Borimer closes his eyes while the waters heal wounds and soothe tired muscles.  "If there are earthquakes here, this place may be soon destroyed like our home."  He rises and prepares to camp.  "I can take first watch."

I'm assuming we're staying until spells are memorized?

Hatchman says, "I'll take second watch."  The paladin makes preparations, marvelling at this underground area and the healing water which he didn't get to experience before.  "That's the least I owe you for digging us out of that cave in."

Tahldar looks at Malissin with worry.  He had hoped the waters would heal him, but now he does not know what will happen to him.  Gifted as he is with spells, he has no skill with poisons.

Settling down to rest, he hopes a way to heal him will present itself.  Knowing he needs a full uninterrupted nights rest he volunteers for last watch.

OOC:  Tahldar will require being lifted or lowered by the rope as he has no skill with climbing.  Which I'm sure Borimer can handle.  :)  He could cast Fly again but that in my opinion would be a waste of a valuable 3rd spell.  And yes, I assume we'll stay until we recharge spells.

Actually, it's not so easy for Borimer after he got his hand chopped off.  I build into my reckoning that all of this walking, climbing and hoisting takes a number of hours, but assume that you all figure it out eventually.

Right now, my understanding is that you just have a very long rope attached to the pulley at the top which can be climbed up or down, or which can be used to hoist people to the top.

Remember this very large chamber is softly lit by the purplish crystals, but it also has a large pile of corpses in its center, directly under the hole you crawled down.  The pile of rotting corpses had been somewhat crushed and spread when Kahan's earlier "rock to mud" spell caused the rock portion of the blockage to fall down into the pile of corpses.  I am imagining you are using this fallen rock to step on so you are not stepping on top of skeletons and rotting flesh to get to the top.

"You can wake me after your watch, Hatchman.  Would that we were above ground again."
This message was last edited by the player at 04:02, Thu 21 Nov 2013.

Kahan makes sure to look after Malissin before flipping through his scrolls, finally finding the right one. He encants the magical words in the hopes that more magical healing will help.

Kahan attempts the spell but it doesn't seem to work.  What ails Malissin appears to be some sort of foreign disease that is special to Allevia and the likes of which you never saw on Tienna.  You have heard of foreigners going to foreign lands and contracting strange diseases, even if the locals are immune.  Something like that appears to be going on here, afflicting each of you one at a time.

Borimer looks at Mal and then Kahan as he tries to understand their situation.

"We're each gonna get sick...?"

Hatchman says, "I'm not sure if we will get it or not." He explains what they experienced.

Hatchman tells everyone what the DM told them about their knowledge of the disease.  The following quotes his post to us:


The strange disease seemed to set in 1-2 days after arrival here.  It had the following symptoms:

The extremities become dark with pooled blood.
 There are complaints of numbness.
 The lips and throat swell up.
 All this happens within a matter of hours of the first symptoms.

The last symptoms are insanity and pain.  One of your group attacked you in craziness and pain, and you had to kill him.  Another sat down and moaned, scratching at his own throat and stomach and finally stabbing himself to death in the gut.

Then there was Gustav.  He is the one near the giant boulder.  He had been trying to map the caves and was a silent, easygoing gent.  But he complained of the pains in his stomach, vomited, and eventually just keeled over in extreme pain and died.

So far, the three of you have not shown any symptoms, nor do you know the cause.

Being somewhat of a stuffy know-it-all, Tahldar's face lights up with this new information on the disease as it gives him a chance to let everyone know how smart he is.  Sitting for a moment, he gathers his thoughts before speaking...

OOC:  Tahldar knows a bit about Allevia and may have some useful information on what the disease is.  Just waiting for DM feedback.

PM

Asking the group to gather round him, the supercilious mage begins...

"I am knowledgeable on a variety of topics on Allevia.  With Hatchman's description I now have a better idea of what is going on.  Folklore has it that a group of gnomes on Allevia were digging tunnels deep in the earth when they were beset upon by a strange disease, with similar symptoms.  They brought this disease to the surface, and it began to infect livestock, humans, and beasts of all kind.  A powerful mage named Azara came to the rescue."

"There is a powerful healing berry on Allevia called "Lathia" or "Earth Berries."  They grow sporadically throughout the land but in limited amounts and do not survive growing outside the wild.  Some say they find root in magic lines that crisscross the earth, called "ley" lines.  The Earth Berries though a cure-all, could not cure the disease."

"But the mage cast a cure disease spell directly on the berries, and they then were capable of healing the disease for all who ate them.  People came from far and wide for this healing power.  Monks and priests learned the trick and began healing people as well.  Soon, the disease was virtually wiped out."

"Except that sometimes gnomes would bring it back from the depths of the earth.  Only giants, insects, reptiles, and similar creatures were immune.  No one ever knew its origin, its cause, or if it was a curse from the gods, but they knew how to heal it by finding the berries."

Stopping a moment for effect he adds "In my view we must find this Gnome.  He may know more about the disease than I do, and most importantly where to find these Earth berries.  More of us might get this disease and we need to either keep some on hand, or at least know where to find them."

"Then I suggest that after we rest we find our Gnome friend, he's probably still here somewhere."

"Perhaps we should bind Malissin's hands after we get back out of this hole. If he does go insane, he would be much easier to deal with if he were bound. Also he will not be able to injure himself if that were the case. Either way, yes, we must find the gnome. At the very least, he may be able to help us get out now that we slew all the visperillions. Tahldar, do you know any more about this mage Azara? I have an very good feeling that we have already met him before, but under a different psuedonym. The wizard Azaron, or Ashe, was a part of our group for some time. If only we had known his true identity..." Kahan states, shaking his head a little.

OOC: Are you resting in the hole or outside of the hole?  Since it will be an 8 hour plus delay in your progress, I have to roll for wandering monsters, etc.

OOC:  In the hole as it likely will be safer.

You bind Malissin and rest the night.  During the night, he starts thrashing about.  His eyes roll up in his head, and he begins screaming.  You fear he will draw unwanted attraction...but he does not.  Nothing you do seems to help him.  Finally, his lips turn purple, his eyes roll up, and he dies.

OOC: For new players, the three dots "..." usually mean I am making a secret roll.

Borimer rises and puts on his armor, followed by his ebony sword.  This takes time and he curses under his breath repeatedly with his one good arm making occasional rude gestures.

"We need to find that gnome..."

OOC: I will assume you take Malissin's gear as party gear unless you tell me otherwise.

Tahldar looks at Malissin with wide eyed concern, both for his sake and safety of the others that he might draw undue attention.  Blankly he looks at him as he lies motionless.

"Yes, we must find that Gnome or we all may wind up like him." he says in reply to Borimer.  "Should we bury him?  Do have the time?  Digging is generally slow going businsess, made all the worse by our lack of shovels."

OOC:  We would take his gear with us, though reluctantly at least on my part.

Shae says, "My people do not touch the dead of humankind for fear of reprisal from the gods of the underearth that they worship.  We also may contract this curse filled disease if we come into contact with him.  I suggest we approach with caution and take his gear but not his clothes.  What say you?"

To move things along, you take whatever items you want from Malissin, make it back to the top of the "hole," and go back to the point where you fought the giant visperillion viper creature.  So you are now back there, with a freezer full of meat to the west, a large door still closed with the pulley system to your south, and a tunnel leading north, back the way you had come, as long as the other exits noted in the map below:



The two primary points of interest are probably the following:

1) The large shelf-like tunnel that led to the east, which you did not ascend, and instead came south; and

2) the large door to the south that you have not opened.

You take an educated guess that the other western corridor probably leads back toward where you were just at in the hole.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:29, Mon 25 Nov 2013.

Here is the large cavern I mentioned.  It is the large round one on the far east of this passage:

Hatchman decides while the others are taking care of business that he will go back and look through the tunnels to the west to see if there is anything out of the ordinary.  He will not engage or get into any trouble but he wants to basically map out the western part of the cave system before the party heads to the east.  He proceeds with extreme caution.

Borimer ignores Malissin's corpse, instead scanning the area for any signs of their quarry.

"Did the gnome head north? That's back the way we came.  Can anyone track indoors...?"