The Dry Down Below

The Dry Down Below was the Seventh quest taken by the Party and involved Kaano, Tatsumaki, Eirien and Thwark investigating a closed off community in the Sunless Valley and finding a conspiracy to cover the entirety of Wastelandia in shadow

Plot
THE DRY DOWN BELOW PART 1

ACTUAL PLOT

After receiving word from one of his awk scouts, Shawk. Thwark, Tatsumaki, Eirien and Kaano venture out to set up a new happy lighthouse in the mysterious land known only as the ‘Sunless Valley’. After arriving at the entrance to the valley (on foot for some reason, Thwark forgot to bring The Robot) the party notices a strange device on the top of the entrance, with a beholder hovering above it before fleeing. Despite the parties best efforts to take the device seriously they decided to ignore it and press forward into the valley, foolishly triggering the device and causing it to explode. Just barely making it into the valley the party meets up with Wild Eyes, Knobble foot and Big Richard once more, who had been banished to the valley after failing to acquire the Over compensator for Zogwin Pox. After realising that the entire valley has been cloaked by a giant ever present shadow, the three tell the party that for the last two months no sunlight has made its way into the valley, and everyone there has been trapped as every exit to the valley had been blocked, with the entrance the party just blew up the last hope of escaping.

Heading to the town of Sinkhole, the party was greeted by the town’s mayor a grizzled and angry looking imperial wearing old unified empire armor, who after chastising Wild Eyes, Knobble foot and Big Richard for coming back tells the tale of the town. Once a prosperous hub of colonists and soldiers, the Sunless valley was once a prosperous eden of resources, with minerals, water and clean soil all around. Every empire wanted a piece of it, and before the Unified Empire finally struck down its flag in what was now  sinkhole, the Seramkian general Kong Dong had already erected a gigantic statue of himself not far from town and the Inkaman’s had already set up what became the ‘moonlight temple’, both empires taunted the other with imminent doom but Kong Dong died and the Inkamans fled before this doom came to fruition.

After the shadow came, the crops dried up and where once sat a giant fountain that served as the town’s drinking source was replaced by a giant hole. Every night things would come out of this hole, and would carry a citizen down into it, anyone who tried to stop this ceremony was killed and brought down to the hole as well. The only man that went down the hole on his own accord was a naked insane man by the name of Armadillo, who dressed in nothing other than a giant tower shield he said he was looking for a ninja and since ninja’s liked darkness he figured the hole would be the best place to look. The party is then pointed towards the Awk tribe that had set up shop on the foot of the statue, the mayor spoke of them with particular venom citing that they had been the only ones not targeted by the creatures and believed this was because they were responsible for these abductions. After hitting it off with the Awks, Thwark ignores the rest of the party to play some Pawker with them while the Awk leader of the group Lawk keys the party in as to the Awk’s perspective. With no food to grow of their own the people were forced to eat a particular mushroom the Awk’s had learned to grow without the assistance of sunlight, this left the townsfolk fairly listless and unable to make sudden movements, but Lawk said that if his people didn’t make the mushrooms the townsfolk would kill them. When asked as to what exactly had been taking the people Lawk told the party about a girl who’s family had been taken by them not too long ago, and that she had miraculously both survived her sister's abduction but witnessed it without being killed herself.

After concluding that she was the best equipped to get the information out of the small girl, Eirien forced Tatsumaki and Kaano to stay outside while Thwark continued to play Pawker with the other Awks. The girl told Eirien that a humanoid creature stole her sister, retrieving a book from her shelf and pointing towards the page that detailed the sacrificial garments of the Inkaman as the clothing the creature wore. Before any more information could be gathered, the creature managed to slink past Kaano and Tatsumaki, and was about to kill Eirien for conversing with the girl before the girl screamed and Eirien jumped out of the way. Eirien yelled to Kaano and Tatsumaki to stop the creature, with the former shooting a fireball at it and the latter shooting his ‘scorpion spear’ at the creature's arm. The creature was unphased by the fireball and the arm was separated from the body but didn’t stop the creature from jumping down into the hole, disappearing into the dry darkness below.

 

Eirien almost jumped down into the depths before being restrained by the other party members. Lawk ran over expressing extreme depression in the fact the girl is now gone, as she was the only one that didn’t believe the Awks did these abductions. As they talked Eirien realised that a Beholder had been hiding in a nearby alleyway and had most likely seen the entire thing. The creature attempted to flee but Eirien shot it in its big eye killing it instantly. Upon examinig the corpse (the creature's tongue had been ripped out so Kaano couldn’t simply resurrect it) the party found a particular machine on the back of the Beholder that appeared to make it possible for someone else to see through the beholders eyes. Eirien asked Lawk where they could find any more of the creatures, and Lawk said that some might have been seen by the ‘moonlight temple’ and that if anyone knew anymore about them than it was Wild Eyes and his crew. As soon as they were told this, the party heard Big Richard’s scream coming from the corner of the town. Upon arriving at the source of the scream the party watched as Wild Eyes and his crew were dragged away by two of the creatures atop a giant crab, the party attempted to stop them but the crab quickly disappeared from their view.

Following the crab to the moonlight temple, the party arrived just in time to see the crab crawl through a crevice halfway up the temple, and for hundreds of Beholders to fly into a hole on the top. The temple itself resembled a giant closed off colosseum, with a 220 m high sword sticking out of the top. The party saw that three different entrances could feasibly get them inside. The crevice, the old sewer tunnels, and the possible entrance on top. To cover more ground, the party split up, with Kaano crawling up to the crevice, Tatsumaki using his skilled climbing ability to get onto the top of the temple, and Thwark and Eirien used the sewer tunnels. Kaano found himself in the ‘hanger’ where the crabs were kept, and witnessed as Wild Eyes and his crew were taken away, black bags over their heads. Tatsumaki found himself in a small room where the hundreds of Beholders slept, and where one beholde (still halfway into it’s surgery) scanned the room with his eye. Eirien and Thwark slowly made their way through the sewer, hearing slight conversation inside the temple through the old toilet shafts, ‘Girl...got her...rich...Esu’. Before being seen by the one awake Beholder, Tatsumaki stabbed the creature in its open wound, killing it instantly, and hearing a few words behind the door of the room, the voice behind it having a thick cowboy accent ‘Ya’ll...wonder...they’ll...Esu?’   Kaano stealthy made his way to the exit of the hanger (being careful not to wake the crabs) and managed to hear a few choice words coming from the other side of the door. After making his way to the room’s exit, (and being much more used to spying on people) heard every word of the conversation on the other side.

‘How is the plan coming along?’

‘Patience Krokodil I just received word from the shaman that the girl has been accquired?’

‘You think he suspects’

‘I know he doesn’t...and keep your men away from the beholders you’re spooking them’

‘I can’t do that’

‘why?’

‘They’re not my men’

Eirien and Thwark eventually find their way to a toilet tunnel big enough to crawl through and promptly made their way up the shaft. Eirien used her ranger skills to avoid every single bit of fecal matter on the shaft, and Thwark used his experience as a drug dealer to ignore every bit of shit that got stuck to his jacket as he made his way up. Finding their way to the top of the shaft Eirien and Thwark heard and saw a conversation between a tall skinny ranger elf man in a large feather coat and thick green helmet and an orange Ogre that Eirien recognised as the Ogre that Wrecklan had shared a cell with when they rescued him.

‘So Esu you reckon that girl is the one we need?’

‘I’m more interested if anyone besides ‘them’ will follow her here’

‘Eeh its no issue, ya’ll just do to them what you did with the last few, straight headshots‘

‘Any elf with a bow can pull off a headshot...headshots are for rookies...I hit them in their eyes’

‘Gruesome’

‘Not as gruesome as what you did, the ones I killed died quickly’

‘People have bad taste, the fact that they couldn’t wait out my little concert is their own fault’

‘And you hanging their bodies from the moonlight sword by guitar strings was their fault too?’

‘heh heh  sorta...and by the way Eirien, we know you’re there!' ''' '''

Falling from the celing, and surrounding the toilet Thwark and Eirien crawled out of, 20 drymen pulled out their swords and pointed them at their necks. Eirien surrendered immediatly but Thwark attempted to fight back before being punched by one of the Drymen his teeth being knocked out by the impact.

Meanwhile Tatsumaki watched on from the other room as Eirien was marched away by the Drymen, Esu and Flameng while Thwark was dragged away. With no one in the room that he could see, Tatsumaki walked in, moving over to where Esu used to be sitting, where he had left one of his arrows. around the size of his arm and as heavy as a tree branch, Tatsumaki put it in his suit. Unfortunatley while he was analysing the arrow he failed to notice Krokodil (who had been alerted by the noise caused by Esu and Flameng capturing Eirien and Thwark) enter the room. Using the element of surprise, Krokodil readied one of his sleep-fast syringes and stabbed Tatsumaki in the neck, putting him to sleep instantly.

Kaano (now the only one not captured) found his way out of the crab room and onto a balcony overlooking the vast expanse of the rest of the Moonlight temple. His eyes were immedaiatly alerted to a colosseum sized hole in the temple with the bottom shrouded by shadow and the rows of the hole filled with hundreds of Drymen. Suddenly a small man appeared through the door on the other side of the balcony and beckoned him to come into the room. Ignoring his inner Eirien (which was telling him to ‘leg it’) Kaano entered the room to find Tatsumaki, Eirien and Thwark suspended from the ceiling with Krokodil, Esu, Flameng, an unknown girl and dozens of Dry men standing around them. The girl introduced herself as a reprsentative of Pox industries, and explains the town’s current situation as the plot for a ‘reality cauldron show’ in which people all around the world could pay to see through the eyes of one of Pox’s modified Beholders and witness the systematic and brutal destruction of the town of sinkhole. Pox had hired three members of the Carnival to kill those who found out about the show, and an Inkaman shaman to create the Drymen to act as the show’s ‘villains’ dragging unsuspecting people down into the hole to be taken to the temple, their deaths filmed and then the dead bodies transported to the shaman for a certain ‘ceremony’ that even the Pox representative doesn’t know the full details of.

Eirien attempted to escape, but Kaano was curious as to what they wanted with him and the crew and told Eirien to stop and wait a second. Causing Esu to stab Eirien in the chest, which then of course caused her to scream in pain awaking the previously unconcious Tatsumaki, who after getting his bearings begins to silently undo the knot of the rope that he was hung from. Krokodil and Esu introduced themselves, (with Krokodil being interrupted several times by Thwark throwing up blood on him) and upon finishing this introduction Krokodil snapped his fingers and three holes opened up underneath Eirien, Thwark and Tatsumaki just as their ropes gave way. Eirien wasn’t fast enough and simply fell down the hole, but Tatsumaki and Thwark managed to use their acrobatics to dodge the hole. Thwark was then quickly smashed in the face with Flameng’s guitar, knocking him into the hole anyway. Tatsumaki realising that he and Kaano were hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, quickly threw down a blinding barrage thinking it would blind everyone there. He then just narrowly dodged one of Esu’s arrows, realising that Esu’s helmet prohibits any sight, meaning he only relies on sound, meaning the blinding barrage was useless. With the door behind them locked and the room surrounded by Drymen, Tatsumaki and Kaano weighed their choices and decided to jump down the hole.

They then immediately regretted this decision as they find themselves in the very centre of the collesuem sized hole that Kaano saw from the balcony, with over a thousand Drymen watching their every move. In the centre of the room dressed in an old Inkaman sacrifical robe and armed with a dark ancient Inkaman dagger was an Inkaman shaman, controlling a small dark hole in the ground of the room. Upon noticing the Party the shaman introduced himself and asked if they had any questions. From his answers the party realised that after their deaths were filmed by the beholders, the dead bodies of the locals were given to the shaman who used the Dry Dagger to turn them into his personal slaves, and that the reason that the darkness had been put over the valley was because the Drymen die in direct sunlight. When asked about what his plans were, Lawk walked in on the scene identifying him as the shaman’s true compatriot. Lawk wanted for the entirety of Wastelandia to be covered in darkness so all of the non-awks in the country could be turned into the slaves of the Awks, he had purposely tricked Farmawk into creating a strain of mushroom that would force depression and sluggish behaviour in other races and feeding them to the town of Sinkhole so that none of them would attempt communication or be optimistic enough to truly find their way out of the valley. The shaman would complete the task of extending the darkness by becoming the living host of the demon of the darkness Oscuridad, and assuming his physical form. He congratulated the party on being smart enough to witness this ceremony, before stabbing the Dry dagger into the darkness awakening all of the Drymen and causing the small black hole to turn into a burning flame of shadow.

However before he could step into the flame, the shaman was hit in the chest by one of Esu’s arrows, knocking him to the floor. Esu, Krokodil and Flameng then revealed that they were leading the shaman on this whole time, and that the dark demon wouldn’t be invincible if an old Inkaman like him were to be summoned as the living host, and that they had instead captured the small girl that Eirien had let get captured instead. Lawk attempted to attack The Carnival members but was quickly torn apart by the Drymen that they came with. Krokodil, his ego had become his greatest weakness bragged about how perfect the plan was and how he managed to fool everyone, the Pox representative, the shaman and even the person who planned the darkness attack, Lawk. During this time the party recognised that Wild Eyes and his crew were on the other side of the colleseum hole, having accquired a crab and motioning to the party to get the girl out of here. Tatsumaki snuck up behind Krokodil and stabbed him in the back, grabbing the gilr and running towards the crab. Esua and Flameng attempted to stop the escape, but were subdued by Kaano’s fireballs, with the latter's magical cowboy hat being knocked off revealing the true personality of Flameng, a poor scared cow herder with delusions of grandeur who one day found a magical hat while tending his farm. Utilising his confusion, Eirien convinced Flameng to run away with them. Esu and Krokodil attempted chase but then noticed that during their speech, the shaman had been crawling his bleeding body over to the black flame, Esu shot three more arrows into the shaman’s body but it was too late, the fire spread to his body setting him alight and summoning the demon.

As the party frantically drove away on the crab, they looked back to see Esu and Krokodil running away on their own crab as a gigantic shadow emerged from the temple. Pulling the sword out from the temple, and beginning to chase the party along with thousands of Drymen, the party knew this was far from over.