“Here to pay your rent, are you? Well, you’re late! And I don’t tolerate delinquency! If you want to keep the flesh on your bones, you will turn over all your wealth to me immediately: your gold, your silver, your gems, your weapons, rings, potions, anything and all of value. If not, well… How does disintegration sound? Hmmmm?”
This is what Nightscale has to say to the pitiful little beings standing around gobsmacked on the shore of her black lake.
She turns to the Duergar guards who wish they could turn invisible again.
“Well? Why are you here? Here to beg for more time? Hmmmm… well there is no time. I will devour one of you and feed the other to my pet. I’m sure he’ll love the taste of one of his dwarf kinfolk. Oh… but that would leave nobody left to go take my message back to Goerth, and let him know how much I hate for tenants to be late with their rent. Sigh…. I suppose I can always go tell him myself.”
A spray of caustic, venomous fluid erupts from her fang-filled maw, hosing down the two Duergar. Their armor, clothes, and skin sizzle and hiss. The two shriek in agony, and fall dead in smoking piles of ruined flesh.
The self-satisfied dragon turns to glare at Cycek and demands, “Now – for you!!!! Ready to pay up? If they won’t pay me, then you will!”
Cycek replies, “You know, I have a problem with that…”
Nightscale is puzzled, as if anything less the obedience and quivering fear is so unimaginable as to be beyond comprehension.
”You see,” explains Cycek, “those guys you incinerated… they forced us to come down here and try to kill you. Now that they’re gone, we have no interest in inconveniencing you, so we might as well just go back where we came from.”
Nightscale seems to take an interest in this alleged plot by the Duergar against her.
They hear a voice from across the lake: “You bloody fools… give her what she wants and then run! Run your stupid asses off!!!”
”Who’s that?” asks Cycek.
”That’s my pet… no concern of yours,” replies the dragon, “So you say the Duergar sent you to kill me. A laughable idea, but one that should not go unanswered. I have a proposition for you. I’ll allow you to live, if you bring me the head of that bloated Duergar, Goerth, their chief.”
The party swiftly, and wisely, accepts this proposition. The dragon disappears beneath the water’s surface, and the team retreats into a secluded area of the cavern to rest and strategize. The injured Davros remembers his bottle of healing hooch. He swigs half of the bottle, and although he feels somewhat rejuvenated, he also feels drunk. After about an hour, Nightscale, impatient with their procrastinaton, re-emerges and harangues them to get started. Her appearance gives Cycek an idea. He takes the half-filled bottle of hooch, and suggests that they will kill Goerth using Nightscale’s acid. She thinks the idea is deliciously murderous, and agrees to supply some acid. They fill the bottle from a dragon-teat and they part ways.
The four climb the ladder and find a hidden door at the back of the shelf overlooking the chasm. A little exploration brings them through another hidden door and into a closet which opens on none other than Goerth’s private chamber. Peeking through the door, they see an immensely fat duergar reclining on a bed. They recognize this unmistakable individual. This is the leader of the mining clan they met below Xodar’s lab. The last they had seen him, he was battling a demon amid a swirling vortex of water and arcane energy, before being lost in some kind of inter-dimensional abyss. Yet, here he is, large as life. As before, he wears a leather studded skull cap with flaps that cover his eyes. He appears to be drinking a tankard of ale while perusing the pages of a book by touch.
Mishok decides that he will sneak into the room, and refill the Duergar captain’s tankard from the bottle of acid. If Goerth should notice him, Mishok figures that he can pass himself off as a Duergar servant refilling his master’s beverage. He sucessfully sneaks across the room, pours the lethal draught into the half-empty tankard, and then sneaks back into the closet and waits.
Before long, they hear Goerth let fly an agonized bellow. They hear crashing sounds as the obese Duergar thunders about the room, hoarsely cursing and coughing horribly. The sounds of his pain and fury grow quiet, but not silent, as he runs howling into an adjacent room. Listening carefully, they hear another voice. They quickly craft a plan, should the injured Goerth re-emerge with help in tow. Sartan and Mishok take positions at the edge of the chasm, while Davros and Cycek lie in wait within the closet. They will attempt to lure Goerth out of the room, down the corridor, and to the precipice where they will shove him over the edge. Now, they just have to wait.