📰 A Friend in Need

Patience silently opens the door. There's a short corridor followed by another door, beyond which is a corridor leading north-south.

To the south is the kind of trash-filled room that happens in a shared living space where everybody claims it's not their turn for chores. Bent weapons, torn sacks, broken crossbows, and empty crates all wait in vain for the day they'll be taken to the dump. Steps lead down to the north. The sleeping goblin's guard room is open and it seems oblivious to Patience's entry.

If there is another entrance then Jodelle can't see it. Fortunately, the goblins snooze on as our heroes begin their infiltration.

With a clonk, Patience sends the goblin on a long mission to the land of oblivion. At least it's stopped snoring.

The stairs descend and then turn right.

The steps take you down a corridor and below the sewer tunnel which rains down a thin drippy curtain. It opens out into an empty sleeping area containing six tattered, straw-stuffed mattresses, but nothing of value.

There's a wooden door to the southeast, which the moisture has caused to soften and warp in its frame. So it's little more than a soft pulpy rotten thing now.

You hear the sound of gentle movement through the door. Someone moving. Another sound. Some muffled singing of a shanty.

Then there's a high pitched squeal - like a grown man whose panic just discovered a few more octaves that he didn't know he had.

There's the slamming.

"IT'S COMING OUT THE CRAPPER!" A panicking human voice.

Another voice - gruffer, lower, dwarven.

"Gi'o'er. What's tha chunterin' on?"

"THE CRAPPER! COMING UP THE CRAPPER! OOZEY STUFF!"

The sound of furniture scraping as it's hurriedly pushed.

"Eee, tha daft ha'porth. Table's nowt use."

"THE CRAPPER! OOZEY! NEARLY WIPED ME ARSE, IT DID! BARRICADE THE CRAPPER!"

The door is rotten enough for Jodelle to peek through the gaps.

A human man, with his trousers around his ankles, is piling up furniture in front of a door. A duergar is jamming mattresses and blankets into the gaps at the bottom and sides of the door. The hinges of the door smoke as slick grey pseudopods quest through the door's cracks.

The human is hyperventilating in panic and, unless those "oo oo ooooo" sounds are code, is making no sense at all. The duergar is much more composed, but even he seems to be developing a sense of urgency about the crapper monster.

"Plug gaps, Gav. It's comin' through gaps.

Gav! Get grip!

If thee don't want to be eaten by bog monster, ah'm gonna need thee to get grip on thi'sen."

Gav slams his hand onto one of the grey snake-like pseudopods coming through a knothole, before recoiling with a scream, clutching his smoking hand.

"BURNS! IT BURNS, KRENTZ! IT RUDDY BURNS! IT'S EATIN' ME, KRENTZ!"

Grey ooze - a horrid living slime that instantly starts to corrode metal and digest flesh. The Cellarers' & Plumbers' Guild have an ambivalent relationship with grey ooze - they hate meeting it, but it's really good at clearing stubborn blockages.

Flynnhorn remembers a tavern conversation with a guild member: "Don't try and clear it with fire or acid - that don't work, and freezing 'em does nothing neither. Magic that works on the mind is a waste of time. Smash it up with sticks, or run away."

...and running away looks like exactly the conclusion Gav and Krentz have made too. As the unfortunate pair try to wedge the toilet door, they look longingly at your door then nod.

They're going to make a break for it directly towards you.

There's not much in here other than mattresses. An experimental kick tells Vinnie that they have wooden frames.

The timber is full of knots and shakes, and isn't much better than pallet wood... but it doesn't need to be fine joinery to beat the living crap out of living crap.