Ninth and Tenth Sessions
Date: Monday the 6th of Tripple and Tuesday the 7th of Tripple, 2020
While attempting to sleep, the party is ambushed and charmed by a group of people. After regaining consciousness, Onion and Analoté find themselves tied up to stone chairs, stared at by dwarves. Zahra is missing. Before them are five thrones with five female dwarves sitting, staring at them both.
Discovering through the interrogation that these two meant no ill-will or harm to the child accompanying them, and that they were not spies or allies with the UIW, the dwarf queens decide to untie them. They are shown where Zahra is being held.
Zahra wakes up in a fluffy, comfortable bed and is wearing fresh clothes. Her belongings are neatly put away in a corner of the room. A young dwarf servant girl, Chelsea, tends to Zahra's concerns and questions enthusiastically. After a short time, Onion and Analoté appear and the party is reunited.
After the typical bickering amongst themselves, and what they ought to do, and discussing how well they can trust these dwarves, they decide to sleep and readjust their sleep schedules to the dwarves' who are nocturnal. Being underground, it is fairly easy to sleep during the day and operate at night when everyone is awake and stores are open.
The next day, Zahra implores the party to allow her to stay and research and read the books in the room. Onion basically says, "siyonara" and fucks off to do his own mysterious mission. A mission that Analoté and Zahra warned Onion not to pursue. Analoté goes shopping. The crew is split up.
Analoté acquires some items and tries to speak with the dwarves, but most of them only know dwarvish. Some know elvish though. Onion struggles, not knowing dwarvish nor elvish. He does eventually find a small group of radicals, led by a firey Sheila Whetstone. Sheila tells Onion, that to gain her trust, he must find her squirrel Ralphy and bring him back. Onion sniffs her shoulder where Ralphy usually perches, and heads off to find him.
Zahra gleans some information from the small library in the room. She learns about the history of the dwarves and how they once shared this island with orcs before the humans came and displaced everyone.
Analoté wanders around the castle and finds a small museum room with cases of artifacts ranging from simple toys and tools to scrolls written in dwarvish to antique crowns made of iron. In two of the cases rests magical items. One in particular - a flute.
Zahra and Analoté reunite and head off to the library for more research. All the while, Onion is searching all night for the squirrel, riding the mine carts to the different cities. He eventually follows the scent and other clues to a quarry. Expertly navigating the labyrinth of tunnels, he finds a small kid-made fort. As he is about to sneak in and see if Ralphy is there, an Ankheg bursts from the wall and threatens to kill the dwarf children in the fort. Onion basically kicks this insect's ass. When the insect is on its back defenseless, the dwarf children try to help with killing it. Onion is basically seen as a hero. The tunnel is collapsing all around them so Onion and the dwarf children book it out of there. Onion follows one of the kids who is holding Ralphy to her home. She goes inside, and says bye to Onion. Onion nests in a circle a bit before curling up and going to sleep right outside the kid's "house". (She lives in Digsbyton which is a town where shacks/tents are. Most dwarves here only have the one big room that functions as everything).
Zahra and Analoté read a slew of books. The flute in the case is a summoning flute and its exact shape and design and wood-type summons Wargs. Zahra finds out that what could be causing The Infected is likely due to an imbalance of elements. Zahra tries to find the book on how to Re-Balance the elements, but the library workers could not find it on the shelf. As the workers look all around for it, Zahra and Analoté decide to leave the library for now and seek counsel with the dwarven queens.