images generated by Ai but edited together by author.
After a couple of days of harsh labor and taunting from our captures, we introduced ourselves to the rest of the slaves that were in our pen.
The others are as follows: a male derro a dwarf-like race slightly smaller in stature with blueish-gray skin their eyes have no iris or pupils.
A quaggoth is a large cat-like creature, they are normally extremely vicious and bloodthirsty from what I have heard in passing.
A Kuo-toa male, they are a fish-like race.
A gray-skinned male orc, he seems to be a mean-spirited bully just by observing him.
A female dwarf with red hair like myself.
Three deep gnomes two of which look like they could be twins a brother and sister, they tend to stay away from the third one for some reason.
A rather small myconid, he looks like a small walking mushroom, I've heard of them in passing from the taverns in Waterdeep since the festival started before my first adventure before we became the Noir Party Contingency.
And last but not least and very strangely a male drow, he seems to keep to himself mostly.
Verbren was the first to try and introduce himself, he made his way over to the quaggoth to try and talk to him. Sadly he ran into a language barrier between them. When Verbren excused himself from the quaggoth it did something interesting he bowed.
The turned towards the myconid, and when it saw him approach, it began to press itself against the stone wall as if it was afraid.
I came over to try and help, I opened my arms to show it that we meant no harm. But the myconid tried to run away, but it got too close to the grayish-looking orc who then swatted him away harshly, knocking it onto the ground and injuring it.
Verbren quickly stood up for the small myconid, getting into a heated argument with the orc, it came ahead and Verbren tried to cast a spell. Sadly nothing happened, it seems something is damping his magic. Verbren didn't take it very well and he fell into a depressed state where he leaned against the stone wall sliding down into a sitting position.
Lady Lex being herself started scolding the orc, which angered him more and he began to stalk in her direction, before he got too close Gereg got between the two to protect Lady Lex.
I noticed the female dwarf creeping up on them, so I moved in to back up Gereg since I was unsure of her intentions. Lady Lex started using her persuasive ways to defuse the situation.
After listening to her the orc called himself Ront backed down and so did the dwarf. Seeing that the situation calmed down I went back to assist the myconid, they were trembling from fear.
Verbren was still in the same spot with a sad look on his face, it was not something I was used to seeing from the normally confident wild sorcerer.
I opened my arms once again to indicate I was no threat. When I got close the myconid suddenly released a spore cloud at me, and Verbren was nearly caught in it, but he managed to cover his nose and mouth, but I was not so fortunate. That's when I heard it, the voice of a child.
It seems my bad luck and slow to react on a reaction turned out to be a blessing. I could now communicate with the myconid child. He was begging me not to hurt him. I told him that we meant him no harm, and he told me his name was Stool, he then asked if Verbren would hurt him.
I explained to him that Verbren was a friend, and he replied with a high pitch "Really?" and leaped into Verbrens arms with joy enjoying the half-fire genasi's warmth.
Lady Lex makes her way over to Ront and talks more with him. She managed to convince him to apologize to Stool, by telling him that the only way to escape is to work together. To the other slaves surprise he apologizes even though it was in a strange manner.
Gereg started conversing with the dwarf female who quickly tensed up and asked him what clan he belonged to and which orc god he worshipped. Gereg told her that he didn't belong to a clan and the god he worshipped was Illneval, the orc god of strategic warfare.
I stepped up beside Gereg took his hand into mine and told her that he was my boyfriend in Dwarvish. This shocked her greatly and she introduced herself as Eldeth Feldrun and told us she was a shield dwarf scout, and that her people were constantly fighting Ront's clan.
After speaking to Eldeth, Gereg went up to the quaggoth, he tried speaking to him in elvish to see if he would respond, he did the quaggoth understood the elvish language, which impressed me, I had no idea
that the big guy knew it. Gereg would relay to us that the quaggoth is named Prince Derendal and claims that he is a polymorphed elven prince.
JimJar the other deep gome approached me as Gereg spoke to Derendal, whispering that he thinks the quaggoth is crazy. I found out from him he enjoyed betting and would take sorts of them. Apparently, he made a makeshift thieves tool that he could use only once from stone. Lady Lex asked him if he could losen her bindings, with a little convincing he agreed, an made it so her bindings wouldn't lock all the way. The first thing she tried to do was cast, but the bindings were not what was causing the effect of sealing casting abilities, but it could be something about the pen itself sealing away the magic.
Verbren stood up with stool in his arms, and made his way over to the Kou-tou, turned out he spoke common. Verbren learned that his name is Shuushar and that he is a pacifist, which didn't sit very well with Verbren since he found out that he would never lift a finger to aid stool while Ront bullied him consistently, Verbren walked away angrily.
Lady Lex approached the derro first, once again a language barrier prevented us gather information from someone. After she had walked away from him I made my way over, since he looked like a dwarf to an extent, I decided to try and speak to him in dwarvish, and it worked he indeed spoke the language. As we conversed I found out his name was Buppido, he claimed that he was a traveler before his capture. I asked him if he could lead us through the Underdark he said he could try.
Lady Lex quickly made her way over to Shuushar to speak to him about what his abilities were. He shared that he had the abilities of a cleric and could heal. She asked him if he would aid in such matters when we escaped and he agreed but he emphasized that he would not fight.
After speaking with Jimjar, I made my way over to the twin deep gomes, the talkative one is known as Topsy, and her twin brother who seemed gloomy was named Turvy. According to them, they have been in the pen for less than a month, and they were captured while they were foraging for food. A tear came to my eye when they mentioned that the drow ate their rothe mount.
Aeshar spoke to the male drow, his name is Sarith Kzekarit. As they spoke he informed her that he was imprisoned for murder, but he doesn't remember anything that happened that night.
We also managed to get information from our new allies about the outpost. The maimed drow we saw earlier was named Jorlyn Duskryn, and he was the former lover of priestess Ilvara. The other male that was with him was named Shoor, and the new lover for the priestess, he also carries the wand of web that used to be Jorlyn's when he was her lieutenant.
They also told us that The guard tower that overlooks our pen has three guards in it at any given time.
Suddenly three drow guards entered the pen. They gathered Verbren, stool, Buppido, and myself and told us to follow them. It was dark as they led us to a pen filled with quaggoth, feeding on strange-looking meat piles, sadly stool pointed out that one of the meat piles used to be a former slave.
The task given to us was to harvest the poisonous mushrooms in the pen. The drow made the quaggoths move away from the area, even though they listened to the drow it didn't fill me with too much confidence if we failed that the drow wouldn't feed us to one.
Verbren and I managed to complete the task without incident. Unfortunately, Stool and Buppido were not so fortunate, they became posied by mishandling the mushrooms. After the harvesting, we were escorted back to the pen.
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