Shaige soon found that the hidden cave he stumbled across wasn't some tiny camp for a few roving bandits. This was something more, an entire subterranean city. Below the forested hill there was a vast network of caverns and tunnels that stretched out for miles, the blood vessels of the earth. At least a thousand humans lived in this section of the cavern, with small cots in cold, damp corners. There were some magical braziers haphazardly thrown down in various chambers, though with such sparse lighting the darkness still seemed to almost swallow the settlement. Despite living in this place for some time, the humans were unable to adapt to the suffocating darkness. Living in such nightmarish conditions and eating mostly fungi for fear of going onto the surface had left many people sickly and broken.These people lived like frightened little rats, hiding in their own graves.

In this wretched abyss, devoid of warmth and light, the ghost was in his own element. He was free to listen and watch without fear of being seen by even the druids amongst these people. The druids seemed to be the only thing keeping the people alive. It was they who used magic to conceal the entrance, they who created and maintained the magical lights, and they who gathered food for the hungry masses from both the surface and the dark, unexplored reaches of the chasm. Still, the druids themselves were only human, and they too smelt of fear. With only basic earth, life, and illusion magics, Shaige doubted very much that these spellcasters would be of much use in a fight.

It did not take Shaige long to learn the story of this place. By overhearing many a hushed conversation, he was able to piece together that these were refugees from a village that had recently been conquered. A great city state to the east had been advancing further inland, waging a holy war and killing any barbarian tribes that refused to be subjugated. With all the varying tribes in these forests and mountains having pride and long memories, this group was unable to atone century old feuds and find refuge. So, caught between their foreign conquerors and some other tribes that would hardly be any kinder to them, they had no choice but to flee into the bowels of the earth. With crusaders and enemy tribesmen still skirmishing above, venturing to the surface was a frightening prospect. Fear of starvation was the only thing more powerful than fear of being enslaved or executed, so it was seldom that the druids ventured out beneath the sky, and only at night and for brief periods of time. Something had to be said for the hardy druids, since it was a miracle that they had managed to keep their people alive for this long.

Shaige eventually left the caverns the way he came, and scoured the nearby area in search of some of these crusaders. It was not long before he stumbled upon a trio of the conquerors. A fearsome sight they were, though likely not in the way they had envisioned. Two of them lay on the forest floor, hacked in a two or three places and shot with arrows in a dozen more. The two knights' armor was so mangled that it hadn't even been worth looting, and so it would remain there until it rusted away and the crusaders' bones crumbled to dust. However, their bodies looked pristine in stark contrast to the third man in their party, whose corpse had been dismembered and nailed to a tree. He looked to have been their leader. Perhaps he was a priest or a wizard of some sort, for he was garbed in a robe of red and gold. Or perhaps the robe had just been golden, and the red was the man's blood. It was difficult to tell.

Shaige left the scene to search for crusaders once more, preferably living ones. No doubt that ambush was the work of some of the neighboring tribesmen; it was hard to imagine the druids shivering back in the cave committing such brutality. Then again, something about those people struggling to survive in the darkness had resonating within the ghost. They were not unlike himself, victims of circumstance attempting to grow and make the best of things. They had potential. They were resilient and loyal, and they desperately needed a leader if they were to have any hope of survival. Shaige decided then that he would aid this tribe, and take them under his protection. 

[b]Shaige's Stuff:[/b]
[u]Minions[/u]: Soran the imp construct, 9 imps, 37 pain elementals
[u]Resources[/u]: A few bags of tools for the imps. Food is starting to run low, so the imps have resorted to trapping some small animals to help stretch their supplies.
[u]Infrastructure[/u]: A dungeon heart, the imps' makeshift altar, some small animal traps outside. The inside of Shaige's dungeon is being expanded, and the outside is now fortified with wooden abatises and concealed with magic.