Chapter 035: Visiting the Sewers

An adventure-type quest. Our luck for getting into ridiculous situations keeps growing with every passing moment. Who was responsible for that? Robinson? Deviation? Overtyrant? Informal committee of local deities/AIs dedicated to messing with us?

Adventure was a rare type of quest that occured only under a very precise set of circumstances. It could be described as a shorter version of singleplayer RPG games. There was a threat, one in most cases limited in time. A wannabe Daemon Lord about to ascend. An archdaemon about to manifest. Some other threat about to emerge and kill a lot of people.

The fact that an Adventure quest was issued meant that we were in position to stop that threat. That our actions, if we continued doing what we were doing, could influence the outcome.

We were like a bunch of hobbits that stumbled upon the magical ring of power that some ancient evil wanted to get. Silver V grade Adventurer was weird though. How could a Silver V grade creatures threaten the city?!

For an added benefit, Adventures could be failed only in a … plot way. Even if your whole team was wiped out, you would just resurrect in a pre-defined checkpoint. Somewhere within the place of the Adventure. But if the enemy took the ring from you… tough luck.

Seems like troubles were brewing in the catacombs beneath the city. Interesting. Silver V difficulty rating was encouraging, creature of that level should be theoretically beatable now that we got ourselves new spells and some minor equipment improvements. But the thing with some Adventures was that their difficulty level grew overtime. Together with the threat.

Wonderful. Beyond wonderful. Well, I probably should start thinking with a bit more enthusiasm and optimism. I mean, what’s the worst case scenario? The Ambryxis gets destroyed? Like I care. And the best case scenario?

Adventures meant treasures. That was the golden rule of DFI. The higher the risk, the higher the reward.

“Wonderful.” I sigh. The rest got the information as well. Even if most of them didn’t understand the implications behind the type of quest. “Let’s hurry.”

***

“So, the device led us here.” I said. There were stairs in a small building besides the street. It was one of better districts. The stairs, as one passerby explained it, were used by people to access the sewers beneath the streets in case they got clogged. Normally people preferred to steer clear of this place.

Sewers seemed to be a place that average people ignored unless something broke there. Wonderful.

For an added level of troublesomeness, the first compass seemed to point towards the completely opposite direction, suggesting that Kovac’s group travelled quite far from the entry point. Ugh, this was going to be troublesome.

“Take deep breath and remember the smell of clean air.” Leria commented. “You will miss it.”

***

The masks we bought were all type two. They covered our heads completely, making it impossible to use helmets, but aside of that they were quite comfortable. They limited our vision a bit, but that was the lesser of two evils.

The name of the quest included the word ‘Mist’. Besides, we were going to enter a place associated with stench and poison. Obviously we were going to take precautions. You don’t try to save money on an Adventure. When it happens, you always go all out. The only reason we didn’t bought the type three closed-circuit breathing masks was that the bottle had to be requested and making them took a while. While normal masks could simply be bought as they were.

Sewers looked like typical absurdly spacious sewers out of a fantasy. Like a small underground river, bound in stone. You could walk on either side of it. There were ‘channels’ beneath every street, with pipes leading the smelly things into the water below. Where roads intersected, so did the channels. There were walkways connecting both sides of the tunnels there. Stone or, if it broke, there was always a wooden footbridge set atop them.

According to my predictions, we went from the entrance towards the area where disappearances happened. We circled around this part of the district’s sewers for a while. There seemed to be a stairway going down, but someone barricaded it quite competently. Other than that… nothing.

It was boring. Deadly boring. Most adventures were boring. But if you got careless due to boredom, something jumped on you and chopped your head off. Ugh.

Suddenly something happened. The trails stopped circling around the place and instead went a completely different way.

There was no blood or signs of battle. So whatever stalled Kovac’s group didn’t happen here. But they must’ve found something. Or met someone?

Curious.

The first sign that we were in a more civilized part of the sewers were traps. They weren’t hidden too well, those that set them up must have been an amateurs. Syna, despite her impairments, detected them with ease. Crude. Bear traps, primitive projectile launchers connected to tripwires, one or two rudimentary defensive enchantments.

Syna wasn’t too good in magic, but we had two amalthians on the team. No magic traps of this level of sophistication could possibly work.

Then we found another sign of civilization. Primitive agriculture of sort.

Walls were covered in some slightly glowing moss. Too much and too regular for it to be normal. After a short while we almost walked into a person clothed in rags, busy scraping mosses off a wall. They seemed particularly colourful there.

The person (I had no idea of gender, the rags covered the silhouette quite completely) dropped a bucket and a knife and ran. Wonderful.

“Sewer Rats. Uh.” Leria’s voice was slightly distorted with the mask.

“Care to elaborate?” She obviously knew something she forgot to mention.

“Outcasts. Supposedly living in sewers beneath the city.” She answered. “I heard several versions. According to some they are bunch of degenerates driven from the city, according to others they are some sort of weird quasi-religious order. But it is believed that they live outside of Masked Council jurisdiction.”

I guess that you get criminals even when you legalize almost everything. Not wanting to pay your share to the local government (however stupid and abhorrent it was) was enough to get you branded.

“Well, no reason to stop now.” I tried to sound confident.”Kovacs group obviously went that way. So we should as well.” Besides, if the level of traps they set back there was quite pitiful. They shouldn’t be that strong.

We continued walking through the obviously inhabited part of the sewers. After a short while, the welcoming committee showed up.

There was a palisade in the sewer. Made from various things. Wood, metal parts… all of them probably scavenged or bought in exchange for the moss.

It wasn’t that hard to connect the dots. It glowed. It seemed to be useful enough to cultivate it on an almost industrial scale. The place was slightly more irradiated by magic than average, though not enough to be considered a magic anomaly. The moss probably filtered aether from air. You could either draw it out or use the plant to create mana potions.

Of course, it probably wasn’t official. Alchemists wouldn’t want people to know that they were drinking things that was taken from sewers. Not like it was in any way worse than stuff taken from anomalies. But people could get a butthurt about it being from a smelly and literally shitty place. And butthurt is bad for business.

That they didn’t have to pay taxes when buying stuff from Sewer Rats probably helped as well.

There were heads visible atop the palisade. Ones still attached to bodies, obviously eyeing us with interest. Looks at least rudimentary civilized. Alright, let’s try to avoid antagonizing locals.

I made few steps towards the palisade with my hands up in the air. Didn’t stop me from covering myself in Inhuman Resilience, barely noticable from my robe and gasmask.

“We come in peace!” I shouted. “We want to talk to your leader.” Seriously, what am I, an alien visiting America? Uh. But it seems my words caused some reaction. One head disappeared, another opened mouth.

“Stay where you are!” Right, right. I made a step backwards, just in case. They obviously sent for their leader.

***

Wherever their leader was, it couldn’t be far. After few minutes a person came. Only then we discovered that there was a small… wicket? Something between it and a simple door. They were quite cleverly hidden in the palisade.

Three people came. One whom I presumed to be the leader was taller than the rest. The other two… well, now that I think, none of the people I met here were particularly tall. Bad nutrition? Common thing among the poor.

According to Appraisal, the boss was a level 5 priest (an obvious non-combatant), while the other two were Thugs level 8 and 9. The higher level one was a low elf, the rest were humans.

Thugs were pretty much the combination of lightly armed warriors and rogues. Despite some skill in aura they would be no match for us.

“I’m sorry for their reaction, we aren’t used to having guests.” The boss spoke. “Most of them try to bully us and steal from us.”

“We aren’t those type of people.” I assured him. “We are searching for Kovac’s group. We believe they came here.” He nodded.

“I know of their disappearance. They…” He went silent for a short while. “This isn’t the place to talk about it. Please, come in.”

Uh-huh. It gets more and more interesting.

***

What awaited us on the other side of the palisade was a village.

It looked like slums to be honest. It was built atop the channels, I could see stone pillars erected right from them and used to support the wooden floor. It definitely wasn’t constructed recently. It must have been there for a while.

Well after we walked for a while I had to agree that it looked better than slums. More colorful. Locals at least tried to make it look pretty. Only a bit of cloth here and there, and yet it made them look… vibrant was too much of a word, but there was at least some life there.

In contrast to this, people looked much worse. They didn’t fit the place.

“You might have already noticed that, but we have a problem.” The priest (of which god?) said.

“Yes, it isn’t hard to notice.” I answered. The rest were busy being vigilant. “What happened?”

“A plague.” His retort was short and yet it made me almost freeze. It… wasn’t good. In fact I wasn’t even sure if the disease-suppressing aura of Ambryxis was a thing down here. If not, then the diseases… could be much more troublesome. “We are yet to lose anyone, but thus far nobody has managed to recover. We tried to isolate the sick, but to no avail. At this point everyone here is infected. I suggest not taking off your masks.” He shook his head. “I doubt it will help you much, though. We have no idea how this thing spreads.”

He sounds like a learned man. Interesting. Sure, being a priest meant something around here. Most temples tried to teach their novices as much as they could. Sometimes, especially in some faraway villages, priests remained a cornerstone of the population. Not only they could speak in the name of Gods, but they also had some knowledge about healing and the world as a whole, often being the most educated people within at least a few days of travel.

But why here?

“It’s here.” He pointed towards the door in the sewer wall. “My chapel. One of the three ‘buildings’ worthy of that name in this little village.”

It looked a bit similar to the door leading to the blocked stairway we discovered earlier.

“Why did someone build something like that in a sewer?” This seriously looked improbable. I mean, who builds stuff like that? It was completely unneeded.

“According to the villagers, this area used to be under control of drug producers who decided that bothering the Council with all that complicated tax stuff wouldn’t be a good idea.” Priest answered. “They worked here for a while. Added a proper storeroom and production facilities. Decided to invest, believing that Ambryxis wouldn’t let the city above collapse on their heads, even if they dug a lot..” He shrugged. “Sounds like they were right, but it didn’t help them when city militia rooted them out. Not long after that we moved in.” Interesting. “Come in.”

***

I almost tripped when I saw the insides of the chapel.

Theoretically I shouldn’t get surprised by things anymore. I mean, the improbable stuff just kept happening wherever and whenever we were. To be honest I did adjusted to it more or less, but there were still things that went above my resistance.

The symbol on the cloth covering the altar was one of them.

Cross.

An inrithian priest living in the sewers beneath Ambryxis. Improbable. Borderline impossible. Masked Council must have had inrithian worshippers on their kill-list, written right after khardism adherents. So they ignored sewers to this point?

Inrithism was essentially Christianity. The most major difference was that Inri (local Christ’s expy) was a desert elf. The rest was pretty much the same, including the Crucifixion, basic tenets of faith, prayers, sacraments and so on. Inrithian Church was Catholic Church, but there was also a sort of Eastern Orthodoxy-like movement, but the entire structure was pre-schism.

Most Inrithians lived on the territory of Imperium, enjoying a sort of love-hate relationship with it. Both the Church and the major inrithian states (Kingdom of Inrithia, Nikopolan Hegemony and Republic of Vycheav in WR, no idea how they were named in Gates of Eternity) tried to play according to imperial rules, but the continuous spread of inrithism was considered a major threat to Imperial Religion.

“I decided to show you this.” Priest took off his mask. An elder one, at least 50-60 years old. Black hair partially turning white. Lot of wrinkles. But his skin looked unhealthy. There was something like a faint red rash. “Mostly because I am well aware of Kovacs’ group opinion on the surface. If you took the mission you probably didn’t do that for the money.”

Desperation made him take a lot of risk. We could probably earn nice pocket money if we divulged his location to witch-hunters. Not like we planned to.

“Well, while I’m really curious how an inrithian priest wound up in the sewers beneath the Ambryxis, I don’t think that telling people about you would be… smart.” He nodded.

“That’s good. Well, it’s not like we had much choice at this point. We would have long ago contacted the surface for assistance if not for the fact that this would mean the visit of witch-hunters.” Choice like between black plague and cholera.

I made a decision. He looked like a potential ally (even if rather low level). Not enough trust to show him the truth about Leria, but a slight suggestion might be in order.

“Contacting us might have been a very good idea on your part, I think.” He looked at me curiously. “Let’s just say that we represent a small but growing group that doesn’t find the current state of this area… favourable.” He smiled faintly. “We got here mostly because we heard about Kovacs’ look on that matter and we wanted to recruit him and his group. But then, the whole affair turned bigger than we thought.”

“Well, you are on a good trail. Kovacs was here. We contacted him when our patrols in the sewers told us that there was a group of adventurers there. Merely three days ago, but we still had enough people to send patrols.” He sighed. “Things got worse too fast.”

“Any ideas what sort of disease it is?” Now that I think, I remember a bit about them from the WR, right?” What are the symptoms?”

“No clue. I learned a lot about common diseases and ways of treating them when in seminary, but that was years ago. In another life, almost. And this certainly isn’t a common disease. I’m almost sure it’s a magical one.”

Magic diseases were weird. Almost always. They could have methods of transmissions and symptoms completely impossible from biological ways. They mostly started when some bacteria or a virus learned how to utilize tiny bits of magic. Great example was a bloodier, a magical disease that spread through latent telepathic links. Telepathic links connected people that were close to each other (few hundred meters at most) and allowed (if used properly) to contact other people telepathically, like a mind-radio.

Instead, bloodier virus used these latent links to infect people. It caused spontaneous mutations of pre-existing viruses (for example those causing common flu) into more of the bloodier viruses. That then caused symptoms similar to ebola on steroids. 100% mortality (since the ‘bloodier signal’ kept mutating more and more viruses, eventually overwhelming the immune system) and quarantine almost impossible.

Of course it was insanely rare. According to some myths, it was Plague’s (Imperial Goddess of Plague and Diseases) ‘blessing’, used to wipe out entire cities where something terrible was going to happen (like Pentagram spilling into Real World) and all moderate means of preventing the disaster failed. It was too murderous, killing those infected within few hours, annihilating entire cities within a day, long before someone could spread it to other cities.

“And about the symptoms.” Priest continued. “It starts with general feeling of weakness and fever. Then there are traces of blood in urine and feces. Bloody cough. At later stages a rash that looks like red spots on the skin. short loss of consciousness. Sooner or later all infected fall into coma. To this day we haven’t lost a single person, but around 80% of villagers is already unconscious.”

He refrained from telling that, but he was obviously quite far. He already had a visible rash. How long until he falls into coma himself?

“Hmph. Interesting.” I said after a short while of thinking.” There are several diseases with similar symptoms. Even bloodier is slightly similar, but if that was it, entire city would be dead by now. Did you try treating the infected?” He nodded.

“Yes, but to no avail. All common medicines failed to even weaken the symptoms. Which is the exact reason why I believe it to be a magical disease.” Right. Treating them was rather… quirky. They were subjected to vastly different rules than common diseases.

“We’ll have to investigate it closer to come to a conclusion. But the fact that nobody died is reassuring… and potentially creepy.” He nodded. Some magical diseases went deep into either Night of the Living Dead or even more… exotic lands. In most cases the latter, since simple zombies would be wiped out by adventurers with absolutely no troubles. “We’ll need to hurry. Do you have any idea where might it originate?”

I mean, Kovacs group obviously went somewhere, right?

“Well, I have not even a faintest clue.” He scratched the redder part of his face. “But I think I have an idea where to search for answers. There is another ‘village’ in the sewers, located to the north from here.” Now that I think about it, the first compass on the localization device points north, isn’t it? “We had very good relations with them. Mostly because they have similar approach to those living above as we do.”

Seriously? How is that possible that witch-hunters didn’t visit this place earlier? Were they too busy hunting Pentagram worshippers or making sure nobody is making vulgar gestures towards the statues of Ambryxis placed here and there in the city? No matter how you looked at that, they were a threat to the city. A festering wound in its abdomen, that could spread anti-Ambryxis sentiments throughout the city, or help foreign agents.

Perhaps Ambryxis simply enjoyed having worshippers of the beings he personally hated growel in shit and piss beneath his city?

“They are an inrithians as well?” I asked to clarify.

“No, but quite close to it.” Priest answered before he started coughing. He covered his mouth with rag. He continued his answer after he got his voice back. “They are khardics.”

Oh for God’s sake. Too bad the mask is hiding it, since the look on Leria’s face was probably… memorable. The same on Syna’s face, most likely.

“And why do you think we can find answers there?” I asked.

“Because the disease started there earlier. And we lost all contact with the village two days ago.” Yep, that’s definitely a valid reason to suspect that we can find some answers there.” Even if it didn’t start there (not really possible), being hit by it earlier meant that it was closer to the source.

***

The priest wanted to send one of few villagers that still managed to walk with us as a guide, but I decided against it. They already sent one with Kovacs. He disappeared together with them. Let’s avoid unnecessary casualties, especially when we can simply follow the device.

We left the village, escorted by hopeful looks from still conscious villagers.

According to the priest, his village was named Iktin. Which meant something like Stenchful in one of languages of Eastern Aevaria. Heh. The other one, where we heading to, was named Erstval. Which meant something like Foulhole in yet another language. Seriously, who the heck named these places?!

Some time after we left the village Simea appeared in front of us.

“So, how did it go?” She asked us. I quickly described what happened.

We had her use Suppress Presence before we entered the village and take a look around it just in case. I wasn’t going to believe people just because they told me something. Even if they were Inri’s priests.

“Everything fits. I sound nothing suspicious. Most of the population seems to be isolated in one of the ‘buildings’. All of them unconscious. Judging from Appraisal, they had several slightly tougher people, including one warrior, level twenty. But the disease got them.” Interesting. Sewers obviously were a rather low leveled place, but even there it was a good idea to have someone to defend you from other low levels.

Despite the priest (Ramon Kastrial, according to Appraisal) looking rather believable, I was surprised that there was nothing fishy with the village. I expected at least a small drug factory or something like that. On the other hand, drugs were completely legal on the surface, so they were much cheaper than in Imperium. Their level of complication made producing them rather unprofitable, at least when it was all about avoiding taxes. Aether-tainted moss was only a tiny bit less profitable, but it was much easier to produce.

Huh. Or perhaps the priest steered clear of the stuff. After all, this place was once built by some underground drug baron.

“Well then, let us continue to the other village.” I said.

After maybe half an hour we run into the first corpse.

***

The body lied on other side of the channel, face down. I didn’t need to order anybody to jump over to know it was a member of a city militia.

Weird.

“Simea, check him out.” She nodded and jumped to the other side of the channel with aura. She turned him over and searched the body.

“He got an arrow to his back.” She said loudly. “It’s broken, but he failed to take it out. But it looks like it was poisoned and that killed him. There is foam surrounding his mouth.”

So the death happened not long ago. Great. Also, whoever was the enemy, used poison. Damn. It’s not like there were universal antidotes in DFI games, there was also no Cure Poison spells. Magic could at best slow down spread of it, and the best antidote could counter a single ‘family’ of poisonous stuff. For example all poisons made from a single family of mushrooms, since they used similar poisons.

Wonderful.

“Alright, leave him and get back.” No need to search him over. Militiamen weren’t too rich and Militia could get angry over stealing from dead bodies of their members.

I could see Simea nodding and preparing to jump over to our side.

Suddenly a deafening thunderclap made me jump. What the...