Exploration

Ignoring the side tunnels (who knows what dangers or what riches lie hidden there?) you follow the fart smell and soon find yourselves in the sewers.

It's fairly dark here and smells about as horrible as you'd expect. Stone walkways flank the narrow channel in the middle, flowing with murky sewage that reflects what little light that filters down through street grates every few dozen feet. The effluent is choked with all sorts of debris: broken furniture and crockery, dead animals, wire cages, the odd wagon wheel, old fishing nets.

In amongst the junk you also see things stacked in a purposeful way: a cache of half-rotten apples here, a broken crate filled with ragged clothing there. Unexpectedly, you also find a small stash of things probably stolen from an alchemical shop: a chipped beaker, a jar of sulfur, a bag of saltpeter. It seems not just Bartoz's people move about down here.

In time you come to a set of metal rungs set in the wall. By your reckoning you'll emerge not far from the warehouse.

There's a strange scratching sound coming from the darkness further down the tunnel.

What do you do?

Fahlasi is not relishing the task of hauling up these heavy barrels of silphium, but even less if the two of them were being assailed by something in the shadows.

"I don't like that scratching sound, Alner. Let's secure the area first."

She leads the two of them toward the noise, weapons and arcane focuses drawn, leaving the silphium by the metal rungs.

When Fahlasi strikes a spark to light a torch, the scratching stops. As you investigate, a pair of beady eyes reflect the torchlight in the darkness before the stooped, hooded figure turns and scurries away. Briefly you glimpse scraggly gray fur, a rodent's nose and tail. The wererat leaves behind a piece of graffiti crudely scratched into the sewer wall.



What do you do? Do you pursue the vandal, or go back for the silphium?

Fahlasi is tempted to pursue the ratman, but she didn't want to get caught up in a skirmish. Where there was one ratman, there was usually a half dozen more not far away.

She takes another look at the beast scratched into wall and shudders. No time for that now, they had to get the silphium out of here. She returns ladder and begins the processes of loading the barrels up it.

You put the odd, somewhat unsettling encounter behind you and return to your mission. Getting the barrels up the ladder turns out to be no easy feat even with the help of the block & tackle you took from the warehouse courtyard.