A Sail into Darkness
16 Kythorn 1492
The party is provisioned with 20 days of rations (for most) and plucky optimism. They journey to the docks below the keep where the Open Lord’s own craft, Eilidon, lays at anchor. Crew on the docks are heard singing an odd new shanty - “The Delvers, They Did It” - and complaining of troubles down south on the sword coast (in a feeble forward looking tie in with Rob’s adventure which is happening at the same time).
Several hours on the water sailing north into the Sea of Storms, and then due East to Mount Waterdeep and then into a narrow fissure. Wreckage old and new litter an immense underground cavern and a dim sea that stretches into darkness. Your sailing crew is unsettled and quiet, trading hushed whispers of the terrible monsters below the surface, those with faces of men. An ancient temple. If you see your own reflection then the dead gods have seen it too. When the Eilidon can travel no further in the odd eddies of bioluminescence, small craft are lowered and you pass another couple hours past midday descending into gloom. No one gets sick, which was sad.
The journey ends at the top of an immense retaining wall. You can see flickers in the distance of…. okay too much detail for a summary. you can barely make out shapes or a fire a hundred feet below near the base of the wall. The sound of water and distant fighting. You get a sense of the enormous cavern, a tall pillar with dots of flame in the middle, and some 300 or 400 yards away what might be a dim landing or dock. The retaining wall is the last stand of Gwydion and what remains of a platoon of Waterdavian soldiers. Silverhand sent Gwydion there as Gwydion had been caught on several occassions trying to get a folding boat into Skullport (he was searching for his son Ellidyr Ken’Daelus). He has not advanced in wealth and power as you have, but there is still an Aura about him.
He tends to a couple wounded as he talks, dismayed that Silverhand is not sending more. He tells you he’s sent his best four over the wall, send his next best down the excavated cavern. They’ve since trapped the passages to prevent incursions through the caverns. He can’t spare more men, but hands you a folding boat.
Gwydion implores speed. Cai’lel Cadarn at the Flagon and Dragon is the only hope of holding an outpost in the city, and sent a desperate plea for supplies and help days ago. He hands you a crude map of Lower Skullport. He tells you to steer clear of the fire island, or Skull Island, but is vague if he fears the challenge or is urging focus on the mission. This results in friendly jests but no one asks further :)
He briefly comments on the thirteen flaming skulls that orbit in the air around the Island and skullport, the revenants of Netherese wizards who controlled this keep long before it’s current state. More history to explore. He ushers you past his makeshift barricades. His final instructions are to send work when you’ve secured the docks, and help will follow. Oops.
The adventurers set off down an excavated cavern. You elect to take a narrow fissure that cuts down into the rock from the main cavern, which Pessius’ frazzled divination leads her to think you perhaps avoided many traps and perils… but not all. Several remark on the odd blue-white mineral or matter that appears in faint pockets in the cavern floor but you can’t make heads or tails of it.
Zanalor and Nuitt do not have a good system for detecting traps. Nuitt manages to activate a couple with his face, which becomes temporarily disfigured again. You fight a few crumbling mounds (because the Fates loved Shambling Mounds as a kid and you’ve kinda outgrown them) and avoid a few more perils, finding the remenants of the cavern soldiers and eventually making your way to the dark Sargauth River below the wall. There you help the two survivors in their failed launch over the wall defeat Grell and Kuo-Toa, though Zanalor almost go dragged over the edge and into the deep.
A short rest is earned.
