Finnick and Belor bring down more pillars and the roof of the throne room is in imminent collapse. As the party sprints through the temple towards the entrance, in hopes that they can escape, the giant cavity underground that is the throne room starts collapsing and all is darkness as the floor, stairs, debris, and the heroes slide and fall with the debris.
A miracle of architecture leaves the heroes on the floor of a chamber below the throne room without overwhelming serious injury. Cletus shielded Paw Paw and Ruby Esk during the fall. Strangely, Finnick Dunbar is nowhere to be seen and the heroes don’t expend any energy looking for him, writing him off as gone. The underground throne room’s floor had also collapsed revealing a chamber below. The entire throne room is open to the sky above and the walls remain intact. The portal to the feywild remains at the previous level of the throne room, which is about 10 feet above the level of the newly opened chamber below. From each of the cardinal directions (north, east, south, and west) of the chamber’s walls extends straight corridors as far as darkvision can see.
The heroes interrogate the wizard and find out that he was running out of the feywild, specifically in fear from the temple’s patron who is a beautiful lady. The heroes decide that confronting the temple patron isn’t a good idea and elect to not enter the feywild portal. The wizard’s name is mentioned as Probabilitor.
The heroes call for Auric Moniker, the Syratic League agent who warned them not to enter the temple, and there is no response from above the newly formed pit. Now that the temple is gone, the blocking force of the hive-mind is gone and Ruby Esk calls out for her family in that great hall that the halfling community of Kith meets in their telepathic communication. The wizard also mentions the tracking that’s still on the heroes and argues to stay where they are on the basis that concerned parties, whether Sunfounder or Kith, may converge on the pit and haul them out.
Instead of waiting, the heroes scout down the western corridor a few hundred feet and soon hear the sounds of Caladan Town and their old friend Dribbler, the Persistent. “Sausages in a bun! Sausages in a bun! Fresh meat and other ingredients found today!”
Fearing a trap, yet still interested, the entire party moves into the western corridor and takes a short rest and a break for a meal.
Resuming their journey down the corridor, the heroes find a stormwater grate, which is doubling as a sewer gate during particular times of the day. This grate has steel bars and opens up at the edge of the sidewalk into a street in the southern part of Caladan Town’s Outer City. The distance of several hundred feet from the throne room chamber seems like a suspicious bending of distance from what should be at least a day’s journey.
Seeing Dribbler, the heroes call out to him and what follows is intense negotiations for Dribbler to go get help or to free them from the stormwater/sewer gate. Dribbler has them on the ropes with the promise that they’d give him three gold and buy all his sausages in a bun and the vendor cart, whereby he proclaims he’ll grease them up and they’ll slide through the grate. This offer is not welcome. Cletus throws Paw Paw, the opossum familiar, through the grate to go find help, but Paw Paw ends up in Dribbler’s vendor cart.
Meanwhile, Mike and Agnes are scouting further down the corridor and come upon a hole in the side of a creek’s bank in the woods, an entrance into a cave system, and a disused hidden entrance into what may be a tavern’s basement. Mike looks through the tavern’s basement’s doors and see houses and what maybe a gathering of Kobolds in peaceful garb.
Belor and Gracchus lose patience with Dribbler and take up arms against the stormwater/sewer grate and batter a hole into the street. Belor pushes up Gracchus and the wizard first to remove offending content from the sewer’s flow by soaking it up. Belor then exits after them with no unseemly smears upon his clothes, unlike them. The entire party rejoins and exits as well. Cletus fishes Paw Paw out of Dribbler’s vendor cart and pays Dribbler for the damages by the opossum.
The wizard extracts the hero’s silence on the matters of which the wizard is complicit, namely making a deal with a hag to open a portal to the feywild in order to distract and to remove members of the Caladan Town mage guild with a complex plan. In return, the heroes extract vague promises of aid. The wizard hurries off to return to his guild and to cleanup.
A city guard runs up and protests the damage to the stormwater/sewer grate. Belor and party spins a tale where they are the newly formed plumber’s guild and they were removing an unfortunate blockage that had occurred at this grate. The guard is convinced of the need. “You must be a new guild, I’ve never heard of the plumbers guild. But now that you mention it, there’s sometimes terrible blockages in this part of town during certain times of the day. Do you work mostly outside? Well, carry on, remove those blockages.” And the guard walks on.
The heroes return to the Sunken Norwegian tavern operated by Yogun that they had visited during their previous stay. Scared of the consequences from having left Gnoll scalps in the beds last time, Mike stays outside to wait on the others to negotiate. Belor, Cletus, Gracchus, and Agnes all negotiate for rooms, baths, and food. Cletus and Agnes trade care of Ruby Esk, the halfling child, while Agnes bathes. Cletus had previously used the water pump behind the tavern.
In the first floor of the tavern is an old ruined Roman-style bath that the current tavern was built around. Agnes hangs around the bath and learns about “headball” from old men who walked in. “Did you see that ludicrous display last night?” Headball is a traditional sport that only follows the gladiatorial arena’s showings. The loser’s heads become headballs and are kicked around.
While a few of the heroes are eating, Beckett Sunfounder shows up and interrogates them about what happened. Ruby Esk says that her parents, a village elder, and others will be showing up at Caladan Town tomorrow. Agnes and Cletus insist upon custody of Ruby until she can be returned to her parents.
Once again, the heroes try to extract gold and promises of reward. Beckett says not to push him, but that a new and better representative than Gideon while be presented tomorrow along with maybe a few rewards if the meeting with the halflings from Kith goes well. And that the heroes should let Beckett do all the talking. Seeing it’s the best they’ll get for now, the heroes accept, Beckett departs until the morrow, and the entire party goes to their beds.