The shell like a volcanic mountain ridge turned slowly and that big snapping turtle head inclined to the crimson-haired... healer? He dropped the shadow beam into his own shadow but kept concentrating on it.  "Thank you kindly." He was still wounded but he was MUCH better than he was. He had been a hit away from going down the whole fight!

He smiled, which looked rather aggressive due to the structure of his head. "I am Manaen, or Mana. Mage and scribe."

Nemeia was leaning against the cave wall, arms crossed, next to the entrance. Face showing no expression and red eyes sizing up each party member in turn. One would get the impression she was taking mental notes and seeing into their very soul. The latter was not very far from the truth.

OOC
Using Divine Sense

First was the half-elf in all red. She instantly tended to the wounded like all healers do. Nemeia noticed the holy symbol and tried to remember which god she was a cleric of.

No description of character.
08:10, Today: Nemeia Sorrow rolled 13 using 1d20+4 with rolls of 9.  Religion check.

Next was the large black humanoid cat. A stealthy self-professed infighter. Great for hit and run tactics, but a squad of archers would take it down if detected.

Then there was the strong looking human whose wrists looked like they had been tied recently. Why was he captured? Why was he kept alive? She did not like unanswered questions. Other than that, he moved with a practice ease of a fighter.

No character description

She almost failed to notice the small gnome with a hand crossbow that looked more like a toy. Was that a tiny musical instrument? Nemeia groaned inwardly. A bard that could play tiny and annoying music. The gods must really hate her.

No character description

There was another human with the trappings of a fighter. His armor looked well maintained but something about the style suggested old or outdated. Maybe from an isolated village? His smiled looked natural and seemed very easy going to the new people he just met.

Last but not lease was the large, dark colored, dragon turtle? It stated it was a mage. A mage with natural tough armor. At least she would not have to spend too much time babysitting it.

The gnome found a secret door. She started to take things off the shelves and stated her plans to open it. Nemeia shook her head slightly and hoped the gnome checked for traps first. Before anything else happened, the paladin made up her mind.

"Nemeia. Knight of Taelther who has taken the Vow of Vengeance." she stated coldly.

"The orcs in the other room were behind good cover and planned to make the fight there costly. I plan to find out why."

With that said, Nemeia uncrossed her arms, got off the wall, and went to investigate the other room. Not caring if anyone followed.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:24, Thu 03 Feb 2022.

Bleh. That's what I get for posting when I'm tired. I posted the intent but then didn't explain it. HOUSE RULE: All healing occurs at maximum when you are out of combat.

Thus, Manaen is fully healed the 16 points of damage he took from the Orc Chief.


Not sure which room Nemeia is referring to... there are only two rooms that were the scene of the fight. The first room was the Weapons Room, a long somewhat narrow room with weapons hanging on the wall. That was the room where Nemeia fought the two Orcs with Victor, Vane and Kessife.

The second room was the Treasure Vault. That's where Biff, Star of the Morning, Manaen, Ulrik, Lureene and Nyssia had fought the Orc Chief and his minions.

Upon entering the Treasure Vault, Nemeia can see that it is a dead end... except for the secret door that it would appear that the Orcs didn't know about. Thus, they were cornered and fought accordingly.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance, Nemeia," the 'foolish' Tiefling said.

"I am Kessife (rhymes with knife). I have not been with this group for very long myself, but as I understand what happened, there was an old abandoned mine that they investigated and accidentally unleashed some sort of magic storage device. Ever since then, strange comings and goings have occurred."

Victor, Vane, Kessife, and Nemeia had been in the Weapons Room fighting the two Orcs that had been lying in wait but had then charged out at Nemeia's challenge.

Once those two Orcs had been dispatched, the four had briefly headed for the other room from whence the Orcs had come. Seeing as it was getting rather crowded and that the Orcs in there had been dealt with, Nemeia had assessed those that she saw before turning her attention the walls of weapons in the first room.

Her first assessment is that there are a LOT of weapons, probably 50 or so on each of the side walls.

Her second assessment is that there are no two weapons alike. While technically, several swords could all be classified as 'long swords', each one on  display is slightly different. Same for the short swords, bastards swords, and great swords, as well as the axes and hammers.

Her third assessment is that there are no ranged weapons on the walls, other than a melee weapon you could throw, such as a dagger.

Her fourth assessment is that there are six different polearms on each wall, but the width of the room would make it difficult to wield any of them in that direction.

In the Treasure Room, Lureene is the only one that can cast Detect Magic, so after she points out which of the many treasures have a magical aura, Nyssia sets them all off to one side on the shelves. The other non-magical items she puts on a different shelf.

Nyssia sets about separating the items, first the magical items, then those of value, like the statues, then the rest. It took some time, but the gnome sighed as she looked at the pile. "Those orcish bastards have been busy!" She muttered.

She looks at the group. "Unless we have time to figure out what they are, i think we should pack all that up or come back for it once we clean out the orcs. First, we gotta find the others."

she looks at the others.

---

<OOC: If people want to stay and find out what thinsg are, she will open the boxes if locked, if not, i say we store them and return.>

Mana was in a rather good mood now that he was no longer hurt. He settled near Nyssia, "I can help with the identification of the magic items to help cut down on time if you like." He was tapping on an extremely detailed metal book that tapped back at him. He was an Order of the scribe wizard.

Nyssia looked up at the tortle with a surprised look. "WOW...your - big!" She looked at the"If you can help, be my guest buddy gear, then the tortle again and nodded.

she looks through with a snort. "...but where to start, and how long we gonna spend here?"

---

<OOC: About 30 items, 10 minutes to identify them each. for one person that is about 5 solid hours alone>

Considering the dust that's on everything including the shelves themselves, these items have probably been here for years. The Orc Chief probably kept the other Orcs in line so that nothing was disturbed just yet. That, of course, means the Orcs didn't put any of this stuff here.

It appears that only a few of the non-magical items have little value to them, such as the candles, though it depends on just how you define value. Considering that they were stored here with other items, particularly magic items, it seems likely that everything might have had some personal or sentimental value if not outright intrinsic value.

Nyssia goes about opening the secret door, easily opening it like the last.  Again, a hallway was in front of her, and in the distance she heard a familiar voice. Smiling, she turned. "Damn me...i think their all connected. I hear that big barbarian fella who came with you....Viri-something?"

She shrugged

"Not a Dwarf and not a cave-dweller," Ulrik says to Nyssia  as he peers over her shoulder down the secret passage, "but already figured that out."

"I may not have been expecting wyverns to still be living here, but it's been home to someone other than Orcs."

"It's still good to know. Might mean we've got all the Orcs."

Mana opened his large book and very rapidly cast a ritual spell in the same amount of time it took to cast it normally. It took a moment but a disk rose up from the ground that was spiked on the bottom looking like his shell pattern. "I can keep six disk going but it takes a bit to get them all up. Pile on the disk and once we get everything sorted and people have what gear they want I have a few contacts in the market network that could sell what remains."

"Betting my own shop is being robbed blind right now." He started piling things on the floating disk if he was allowed to.

Nyssia nods, and helps the tortle load the disk with the magical items, so when teh time came, they could identify them all

As the group moved to the treasure room, Lureene introduced herself just before she cast her detect magic. "I am Lureene Raventree, of the Raventrees of Waterdeep, a priestess of the Lady Sune Firehair. Do let me know if anyone is wounded that I missed, and in need of healing."

She started to help Nyssia load up the disc. "A convenient spell."

Manaen nodded twice, "Comes in handy back at the shop." She was a caster for sure. "Manaen, I run a shop on the coast but I'm thinking being teleported here that is not so much the case anymore."

"Thanks for the patch job."

"Captain Victor Harkness, Neverwinter Infantry 42nd Division, retired. Pleased to meet you!" Victor said as he began to help load up the disk.

Nemeia looked at all the weapons with some interest. The human's information about the orcs planning a war was correct. But did the orcs make the weapon themselves or did other clans give it to them? Was there a supply chain that could be disrupted? Were there other supply caches in different areas? With all these unanswered questions, she went back to the others.

Biff looks over the loot and pauses to admire the abstract painting. After a few minutes, a single tear rolls down his cheek and he moves on.

"They call me Biff. Prizefighter. Thanks for the backup."

Once the disk is packed up with the magical items and valuables, Nyssia goes down the passage to the otehr end, listening and looking for dangers.

Manaen shouldered up and kept his book open while he quietly started refreshing the disk spell. The last thing he wanted to do was play fifty two card pickup for being lazy. He kept his distance behind Nyssia but kept trundling along.

Rituals in order time allowing:
Identify
Identify
disk
Letting us ID 2 parts every half hour until we can just sit down and crank out the IDs

As expected, the haversack turns out to be a Handy Haversack. If it had been anything else, the magic would not have been so readily identified.

However, putting unknown magical items into the haversack is not a wise move. The Haversack has extra-dimensional spaces into which other extra-dimensional spaces should not be placed without causing a catastrophe!

The Wand is a Wand of Greater Magic Missiles. It takes a bit of analyzing the magic to realize that the missiles do 1d6+1 points of damage.


Out in the Weapons Room, Nemeia thinks the weapons on the wall are of much better quality than anything the Orcs were wielding. Functionally, the Orcs' great axes were fine, but they were clearly of inferior quality.


Nyssia leads the group back down the passage to the Weapons Room, through that to the next room, and through that to the cave. The cave, of course, opens outside into the area where they found the six cave entrances.

By the time the last of the group files out, you spot Mithra dragging an Orc body out of a cave two openings over.

Nyssia led the way through the secret passage and outside, waiting with her crossbow for the others as they emerged. When she saw Mithra, she smiled. "You found a new pet? Looks like you may need to break him in a bit first."

"Ha! What about the four strays you picked up?" Mithra replies to Nyssia as she drags the last Orc body out of the cave and over to the far side of the wide ledge and tosses the body over the edge.

"This is Kassan... what I've always heard called 'Warforged', some type of Living Construct. As far as we know, he's been standing in these caves for a hundred years... just waiting for someone to come along and wake him up. Lucky us."

Nyssia shrugged her shoulders. "Some came when an amulet broke - a dimensional prison maybe.  Either way, their pretty handy. Snappy the turtle here has some magic skills. Oh, we found some toys as well! When we rest, he's gonna be busy."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 06:23, Mon 14 Feb 2022.