The hour has passed midnight after another busy day spent trying to unpick a conspiracy against the realm. The howling winds outside have kept everyone indoors all day and blown the deep snows all over the city and palace. The party makes its way back down into the sub basement of the palace fully equipped for venturing into untouched sections, bringing along a younger cousin who has insisted she wants adventure and two of her entourage, the adept and the swordsman.
Down into the depths of the palace they go, past the old throne room to the gallery where the kobolds have been set up. A short discussion in pidgin draconic explains their intent to go find the second masterwork the kobolds say they had discovered and Curator Zosk assigns a troupe of junior volunteers to lead them - junior scout Zoogr, apprentice treasurer Vazrur, apprentice painters Ralral and Kedri and wax-collector Yeep with her two fire-beetles. Equipped with a map, packed snacks, spears and lantern-staffs the kobolds lead off into the depths.
Sketch of a junior kobold by the bard
Down the corridor they find a set of bristled trestles blocking the width of the corridor that they move past and set back where they had come. Past some more doorways the kobolds lead them to a stairwell, once a grand live-wood structure in the old high-elven style that has long since died and withered. Spacing themselves out the kobolds descend carefully and after waiting a little the party descends as well. First the bard, as the smallest and most lightly burdened, scurries down, stopping a floor down and recognising they have been there before, before descending down the ominously creaking stairs to where the kobolds have stopped two floors below.
Next comes the cleric. At first all goes well until the segments right before the first floor down collapse under the weight of them, their arms and armour. The cleric manages to leap and save themselves on the door-sill of that floor as the cries of alarm and racket of tumbling steps echo through the hallways. The bard marshalls the kobolds to find something to cushion the clerics fall should she slip while the cleric hauls herself by main strength back up and into the doorway.
Above, the sorcerer, along with his cousin and her entourage, notice that something has come creeping out of one of the open doorways they had passed, gliding along the floor. The sorcerer, remembering the weird ooze-like things called puddles that seem to infest the sub-structures, chivvies his cousin and her companions down the stairs. The adept, a nimble tabaxi, dashes down along the stumps of the broken stair-steps, leaping through the doorway by the cleric. The cousin slips on the same path but the adept manages to catch her to hold her dangling from the doorway. The sorcerer and the swordsman, fleeing down the stairs together, over burden the steps and send another section crashing down, far from the doorway with no chance to leap to safety.
The bard below snaps off her held Featherfall that catches them, and they drift down safely. As the fallers weight begins to land on the now doubly burdened lower steps these begin to creak dangerously again. The swordsman flings himself to safety through the doorway by the bard but the sorcerer misses his leap. The stairs crumble beneath him and he begins to descend once more, feather-falling into what becomes apparent is a shaft with no visible bottom. The swordsman manages to snatch his arm and with the bards help hauls him up.
Above, the adept drops the cousin onto the cleric who realises that they have all decided to come on this adventure directly from an evening of fine wine in the salons. Setting that aside, the cleric and the bard stick their heads out into the stairwell, then lower down the cousin to be pulled in by the group below. The adept climbs down under her own power and just as the cleric is setting up to climb down she hears movement from the rubble filled corridor extending deeper into the hill below the palace. Deciding speed over elegance, the cleric drops down and tumbles to the floor below.
The reassembled group follows the kobolds and their map. The sorcerer talks with his familiar about whether there is anything about and the familiar notes whatever the cleric disturbed appears to be interested in them. They proceed watchfully through the deepest basement until they find a corridor they recognise from a long ago recovery of a trespasser who fell through a section of the roof. All is still in this usually drafty place which they find is caused by the huge pile of snow that has blocked up the hole in the wall at the end of the corridor.
The kobolds lead them to a doorway, at the edge of the snowfall, that they dig out and begin to try and open through brute force. The ancient door is seized in place and after a period of time trying to noisily force it, the adept calls their attention to something down the corridor.
Assembling at the front of the group, they peer into the gloom, and spot what looks like a skeleton gliding towards them with its arms extended. They recognise what seems to be one of the kobolds, lost during their explorations. The agitated kobolds form a thicket of spears at the back of the group and the party prepares to meet this threat.
The sorcerer flings a scorching ray that seems to boil across the air in front of the skeleton, the bard fires a crossbow bolt that seems to miss. The adept flings an acid splash and the others form a battle line. The skeleton glides towards them, seemingly unaffected, further spells seeming to flare and discharge off some sort of defense around it. The cleric is about to try and banish this undead thing when they realise what this thing probably is. A searing light blazes across the surface of this gelatinous cube just as it gets within range to slam the cleric with a pseudopod.
Sketch of the encounter by the bard
With a crack of impact and the sizzle of acid the clerics muscles lock up and the party decides that discretion is the better part of valour. They send the adept to go with the kobolds and get a door open to flee through. The sorceror grabs the cleric and hauls her back and away from the thing while the swordsman steps up to engage it. Another slam of the pseudopod and the swordsman locks up, until the cousin hauls him back.
The slowest chase ever ensues as the bard and sorcerer tow the cleric down the corridor at half speed while the cousin tows the swordsman who is being pummelled by the cube. With the bards help to tow the cleric, the sorcerer fires another scorching ray over his shoulder which finally causes the cube to loose cohesion and flood the corridor with ooze.
By the time the cleric has shaken off their paralysis and pulled the swordsman back from the brink of death, the adept and the kobolds succeed in prying the door they had come for mostly open. At this point the sorcerer waves back the kobolds and peers into the room through a crack in the door. Within he spots one of the family guardians, the ash dogs, that reacted violently to non-family members entering the old throne room. The sorcerer, cleric and bard push the door the rest of the way open after a few tries and make their way inside while the kobolds go to collect their comrades skeleton from the remains of the ooze.
Inside the sealed room the party find a huge ornately carved relief map of the whole kingdom and its bordering lands, drawers full of maps and papers, six of the guardian beasts still and stony about the room and the huge masterwork on the back wall. Here it depicts a forest as grows anywhere in their realm with a party of elves standing before a gap in the trees. Through the gaps a super-natural landscape can be seen, one they recognise from their recent sojourn as being the feywild.
After searching the room and finding some minor magics, they decide to leave the painting in place as far too large to transport safely and head back for tonight. Just as they are pulling the door closed they hear another shout from the others in the corridor. The sorcerers familiar observes that the thing that had been following the cleric before has returned with a friend. Scuttling along the ceiling they see something insectile and the sorcerer cuts loose with his magic missiles. Bolts of energy whizz and thud and one of what turns out to be a pair of monstrous centipedes drops off the ceiling.
One centipede dashes along the floor to engage in a close quarter slip-sliding brawl with the cleric, both finding trouble with footing in the spilt ichor of the dead ooze. The other engages the others, snapping at the swordsman and being fended off by the kobolds and their spears. A nasty, close range fight with the clerics armour performing sterling duty leads to a pair of dead giant centipedes.
Deciding that they have achieved their goals and this was enough excitement for a night, the party retraces the path the bard and sorcerer had taken when they recovered the fallen trespasser on their own. Back through an old assembly hall and up its balcony stairs, careful to close all doors behind them, they make their way back up to the outer stairway that they have usually taken to go down. Today it is completely snowed in but the sorcerer uses the last of his scorching rays to trip some minor avalanches to clear most of the snow. The cleric brute-force clears the rest off the outdoor stairs, as the wind howls past them. The bard luxuriates in the heirloom dragon-skin cloak she found that keeps her snug in the terrible weather while the sorcerer, cousin and her entourage tough it out. The kobolds cluster around their fire-beetles and together with their protective candles seem to stave off the cold.
After clearing the snow and finding the door not so far from the galleries, they follow the kobolds home, explain what happened with judicious use of the painting of the palace that the kobolds had made and make their way to bed for a well earned rest, further decisions to be pushed off to tomorrow and ideally to senior members of the house.
Our final encounter with the kobolds is here: the Farewell.
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