The metal eye on the top of the staff snaps to DAI as he describes the party's motivation. "Saving the world and revenge. Noble pursuits, though less satisfying if it is not for your own sake."

The eye then jerks the slight bit stare at SILI. "No... ...describe the one you seek."

Zeig is apprehensive but without anything else to go on he takes a small risk.

"We seek the ancient crown of the elves, one warped and twisted by the Demon Queen of Spiders, Lolth, and given to the drow in days of old."

A dry and raspy, rhythmic hissing comes from the figure. It takes a moment for you to realize it might be laughter. "That particular crown," he pauses to get over another fit of 'laughing', "I have not seen in a long while, but I know where you may begin to look for it."

"Come with me. Let us not tempt the crawlers any longer with your presence."

The figure does not turn his body, but simply shuffles backward to the corner of the structure behind him. His method of walking is a mystery as his robes do move slightly but he makes absolutely no noise, not to mention he doesn't seem to mind where his body is pointed. The metal eye on the end of his staff snaps between looking toward where he's going and back toward the party.

He stops at the corner of the building, waiting on the group of you to follow.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 13:05, Mon 17 Dec 2012.

"I don't think this is a good idea." Sili says to the others. He doesn't bother lowering his voice; drow should have good ears any way.

Zeig nods his head and narrows his eyes. "I think we can manage on our own."

He gets a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach while watching the creature.

"Very well." The bottom of his staff then suddenly slams down onto the stone floor. The noise it makes is disproportionately massive and resounds through the enormous cavern. The eye closes slowly afterward.

"Two small bits of help, regardless:
Do not let your half-breed's poisoned mind affect your reasoning any further."

He lifts his staff back up, but the eye remains closed.

"To find the crown: descend. Its owners have not eaten much recently. They will find you first."

He walks beyond the corner of the building, out of sight. His voice, though now around a corner, far-away sounding, and reduced, is still quite clear in your ears (or mind):

"And the crawlers will be here soon."
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:24, Mon 17 Dec 2012.

DAI snaps awake from the moment he had spent elsewhere deep in thought. "Wait...what? We turned down his offer to help and...now we're about to get eaten by crawlers? I don't even know what those are and I'm liking the sound of the Drow's place a bit better." There being only one of him...DAI's mind lingered too as he noticed the 'man's' awkwardly shifting body not seeming to make sense from one end to the other.

DAI shakes his head and begins looking for wherever might constitute 'down'. "Well let's get moving...unless you want to start heading up just because he said down." This question was aimed mostly at SILI, a poor attempt at a jest by someone who'd mostly only read about jokes before leaving home.

Zeig looks back and forth between Dai and Sili.

"Does that thing look like a drow to you? It was watching us through its staff and it did not appear to be walking on two legs, not in any fashion I've seen, anyways."

Zeig shivers a bit.

"What purpose could it possibly have for helping us? If it was a drow, it is a horrible devious monster. If it is something else...horrible actual monster, for instance, it probably just wants to lure us into a trap. Things are always trying to eat us or brutally murder us and that thing just screams altruistic. For all we know it could be one of Astos' minions..."

He then sighs for a moment.

"I don't know how to best search for this, but that thing can only mean trouble."

"...shit. Well, it knows we're here no matter what. Maybe it would be better to go along with it for now...that way we at least are ready for it to show its true colors. Leaving it now could let it ambush us with a bunch of its friends, and we are no closer to finding the crown on our own."

"What a mess."

DAI just shrugged it off. "We were certainly held at arms' length by the Elves thanks to being human, maybe some Drow didn't choose to go through this whole country-shifting thing." He shrugs it off and keeps walking, after all everywhere there are those who speak up against their kings.

"He was suspicious of us for being Human, we're wary of him for being a Drow...I'm sure there aren't many hurt feelings, all's fair when it comes to racism." He rolled his eyes as he said that, before heading in the direction the Drow had slithered off to. "But if we hope to catch up with him before these 'crawlers' show up..." He left the sentence open as he turned back to see how many were ready to move- either to the potential-Drow or just down.

Sili follows the squishy mage down deeper into this wretched hole in the ground.

DAI steps around the corner of the building with the rest of the party not far behind.

All he sees is the featureless wall of the building. There is no sign of the strange man.

"So much for that. I guess we'll press on, look inside the building?"

Peeking inside building 2, then heading somewhere looking for a way down I guess.

The party walks around the exterior of building #2, ending up on the side facing the fountain. There are no doors.

Zeig wanders over to the obelisk, giving it a once over. It seemed strangely out of place and he tries to glean what purpose it might serve.
14:32, Today: ZEIG rolled 29 using 1d20+10. know (religion).

Zeig casts Detect Magic and gives the obelisk a good look.

"Wandering around in this hole in the ground isn't doing much good. Can you guys tell what direction you think the city was in again? Maybe we'll find a way down on the way."

Survival?
This message was last edited by the player at 20:11, Tue 18 Dec 2012.

Giving up on the strange man, the party makes its way to the obelisk.

Racking their minds, they cannot place exactly where it came from, though they are sure drow hands did not craft it, and that it was very, very probably brought here from some far off land or culture with which nobody is familiar.
As I said, I already rolled Know(history). It was not made by any dwarves, elves, drow, giants, goblins, humans, sahuagin, or any other culture you can identify from the southern continents.

As far as the runes on the side, nobody has a clue.
00:24, Today: teslas, on behalf of SILI, rolled 18 using 1d20+6. Decipher Script.

The obelisk is obviously religiously important in a cultural sense--there's no denying that. Its purpose, however, is almost impossible to tell. Zeig's best guess would be that it's a focus of some kind, useful in focusing intent or will of magic adept participants. A hunch, perhaps a strongly retro-prescient one, suggests the obelisk is the center of some kind of ritual or group effort.
A Know(relig) of 31 (SILI auto-assists), potentially 33 if DAI assists, is a very great total, but it's not enough in its own right to garner any further information.

ZEIG casts Detect Magic but does not manage to discern supernatural effects. If anything is magical inside or around the obelisk, it is obscured by stone or spell.

The team of survivalists can, after some short deliberation, fairly confidently direct the party toward the main drow entrance. If you'd like to travel away from this collection of structures toward there, just say so.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:04, Wed 09 Jan 2013.

It's been a while, but if Zeig can't find anything worth doing in this place they'll move towards the only real lead they have, towards the main entrance and guess from there. This place is too big to do a sweep of the entire underground network.

I'm sticking by my last post. Maybe we'll find a way down on the way, but since we don't know where a way down is, might as well start looking in a place where we at least think it might be more likely.

"Yea, let's go over there. Better than waiting around for the crawlers."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:10, Wed 09 Jan 2013.

The party looks around for another few seconds and quickly resolves to leave the temple complex and continue on their way deeper underground.

Not forty seconds later, Gurlop shrieks into Garus's ear, staring off into the darkness.
20:54, Today: teslas, on behalf of Garus, rolled 38 using 1d20+18. Gurlop Spot.
20:54, Today: teslas, on behalf of Garus, rolled 10 using 1d20+2. Spot.
20:53, Today: teslas, on behalf of SILI, rolled 6 using 1d20+4. Spot.
21:28, Today: teslas, on behalf of SILI, rolled 8 using 1d20+5. MILO Spot.
Everyone turns to look, but nobody else can see anything.

Gurlop takes wing, as he's been trained to do if he feels threatened. And he will not be mentioned in initiative unless Garus issues a command to him.

Everyone has one full round of actions they can take. We are not in initiative yet. None of you can see anything in the distance.

JAGA has the lamp, your only light source. 30' bright, 60' dark (60' bright, 120' dark for those of you with low-light vision). The obelisk, however, will block the spread of light just as you'd think it would.

X = obelisk
J = JAGA, 30' bright, 60' shadowy

......................
......................       direction of Gurlop's head
......................     /
......XXXX............   /
......XXXX............ /
......XXXX............
......XXXX............
......................
.......ZDG............
.......JSM............
............----------
............|   #2
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:28, Thu 10 Jan 2013.

Zeig will cast Illuminate on a copper and ask Jaga or Garus to throw it in that direction. He was never any good at baseball...or soccer, or touch football, or jogging, or taking the trash out...
This message was last edited by the player at 03:17, Thu 10 Jan 2013.

If JAGA or Garus don't log on and post before 24 hours is up, we'll assume that one of them does it.

JAGA, however, would have to put something down or stow his staff or something, or maybe hand the lantern off to someone else. It's all up to you kids.

Correct me if I'm wrong, or draw things at your desire, but here's what each of you is holding:

DAI:
H1: nothin'
H2: nothin'
ZEIG:
H1: Staff of the Deeps
H2: coin with Illuminate
JAGA:
H1: ZEIG's hooded lantern
H2: Power Staff
SILI:
H1: nothin'
H2: nothin'
Garus:
H1: nothin'
H2: tower shield

Exchanging the with Zeig the power staff and the illuminated coin, Jaga tosses the the coin in the indicated direction.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:36, Thu 10 Jan 2013.

You can exchange the staff and then throw the coin, but you don't have enough actions to grab the staff again in one round, so that does not happen yet. (Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to do it.) I edited your post accordingly.

Sili immediately moves two squares to the left to stand behind Jaga, and draws his harp out.

JAGA flings the coin 50' away with relative ease, accuracy not really being all that important.

DAI grabs ZEIG's lantern from him before he does so.

SILI gets behind one of the men with muscles. MILO stays at his side, sniffing the air in excitement.

Garus draws his trident.

Six odd-looking creatures rapidly slither up out of the ground away from the party. Upon closer inspection, there looks to have been a set of three holes a meter in diameter in the ground that weren't noticed before off into the darkness.

The creatures have a mass of writhing tentacles coming from what would otherwise be their chin. Four of them are quite large and a couple feet long, and are covered in slime. A dozen or so others of varying lengths flail around behind them. A gigantic mouth froths with green liquid and foam, though, if nothing else, at least their several rows teeth are relatively tiny. One of a pair of external mandibles lies on other side of the mouth. They are sizable enough to help swallow or grasp food, though not to do too much bodily injury. Two eyes at the top of stalks much like a snail's come out their heads, and in lieu of feet, their long and scaly bodies have two long rows of stout spines underneath them that the creatures can use with a serpentine rippling motion to dig in and move.

Gurlop's fantastically alert and honed eyes probably saw a couple sets of eye stalks popping up from the ground--an impressive feat if anyone stops to think about it.

None of you have a clue what the hell these things are, though it's close to a sure bet that these are the crawlers the old man was speaking about.
02:09, Today: teslas, on behalf of SILI, rolled 9 using 1d20+3. Go Go Knowledge Nat 20!


Gurlop makes a circle around and then lands on top of the obelisk to watch the fight. As said before, this will be the last time he's mentioned unless given an instruction.

MILO assumes the posture, hair raised and teeth bared.

Nobody in the party is flat-footed due to having a warning from Gurlop and seeing them come up out of the ground (though the enemy rolled like shit for their initiative and are pretty far away, so it doesn't really help you much in this particular instance).

Round 1:
22: Gurlop
21: MILO     - Readied Action
21: SILI
19: JAGA
12: Garus
11: DAI
11: Crawlers - Flat-footed
 9: ZEIG

X = obelisk
D = DAI holding hooded lantern, 30' bright, 60' shadowy
o = Illuminated copper piece, 30' bright, 30' shadowy.
               .....
            .....O.....
           .....34........
        .............2O......
       ..............6.....O..
..........................14..
...............................
................................
......XXXX......................
......XXXX.....................
......XXXX......o..............
......XXXX...................
...........................
.......ZDG................
......SJ.................
.......M....------------
............|   #2

The map isn't drawn at the edge of your vision, it's just where it was convenient to stop.

These things don't have any readied actions or whatever else to mess up initiative. Feel free to post after one another, but be aware that spells and other effects, if any, may be worth waiting to see if they work or not.
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:45, Fri 11 Jan 2013.

Sili strikes up a lively tune that echoes oddly in the cave. Zeig feels the sudden urge to tap his feet and notices that he feels quicker than he should. (March on Zeig)

10:26, Today: SILI rolled 33 using 1d20+14 with rolls of 19. Perform (Harp, March).

33/3=11
Caster level 11, 6th level song. Zeig gets a +2 bonus to initiative.