Day 1, 1485 (Eveningish)
Captured by the drow ! You
wouldn’t wish this fate upon anyone, yet here you are — locked in a dark cave,
the cold, heavyweight of metal tight around your throat and wrists. You are
not alone. Other prisoners are trapped in here with you, in an underground
outpost far from the light of the sun. Your captors include a cruel drow
priestess who calls herself Mistress Ilvara of House Mizzrym. Over the past
several days, you’ve met her several times, robed in silken garments and
flanked by two male drow, one of whom has a mass of scars along one side of his
face and neck. Mistress Ilvara likes to impress her will with scourge in hand
and remind you that your life now belongs to her. “Accept your fate, learn to
obey, and you may survive.” Her words echo in your memory, even as you plot
your escape.
Stuck
cramped in a cell with a dozen other prisoners, Niljia , a human ranger caught fairly
recently while she was caving, Verna and Elora Ritter , a drow mother and half-elf
daughter captured by the drow the most recently, and Lashe , a half-elf druidic
maiden also captured fairly recently. This small conclave of elves and a human
find themselves stuck, manacled from the waist up, without magic or any
personal effects aside from worn holy symbols, basically anything the Drow
cared about or found of value, leaving the group in very basic clothing. From
time to time, the guard would grab some of the prisoners seemingly randomly from
the cell, taking them to do gods knows what, until they started to be chosen by
the guard. The guard takes the prisoners to perform menial tasks such as
cleaning, cooking, or some cruel task like moving rocks around or organizing a
shelf to impossible standards. One
day, as Verna attempts to use magic and once again to find it failing, they
heard the door to the guardhouse across the connecting bridge open, and two drow
guards come walking out towards the bars of the cell. One guard posts up and aims
his crossbow at the prisoners while the other calls out, “All deep gnomes , step
forwards, the rest of you back against the far wall!” He commands, the other
guard keeping a trained eye on the prisoners as they all but the deep gnomes
back away. It's apparently the deep gnomes’ turn to do some tasks today which
seemed fine; it lets the group figure out how to get out. As the gnomes are
filed out of the cell a sudden jerking sound of chain can be heard. In horror,
the prisoners watch as the drow threw the deep gnomes over the edge of the
chasm just mere feet away from their cell doors. They hear the terrified
screams of the gnomes as they fall, until their screams stop, and the horrifying
sounds of insectoid movement and bestial screeches can be heard coming from
below the edge. “..You will pay for what you’ve done..” Niljia threatened,
angered by this act of malice. The drow only chuckles at her, “Mind your
tongue; they would’ve been useless to us anyway because the city has enough
deep gnomes in their markets. If you listen,” at this, they watch as he points
up to his pointed ear, to which they hear the horrifying high-pitched monstrous
noises faintly coming from the dark, “You can hear the fate you may find
yourself in if you act out of line. So please, act up, our pets are hungry.” He
and his drow brother laugh at this as they lock the door and turn away, very
much enjoying the horrified expressions of the prisoners as they made their way
back to the guardhouse. The
prisoners were left to listen to the sounds of the giant spiders below,
spinning webs around the paralyzed deep gnomes. The orc nearby whispers something
to himself, of which Niljia and a few others did pick up on as he said in undercommon,
“should’ve been the dwarf ..” to which they watch as he glances to the lone
female dwarf sitting in the corner, looking at some of her cellmates warily,
almost ready to defend herself. Niljia walks over towards the orc and scolds
him, “Be glad that it wasn’t you.” She looks down at him, crossing her arms as
the orc looks back up to her. He blinks for a moment before he stands up, and he
looks down at her, brow furrowed as he leans in, “Would ya like to run that by
me again? I got a bad ear ya see” He huffs, staring at her threateningly.
Niljia smirks up at him and repeats what she’d said to him, “Be. Glad.
That it wasn’t you” The orc smirks lightly and scoffs as he sits back down,
“If only looks could kill.” The group reconvenes, Verna and Lashe talking with Niljia about the orc, and they
figured it’d be best to cause a scene, see if they could get some guards to
come in, and they could overpower the guards. However, as they talked about this,
they heard the distant door of the guardhouse open, and a familiar to some
higher ranking drow come walking towards them, a drow guard in tow. They can
see he suffered a battle scar somewhat recently as the scar goes across his
face and down his neck; some acidic burns hit him. He looks like he’s
still somewhat on the mend as he has a slight limp making their way towards
them before he takes the claw bowls from the guard, and one by one, he hands
out their meal for the day. As Niljia gets her food, she looks at his scars and
blinks, “wow, that.. quite the scar you got there, did you fight something?” The
guard smirks a bit and chuckles, “Yeah, got his ass hand-“ Before he could
finish that sentence, the drow gives him a dark glare, which shut him up. Niljia
decided not to press the issue any further, taking a bowl for herself and one
to the other drow prisoner that has kept mostly to himself. She gives him his
bowl, which snapped him out of his stare as he looks to the bowl. He glances up to
her, then to the bowl before he takes it, and he gives a low, “thank you..” As
they eat, Niljia notices the child and mother eating together, feeling saddened
to see the child in chains she finishes her meal and looks around for a rock or
something before she bends a certain way and feels something poke at her side.
She forgot she’d smuggled a drow bolt on her from the guards, and she felt it
poke her. She perks up and takes it out before she makes her way over to Verna
and Elora. “hey, maybe we can use this to help escape?” She offered, showing
them the bolt. Verna sees it and gets an idea, “May I see that?” She asks,
pointing to the bolt. Niljia nods and surrenders the bolt to her, at which
Verna goes over to the barred entryway to their cell, glancing around to ensure there weren’t any nearby guards before she starts to look around the cell
walls. After a bit of investigating she finds what she was looking for, carved
sigils around the entryway outside of the gate, seeming to be just out of reach
of her shackled hands. She looks at them, taking note of how worn and used they
looked, she takes a moment and she starts to pull one of her hands through the
shackles. It took a bit and it really hurt, but she managed to crush one of her
hands just enough to slip it out of the shackles. Now with one sore hand free,
she takes the bolt and she reaches out, trying to scratch out the sigils while
Niljia kept an ear out for any guards. However, despite Verna’s best attempts,
her sore hand couldn’t get enough strength to dig into the carved sigils and
scratch away the markings, preventing her and other magic users from performing
spells. Frustrated she huffs and tries again before an eloquent voice in elven
spoke out behind her, “I do hope you don’t expect to dig into solid stone with
a simple dart.” Turning around, both Niljia and Verna see the imprisoned
quaggoth , which at first seemed dangerous, but the oddly well behaved and
docile beast just sat there most days, tending to himself until this point. “Well,
I do you have a better idea?” Verna replied, staring up at the quaggoth. The
beast shook his head, “No, but I know it’s not a good idea to just waste drow
poison like that, of which that bolt tip is very likely coated in.” Verna quips
back, “Well, it sounded like you were complaining.” At which she’d noticed
Niljia just looked at them a bit confused. “Oh, believe me, I have plenty to
complain about..” the quaggoth replies back with a frustrated sigh as Niljia
looks up to him and asks, “You… wouldn’t happen to speak common.. would you?”
Niljia looked hopefully up to him, Elven not being one of the languages she speaks.
Unfortunately, the quaggoth gives her a questioning tilt of his head, at
which Niljia sighs, and Verna offers the bolt back, “Here, at least the poison
should be useful, at least.” Soon, one after another, the prisoners nestle in onto the hard stone floor, and they
drift off to sleep. Some of them find themselves having a horrid nightmare of
being lost in a labyrinthine maze of tunnels. Oily tentacles slide along and
brush past some of them, while a great buzzing and howling rises in the
distance. Suppurating wounds burst open in clouds of what looks like spores fly
towards them, seeing masses of maggots and insects pour and rush towards them. Before this mass of insects suddenly overcame them, they woke up in a
cold sweat, reeling in horror by what they saw. Looking around, the only ones
that seemed to have been awakened by this nightmare were Niljia, Verna, and
Lashe. “Did you… get the bug dream too?” Lashe asks, at which the two nods.
They notice Elora was still fast asleep nestled upon Verna’s lap, a sight Verna
was thankful to see at that moment as she and the others awake felt a deep
troubling feeling in the pits of their stomachs, like something, was out there, and
that something was worse than the drow prison they were in. Before they could
discuss much of the dream, Niljia notices the familiar scarred drow standing at
the gate of the cell, staring at them silently. Niljia
stands and she walks herself over to him, a bit weary since he was basically
watching them sleep, but curious to what he had to say. “It’s safe to assume
you want to get out of here.. yes?” At this, Niljia blinks before she nods, “Yeah...
something here gave us some weird dream.. not sure if you guys-“ The drow
interrupts her “your strange dreams matter not to me. If I were to offer you a
means of escape, would you follow my instruction?” At this, Niljia nods once
more before he continues, “Tomorrow. After you are fed, await ten minutes..
Your cell will be unlocked, as will the guardhouse. Do we have an agreement?”
Niljia nods a third time, “ten minutes after we eat, got it.” To this he nods
and he turns away, heading back into the guardhouse. Niljia goes back to her
group and relays this info to them, glancing around to see who of the other
prisoners would be the best help in their escape. After a little bit of
deliberating they decide to sleep on it and finish off the night's rest. The
next morning, they were all suddenly awoken at the sound of metal bars banging.
Shook awake, they all look up at the gate to see a guard chuckling to himself,
enjoying the sight of scaring the prisoners awake. Grumbling and angered by
that, the group wakes up fully and reconciles with one another, glancing about to
figure who to take with them in their future attempt to escape. -Session paused- Day 2, 1485 (Morning)