Tales from Toril- The Underdark Escapees: Book One, Chapter One

The Escape from Velkynvelve

Dramatis Personae:

Hera Adaar, the Abyssal Tiefling Wild Sorceress 

Luna Trelawny, the Human Divination Wizard

Phillip Johnson, the Human Cleric

Aura, the Air Genasi Storm Sorceress

Orvald Abershaw, the Mousefolk Barbarian

Stool, the Myconid Child

Zenit 'Dracon, the Drow Fighter and Orvald's wife

Prince Derendil, the Quaggoth who thinks he's an elven prince under a polymorph curse

Ront, the Orc Fighter

Thimblepwent Battlehammer, the Dwarven Battlerager Barbarian

Topsy and Turvy, the Deep Gnome Twins

Buppido, the Derro

Sarith Zekarit, the Drow Scout

Eldeth Feldrun, the Shield Dwarf

Jim Jar, the Deep Gnome

Shuushar, the "Awakened" Kuo-toa 

Friendly Fire: 3

NOTE: Things are mostly from Hera's point of view, anything in italics is from a third party, since she can't be everywhere at once.

***** Tarsakh 29, 1489 DR

Phillip Johnson was captured by drow slavers and taken to the camp Velkynvelve, and added to a cell that was already occupied by Stool, Prince Derendil, Ront, Thimblepwent, Topsy, Turvy, Buppido, Sarith, Eldeth, Jim Jar, and Shuushar. 

Tarsakh 30

                Orvald is captured by the slavers and drug to their camp, joining the others in their cell.

Mirtul 1

                Luna Trelawny is taken by the drow, and due to her nature as a diviner, she is rendered unconscious before they reach the camp. Her unconscious body is dumped in the cell.

Mirtul 3

                While I was chasing down what was probably just another dead end, some bloody drow snuck up on me. Before I could begin barraging them with magic missiles, they hit me with one of their damned poisoned bolts. When I awoke I found myself a prisoner in a cage that was very full.

Mirtul 4

                A peculiar slave has joined the cage today. She is apparently new to the material plane, and came from the Elemental Plane of Air. Aura is her name, and she is an odd person, even by my standards. Perhaps another sorceress will be key to getting free of this stupid cell so I can resume my search. There's footprints leading away from the door now, something beat me to it.

***** Mirtul 7

                When our captors came in today, I was instructed to clean their quarters, along with one of the svirfneblin twins; I’m not sure which one, they don’t talk much and it’s hard to tell them apart. I swear they dirty their quarters just to give us something to clean.

                Earlier that morning, before the drow came in to delegate responsibilities, Phil had asked Eldeth to carve him a new holy symbol, with his magic he thought he might be able to begin an escape. When the dwarf pointed out she didn’t have any tools, he said he would try to steal something next time he was on duty in the mess hall. Lucky for Phil, today was the day he was sent to the mess, along with Aura and Sarith.

                Upon reaching the mess, Phil asked Aura to try to make a distraction for him. The genasi planned to just drop something to distract the guards, but she’s incredibly clumsy. Aura’s feigned trip, turned into a real one, and the bowls in her hands went flying; knocking out one of the drow who was watching them. This gave Phil an even better distraction than he had hoped for, and he was able to sneak around the remaining guard, who was wholly focused on the sorceress, and get his hands on a knife and fork.

                Aura was grabbed by one of the quaggoths the drow use for muscle, which sacred the little genasi so badly that she peed herself. The beast carried the terrified girl out of the mess hall, and held her over a ledge high enough up that it was unlikely she could survive the fall; except that a giant spider web was stretched across it. Aura was dropped, and landed on the web, the spider instantly started going for her.

                Phil was not the only one who used Aura’s peril to his advantage, Sarith took this as an opportunity to stab a guard, and managed to make it look like an accident.

                The other guards began leaving the rooms they were guarding to see what the commotion was about- the quaggoths had congregated around the ledge Aura was dropped from, and were watching in twisted glee while the spider prepared to eat her.

                Orvald was cleaning the supply room at the time, and when the guards in his room left, he began looking for his stuff. The mousefolk had had a philter of love taken from him when he was captured, which he found, and soaked a crossbow bolt in it. He then took a length of chain and walked out to the ledge, using it to hook Aura, and began reeling the unconscious genasi back to safety- though he did further injure her in the process. He knocked a quaggoth over the ledge in the process, and the spider fell upon its new prey quickly.

                When the drow vacated the room I was in to investigate the commotion, I sent the deep gnome that was with me to look for help; little did I know that would mean he would go find his brother. The drow don’t seem to keep useful things in quarters like these, so I went to the door to see what was happening outside.

                By the time the odd mouse had pulled the genasi out of whatever trouble she seemed to be in, a full uprising seemed to be happening- I joined gladly. I saw the mouse stab a drow fighter in the leg with a crossbow bolt, and suddenly she was on our side. He must be some sort of mage. With that drow on our side, the battle was over quickly, and the others decided we should jump down the waterfall to escape- the same waterfall we’d been dumping waste in. Glad I have wings.

                After we reached the bottom of the pool, we heard new commotion above, and saw a group of vrocks and demon insects fighting above us. While we were watching that, a grey ooze attacked us, but we made quick work of it. We had a brief discussion of where to go, and since we couldn’t agree on where exactly to go, we decided to head to Dark Lake, and decide when we got there if we would take Stool back to the Neverlight Grove, go to Gracklstugh like the derro wanted, or go to Sloobludop like Shuushar wanted to do. We realized we would need Stool in order to gain access to the Grove, and I flew back up with Orvald and his pet drow to get him and the unconscious human. We also got gear, including an odd wand that lightly vibrates when I press a glowing button on the top of it, I was able to turn it into a new arcane focus. It seemed that all of our stuff was there, except for our arcane focuses, sucks to be the rest of the casters. 

                That night after making camp, we learned that there were less drow at the camp than there should have been, which is why our escape had been so easy. Zenit, Orvald’s pet, said that one of their caravans had been attacked by a beholder and some kobolds, and they had dispatched reinforcements to help with the beholder. The caravan that was under attack is the same one that Teegan rescued the Ironfang Eight from; had he not saved them, they would have found themselves in the same camp with this party.

***** Mirtul 8

                In the morning, or when we woke up, since we have no sun to tell us if it’s actually morning down here, the human girl finally woke up. We learned her name was Luna, and she instantly made friends with Stool- adding her voice to the requests that we take the lad home first.

                Later in the day, we heard voices up a tunnel who were fighting about being hungry. Orvald decided to go investigate, but because his sword is bigger than he is, the sounds of it dragging along the rock alerted them to our presence. It turned out they were a group three of goblins, who began shooting at Orvald the moment they saw him. The little mouse responded by hacking one of their arms off, which terrified one so badly that it curled up in the fetal position and began rocking; another was so scared it began babbling incoherently. Ront charged in and took one of the goblins out instantly, I used magic missile to kill another, and Orvald polished off the one whose arm he had taken.

                That night at camp, after I had gone to sleep for the night, along with most everyone else, I was awoken by Zenit screaming, and found everything cloaked in magical darkness. Pwent, thinking the foe was next to him, smashed poor Ront to a bloody pulp, turning the orc into hamburger. He then swung again, hitting Zenit instead of the foe. Orvald began pounding on the thing hurting Zenit, and managed to wrench her out of its grasp. I blindly slung a magic missile in the direction the sound was coming from, I think I missed though based on the sound I heard after casting.  Luna slung a spell blindly at it, killing it and causing the magical darkness to fall away. Zenit, realizing that Orvald had just saved her, went completely mad, and permanently fell in love with the mouse.

                When the darkness slid away, we discovered that our attacker was a giant rocktopus. We also found the fleshy smear that remained of Ront, no one is sure what happened to him, since the hamburger that was the orc wasn't near the giant rocktopus. Orvald decided to cook some of the rocktopus for us, that barbarian has odd tastes- though it was pretty tasty.

***** Mirtul 9

                Our day was blessedly uneventful, something that rarely happens in the Underdark. I wondered how long we had until the drow bitch turned on us, and how long before the rest of her friends caught up to us.

                As we made camp that night, we heard voices and odd skittering noises coming from the tunnel, which this time were not something coming to attack us. We met a small party of duergar merchants, and Buppido asked if he could join them. The derro was anxious to get to Gracklstugh, and didn’t want to wait until we made it there.

                Orvald, not realizing that duergar don’t haggle, attempted to do so with the merchants, who were unintimidated by the tiny mouse.

***** Mirtul 10-11

                The next two days were peaceful. I enjoyed this brief break, for I knew it wouldn’t last long. I hope I'm getting close to my door. 

***** Mirtul 12

                We stumbled into a cavern of mushrooms, and decided to harvest some for food and water; Stool helped us identify which ones were edible, and showed us the Zirkwood mushrooms, which are the Underdark equivalent to lumber.

                Derendil, not wanting to lift a royal finger to help us, got himself attacked by mushroom stalks- his flesh where it had touched him looked rotten. Pwent and Orvald, always ready for a fight, ran to his rescue; I also helped since I was close enough. I used an ice spell and froze the stalk, allowing Pwent to shatter it, saving Derendil from the threat- or so we thought.

                We all turned back to what we were doing, when Derendil got attacked by three more of the bloody things. The insane quaggoth went into a rage after getting his arse handed to him by a group of mushrooms, and attacked Pwent. Pwent went into a rage of his own, and whacked his highness with his waraxe. Derendil somehow managed to knock Pwent unconscious, and Orvald knocked his highness out in turn.

                The rest of our night of harvesting was rather uneventful.

***** Mirtul 13

                The next morning we discovered Topsy and Turvy were missing. There were some tracks around where they had slept that looked like they were made by large rodents, heading south. We decided we needed to go rescue the twins.

Photo from Out of the Abyss Adventure Module by Wizards of the Coast

Photo from Out of the Abyss Adventure Module by Wizards of the Coast

*Author's note: Many of the events and characters that take place in this story are from the Out of the Abyss Adventure Module by Wizards of the Coast.