The temple

"Let's head for that big black building, Li. The Temple, right? That's where they were last seen."

"I dunno about this, Tey." Aliara sounded nervous. "Shouldn't we head for the Stone Egg first? Meet our contact? I don't like wandering blindly around this city."

"There's time for that later. Come on, we'll just scope it out. We need to get the lay of the land."
The two of them set off through the city. The roads nearest the walls were cobbled, but as they navigated through the interior more and more were simply bare dirt. Squat buildings seemingly hewn from black basalt lined the road on both sides. In front of them were countless stalls: some as simple as a blanket laid on the ground, others complex and delicate-looking confections of silk, lace and beads draped artfully over a metal skeleton.

"Potions! Bottled love, corked wisdom, liquid ****! Come, buy yourself a dram of fate!"
"Amulets here! Do not go into the darkness unprotected-- buy an amulet!"
"The finest copper plates! So buffed you can see yourself in them! A plate that serves as a mirror-- what a thing!"

Nobody paid them the slightest bit of attention. Most of the populace were drow, but there were a fair number of dwarves among them, as well as humans and halflings wearing surface fashions. A pack of goblins scuttled furtively across the street on some dire errand, almost crashing into a pushcart being manhandled by a pack of gnomes. The tiny merchants jabbered furiously and shook their fists as the goblins disappeared into the alley.

Teysa shook her head. "This place reminds me of Lockport. What did that wizard call it? 'A villainous hive of wretched scum.' I always thought of elves as more... refined."

Aliara spat. "Some more than others. These drow are basically orcs with hair. Animals." She shuddered. Teysa laid a hand gently on the other woman's arm. "Li, it's ok. I'm not going to let anything happen to you. I'm not, really."
"I can take care of myself, you know, dear." Aliara's tone was sarcastic, but she drew closer to Teysa all the same.

The temple building loomed over the rest of the city. They walked for what felt like hours, but it barely seemed to move. Teysa's feet were getting exhausted. "Li, can we stop to rest? I'm kind of hungry."
Aliara looked up at her. "No money, remember? I was the one that said we should talk to our contact, for the record..."
Teysa rolled her eyes. "Fine. Later. We'll get a quick look at this building, then we'll..." she trailed off. Up ahead a crowd had gathered. "What's going on?"

The two of them strode over, trying hard to look nonchalant. Up close they could see the crowd was maybe two dozen people, mostly drow, all milling around and muttering. There was an ugly tension in the air. Teysa gently elbowed aside members of the crowd to get a good look.

At the center of a cleared semicircle was a dead drow. She looked youthful, but it was hard to tell with her head four feet away from her body. She wore elaborate black and silver robes decorated with web patterns, now sodden with blood. She lay half-out of a narrow alley, on her stomach, as though she had fallen forward. Teysa shivered. "Li-"
"I've seen corpses before. What happened to her?"
An elderly gnome next to her shuddered. "Mourner got her. Has to be."
"Third one this month!" came a voice from somewhere in the crowd. The angry murmuring continued.

Teysa turned to the gnome. "Mourner? What's that?"
"New in town, are ya?" He looked up at her with a sober expression. His face was lined and leathery, his short white hair crazed like a stereotypical mad wizard. He wore tiny half-moon spectacles, which he kept fiddling with nervously.

"The Mourner's been killin' people in the City for as long as I've known the place. Wasn't normally more than one or two a year, not till recently."
"Who is he? Or she?" Teysa asked.
"Ain't nobody knows. Strikes at night, the Mourner does. All we ever hear is the cryin'. Like a father lost his child, some say. Or a wife lost her husband."
"What happened recently?" Aliara interjected. "You said that until recently this Mourner wasn't killing very often. What changed?"
"Oh, uh, I mean-" the gnome looked from side to side nervously. "I dunno. Didn't mean nothing by it. You look out for yourselves, ladies!" He slipped backwards, disappearing into the crowd. Teysa looked around. "What was that about?"
Silently, Aliara raised a hand in an almost imperceptible gesture. Two armored drow, a male and a female, were pushing through the crowd towards the body.

"Fangs," she whispered. "Like city guard. But meaner. We should make ourselves scarce."

The newcomers shoved their way to the body. The male knelt beside it while the female scanned the crowd. Both wore thick, dark plate with a baroque carving of a spider's head across the cuirass, and heavy helmets with two great fangs jutting from the sides of the visor. They carried long pikes with cruel-looking serrated edges. The female lifted her visor and barked at the crowd.

"All right. Who saw it? Speak up! Who found her? What did you see?"

"Time to go!" hissed Aliara, pulling at Teysa's arm. She slipped back through the crowd. As Teysa turned back for a final look she saw the female drow grab a dwarf by his beard from the edge of the crowd and drag him into the circle. "What did you see?" she yelled. "I want answers, maggot!"

The crowd was starting to disperse as other bystanders had the same idea. Teysa and Aliara strode with **** nonchalance until they put a block between themselves and the crime scene, then relaxed. "That was close," breathed Aliara. "You do not want to get involved with the Fangs. They are not gentle."

Teysa picked up her pace. "I wonder what that was all about? The Mourner? Had you heard anything about that?"
Aliara shrugged. "These scum are always killing each other. What business of mine is it how they choose to do it? One less drow, I say."

"Li, I don't like to hear you talk like that. You're better than that."
"Tough shit, hon." Aliara sounded bitter. "Look, let's drop it, ok? We're getting closer." She pointed up. Indeed, the temple's bas-relief tympanum loomed over them, with its pattern of webs and spider heads.

The ground around here was a kind of tile. It looked like obsidian, shiny and black. They stepped into a wide circular plaza. At one end the temple towered over everything, its vast double doors opening into a pitch-black antechamber. A line of armored guards stood like statues in front of the great portico. Five fountains stood in the plaza in a great cross formation, each guarded by a ring of drow with spears. Drow milled throughout the plaza, most dressed in the black and silver robes the dead woman had worn, others in rich blacks or elaborate silken dresses. A few non-drow moved among them-- mostly surface elves, though Teysa thought she saw a heavily armored dwarf with the grey skin of the duergar.

Near them, a small knot of people clustered around a speaking platform, from which a female drow in silver robes and an elaborate headdress was speaking. Preaching, it seemed. Teysa and Aliara wandered over to observe.

"-from our cities? I say yes! These abominations-- these misbegotten creatures-- are twisted parodies of Our Sacred Mother's noble form. They have failed Lolth! Their lives are suffering, knowing as they do their weakness of spirit is reflected in their flesh! To kill them is an act of mercy! We must drive them from our city-- nay, from the very Underneath!"

The crowd stirred in agreement. Teysa looked at Aliara in confusion. _Wha-? _she mouthed. The half-elf shrugged her shoulders.

On the stage, the speech was reaching a crescendo. "The driders are a threat to us, sisters and brothers, and we must not be blind to their evil! They covet our great City, and our relationship to the great Lolth! They will stab us in the back if we let our guard down for a minute! Will we give them that opportunity?"
"NO!" came the answering roar, and the crowd cheered. Teysa felt sick to her stomach. The show seemed to be over and the crowd was drifting apart in twos and threes. Teysa took a deep breath and turned to Aliara. "Li, we-"

"You there!" She looked up. Three armored Fangs were approaching them from across the plaza, spears leveled. They stopped about five feet away and the leader raised her visor. She stared at Teysa with undisguised contempt. "Surface dweller! This place is forbidden to your kind. Where are your papers?"