The gnome is in shock and is mumbling, “They’re going to kill him…”. Perroll slaps the gnome and snaps him out of it. We start interrogating him. He says the “him” is his apprentice. “They” are people that were having him make master keys. We assume this was to get in to the houses where the people were kidnapped. He says there are usually others watching him from outside. I ask if the people watching him are all dwarves; Ghoral comments that this is a Dark (Deep) Dwarf not a regular dwarf. He says no, there are Goblins too, but they seem to be darker Goblins than normal. We ask how they are getting in to the city and he appears to be getting nervous. He says they are coming through his house. He says it’s a tunnel and we ask where. He goes over to the stairs and opens a secret panel. There is a hole that leads down with a ladder probably 50 feet. Ghoral says he hears someone approaching from outside, “chink, chink, chink…”. Ghoral goes to the door to see who is coming; it’s a dwarf…segment 12.
Glaive moves over by Ghoral. Perroll grabs the gnome; the gnome is mumbling, “Please don’t let it be the dwarf, please don’t let it be the dwarf, …”. Glaive notices that he has a tatoo (red mark, almost talon like) and it scares her, but she can’t remember why. Perrol recognizes the tatoo as a member of the Red Talon guild, which are slavers. Dwarf hits Ghoral with a war hammer in the hand for 12 body and 18 stun. As that happens there is a flash and a loud thunder. Everyone takes 20 stun; Gnorm the gnome collapses. Post segment 12 recoveries; Perroll, Kross, Ghoral, and I recover from being stunned. Glaive recovers from being stunned. The Dwarf goes to attack Ghoral again and Ghoral aborts to dodge; he misses. Kross moves to a window upstairs and he sees two dwarves outside with crossbows across the street; he opens the window. I move over by him near the counter and throw my dust of entanglement, using a hero point I hit for 20, i.e. 5 body; he is entangled. Glaive gets ready to attack; the dwarf looks around, mumbles I’ll be back, and then disappears with a red flash. Glaive waives her hand through where he was and also notices that a crossbowman is still out there so she goes out the door (and sees the second as well). They both fire at her and miss. Ghoral moves out towards this and says “Drop your crossbows and come with me if you want to live”. They answer and say “okay, okay”. Kross goes out the window and on to the roof. I go to the door and look around; people are starting to take notice. The dwarves drop their crossbows.
Glaive and Ghoral disarm them and bring them in to the store. Perrol asks them if there are any others in (or under) town. They say yes (under). There are 15+ under. I ask if they are abducting families and selling them in to slavery. They say they are just the muscle and mules. We ask the name of the leader dwarf; it’s Kelgar. Perrol remembers something about Kelgar and the Grayward Mountains. Perrol asks if there are any other lieutenants/leaders and they say there is an elf, Valmar…something or other. He seems to be a magic type. Peroll remember there are stories of an elf called Valmarrellian that was born in elven home that left elvish society a century ago or so that was a cold-blooded, mercenary type that quested for power. He had studied sorcery, in particular the study of mind control. Peroll asks where the hole leads to. They say it leads to an underground, abandoned city, probably dwarven or gnomish. Gnorm is starting to wake up. I try to open the big door and its locked so we tell Gnorm to open it. He objects but he open it. It looks like a forge room with locks. Perrol does magesight and determines the gloves and forge are magical. Perrol and I go upstairs to check whats behind the other doors. In the first room there is a bed,wardrobe, and a chest and a door. Perrol does magesight and finds something in the bottom of the chest that’s magical but it’s locked. We go in the door and it’s a kitchen area with a door on the opposite side. We go through it and it’s another bedroom, but nothing remarkable. We go downstairs and we ask Gnorm to open the chest. He goes upstairs and we ask him to open all the drawers. When he gets to the bottom one he is opening it nervously and it’s a book. We ask him what it is and he says it’s his spell book for lock making. We tell Gnorm that we have to tell someone about this and he asks if we can save his apprentice. He gives us a map. He says his father told him a story of an old abandoned gnome city. There was a magical curse on the city that caused people to start fading away. We decide to take Gnorm with us and the dark dwarves to the city. We have Ghoral board up the secret door first. We get about 4 blocks away and one of the dwarves starts slowing down and looking around; the agrophobia is at work. We duck in to an inn for a little bit; Perrol and Kross get an ale. We leave after the dwarf calms down and we make it to a guard station. We tell the guards that these dwarfs are with the “abductors”. They take us to a holding area and they return with a middle-age man with robes comes in. We give him the information that we have and he takes notes. He leans out the door for and whispers to the guard to get two more guards and an investigator from the major crimes division. We tell him more about Kelgar and he leans out and asks for more guards. The investigator thanks us and we leave. We tell Gnorm that he should stay with us until we can get him to the regeant mother. We go back to the inn, eat, and go to sleep with the normal watch rotation.
The next morning after breakfast, we go the castle first. We let them know that we would like to see the Regeant Mother or Julliene. They tell us to go on up. Two runners go out ahead of us. Julliene shows up. We ask about the Regeant Mother. We go to Julliene’s office and proceed to tell her the story of what we’ve learned and that we want to put Gnorm in her protection. She agrees to. We let her know that we would like to be involved in any action against the underground city, since we told Gnorm that we would help save his apprentice. She says the Regeant Mother will want to see us tomorrow evening for dinner; she should be well enough then. She lets us know that if we do go down in to the underground city, we’ll have to be quarantined when we come back up. She tells us to talk to Aldus Mannus or the High Priestess of Hospin (only) and Aaron (only) if we are going to the talk to the temples and wizards, respectively. She tells us to let her know if there are any requests of the lady, tomorrow would be a good time to ask it. She expects that she’ll want to give some type of boon.
We earn 1 xp.