Neri didn't seem to be helping much at all. He'd keep trying though... once others had caught up to him.
((If Luna hasn't stopped her bleeding within four rounds, Neri will get it to stop. Then two turns later he'll get his own. So he'll be at 18/32, if no one stops his before then.))
"I'm... pretty well tapped out, I think. I can magic my weapon again... and wing it a little with the magic, so long as there's no more screechers... but I'm voting we turn back and rest. I burned basically everything in that fight."
Jacob, revived as he was, readily agreed with Neri.
"Bats congregate in large colonies - there are likely many more. And seeing as you all kept me from death's door - which I appreciate - I'd rather not go knocking again."
It was a queer feeling, being rendered unconscious like that. Painful yes, but he was out nearly instantly. Upon revival, there was soreness but no wound. It was like the dentist only more prevalent.
"But I believe we must continue through when at fuller strength. I will not spend the rest of my days stagnating in some hovel." The promise of another civilization close by made the case difficult to ignore for Jacob.
"Speaking of stagnating... maybe we can leave a present behind for the bats? A barbed net, or a bit of smoke to help thin their numbers until they return? I don't want to make the caves unsafe, but it might be worth a thought."
"Smoke won't work, because the caves are well-ventilated. Otherwise they'd all be dead from methane... or we'd be dead from an explosion. And a barbed net would only affect the babies, I'd think. What I -am- thinking, though, is that we could maybe capture some of the babies rather than killing them all, and attempt to raise them in your keep. You know, speaking of nets."
"I've got pretty much nothing left to fight with and my whip does almost nothing to these guys, I'd rather not have even more pets that can kill us as well, I say we head back alone."
"Sadly, I must second Luna's point" Jacob gave a vengeful look back at the cavern's forward depths. "We'll have to conquer this obstacle some other time."
The group goes back to the earthen plug, and sets up a camp and rests.
Nothing happens over the course of the next 15 hours, and the next day they are fully recovered.
Luna would spend most of her time trying to prepare more bombs as she was still very new to the subject.
"Does anyone else have a way to kill the swarms, I'll run out pretty quickly again."
"I can prep a spell for that in the morning. I get the feeling it'll be a better idea than Chill Touch. We'll see though. I'll have to be careful with it, it's not like I can shape it... but..." He trails off with a shrug.
The 'night' passes uneventfully, and after everyone has rested, they feel much recovered.
"So. Are we ready to head back down? There's not much left down that individual path."
Once the group is ready, and Neri's healing spell has finished putting him back together, he goes along with them. He begins paying careful attention even before they reach the previously dangerous location, and does his best to keep a low profile.
Luna would have tried to creature more bombs if she was able in the limited area but when called on she was ready to move on.
"Hopefully we've cleared out most the bats anyway, I'm getting tired of all the scratches."
Jes. Zese bats are annoyink.
Kong is ready to go, but feels a bit sheepish after being afraid, in that last encounter. He's a bit subdued, at this point.
The group returns back down to the bat cavern, and find that while there are still bats in it, there are no more large ones immediately evident, and the small ones are too dispersed to be more than an annoyance.
Ideally, the group would continue along the path they'd traveled previously, continuing down it, back to where they'd been before; as nothing showed up of exceptional interest on the way in, or out, the previous time.. aside from the water, forward was more ideal. "There are multiple turns ahead, if I remember right, so we need to be careful not to fight in any crossroads, so we don't wind up flanked." Neri suggested as their group neared where they'd previously been.
At the show of everyone else being hesitant, as they pressed deeper into the caves, Neri moved to the front and lead the way, looking into the right hand path, into the apparent room.
Neri see's flashes of purple colored light in the dim recesses, upon closer staring, the flashes seem to be coming from large spikes of crystal.
Neri casts detect magic in the direction of the flashing crystals.
"Shiny."
"What's shiny? Shiny has yet to be good for us."
"Crystal of some sort. I'm trying to figure out if it's magical or not."
The crystal is not magical in any way. There are three growths of it though, one yellow, one purple, and one white.
"Never know who might find that valuable. Maybe we should take a few samples?"
"Yeah. We should probably take it at the rock, we don't know what it is, if it'll shatter, or if it'll explode into a cloud of toxic dust when we try to chip it. Probably better to take it back... I wish we hadn't lost Harry, his crew probably would have known what it was useful for, if anything."
Neri focuses on the crystalline structures to see if he recognizes them. (let me know if it's not dungeoneering)
The yellow crystals are Topaz crystals, although they are the largest Lina has ever seen. The larger ones are the size of her thigh.
The purple crystals are jadeite, the rarer of the two types of Jade. The crystals are probably about 300 lbs of purple jade.
The white crystals are common quartz crystals, but they are the larger of the three batches, taking up a third of the small cavern. The largest crystal, in the center, is nearly as big as Neri. The crystals have thin silvery filaments inside, some form of metal contamination.
After studying the crystals, Lina grins and points. "These are gems, everyone! Topaz, jade, and quartz with what might well be a rare metal inside. If I can borrow one of those picks for a few minutes, I'd like to take a dozen kilos of the stuff with me—and mark this on the map, Neri, because it may be just what we need to craft some more of that magical jewelry."
"It'll be easy to remember where this is. It's the first significant area we've ran into. I'll mark it when we get back, possibly with a dab of each crystal. It'll definitely come in handy. If the metals mean anything, the volcano cares more about value than the amount... so I'd hate to have to pull rare jewels."
"Wonder why the bats are set up around here, though. Do they just like the shiny things?"
Jes, let's chust take a little, for now, und come back for more, maybe on ze way back.
Kong does his best to chip out a few prime specimens of each.
"Are you sure it's a good idea to carry more of this around? if it doesn't do anything it could be a complete waste, small sample seems best."
"That's fair. We're just carrying so little as it is, that ten pounds of the stuff shouldn't make a difference to me."
Kong hits the crystals a few times each, and chips off a couple of pieces of each the size of his fist.
Neri turns around and heads to the right. To the southern tunnel.
Neri and Lina find nothing in the other two caves except dung filled caverns.
Finally, anything of interest in the alcove in the northeastern section of this map? Just to our right?
If not... "Guess that's all that's down here. Seems strange for all those bats to just be hanging out in this section. I guess that's kind of what bats do, though, huh?" Neri shrugs before activating detect magic, and maintaining it for a moment in each alcove, before leading the way back to the central tunnel, where they could turn 'south'.
The bats likely hid out here as a safe fall back area for their colony. It looks like a breeding area.
"This looks like where those bats nested. Back to the fork, then?" Lina asks, and begins to walk if nobody stops her.
Neri has no reason not to go along with, especially since she's simply heading where he was planning to head.. and she even has light.
Luna would carefully follow ready to attack if any more of the wing'd creatures show themselves.
The air grows thick with moisture as the group goes down the cave, and the roar grows until they can barely hear themselves think. As the move forward, the air itself becomes thick with water droplets, and they see they've come to a massive underground waterfall. To the left, thousands of gallons of water pound down every second, sending up a spray of water. The water has cut a channel through the rock floor of the cave, leading to a 30 ft drop to the surface of the water. The ground is slick and wet on either side of the crevice.
To the right, a small pool of water whirls rapidly in a whirpool, the massive amounts of water falling from the waterfall disappearing just as rapidly as it goes down some unseen outlet. The water in the crevice appears to be racing past, white with foam, probably 30 or 40 miles per hour.
Two old water soaked logs stretch over the crevice, spiked into the floor by heavy rusty spikes on either side.