Chapter Three

## **Shafted**

**Latrardag 9th of Biriskjur 1770**

After the ground stopped shaking and the dust subsided following the cave in in Shaft H, our five plucky adventurers found themselves trapped, with a seemingly endless hallway, carved from white stone extending before them.

The party walked for hours in their search of an exit and as they walked, they each began to hear sounds that were both indistinct, yet familiar.

Booker Longsparkle heard halfling folk music and the telling of tall tales, the traditional sounds of revelry of a reservation long tent, all the while underlied by the constant rhythmic whirring and steady tick-tick-ticking of a clock in motion.

Brandyr Greybeard heard the overtone chanting of songs of prayer, but this comforting sound was accompanied by the anguished crying of a child. Faintly at first but growing louder and louder until it all but drowned out the prayers entirely.

Nixe-Nona Airendil heard the soft, strained muttering of a man speaking in Elvish, so quiet he couldn’t quite make out what was being said and as he strained to listen, the voice was drowned out by the growing howls of the cold winds of the wildlands.

Ryan Fitzpatrick heard the familiar sounds of a soiree. The clinking of glasses, toasts being raised and people asking for drinks served “on the rocks”. “On the rocks” came a man’s voice, somewhere amidst the partygoers “we should’ve dashed his head on the rocks”.

and Plymouth Argyle heard merely the scratching of quill on parchment and faint crackling of wood on the fire, and with it enjoyed the sense of warmth and comfort that came when he was sitting in his office writing about other races, from a position of safety and privilege.

The hypnotic sounds faded and the world came back to them. The group felt the pains of hunger and thirst, as if they hadn’t eaten or drank in hours and in front of them, they saw a doorway.

Through the doorway was a circular room with four concave portholes in the walls and small wooden crate in the centre. As they peered through the windows, they looked down upon foreign and strange locales; a small island with a tower that served as some kind of monastery, an enormous walled city swarmed by shambling figures, an impossibly tall tower in the shape of a whale’s tale, and a small town-square with a statue of a Warforged soldier at its centre.

As they opened to the box and found nothing but grain, they heard a snippet of a conversation between a man and woman.

*“How did they get inside?”* asked the man in an accent thick with rural roots.

To which, the woman replied *“We’re still trying to work that out. Some sort of malfunction in the observation levels. The defence measures have activated too.”*

*“Well, deactivate them. We gain nothing by killing wayward travellers”*

*“We’re working on it. Does it really matter though? They’re all going to die anyway...”*

And with that, the voices faded away until the party heard no more.

A locked door led the way to the next room, but Booker displayed new talents in making short work of the lock with his thieves’ tools. The door was noisier than Brandyr accounted for however and in opening it, he alerted the guardians within to their presence. All but Nixe were caught unprepared for the assault of four bronze constructs that were climbing down from their plinths inside the room.

The party were peppered with arrows, javelins and fists as they were cornered within the narrow confines of the corridor. Brandyr threw down his crossbow and attempted to reason with the creatures, to no avail. Persevering through the initial assault, the team was spurred on by encouraging words from Plymouth and eventually, through dagger, spear and arrow, vanquished the last of the Modrons, which crumbled to dust before them.

Inside the cubic room was what appeared to be a museum of assorted items on display. Of the ten plinths, four now stood empty and the others housed;

* A leather bullwhip.
* A fragile looking parchment written in a language that no one in the party recognised.
* A large, slightly chipped ornate vase that depicted the fall of a civilisation. On closer inspection, Plymouth found what appeared to be The Agolith amongst the artwork.
* A tapestry hanging vertically from a halberd. The tapestry depicting a battle between light and dark. From a distance it is a brilliant white at the top and pitch black at the bottom.
* A snow globe that does not need to be shaken, housing a model of an elven village.
* Two linked silver rings.

The party, utilising Booker’s bag of holding, made short work of the exhibit and took everything but the large vase and the halberd. As they did, the voices returned.

*“I thought I told you to deactivate them!”* chided the man.

*“We’re trying”* replied the woman *“but we’re having trouble with localised temporal and spatial distortions. Something’s definitely broken. They’re touching the exhibits. Should we stop them?”*

*“No. Just get ‘em gone. We can take the items back later. Maybe they can even use them to help.”*

*“Unlikely. They’ve not exactly lived up to their end of the bargain so far...”*

Trapped inside a room that appeared to be without exit, Brandyr put to use the Stonecunning that comes from being the son of a sculptor and managed to locate a metal hatch in the floor at the centre of the room. Through the hatch the party gained access to some sort of service hatch, which led to a triangular room in which sat the remainder of the artefact that they recovered from the mine.

Booker placed the item and lined it up correctly, and Brandyr cast a mending spell upon it. Before long the stone was knitting itself back together with a gleam of white light emanating from the crack as it healed. The light grew until the party could see no more and as their vision returned, they found themselves looking through another portal.

Through the window, the party saw a chubby-cheeked halfling with sandy blonde hair and muttonchops. He was looking pensively at a war table and said *“You’re right, as always, my love. We can’t spare any more time.”*

*“Of course I am”* comes the reply and from somewhere beside the window, a blue-skinned elven woman emerged and walked slowly over to the war table. *“They’ve failed to prepare and now we must do what is necessary”.* With that, she reached over and toppled one of the abstract figures.

As the Halfling and Elf stared into one another’s eyes, the party began to speak, shouting out questions and introductions. The Halfling’s eyes darted to where they were standing; his eyes pleading. The woman slowly turns, but doesn’t appear to see whatever he is seeing. With that the light flashed up once again and the image in front of the party was replaced with nothing but a rough stone wall.

With that, they found themselves back in Shaft H. Approximately thirty feet in length, at one end a pile of rubble, under which lies the crushed debris of the wooden barrels and planks that made up the barricade. At the other side the shaft reaches a dead end, out of which juts the restored miniature monolith.

Mine foreman, Cleft Shallowide, and his men soon managed to break down the rubble and gain access to Shaft H. He apologises for the inconvenience of being stuck there for *“all day and most of the night”* and offers them a bag of assorted gemstones that he has discovered whilst mining. Plymouth and Brandyr however, asked him instead to donate the stones to the families of the miners that had been injured in the shaft. Thankful, Cleft agreed and also offered to pay for their meals and bedding for the night at the local inn, where the party returned to rest until morning.

Next: Chapter Four. The Times they are a-Changeling