The party returns to Leitus’ abandoned compound and gathers their things. Gronk drains the mine completely and they recover the two pounds of warpstone from the containment chamber. During a subsequent search of Leitus’ compound, the party comes across a small crate full of keys, perhaps a sign of Leitus’ growing madness. They also discover a pit cell whose recent occupant had completely covered its walls with strange, meaningless phrases in his own blood. One phrase stood out among the rest though:
“The woman is a lie.”
This phrase was repeated several times and with emphasis against the rest of the mad meanderings of the prisoner.
The party returns to Everwatch and report in to Volkov – who reports that Mengst has woken up from his coma several times, and is weak but recovering steadily. He instructs them to turn their warpstone over to Corky and take two days leave. Corky reports that while the volume of star metal is unideal, he should be able to produce a gun-neutralizing device with roughly a five yard effective range. The party takes their two day liberty for their own pursuits.
They report back in to Volkov, who orders the unit to Karak’Ven to ascertain the disposition of the Dwarves, to find the original plans for High Guard fortress, and to pursue the artifacts relating to Ari Stonehand mentioned by Etari’Sul. Gronk doesn’t appear to take the news well. The party proceeds to the Northeast towards the trading post at the gates of Karak’Ven.
The night before their arrival, Gronk comes clean with the party about the situation with the Dwarves – telling the tale about how King Thane Ironfist dug too deep looking for Karak’Mithril and on the day the WayGate opened in the South, broke through into the warrens of the deep ones. The Dwarves have been fighting a losing battle in the deeps for thirty years and have steadily had to give up ground. Gronk hadn’t heard from any Dwarf coming out of the network in fifteen years, so he warns the party that it may be possible that the entire Dwarven civilization is gone.
The next day the party arrives at the ruins of the trading post at the gates of Karak’Ven and Gronk gains access to the thoroughfare that leads into the depths. Several miles down the tunnel, they encounter a number of Chaos Dwarves attempting to sabotage a cutoff – a carefully crafted bit of stonework that circulates air out of the large dwarven cities. Destroying the cutoff would choke out Karak’Ven and make the city uninhabitable. The party slays the dwarves in the nick of time, preventing their explosives from going off, and proceed on towards the dwarven city.
“The woman is a lie.”
This phrase was repeated several times and with emphasis against the rest of the mad meanderings of the prisoner.
The party returns to Everwatch and report in to Volkov – who reports that Mengst has woken up from his coma several times, and is weak but recovering steadily. He instructs them to turn their warpstone over to Corky and take two days leave. Corky reports that while the volume of star metal is unideal, he should be able to produce a gun-neutralizing device with roughly a five yard effective range. The party takes their two day liberty for their own pursuits.
They report back in to Volkov, who orders the unit to Karak’Ven to ascertain the disposition of the Dwarves, to find the original plans for High Guard fortress, and to pursue the artifacts relating to Ari Stonehand mentioned by Etari’Sul. Gronk doesn’t appear to take the news well. The party proceeds to the Northeast towards the trading post at the gates of Karak’Ven.
The night before their arrival, Gronk comes clean with the party about the situation with the Dwarves – telling the tale about how King Thane Ironfist dug too deep looking for Karak’Mithril and on the day the WayGate opened in the South, broke through into the warrens of the deep ones. The Dwarves have been fighting a losing battle in the deeps for thirty years and have steadily had to give up ground. Gronk hadn’t heard from any Dwarf coming out of the network in fifteen years, so he warns the party that it may be possible that the entire Dwarven civilization is gone.
The next day the party arrives at the ruins of the trading post at the gates of Karak’Ven and Gronk gains access to the thoroughfare that leads into the depths. Several miles down the tunnel, they encounter a number of Chaos Dwarves attempting to sabotage a cutoff – a carefully crafted bit of stonework that circulates air out of the large dwarven cities. Destroying the cutoff would choke out Karak’Ven and make the city uninhabitable. The party slays the dwarves in the nick of time, preventing their explosives from going off, and proceed on towards the dwarven city.
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They headed back to Leitus’ cave to pick up their equipment. As they searched through the area more thoroughly, one of the humans found a box, containing a lot of keys. She glanced at the contents of the box, then shrugged. Just another sign that Leitus was far too old, another proof that immortality was not really something to covet, regardless of what the humans thought.
Then she heard Poppy yell. She rushed over, but it was obvious even before she got there that the halfling was unharmed. It seemed she had fallen into what must have been some sort of a cell. The walls were covered in writing with what appeared to be dried blood. Most of it looked like the ramblings of a madman, though one of the lines caught her attention; it had been repeated over and over: “The woman is a lie.”
For some reason, that particular message did not seem like the rest of the ramblings. Not that she had any idea what it meant; it might well be ramblings with no real meaning. Or it might be a reference to something that had nothing at all to do with them. It might even be a reference to someone they had met, or knew of. She wondered who the prisoner had been, and what had happened to him or her.
Their search turned up nothing more of interest, and eventually, they returned to Hillcrest, only to find it strangely empty. It seemed that the enemy had been making a push from High Guard, and most of the army was up at Everwatch.
Moriel was rather surprised when they, rather than being told to aid with the defense, were told to take a few days off. Not that the team would make much of a difference against the Kisharan forces. Still.
A couple of days later, they received their next assignment. To find out what had happened to the dwarves. Gronk did not seem happy about it. She could not help but wonder why he had left, whether it had been voluntary or not, and whether there would be problems when or if they met other dwarves.
In fact the dwarf was even more grumpy than usual, but it was not until the last day before they reached the gates that he told them why the dwarves had closed the gates, why they had sealed themselves off from the world. The reason and implications of that were chilling. It did not help that Gronk said that the dwarves might be all gone.
The idea of the dwarves being gone from the world was staggering. The Kisharans had practically wiped out the halflings, at least the ones in the south, and unless the Northland army could find a way to drive the Kisharans back through the Waygate, they would sooner or later do the same in the north. The elves were dying, had been for centuries. In a millennium or two, they would be gone as well. And now the dwarves. All that would be left, were the gnomes, and the humans. She was not sure she wanted to see what kind of world they would build.
The next day, they reached their destination. The doors were massive. There were no way in the world they could bring those down. Besides, these doors might be all that stood between the surface and whatever dark hordes were waiting inside.
But Gronk obviously knew how to open the gates. As they entered through the gates of Karak’Ven, Moriel wondered what they would meet. The tunnels were dark, of course, and it felt as if the walls were leaning inwards, threatening to crush them all.
As they moved through the tunnels, they heard voices. First, something that sounded like dwarves, and then something that was unmistakenly an orc. The sounds came from a side-passage, and Moriel and Poppy slipped down to scout.
Down the corridor they saw several Chaos dwarves, clearly preparing to blow up some dwarven construction of some sort. The two of them returned to the others and told them what they had seen. Gronk looked worried, and explained that if the Chaos dwarves succeeded, anyone left in Karak’Ven would choke to death, as the construction was a ventilation system keeping the city supplied with fresh air.
They had to do something, of course. The fight did not last long, and went well enough, despite the Chaos dwarves’ attempts to blow the entire place up.
Afterwards, they carried the explosives down to a large cave they had passed through earlier, and broke the kegs, spreading the gunpowder on the floor, making it very unlikely that anyone would be able to use it to blow up the ventilation system.
At least it meant, she hoped, that some of the dwarves were still alive. The chaos dwarves and orcs would not have bothered to blow up the ventilation system, unless they wanted to kill off whoever remained in the city. It probably also meant that something must have happened recently; it had been fifteen years since Gronk had heard from the dwarves inside the mountains, so the attempt to kill off Karak’Ven had to be a recent one.
Maybe the failed greenskin invasion had prompted this. Or maybe, she reflected, the dark ones had started fighting among themselves, and the plan was to kill off rival orcs and chaos dwarves, rather than dwarves.
As they resumed their journey, she had to wonder if the humans were going to claim that the _dwarves_ now owed them a debt as well. Not that it mattered, the dwarves might not even be able to repay anything at all.
She just had to hope, for both Gronk’s and the other dwarves’ sake, and for the world in general, that the dwarves were still alive.