Before the night is out, the PCs decide to teleport a scouting group to the mines beneath the Hud Horrn and scope out the situation there with the Blooded Lash occupants. They find that the place is relatively empty, so Mudgol uses a clairvoyance to check the walled town above. Unfortunately, it's a little too dark to make out exact details, but there are easily several dozen guards including trolls, bugbears and goblins, not to mention the hippogryph aerial vanguards. Back in Floivin Keep, the brothers Ox and Badger head to the Seven Floods Inn with Lord Ballyhoo, since it has now once again opens its doors to the public after the 'King is Kind' scare. They are let in with some suspicion by Brand the server, and the bard decides to perform some tunes, while Ox tries his hand at dancing and Badger buys whatever expensive booze the Inn still stocks (the nobility purchased most of its during the epidemic).
The scouting party returns to the Floivin Penitentiary, from which they are currently operating in the Keep. Ox, Badger and Ballyhoo retire to their the minstrel's nearly permanent rooms at the Inn.
Verne, Verget the 5th, 838 ID
After getting breakfast at the Seven Floods, the PCs pay a brief visit to the Cathedral of Blades, Ballyhoo wanting to 'thank' Bishop Conniff for curing him during the outbreak. While there, Badger tries his hand at a Bally-ism and cries wolf about some damage that he'd very much like a female acolyte to 'attend to', but he is caught in the act by Conniff, who casts a hold person on the archer and then once again exiles them from the church. They meet with the rest of the PCs at the penitentiary and determine that it's time to take on the Blooded Lash and their Score affiliates before they can make further progress on their primary mission to retrieve the Axe of Dwarven Lords. Once more, teleportation is used to transport the party in its entirety to the mines beneath Hud Horrn, and then the PCs try and recall what lore they can of the place. There is supposedly a hidden treasure of a Mad Myko somewhere in the tunnels, but none of the current party remembers precisely how to traverse the underground passage from the Hud Horrn towards the Haunted Horrn...
They discover a trapped, rubble strewn passage in which Mudgol's familiar the Professor is nearly killed, and eventually an almost infinite, 5-hour long side trek which takes them out of the mines to the west slopes of the Vernal Wall, where they can see such regions as the Rat Strand, Fox Knolls and Castle Roy off in the distance. Through his spyglass, Baro spies a group of refugees rowing and poling down the Midge Creek towards the independent dwarven stronghold, and he thinks he recognizes the craft as belonging to the village of Tarndim. The PCs decide to turn around and head all the way back, and on the way encounter a sniveling goblin named Shnoggo, who is secreting a stash of fat rats he likes to take for meals in the area. He is Blooded Lash, so the PCs press him for information, with Ballyhoo charming the creature and offering him gold for his assistance. Sadly, they couldn't get much from the pathetic thing, and Badger decides to put an arrow through its face, ending the goblin's potential usefulness...
Eventually, they find the tunnel that leads Northwest towards the Haunted Horrn, and come across the old rickety bridge crossing a subterranean chasm where the PCs once fled from the dwarf barbarian Dondrys Buld of the Score. Pressing on further, they come across a pair of troll sentries guarding the depths, but when they charge them to attack, they discover they are mere illusions, which set off a pair of massive, painful ringing alarms that seem to resonate all the way towards the Haunted Horrn! They discuss fleeing the caverns and taking another approach, now that their vector has likely been discovered by the Blooded Lash and the Score, but instead they press forward, seeking to combat anything that arrives to stop them. At long last, they arrive at a trapped steel portcullis which shocks Ox...beyond that, a chamber full of stone sarcophagi which apparently must have belonged to the dwarves...
After somehow managing to breach the gate into the room, it turns out the tombs are occupied not by dwarves, but by undead, mummified bugbear ancestors of the Blooded Lash! A grueling contest breaks out, with the PCs victorious, but Ballyhoo and Ox are infected and they must use their remove curse scrolls to free them, only the affliction is so strong that one of the scrolls doesn't even work! The PCs thus teleport to Flabbergast Manor where, after several attempts, Schnoo is finally able to destroy the curse on Ox, but not before he's taken hideous damage to his health and...already lacking charisma...
PCs: Badger, Ballyhoo, Baro, Gruulsh, Mudgol, Ox
NPCs:
Shnoggo (goblin male): A filthy, nervous, pathetic goblinoid who was encountered by the PCs as they were exploring the old mining tunnels beneath the Hud Horrn. Claims he is often bullied by the other Blooded Lash members, so sought to escape and devour his rat prey hours west of his station. Lord Ballyhoo charmed the creature to use him for information, but soon after Badger put an arrow through his face. The bard left him with gold coins in his eyes.
