Wealday, Sarenith 15 (late morning)

We descended into the sewers shortly before dawn. There was no one around—unsurprising since normal people aren’t up this early—so we were able to get in without having to wave our letter around in front of some city official.

Believe it or not, sewers are a topic of conversation in the Church, though one that mostly takes place from an engineering and public health standpoint. Proper sewer design is important in separating waste from, say, drinking water, which helps prevent the spread of diseases both mundane and supernatural. What they don’t discuss in detail is the realities of being down in one, which is that they are disgusting. Fortunately for us we tend to plan ahead, and were covered by a spell that surrounds us all with a layer of clean, breathable air. This protected us from noxious fumes, harmful gases and even let us breathe freely underwater if needed. But most important? It got rid of the smell.

But it was still an unpleasant experience, because it’s a sewer, and sewers are filled with sewage.

About an hour of working our way through the labyrinth with only my hand-drawn map as a guide, we came across our first dead body. Well, not our first, obviously, but our first down here. They were dressed like a city maintenance worker, which was not unusual, but what was unusual was the large hole in their forehead. Mind flayers are known for their ability to suck the brains out of their victims’ skulls if they manage to get a firm grip with their tentacles. Just in case there was any doubt about us being in the right general area, or what we were up against.

I marked the location on the map so we could inform the city, and pressed on. An hour later, we saw this translucent barrier ahead of us with what looked like objects suspended in the air behind it.

Viktor and I exchanged glances, then said to the others, quietly, “gelatinous cube”. We backed away slowly, and looked for another route.

This was safer, but also a lot longer because now we had to take detours that weren’t on my map. But we eventually worked our way back to that sewer line and were rewarded with faint, phosphorescent mold that someone had tracked in along the walkway. This mold was, from what we could tell, a byproduct of the heavy metal pollution from the Forge. A few minutes later, we saw where the sewer line intersected a natural cavern that was filled with the stuff, and we knew we were in the right place.

We entered the cavern and followed the passage to the next chamber, which was lined with a different, yellow mold with numerous giant mushrooms growing out of it. I’d describe the as “swaying in the breeze”, only there was no breeze. They swayed anyway.

Viktor knows more about fungi than I do—I’m not going to ask—and said these things emitted a piercing, screeching sound when they sensed vibrations. That sounded like a natural alarm to us, so Snagsby used a spell to silence the area and I started slicing them up. This kicked up a huge cloud of spores or whatever it is that comes from mold, which would have been bad if it hadn’t been for our magical protection, and instead was just annoying.

Beyond that was a natural passage with a ledge forming a sort of overlook. This seemed like a good place for an ambush, so I opened myself up to the auras around me and sensed the taint up there right away. We snuck up on the ledge and heard something being poured down the shaft. Suspecting it to be oil—again, can’t smell the fumes through this spell—Snagsby conjured a flame to set it alight before it could reach us and we let it burn out. Then we scrambled up and confronted the defenders: more drow.

Legend says that when the Starstone struck the world and plunged it into the Age of Darkness, most of the elves fled through some portal to another dimension. Those that opted to stay on Golarion instead of flee dove down into the Darklands, and were tainted by Rovagug’s influence into a twisted culture of demon worshipers, eventually becoming the dark elves we know today. I don’t know how much truth there is to that legend, but it’s a good story and I see no reason to doubt it.

Why were there drow here? Don’t know, and don’t care. That they were here at all was concern enough. But, we needed to know more about what we were walking into, so I took one of the survivors back to the mushroom cave to have a little talk. I just got finished tying them up before my friends called out an alarm. Something about a snake with a woman’s head.

I rushed forward in time to see them engaged with…well…a giant snake with a woman’s head. She exerted a mental push on me as I met her gaze, but I was able to shrug it off. Some of the others weren’t so lucky, and it was up to Sera, Viktor, and I to take it down while our friends got in our way, because that is what we needed right now.

As we closed in for killing blows, it said, “I could have killed you all before you even knew I was here! I was trying to be nice!”

What?

Obviously, I had missed something, because I hadn’t been there for the start of this skirmish. So I asked for an explanation. “What was that about her trying to be nice to us, but we still attacked her?” I asked.

“I cast a spell that put a bane on her,” Viore said.

I met eyes with Viktor. He was thinking the same thing I was. “I would have considered that a hostile act, too,” he said.

This one is going to stick with me because we were definitely in the wrong here. Lesson learned, I hoped, about not starting fights we don’t need to have.

Fireday, Sarenith 11 (night)

The doors at the end of the hall opened to another stars-be-damned maze. This is only our second one of these and already the idea feels played out.

For what it’s worth, this one at least had a theme. The walls were all metal, polished to a mirror-like surface, and some rose from the ground to alter the layout as we walked through in an effort to isolate us from one another. Or so I assume. That being said, what was the point? It all just reeked of form over function. These creatures would probably be more successful if they spent as much time on their jobs as they did on trying to be clever and stylish at the same (though maybe that’s a good thing, since organized like this, they were already astonishingly successful).

As we worked our way through it, predictably, walls rose up and one or two duplicates of us appeared and tried to take us on, and then (also predictably) they died. This happened, like, five times and they still didn’t get the message. They were taking notes from the Ebon Triad on how to suck.

We found their boss, Telakin, sitting on a throne, of all things, in a giant hall filled with vats and tubes and similar lab equipment, and he had taken Allustan’s form. Allustan? Really? Like that was going to fool or startle us. Ooooh! It’s someone we know! How clever and shocking of you.

Give me a break.

There was a wide open space in the center that just kind of said said “trap” to me, so we approached along the walls. Turns out that was clever, but not quite clever enough. At the far end of the hall, two sets of stairs ascended to their throne, and by sheer, dumb luck I avoided setting off a trap at the top as I closed in. On the opposite side, Viktor didn’t, and nearly fell in a pit when a trap door opened up underneath him. Fortunately the operative word there was “nearly”, as he deftly jumped out of the way.

Telakin responded by creating a wall of fire separating us from them. I won’t lie: being burned in fire is no fun, and I don’t recommend it. But we’ve long since learned how to counter injuries from this sort of thing using magic. One spell from Viktor later and we just walked on through. He was still sitting on his throne, like a chump.

“He’s still sitting on his throne, like a chump!” I said to the others. While this technically broke my no-banter rule, the flames were difficult to see through so it served the purpose of letting our archers know where to aim. So I let it slide.

Of course, he thought the point of this was to exchange quips.

“You’re dumb enough to run through a wall of fire.”

This is why I don’t like to banter during a fight: you just end up looking stupid because odds are good the other person knows something you don’t, like, say, they’re magically protected from fire. Just to toss out a random example.

He transformed into a half-orc as we surrounded him. Unlike the others, taking new forms seemed to actually imbue him with abilities, but he was still afflicted with the same “good plan, poor execution” disease as his henchmen. It was too little, too late, and Sera and I cut him down.

We examined the lab equipment and determined this is where they made the gems like the one we found on Zhog’s imposter. Zhog remembered being strapped to the table here, and having that silvered helmet placed on his head. The gems were obviously an enormously valuable and effective asset to the dopplegangers, allowing them to very seamlessly assume a person’s place, but we learned  that they were also very difficult and expensive to create, and that limited the syndicate’s ability to scale out. Not that I am real upset over this.

Telakin’s quarters contained a number of legal documents and business records of transactions here in Korvosa, and an enchanted mirror that showed the true form of whoever stood in front of it for a brief time. The latter seemed like it would be of value to the city, given that a number of people in government and high society had been replaced. We found two more gems: one belonging to an influential noble, and the other to a captain in the city guard. Reading through the documents will probably clue us in to others.

There was also an interesting note, apparently written to Telakin. It said:

I have a task for you, thrall. Meet me at the sewer junction beneath the cold forge and I will give you the details. There are some troublesome small minds that must be removed.

It seems, then, that Telakin had a boss, too. Also, who actually calls their subordinates “thrall”?

That there was still a head on this snake sounded interesting to us, so we visited our prisoner.

“Congratulations on your promotion,” I said. “You’re now your own boss!”

It seemed less smug in their reply this time. “Well. You’ve won this round, but you still don’t realize you’re dead.”

Whatever. We’ve heard this kind of bluster before, and we’re obviously still around to hear it again, now.

“And who is your former boss’s boss?”

It shrugged and said, “I don’t know his name.”

Whoever they are, our prisoner is absolutely terrified of them. They literally preferred being imprisoned down here to potentially being hunted down as a deserter. Personally, I think they are overestimating their own significance, but if they want to stay locked up in a cell below a dilapidated warehouse? Well, that is a service we can provide.

As for the “cold forge”, that sounds like a reference to an actual business here in the city. When we first got here, I set out to find a metalsmith, blacksmith, or armorer that would let me rent some time with their forges to work on my armor, and I vaguely remember a place called The Cold Forge as being one of my options (I’ve been hit on the head a lot since then, mind you, so my memory is fuzzy). I am pretty sure I can find it once we are out of here, and from there we can figure out what is meant by “beneath it”.

We’re staying the rest of the night here because we are all exhausted and need to sleep. And if you think it’s easy to rest properly when you are chained to wall and have only beds of straw and an uncomfortable chair for furniture, allow me to correct that misconception. Personally, I’d rather be back at the inn and sleeping in an actual bed, but it’s not mere paranoia to assume we might get ambushed as we try to leave. If that’s going to happen, then it should happen when we’ve had time to prepare. Of course, they could just come after us here now, too, but this location is fairly defensible, and while that didn’t work out so well for Telakin, I am confident we can do better. So we are safer where we are.

It also gives us time to wreck the equipment used to create the gems, which I see as a valuable public service.

(afternoon)

Remember what I said about being ambushed? We have gotten good at predicting the obvious.

It happened as we entered the water chamber that they use as a buoyancy lift. We opened the door to the chamber and saw room filled with dark elves climbing out of the water. Floating above them was a grotesque aberration that looked like a man with a squid for a head, which we later figured out was called a mind-flayer. I locked eyes with it, and then we heard a booming voice echoing in our minds.

“I am surrounded by imbeciles! Finish them! No prisoners. No survivors!”

This was accompanied by some sort of psychic hammer that stunned Sera, Varin, and Zhog. So I shut the door. There was no reason to make this easy on them.

“Let them come to us,” I said.

And come to us, they did. We used Zhog’s foaming powder and Snagsby’s tanglefoot bags to slow their advance into the main hallway, and set up on both sides of the tee to make a kill box. Wave after wave of dark elves came in, and wave after wave of them died before they got smart and bolted. We went after the survivors and it quickly became a rout.

The mind flayer was long gone, which meant it hadn’t stuck around to see how this all turned out. Letting someone escape to deliver a report was a risk we could not afford, so we didn’t let anyone escape. While it would eventually figure out that we were still alive, that would take time and, until then? The ambiguity worked in our favor, not theirs.

We spent the rest of the morning at the inn, pouring over the documents from Telakin’s quarters to reveal the extent of the infiltration in Korvosa. It was not as widespread as we feared—again, there were only so many gems they could make, and it was a constant frustration that showed through in their planning—but it was obviously not great. And they were smart, targeting people in positions of power that were not otherwise prominent or public figures. The real power in government, after all, comes not from those who make decisions but those who carry them out.

Starday, Sarenith 12 (afternoon)

Snagsby and I set out to find The Cold Forge today. It was a two story building with a forge area out back and drains for dumping waste into the sewers. And, yeah, we should just go ahead and call that “polluting”, since they are sending heavy metals and other noxious runoff down there along with their blackwater. See Diamond Lake, including the actual lake and not just the town, for an example of how that goes.

While I am not so good at casually casing a location, I can check for tainted auras and a quick scan of building at the lot did not turn up any obvious signs of foul play. Of course, this was hardly an exhaustive search, as most of the dopplegangers didn’t register to that, either, and there are spells (and rings, like the one I was now wearing) that can mask you from these simple abilities. I told Snagsby as much, and he said, “I’ll get a closer look.”

This was my cue to occupy myself elsewhere. While I could guess what that entailed, I didn’t know and I didn’t need to know, and it was best for all of us if it stayed that way.

He found me an hour or so later and said he hadn’t seen anything suspicious. Because finding a sign that said “Ebon Triad here” or “Now serving mind flayers” would make this too easy.

We concluded that whatever was below The Cold Forge was probably not a part of it, meaning the forge itself was just a reference point. To find whatever it was, then, we’d have to go down into the sewers. As the drains around the forge itself were way too small to fit through, the meant finding a nearby sewer maintenance entry and working our way there.

I swung by the city’s hall of records—and before you ask, yes, I specifically sought that out the first day we were here—and spent some time digging through maps of the sewer system. Many of the records were old and bore signs of occasional updates, some of them hastily done and of questionable quality. This was not the level of accuracy, or even detail, that I was looking for, but it was enough to find a couple of promising entry points, identify major maintenance routes, and get directions that may or may not be good once we got down there. It was the best we would be able to do, and it was decidedly better than just starting at the Forge and hoping for a better plan.

Sunday, Sarenith 13 (evening)

We visited Eligos today and brought him up to speed. Varin almost committed a little social faux paus by asking Eligos for a drop of blood so he could verify the man’s identity with a spell. I really didn’t think this was necessary, and I wish he had said something before springing it on us at the last minute like this. Eligos wasn’t mentioned in any of our paperwork beyond a vague note to “track down relevance of that relationship and potential hazards from that person”, and as far as we could tell, that was never done. And, it came a hair’s width from offending Eligos outright. Fortunately, we were able to smooth that over.

Eligos agreed that everything we had found needed to go to the queen’s council right away, and he’d do that through Marzena. He’d also make the offer to sell the magical mirror for their use. We were pretty sure they’d bite here, and he was too. Last, I explained our plan to go down into the sewers and showed him the copy of the maps I had made. Like me, he suspected the city maps were only vaguely accurate when it came to the sewers, but he’d agreed it was better than nothing and offered to relay our request to the city.

Word came back to us at the Crooked House that night, which meant Eligos had been a busy beaver. Obviously, the safety of the city was at stake here so there was some genuine urgency to the matter, but I don’t doubt he was using the opportunity to improve his own influence and standing in the city, proper. This probably explained why he was willing to do all this work free of charge: he was just accepting other forms of payment.

The city agreed to purchase the mirror at a premium price, and also awarded us a handsome sum for uncovering a plot that threatened the security of Korvosa and its holdings. This part was a bit unexpected, and certainly appreciated. The city has its issues, or course, many of which (like the Shingles) are in plain sight, but…it’s trying. What I would give to live in a city that tries.

And last, and certainly not least, was a letter, signed and sealed, giving us permission to enter the sewer system while pursuing this investigation. Few things set my heart aflutter like an official permission slip.