Iron Crisis Pt3 IC

[Amnestic]

It will be a number of days, you expect, before Seniyad's bird returns, though it seems entirely confident in its ability to carry Caelyn's message.

With a new goal of investigating the sewers, you gather your things and head out - sans Vala, who has yet to return. En route, you're headed off by a courier from the Flaming Fist carrying (on a horse-drawn cart) the items recovered from the shipwreck. It would seem that Scar was true to his word, and even prioritised recovering what you had listed over an "everyone is equal" approach. Though they have not been cleaned and have a distinctly ocean pungency to them, that which can survive water and salt damage has done so, and that which could not...has not. Cleaning your items was not on the list of priorities for the Fist, it seems, though a judicious application of the relevant magic could accomplish such a feat.

The smell of the sea might be preferable to what you face shortly though. It's not hard to find an entrance to the sewers in the city - such things are unguarded and apparently freely accessible, for what person would willingly subject themselves to descending into the belly of the city?

The grate is easily opened, the metal ladder slick with accumulated rainscum. It's a short descent, perhaps fifteen feet in all, before your feet touch 'solid' ground. The lighting situation is dire down here, with the occasional surface grate granting a few short shafts of light, not helped any by the thoroughly overcast skies above. Those who lack darkvision will require additional lighting in order to find their way, lest they be rendered blind by darkness for the majority of your travel.

Underfoot is solid stone, though it's as slick as the ladder with wet grime that threatens to send your feet skirting out from underneath you should you step too hard or fast. The smell is toxic - a noxious combination of seawater, humanoid excretions, and what you can only hope is rotting food waste and not something worse. From where you've entered, the sewer is a small pathway, perhaps wide enough for two people to stand abreast at their limit. The footway is slanted on both sides down towards the centre, leading into a depressed trough through which the sewer 'water' flows. Unpleasant to smell, unpleasant to look at, and even unpleasant to hear. Descending beneath the surface has dulled much of the hustle and bustle of the city and it has instead been replaced with the ever present sounds of the sewer flow, the lapping of water against detritus caught along in its flow, the plop, plop, plop of things dropping beneath the surface, and the trickle of the various pipes that feed into the central sewerline. Though only a mere fifteen feet beneath the surface, it is a complete other side of the city, and not a particularly pleasant one.

Either direction you could choose appears basically identical, and so lacking any further guidance you arbitrarily pick right and begin making your way along. Occasionally the pathway widens into a more open chamber with a well in the centre and branches off into different directions, but any choice you make is entirely guideless, and so dwelling on them is an exercise in little more than habitual discourse for the sake of hearing your own voices - though that might be tempting given the only other sounds you hear are that of the sewer or the skitter rats upon rats upon rats.

Down one route you note the channel widening, and after some time following it, a light glimmers further ahead, emerging from a tunnel to the left that appears broken in, rather than deliberately made by human hands. The light flickers, indicating it's made by a fire, and though difficult to make out it does sound like chittering words are being exchanged.

Beyond the tunnel, the path of the sewer line looks partially blocked by thick metal bears - a humanoid could squeeze through them with some effort, though anything larger would be blocked in.

Spoiler: OOC

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Time to decide on your approach and any preparations you wish to make in case a fight breaks out.