A first-hand recounting of the recovery of outpost 7 by Takir Bandah

Drip. Drip. Drip.

That sound still haunts my nightmares. I wake up in my room hearing the splatter of water on cold stone, terrified that I'm back in that Faust cursed dungeon.

The outpost fell so fast, we didn't stand a chance. One can only be vigilant so long. We had long grown lax in our watch, still doing our duty but no longer truly expecting a conflict. When the forsaken attacked, we were slow to respond, but even had we reacted quickly, I doubt we would have prevailed. They were far too prepared.

I was captured along with a dozen others as we scrambled to don our gear, having been on third shift, it was our night. The room filled with a putrid cloud of green gas that obscured our vision and forced us to our knees, retching until we passed out.

We woke in the Dark cells with Will collars on, the magical darkness making it impossible to see who else had survived. Tentatively, I reached for the Font of Earth and tried to mold the stone around me, but as soon as I began to focus my Will, I felt the runes on the collar activate, cutting shallowly into my neck as a warning.

"Fauell hairy balls," I cursed into the blackness.

“Stoneweaver Bandah?” a voice called back,

“Har’Dible? Is that you?”

“Yes Ma’am,” came Dible’s reply, “With you here, that brings the number up to a dozen. I think you are the last to wake, they must have drugged you extra due to your magic.”

After he spoke, I could pick out the shuffling of bodies somewhere in the dark. The Dark cells were runed to draw on the Font of Darkness to create a perpetual blackness, impenetrable to all but the most powerful magical senses. We fumbled towards each other, and met in the center.

All in all, we numbered twelve; ten guard rankers—Hars—and one sergeant—Kerath. That placed me in charge. As a Stone Weaver, I was somewhat outside the typical chain of command, but there was no question that I outranked a sergeant. Few Stoneweavers have been born since the Flood forced us from the depths we once called home. Away from Torc’s Primordial, the only hope for more Primals lay in accidents of birth, and as such each were trained rigorously from a young age—rigorous by dwarven standards.

I set the group in order, searching the cell for any potentially fallen comrades, but the search turned up naught. I reassured the squad that the other outputs would know of our fall and be on their way any moment, and we waited.

And waited.

After two days, the forsaken finally learned the controls to the cell and flooded it with water. Once it had drained down the narrow holes in the corners of the cell, they threw down the remnants of meals that could only be called food in the most generous sense and some containers for which we could store water after future floods.

The supplies and water fell from two holes set fifteen feet up in the ceiling. Though we couldn’t see this in the darkness, we knew the location from staffing this outpost ourselves. The cells themselves were lined with runes to prevent the inhabitants from drawing on the Fonts. The presence of the Will collars hinted at either paranoia, or the possibility of transfer.

Without being told, my companions gathered all the food into a pile, and it was divided up evenly. And then, we waited some more.

And waited. After that first flooding of the cell, a constant dripping began that never ceased.

Drip

Drip

Drip

Endlessly,

We lost track of the days, weeks, months in the darkness. The food and water came at irregular intervals, making it impossible to use them as a measure of time, but it was sometime in the second week that the interrogations began.

One day—or night, the words had long since lost any meaning—as we gathered to collect the recently fallen food, the green cloud of before flooded the room. When we came too, Daknik—one of the Hars—was missing. A week—two?—later, the cloud returned, and a bloodied and battered Daknik was returned to us, and another of our number disappeared.

They’d tortured him for the entirety of his absence. Sleep deprivation, cutting, burning, and far worse things I’d rather not mention. Through it all, he hadn’t revealed any secrets. They’d asked him a range of questions, from the locations of Primals, to the secrets of the dwarven defenses deeper into the Torack.

From that point on, one of us was always missing, endlessly on rotation. There was no pattern to the abductions, sometimes a dwarf was taken once, returned, and then taken again, other times they were left alone as everyone else went multiple times.

I will not speak of the experiences of my own torture, this magic paper makes recounting such a thing far to painful, but I take pride in knowing that I never broke.

Unfortunately, others were not so strong. One dwarf came back to us, a broken man. When we came too after the cloud cleared, he was bawling. Nothing could console him, and all he spoke of were prayers of repentance into the stone of the ground. He’d broken his Will Oath to the Hardune, and was no longer of our number.

After that, he was never taken again. My guess was to show that mercy was available to those who broke.

And through it all, the constant dripping.

Drip

Drip

Drip

One morning, I awoke to dripping on my forehead, and once awake made my rounds, checking in on each dwarf in my care. The broken man—I will not record his name here, for while he broke his vow, the circumstances were great and I see no need to shame his family's name—the broken man only nodded at my concern, and told me he was undeserving of my consideration.

When I was nearly though, I smelled the tell tale stench that told of a coming gas attack.

“Stinking Cloud!” I yelled to the group, alerting the group. We’d learn it best to lay down and spread out to avoid injuring ourselves or others during the retching. Each abduction was followed by a flooding, but it took many such floodings to clean vomit out of a jerkin.

I woke next strapped to a chair, still in the darkness. The torture may be been a relief, if only they allowed us to see.

How long has it been since I last saw anything?

But, I suppose that was the point.

Someone came in, a redcap from the shrill voice, and began to ask me questions, the same as always.

“Where are the Stoneweavers trained?”

When I refused to answer, I felt a hot poker dig into my hand. While I’d never revealed secrets, they had long since been able to elicit my screams.

“Where do you keep your weapons caches?”

Burning

“Where are the other Primordials?”

Burning

“How can we free our Master’s great servant?”

Burning

The questioning repeated, until my hand was a useless-burned mass of flesh, and then the foul mouth forsaken left and the noise began. Sound illusions of the most horrid screams echoed in the stone chamber, making it impossible to sleep. Despite hours of that, somehow I managed to fall asleep, for I woke up once more to the dripping on my forehead.

Drip

Drip

Drip

I was back in the cell, and to my surprise, my hand had been healed by my jailors. As was my routine, I made my rounds once more, and was greeted to warm welcomes as to my return. I debriefed the squad as to the new method of torture, and after only fifteen minutes of consciousness, the gas returned.

Once more, I awoke strapped to a chair in the darkness.

“Where are the Stoneweavers trained?”

Burning

“Where do you keep your weapons caches?”

Burning

“Where are the other Primordials?”

Burning

“How can we free our Master’s great servant?”

Burning

They repeated half a dozen times, and then the noise returned.

What new torture is this? To heal my hand only to destroy it again?

And then, after countless hours in the screaming dark, I woke again, once more in my cell.

Drip

Drip

Drip

As soon as I woke, I called my squad to me and outlined this new torture. After discussing the situation, the cloud returned.

Questions

Burning

Screaming

Drip

Drip

Drip

This time when I returned and called the squad to me, they had news to report.

“Some strange magic is at work,” Padic the sergeant reported. “Some new torture. They haven’t given us food in days, yet we grow neither emaciated nor dehydrated. Each time you alert us to wakefulness, we are less hungry and thirsty than the night before.”

Everyone shared their experience, and then it repeated.

Questions

Burning

Screaming

Drip

Drip

Drip

This time, we attempted to prepare, at the moment of my waking, I yelled “Start the count!” and the Har with the best time sense began to mark time. The rest of us spread out around the cell.

When the first hint of the cloud arose, the time keeper yelled, “Fourteen twenty two!” and we all took a breath.

We each held our breath, tracking time as we did. When our breath finally gave and we had to inhale, still we counted, in an attempt to find the location in the cell where we could best outlast the spell.

Questions

Burning

Screaming

Drip

Drip

Drip

“Who had the longest count?” I shouted as soon as I woke.”

Numbers came back, and a Har reported being awake three minutes past the call, before passing out. He directed someone to his location to confirm, and we all found new spots just in time for the gas to return.

“Fourteen twenty two!” came the count once more.

Strange I thought as the gas took more.

Questions

Burning

Screaming

Drip

Drip

Drip

We repeated the test a dozen times and found that two areas of the cell had a lower concentration of gas, and if one breathed through a shirt they could last five minutes.

We didn’t know the purpose of this exact repetition, but we could not look past the opportunity. If it was an elaborate trap, we had nothing to lose.

Questions

Burning

Screaming

Drip

Drip

Drip

“Positions!” I screamed when I woke, and we scrambled to the corners of low concentration and began to turn shirts into face masks. Each time we awoke, we found our clothing had returned to its previous state. The first time we’d learned this was after the squad had turned their shirts into rope in my absence, and found the rope gone and their shirts returned the next day.

We waited.

At Fourteen minutes and twenty seconds, the time keeper yelled, “Breathe!” and we all inhaled.

After two minutes, I began to hear gasps throughout the cell as others lost their breath and had to breath through their clothes. Then coughing, and then some retching, but finally we heard the clatter of the rope ladder we knew to be the only means of egress hit the ground.

We charged the ladder en mass and jumped on the figures as they descended. We pulled two draugar down and pummeled them to death with our bare hands as the fastest climber amongst us scaled the rope. Before he could reach the top, the gas thickened, and the door above us sealed.

I woke, tied to a chair once more.

Questions

Burning

Screaming

Drip

Drip

Drip

“Sit rep!” I yelled, and the squad closed in on me.

Everyone was alive and accounted for. All injuries were healed, and clothing restored just as before, so with no better option, we tried again. For some inexplicable reason, our captors stuck to their schedule, and we to ours. Ratic, the climber, got through the opening at the top of the ladder. We heard him scream as he was pushed back down, and then I felt only fire and pain and then nothing.

Drip

Drip

Drip

Despite everyone remembering the burning, no one bore any injuries, and all our clothing was accounted for.

“We were so close!” Ratic said, “If only we could push ourselves a little harder. We need [redacted], he was the best climber among us.”

Mumbles broke out as Ratic mentioned the name of the oathbreaker, but Ratic had a point. Knowing time was running out, I ran over to him.

“We need your help.” I said simply.

“Help? From me? With what?” he asked dumbly.

I stared blankly in the dark where I believed him to sit, unsure how to reply to that.

“With our escape attempt. We were so close last time, we need your help to climb the ladder. It's not too late to serve Torc, no matter what you did before.”

“Last time? What ladder? Are you taunting me? I know I don’t deserve forgiveness, but to dangle a false opportunity for redemption is not becoming of a servant of Torc. Even I know that.”

Before I could respond, the gas returned.

Questions

Burning

Screaming

Drip

Drip

Drip

I ran over to the broken man, “We need your help!

“Help? From me? With what?” he asked dumbly.

“Help us climb the ladder and escape!” I screamed.

I looked in the darkness to my endlessly mangled hand, my clothes that had been torn a dozen times. And then felt my forehead, just above the left eye where the drips always hit.

It's not a trick. It's a Hardune defense!

I ran back to the group, who all stood in silence, having heard my conversation. They had interrogated the broken man at length in my absence, and had thought him mad.

“It's not a trick. It's a Hardune defense. I don’t know how, but our captors, and the oathbreaker are not in control of this. We are.”

The gas came, and I woke up attached to a chair.

This time, when the questions came, I strained against my bindings, causing the poker to burn it slightly each time. The timing was difficult, but I had time.

It took a dozen resets, but eventually, I managed to get the redcap to burn through my wrist bindings, though my arm was still mangled. I broke my hand free, and grabbed at the poker at the last question, ripped it from his hand, and swung across where I expected his head to be. I missed, and the chamber flooded with gas. But, on the next attempt, I swung lower and felt the satisfying crunch as the poker handle broke the forsaken gnome’s skull.

Frantically, I unstrapped my right hand, fumbling with my mangled left one and freed my legs. I ran over to the fallen redcap, and found a dagger on his small body, then fumbled around in the dark until I found the wall. From the size of the wall I’d found, I knew where I was, it wasn’t a cell, but a storage room the floor above the cells. I navigated to the door, and listened, but heard nothing through the thick stone.

With a kick I pushed the door open, and was blinded by the dim light of the hall.

Light!

After so long in darkness, even the dim light of a single light rune at the far end of a hall brought pain to my eyes. On either side of the door stood two draugr, and on seeing me, they drew their swords and ran me through.

Dying, it seemed, was not so bad. As I lay there bleeding out my last thought was

At least I got to see the light one last time.

Drip

Drip

Drip

I was alive. I reported my success to the group, and my apparent resurrection. They too had been trying to escape, but had not been able to outperform any prior attempts.

That day, I burst through the door, eyes closed, and stabbed blindly at the guard on the left, but still, I was not fast enough.

It took over fifteen attempts, but eventually I was able to kill both guards before they could kill me or raise the alarm. I took their weapons, bandaged my hand with the remnant of their shirt and ran through the halls towards the cells. They were guarded by a group of draugar and dark elves. They sat around the hole above where my companions sat captive, playing dice and gambling with the wealth of our outpost.

I lost count of the attempts, but finally, covered in blood and wounds, I opened the door and threw the ladder down, just in time to succumb to blood loss.

For months, we struggled. Each day I freed them, faring better each time. Once free, they spread out, methodically clearing out our home of the invaders. We each died dozens, maybe hundreds of times, but each day we killed more of them, and less of us fell in the doing. By the end, we could clear out the fortress up to the flood controls, clear out the rest, and restore the river, with the only loss being my burned hand. A worthy sacrifice.

Once successful, we repeated the task. Day in and day out. We knew not what Hardune defensive measure had tripped this phenomenon, but that was not our responsibility. Our duty was to reclaim the fortress, and trust in our brothers and sisters to do the same. From the rune network, we knew the other fortresses had fallen, but just as we had persevered, we knew the others would as well.

And that belief proved true. One by one, we saw the runes update, indicating that other rivers around Basin were restored and that the Hardune had retaken our homes.

The day we awoke in the light of our own quarters, we wept in joy and praised the Wardens. We had done it. We had survived, and the Hardune hadn’t failed.