Recap
The evening of the 16th of Trivor, 1329:

Taryn held onto his magical rod, a slim thing of iron no thicker than willow switch and no longer than his hand from the base of his palm to the tip of his longest finger. He held on with all his strength, his knuckles white even in the odd green light from Sammeth's dwarven torch.

Sammeth clasped Taryn's other hand as hard as Taryn clasped his. The eerie green light of the torch stuffed in Sammeth's belt was the only light in the tunnel, and the rippling water seemed a thing alive. Thunder reverberated even in the depths of the tunnel, and the water flowed like a living beast, roaring and pulling and tearing at Sammeth, whose body was in the current up to his chest, his feet finding no purchase against the strength of the moving flow.

Taryn's magical rod was mere inches from the ceiling, and touched nothing save Taryn, and yet it held both their weight. The half-elf had suspended weights from his magical rod totalling nearly four tonnes, before the rod had even moved. Impossibly, the rod was moving, slowly but surely.

The half-elven cleric of the God of Memories snarled in frustration. Either the rod was failing, or the gods were being capricious. The water flowed through the squared-off tunnel at tremendous speeds, draining into a nearby whirlpool that roared at sub-vocal strength, palpably beating at the air over the waters. Taryn knew that there was no way the water could pull at Sammeth with four tonnes of force, and Taryn still hold on. His rod was failing, and he cursed the man that had given him the rod.

With a grunt of fury, Taryn tried to lift Sammeth's hand towards the rod, and failed, nearly losing his grip on Sammeth. The human looked up at Taryn, helpless in the face of the waters that flowed and pulled at him with wet, green hands.

Taryn snarled, again. His grip on the rod was still firm, but the humidity in the watery tunnel was turning everything clammy. The half-elf took several deep breaths, and then with a draconic effort hoisted Sammeth up out of the water, putting the man's hand to the magical rod.

The two shared a quick glance, and Taryn let go.

There was a silken rope tied about Sammeth's waist, and he saw it trail into the green-lit waters. With one hand firmly on the rod, he used his other to pull his dwarven torch from his belt, and hoist it as high as the seven-foot ceiling would allow -- a ceiling that he was only three feet from. The waters were rising, and Sammeth felt they had to level off, eventually. Just beyond the dim light of the torch, the whirlpool howled, the water swirling around it savagely.

There was a bright flash of gold and yellow and orange, and the waters battled against Taryn's magical armor and blade, as they flushed with fire, steam pouring off of them. The fire swirled quickly down the maw of the maelstrom, and the tunnels seemed to dim instantly, despite the green light Sammeth desperately held high.

He shoved the torch back into his belt, and began wrapping the length of the silken rope about his free forearm. After nearly fifty feet of it had been coiled about his arm up to the elbow, he came to the wet, soggy end. It had been burned off, when Taryn ignited his flaming armor.

* * *

Warvold, son of Grimholme, son of Gemsong, decided that he was rather tired. And bloody. And irritated. And bored.

Warvold and the rest of the Deepsmiths -- all forty-one of them -- lived in what had been the Mage's Tower of ancient Tymarell. In that long-ago time, Tymarell had been a great city, located atop the dwarven Deepsmith home of Daggoneth. Daggoneth, though, had been falling into ruin even as Tymarell rose in stature. The Mage's Tower had been a substantial tower that clawed its way into the heavens, even as the Deepsmiths tried to claw deeper into the earth.

The Deepsmiths had failed, though, to retake their city. And Tymarell had fallen to a volcano's wrath, buried beneath ash and mud-steam so quickly that brains had boiled inside men's skulls even as they fled in terror. The devestation had sealed the sewers of Tymarell -- built atop the springs of Daggoneth. And worse, the fall of Tymarell had meant the escape of Grythe.

The troll had been a brutal murderer and cannibal of great strength, and had been placed in the dungeons of Tymarell for all eternity, or so his sentance had been read. The devestation of the city meant his freedom, and the massive troll had found the Deepsmiths to be easy prey -- a broken clan unable to come upon him in numbers, within the sewers of the city.

Grythe had taken over the Mage's Tower, and used it to lord over the Deepsmiths, keeping many as hostages against his will while the smiths and miners and masons raped Tymarell's basements from below at the troll's bidding.

For how many decades -- perhaps centuries -- Grythe had lorded it over the Deepsmiths, Warvold did not know. The troll had been killed by outsiders. Just the thought of it lent him a shiver of excitement, despite the cooling blood in his beard and on his boots.

Grythe had been killed by the Treasury's guardian -- a guardian the troll had tried to command for a long time, and yet had been commanded in the end by outsiders that the troll had thought to enslave as he had the Deepsmiths.

For two years had they been free of Grythe, slowly rebuilding their spirits.

Sometimes Warvold half expected the troll to come back, skulking around a corner with his head too close to the ceiling, and his emerald-green eyes insane with madness and mayhem and a touch of calculated evil.

But Grythe was gone. Warvold had lived with terror all his short five decades. And he was, all in all, a bit bored by it.

Above, outside, a storm raged. Water fell from high above, and flooded the tunnels and sewers of Tymarell now and again. This time, the waters were strong -- strong enough to force the rats to seek somewhere dry. The basement of the Mage's Tower led down into the level of the sewers, and though an iron grate held sway at the entrance to the sewers, rats could not be held back by holes in a door.

They had come in a swarm -- hundreds, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands.

Warvold and two of his clan had stood responded quickly to the infestation, and taken to the stairs, killing the rats as quickly as they could with boots and blades and hammers and even their hands and teeth. While they had killed through the swarm from the steps, their clan brethren had killed a great many rats, as well. Their snakes had helped, as well.

Grythe, strange, cruel creature that he had been, had been kind to his snakes. He had grown monsters, some thirty feet long and near enough in strength to rival the troll, and those great constrictors he had kept in the sewers to cow the Deepsmiths, and to keep outsiders away from his treasures, and the Treasury.

The Deepsmiths had always been jealous of the snakes, who were treated better than they -- but they had seen the value of keeping them when Grythe had fallen. Though Grythe had denied them reading and writing and pictures and runes, after the troll's death, they had taken on a new symbol -- that of a smith's hammer with its handle wrapped about by a serpent.

Warvold, son of Grimholme, son of Gemsong, sat on the bloody steps and watched congealing guts slowly drip down the wall, lit from above by the green of dwarven torches. He had nicked his mithral blade on the amazing stone of the Mage's Tower, and slowly, methodically drew his whetstone across the blade. He knew it might take decades of work to get the nick out, but he knew it would be worth it.

The eldest of the Deepsmiths, Trorgil, had become their all-father and clan chief. Only Trorgil and two others were old enough to remember a time before Grythe, and remembered their runes and many other gifts. Though the last two years had been years free of Grythe, they had still been hard on Warvold's head, as he mastered all that his elders had to relearn, and then to teach to him, including the secrets of steel and stone.

And despite getting worked up at killing a horde of rats, it was still just a horde of dead rats in the end. The snakes would catch the rest. And life would go on, as dull and opressing as it had been before, even with the slave-master dead.

* * *

The waters had finally begun to recede, and Sammeth found himself slowly but surely more vertical.

He knew the secret of working Taryn's rod, and the rod had held for him, magically keeping him above the worst of the flood waters. Sammeth pressed the recessed stud on the rod, and then quickly pressed it again as he dropped several feet into the water. His feet had found purchase, and then the water had quickly swept his feet out from under him on the slick stones.

After a bit of time, Sammeth found he could finally stand unaided. He pressed the stud on the rod, but kept it ready in case the flood waters should return. He walked, slowly but steadily, towards the larger chamber nearby. The maelstrom had been reduced to a swirling, suckling, mewing farce of its former self, and Sammeth could see the stone steps that led down into the bowl from the sidewalks of the sewers. At the bottom, a round hole eagerly pulled the remaining water deep down into itself.

Water continued to fall from the sewer grates and pipes above, and the sound of falling water was everywhere, but the power of it was gone. The roar was gone. The maelstrom had apparently been sated with Taryn's flaming body.

Sammeth held the green light up higher, hoping to see something down in the hole where the water fell, sparkling like a flow of green diamonds down into the depths.

* * *

The water levels had begun to drop enough for father-chief Trorgil to send Warvold out. The youngest of the Deepsmiths was also one of their largest and most fiercesom, and also a bit unstable. Trorgil's chief task for his most unstable of warriors was to keep Adjantis' husbands in line.

Adjantis had been a bane of the Deepsmiths since they had discovered her. She was too large to come up from the under-sewers that Trorgil and the others suspected were water cisterns for Daggoneth in days long gone. Her children -- and those that had grown large enough to mate with her -- were another problem. They often infested the sewers, and Grythe had used them to help control the labrynthine sewers. The Deepsmiths had seen no need to stop using them, so long as they did not grow too large. Adjantis' husbands were of a size to make control of the sewers difficult, and where one could go, the others could go.

Warvold and his brethren often blocked up the sewer drain that led to Adjantis' lair -- a drain just large enough for her husbands or a dwarf to squeeze down, but not large enough for the spider queen herself. During floods or rains, though, the sewers' powerful water currents could sometimes free the blocks, pouring water through the spider queen's webs like a seine net.

The Deepsmiths had no real way to defeat Adjantis without heavy casualties, but wanted to keep the option of storming her lair to get into Daggoneth as an option.

* * * Hoping for some sign of Taryn, Sammeth slowly made his way down the slippery steps to the hold at the bottom of the large-mouthed well. The water fell in sheets, but was less a battering force and more of a steady rain, as it had been before it grew into a mealstrom.

The falconer held his dwarven torch out over the hole, and saw nothing. At first. Something skittered across the hole too fast for him to see.

And then eight legs as large as his arms came up through the hole, followed by a body as large as his chest. The shiny carapace reflected the green light wetly, and its enormous fangs lifted in threat.

Ghost was instantly out of its sheath, even as Sammeth carefully worked his way up the treacherously slick steps. In one hand he kept the dwarven torch aloft, its green light flashing off a million wet surfaces and drops of falling water, and in the other hand his sabre's edge glowed with a touch of white that seemed to make everything around it glow as though it witnessed something unholy. Worse, the eyes of the giant spider reflected both sets of light with too-intelligent, too-cunning looks.

Sammeth nearly slipped several times, keeping the blade between himself and the spider, even as the spider skittered through the sheets of water as though they weren't there, looking for an opening to attack.

The huge spider leapt upon Sammeth's extended arms, and wrapped its legs around the elven buckler there. The falconer, moving fast, slid Ghost up behind his buckler and impaled the wicked beast.

* * *

Warvold held his dwarven torch high aloft. Farther down the corridor, he could see another green glow moving wildly about. The wisp. He grunted, and waded through the water, before finding a bit of sidewalk to step on. The wisp could be a problem, particularly when it wanted to free the spider queen's husbands.

* * *

Sammeth retreated into the shadows, hiding his dwarven torch's light under his cloak.

Another green glow approached, and Sammeth was afraid it was the will-o'-wisp returning. The light made sounds, though, in keeping with feet -- but not of a pace or size to be Taryn, despite his brief hope.

The water slowly moved the body of the twitching spider, and then it fell over the side of the bowl, and down into the depths of the hole.

The 'wisp' turned out to be a dwarf with a short, bristly beard, and a hugely built torso and arms.

Sammeth figured it was one of the Deepsmiths. Based off of what Tram had told him, they were the slaves to the troll Grythe.

Warvold sighed. Luckily there was no sign of the wisp, but the way to Adjantis had obviously been opened. He glanced about, and saw none of her husbands loose -- yet.

Seeing no other way to block the hole quickly, he slung his shield from his back to his front on its over-shoulder loop, and then rode it face-down to the bottom of the drain. As it had a time or two before, the shield just covered the hole -- and just in time: several spider legs thrust up out of the water, but could find no purchase.

Warvold crossed his arms, and thought furiously for a moment. Water was pooling in the shield, already, and the weight of the water would help keep the 'drain' in place, but it would mean going without his shield for a time. He wished he'd brought one of his brethren with him.

Sammeth unfurled his light, startling the dwarf.

Warvold asked in the dwarven tongue, "Who are you?"

The falconer could not answer, for he understood naught of the dwarven language. "Do you speak the common tongue?"

The Deepsmith spoke back, "Little?"

Sammeth sized up the Deepsmith, already up to his knees in water. The dwarf had an open expression void of malice or anger, and it touched Sammeth. He felt as though he spoke with an innocent, despite the sharp-edged battle-axe in the dwarf's hand.

The falconer said nothing, but quickly raced away from the dwarf.

Warvold could only frown. He was excited to see an outsider, stuck at the bottom of the sewer drain (unless he wanted to leave his shield behind), and wondering if there were other outsiders. It never occurred to him that the human could've killed him if he'd chosen to.

Sammeth raced down a side passage hunkered over, and found the rotten log he'd seen earlier. He kicked at it, several times, with all his strength, until it finally broke in half. He lay his cloak down in the running water, and with one foot on it, managed to muscle each of the logs onto the cloak. He then drug them both back through the sewers towards where he could stand up, and then back to the dwarf.

At the edge of the pit, Sammeth paused, wondering how to get past the language barrier. The dwarf obviously spoke limited common, and Sammeth spoke no dwarven at all.

Warvold, seeing the logs, finally realized the danger of the outsider. It occurred to him that the human could crush him as easily as a bug, if those logs were rolled over the edge. The human hesitated, though, like it wanted something from him.

* * *

Sammeth and Warvold, together, kept Adjantis' husbands secured, and the water level of the cistern returned to its former levels. From there, Warvold led the Falconer into another part of the sewers, to the Mage's Tower. The tower had been mistakenly marked on Tram's map as north of the main entrance; Warvold, however, led him south.

The two did not talk much, the language barrier between them being considerable. Sammeth vowed to learn as much dwarven as he could, though. And he missed the sun.

Warvold left Sammeth at the foot of the basement entrance to the Mage's Tower, and went ahead to speak with his Clan Father. While Sammeth was below, drying off and shivering somewhat, he realized that he was wearing dwarven-constructed mithril chain. He stripped off his top leathers, and peeled the beautifully constructed chainmail off, putting it in his pack. He feared that the dwarves might mistake him for a grave-robber -- which he was, in a sense, he realized.

Sammeth preferred to think of himself as a tomb-robber, though. The difference was fine, but real enough to him.

Warvold returned, and beckoned the human to follow. Wet rat entrails still slid down the walls in places, slowly, congealing blood making the steps slippery.

Sammeth's introduction to the Deepsmiths was a grim introduction.

Trorgil, thankfully, spoke the common tongue well. A dialogue began, and when it was done, Sammeth might well call himself 'ambassador'.

Trorgil and the rest of the Deepsmiths agreed to take in and shelter all the folk of Takanal, if those folk could help the Deepsmiths re-open Daggoneth. Sammeth learned of the city beneath the city, that the Deepsmiths called 'home' and Daggoneth -- and of an ancient foe, some sort of undead, that could electrocute its victims.

The seal on the deal was the mithril chainmail, which Sammeth had presented to Trorgil with great majesty. The chain shirt had obviously been constructed by dwarves, and the workmanship had been quite fine. It was also a reminder to the dwarves that they, too, could once again begin to make such fine objects -- by being allies of Rakore, of the nation beyond their borders that needed them.

* * *

The next day, after carefully preparing supplies and speaking one last time with his family, Warvold left with Sammeth for Takanal.

They had barely stepped out of the sewers and into sunlight, before they were attacked. The orcs had been waiting for them, and an ambush began. A half-dozen orcish rangers assaulted them with composite shortbows, before launching down the sides of Cason's Cut.

Though Sammeth fired bolt after bolt into their attackers, the armor the orcs wore and their fearsome constitution made them difficult to kill with quarrels or crossbow. Warvold's dwarven war-axe had no such problems. The tall dwarf's eyes nearly went cross-eyed as he charged the orcs, cutting off heads and limbs in a flurry of green blood. Sammeth had to get out of the dwarf's raging way, lest he be cut down himself.

Warvold chased a retreating orc up the side of the ravine, but the orc scrambled over the edge of the ravine and into the woods, and was away. Frustrated with the escape, Warvold was not about to let the others get away, and leapt back down upon them from above. He crushed one's ribs with a heavy landing, and buried his axe in the last orc standing.

Sammeth had never seen such a warrior in combat, before, and he was awed by the youthful dwarf -- a dwarf that was suddenly very tired.

XP Awarded
2,000.   (total XP awarded for the campaign is 5,250)

DM's Notes
Luke couldn't make it, and I broke one of my cardinal rules: We all play, or no one plays. I shouldn't have done it, but I did, and the rest is damage control.

Warvold was played by Todd's son, Bradley, who does an admiral job of learning the ropes. He enjoys playing a barbarian, and seems to enjoy the role-play as well as the battles. Of course, he rolls like he has loaded die, though I know he doesn't -- and that doesn't hurt, when it comes time to lop off some heads.