The party enters the tunnel. JAGA remains slightly ostracized.

The tunnel is straight for a little under five minutes. As the party descends, the smell's pungency increases. As everyone mentally tries to place what it might be, the tunnel opens up onto another cavern ahead.

Moving to the exit, the source becomes apparent. Many, many small stone structures have been raised up with mushrooms growing on some of them. They stretch off into the darkness, as if this were some kind of farm. The room's smell is bearable, but it's the kind of smell that will sink into your clothing and remain there for days.

MILO paws at his nose a few times in visible discomfort.
His Scent ability is nullified while here and will remain that way for an hour after leaving.

The structures vary in shape, and the reason shortly becomes clear. Many of them are damaged or toppled over.
22:27, Today: teslas, on behalf of SILI, rolled 13 using 1d20+3. Know (dungeon).
22:26, Today: teslas, on behalf of SILI, rolled 16 using 1d20+12. Know (local)
HA! You forgot to cheat this time.

Moving out of the tunnel a little bit and poking around reveals that this is some kind of farm suited for growing mushrooms. It looks to be in rather bad disrepair, as if untended for a long while. Much of the stonework has been eroded, and it's not long before someone connects the dots and realizes that the crawlers have decimated the area.

SILI comments that this was a food crop. Not for the drow themselves, unless they were slaves, but for the livestock they would keep and slaughter.

Off of the road by 30' stands a tall stone structure that runs from the floor to the cavern ceiling. It could easily be a granary or storage unit of some kind, and there is a small building connected to it. The exterior walls are riddled with burrow marks left by crawlers. The metal door remains shut, but a hole large enough to crawl through lies just next to it, invalidating the door's existence.

The cavern is quite large, but soon the path leads to a fork while you are still within view of the structure. Both routes lead into tunnels, and both are going in the direction you think you need to go. Both also begin a gradual downward slope. Both have the same inlaid brick path running down the center.

If you take the time to poke around, one goes deeper then levels off. The other goes deeper then takes a gradual turn to the left, and continues to descend.

Any one of you can pick what the party moves to.

Sili, hiding behind keeping a sensible distance behind the mountain of metal that was Garus, points at the tunnel that gradually curves. "We want to go down, right? Let's go down."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:05, Sun 03 Feb 2013.

"Agreed." Zeig says with surprising brevity.

The party makes a quick decision and heads down the tunnel. It is very much like the others that you have seen, complete with holes in the walls and one in the floor where crawlers have decided to take shortcuts.

After a few minutes of walking, a non-moving body of a crawler appears to SILI and Garus ahead in the darkness. The party cautiously moves forward bit by bit, weapons readied, only to discover it is long dead. The inside of its body cavity has been hollowed out, with a gaping hole on the side that was facing away from the party. The rotten smell of it is so strong most of you feel as if your sense of smell has simply shut itself down.

Garus and then ZEIG kneel down to look it over briefly.
11:13, Today: teslas, on behalf of ZEIG, rolled 22 using 1d20+6. Heal.
11:13, Today: teslas, on behalf of Garus, rolled 21 using 1d20+12. Heal.
Judging by the patterns of the wounds, it was attacked by other crawlers, then consumed. Nobody knows if this is standard behavior for the creatures.

Moving on, this time very quickly to escape the odor, the party soon finds themselves in another large cavern. The same style of metal ramp leads down from the tunnel to the cavern floor.

This cavern is vast. The ceiling is far above even SILI and Garus's ability to see. Judging by the near lack of echoes, it must be well over two hundred feet above you. The brick path stretches on before you. At the edge of SILI and Garus's vision they can see the hard angles of intelligently-built structures. There are several of different sizes.

Everyone can see, faintly, the glow of something with a light in the distance that is moving. The source isn't directly visible, whatever it is. Garus and SILI guess that it's moving around behind some kind of wall and the light is shining up and out.

A smaller path leads off to your right along the cavern wall. It is well-worn.

to structures and light

        ::
        ::
        ::.........  to ?
        /\
        [][]
-----|  ::/\|-------
     |  ::/\|

from whence you came
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:22, Sun 03 Feb 2013.

"This feels...out of place. Drow are fond of traps but I don't think they would be expecting to encounter things that relied on light in these caverns, especially since they're likely all dead or worse now. We might as well check it out."

"Light...wonder if we aren't as alone down here as that Drow thought." DAI keeps his copper piece pockted for now since he was also carrying a lantern, but had it ready in case he wanted to toss a light anywhere for the next 73 minutes or so.

OOC: DAI is ready to go...honestly down either path, so whichever gets the requisite votes -1 to move on first.

The party can't kick their inquisitive streak, and heads off toward the light.

As you approach, the light seems to go around a corner away from you, and then around behind something else. A few moments later, it's obscured altogether.

You do, however, make it to a group of buildings surrounded by a short wall. It's only about six feet tall and made of stone bricks. The ornately crafted metal double gate is swung wide open. On it are depicted small humanoid figures wielding blades that appear to be riding giant spiders.

To your right is a tall, three-storey structure. It looks to be more along the lines of an elaborate manor house than anything else. Behind it and further to the right are two more much smaller houses.

To your left is a structure that SILI is certain is a small fortress of some kind. It has small windows usable as arrow slits, and appears to be more thickly constructed of large stone bricks. There is a single tower that rises four or five stories above the base, all in all twice as tall as the house to your right.
19:17, Today: teslas, on behalf of SILI, rolled 18 using 1d20+3. Know(archi).

There appear to be more small structures ahead in the darkness, though how many or how few that lie just outside of vision is hard to distinguish. Apart from your sources of light, you can see no other illumination.

(Not to scale)

F = small fortress
G = gate
H = 3-storey house
1, 2 = small houses
P = party

 FFF

FFF  HH

FFF  HH 12

---G-------

    P

This message was last edited by the GM at 13:01, Thu 12 Sept 2013.

Reread the last page or two of posts before you post anything.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the OOC thread. We are in no hurry here; it has been a long while.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:38, Tue 10 Sept 2013.

After what seems like an eternity in this hell hole, Zeig finally speaks up as they approach the gate.

"An underground city...sounds like Drow to me. I wonder if the crown could be in there?"

Just to be clear, this hasn't happened:

15:25, Today: teslas, on behalf of Garus, rolled 0 using 1d20-9. Spot.
Garus looks down and notices he's been carrying the crown in his hand the whole time, "OH, MY, GOD, sorry guys, I thought you were talking about a different crown. I found this a few days ago in the mud. My bad."

So let's get t' goin', gang!

So we're not playing The Hobbit, then.

Sili nods at the fortress. If it's here, it's probably in there
This message was last edited by the player at 15:13, Thu 12 Sept 2013.

"But lets not get our hopes up. This place looks more likely to kill us then help us." Jaga muttered after Zeig and Sili spoke. "But lets check out the incredibly spooky and undoubtedly haunted fortress anyway."

I'm glad you're on board. Says Silk, blandly, and continues After you.

The party enters the gate, Garus first, leery of any more traps. Nothing happens with him, nor anyone else as they enter.

The inside of the wall looks pretty much the same as the outside, as to be expected. There is a gap of about 30' between it and the small keep to your left. To your right, the three storey mansion is closer to the wall, at only 25' between the edge of the foundation and the wall. The two large structures are about 60' apart from one another.

Now that you're on the other side of the wall and a bit closer, you can make out one small door on the southern wall of the keep (the one facing the perimeter stone wall). There is no handle or obvious way of opening it. The manor house's door is quite obvious, being an elaborate entryway with two, thick stone columns on either side of its large front veranda. The mansion is surrounded by some sort of very low-lying hedge... thing, with a wide gap in the front before the door. It looks like a tangled mass of brambles about 2' tall and thick. Whatever it is appears to be long dead, though identifying exactly what it might be would require a bit of closer inspection, if it even really matters.


The shadowy structures in the distance are slightly clearer. All in all, there are at least a couple dozen of them, and they look no bigger than 15' wide. The two small houses next to the manor house seem to be in decent enough shape.

Everything, SILI notes, is of pretty obvious Drow architecture. Now that the rest of the party has seen a few buildings, it's easy to see why he's so sure as they are quite distinct in many, many subtle ways from surface structures.


I can't assume too much here, sorry to pause.

Options:

- Left between the wall and the keep.
- Straight ahead between the mansion and keep, then look around once you're behind something.
- Right toward the front door of the mansion/the smaller houses.

It's also been a long time, so I wouldn't mind if you guys redefined your marching order as well. I think it was something like(?):

  G
  SM
  DZ
  J

Let me know in the OOC or here, as usual. Since you guys wanted to go try to find a way into the keep, I'll go with two people saying "we still want to do that by going [west or north]" as enough to move everyone along.

"We are in a cave full of horrible things that are just waiting to do god knows what to our bodies. The sooner we find the crown, the sooner we get out of this hell hole. That crown's not gonna find itself so we might as well start with the big one."

Zeig motions to the left.

DAI glanced down the left path and cringed a bit. "Well, may as well start somewhere I guess..." He had a lantern in one hand and his other ready to begin the movements on one of his many spells.

The party begins making its way to the left. They get most of the way to the small door, when MILO's hair stands on end and he begins sniffing the air. As the party slows to watch MILO, a light, possibly the one seen before, can be seen ahead and to the right, around the corner of the keep.

Garus, SILI, and ZEIG notice Gurlop's head jerking to the right, trying to focus onto the keep. (Just in case you forgot, Gurlop is sitting on Garus's shoulder unless he says otherwise.)


W = outer wall, 8'~ tal
, = dim illumination

W      |      (keep, 20'~ tall)                 |
W  ,,,,|----------------------------------------|
W   ,,,,
W    ,,,
W     ,                           MZ
W                                GSDJ
W
W
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW


The fortress, as SILI noticed pointed out, has many narrow slits on the sides--one or two every five feet. Far too thin to go through (though possibly Gurlop could, with absolutely no grace involved), as they are about eight inches wide, but more than wide enough for arrows.

edit-
You are also carrying your own light sources, of course. I will go back and review those tomorrow.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:18, Sun 15 Sept 2013.

Garus looks at the arrow slits and steps forward, "Get behind me." Turns his shield to provide total cover against the arrow slits and prepares to use it to cover them against any arrow attacks.

The arrow slits could likely fire arrows out at at most a 15 degree angle.

You know that at your current range to the wall, only 2-5 could be used to fire upon you at any time (you being a single person in a 5' square), and 2-3 of those would suffer from you having corner cover (+4 to your AC).

edit-
And of course Garus (and Gurlop) have total cover from arrows from the wall. Someone occupying the 5' square behind him, due to the nature of the situation, would also has the same. Anyone further back, however, and they'd only be protected from the slits directly to the north.

And you are not in initiative, but do not take overly long actions, or go into some super-long dialogue.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:24, Sun 15 Sept 2013.

Sili can't teleport, so you're all left wondering how the hell he got behind Garus so fast as he takes cover.

"...Mind making more than one trip just so we can do this safely?" DAI asked looking at Garus's shield and already knowing it and his own massive size wouldn't protect more than one person entirely.

"I can do that. Who wants to go first?"

"If this is a trap then I'm pretty sure that light is the trigger. I'm gonna be over here while you guys figure it out."

Zeig moves east towards to edge of the fort, or as close as he can before something happens.

DAI glances at SILI already crouching behind Garus. "Uh, him I guess. Think MILO can fit safely behind you as well?"

"Maybe if Sili carries Milo?"