250312 Gating in
General Summary
Oh calamity, dearest of readers! This more than humble writer has found himself in quite the conundrum, I can tell you. I was reporting on a recent mystical discovery and there was a terrible accident. A wizard had discovered a way for chickens to lay hard boiled eggs and I was to write the article for the Daily Bugle. Alas, he was messing with the space/time continuum in order to boil the eggs in the future and send them back to the past. An avatar of Mystra, the Goddess of Magic herself, appeared and cursed everyone in the room. I am now travelling backwards in time for a short period. Hence, I am writing something that hasn’t yet come to pass for me, but will soon write things that have already happened in the future. Confused? Yeah, me too.
“Bugger!” said Drogon as he wiped Purple Worm off his particularly fetching green leather boots. He and the party quickly found a place for Sentinel’s Mystic Mansion to reside and piled inside to clean up and get some much-needed rest. It’s amazing what a good night’s rest can do for a person, apart from the people in the rooms next to Thorg’s. Thorg was oblivious that those rooms were always empty.
With the morning, a spry and cheery Drogon poked his head out of the doorway to check out the corridor. All was as it should be, empty caverns and a dim light. These things didn’t bother him at all any more. Nope, not a bit, as he pressed his fingers to the muscle constantly ticking under his left eye. He set off, doing the scouting that he so loved, he thought, as he tried to stop the twitch under his right eye.
The team set off a good one hundred and twenty feet behind Drogon, aimlessly talking in the mind link about what had happened the day before. Now, discerning reader, I have no clue what that might have been. Yet. Okay, this is going to get complicated so roll with it and we’ll press on. They knew that they were likely to come across something called the ‘Black Gate’. Whatever that was, beyond the obvious, they’d soon find out.
Drogon paused after travelling for an hour or so and told the others to halt through the mind link. Up ahead, he saw a series of green lights glowing down the tunnel. They appeared to be magical in nature, so he crept forward to take a closer look. As he approached, he saw that the lights were indeed magical and akin to Faerie Fire, perhaps just to light the corridor? They burnt with a slightly sickly green colour, perhaps that of goblin skin. He elected to return to the band to have invisibility cast upon himself. Luthiel obliged the stout fellow and off he returned again, confident in his new sneakiness.
Drogon carried on past the first set of lights, following the hewn stone corridor further into the eternal dim glow of the Underdark. After a hundred yards or so the corridor opened up into a large cavern, again dimly lit by more of the Faerie Fire green lights. Just at the edge of the gloom, Drogon could make out the edge of a tower. He paused again, taking in the sounds and sights within his radius. Something was off and it took him a few seconds to realise what it was. He could see his shadow in the green light. Now that should not be possible whilst invisible, so it seems someone might be prepared further up the tunnel.
Yet again he returned to the band and they pondered the problem. As Drogon was about to suggest something, Griff shouted “Bat!” and Drogon flapped his way into the air, shrugging his batty shoulders in resignation of his new form.
Flying into the cavern, Drogon saw that that there wasn’t just one tower, but two mighty sixty-foot-high towers of some kind of black stone, piercing into the sky and almost touching the ceiling. The stalactites practically scraping the crenelations topping the brickwork. Between the towers was a huge black gate, made of stone as well. “Ahah!” thought Drogon, “This must be the Black Gate!”. What ever gave it away we’ll never know. Perhaps the colour and the open and close nature of the stone obscuring the path forwards.
The chamber the gate was in had five exits, including the road they were walking along. The side ones, before the gate, were those that appeared on the Drow map they had. There appeared to be one too many for the map and Drogon ferreted away that snippet of information to ponder later. Drogon explored further and discovered that behind the gate was a huge block of solid stone, that had two handles on it. Something stupidly large would have to pull on those to budge them. Something Drogon was keen not to meet.
The ramparts of the towers and the one above the gate were all clear of troops and everything looked pretty quiet. There were two sets of windows on each tower, one above the other, and a dim glow of natural fire was coming from them all. Drogon flew to the lowest set on the right-hand tower and spied a group of five Drow in a guard room of some sort. Flying to the upper windows he came face to face with a Drow peering back at him. The Drow fired his crossbow without a thought at Bat-Drogon, but missed by miles. The guard was clearly bored and hadn’t seen anything untoward about a bat hovering outside his lookout.
Drogon flew further up and then over the gate rampart, straight into a fine wire mesh. It was clearly designed to catch flying creatures, but our dexterous little fellow, even in bat form, was able to wriggle free. However, not before there was a loud ringing of alarm bells, that had been attached to the mesh. Three guards appeared from a trap door on the tower, and ran to the centre, clearly looking at the mesh to see what they had caught. Drogon flew all the way back to the team so that they could take stock and come up with a new plan.
Drogon opened his mouth to suggest something when Griff shouted “Fly!” leaving Drogon to buzz his way back to the towers. His little fly mouth was constantly trying to form the necessary words to describe the human wizard and what he could go and do with his wand. Fly-Drogon could now scout things much easier than before and was able to fly through the mesh. Beyond the gate was a camp, made up of various temporary structures. He estimated that it would house some thirty to forty people.
There were two cave entrances on either side of the camp, leading to quite large rooms. One contained two of the largest trolls that Drogon had ever seen, some might call them Giant Trolls. They were sat around a huge campfire gnawing on bones and making Giant Troll sort of noises, each had a spiked collar about their necks. These were the most likely candidates for pulling that very large stone from behind the gate. Drogon remembered seeing a pile of large rocks on the rampart, perfect size for these bad boys to throw.
In the other cave was a rather majestic, if terrifying, horse. It was the colour of night and had flames coming from its mouth, hooves and mane. Flame retardant tack was hung up at the side, so this beast was clearly meant to be ridden. Somone with a fire proof butt, Drogon surmised. He flew back to the right-hand tower and flew under the door and began to explore.
Following a stairway up, he eventually came to the guard room he could see through the lower set of windows. He buzzed past five Drow, one of which was a female and probably a spell caster. She sat away from the grunts, who were definitely Fighters Society crew, drinking a glass of red wine on a chaise longue.
Drogon decided to head back to the gate and check out the solid stone block blocking the back of the gate. This was perhaps twenty feet thick; a mind-boggling amount of muscle would be needed to shift this. The two trolls would be enough as long as there were runners or wheel or something. He then flew into a room above the gate and found five more Drow and their possible leader. He carried on left into the far tower and found it to be a perfect mirror of the right-hand one. The rooms had the same number of Drow in them, but this time there were two female spell casters.
During this time, Drogon was able to see a changing of the guard. Fifteen new Drow appeared from the buildings in the camp and replaced the ones in the three guard rooms. He scouted around for a place for the band to congregate in secret and came across a store room that would be perfect for the task. The band settled to working on a plan to get the entire team over the wall and into this room without being detected. It went like this. Griff would turn everyone into flies and they’d regroup in the storage room. They knew that invisibility would be too much of a risk, so polymorph it was.
Sentinel went first so that she could start the casting for her Magical Mansion. She was quickly followed by Thorg, Jude, Luthiel and Kurog. Griff was last across and flew directly into the mansion door as Sentinel finished her casting. They all rested, relearning their spells and sharpening their weapons.
Drogon went back out to continue his fly-based recce and saw the Drow leader communicating with the trolls through some sort of telepathic link, most likely through the collars. For the trolls came out and pulled back the block of stone, that was indeed on runners to let a caravan in through the gate. The caravan consisted of five Drow mounted on lizards, fifteen Bugbears and thirty slaves of various races. The beginnings of an idea formed in the team’s collective minds, apart from Jude’s which was mostly concerned with wine.
Fly-Drogon flew out, further into the camp towards the pathway leading out. His fly-ears, along with those of the creatures throughout the camp were suddenly assaulted by a loud shriek. It was clearly an alarm and he had clearly triggered it. He quickly flew back to the storage room and into the mansion when he saw the camp and walls of the tower break into full alert. The ramparts were full of Drow, including the three casters all looking in all directions. It seems that the alarm was non-directional and the guards didn’t know where to look. A search of the camp ensued, looking for intruders.
Back inside the mansion, nice and safe from prying eyes, it was decided to capture a guard and question them on how to get past the alarm. They tentatively opened the mansion door in the storage room and waited for a likely victim. It wasn’t long until two guards entered the room and were quickly accosted by Kurog and Thorg and then dragged into the mansion. They were separated into different cells in the basement. They set to work on one of them. Jude cast Geas and asked the guard to truthfully answer all of their questions.
They found out the following exciting bits of information. The guard was called Quared and he couldn’t wait to tell his new friends all about the defences of the Black Gate. The three spell casters were all from the house Eilservs, Ladies Ileria, Triel and Vornalla. The head of the guard and current commander of the gate was General Ulric (Oberon is the overall leader of the Fighter’s Society), from the Fighter’s Society. He also mentioned that they didn’t often have to fight because, most of the time, they could just release a brood of demonic spiders from the front walls. He got very enthusiastic about that and licked his lips at the thought of the screams coming from the victims.
The team learnt of various passphrases that could be used to communicate and gain passage through the gate. They also learnt that the Magic Mouth alarm in the camp, wasn’t actually a magic mouth but went off in the presence of a polymorphed creature. They really had thought of everything, these Drow! The two guards were then memory wiped by further cleric-based spell casting and sent back to do their jobs and not let on that the band had got past the gate.
Another plan was hatched, this time to join one of the larger caravans that passed through the camp in either Seeming form or invisible and hide amongst those passing. The first group to come through the gates was not a caravan at all but a war party. Could this be the war party hounding the steps of the band? They checked out the leader against the description they had. Female, check. Cleric, check. Drow, check. House Noqua, check. High Priestess of Lolth, the Spider Queen, check. This was almost definitely her. Not a group to mess with as they were forty Drow strong with a supporting cast of trolls and demonic dogs.
Again, the band of adventurers set to waiting for the right group to join. The next band was a small caravan of a dozen half-orcs. Too small to add seven more half-orcs to without notice. A distraction was needed. Sentinel and Thorg used Dimension Door back the way they had come and cast a fireball down the corridor whilst Sentinel fashioned an illusion of a mind flayer. That would get the Drow’s attention!
They then returned back to the store room, all got invisibility and they hugged the group of half-orcs as they trudged their way further into the darkness and despair of the Underdark, trying not to choke on the overwhelming body odour of their moving camouflage. They had made it past the fabled Black Gates without being detected and without spilling any blood. Part of Jude was slightly disappointed; they had passed up the opportunity to kill many of their enemy. But gorgeous peruser of pages, I think this band of Tomb Robbing Assassins will get their fill of Drow blood all too soon.
Report Date
17 Mar 2025
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