Gelik casts prestidigitation on everyone to dry them off before beddy-bye. He will also recharge his lavender hanky. He requests first watch (so he can sleep in as long as possible).
Ralf spends some time poring over the moldy logbook before bedtime. (See Linguistics roll above.)
You have safely bedded down for the night when you hear the familiar flapping of wings announcing the arrival of another hungry pterodon.
It's on Gelik's and Aerys's watch, so you can roll for initiative while the rest of you make Perception checks to wake up.
Also Hrakar needs to make a Fortitude save.
Fortitude Save:
Perception Check:
"Giant bird-lizard!" Gelik shrieks an a school-girl octave.
Perception:
"Zzzzz..."
"What, Oh I see it!" replies Aerys back to Gelik, "For heaven's sake calm down and wake the others."
Aerys breavely takes a stand and swats the flying creature for 5 points of damage, as it bites her for 7 points.
Gelik is up, Torch and Hrakar need to beat initiative 16 and somebody will have to wake Ralf.
"Wakey wakey, you deaf old coot!"
Gelik unleashes a blast of swirling color at the flying horror, knocking it clean out of the sky, netting you 80 xp each.
You also make some headway with the book, which turns out to be the captain's log from the Nightvoice. Gelik's heard stories about that ship, and the most popular theory as to what happened is that the ship ran aground on Smuggler’s Shiv or sank near the island. Being able to confirm this might put him in the Pathfinders good graces again. It also gives you 40 xp each.
The rest of the night is peaceful. Still going back to camp?
A very sleepy Hrakar starts mumbling something, if anyone was close enough he could hear the dwarf words... "Uh... what? Stop making noise you louts! I need to sleep if I am to unleash the wrath of Torag on those accursed betrayers! And... yhawn... I cannot do that if you keep waking me up... zzzzz"
HP increase roll:
EDIT: ... Do I need to say I vote for "random" roll? :D
Gelik pumps his fist when he brings the flying creature down. "Yes! See, now that's a proper opponent. It has a mind that works more or less like normal. Not some alien plant-thing." Gelik continues to be annoyingly self-satisfied for the next several hours, until he realizes that Aerys was the only person that saw his triumph. That makes him grouchy instead.
Torch readies his blade... and Gelik wipes the dinosaur out of the sky. After a moment's pause, and with a certain air of disappointment, Torch shrugs, resheathes the weapon, and gets ready to head back to sleep.
Aerys ... includes favored class bonus
So the question is, will you stay and finish reading or do you want to get back to camp as fast as possible?
Ralf, once he gets over the indignity of being woken up in the middle of the night for no good reason at all, is in favour of continuing reading the log book. He'll use his trance ability again, so there's no chance of failure.
While Ralf and Gelik try to decipher the moldy log, Aerys, Hrakar and Torch go foraging for some food.
Then Aerys goes and disturbs a den of vipers.
Roll for initiative.
Survival check:
Initiative roll:
"Oh... damnation... here we go again!"
Aerys aims a blow at the nearest snake but the foliage is too thick. She is bitten once by one of the three red and yellow snakes.
The rest of you are up.
Hrakar charges into the fray whielding his warhammer
Attack roll (charging):
Damage roll (if hits):
Torch moves toward a second snake, hoping to match Hrakar's violence with his own:
Hrakar smashes through the shrubbery and pounds one of the snakes to paste. Torch slashes at another but it is too quick. Aerys kills another and the last snake slithers away. Aerys was bitten, but fortunately the wound does not seem too swollen, so the venom hasn't taken.
Back at the camp Ralf and Gelik finish reading the log. Here's what happened (spoilered for length):
As he watched his friends and crew succumb to the infection, he knew that he couldn’t allow the strange bulb (which had closed up on itself and was pulsing with a foul life, as if replenishing its store of spores) to reach the coast. Yet the Nightvoice was now adrift on a current that would swiftly take it to the coast of Sargava. It was all Captain Ames could do to alter the large ship’s course on his own so that it instead crashed against the rocks here.
The log ends with the captain's decision to "carry the blasphemous pod up to the top of a rock spire to the east of this island" away from the prying eyes of humanity.
Ralf relates the contents of the log at length...even if Gelik has already done so. :-)
He also cudgels his brain to see if he might have heard of such a pod before.
Knowledge nature (?)
Hrakar considers the new information for a moment then speaks:"So... the captain took this... thing and secured it somewhere? Good, although I guess he wasn't all that through with his task, judging from all those fungal monsters we had to kill back on the ship..."
Torch surveys the local terrain, looking for a rock spire that might match the log's description. "No," he replies. "No, he wasn't. Which means we need to be, if we're going to secure this area as a staging ground. It's been contained on the other island for now, but we're talking spores, here. Things that float on the wind. That's an existential threat to all of us."
"Aye, to be sure, we should honor the old sea dog and complete the destruction of the pod thing." says Aerys nonchalantly, surely such a victory would prove easy for these heroes.
So you want to go back onto the island and search for the captain and the pod?
Ralf can tell (and Torch can confirm) that vegepygmies usually grow from russet mold, which doesn't form pods like that. It's hard to tell exactly what the pod is from the captain's ravings, but it's probably of extra-planar origin. It's simply too potent to be natural.
Gelik is clearly torn. "So if this were a good story, the Captain would have struggled mightily to get the spore pod to the safety of the rocky spire. At the climactic moment of his success, the pod bursts, infecting him with spores and tragically turning him into a mold-man. Through sheer force of will, the Captain retains some spark of his humanity, and keeps the infection contained to the spire. The heroes (us) climb the spire, where the mold-man Captain tells us how to destroy the pod. We do so, and of course the Captain dies as well, along with all the other mold-men. Happy ending."
He rubs his nose and frowns. "Of course, what probably really happened is that the Captain is now a wicked mold-man just like the rest of them, and he's going to try to infect us with his spore pod."
He stands up and paces back and forth, then stops and shakes his head. "Nope. Bad idea. The Pathfinders would surely be interested in what happened to the Captain and the pod, but it's way too risky, and disgusting to boot. The ship's been there a while - the fungus doesn't seem to be spreading too fast. I vote we go back to camp."
Hrakar falls silent for most of the conversation, then, when everyone is finished making his or her point, he speaks, but with an unusually soft tone:"This story saddens me. It really does. But let's be realistic, for once: we can't be sure of finding this thing. This dangerous thing. And even if we do it may very well turn us into moldy creeps like the rest of that ship's crew. Besides while we do this the chance of that bastard captain and his whore running away increases even more. Now, I respect courage and I would like to see justice done to the Nightvoice's captain memory... but this just doesn't seem the wise course of action here and now. I'll respect whatever you choose, but I say we need to deal with this problem later"
"Two for, and two against." Torch looks at Ralf, then shakes his head. "And one guy who doesn't even know what we're trying to decide."
Gelik glances over at Ralf and sighs. He then uses his spear tip to write a few words in the dirt. He speaks the words loudly as he writes them. "pod" (points toward the mold-infested island) and "tracks" (points in the direction of the tracks they found). "You're the tiebreaker!" Gelik says loudly, then adds, "You deaf old coot."
"Huh. Sounds like a mighty queer thing. Maybe not even from this world!" Ralf shrugs noncommitally. "So, how's about we keep exploring? There's got to be some way off this island. We're burning daylight!"
He starts packing up his small assortment of gear.
Hrakar looks at Ralf, perplexed by his answer:"Does that mean you want to go back to camp or that you want to search for that "pod"?!?" the dwarf shouts to allow Ralf to hear him.
Ralf is blissfully ignorant of whatever Hrakar is saying.
Gelik shrugs. "The man is senile; his vote doesn't count." He sighs and adds, "I suppose compromise is in order. I change my vote to doomed captain hunt. But I refuse to stay on that fungus island overnight. We go looking for this rocky spire mentioned in the ship's log, but we come back here before dark. We can stay on the shore and circle round the perimeter. We search for one day, then it's back to finding a way off this island. How does that sound?"