erose fancied him; she tried to scowl in an alluring, but modest, manner. Sanjay said some annoying stuff which caused the guard to chase us all off, and we went back upstairs.
We asked around the servants quarters after Elspeth; it didn't seem like anybody had seen her. Some of us (me & Sanjay) got put to work washing dishes. Sanjay tried to get out of it by breaking dishes. Unfortunately for him, dish-breaking is a flogging offense in this castle, and he got hauled off to jail. Since Sanjay is a pretty fragile little guy, I figured flogging wouldn't do well by him, so I followed behind, to see if there was some way I could break him out before he was damaged. He got dragged down to the basement dungeon. I hid in the laundry room and tried to make a plan. I had a very strong feeling of deja vu.
After a bit, Hal showed up in his elf-disguise. I proposed dressing up as a couple who wanted to be kinky and get it on in the dungeon, but Hal wasn't into that idea. So, we settled on setting a fire in the laundry. We did that, and I, dressed up as a girl (from my previous plan), ran down the hall saying, "Fire! Fire!" Hal waited in the laundry, ready to knock the guy down, and make it look like he'd tripped. However, the guard was somewhat distracted by the fact that Sanjay had escaped and was running down the hall. The guard managed to get Sanjay back in the cell, and treated me quite rudely before running upstairs to get help in putting out the fire. No wonder he has trouble getting laid. We took that small opportunity to get Sanjay out of the cell; Hal took a look in the other occupied cell, to see who was in there. He told us later that it was a very worse-for-wear Drow, chained to a wall. That seemed like a good place for a Drow to be, so I didn't concern myself with it too much.
Of course, this just peaked Sanjay's curiosity, and he decided to do something very unwise. Clearly, there was no stopping him, at least without the help of some of our brawnier friends, and Hal and Erose just don't appreciate the depths of perfidity which the Drow represent. So, Sanjay went down and turned himself in to the jailer. At some point, he got out of his cell, and sent his weasel in to ungag the Drow so that he could talk to him.
|
They spoke in goblin ("Goblin is not a very effective language for communication."), and he told Sanjay that he'd been locked in there for a week, and claimed that the drow were not on friendly terms with Northumbray. Sanjay sent Hal a weasel-gram with the results of that conversation, which Hal relayed to us. I pointed out that we should take anything a Drow said with a large dose of skepticism; After all, it seems pretty clear that there is some sort of collusion going on between Northumbray and the Drow. I'd guess that if the Drow were telling the truth at all, he was saying that the Drow did not have friendly intentions towards Northumbray. This in no way precludes him being used as a pawn by them, to be tossed aside when he's of no more use. |
| Dingus: Weasel-gram! |
Vrba became very incensed at Sanjay for talking with the Drow. Apparently, his odd religion considers it an abomination to talk to somebody who has talked to a Drow. I wonder how his folk deal with interrogating Drow prisoners. Anyway, he decided that Sanjay needed to be purified, and the purification involves lots of bat dung. {"Dude, bat dung is, like, the duct tape of this world!"--Katherine} Fortunately for everybody else's peace of mind, he decided it was sufficient to purify Sanjay's familiar, and the purification would transmit itself to Sanjay by contagion.
The Holy Amp--It Goes to Eleven
While Vrba was smearing the weasel, Mercury arrived from the amp auction, amp in tow. Keef and I communed with it for a while. Hal decided he wanted to learn to play an instrument. Keef set to teaching him bass.
The search for Elspeth resumed. Finally, we found a person who she'd spoken to the previous day. He said that she'd been asking about the second-level basement (where the Drow were). We also found out that two guards had been killed there, yesterday. We had a sinking feeling that Elspeth had decided to take on the unknown number of Drow lurking on that level, all on her own. That girl has no sense of priorities. She has no sense, period. She should at least have gotten Vrba to help her; I'm sure he'd have been totally willing. We couldn't get onto that level unnoticed. Apparently there is only one entrance to that area, and it was guarded. So, Billy Ray tried to locate her (in particular, her Thor pendant). We had no luck. We had resigned ourselves to busting into the second floor and searching there, when we got a message from Sanjay via a very stinky Dingus.
Sanjay's adventure:
At some point, Sanjay decided to leave the confines of the prison cell. He found the door of the Drow's cell gone. The Drow himself was in a very poor way. His skin had been removed, and the remains of his body artistically scattered about the cell. His chains had been melted into some eldrich symbols. The guard was gone, his fate indicated by a smear of blood at his station. The scary thing was that all this had happenned without Sanjay hearing or seeing a thing. Sanjay decided that he'd better get out of there.
He left the dungeon, and as he walked towards the stairs, noted that the Mysterious Door was ajar. He looked in, and saw some torches, lit, and a large table with some charts and maps on it. He entered the room, and saw some kind of magic portal before him. The portal looked into a hallway walled with red-veined black marble. Two figures in long black cloaks were sitting in the hall, facing away from the portal. Ahead of them was a doorway with light coming out.
Sanjay took a look around the rooms at the maps; they looked like some sort of invasion plans--plans for an invasion of Scotland, via the old dock we'd seen a few days ago. While he was inspecting the maps, Sanjay heard a blood-curdling scream from the direction of the portal. He looked back, and saw that the guards were gone. In typical Sanjay fashion, he jumped through. He went towards the light, and saw 4 Drow standing around Elspeth, who was mostly naked and chained to the wall. A Drow female was doing nasty things to El's chest with a knife. (Sounds like they're preparing her for a sacrifice to their vile demon-goddess. I expect they'd get a lot of milage out of a paladin.) Sanjay looked back to the portal, and saw that it was closing. He ran back through it, just as it shut, and sent word to the rest of us (who were preparing to assault the second basement level).
We got down to the room as quickly as possible. Vrba inspected the wall where the portal had been, and found some runes describing the operation of the portal. It seemed to Vrba that it led to someplace fairly nearby, and the runes indicated that it could only be opened from this side at four times in a day: midnight, and every six hours after that. It was still a good two hours before the next available opening, so we've had that much time to prepare, and hope they haven't killed her in the meantime. (Yes, we're going to try to rescue her; the thought of assaulting a Drow stronhold of unknown strength with little preparation, and only a small force, is NOT pleasant to me, but I can't leave that lovely, stupid girl in the hands of those evil creatures.)
Vrba was able to decipher the tactics maps for us; it seemed like Dave was going to try to send in some troops to reinforce his holdings, from alfheim, via the old docks. Northumbray seemed to be planning to trap those troops, using the warships in the secret harbor, and various troops of his who'd been/would be set into place. The positions of royal troops in the area were also marked, but they seemed to not be involved with any of the action. There were indications that the Drow were pulling Northumbray's strings, which isn't all that surprising. My guess is that they want to ignite civil war in England between elves and humans, and, if possible, war between Eldamar and England. If enough of our forces got diverted to the South, or to England, they could take advantage of the correspondingly weakened Northern defense, and divided attentions, to increase raiding, or even mount a full-scale invasion.
Erose visited tSotL to ask his advice on Drow-fighting. He told her to watch out for their poisonous blood, and gave her some sort of ring. Keef is insisting that he go on the expedition; I can't convince him not to go.
Vrba, for all that he's a psychopathic nutter, does seem to understand how critical the Drow situation is, unlike the Steinhallers. I suppose I shouldn't really blame them, since they don't have any understanding of how evil the foul fiends are, and they don't give a damn about the security of Eldamar. Humans. Anyway, Vrba and I managed to abscond with a good portion of the charts and maps, and got Rick to bring them and the intelligence we'd gathered to Dave, as well as a personal note from me, on what is very likely the eve of my horrible, painful death.