1.3.2 - Scratching in the dark

You cleared a god's treasure out of the dark, and then six elite Orks walked into the middle of your massacre and asked who you were.

You were wounded and filthy and standing in a slaughterhouse, elves heaped and torn, some of them killed slow while they still breathed. A great column nearby leaked thin shafts of light into the black. Behind one of the eyed doors you found and killed a lurking spider, and past it Heimdall's chest: a lens, a blessed lightstone, a horn. Then torchlight came down the tunnel, boots in disciplined rhythm, and six Orks in real forged plate marked with clan glyphs, escorted by the silent Chosen. At their head, Grukk One-Tusk, one tusk snapped halfway down, eyes sharp with years of judgment.

He found you bloodied in the middle of a massacre on sealed Chosen ground, and he wanted answers before he dragged you up in chains. You gave them straight. He looked at Riven's cursed wound and the dead and decided you had crawled through the same hell these poor bastards died in rather than made it. He pointed you to the stair up into the Eastern Shallows and told you not to come back down unless you were Chosen, with a sour glance at the robed escort he was stuck sharing these tombs with. Then a week to lick your wounds, runes shuffled between you, and home to the Black Tide, where Varka and Balder poured drinks and told the old stories of Kvarrac and Brelka and how the Hand began. Whatever you were now, Varka said, you would always be welcome at the Tide. Hanzt, for his part, still could not shake his fever.

Remember For Next Time

• Grukk One-Tusk: an Ork elite who judged you innocent of the elven killings and let you walk, warning you off the catacombs. Worth remembering as more than an enemy.
• Heimdall's chest: you carried off Heimdall's Lens, a Blessed Lightstone, and the Sentinel Horn.
• Hanzt's fever: still uncured and worsening, even after treatment.
• The Tide is home: Varka named you welcome there for good.

Where We Are

Back at the Black Tide Tavern after a week's rest, patched up and resupplied, the catacombs behind you for now.