The Watch Tower Tunnel
10 Graingold 1463
10 June 1998
Late in the evening the Party of Five stumbled upon a ghostly grey structure looming out of the fog that has settled upon the valley. The tower appeared to be a circular stone tower of some age. It was partially destroyed, whether by the ravages of time or an epic battle is anyone's guess. The mist and the fog swirls around the structure making it appear even gloomier. The group is extremely discouraged. After once again connecting up with their unofficial leader, they had lost a close and valuable member of their party. Talfar, realizing that everyone was exhausted, called for the group to set up camp and began digging a shallow grave for his comrade. Although foreign to his Elvish senses Talfar had been among humans enough to realize that this was their way. As they laid the human into the sandy soil, piling large stones from the structure atop him, each of the party members spoke of the man they had come to call friend.
Talfar said that Markus was a brave and valiant warrior and that it was appropriate that he should rest in the shadow of the ruined watchtower. "It will be his headstone, giant sized to match his courage and valor", he voiced in the singsong elvish tongue. He then repeated it in the human tongue for the human members of his party. It said even more about the man that he had helped to overcome the decades of mistrust between the Elven race and humankind that this party represented.
The next morning as the sun kissed the horizon, the Party of Five discovered that they were on a wide valley with the Citadel of Dwarves rising out of a pillar of rock off to the west. They were within sight of their current destination. Behind the Citadel of Dwarves, mountains rose, rugged and forbidding. The citadel commanded a sweeping view of the valley below with the ruined tower that they had camped next to placed strategically at the northern end of the valley. As the night fog burned off the Party of Five discovered that they were not the only ones to have camped this night in the valley.
On the other side of the tower as far as they could see was a tent encampment of a siege army of non-human bipedal creatures. Wysteria immediately throws sand on the fire but it does little good. A party of nearly 20 of the creatures departs the tent encampment, which contains several hundred tents and begins heading earnestly toward the watchtower on foot. O'Reily, who is supposed to be on watch, is nowhere to be found.
At this point things begin to occur rapidly. O'Reily calls down to the group from the watchtower, obviously oblivious to the current desperate situation. He calls down that he has found something he wants to show the party. He then ducks inside the shattered walls of the ancient structure while motioning for the group to follow. With little other avenues of escape and guided by some unknown sense the half-elf, Wysteria, and her daughter, Loralei; who the elves call the Chosen One, mount the rugged steps up to the tower and follow O'Reily, Gaelin follows moments later. Talfar stays only long enough to set free the horses and slap them on their rears so that they might escape. He then follows the rest of the party up into the tower; O'Reily shows the party a secret door in the flooring behind which he discovered a spiral staircase going down beneath the ancient structure. At the bottom of the thirty or forty foot stair is a tunnel.
The tunnel is only about six foot tall at its vaulted peak. It runs away from the watchtower above in only one direction. The spiral stairs leading down to it from above were dizzying so no one could tell which direction it leads off into in relation to the landscape above. All they knew was that it lead away from the large army currently assembling above their heads. The walls and arched ceiling are damp and musty. The stonework itself is solid and appears to be ancient. The floor is sandy here under the tower but when the inch or so of sand that covers the floor is scraped aside it reveals a stone floor that appears to be natural, not man made.
The tunnel continues for a long ways. Although there are frequent turns none appear to be more than 45 degrees off from the previous direction so it looks to be fairly straight in its direction. There are no doorways in either wall or bulkheads between the sections of tunnel. The tunnel appears to be level as far as the scrambling party can tell, although after an hour or so they could begin to tell that this tunnel was now taking them uphill from their current elevation. The sand also tapers off at this time with their footfalls now echoing hollowly in the barren corridor before and behind them. The width of the tunnel is from six to eight feet at the base although walking side by side is difficult due to the extreme low height of the vaulted ceiling.
There is no natural light source available in the tunnel not even places for torches in the walls. Just the even stone work. Talfar's new staff, a gift from the natives in the previous encounter is the group's sole source of light. It gives off a soft glow only lighting up a 5-10 foot radius circle of pinkish light.
After some distance the climb gets steeper still. Not to the point where steps are needed but the incline makes even the stout begin to puff and wheeze. At this point also some degradation can be seen in the tunnel walls. Cave-ins are visible for the first time and become more frequent. To the trained eye the workmanship of the walls appears to be of the same caliber as the walls previously so the walls here must be under more pressure or are older in nature or some combination thereof.
After hours of climbing the tunnel breaks away complete into a natural cavern. It is easy to tell even to the surface folk that this cavern is the quarry where the rock was garnered to construct the walls of the tunnel. The smooth flooring still shows the ancient skid marks where skids of quarried rock were ferried to the tunnel. Here too are the first native denizens of this place as three Drow warriors are caught by complete surprise by the Party of Fives' entrance into the cavern.
Almost immediately the lights go out. Wysteria, terrified for her young daughter blindly gropes for her in the blackness. When she finally feels her, she clamps her hand over her mouth and whispers in her ear to slowly back with her out of the cavern. Unfortunately Wysteria had lost all sense of direction and instead backs into the cavern wall. All the while they hear fluttering sounds and clattering sounds coming from all around them. Other sounds can be heard as well. It is amazing how much sound the ears pick up when the eyes have nothing to see. The sound of metal striking metal, metal on stone, and then metal on metal again. Then came a sound that sounded as if a bardic lute had just lost its string. A muffled thud, a groan and then a complete and unearthly silence fell about the cavern. Not knowing what has happened the women stay huddled together until a tiny pinkish light returns to the cavern.
The cavern around them was strewn with arrows, darts and blood. The carcasses of all three Drow warriors lay unmoving in pools of their own blood. Gaelin, who stands by the fallen corpses staggers and leans heavily on the cold hard stone of the cavern's wall. He is clutching his side with the feathers of a Drow dart visible between his fingers.
Two of the Drow warriors have multiple arrows imbedded in them. Most of the arrows are imbedded deeply with only a small portion of their hawke feathered shafts visible. This is a testament to the prowess of Gaelin, who is a master bowman. The other lifeless Drow is not sprouting arrows but instead is slashed across his chest from his left shoulder to his right leg. Talfar lies nearby with a Drow weapon still clutched in his hand. His own weapon lies 10 feet away from his resting place. He is not resting comfortably for he too is sprouting a deeply embedded arrow in his chest. A testament that not even master bowmen are immune from poorly placed shots in blind fighting conditions. He is breathing heavily but is at least conscious. O'Reily is positioned only a few scant feet from the women and appears to be unscathed.
O'Reily begins moving first and starts rifling through the downed Drow almost immediately. Wysteria decides that this cavern is not the best place to be in and hollers for O'Reily to assist Talfar while she tends to Gaelin. O'Reily back talks her and asks her who died and made her his mother. Wysteria, incensed, scoops up Gaelin's bow and pulls an arrow from Gaelin's quiver and haltingly fires an errant missile at him. Wishing only to scare the hapless thug with a harmless near miss, both she and O'Reily are surprised when the arrow flies true and imbeds itself in his arm. It is not a mortal or even severe wound but it is not the expected miss either.
Wysteria recovers quickly and yells at the petty thief to stop pilfering and help me get us out of here before someone else comes. Instead O'Reily stoops and plucks up something from the nearest Drow body and instead of assisting moves further into the cavern. Wysteria hisses at the retreating thief and commands Loralei to assist Talfar into a standing stance while she gathers a few of Gaelin's arrows that appear to be intact and slides them back into his quiver. She retrieves Talfar's original weapon and slides it into his sheath, which she mounts over her own back. She then stoops and picks up Talfar's staff which is their only source of light. She then places Gaelin's bow over her shoulder and actually hoists the now still form of Gaelin over her shoulder. She then stumbles her way over to the entrance to the cavern and out into the tunnel where they had entered. Loralei and the stumbling Talfar follow.
As Wysteria takes one last look around at O'Reily she sees him slump to the ground at the extreme limit of her field of vision. Fearing that he might have set off a trap or maybe was just feigning injury she shakes her head in disgust and leaves O'Reily behind to fend for himself. If she had a better source of light or the better vision of a full blood Elf she might have seen the Drow "Sleep Poisoned" dart that the hapless thief had just scratched himself with.
Stumbling with her immense load she is working on pure determination now.In a hurry, Wysteria continues down the tunnel towards the end destination she desperately hopes must be ahead. More and more cave-ins, holes and damage to the bricked face of the tunnel. The end of the tunnel finally becomes visible to the exhausted adventurers. The tunnel turns a sharp corner, this one more than one hundred twenty degrees. The end of the tunnel is a wall of natural stone. Not the bricked variety of the obviously manmade tunnel but solid chunk of rock with no seams, no doors and no exits. Totally exhausted Wysteria drops Gaelin's unconscious form on the ground and fights a strong urge to sit down and cry. Loralei gets caught up in her mom's emotional state and begins wailing, "What do we do now!"
Wysteria sets down the staff to comfort her daughter and the tunnel goes completely black for a moment. Then almost inmperceivably at first the key around her daughter's neck begins to glow. Caught in the glimmer of the unearthly light the outline of a door is plainly visible in the bricked wall to their left. Wysteria screams at her daughter to hold her birthright gift from the mysterious visitor on the night of her birth and search for a keyhole. When Loralei discovers one and inserts the key, the secret doorway opens silently. Wysteria partially Elven hearing now picks up the sound of pursuit. The nearly silent pads of Drow feet echoing from somewhere down the long corridor. At a loss as to what to do next she desperately commands Loralei to assist Talfar inside the tiny alcove behind the door. She then gently picks up Gaelin and Talfar's staff and moves into the alcove as well. Behind them the secret door slides silently shut.
Talfar at the extreme end of his consciousness finally succumbs completely to the loss of blood and slumps unceremoniously to the ground. Wysteria takes stock of the desperate situation as her Half-Elven ears strain to pick up the sound of her pursuers. Inside this room is a ladder and a manhole sized borehole in the low ceiling that goes upward beyond the limits of her light. She again panics as she hears the unmistakable twittering sounds of the Drow language directly on the other side of the secret doorway.
TO BE CONTINUED…