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November 7, 2006

The Lurking Fihyr

Roywyn's Journal

Kythorn 9, Waterdeep

I listened for rumors as I mingled with some of the patrons of the 3 Pearls Festhall. Nothing I heard was terribly useful or even new— unless you count the one about the city guard having hired adventurers to eliminate whatever was causing the disappearances. I also learned that this festhall is where many “famous” bards supposedly got their start. I wanted to put that to the test myself, but I wasn’t sure I could get Pratt to stop fretting and acting nervous. I did get permission from the proprietor of the festhall to sing a few songs, and Seren agreed to keep the fruit bat occupied while I did so.

The crowd seemed to like two of the songs I performed— the two that were more lament than cheerful— they threw about 40 coins at me. Flin must have seen that, as he ran up to where I’d just performed and did some unusual dancing (unusual in part because no one was playing any particular music at the time!) and I saw some coins flung his direction as well.

Now, all of this took place in the span of a few minutes, an hour at most. When I got back to the table that Soveliss had kept for us, I noticed my bat was sulking a bit, and his fur appeared to have some unusual tint to it. I am not sure if the tint was related to the sulking, as Seren didn’t mention anything about it. I have a cousin whose familiar was always changing colors— maybe it’s normal. The sulking is barely a step up from his previous nervousness though.

We eventually decided it would be best to turn in, so we headed back to the Dripping Dagger and to our rooms.

The night was blissfully uneventful. After breakfast, we gathered a few things from the markets (I bought as many scrolls as I could afford), and we were about to head to the sewers when it occurred to me that we could do our job much better if we had a map. A quick detour to visit the Watch provided us with a note, which we, in turn, took to the guild that maintains the sewers, and they were very cooperative, providing us with the most up-to-date map they had. Map in hand, we continued on to the sewers, and once inside, started to make our way to the octagon room where we had found the four humans chained.

As we wended our way through the tunnels, Seren glowing and leading the way, and I marking the walls with chalk, we came upon a six-legged rat-like creature. I had seen one of these “osquips” as a wizard’s familiar once, and assumed it was friendly— I attempted to talk to it while Flin (luckily) did not hit it with an arrow. It did not respond to me, but turned its back on us and scurried away. We followed it right to the octagon room and into a tunnel (all of us that is, except for Soveliss, who took much longer to navigate the small tunnels). We saw the creature scurry into an even smaller tunnel, and went to see where it had gone— but once we got to its nest (for that must have been all a 2’ wide tunnel could be!), we could see the osquip’s eyes glowing in the light shed by Seren, and a warning hiss— followed by similar sounds from small openings all around us! We took that opportunity to leave it, and its many cousins, alone.

Returning back to the octagonal area, we met up with Soveliss. Before we could decide on a direction to go, this abomination— all eyes and teeth and tentacles coming out of what looked like a pulsing brain— appeared from out of a side tunnel. Worse, it was followed by an identical creature, and both were determined to harm us! We all got into positions to attack them, and were doing so, when Seren and Flin dropped their weapons and ran out of the room! I was able to help Soveliss defeat one before I too had the urge to flee, and found myself running (in terror) into Flin moments later. Fortunately, Soveliss seemed immune to the creatures’ (what Seren calls “fihyrs”) fear attacks and was able to slay the second one. We are all back in the octagonal room, and after we catch our collective breath, will attempt to check the tunnel from which the fihyrs emerged.

Posted by Kristin at 23:58 | Roywyn’s Journal