After sweeping away as much dirt as possible, you are unable to find a trap door but the floor is certainly hollow beneath the wood so Xerxes starts cutting through to make his way beneath.
Beneath the wooden floor is a sinkhole descending into the rock. It drops thirty feet to the still, dark surface of water below. The broken remnants of a wooden platform and stair clinging to the wall, but the structures themselves have long since rotted away and dropped into the inscrutable depths.
"Okay kids, who's first?", Karter peers down at the dark waters, "Anybody got a light source we can toss down there? -Sh'yl?".
I will go first. I can see in complete darkness, but I understand your need for magical means. I'll wait until everyone is ready.
"Hope you can breath in complete liquid too cus looks like nothin' down there but water", Karter makes ready with a breather and the rifle.
Sh'yl smile at Karter Of course !
May the Force be our Light. He prayed and a light appeared on a stick.
I will take the rear he said, looking around him.
You drop down into the water, which is quite cool, but do not see or hear anything initially. You wade through the water, which thankfully is not more than waist-deep at this point, and emerge into the next chamber.
Unfortunately, no one notices that hiding around the corners of the next cave opening are more Silurians who must have sneaked past you while you fought the sontaron! Clearly they found another way in....
The others splash noisily, carrying pronged poles which spit out bits of flame from their ends.
Grazed by a sonic wave that barely managed to get past his armor, Xerxes closes in on the closest Silurian and strikes with a potent blow.
Xerxes leaps forward and sends one of the lizard-people splashing into the water below. The three silurians hanging back work on recharging their sonic rifles while the two others leap forward with their pronged weapons to stop Xerxes' path!
Francis steps down and points his fingers at the orange-skinned silurian. "Pow!" he yells, mimicking a gun in his hand, finger outstretched. A small bead, bright red, shoots past the silurian.
Before he has time to react, the bead explodes 15' behind him, enveloping him and two of his buddies in fire.
"Take them down crew!" Francis yells after the explosion rings out. The shockwave knocks the Tricorne of the 'Verse askew, so Francis takes a second to readjust it.
May the Force be with us ! Prayed Sh'yl before moving toward one of the Silurian and drawing one of his lightsaber.
Sh'yl blesses the party as Captain Francis blows three of the silurians to bits!
Xerxes strikes four times at the blueish silurian in front of him, reveling in the purity of his battle stance! Yet he seems so absorbed by his philosophical mindset that most of his attacks whistle past the silurian harmlessly.
Despite Xerxes' bad luck, he still knocks one of the two remaining silurians unconscious, leaving the last one to pathetically fight on his own before being overwhelmed by the four of you.
Xerxes picks up one of the space tridents, intrigued at that clumsy, yet somewhat useful weapon depending on the circumstances.
Those Silurians sure are persistant, I'll give them that. I'll lead the way north.
Xerxes leads his companions in the northernmost hallway, weapons drawn.
"Good thinking, Xerxes." Capt. Francis commends his crew member. "To the north!"
Francis will let Sh'yl take point in front of him with Karter at his rear while Xerxes scouts ahead.
To the northwest, the tunnel rises above sea level, creating a floor of sand. There are a few items of furniture that are scattered about, including a table, a poorly repaired chair, a bed with a sagging frame, and a crude fence of driftwood in the rear of the chamber. The entire cavern is overgrown with vines bearing tiny violet flowers that fill the room with a cloying fragrance.
Hidden in the bed covers is a wand of web (37 charges). Beneath the bed is a small coffer holding three more potions of water/vaccuum breahing. There is also a large glass jar filled with alcohol and holding the preserved head of a vicious-looking man with pock-scarred cheeks, a tattoo of a kraken on his forehead, and a ll his teeth broken out.
Francis mulls over the head and decides that he wants no part of it. "Can't be having weird disembodied heads on the ship. Bad for morale!"
He looks around and doesn't see any other ways to go but to the south. "To the south! Lead the way, Xerxes!"
I have no clue who this was. I'll lead onwards to the south. Meanwhile, I'll take one of these, just in case.
"This looks like...", Karter taps the glass then his forehead, "...a dead guy", then just in case he needs a severed and pickled head for any reason, he wraps the jar in clothe and stows it in his pack. Still holding Shyl's stick to light the way, Karter urges the fearless Slayer onward.
To the south is another flooded chamber with an attached room in which you find an abandoned masterwork space trident.
Beyond this further to the south the water grows higher and the cavern slips down until eventually, by the time the tunnel turns, you can see that it is completely submerged in water.
It looks like we have no choice. Let's venture underwater with the potions we found earlier. Unless someone has a better plan?
"This sounds like THE plan, Xerxes." Francis says as he quaffs a potion. "Drink up!"
You find it quite easy to breath in the water after ingesting the gillyweed potions. Further down you find numerous strange, organic filaments filling the chamber at the bottom of the slope. Fist-sized pink ovoids float from the filaments, bobbing in the lazy current.
Closer inspection reveals the spheres to be slightly translucent and to contain a small tadpole-like creature twitching with.
Beyond this chamber an offshoot leads to a room where rusty shackles scavenged from somewhere hang from the wall, holding in a fish-like humanoid with crested fins and an orange coloration. The thing's legs have been savagely hacked off above the knee and crudely stitched up.
What are these things? Zerg offshoots? I can't allow these spawns to come to life. Unless they are from that creature. What is it?
"I am... uncertain." Francis thinks back to the Protoss. "Hold off on killing it for now and try to contact the creature in front of us."
The fish-headed creature raises its head, clearly in much pain. "Please. . . no more. . . my children." she moans.
Sh'yl seeing that the creature is still alive tried to find a way to help her, with his magic or his skills.
She is shackled to the wall and suffering many superficial cuts and bruises. Unfortunately, regrowing her legs would require powerful magic.
Sh'yl turned to Xerxes and asked
Could you free this poor creature from her shackles?
Something your lightsabers can't do? Very well, Sh'yl, I'll do it.
With a clean cut, he cleaves through the metal with his psyblade.
"Cut her down and someone apply some light healing magic." Francis says as he looks about.
Hmm... whoever did this cannot be too far. Perhaps I shall take their legs from them and offer them to the chained beast. he ponders.
As Xerxes breaks the shackles holding her in, she slumps to the floor of the cavern. "Oh, thank you! Those lousy lizard people. . . they've been eating my babies! They were forcing me to make eggs for them, just so they could eat them! Isn't it awful? Please, would you just help me get the rest of the eggs out of here before they come back? I must save some of them at least!"
It appears we committed to this course of action - it would only be consistant to keep on helping you at this point. The question is, what does he have to offer?
"Hmm... Such scandalous behavior should not be tolerated! We will capture them and force them to lay eggs for you to eat!" Francis decides.
"Men! We must find these brigands!" Francis decides.
He radios back to the ship. "First Mate!" A moo can be heard on the radio. "We have found a friendly beast chained up down here who will need help returning to the ship with her eggs. Send Maheem and the big one to escort them out."
He assuages the creature and tells her that aid will arrive shortly to keep her safe.
"We happen to have a lizardman in our crew but no worries he's a Veggan", Karter pulls out his healer's kit and goes to work on the wounds trying to distract her from any discomfort with banter, "I learned a few vocabulary from our Hartshorn, I'll be sure to admonish these other lizardmen properly when we catch up with them.".
Maheem and a few other crew are waiting above the water to escort the fishy woman and her eggs, which she gathers up in a seaweed basket as best she can. Her wounds are quite serious but the rest of the crew will be able to look after her until you are finished exploring this place.
Further down you come to another open cavern where the water is murky with the haze of fresh blood. Gobbets of flesh float in the water. Tunnels lead off in several different directions.
Francis points out to his men the northern passage. "Cut down that seaweed and let's look to the north!" he mentally transmits.
To the north is a dismal chamber that seems to be serving as the quarters for the almost three dozen noncombatant members of the silurian tribe, old and young too weak and malnourished to help the warriors you have been fighting off so far.
Hmmm... it seems the egg layer was their source of nourishment.
"Xerxes! Try to tell all of them that we can help relocate them to places with food if they can help convince the Silurians that we are hear investigating the source of their aggression. A peaceful resolution can occur if we can work together." he commands the communications specialist as he sees the pain and suffering float all around the room like wisps on the water.
Xerxes helps convey his captain's message to the famished Silurians.
These silurians do not seem ready to put up a fight or impede your progress at all. One of the elderly females agrees to accompany you try to try to convince any warriors you encounter to speak first. "Beware of the Matron, though. The warriors may reason with you to save their own lives but the matron is ancient and the others fear her. She will fight to the death to defend the hatchlings and eggs, even from her own kind. She takes residence to the southeast."
There is an advantage to be gained from this situation though. Sever the head and the body will fall limp. If we kill the Matron, the rest may give up and save their lives. Let's head to her lair.
With a plan in mind, Xerxes suggests you head to the Matron's lair. Along the way you see swarms of silurian fingerlings and newly hatched fry. The seaweed curtains are thick enough to generally keep them contained and prevent them from wandering, it seems.
The Matron is ancient and massive, as you were warned.
The protoss zealot swims to the Matron while drawing his psiblades and strikes at her before she can react!
Xerxes stabs beneath her flabby arms and digs his blade in deep!
The giant silurian bubbles and spits as she backs up and viciously attacks Xerxes!
Francis moves up behind Xerxes and weaves a quick spell behind the man, opening a small portal. "On my mark, Xerxes." He thinks to the man as he shoves his hand through the portal. As he draws it back, his hand is nearly crystallized in ice, but he seems to be drawing out a long coil of dark magicks.
"Mark!" he thinks loudly at the Protoss as he slings his Limp Lash at the mother silurian, trying to wrap the tip of the dark whip around the neck of the beast.
You must make a ranged touch attack with this spell. If you strike your target, he takes a 1d6 penalty to his Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution each round. This penalty cannot reduce any attribute to less than 1, and once any of these attributes reaches 1 the target collapses and his body, except his head, becomes paralyzed. While paralyzed in this way, the target retains full use of his senses, including the ability to feel pain, and can speak (including casting spells with only verbal components). The whip has a maximum length of 20 feet, 15 hit points, and a hardness of 5. The spell ends immediately if you let go of the whip or it is destroyed. When the spell ends, all penalties the target took from this spell also end.