Editing Journal 5: Diamond Deal

= From the Journal of Talmuq ur'Tak =
Back to [[Dragonslayers]]

== 12 Broadsummer 807 ==
After five days of uneventful traveling, we have arrived at [[Fort Aster]], the first waypoint on our journey to [[Augzennet|Augsenet]] where we are to meet with the [[Diamondteeth Clan|Diamondteeth]] dwarf clan in order to buy a diamond to replace the one that was used to resurrect me. At Fort Aster, we met an [[Axebreaker Clan|Axebreaker]] dwarf named Bucky, who was to guide us on the next leg of our journey, a trip through the foothills of the Southern [[Fangs]], a mountain range where we were told we are going to take something called a [[Underdark Tram System|tramm]], which is going to get us either around or over the mountains to get us to Augsenet, though I don’t know how, exactly. Perhaps Tramm is the name of a pass we will go through, or maybe a road of some sort? No one has been willing to give me a clear answer. We will be staying here at the fort for a night, and then it is another two day’s journey to this Tramm, so I will find out then.

== 15 Broadsummer 807 ==
This Tramm is like nothing I have ever seen before. It is not a pass through the mountains, it is a vehicle to take us under them. I am currently sitting on what people are calling the platform, which is a large waiting area next to the vehicle, while the others do business with the merchants who have set up small, temporary stalls around here. The Tramm itself is a set of three long ornate carriages, windowed chambers with seats along both sides, only no animal pulls them. They are connected to each other, with doors to move between them, and they all hang down from a rope that runs down into a tunnel dug into the side of the mountain. The rope is somehow connected to a mekanisim, through gears and pulleys, to what can only be described as a giant bronze dwarf. After asking some questions, I have found out that this metal statue is somehow animated, though by what they call mekaniks or through magic, I cannot find out, and it turns a crank which then makes the Tramm move along the rope down into the tunnel. Most of the other people on the platform are fellow passengers, including the merchants. We are all going to be boarding the carriages now, while Bucky will stay behind. [Drawings enclosed]

The Tramm ride was not the calm, peaceful ride through the mountains we were hoping for. We are now at a rest stop partway through the tunnel, where we are going to spend the night before resuming the journey tomorrow, but the ride itself was very eventful. When the Tramm went into the tunnel, we found ourselves inside the biggest cavern I have ever seen. Once we had moved away from the entrance, there was no wall, floor, or ceiling anywhere in sight. It became completely dark, except for the lights inside the carriages. There was absolutely no light outside. This had a strange effect on me. For a moment, I felt like I was dead again. I relived the moment when that beholder disintegrated me, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe, my head felt light, and I became somewhat hysterical. The others were able to calm me down enough that I was able to breathe, but I remained on edge. Then we heard a crash from the carriage in front of us and the Tramm shook. A few seconds later, the door burst in and two drow, dark elves, came through. In my panicked state, I jumped and fired a spell at them immediately. The one I hit died, and Bula cut down the other one. Then we went through the door to see what was happening in the front carriage. Two more drow were there, clearly attempting to rob people on the Tramm, though I could not tell at the time how they got there, as we were still suspended in the air in the middle of a giant cavern. One of these two was obviously the boss, and I fired a spell at the other. Aalari told them to surrender and the one I wounded begged his boss to allow them to. In response to this, the boss smacked him down, and he fell to the floor. Then the boss grabbed one of the other passengers as a hostage. Thinking he would not give up easily, I thought with a spell that could not miss, I could take down the boss and free the hostage, so I fired a magic missile at him. Unfortunately, this did not hit hard enough to kill him, and he shot the hostage with his crossbow. When the hostage fell, we all flew into a rage and unloaded everything we had at him, which finally took him down. Then a female drow riding on a giant bat-like animal outside the carriage cast a spell that filled the carriage with gas. I used my own magic to disperse the gas, and she turned and tried to fly away, but Glendower managed to shoot her down. The final drow, the one hit by the boss, finally surrendered to us and we took him prisoner. Fortunately, the hostage just barely survived the crossbow bolt, and Aalari was able to use her magic to revive him. I do not think I could have taken it if he had died because of what I did. After that, things calmed down, and we eventually came to some kind of island of rock in the middle of the cave, which the Tramm staff called a rest stop. There was a small pool, space for people to move around, and a small lodge building with enough places for all the passengers to sleep for the night. Once we were all off the vehicle and settled down, we were approached by a dwarven merchant who wanted to give us thanks for saving the Tramm from the drow attack. He gave us each one object from his bag of magic items. I got a magic razor, which can grant a small amount of supernatural luck, as long as someone specifically addresses me. I tied it to the head of my spear with a quick-release knot so I always have it close at hand. He also gave us a giant leg of meat, bigger than any I’ve ever seen. He said it came from something called a brakiosarr, which must have been bigger than I can even imagine a land animal to be. We all feasted on the leg for dinner. After that, one of the Tramm staff, who called themselves Porters, approached us and asked us to stand guard over the rest stop for the night. We agreed to stand watch in shifts, but my shift is later, so I turned in.

We didn’t get to stay in bed very long. During Aalari’s watch, there was an attempt to break into the Tramm. She spotted some figures on the roof of the rear carriage and alerted the rest of us. Two more drow and a deep gnome were trying to cut their way into the Tramm. We managed to fight them off, but we had to find out what the drow wanted so badly that they kept attacking us. We woke up all of the passengers and asked about anything valuable they might be transporting that would be a target for theft. It took a while, but eventually a human man came to us and said he had an idea what they were after. He led us into the rear carriage, where most of the luggage was stored, and found his bag. In it, he retrieved a cloth-wrapped bundle. When he unwrapped it, I knew immediately why we were being targeted. I recognized the [[Deck of Many Things]], a powerful magic item that can randomly grant people incredible boons or horrible curses. This was an object I would have been happy to never see in my life. The man said he worked as a transporter. He and four decoy couriers were hired to take the Deck to the Allfather of Augsenet, a dwarf king. Though I already knew, he described what the deck did to us and many of the passengers who had assembled around us. We decided we needed more privacy, so we dispersed the crowd. When we got him alone, we asked him about his employer, but he was magically blocked from discussing them. Glendower used her magic necklace to try to go into his mind and find out what she could. She saw in his mind a black-robed human or half-elf with white hair. When she described her vision to the rest of us, the courier seemed confused that Glendower saw a woman. I believe he may have been subject to some kind of memory charm or illusion so he did not know his own employer’s face. I told him to use his Sending Stone to contact his superiors to tell them about the robbery attempt. At that point, Bula decided to interrogate the drow prisoner we captured on the Tramm, but I had enough and needed to rest, so while she does that, I am going to sleep.

== 16 Broadsummer 807 ==
It appears adventurers are never allowed a simple, peaceful journey. After we woke up, I asked what Bula got from the prisoner last night. She didn’t get much out of him, but he told her that his boss, a drow named [[Molyennen|Molenan]] knew about the Deck and that the man on our Tramm was the true courier and not a decoy. After we spent a brief time getting ready, the Tramm set out again. This time, the trip was mostly uneventful. It took most of the day, and I passed the time by reading the book [[Aloysius Pridd IV|Aloysius]] gave me about planes and portals. In it, I discovered something about a place called the [[Planes of Existence#The Far Realm|Far Realm]], which is like a prison for gods. I don’t have any support for this idea yet, but I think that may be where [[Novius Dorian|Dovar]] and his emissaries come from. Eventually, we started to see a dim light below us. It slowly got brighter until I could see that it was a giant forest of huge luminessent mushrooms. They were so big, we couldn’t see where they met the floor, but it was nice to have some light around us again. We descended into the forest, and eventually came to a stop at what seemed to be a mansion built directly onto the top of a cluster of the mushrooms. This was our second rest stop. As we filed off the Tramm, we were greeted by a kind, stately deep gnome woman named [[Lady Worthington]] who gave a short tour of the mansion to all of us passengers. This was a waystation between several different Tramm routes, and there were many more people here than at the previous rest stop. After the tour, she pulled the four of us aside. She told us she heard what we had done to protect the Tramm, and asked us for our help in dealing with a problem she was having. She said there was a hole in the basement that led directly outside, and some unpleasant creatures had been coming in and infesting the basement. She asked us to clear out the pests for her. We agreed and descended down the stairs into what looked like a dark cave filled with cave teeth. Something about the place felt wrong to us, but only Bula realized what it was: this was a basement, not a natural cave, so why would it have cave teeth? These, it turns out, were creatures called Ropers, which imitate cave teeth before attacking, so we attacked first. During the fight, some giant centipedes came out of the dirt floor, so we fought them, too. Once the fight was over, we moved to the next room. This was the wine cellar, full of racks of barrels. One corner had a big hole that opened directly into the open air of the cave outside. In this room were three horrible creatures called Nothics and something called a Spectator, which looks like a small Beholder. The sight of another ball covered in eye-stalks made me and Glendower panic and attack it immediately. We beat the small group and dumped the bodies down the hole. Then we pulled one of the large casks from the wall and used it as a temporary plug for the hole. Then we went upstairs and collected our reward from Lady Worthington. That was when Glendower received a Sending from [[Peggy Redfang|Peggy]] saying something vague about a “situation” on the surface. Glendower responded with our own situation, and Peggy told her to tell Thayden, our contact in Augsenet, to give us the “quick way home”, though we didn’t know the details of what this meant. As part of our reward for dealing with her pest problem, our hostess gave us the finest staterooms in the mansion. I have never seen such luxury, and I am eager to go to sleep in such a large, soft bed.

== 17 Broadsummer 807 ==
It’s finally over, but the mission went sideways very fast today. I woke up after one of the most pleasant nights of sleep I’ve ever had. I took my time getting ready, reluctant to leave such a fine room, and when I came down I was planning to eat a long, large breakfast. I took samples of as many of the different local foods as I could find, including some of the glowing mushrooms, cooked in a variety of ways, and something called a liken, which I did not enjoy, but I am glad I tried it anyway. It tasted kind of like dirt. But the mushrooms were very tasty. Before I could eat my fill, however, I was interrupted by sounds of commotion from the courtyard outside. I went to find out what was happening, and was horrified to find one of the passengers from our Tramm had gotten his hands on the Deck of Many Things and was offering it to people to draw from. He told everyone that he drew three cards from the Deck himself, and they all canceled each other out, and he thought that was proof it was safe. I know how dangerous that Deck is, so I was not willing to allow him to endanger anyone else with it. Me and the others shut him down and dispersed the crowd. Bula grabbed the thief and led him to the basement to tie him up. After this, Lady Worthington offered to lock the Deck in a safe place. She also chose the basement, and she led us there with a couple of her gnome guards. But after they closed the door behind us, she locked it and turned on us. She dropped the glamor she had been hiding under to reveal herself to be the Drow mage we thought we had shot down in the first attack on the Tramm. She and her guards attacked us, and we had to fight them off. During the fight, one of the guards used some kind of weapon I have never seen before. It was a metal tube that sprouted an explosion of fire at one end and launched a projectile faster than I have ever seen, though I managed to stop it with a magic shield. After he used this weapon, Bula charged and cut him down, but as soon as he died, his body exploded. Our other enemies and, unfortunately, the captive card thief, died in the explosion. We all survived, though it roughed us up pretty bad. The explosion also did a lot of damage to the basement, and pieces started falling away into the cave below. It looked like the whole basement was about to collapse, so we ran for the stairs and broke through the locked door. Upstairs there was even more chaos, though. The mansion was under attack by a swarm of giant spiders, apparently led by a creature called a Dryder, half spider, half drow. We bickered over whether to fight the Dryder or run away, but I knew civilians were in danger, and I could not allow any more of them to die, so without waiting for agreement from the others, I attacked the Dryder. The others had no choice but to help me, and we managed to bring it down, then we started gathering civilians to try to herd them towards our Tramm. There were more passengers than one Tramm was made to hold, but we managed to get most of them on board. Just as the Tramm was about to pull away, the dwarf merchant who gave us gifts earlier pulled us aside and said he had a faster way out. Knowing those aboard the Tramm were going to get away safely, we agreed, and he pulled out a strange metal disk. When we all grasped is, it teleported us directly to Augsenet. We had a moment to breathe, then our contact Thayden found us. The stay in Augsenet itself was brief. We met briefly with the Allfather and delivered the Deck to him, telling him of the attempts to steal it, then Thayden gave us the diamond we came for, and  led us to a teleportation circle which sent us to Stonett. There, Landallyn and my friend Steve the Donkee met us and led us back towards [[Wodesville]]. While we traveled, she told us that a member of the Redfang group [[The Lost Ones]] appeared recently with no memory of where she’d been or what she had been doing. But that is a mystery for later. For now, I just want to get home to my fish.
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