Session 19

The party could hear the sound of horns blaring and an alarm bell clanging somewhere in the distance as they came out of the tunnel to find themselves on a long, wide bridge more than a hundred metres above a large subterranean lake. Peeping over the lip of the bridge, they could see and hear far below a massive, vaguely humanoid creature with a turtle-like carapace, thrashing the water to foam and bellowing unintelligibly. As soon as Tallis peered over it looked up directly at her, and she felt her skin burning beneath its gaze; she ducked back behind the lip of the bridge.

Pandora flew out over the lake, and saw that the tunnel emerged from a massive central pillar, from which emerged four bridges. On the wall behind the pillar was carved a gigantic face, from the mouth of which poured a torrent of water. Below that was a collection of buildings, some carved into the rock, others built up over it, and all swarming with the hairy savages and four-armed ape-like creatures they'd encountered further up; they appeared to be somewhat agitated, and every so often one of the four-armed things would go on a bit of a rampage, scattering Hairies in all directions.

She flew over to investigate the face carved into the wall of the cavern and found its eyes to be great faceted windows. Peeping through she saw a large room — an illithid was doing something with some large and incomprehensible (probably magical) apparatus to one side of the chamber, while other creatures — some sort of reptilian-illithid sub-species perhaps — were tending other apparatus all around.

She flew back unobserved to report her findings. Hairytown seemed to be emptying out; columns of Hairies and Four-arms were moving around the lake-side and into tunnels with some sort of organised purpose — probably in response to the alarms.

Meanwhile, Tallis had observed the appearance of three humanoids on the highest bridge, far above them and too far away to make out any detail except that they were armoured and definitely not Hairies. There was speculation that perhaps they'd been sent on this quest merely as a diversion, and that those three were maybe the real rescue party — wild speculation based on no real evidence but their own pathetic inferiority complex. Bah. Justin felt that the party should investigate the interior of the pillar in the hope of finding some way to get to the illithids' lair that way; they back-tracked to a doorway they'd observed on the way down and found their way through to a landing on a massive spiral stair which extended above and below them as far as they could see. They began an exploration, finding many empty chambers carved into the rock around the stair, but no interconnecting tunnels that they could find.

A commotion from below alerted them to danger, and Tallis could see a mass of enemies surging up the stair towards them. They advanced to meet the first wave and destroyed it, but they could see many, many more reinforcements coming up. Our heroes wisely turned and started hiking up the stair as fast as they could, hopefully to find their way to the uppermost bridge and a defensible position.

With red-hot aching thighs, and with Jim whimpering pathetically they burst out on to the bridge with the mass of Hairies not far behind; they found no sign of the three they'd seen before. They turned in the middle of the bridge and prepared for the onslaught, and Pandora cast her "Pratfall" spell as a barrier so that they wouldn't be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers.

The attack came, and the first wave was beaten off, though not without casualties among the Good Guys. The second wave was massing, and it looked a bit precarious for Our Heroes, when a weird ululating sound filled the air; the Hairies and Four-arms immediately backed off and scampered back down the stair leaving the party relieved, but puzzled.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the others, Vallana had reappeared on the scene and was in the process of making her way up the stairs from the bottom. Unbeknownst to Vallana, she was right in the path of the Hairy army.