The roar of the crashing waterfall competed with the
mechanical roar of the waterwheel turbines that spun beneath Ieirithymbul’s
gatehouse. Theryn eased his way through the gap in the iron gates,
following Siegfried down the rather steep ramp that led into the subterranean
city. He kept a close eye on every shadow as he made his way down the sloping
ramp, mindful how the roof of the cavern could conceal all manner of enemies.
The roof soared overhead, at least 25 feet above the worked canal through which
the glacial river’s waters were forced. At regular intervals in the canal spun banks
of waterwheels, no doubt powering some strange gnomish contraptions deeper
within the cavern. Theryn could barely make out Siegfried’s form as the half-orc
crept along. He stopped at a circular stone well, from which wafted the reek of
oil. Theryn fished out his flint and tinder and cast a spray of sparks into the
void of the well. The oil ignited, and with a whoosh the well cast both
heat and illumination in a wide circle. “That’s better,” Theryn said to himself as he warmed himself
by the fire. Suddenly he felt a tingling sensation wash over him. Looking down,
he could see the hairs on his arm standing on end. Strange, Theryn thought
to himself. The monk found a torch in his pack and dipped it into the well.
It caught with a smaller whoosh as he continued on. Erwen’s flames whooshed higher as the army of automa-gnomes
tottered through the fire, heedless of the blazing heat as they ignited into
walking candles, their arms outstretched as they stumbled blindly forward. Alec aimed his hand crossbow and fired a shot into the first
of the gnome-bots as it stumbled through the fiery wall. The bolt struck home,
sinking deeply into the liquefying face of the construct. One by one the gnomes surged forward, attacking Erwen’s
remaining wolves. Two of the wolves went down with mournful yelps beneath the metal
jaws of the constructs, while two gnome bots zeroed in on Bob’s prone form, biting
him savagely. They grasped him with their expanding claws, squeezing tightly. “No!” Alec shouted, trying to keep the constructs from
dragging his brother back into the flames with them. Bob’s eyes fluttered open and he grimaced in pain as he felt
the metal teeth of the gnome constructs tearing his flesh. He coughed wetly,
his mouth full of the taste of blood and sulphur. He had a pounding headache, and cutting through the pain was
the voice of Andusk. Where…where am I? Andusk asked. I was going to ask that! Bob replied. The sorcerer
struggled to his feet, flinging the tiny constructs aside. “That’s it!” he
rasped, casting dragon’s breath. A cone of fire blazed out from his mouth, catching a number
of the oncoming gnome constructs in its area of effect. One of the
automa-gnomes let out a screech and exploded, flinging shrapnel into the bodies
of its comrades. Bob raised his hand, cocked like a crossbow, and blew smoke
across the tip of his index finger. Erwen nodded with approval at Bob’s blazing barrage. “We’re
going elemental,” he shouted. “First fire, and now…earth!” the druid cast erupting
earth and a section of ground in the village suddenly became a churning
morass of soil and stone, catching several of the constructs in its crushing
grip. One of the tiny cottages leaned forward drunkenly and collapsed as its
foundations liquified. One of Erwen’s wolves bit through the neck of a construct,
flinging the gnome’s head into the churning earth. The headless body toppled
into the swirling rocks, disappearing beneath the crushing rocks before it could
explode. Siegfried moved forward through the gloomy darkness of the gnome
causeway, the roaring sound of the waterfalls and turbines fading behind him.
He passed a stone column and a darkened fire well that someone had snuffed out.
His darkvision allowed him to see ahead in shades of grey, and as he approached
the outlines of the first gnomish buildings in the cavern, he did not like what
he saw. The canal bottomed out and bent at a sharp angle following a
southerly course beyond Siegfried’s field of vision, but he could see huddled
on both sides of the artificial river a number of stout fortifications
protecting clusters of stone cottages, many of them arrayed about rocky pillars
that linked the cavern’s floor and ceilings. A complicated tangle of pipework,
a series of tubes of varying gauges, linked the buildings together, their
purpose alien to Siegfried’s eyes, as Waterdhavian civil engineers preferred to
keep infrastructure tucked away out of sight beneath the streets of the city.
The gnome tinkerers of Ieirithymbul, it seemed, liked to show their work. Siegfried felt a twinge of dismay as he saw no evidence of
the hustle and bustle of the gnomish cities he’d read about in adventure
magazines. A pall of smoke hung low over the buildings, and though their stone
edifices were peppered with windows of various sizes, he saw no lamplight, no
hearthglow, and no sign of life whatsoever. “We were too late,” he said to himself, surprised at the
depths of his sorrow for a city he had never known. “It fell…” “Siegfried!” Theryn called out from behind. The monk had lit
a torch and was walking purposefully towards him. “Yup?” Siegfried shouted back. “What do your orc eyes see?” Theryn shouted. “I see a burned and blackened city!” Siegfried called back. “But
I hear no screaming, other than your voice!” Theryn pointed across the canal. “There’s a pathway along
the other side!”
“Where’s Varien?” Siegfried shouted.
Theryn hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s coming!” Siegfried resumed walking but paused as he felt a tingling
sensation wash over him. His eldritch sight told him that there was some residual
magic in the area. Varien drew parallel to Theryn. He pointed across the canal.
“I say, are those some sort of buildings over there?” Siegfried gave an exaggerated shrug. “Should we go to the other side?” Theryn asked. Again, Siegfried shrugged. “Fine,” Varien replied, and, using his boots of striding
and springing , launched himself across the canal to land, barely, on the flagstone
causeway that ran along the north side of the canal. “You do not want to fall into that machinery,” Siegfried
mused, indicating the waterwheels and clockwork train tracks that lay ready to
snare swimmers in the rushing water. Theryn smiled. “Both the soaring eagle and the mountain goat
are fleet of foot,” he said, bowing to the half-orc slightly before turning to
the phalanx of waterwheels that formed a sort of bridge between the banks of
the river. The monk timed his jump perfectly, diving through the spokes of the
spinning wheels and coming to rest in a three-point landing on the far side of
the canal. Siegfried suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. He turned and
continued to make his way along the causeway. A few steps later, he froze. His
sharp eyes had picked out the shape of a pressure plate in the flagstones
before him. “Interesting,” he said. He looked about with his eldritch sight and
spied an aura of evocation magic that charged the stone pillars nearby. He
picked up a stone and dropped it onto the pressure plate as he misty stepped
across the canal to emerge from a shadow in a narrow alleyway between two
stone buildings. The tiny rock triggered the pressure plate and instantly a
pair of whirling turnstile-like blade apparatuses launched upward from hidden
sections of flooring, their sharpened blades whirling rapidly. Siegfried backed up into the shadows, silent as a ghost.
Only his eyes glittered in the darkness. Across the canal, Theryn and Varien moved quietly along the
northern causeway. They made their way past a stone pillar in the centre of the
walkway. The two men felt a strange uneasiness ripple through them, a feeling
that was more discomfort than pain. The feeling passed after a moment or two. Theryn put out his quarterstaff and blocked Varien’s
advance. “There, on the ground before us. A cunningly concealed contraption,
certainly.” He indicated the pressure plate on the flagstone ahead of them. “I think we have something here,” Varien agreed. Alec swung his broadsword in a great arc, decapitating
another gnome construct. He peered down the gaping hole in the headless automaton’s
neck and shielded his face as the gnome-bot’s power source melted down, sending
a gout of hot metal slag burbling up out of the rent in the construct’s torso.
Laughing off the pain, Alec cast magic missile and sent a formation of
force bolts into the next approaching construct, blowing off limbs and gouging
holes in the automaton’s half-melted hide. The construct dutifully exploded. Erwen dismissed his wall of fire after the last
construct staggered clear. The druid frowned as a second wave of automa-gnomes
popped out from hiding places in the village. They began to march resolutely
towards the adventurers. Alec strode across the bridge and planted his family sword
into the ground, gripping the handle until his biceps bulged. Bob stepped forward. “Alec, hand me your goggles,” he
hissed. Alec fished them out and tossed them to his brother. Bob slowly lowered the goggles over his eyes. “It was nice
gnoming you,” he said to the approaching mob of constructs. Then he cast fireball . A bright streak of flaming energy leapt out from his pointed
finger and detonated amid the ranks of approaching constructs, sending a
mushroom cloud high into the air above the tiny village. Instantly the gnome
army became an expanding cloud of broken limbs, torn torsos, and flaming heads,
some still serving up gnomish puns as they bounced on the ground, sending
sparks flying. Secondary explosions from the dying constructs followed like a
string of summer fireworks, popping and crackling even as the fireball expanded
fully to engulf the constructs. Only two staggering, half-melted figures remained. What…what have you done? Andusk’s voice was weak,
plaintive. I did what I had to do , Bob replied. My children…they are still at risk! Andusk said
through a veil of confusion. I’d say we’re all at risk here , Bob replied. Varien’s boots clanked loudly as he attempted to skirt
around the edge of the trap that blocked their path. Theryn deftly followed and
soon the adventurers were standing before a small one-and-a-half-storey
fortification that featured firing slits that gave good coverage of the canal and
causeway. Theryn skipped up the side of the stone structure. Atop the roof
there was a raised battlement, a trapdoor that did not give in the slightest as
Theryn tapped it with the butt end of his quarterstaff, and another cold stone
firewell. Theryn shrugged and dipped his torch down into the oil, igniting the
well. There was a sudden, deep basso hum that reverberated off the
cavern walls. Theryn again felt a tingling sensation as though some sort of
energy was running through his body. Suddenly, the stone pillar behind them crackled with a deep purple
energy force that leapt out in lightning bolts to land on another pillar beyond
the fortification, where it sizzled for a split-second before lashing out again
in a barrage of bolts that found another stone pillar, and another. Varien was struck full-on by the blast of lightning energy,
frozen for an instant as the electrical current raced through his body, heating
up his plate armor and searing him from one end to the other. Siegfried’s hiding place gave him no cover from the sudden
streak of lightning bolts that ran him through on their journey from one charged
stone pole to another. His teeth chattered together involuntarily as the
electricity rushed about him, wreathing him in electrical fire and hurling him
back against the stone wall before continuing on its way to another pillar. Undaunted, Theryn leapt from the first rooftop to the
second, flitting overhead as Siegfried fought to get his limbs under control. “Boo…” Siegfried croaked from the alley. “You all right down there, Siegfried?” Theryn called. The
monk didn’t have a scorch mark on him, somehow having evaded the lightning trap
entirely. “No,” was Siegfried’s strangled reply. “You really should be mindful of your surroundings,” Theryn
said matter-of-factly. “Never you mind,” Siegfried hissed. He lurched from the wall
and steadied himself. “Now, let’s see if we can find some survivors and salvage
some of our dignity in the meantime.” Beyond the fortifications sat a cluster of tiny cottages,
each one built of masterworked stone that featured slate and metal roofwork. “How quaint,” Siegfried offered. He took a closer look, stepping
out from the shadows into the cobblestone square that most of the tiny homes
fronted. Here in the dark, he could see a dim glow through the leaded bay
windows of the homes. He could see that most of the homes’ doors were covered
with hinged metal shutters that had locked in place over the doorways. Stepping
to the nearest window, he peered inside. At first, he took the white-blue coverings that draped the
tiny pieces of furniture within the townhouse to be drop cloths of some kind,
but their glowing threads soon resolved themselves into a less logical but frightfully
familiar pattern. Spiderwebs. The entire interior of the townhouse was choked
with webbing. “Oh, hells,” Siegfried said under his breath. Here and there
within the webs were oblong cocoons, each of them large enough to contain a restrained
gnome, unless he missed his guess. “Damnation,” he hissed and misty stepped inside to
appear next to a cocoon. Instantly his legs were stuck fast in the webbing that
lay shin-high on the stone floor of the townhouse. There was a vinegar-like
reek throughout the small home.
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“Delightful,” he said, manifesting his weapon.