4th-5th of Sage’s Vigil, Year of the Horde
Having slain the carrion-crawler and found the magic cloak, our small band set off deeper into the sewer tunnels. Our hope was to find a safe passage into a building above, wherein we could scavenge for supplies. The survivors left behind at the Golden Gryphon were by now in desperate need of all manner of things, food and weapons chief among them.
Above us, it started to rain–we could not see it deep below the city, of course, but the increased flow of water from the drains and gutters into the sewer was a clear enough indication. We also heard a distant rumbling, of unknown origin.
Little Viggo leapt from my pocket and scurried along beside us for a while, hunting. As inhospitable as these dank sewers were to us, they were clearly a weasel’s delight, chock full of crunchy cockroaches, worms, and small rats. He hadn’t been so well fed in days.
Eventually, we found our way blocked by a large iron grate. The murky water flowed on beyond it a few feet, then appeared to empty into a deeper, lower chamber. Perhaps it flowed into the River-Beneath-the-City, which Viggo and I had tried to reach by the water-well the day before? Or perhaps not, for it seemed odd to empty a city’s effluent into its water supply? Perhaps there was a large run-off tunnel? Or perhaps—as in the story of Edgar Stoat and the Enchanted Pixies of Cleanliness—there was a whimsical fairy cave of fey sewer-cleaners down below, who spent their time singing, baking strawberry muffins, and disposing of the sludge of those who toiled above.
No matter–the grate was too sturdy for us to force. Moreover, neither singing nor the aroma of freshly-baked muffins could be sensed. We could go no further in that particular direction.
We could, however, go up—for, peering at the damp ceiling of the tunnel, I spied a small trap-door set in the roof. Viggo quickly hoisted me onto his shoulders for a closer look. It was locked.
Ah well, there was little in the way of simple locks that could resist a good pair of Aunt Tulip’s sturdy iron hairpins, which I always kept handy in my boot for just such a purpose. With a few quick turns, an audible click could be heard. I carefully lifted the door.
Nothing–no light could be seen, nor could anything be heard. I waited a moment, then took the sunrod from Dirock’s hand and shone it inside. The trapdoor seemed to open into a stone cellar of sorts, containing several barrels and a rickety set of stairs headed up to a closed wooden door. It seemed safe enough, so I pulled myself in, threw down a rope, and gestured for my companions to join me.
Once inside the storeroom, we quietly checked the barrels. Most contained water, a few were empty, and one contained lantern oil. That might prove useful later.
Viggo and I warily crept up the stairs, and carefully opened the door. It creaked a little, much to my dismay, but attracted no attention. We found ourselves looking into to a ground floor room, lit from a few open windows, filled with racks of weapons and barrels of arrows. Clearly this was Andy’s Armoury, which several of the survivors had pointed out to us from the roof in the days before.
As Viggo covered me with his bow, I moved carefully from window to window, slowly shuttering each to hide us from the undead hordes who doubtless shambled the streets outside. The door showed signs of damage, as if it had been unsuccessfully barred against assault. I did my best to bar it once more. Most ominously of all, a staircase leading up to the second floor was stained red-brown with blood, and severed body parts lay strewn about. Sure as a sleepy badger in a well-worn sleepy-badger-hole, the weaponsmith had been beset by a murderous pack zombies, and had fought a desperate retreat up these very same stairs.
Viggo and I picked our way quietly through the carnage, until we could survey second floor from between the railings of the staircase. This floor was also furnished with racks of weapons. It was also furnished with a pair of zombies, hswaying slowly as they faced away from us. One was clad in bloodied chainmail—Andy, I suspected. Ahhh well, in that case he wouldn’t really miss any of the stock that were were about to help ourselves to.
Viggo gestured for Thor to join us, so that we might launch a surprise assault against the abominations. Alas, the Dwarf’s idea of a stealthy approach was to mutter loudly, hammer in hand, and start stomping his way up the stairs with enough noise to wake a school of deaf blue-finned dozeyfish. Almost immediately, the two zombies turned towards, joined by two others that we had not seen earlier lurking among the wares.
Dirock was the first to the top of the stairs to meet them, swinging his maul and bringing Kord’s damnation down upon them. I unleashed a barrage of missiles upon the undead, blinding one with a well-placed sling-shot and wounding two others. Thor rushed to the center of the floor, blocking the zombies’ way and drawing them to him with warlike dwarven cries of “Come here, zombie!”. Viggo strode up the stairs and into the room, firing arrow after arrow into these our most hated enemy.
It was a fiercely fought battle, as the creatures clawed at us with their unbridled hatred of all living things. Dirock once more invoked the name of his stern and powerful god, this time driving the undead back amid as his holy symbol blazed with the wrath of Kord. Viggo fired still more arrows, impaling one bloodied and mangled lady-sword-shopper-turned-creature-of-death against the wall. Eventually, all four foes lay dismembered at our feet.
“Mmmmmmmmm,” murmured The Abzurian, who had sheltered on the stairs throughout the battle. “I see blood.. there has been a battle here.. zombies, I think. Mmmmmmmm…” At this, my ranger friend uttered a stream of Kuzian curses under his breath, casting a colourful array of aspersions as the dragonkin’s parentage, sexual habits, and culinary preferences. The dragonkin, who clearly hadn’t understood Viggo’s thick northern accent much past his first mention of a “gangrenous runt of a mangy mushroom-addicted she-boar,” merely smiled and tapped his claws together.
In one corner of the room a small set of iron rungs led up to the roof. We climbed up, and tried to signal the survivors at the Golden Gryphon that we were still alive. We also surveyed the area around the armoury. It was then that Viggo noticed something amiss: the silvery spires of Phirul’s famed Spellstorm College could no longer be seen to the north of us. Later we would learn that it had collapsed from view when we had been below, producing the distant rumbling that we had heard in the sewers. What could have brought down such a redoubtable fortress of magic? Unimaginably powerful dark magicks by an ancient evil skeleton-lich? Some defensive spell of sort, safely retreating the college into the bossom of the earth? Undermining from below by foul-tempered demonic insects, bent on revenge for some imagined slight or implementing some diabolical scheme? Shoddy construction by a poorly-trained stonesmith? I wasn’t at all sure that I want to find out.
Eventually, we settled on a plan. We would each stock up on ammunition, and load our packs with a few weapons for the survivors. Other useful items would be placed in the storeroom, where we might access them at a later date from the sewer. In the cellar too we would spend the night, recovering our strength for the next day. Tomorrow, we would try to make our way to nearby Heward’s General Store, where we hoped find some rations and other needed items. To facilitate this, the dragonkin seer would once more perform his ritual incantations, granting us a few minutes each of invisibility from undead.
And so that’s what we did. The night passed uneventfully, with the cellar providing a sense of security that I hadn’t felt in a week. In the morning we ate, and then the ritual was cast. Once protected, we jumped out of a second-floor window to the street below, and ran to the store. With expert aim, Viggo threw a grappling hook up to the roof, and we all clambered up. We then set about checking for survivors, with Viggo banging a loud rhythm on the rooftop with his sword-pommel (the celebratory drumming of annual Kuz Valley Bear Milking contest, if I’m not mistaken) to alert anyone inside.
At first there was no response. After a few minutes, however, a woman stuck her blonde head out of an upper floor window, and urgently beseeched us to be silent. “Don’t do that, you’ll attract those foul creatures! Quickly, climb in here afore they see you!”
We clambered in, and introduced ourselves. The woman—one Samantha Heward, and her son Jason—seemed relieved to know there were other survivors in the city, although the relief was mixed with a little alarm at Viggo’s usual efforts to be charming, especially we he tried to explain bear milking by way of gestures. Since the first attacks, this pair had blocked the doors and windows to their shop, and sought shelter in the basement. Other than us, they had seen no one else alive since then.
Given that their hiding place seemed secure enough for now, we thought it unwise to risk relocating them until we had identified a more permanent refuge for the group of survivors in our care. Samantha was kind enough to allow us to take rations and equipment from her stores. In exchange, we left her with a crossbow and some gold coin—although the value of the latter seemed much diminished in this zombie-infested world.
With this, the dragonkin once more cast the ritual, we once more leapt out of an upper-floor window, and we all ran two blocks further down the street until we were back at the Golden Gryphon. Once there, we unloaded the goods we had scavenged into the tarpaulin-hoist we had fashioned earlier, and clambered up the knotted rope to the rooftop. Our return was greeted by a cheer—even more so when the survivors saw the food and weapons that we had brought. They were damp, with little shelter from the rain that had fallen while we had been away. They had also eaten rather more of our food supplies than we hoped, despite efforts by Jeffrey the innkeeper to hold each person to their share. Still, they were all alive.
Our foray had been a success. It had, however, only bought us time—not resolved our fundamental predicament. It was clear that we couldn’t stay on this roof forever, with scant shelter, and thirty-two mouths to feed. We needed to find somewhere safer, more sheltered, and with easier access to both food and water.
As my mother used to say, however, “worries are best worried on a full stomach and after a comfy sleep.” I curled up against the edge of the roof, and closed my eyes. Little Viggo curled in an even tighter ball beside me. After the exertions of the past two days, sleep came quickly to us both. I dreamed of home, and the quiet days of my youth upon the rivers and canals. Little Viggo, I suspect, dreamed of endless tunnels of crunchy cockroaches.
