#3 - Adrift and Adjucated

Unquestionably resourceful, the PCs freed themselves from their bonds in relatively short order. Perhaps in part due to the sloppy work of their captors, they were not watched over, and plenty of their gear was still with them (though not weapons). Still, they'd been spared from death—why? Did their captors have plans for them, or were they mere curiosities? Wild cards?

In one corner of the hold, they saw a smaller cage housed a disheveled young human in fine but shredded clothing. He seemed in a constant trance, muttering to himself. Some words they could make out:

While the Kingly Eye glares

And the Sentinel hides

Theorizing that these were referring to some of Eberron's moons, Cyzicus speculated that the man might be a lycanthrope in human form.

Meanwhile, the drow, Xoma, clung to the outside of the airship a mere fifteen feet from a porthole. One he could perhaps squeeze through if he could reach and open it. Secured by rope to the fin-like protrusion he'd first latched onto, the black-skinned stowaway attempted to climb to the window....

The PCs idled for a time, speaking only a little, assessing their confinement and hoping to recover enough strength for another, and surely inevitable fight. Halfway through their rest, three men came down one of the two flights of stairs: two scarred warriors, a human and a dwarf, and a strange, bald-headed man in disturbing, scabrous armor. His attitude was smug and he spoke only a few vague words to the PCs before ordering his men to remove the gnome Wenrick from his cage.

One of many symbols of the Dragon Below.

Indignant, Wenrick looked the warriors up and down then spoke to the PCs quickly—first in the Elven tongue (which none of them understood) then the Goblin (which some could), hoping his captors wouldn't understand. "They serve the Dragon Below," he said with disgust.

The Dragon Below. The name given to the mythic dragon Khyber, and thereby the entire underworld beneath Eberron. Followers of the Dragon Below run the spectrum from crazed hermits who worship lone monsters from the depths to organized cults who serve any of a number of powerful fiends. But it's generally accepted that all are malevolent, willing to kill or destroy all who walk under the sun.

"They must not get emperor's key!" Wenrick hissed as the cultists dragged him away. They shook him to silence him, but still he spoke in Goblin: "If  you save my people, the Trust will reward you!"

Then he was gone.

A displacer beast, as depicted in 2nd Edition.

Angry and determined to escape, the PCs finished their rest and then strategized. In the end it came down to brute strength: Magnus, the Seren barbarian, merely wrenched open the locked iron door. Cyzicus, in turn, managed to break open the other captors' cage to free them. Many of the gnomes were still unconscious from the poisonous fumes, but the trio of humans and the goblin Dursha were conscious.

Xoma finally succeeded in reaching the porthole, even succeeding in cracking the glass, but it was Cyzicus who discovered the drow and helped him inside. The defiant heroes of the Bookmark Inn were now reunited. And the drow still had his weapons. Xoma also confirmed for them that they were indeed in the hold of an airship, flying northward alongside the Seawall Mountains.

In another couple of cages, the PCs discovered that a pair of large black cats had been chained inside. Thing, six-legged, sleek, and sporting a pair of thorny tentacles, these were displacer beasts—deadly, fey predators with illusionary powers of misdirection. These two merely looked quietly back at them, issuing only low growls when they ventured close to the bars.

While the PCs debated their next move—and perhaps because of the noise they'd made breaking out of their cages—one of the doors at the top of the stairs opened. Readying for the inevitable fight, the PCs moved into position. Halbazar used a spell to grease the bottom of one flight of the steps, just in time for a pair of scarred human soldiers to come down...one immediately slipped, and the warriors of the party fell upon them. From the other flight of stairs came a dwarf and a pair of hideous, gibbering, double-mouthed monsters with four arms, pallid gray skin, and fearless motion. Aberrations on the airship!

A face only a dolgrim mother could love.

The ranger Cyzicus knew them by name, though most had never heard of such things. They were dolgrims, mutants of the Dragon Below, aberrations allegedly fashioned from warped goblin flesh. With spells, stolen weapons, and even a fire-infused mace (courtesy of Cypher's artifice), the enemies were all eventually slain—but not before Cyzicus fell to one of the dolgrim's morningstars. The cleric Doongul intervened, stabilizing the shifter with a silent prayer.

The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut, and the PCs saw that Wenrick had been tossed down the stairs toward them, relinquished from the captors' immediate custody. The aging gnome had clearly been beaten, and now clutched at his face, blood leaking between his fingers. He was alive, but anguished. And his tongue had been torn out.