Tales From a Guild Member

Roach Motel

I received an urgent letter from Professor Henry today.
I was already quite familiar with the Professor, even giving some lectures on safety and security to the class. It seemed that the Professor had requested my help on a matter of protecting his students.
He informed me that nearly 2 weeks ago, the first report came from a little girl that she was bitten by a roach, and was even poisoned. Guards from Edgeville and a few concerned parents kept watch over the opening in the ground, but no strange or aggressive roaches appeared. No one was certain if the girl was lying, perhaps she had accidentally hit a drone and it hit her back, but how she got poisoned was a mystery.
Then last week, 2 boys reported being bitten by roaches. Again, adults and guards kept watch for a few days, even a passing adventurer came to keep an eye on things. The Barbarians of Gunnarsgrun even made a special trip into the old jail and slaughtered many roaches. (It was not unheard of for King Roald to offer bounties to clans or mercenaries to occasionally go in and cull the roach numbers, or for guard units of Misthalin and the Barbarians to use it as training exercises and use the gathered resources from the roaches to make more equipment.)
But in none of the excursions, none had ever reported seeing a poisonous roach.
So I was asked to take a closer look around since most of the guards and mercenaries who come through might be good in combat, they may not have the eye to look for a roach that is out of the ordinary. He also requested some guards from Edgeville with an old sergeant of the Edgeville guard, Jennersen, who was even a guard in the old underground jail.

Jennersen's a bit too old to be on routine guard duty, so he was given a desk job, and tends to handle clerical duties, when he's not dozing off for the day. Despite that, the old timer still knows how to swing his custom halberd.
With Jennersen, 6 Edgeville guards, and a pair of young and annoying would be adventurers (a ranger and a mage) we headed into the old jail. If there was going to be any trouble, I could easily handle a Soldier or two on my own, with this group, we could take one down very quickly. And considering the job, I did not want to get any of my good gear covered in roach guts, so I grabbed my spare rune armor, a rune warhammer and an adamant battleaxe.
We performed a basic sweep investigating for anything out of the ordinary through each level, scanning as many roaches and walls as we could spot.
The search on the first and second levels took most of the day, nothing unusual was found. When we descended onto the third level, I first thought to check the 'hidden' area, but nothing was wrong there. We then proceeded through the rest of the third level, and again saw nothing.
No new tunnels, no roaches being aggressive, no new types of roaches. Just simply ... nothing ... at least until we heard noises of some Roach Soldiers and Workers fighting something off in the distant part of the jail. At first it was thought some other adventurers or treasure hunters had come down here, but the area had specifically been set as off limits today so we could conduct the search. So, we headed towards the commotion.
The fighting was occurring in a newly dug tunnel area that was still low lit so it was easy to miss. We saw the larger roaches clearly fighting other roaches that looked like drones, but in the low light, we couldn't tell anything besides their shapes, and that there were many drones being fought by the larger roaches.

After a few more minutes the fighting was over and it seemed the remaining larger roaches had won.
I took a torch from my pack and lit it, but with the low light and the crushed remains, it was impossible to tell what was different about these drones.
The guards and I then scanned along the wall, and eventually found a small crack that was big enough for a drone to pass through.
I grabbed the pickaxe from my toolbelt and started swinging away to make the opening bigger. After an hour of mining, the hole was big enough for a person to pass through, and that passage lead downwards. Of course, we entered.
Our party spent an hour creeping through the tunnel before we reached an area that spread out. We were amazed at the number of tunnels this deep into the ground, but the tunnels looked like they were not braced very well and could easily cause a cave in.
Our attention to the tunnels was cut short as we heard the skittering of little drones coming towards us.
I had the guards form a wedge from with me at the lead center, the young ranger and mage behind us. A dozen small drones charged at us.
The guards stabbed at them with their steel halberds, the archer fired his bronze arrows, and the mage fired off a series of strike spells. None of them worked.
At best the steel metal of the halberds pushed the drones back. In some cases, the weapons blunted or broke. The strike spells splashed harmlessly on their outsides. The arrows glanced off.
Only my Rune War hammer and Jennersen's Mithril type Halberd seemed to be doing any damage. The other guards in their desperation pulled out some mithril daggers and the mage cast wind bolt, that's when they started to hurt the roaches.
Soon it was over. I managed to capture a live roach and put it in a lobster pot for study. We also had the clean remains of one skewered on a dagger.
After close inspection, the roach had a slight yellowish coloring to it I had never seen.