Editing Journal 5: Diamond Deal (section)

== 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.