19: Into the Underground

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## Summary

On the 28th day of the Hyllian Moon, Age of Second Spring, the gang awakens in the Dark and Stormy and orders an elaborate breakfast. After a hearty meal, they also check out the inn’s bulletin board, which has some furniture listings, a few wanted posters, and some ads for booths at the Midsummer Market. Of greatest import, however, is a flyer for the city theater troupe’s annual showing of Les Riz, debuting the next night.

### You've Got Mail

Per Dabo’s instructions, the party heads to the post office. After braving the line, they receive their parcels from an overworked and underpaid public servant, and notice that Lillet Hervey has recently signed off for a package from Lhoam. Luca writes to his mother, and hellbent on wasting as much time as possible, Bran (and Tira, Mujie, and Mahi) write to Stonetree Village, while the postal worker considers where she went wrong. After what must feel like an eternity to a downtrodden city employee, the party leaves with their parcels in hand.

### Mujie Goes to College

While Luca, Mahi, Bran, and Tira go to the stables to check on the donkeys and Muna, Cat and Mujie make for the School of Sorcery. Off the postal worker’s tip that Lillet was a guest lecturer there, the two hope to find her on campus. At the School’s library, the pair learn her stint has wrapped up, and Cat settles in to copy down some spells.

Luca, Mahi, Bran, and Tira make it to the School a couple of hours later, and Mujie puts them all to a plan to sneak into the lecture hall. While they don’t find Lillet or any other clues, they do see her chronurgy notes on an uncleaned blackboard. Eventually, Cat identifies the complicated notes as discussion on theory related to a spell called Tether Essence.

### Meet Peeks

Having run into a dead end at the School of Sorcery, the party decides to check out the Castle by way of the Bowery. They make it to the center of this seedy neighborhood, complete with an abandoned rail station. But before they can do much more exploring, they meet Peeks, Pombo’s trusted friend. Back in the privacy of his modest apartment, he forwards them a note from Pombo, who writes to tell them that he’s working with Fortuna to rebuild a temple over Mitro’s Arkspring. But more troublingly, he also passes on the news that the Illumined are becoming bolder now that city’s power balance is unsettled. Peeks debriefs the party on what he knows about Lillet: that she’s got a gig at the School of Sorcery, and that she’s been spotted at the underground market. Rumor has it she’s been asking around about some ancient artifacts, but she’s done a good job keeping things quiet. He also mentions she’s frequently seen with a young wood elf girl, who the party knows to be Tai. They get to talking about Bevin and Bevan, whom Peeks also knows, as fellow Smuggler’s Guild members. He gives them some sage advice—don’t trust them—and advises against seeking out any additional trouble. Finally, he says he hasn’t seen their Meranhi traveler, but the party could probably find him at the Midsummer Ball in a few nights.

### Queen of the Sewer

Peeks then offers to show the party around in the sewers, to give them a taste (and smell) of the black market’s swap floor before the real festivities begin. They descend, using an entrance near the rail station they’d stumbled upon earlier. The smell of sewage thick and heavy in the air, they make their way through some side tunnels and get a peek at the trade floor from afar. There’s not much going on, mostly merchants setting up and preparing. But on the way back, Peeks somehow manages to get a little turned around, despite claiming to know the sewers like the back of his hand. To top it off, Cat hears a mysterious, ominous voice calling to him from deeper down the tunnels, and when Mujie flips Mitro’s coin, dread washes over him despite not hearing the voice himself.

As the party is led back to the correct passageway, they run into something even more troubling—a group of wererats eating some strange, blackish purple substance. They put up quite the fight against the party, being immune to conventional attacks and weaponry, but eventually, they dispatch all but two. Jonn, who flees back into the maze of the sewers, and Penryn, who the party subdues to question.

Penryn reveals that the sewer wererats are beholden to a mysterious, terrifying “Rat Queen”, whose lair lies in the southwest tunnels near the castle. He says she forces them to bring her children to eat, and in a moment of clarity from the influence of the wererat curse, he begs that the party kill him. Bran wastes no time in putting him out of his misery.

### Light Reading

Sufficiently spooked for the afternoon, Peeks hurries them back up to the Bowery, where they return to his apartment to wash away the stench. While the party rests for the afternoon, they open their parcels from the post office. One is from Keller, telling Mujie that they’ve become something of an urban legend in Lhoam. She’s also made friends with Ben, the elf artificer at the Ark workshop on the westside, who sends along an Ark Camera for the gang. They promptly put it to good use by taking selfies to mail to Keller and Pino.

The other package, from Dabo, contains a book called Balaayt: A Modern History, which covers events from millennia ago. The book spans from a time period called the Age of Divinity to one called the Age of Sovereigns, seemingly some 1500 years ago. They learn some of the mythos surrounding Balaayt’s forgotten deities, and later get as far as an introduction to the First Ark War at the end of the Age of Unity, during which six Champions from across the realm underwent trials to become Ark Chosen.

## Quotes

### *A FRIEND OF MY FRENEMY IS MY...?:*

> “Pombo wasn’t kidding when he said you guys stick out like a sore thumb. Welcome to K’nafay.”
>
>

*—Peeks*

### *AGED LIKE A FINE EGG:*

> “Anyone can waltz down here if they feel like, but full-time undergrounders are *not* keen on strangers, and neither is the Guild. Plus, place is fucking crawling with rats the size of me. Not to mention it's a total maze.”
>
>

> “Half the reason I smoke is so I can’t taste the shit in the air.”
>
>

> “We’re under the Civic Quarter now. Took you the scenic route so we didn’t run into anybody. Sorry about the smell, but, the fewer questions, the better. Just ahead is the swap floor, where all the, uh, magic happens. Auctions, trades, all that.”
>
>

> “Like I was saying earlier, some people—and, uh, some other things—live down here full-time. That tunnel leads to an encampment of, I don’t know, outcasts, we’ll call them.”
>
>

*—Peeks, on the sewers*

### *WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN:*

> “Eton. Come, Eton. Closer."
>
>

*—unknown voice in the sewers*