Far beneath the lazy grass of the Eastern Shaar, unseen by the rising moon, was a measureless maze of dripping caverns and dusty halls. Through this stupendous realm, a subterranean river hurled along a passage it had carved through a thousand miles of cold rock. Called the River Raurogh by dwarves who, over long centuries, had mapped its dark twists and turns, the channel descended through layer after layer of stone at a steady pace toward an unknown end.
Cautious dwarves slowly charted the river's course, probing for whirlpools, low ceilings, rapids, flesh-eating emerald slime, and unwholesome beasts that welcomed a change in their diet of blind, transparent fish. Foolish dwarves cast off in heavy rafts with magical lights fore and aft, determined to learn the river's secrets in a fraction of the time. Four out of five cautious dwarves came home to make their reports, only one in three foolish dwarves did the same. The cautious dwarves drew reliable maps. The foolish dwarves gave birth to legends.
It was a foolish dwarf, battered and wet, who returned to tell of the Deepfall at the Raurogh's end, which had claimed his eight companions and their raft. It had undoubtedly claimed many rafts before theirs. Other dwarves soon dug out a passage from a nearby cavern to the Deepfall, where they put down their tools and marveled at the sight. The long tunnel carved by the River Raurogh here opened into a titanic domed chamber splashed in scarlet and ocher hues. A thousand long stalactites and glittering mineral curtains hung from the dome like diamond chandeliers in an emperor's palace. The ancient silo, well over two hundred feet across, dropped away into nothingness. No sounds arose from the black depths to indicate that the cascade had found its bottom.
Seeing a natural ledge leading into the silo by the chiseled opening, a foolish dwarf soon edged out on hands and knees, bearing a short staff upon which a light-bearing spell had been cast. He looked up first, noting that between the brilliant formations on the ceiling was a dense network of narrow cracks looking a bit like a crude giant spider's web. Most of the cracks were filled in with mineral draperies, but their cause was still apparent. The entire ceiling, to an unknown height, had begun to separate from the rock above it.
The dwarf judged after a minute that the roof was still centuries away from yielding to gravity, and he worried about it no more.
The dwarf then looked over the ledge, his illuminated stick held aloft, and stared down into the abyss. His wisdom overcome by curiosity, he cast the enchanted staff over the edge and watched it fall until it was a spray-dimmed twinkle that was gone from view between one eye blink and the next. He lost track of the time over which the light fell, the depth into which he peered was beyond imagining. When the dwarf returned to his companions, it was deemed best to depart from the region in haste, in case an unwelcome being far down the shaft made its way up to investigate the source of the falling light. Nothing ever did, for which all were thankful, but the legend of the Deepfall spread and bewitched many a dwarf who heard of it.
In a short time, a hundred dwarves migrated from the crowded caverns of Glitterdelve, discontent with local taxes, and chiseled out new homes near the great shaft's dome. Coarsely woven nets strung across the river caught blind fish and crustaceans for the dwarves' food. Wastes and offal were cast into side passages where edible fungi and molds for potions were cultivated. Magical lights of golden hue soon filled the colony of Raurogh's Hall, as the cave village came to be known, though all light was carefully shielded from the silo's top to avoid alerting anything living far down the falls. The surrounding rock was solid, local predators were quickly dispatched, and the river's bounty was endless. Life was good for seventeen years and a hundred twelve days.
The derro waited for Wykar where they had agreed, toying silently with a long knife among the blue glow-fan fungi.
Wykar stopped and did not move a muscle after he eased around the entrance to the blue-lit cavern chamber and saw the derro. The hunched gnome warily embraced the chamber with his senses to discover if Geppo had unwisely brought friends along to the hidden garden of luminescent fungi, but he sensed nothing amiss. He nonetheless kept his gray hands free, ready to seize from his vest, belt, or boots whatever weapon was called for.
Geppo noticed the deep gnome after a few moments but did not seem startled. Head bowed in concentration on his knife, he peered up at the little intruder through his thick, pale eyebrows. A smile tugged at his thin lips. With skin as white and dirty as a toadstool cap, Geppo could easily pass for a true dwarfs corpse in his sleep. The orbs of his large, milky eyes each showed only a black dot for a pupil, little holes in moist white stones. His emaciated face was framed by long, matted hair of a filthy sulfur hue. An unkempt beard and mustache hid his sunken cheeks and narrow lower jaw.
Though Geppo was a head taller than the three-foot gnome, he seemed much the weaker of the two. The derro's skeletal frame had not fleshed out after his long, hard-lived enslavement by the drow. Except for a change of clothing and a few obviously scavenged tools and weapons now strapped to his person, he looked exactly the same as when Wykar had known him as a fellow prisoner. The faint blue light from the glowfan fungi added an air of unreality to the derro's presence, as if he had recently left his own grave.
Geppo wore a dark, muddy tunic of rough fabric, under which a darker outfit showed at the collar. Wykar guessed that leather or hide armor lay beneath. A finely tooled black belt bearing many small pockets and pouches was pulled tight at his thin waist. It looked like a drow's belt, but it was unlikely the derro had taken it from the bodies of their former masters. The Underdark held the remains of many failed plans and dreams, and one could get anything if one knew where to look.
After a long moment, Geppo's gaze dropped. He resumed scraping the edge of his long knife across the scar-crossed back of his right hand. "Late," he grunted, his voice as rough as a broken rock.
Wykar saw the butt of a weapon lying within reach of Geppo's left hand, almost hidden by the curled edge of a glowfan fungus. The bent gnome stepped closer, his movements relaxed and slow. The weapon looked like a crossbow, a little two-shot repeater type favored by the drow-a lucky find. When he was ten feet from Geppo, Wykar crouched on the balls of his boots and rested his elbows on his thighs, letting his thick hands dangle. "Long walk home," he replied.
Geppo snorted faintly, as if he recognized the lie. He lifted the knife blade, eyed its bright edge, then carefully slid it home in a crude sheath strapped to his belt. His thin arms then rested on his knees, hands limp. After a short glance around Wykar, he nodded. "Alone," he rasped approvingly.
"Alone," agreed Wykar. He detected no heat-glow but Geppo's, heard no sound but Geppo's breathing, smelled nothing other than the earthy scent of the glowing fungus and a sour, unwashed body odor that had to be the derro's. Didn't they ever bathe? It must be easy for Underdark predators to track them, little wonder most derro were so insanely paranoid.
Geppo nodded and seemed to relax. He reached over and gently broke a piece from a nearby glowfan. He popped the luminescent tidbit into his mouth and chewed.
Wykar saw disease-blackened teeth through the forest of filthy whiskers. The gnome swallowed and covered up his disgust. He never touched glowing fungus, much less ate it, many species of it were poisonous. Geppo seemed to enjoy fungus of any sort, though. The drow had fed him nothing else.
Wykar let it go. He inhaled slowly as he looked the derro over. "I was surprised to see you here," he said at last. "I didn't know if you would make it very far after…"
The derro smiled with the look of a wicked boy who is proud of something. "S'prise you, s'prise Geppo," he said. "You run much, walk much? You strong, hey. Geppo… mmm, no. Not strong." He held out his thin arms and turned them over, shaking his head and frowning in disapproval. "Not strong, hey? Sick much, sick much." He dropped his arms and shrugged, then leaned forward and stared into Wykar's cool gray eyes, a smirk on his ravaged face. "Hey," he whispered, his white eyes narrow. "Geppo sick much but"-his voice dropped further, as if telling a little secret-"laughing ones sick more now, hey?"