Day 3

We met outside the inn, apparently Halfling run, the following morning and were directed to the woman’s table. As we approached we could tell that she was clearly affiliated with one of the dragon marked houses by her garments and the fact that she had a whole room of the inn cleared for her to eat in. As we sat by the table the woman asked us if we were involved in the fight near the body of the old man and we admitted that we were, though apparently I was the only one to remember that we had been clearly told to distrust her. I gave up on my efforts at secrecy given that they were meeting with little success at eliciting more information from the blasted wench. We handed over the journal in our possession and in conjunction with a House Cannith ring she was wearing, she was apparently able to read the journal. It turns out that she and the old man who was a scholar at the Sharn University, were both members of the same house. It dealt primarily with the creation of the warforged at one time, and now the two were pursuing some silver schema that sounds like it was used for part of the process.

She then proceeded to hire us to go search for the schema. Unfortunately our search would lead us into the bowels of Sharn, into the deep sewers and abandoned floors that Sharn had forgotten, built upon and forgotten yet again. Who knows what we’d find in the darkness below our feet? Hopefully monsters to kill, and new foes to face.

Following the limited directions she was able to give us, we made our way to the lower levels and came upon the goblin merchant Rat and his collection of wares. After buying some rope and other items, we bargained for direction to EC-213, the next marker on our journey that would lead into the sewers proper. Rat was only too happy to help us given the money tendered and we soon found ourselves facing a river of crap. Along the wall, valves would randomly open to spew more feces into the stream. Footing was to be treacherous, to say the least.

I confidently waded into the filth as the others followed behind me, of course, and noticed that one of the valves was partially open and completely dry. To my detriment, I decided to investigate the malfunctioning valve, though I saw nothing. The druid who had disappeared from our group that first night at The Tavern joined me, though she also saw nothing of interest. During this time the rest of the group had been making its way forward along the raised edges of the walls adjacent to the spewing valves, careful to position themselves between the valves when they had to pause so that they weren’t swept into the fecal morass. While everyone’s attention was diverted, a scimitar connected to a warforged arm emerged from the malfunctioning valve and treacherously stabbed me in the gut, the sneak attack dropping me to the floor.

While the rest of my party decided whether or not to heal me so that I could fight for them, a group of skeletal rats emerged from downstream and proceeded to attack! The warforged that two of us had missed in the valve demanded that we give him the journal or that our assailants would kill us. Luckily the party was apparently thinking along the same lines as I would have been, and proceeded to attack. The friendly druid, Kaellana, revitalized me so that I could get back into the fight. It seems more and more that I only like to fight when I’m hovering at the edge of unconsciousness and death, but never mind. The rest of the party was actually performing well against the skeletal rats, though many of their attacks were missing, so I proceeded towards the rat nearest to the druid that had healed me. Working together we managed to destroy it, but during this time the warforged had emerged from the valve and submerged himself in the sewage. He apparently used the cover of the waste to move close to us so that he could surface and attack. Luckily his attacks missed.

The artificer then made his only real contribution to combat so far by blasting the warforged with some fiery burst of magic he had prepared on a scroll. With the warforged’s death, the skeletal rats that remained and not been swept downstream by the sewage bursts were easily dispatched.

Following our instructions to follow the sewers after the valve, we continued onwards and eventually navigated the filth river to a door that lead to crumbling tunnels. A short journey later, we emerged in a large cavernous room strewn with rubble. Hopping down the six foot drop to the floor, I threw two torches into the room to cast some illumination. We proceeded to search our immediate vicinity but saw nothing suspicious, which was immediately contradicted when three gigantic swarms of beetles emerged from the rubble piles around the room and proceeded to attempt to swarm and kill us. The artificer used a flask of alchemist’s fire that we had acquired in our first fight and set one of the swarms ablaze while everyone else tried to think of something to do. Through a number of fumbling attacks, it was finally determined that burning torches swung or thrown at the swarms could actually damage them significantly and cause them to disperse. This, of course, occurred around the same time that the artificer fled away from the party where he was immediately attacked by what looked like dire rats. Someone actually managed to get one of the swarms and rats to fight amongst themselves, which allowed the rest of the party the time to disperse the other swarms.

At the end of it, most of us were almost dead on our feet and stumbling around. All we wanted to do next was rest. We staggered around after the battle and were going to make the long trek back when we decided to investigate the bluish green glow emanating from a side passage. The light led us to a small room, eerily quiet and soothing. The elf cleric inspected some symbol carved above the doorway leading to the room and determined that it was actually a shrine to Onatar. This was a good sign because it meant we must be getting close to the old Cannith factory where the schema would be found.

We decided to rest in the shrine and discovered a small pool of water in a back corner being fed by a trickle of water that flowed out of some sort of gold ring embedded in the wall. The thought of prying that ring out of the wall passed through my mind and was voiced by the others but we decided to let it be. We didn't need to risk any divine displeasure that night so we drank from the pool, finding that it cured some of our wounds, set watch, and went to sleep.
-A.N.-