"I'm sure Joram can handle it." Morin responded, referring to both Kelaria's concern for the dead guy's rites and Io's worry about the fungus spreading.  Admittedly, he wasn't particularly sure in the doddering old priest's ability to handle much of anything. But public health and body disposal definitely fell under the cleric's domain.

He turned to Ionaya, not unsympathetically.  After several days tied to a table, he understood that the sorceress might have some hard feelings towards any party members that might not have pulled their weight.  But he did see a small problem with her plan.  "I don't mean to nitpick, Io, but...look, I'm not sure exactly how much acid it takes to dissolve a human body, but I'm pretty sure it's more than you've got in your pocket."

"Maybe we could compromise." He mused, brightening up. "You could, I dunno, just dump some acid on his face?  Y'know, mutilate the body a little, make it a closed-casket funeral.  We could say the robots did it!  Would that make you feel better?"
This message was last edited by the player at 17:49, Sat 06 Apr.

She looked at Cain and replied, “I appreciate your efforts to recover the body, even though I don't quite understand why you did. But anything I might use on him are my own. In addition to safety, I seek a measure of vengeance for those he abandoned, Councilor Baine, and myself.”

Looking at back at Gerrol's body, she replied with renewed anger and disgust in her voice, small electric blue arcs continuing to walk the flask. “This mold sucking, slimy coward abandoned us while we were fighting for our lives! He fled the battle as it started, leaving us to fight alone, leaving us to die! That's what he did!”

Turning to Morin, her anger fading from her voice as she looked at the bard, she added, “Morin I am not beyond reason or compromise. If I was, I could have simply used magic to destroy what is left. But I'm not trusting those brown markings to be anything safe especially since no one seems to know exactly what they are. I have a need to feel safer. I know I can't completely destroy him with this flask of acid, but I am happy to use it to destroy something I consider a danger.”

Addressing the entire party she asks, “Does anyone have more to say? If not, then help me or get out of my way.”

"If it is such a concern, why not throw it back where it was?"  Kelaria asked.  That seemed like the solution to her.

Zorden gave a shrug.

The man was dead.  It didn't seem worth getting into a fight over that he wasn't certain could be won.

Without any further comment or objection, Ionaya carefully poured acid on the discolored areas of Gerrol's body until they are all gone (along with much of Gerrol's throat and chest).

Resealing the empty flask and putting it down besides the smoking remains of Gerrol's body, with a grim smile of satisfaction, she says, "Let's go on, we have things to do to save Torch."

Cain gives up on arguing the matter further. "Well, then. Excuse me while I don't stand next to a human body while you proceed to slowly dissolve it with acid. The vapors would just wreak havoc on my complexion."

He puts some distance between himself and what Ionaya is doing, but keeps in sight of the rest of the party. There's still that monster they fought the first time somewhere around here.

Morin backed away slightly as Ionaya burned off the discolored flesh, covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief as the fumes made his eyes water.  "Phew, that's foul!"  He called out cheerfully.  "Alright, uh, good work Io.  Now back to adventuring!"

While the others gives Ionaya some distance for her gruesome vengeance, the sorceress pours out acid from her alchemical flasks onto the exposed, discolored skin of the tragically fallen Gerrol Sonder. The corpse snaps, sizzles, and hisses as the heat of the dissolving flesh boils away the frozen condensation and blood and soon the partially dissolved, partially cooked flesh sloughs away, leaving the rust-colored skin replaced by the color of fresh, concentrated acid burns(Not googling that for a reference.)

With the grim business finished, and once everyone recovers from the horrible sight, the party presses on into the caves. Taking the nearby intersection of tunnels south, the caves quickly open up into a cavern so large that the light Kelaria's floating torch can't reach the opposite end--though the echoes assure her he blackness does end. The ceiling of this vast chamber rises nearly thirty feet overhead. A five-foot-wide ledge runs along the western wall, sloping down to the cave floor ten feet below. Four ramshackle huts made of what appear to be strips of metal, hides, and some sort of fibrous plant matter sit in the cave, while to the south yawns a dark pit. Four skulks inhabit this small cave settlement--lithe, bald humanoids with little more clothing than the straps to carry their gear, their exposed skin constantly shifting to match the red-brown rock and grey metal of their surrounding.

The nearest skulk, their female leader Sef, greets the party as they arrive, "You kept us waiting." Despite the terseness and possible accusation in the statement, it's not hard to sense the fear and relief behind it. She looks to Kelaria, the stranger to her who is visibly carrying the bulk of rope she had asked for, and gestures to the group to follow her as she slides down the ledge between the junk huts below and towards the southern pit, where the skulks have gathered the spoils they mean to trade.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:39, Mon 08 Apr.

Zorden offered a shrug, but said nothing to Sef, leaving that to Morin or one of the others.

Instead he brought up the rear as they were lead through the Skulk's camp.

Cain followed after the skulk leader, tense and eager to be done with this. It did not look like the skulks were out to backstab them, but who knows what could go wrong in negotiations. He'll feel much happier once the skulks have left this place. "We came as soon as we could."

Morin once again nudged Kelaria, the newcomer to the party.  "I don't trust these creeps as far as I can throw them." He told her. His voice was fairly quiet as he did so, but he clearly wasn't making much effort to keep the skulks from hearing what he was saying.  "Hand over that rope and lets see them off, but stay ready to get murderous if they make a wrong move."

Turning back to Sef, the bard flashed a broad, insincere smile.  "Better late than never, right?  Here's the rope, have a nice trip!"  He didn't make any attempt to inspect the gear the skulks were trading in exchange for their escape.  It would probably be enough to cover the cost of the rope, but the real reward was not having a band of chameleon-skinned killers lurking at the party's back.

Kelaria grunted to Morin.  Not trusting strangers was always good advice.

This was a strange cave.  But it didn't bother her, a cave full of worthy enemies must surely be a strange place, right?  She followed, not sure what to make of these creatures herself.  That thing with the corpse was weird, but she had no real opinion on it.   She hoped this would go the  same way.  The creatures seemed interested in her.  No, not her, something she was carrying.  How very strange, she mused as she followed.

Taking the offered rope, Sef nods her appreciation to the group and gestures simply to the pile for them to take. She and her crew then begin to lay the rope out to ensure no tangles, tie the ends of each together, secure one end of the combined length to a nearby stalagmite, and even fashion some rudimentary descenders to aid in the climb. They then tie one of their members to the end of the rope and, using the friction of other stalagmites nearby, ease him down into the pit to the Darklands--ensuring the rope doesn't get caught up on the way down. Finally the weight of the rope eases as the skulk reaches the bottom of the pit and a sharp whistle drifts up from below. The remaining three then make the climb down one by one, each waiting for the line to clear with a whistle before heading down--avoiding putting their shared weight on the rope at once. Sef heads down last, with another silent nod to the party, and soon the party is alone in the cave. With their frenemies gone, the party takes a moment to appraise the skulks' trade--a masterwork buckler, a masterwork sap, two potions of cure moderate wounds, two sets of masterwork thieves’ tools, a scroll of shield, a scroll of identify, and 143 gold pieces.

"We should probably pull that back up."  Zorden figured with regards to the rope.

Of the trade offer he gave a nod.  "Not a bad deal."  Though he didn't have much use and the gear itself.

Cain likewise passes on the gear. "Time to get to work."

OOC: Should we go back to where we found Khonnir and look around first? Not sure what we did and did not explore there. Or should we head for the pygmy territory right away?

Morin perused the scroll of identify briefly, before carefully rolling it up and tucking it into his already hefty collection of magical scrolls. He was all in favor of pulling up the rope, if for no reason other than the chance to return it from wherever they had gotten it.  That said, his support was purely moral support, rather than a meaningful contribution to hauling the heavy rope out of the hole.

"That's right, on to the real heroics!" He enthused.  "I say we head straight to the pygmy den, and see how they like getting surprise attacked."

OOC: Taking the scroll of identify.  I'll hold onto the healing potions if nobody else wants them, but I've got a ton of healing items on me already.

"Pygmies?"  Kelaria asked.  It seemed this would be a fight.  "Are they... metal, these pygmies?"

Kelaria should be good to lug anything that needs lugging, but I agree with taking the scroll/potion and caching the rest of it here.

"No.  Were they plants maybe?"  Zorden asked the others after answering Kelaria.

"Either way, probably not a terrible idea to start there as I think we were going to be ending up there anyway as I think we were just going in a big circle where we were before."

On second thought, likely not a bad idea for Zorden will take one of the potions just in case

After picking what they like from the Skulk's trade, the party continues on, crossing the makeshift settlement and arriving at the great, pock-marked, Numerian steel wall bisecting the cavern. Set in the wall about five feet above the cave floor is a recessed circle of steel which the party informs Kelaria is a doorway which will need to be pried open. With a crowbar and the proper application of leverage and muscle, the recessed wall of steel slides up and into the ceiling, revealing rooms and halls of grey steel and white plastic well-lit by artificial, stale, diffused lights behind translucent panels much sturdier than glass. In places this metal structure has collapsed under the weight of the cave's ruddy rock, but the party leads Kelaria ahead through the halls and a smaller room with strange decorations of tubes and nozzles and a lit panel with the strange characters she's seen before on metal beasts in the past.

The metal rooms then suddenly give way to a narrow cave and the air quickly becomes hot and dry, quite a change from the cool, damp caves accessed by the underwater tunnel. After a twist in the cave, the path opens up unexpectedly into a vast, sweltering desert beneath a red sun and sky. A breeze which could never exist indoors pushes the sands about as they slowly cover and erase the disturbance of what must have been a recent battle--hurried footsteps and scattered bones are slowly being lost to the dunes and the carcass of some grotesque, tentacle beast rots away in its shell, but the beast's shell, a spiky, coral-like structure taller than a man might never be lost. In fact, as far as the eye can see in this desert caldera of sorts the sands are littered with these eerie, coral remains.

Once Kelaria's awe and disbelief at this Buried World have eased, the party continues eastward across the desert, following the trail of footsteps left by themselves and others who went before, arriving at another cave in the desert's surrounding rock walls.

See Group 9 Map for reference.

"So much Metal."  Kelaria remarked in awe of it all.  She already found coming here entirely worth it, no matter how disappointing the rest might be.  What she could do with such Metal...

"I hear the hiss of lightning."  She reported as they traversed the latest cave.  She didn't like that.  Wearing lots of metal armor probably had something to do with it.

"This place is not without its defenses and hazards, even without monsters and beasts dwelling in the halls."  Zorden answered Kelaria.

"Easier the second time around?"  He asked Cain, recalling how the man had managed to finagle the machine to turn off during their previous expedition.

"Let's hope so." Cain approaches the device carefully, remembering how it almost burned him to a crisp the last time.

OOC: Using a black e-pick, not that it matters with this roll.
15:02, Today: Cain rolled 17 using 1d20+13 with rolls of 4.  Disable Device. – 17

Like the last time, I'll make a retreat if the humming grows louder and wait a bit before making another attempt.

Morin chatted constantly throughout the journey, filling in Kelaria in on the party's journey so far.  He told her all about the four-armed skeletons, the tentacle beast, and the ooze that had each made their attempts at attacking the party.  He talked about how the desert had been as dark and still as one would expect underground, only to change after the group had fiddled with the control panels further on.  He pointed out where he had seen his first metal man, and how it had seemed docile until they attempted to open a nearby door.  But mostly, he just talked.

When Cain got to work on the sparking doorway again, Morin (briefly) quieted down to let the half-elf work.

PMs
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:22, Fri 12 Apr.

"Guess not."  Zorden remarked at their poor luck.

"But at least you avoided getting caught in that.  Try again or should we try to just make a run for it?"