Journal of Miyara Kyosuke (61)
The leader of this group of dwarves is called Sundrim.
Our first orders were to retrieve the supplies which we threw down the
hole, and that we go to do.
Pireseri is lowered down the hole on a rope, and
will be tying the packages to bring them up.
(When he gets down there, a voice says "Hello" to
him. It's Alex. They talk briefly, then Mendri and two
other dwarves step forward. Mendri greets Pireseri, and asks him
where Gadrik's body is. P says it's up the hole. Mendri
wants to plead with us one more time not to expose his father's descent
into Chaos.)
Goru and I hear voices, but he can't pick out the
words. Pireseri calls up something to Goru. Goru passes it
on to Miyara. The two of them go down the hole, and there is more
talking. The conversation sounds intense and heated on the
strangers' side. Finally one of the strangers wails in
desperation, and there are sounds of the strangers moving off.
It turns out that Mendri himself had come to beg us
to succoumb to his dishonorable deception, and once again Miyara had
explained that was simply not going to happen. Mendri went away
crying.
We continued to pull up the supplies and return them
to their place in the storeroom.
We then, as ordered, report to Sundurin. On
the way, the dwarf leading us is stopped by another one, and after a
conversation, the new dwarf leads us on. This person is clearly a
craftsman rather than a fighter. He leads us down a hallway, and
in the middle of it stops us. One at a time he makes us move on,
so that at a certain point in the passage only one person at a time is
passing through a certain distance. We continue on, while I note
the place carefully.
We keep going up staircases, a long way up. We
go past some guards, down a short hallway, and arrive at what is now
the workroom and sleeping room of Sundurin. We have not seen this
person before, and it seems to be news to him that we are working for
him.
Miyara explains that we were hired to help find the
tomb. He is puzzled by this, but Miyara explains our
qualifications. He appears to be a scholar, and claims to be
experienced in much the same things. He directs us through a
certain door, telling us to map everything, not to break anything, and
not to touch anything needlessly. We are to come back and report
what we find. This place is full of traps, some of which are
merely fatal and others which will bring the whole place down. He
says that we are not to go down, as that's where the really dangerous
traps are, and he wants to see how we do with the traps here first.
He has pointed to a door leading out of this room,
which clearly used to be a throne room. There are remains of
tapestries, and some statues of dwarven warriors. We came in
through one of the three doors in this room. We start out through
the door that Sundurin indicated.
Pireseri leads, with Goru and then myself right
behind. We move slowly so Pireseri can search, while Rabenna
makes her map. We explore, avoiding the many opportunities to go
down.
Soon we came to a natural cavern, which Goru
promptly assured us that it had been carefully constructed as such by
dwarves, and that it was excellent work. It was actually a
shrine, it turns out. There used to be a grating separating a
small side chamber, but the grate is long gone. Smashed stones
litter the area. Near the plinth is a hole and a ladder leading
down. The hole goes down about twenty feet to another room.
Rabena asks us to stop for a while. She works
on what seems to be a couple of maps.
We resume exploring.
At one point we reach a place where there are two
dwarves, who tell us politely to go back and not past them.
We also find the way to the entrance to the
stronghold past a rubble pile, and go to look outside. Here we
are higher up and on the other side of the mountain.
Eventually we run out of places to explore on this
level, and head back.
When we reach the natural cavern, we are intercepted
by a young dwarf looking for us, who says that Mendri has attacked,
that we are released and to leave. He has been told to take us to
the back exit. I point out to Miyara that having been released we
are free to explore downstairs, and once we have left the dwarves will
not let us back in. We were in fact released before we were told
to leave, so we need not do so.
At the exit, the guards there are alerted and ready
themselves for any attack. The young dwarf returns the way he
came.
In Nipponese, Miyara presents several choices.
We are free agents. Our ultimate goal is still to retrieve the
sogin roku of water before the dwarves. In the meantime, the
first skirmish of a civil war is about to be fought here.
I notice a dwarf looking unusually attentive, and
say that we should go and enjoy the beer we have in the next
room. There is no reaction, so I believe he does not understand
us. Goru insults him and his mother, and he does not react,
further confirming that.
Miyara continues. If we return on our own
mission we will be at war with one of these groups.
As Goru points out, we must continue.
I say that my sympathies are with the royalists,
although my duty is to side with Mendri as the rightful king.
We return to the tunnels.
We take one of the paths down into a seven-sided
room. There is some ancient furniture, smashed. The ladder
we saw before goes up, and there is a secret door as Pireseri tells
us. The trap has been disarmed many years ago. On one of
the tables in this room is a note in dwarvish. It says that the
dwarves have reset the trap in the corridor that we already knew
about. We then open the secret door. This leads to a
hallway with circular stairs down.
Since the dwarves told us not to go down, that is
surely what we must do. We descend into a room at the bottom.
Pireseri reports an area with a throne on an island
in a section of water, among other interesting areas.
Eventually we decide to take a ladder that leads
down as far as we can see.