Journey in the Dark
OOC
{table=head]Player | Character | Race | Class | Alignment
obscurejones | Glon Undarkife | Underfolk | Rogue | True Neutral
Bohannamut | Nysan | Tiefling | Warblade | Neutral Evil
Circle of Life | Tsal, the Exiled | Whisper Gnome | Duskblade 1, Crusader 1 | Lawful Neutral
RaggedAngel | Vassi | Whisper Gnome | Factotum | Chaotic Neutral
OMG PONIES | Konig der Totten | Desert Dwarf | Dread Necromancer | True Neutral[/table]
Vassi & Tsal:
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While their eyes of course can see fine in the darkness, the pair of whisper gnomes are utterly unprepared for the pure, endless, relentless black of the Underdark. Were all the sun and all the stars to vanish simultaneously, the world could not have been made darker than it is down here. As the pair grow accustomed to a world without color or light, they learn just how treacherous a place the Underdark really is. Vassi's vast knowledge allows them to survive on the edible fungi and avoid the poisonous ones, while the pair's talent at combat keeps them alive through the occasional foray with monstrous spiders.
At long last, you happen upon a small village; twenty buildings or so, all either carved right out of the bedrock or made from rough stone bricks. The windows stare emptily, no curtains nor glass to fill them, no candles lit inside to make them appear homely and welcoming. The only thing more dreary than the town are its inhabitants. They are, surprisingly, your own size. Distant racial cousins perhaps? For though they are of similar size and stature, there the similarities end. The males are bald, one and all. The females are all dark-haired. All of them seem exceptionally hardy, but most notably they are all extremely subdued -- even from your 'silent' point of view.
Nysan:
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As Nysan flees for his life from Menzoberranzan, the guards of several houses hot on his heels, he wonders just where he will go. Having rarely left the city, he is not overly familiar with the Underdark as a whole, most especially areas outside Drow territory. However, this is exactly where he finds himself driven as he is pursued relentlessly. Once he is perhaps a day outside Drow territory, he gets the feeling that pursuit has died off, and that he can slacken his pace.
Nevertheless, he knows that to return now would be tantamount to suicide, and thus continues forward. What passes for road signs in the Underdark are plain to see, and he follows them down a minor trade road to the svirfneblin community of Boldris.
Konig:
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The dwarf's most recent experiment had him seeking out some extremely rare ingredients, and he was having a most difficult time finding them. Try as he might, he simply could not find them above ground and even when he ventured into small caves found amounts too small to truly be useful. Thus it was that he found himself strangely drawn to the deep caves, the entrance to the Underdark, to seek out the elusive Headstone Cap mushrooms.
As luck would have it, he did find them here and there, ever working his way deeper into the labyrinthine darkness. So absorbed in gathering materials for his research was he that he found himself reaching for a particularly large and bulbous tuber just as a smaller, ashen grey hand did likewise. Both Konig and the other figure leap back in surprise, and the dwarf finds himself looking at a small, wiry black-haired gnome dressed in simple pants and tunic, a basket already full of mushrooms gripped in one hand. After brief introductions, the quiet gnome indicates that they have a great store of the fungus back at her village, and that he should follow her there.
Glon: Spoiler
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His most recent job completed, the half-breed finds himself yet again wandering the tunnels haphazardly towards the next settlement, keen on finding more work. His incomplete training as a Darkrunner and freelance work since then has given him a good knowledge of the geography of this region of the Underdark, and thus he knows that the nearest town would be the svirfneblin village of Boldris. It is exceedingly small, with only a single inn that would be called 'tiny' in any respectable city. Nevertheless, he figures it is worth checking out at the very least, moving on to a larger settlement if nothing pans out.
As you enter the settlement, there is a little whispering and pointing but for the most part they merely look curiously at you for a moment before continuing on their way. When you enter the largest building, an inn advertised simply as "The Rock", you see something even stranger: a human man sits cross-legged near the fireplace, looking large and out of place among all these little people. Although you thought up until now that you had merely been wandering the endless dark labyrinth of the Underdark, you now have a sudden unexplained feeling that you were in fact merely making your way here, to him. Those who arrived first felt compelled to merely sit where they would and wait -- for what, they could not say. However, after no more than an hour had passed the inn now held a varied lot: two whisper gnomes; a bulge-eyed half-breed human of some kind; a horned, tailed tiefling; and an aged white-haired dwarf.
Once all have arrived, the human man seated by the fire nods once as if confirming an earlier thought, and looks around at the group with strange, luminous eyes that glowed an eerie white-blue. Those strange eyes coupled with the warm, soft glow of the fire somehow put the group at ease, at least enough to sit and listen.
"Now that you're all here, let me begin," the man intones calmly in a deep, rich voice. "You're here because I need your help. I have waited here some time, calling out to sympathetic minds, those who may have the courage and fortitude to aid me in this my eternal task."
He pauses for effect, looking around once more at the assorted folk.
"I have long sought an item that will help me achieve my goal. I must state right now that I cannot tell you what that goal may be; for to reveal it would surely spell its failure and doom. I know not what the item is called, what it looks like, nor specifically what it can do. I know only that it calls to me, ever in the distant recesses of my mind. Having tuned into its melody, I have a feeling that a good place to look for clues of its whereabouts would be southwest of here at Kal-thûn, and the abandoned lodging you will find there. Speak now; I wish to have aid be given willingly, and I promise that any aid shall not go unrewarded."