RP:Bait

Part of the Venturil's Bane Arc

Synopsis: The Burrower threatens Trist'oth. Not content to sit idly by, Gevurah, the First Daughter of the First House D'Artes, sets into the Underdark with a bugbear slave, her giant spider mount, Halbyrn, the blessing of her true god, and the religious paraphernalia of her false idol. With no hope of defeating such a powerful creature, the priestess can only strive to redirect its gluttony, to create an appetite for a different type of flesh. In a wide cavern of the Underdark, a fair distance away from her immoral city, she sets her clandestine mission, hidden even from her own Patron, into motion. She prepares the bait: an undead bugbear bound by webs and consumed by a carnivorous worm, a proxy for its terrorizing doppelganger. The Burrower takes the bait, and from henceforth eschews living flesh for that of the undead.

Trist'oth

Gevurah kneels beside a small, crude hole carved into the stone floor of her private chambers. The pit serves as a clandestine storehouse for paraphernalia she would rather not have discovered by the priests – or any member – of House D’Artes. The contents of the room around her contrast with those housed within the pit. Mounted on a pedestal behind the priestess sits a faerie fire-lined effigy of Vakmatharas, the idol she worships before the approving gaze of her Patron; and within the hole lurks an obsidian statuette of the Spider Goddess, half drow and half spider, the idol she worships behind the ignorant gaze of her Patron. Her beating heart serves as the singular proof that Patron Tiphareth remains unaware of Gevurah’s duplicitous worship. Should he ever find out, that singular proof would cease. She takes a deep breath to steady her jittery nerves. Rarely does Gevurah expose the pit which would condemn her, but today she will undertake a task so difficult and dangerous that she knows the Spider Goddess would demand to be worshipped directly, without the obstructive mask of the mock idol, Vakmatharas. Gevurah prays for the Spider Goddess’s unholy blessing today, and asks for the right to wield certain spells she may need to call upon during her mission. When she has finished, she smears gray mud over the hole and whispers an incantation. The mud hardens to stone and the smooth floor is replaced. No eyes seeing the infrared or light spectrum would detect her tampering, and after several minutes the floor is devoid of traces of magic.

She dons the drow uniform, a dark piwafwi and neck purse, and grabs a small Vakmatahras skull idol from a table near the door. The idol is about the size of two fists, hollow, and made of a thin slate. It is perforated with tiny holes in several places. She descends from the heights of the noble quarters towards the slave pen and glances towards Andon d'Chath, Trist’oth’s infrared clock tower. A sliver of pale light rings the base of the tower; it is early morning and most drow are sound asleep. At the pen she calls “Come!” Whichever slave arrives first will suffice. A particularly hideous bugbear reaches the priestess more eagerly than the rest. He must be new here. She leads the slave to the stables where she fetches her giant spider mount, Halbryn. The mount predates Gevurah’s discovery of the Spider Goddess. She came upon this creature during the time when she faithfully worshipped the God of Death as instructed by her father, Keter. Perhaps it was a dark omen – the right kind of omen. She strokes the spider’s hairy back once, not allowing herself anymore tenderness for an animal, even one so sacred to her goddess. Daring to venture into the Underdark alone is a foolhardy mission under most circumstances, but as of late a single voracious predator has scared away those beasts on the food chain between itself and Gevurah. The Underdark has grown quiet with fear. So long as Gevurah herself remains quiet, she may just survive this foray into the Underdark, the new lair of The Burrower.

She leads Halbryn and bugbear to the western wall of the Trist’oth cavern. Two gargoyles stand sentry near the mouth of the wide tunnel. Just beyond the watchful stare of the gargoyles, the priestess takes a moment to prepare the party’s stealth. To move undetected they must mind their footfalls and heat signatures. The former she can trust herself and her spider to carry out to perfection. The latter she resolves in herself with a chilling spell. She shudders fiercely as the bulk of her body heat flees her small frame. As for Halbryn, spiders are cold-blooded and adapt to ambient temperatures. And lastly there is the bugbear. Gevurah beckons him to kneel so that they are at eyelevel, and commands he open his mouth wide. She smiles with false kindness to placate the slave. Then without warning she spears her pointed arm down his large throat and retrieves his vocal chords in one fluid, practiced motion. The bugbear grasps at his throat and falls to the side, howling with all breath and no vibrato.

Then Gevurah kills him – and with a ceremonial Vakmatharas dagger, no less. However, the prayer she chants in offering this death has been modified with ambiguous language which makes Vakmatharas a mock idol for the Spider Goddess, the true recipient of this death. It may have been a more practical choice to rip out his larynx after slaying him, but she is still a young enough drow to choose the impractical for the sake of fun. The heat slowly bleeds from the slave’s corpse. This transition from warm to cold is the only window of opportunity that Gevurah has to animate the corpse into a lesser undead creature.

The Underdark

Halbryn carries Gevurah and the undead (and still unconscious) bugbear through the Underdark’s twisting tunnels. Gevurah must ensure to place enough distance between herself and Trist’oth to keep the city safe from any unintended consequences of her secret mission. Several hours out, she finds a deserted passageway large enough for The Burrower to hunt and dismounts behind the cover of a rocky outcropping. She kneels beside the body of the bugbear and whispers into existence web bindings to restrain the creature should he wake. Halbryn patrols the tunnel for any movement, climbing over vertical walls and the ceiling as easily as the floor.

Gevurah wastes no time in starting the ritual. If she is lucky, the spell will be completed within 12 minutes, but the difficulty of the spell could force her to remain vulnerable for far longer. She slips on a thick leather glove and shatters the hollow Vakmatharas skull. From within the fragments of slate she carefully lifts a carnivorous worm with her gloved hand and lines it in faerie-fire. She places it on the bugbear’s face, but it does not feast. The worm prefers the flesh of the living. Gevurah then retrieves from her neck purse a small black candle, the most dangerous reagent in her mission. Flame attracts more than moths – but, yes, it also attracts Underdark moths which are carnivorous (duh.) She lights the candle magically, wincing against the bright light. Once her eyes have adjusted, she unspools thick giant spider silk and begins chanting to The Spider Goddess. Whispers drown out vowels and consonants bounce off the tip of her tongue and her teeth.

She asks the Spider Goddess to guide this worm and its massive doppelganger, The Burrower, to appreciate an undead palate. She cannot hope to slay The Burrower, but killing the undead worm is not her goal. She seeks only to protect Trist’oth, and must convince the Spider Goddess to do the same. But the Spider Goddess is reluctant to aid a race that after millenniums of her favor has turned its back on her. The priestess prays on, asking despite her kin’s shortcomings, and promising to convert the drow back to the true path. As she chants, she weaves the spider silk between her fingers into an ornate web, one she has doubtlessly practiced countless times. Eight minutes pass and the worm still does not feast.

Halbryn clicks a low warning that something moves a few kilometers down the tunnel. A younger priestess would panic and lose her concentration, but Gevurah remains calm and focused. Twelve minutes pass, and the worm still does not eat. Gevurah does not surrender. Instead, she improvises amendments to her prayer in pursuit of the right phrasing to please the Spider Goddess. Because she was not taught the ways of the Spider Goddess by members of her order, Gevurah has had to experiment and invent her own tenets and rituals. Her worship would be foreign to the matrons who still worship the Spider Goddess today. Gevurah has not dared approach them for fear that her visit would become known to Patron Tiphareth. And thus this rogue priestess struggles to find a way to convince her goddess to grant her this gift, but she does not despair. Halbryn clicks again; the threat grows closer. Gevurah still does not waiver. Her steadfast faith in the face of danger is rewarded at last and the worm begins to eat the bugbear’s lip – just as a bolt of energy careens through the tunnel and extinguishes Gevurah’s flame. Quickly, she spins her web over the bugbear’s mouth, trapping the worm beneath. A tongue click calls Halbyrn back, and the spider crawls along the wall sideways. Gevurah grabs the hair at Halbyrn’s back and swings herself up to sit upon its thorax, perpendicular to the pull of gravity. They flee along the wall and ceiling, spiraling and weaving through stalagmites and stalactites alike to avoid anymore bolts of magical energy. Gevurah casts a glance over her shoulder and just barely makes out one shadowy gnome, though she knows they never travel alone.

The caverns and tunnels narrow and open of their own accord. This is not the woods with near infinite paths to choose from. Stone whittles down her escape routes to but a few. She is less familiar with this part of the Underdark and takes a right which forces her to take yet another right and another until she circles back to an earlier passageway closer to her predators than she was before! Cavernous jug handles are proof that in the Underdark the very architecture wants to kill you too. But she must have pleased her goddess, because just as she rejoins the tunnel, the gnomes’ faces go from predatory to prey-like, and they run faster, and right past her. The gnomes are suddenly less worried about their dinner plate and more worried about staying off something else’s. Behind them a couple kilometers away, Gevurah sees massive shadows with no heat signature ripple and glide past the mouth of her tunnel, towards where she left the bugbear. The Burrower has taken the bait – hopefully her spell works and from this point forward it will crave only undead meat. Gevurah can only hope, for she still needs to flee back home to safety.