Arc 9 Chapter XXVI: The Spelunkening

We offer our meagre thanks to the devious eldrich abomination that shall not be named.

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My hand flicked the aged pages of one of my many magical grimoires, my eyes lazily scanning the diagrams of one of the local "buff" series of spells that I had been putting together for the last hour or so.

I've long since made the casting of dragonflesh a subconscious reflex, cast with the barest fraction of my mind whenever I entered combat, but while the spell had naturally evolved in complexity, the physical boost I now got out of it was nowhere near as game changing as it once had been.

Really, the only reason I still even bothered using it at my level of baseline strength was ironically enough the armor, as it made resisting the resulting impacts of moving at unnatural speeds much more tolerable.

And for all my love of magic, one could never go wrong with some unga bunga.

Also, feeling my ash rattle chafed in a way I couldn't truly describe to someone who wasn't a floating pile of element.

Where was I going with all this?

The Faerunic buff spells, a mere curiosity to begin with and mostly due to nostalgia at that that had evolved beyond that because when I cast "Owl's Wisdom" on myself... it actually worked.

I cannot even begin to describe the sheer level of bullshit that implied.

And the effects were also out of whack. Even if one ignored the mechanics of how "wisdom" worked on someone like me, the effectiveness went beyond any of my expectations.

This might have something to do with the spell's descriptor in the grimoire being "greatly increases target's wisdom" instead of the "add four wisdom" like I remembered.

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one non the less.

Of course it wasn't that easy, as the effects fizzled out after mere seconds of subjective time due to power requirements simply not being supported in the spell matrix, but the implications were fucking delicious to consider.

Naturally the first thing we did with this information was leave a temporary simulacrum with the peons while teleporting away to the nearest concentration of "target rich environment" and promptly buffed the fuck out of Scorch to the greatest extent reasonable and performed some... ordinance testing.

Needless to say, the buffing spells made Scorch explode that much harder and now I had a fiery bird pestering me to perfect them on an hourly basis.

Truly, this is what suffering from success felt like...

"Did any of you hear that?" Karlach spoke up suddenly, exactly as I replaced the simulacrum.

I almost thought she noticed me doing it but that would be fucking ridiculous, and I was proven right quickly enough as I saw her looking in a completely different direction.

"Hm?" I looked up from my conspicuously distracting grimoire.

"I think I heard screams." She explained and pointed vaguely southward "They are coming from over there."

And indeed, now that I bothered to actually listen I could hear a distant echo of "Boooooaaaal!!!"

It was a chorus of scratchy voices that when joined sounded like someone was butchering a pig.

"Either someone is throwing a party." I noted dryly "Or the Underdark is freakier than I expected."

Shadowheart let out a small exhale "Something tells me we aren't lucky enough to get a party."

Which of course only served to motivate Karlach further "We going to check it out?"

I shrugged and turned to the rest, and they didn't really take much convincing to go for it.

Durge was no doubt feeling murdericious, Shadowheart was still too numb to really resist, and the Drow was no doubt looking for ways to indulge in its inherent sadism that wouldn't annoy me.

I nearly regretted the decision when the smell hit us.

It was like a vile mix between rotten shroom and blood that had been spiled far too many times stacked on top of itself over and over again for maximum discomfort possible.

What we found within the semi hidden cave was less disgusting and more... odd. It was a small village made up of large mushroom treehouses (mushroomhouses?), filled with some three dozen squat, and very ugly, fishmen all gathered around one of their kind bearing a staff and a crest and all chanting the same scream from before.

"Booooooaaaal!"

For some reason Durge's eye was twitching repeatedly.

"What are we even looking at?" Karlach asked, dumbfounded.

"Kuo-toa." The Drow sniffed in disgust "Cultish little things. The fools will worship anything, even the slaver's whip at their backs."

A trait she no doubt found useful.

One of the fish people approached the altar and the priest began asking him for a dedication to the "Great And Mighty Boooal!!!" as he unsheathed some kind of sacrificial dagger-scythe.

Honestly I was content to just watch the show at this point.

But my minorly draconic murder enjoyer seemed to have already had enough of whatever they were doing and promptly summoned an almost shortspear-length shard of charged ice, launching it in their direction at impressive speeds.

For someone who didn't even truly understand his magic, that is.

The local sorcerers were... disappointing as a concept.

The spell detonated with ice's telltale crystalline snap, impaling a good number of the creatures but not before the priest buried the dagger in his fellow fish man's chest, ripping out his heart in one swift movement.

"Great BOOOOAL!!!" He screamed despite the alarm of his followers "Accept this offering of blood! Accept these bones for your temple!"

Many of the fishmen turned away from the ritual and aimed their pathetic little bows at our elevated position, and my followers quickly scattered out of the way.

I on the other hand, simply turned invisible and levitated myself closer to the altar.

Because whatever had just been done carried an actual spark of divinity.

The body laid out atop it twitched and then exploded in a loud burst of blood, painting the entire area red and revealing... One of the hag's redcaps?

...What?

I ignored the sounds of battle behind me as my eyes narrowed in consternation.

Not that the hag, whose house was suspiciously close above this place, had potentially infiltrated the little village, that was to be expected really. But the fact that the little shit actually had a spark of divinity inside of him!

It was tiny, barely even worth mentioning, but it was there.

'Imagine having to drink the blood of the god whose dead body makes up the world to become divine when you could have just had fish pray to you!' Scorch was, naturally, laughing his ass off 'Get skill issued by literal fucking fish and a garden gnome! HAHAHAHHA!'

This went on for a good ten seconds.

'Scorch.' My eyes narrowed.

'Yeeeees?' I could feel his massive smirk.

'Go fuck yourself.' 

'Seethe bitch! SEETHE!'

Before I could deliver righteous punishment upon the poultry, the sounds of fighting came closer and closer and I focused outwards just in time to see Durge leading the charge like the bloodthirsty maniac that he was.

He was covered in bruises and practically bathed in blood to the point his scales' pale sheen was completely replaced by red, but that didn't seem to slow him down one bit as he disregarded his magic and just went wild with his natural weapons, ripping and tearing through half the village's population on his own.

The 'god' who had finished with his little performance squawked in confusion at the sight that awaited him but he quickly schooled his expression and pulled out a sickle reminiscent to that of the fishman priest's.

"Who dares approach Boooal?" He demanded in a deep, and terrible voice.

A surprisingly good illusion for a fucking garden gnome.

And one that did not seem to slow down the local lizard extraordinaire one bit as he growled at him "These." He gripped the head of one of the fishmen and crushed it in his grip "Are no longer yours to butcher."

The godling prepared a no doubt impressive retort to such a claim but his bloodied opponent had no patience for posturing and simply sprang forth in his murderous spree, ripping the trembling priest's throat out before leaping at the godling itself.

And feeling just a bit cheeky I decided now was the perfect time to experiment a bit.

Just before Durge's claws connected, I cast my recently refined version of Bull's Strength on him, and watched with great fascination as his strike turned from something reasonable into a blur of motion that sent the surprisingly durable godling sprawling on its ass with a shriek that was everything but divine.

What came after that could not even charitably be described as a beatdown, as Durge decided to use his newfound power to... take his time.

To the point even the Drow seemed mildly concerned after a while.

But he did stop himself. Eventually.

And merely grunted as I turned visible, my look a questioning one "So? What was that exactly?"

While I spoke I made sure to heal everyone up just in case.

"I don't know what came over me." The dragon man shrugged, looking as confused as I was "Something about the name, and the way they spoke-" He shook his head "It made my blood boil."

My expression remained the same but my intuition was not nearly as silent.

This definitely had something to do with Bhaal, even if my only clue was that the names sounded familiar and both seemed to be related to blood, murder, and bloody murder.

'Dude is a demigod of Bhaal.' Scorch chirped suddenly 'Or at least descended from him.'

'Well yes I get that much.' I scowled internally 'But isn't he kind of too weak for that?'

'You noticed he was even more fucked up than the rest of the tadpole degenerates.' The bird shrugged his wings 'And he is getting back to a reasonable degree of strength quickly.'

Much like the rest of them were. How very fitting.

"Doom driven heroes wherever you go." I muttered to myself with a small amused shake of my head and addressed Durge once more "Well no matter your reasoning, I doubt they would have been civil anyway." Fuckers were radiating enough bloodlust to give someone a heart attack "So let's grab what we want from this place and get ourselves moving."

The others were more than happy to get things moving again, and we even managed to find some loot worth keeping despite all of the fishmen looking less than destitute, even the priest.

Though aside from the mildly blessed sickle of the mauled godling, my thoughts remained focused on the final item we managed to discover.

A bottled message, signed by one of the many Tiefling kids I had seen running about in the grove, having floated down the small underground creek for many days to get to this place and be entangled in the fishmen's nets.

It was a message to the boys father who got 'lost', naively asking him to visit him in Baldur's Gate one day.

Man that was fucking depressing.

-

It was almost comical how delightful the relatively stale air of the Underdark proper felt to our noses after we finally left that cave, everyone, no matter how tough or prideful, took deep lungfulls, their expressions so universally comical it was immediately and unanimously agreed they would never speak of the moment again.

Though that little moment of embarrassment was forgotten quickly enough as Durge slipped on all the blood he was dripping and smacked directly into one of the nearby mushrooms.

Glowing, pulsing, yellow mushrooms.

The noxious bulbs that lit up the cave reacted to the sudden force and proximity, and promptly ignited.

This, of course, caused a massive chain reaction throughout the entire section of cave we were traversing, and suddenly we were left without any light and surrounded on all ends by trembling rock.

I closed my eyes as my minions panicked, slooowly counted to ten and promised I wouldn't cave the place in out of sheer spite for explosive fucking mushrooms, and raised my hand.

The air shuddered, and then, blessed silence.

The Drow recovered first, and cast dancing lights between us to reveal the still pale faces of the rest of them, and myself, surrounded by a lightly shimmering aura of Magicka, holding up an immense stalactite that was just about to smash directly into us.

I clutched my hand, and the rod of rock was disintegrated into sand that fell uselessly to our sides, looking almost like a sea of stars that would have probably been beautiful if I wasn't this annoyed.

"Well." I did my best not to growl "That was irritating." My eyes flashed at the Drow and I spoke in a deceptively calm tone "Why was I not informed the local flora was explosive?"

She tensed despite herself, and gave a simple but pointed answer "Just because I come from underground doesn't mean I am an expert on every shroom that grows there, Dagoth."

It was a mildly disappointing moment when her words registered as the truth.

I exhaled and deflated slightly "Yeah whatever, let's just get to the tower already." Not waiting for her response I started moving, summoning a ball of magelight bright enough to light up the entire cavern to follow us as we went.

Finding the tower proved a relatively simple affair after that.

More than simple really, since no light interfered with the comparative beacon that was the sole artificial structure nearby.

It quite literally stuck out like a sore thumb even to mortal senses, almost paradoxically so for a tower that was supposed to have not been breached despite its supposed lengthy abandoned status.

For a short while I almost thought it to be some kind of trap but no, it literally was just a mildly well protected abandoned tower in the underground.

I supposed the turrets that sprang up as we approached were impressive enough, their elemental nature and level of refinement was something I'd easily rate as low-expert dwemertech if I were to use Tamrielic standards.

Impressive for the locals maybe, but not so to yours truly.

Luckily for my sense of adventure the tower did contain something much more interesting when we made our way down to its base, and I quickly found the reasoning behind an obviously skilled mage deciding to live in the Underdark of all places.

They were using the local 'susur' flowers to insulate the Weave and guide it much like one did electricity. It was impressively inspired when compared to the ritualized magic that seemed to suffuse all but the purest applications of magic in this world.

Of course while I could have just teleported us about and have been done with the place in minutes, I decided to actually give the contraptions our 'host' created an actual whirl, which meant interacting with the flowers that powered them.

It was odd, being cut off from the ambient Weave after days of feeling it suffuse literally everything and anything.

Naturally it did absolutely fuck all against Magicka which made the poor flower burst into sizzling ash after only a second of me holding it. 

There was an awkward moment of silence before it was quickly decided only Karlach would deal with the anti-magic flower from now on, being the only one not dependent on the Weave in some way or another.

The instructions the tower's owner left behind were irritatingly poetic, but thankfully still clear enough that we were able to light the place up and activate the central teleportation array that seemed to be the only way of reasonably traversing the place.

We spent only a brief while scanning the thing before finding it to be stable enough and moving on with our 'exploration.'

The ground and what I supposed was meant to be the usual entrance floor was relatively empty, holding only boxes filled with reserve parts meant for all the machinery used to run the place, and a few rotting wooden benches.

Not a fan of visitors our host, if this was how they usually welcomed their guests.

The floor after that one revealed itself to be a garden, a magical greenhouse of some form that housed still viable specimens of the local flora that the wizard found useful for one reason or another.

None of my current companions knew much about them so I simply grabbed everything and decided to toss the job of finding their use to Gale. He needed to pay for my tutelage in some way anyway.

It was on the third floor that some of my interest was finally roused, and I found myself rifling through the half ruined living quarters, grabbing every single book I could get my grubby hands on with the hope of finally getting my hands on some actual proper high level griomoires!

Aaaand it was all poetry...

Motherfu-

Thankfully I was not bird brained enough to blow the place up in my irritation and simply let the others explore the writings while I searched for more useful things (I found nothing except a ring enchanted with a light spell, go fucking figure!)

Though I did end up grabbing one piece of writing.

My translation spell was advanced enough I could read pretty much anything, which meant instead of just glossing over the circular tablet that was for 'whatever' reason placed on the same shelf as a bunch of history books I realized it was actually a fancy way of preserving information.

Namely a Gith carving describing some manner of prince of theirs I lacked true context to truly understand.

Oh well, I supposed Lae'zel could enlighten me about her shitty culture later. Yoink!

Still, I wasn't about to let us spend the next fourteen hours going through everything the local wizard left behind in hopes of finding some hidden kernel of information that would magically make it all worth it, and to very little protest I had us move on to the final, unfinished floor of the tower.

Which is how we found ourselves surrounded by a group of armored clockwork constructs whose internals made me mentally raise my evaluation of our host a bit further.

That was some fine enchanting work, I could admit that much.

Their leader, an impressive clokwork construct that  towered over us and seemed to posses a degree of intelligence, approached us in a fast but stilted gait, and to my utter disgust, proceeded to quote poetry at us.

I was this fucking close to just deleting him, artistry or no artistry.

But Shadowheart came to the rescue, and surprised me by actually quoting something back. And bafflingly, her answer seemed to be the correct one as the construct bowed and apparently imprinted on her.

"That actually worked?" For a moment, it looked like her eyes were about to pop from her skull in surprise, before she quickly composed herself, clearing her throat "I mean, of course it worked!"

The others were naturally amused by the sight, while I was left feeling conflicted.

On the one hand, I was impressed she caught enough details to actually try that.

On the other hand, my previously high opinion of the tower's owner plummeted into the abyss.

Oh yes, why don't you leave the key to your defenders in plain fucking sight?!

My frustrations aside, the lead construct whom I learned was named Bernard held another enchanted ring with him that served as a secret key to the tower's teleportation array, one that let us open up a way to the basement which was where most of the actual loot was hidden.

And that is where I found the last bit of my disappointment with this place.

For you see, the tower was not owned by a wizard...

But by a fucking cleric of the local magic wench.

Sigh.

They did leave behind a nifty staff that carried the goddess' blessing so I supposed I could forgive them the ruination of my expectations.

Not.

My very justified grumbling aside, we were not left with much time to truly dig through the loot pile, because annoyance was not all I got from the tower's summit.

Besides being the usual compensatory status symbol of a mage a tower usually served as a good vintage point. 

Surprising, I know.

My endless wit aside, it gave me a perfect view of the surrounding area, and thus allowed me to notice a distinct gathering of locals to our relative south, namely a bunch of dwarves clamping an even larger bunch of gnomes in chains and preparing them for transport down a massive underground river.

It did not take much consideration to realize what their purpose was.

And that was just plain unacceptable.