Gideon raises his bow, taking a shot at one of them before the melee starts.
Calvin swims up to the closest one and slashes at it. He leaves the left side open for his ranged friends to deal with the companion.
Sloshing through the water noisily and somewhat clumsily, Tobar nevertheless brings his crossbow to bear as he nudges past Gideon so that he can take an unobstructed shot.
Calvin swims up and cuts the closest grindylow down with a powerful slash of his sword. Weyve and Tobar both hit the second grindylow with crossbow bolts, and it falls back into the water in a spreading pool of blood. It seems the fight is over before it began.
With the pair of grindylows defeated, you move deeper into the caves. The tunnel runs roughly south to north, its floor about five feet below the water’s surface. Two openings lead to other caves along the eastern wall. At its northern end, the cave jogs to the west.
Three more grindylows emerge from the water in the nearby intersection, growling as they prepare to strike!
Gideon raises his bow again, hoping he has better aim this time than last!
Tobar moves forward slightly to get a clear line of fire once again.
Weyve watches as the two take shots that bring down their enemies. He lifts his crossbow...
And shoots, but the bolt lands harmlessly in the water.
"Not all of us can be crack shots..."
With two expertly placed shots, Gideon and Tobar drop two of the three grindylows. Weyve tries to hit the third one, but his bolt splashes harmlessly into the water.
The remaining grindylow shrieks and swims off down the northern passage. It quickly passes out of range of your sight.
"We better stop that 'un before it gets help," says Tobar as he reloads.
"Crud, probably warning others! Should we pursue?" Gideon says, looking to the others.
If the others agree to pursue, Gideon will take off after them, though he lets Calvin take the lead.
Calvin will lead, swimming after the Grindylow, though he feels that the thing will reach its comrades far faster than they will, still, this way might be safer in the long run.
You follow the grindylow down the tunnel. You are about halfway down its length when Calvin inadvertently swims into a piece of translucent seaweed set up as a tripwire. The kelp pulls at an already loosened section of stone, which causes several other rocks to fall on you! Calvin and Weyve get pummeled, but Gideon and Tobar dodge the worst of it.
The tunnel opens to the east into a section of deeper water that seems to connect to the previous cavern. It continues ahead and turns to the west.
With a cry of surprise when the tunnel suddenly collapses in on them, Gideon barely manages to avoid the falling rocks; his comrades, though, are not so lucky.
With Weyve able to cast a cure spell on his own, Gideon focuses his efforts on Calvin, casting a spell of healing on the swordsman.
"Nice welcome mat they've got there."
"No kiddin'. Let's hope we aren't crashing a barbecue or something." Gideon says, ready to continue forward, though encouraging a bit more caution and trying to keep an eye out for any similar traps.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Gideon doesn't find any other traps ahead.
"Hang on, let's both get eyes on this," says Tobar as he joins Gideon in checking the area.
"I'd rather leave no ground unturned behind us than keep rushing after the grindylows...if there was an alarm to be raised, surely it's too late for us to prevent them doing so."
Calvin will let them check, but he'll keep his guard up and stay nearby where he can move to intercept threats.
You head into the large eastern cave to check it before continuing forward. You've only made it a little ways inside when three grindylow emerge from behind pillars of stone and start rushing towards you!
"What? Look out!"
Calvin raises his longsword high and brings it down on the grindylow that rushed up to him.
"Take this! he snaps.
Gideon takes a swift step backward away from the grindylow nearest him, then takes another bowshot at the creature.
Tobar fires his loaded crossbow once again as the latest wave (ha ha) of grindylows rush forward.
Tobar' point blank shot strikes the grindylow in the head, dropping the vile creature.
Gideon steps back and holds his bow above the water line as he shoots, but his attack goes wide.
Calvin cuts down a second grindylow with a powerful attack!
The sole remaining aberration swims at Calvin, stabbing with its spear and biting fiercely! The gillman parries the attacks.
Tobar reloads, turns, and fires again!
"Uh... yeah. *ahem* Ah... I didn't want to step in there... wouldn't have been fair, four on three you know."
Weyve looks over the bodies, to see if they are carrying anything interesting. After gathering up anything valuable and handing it to the others, Weyve looks around.
"I doubt that's all of them. We should keep moving." Weyve hefts his crossbow and continues forward.
Between Gideon and Calvin, the last grindylow goes down hard. Weyve only finds spears on their bodies, but when he swims down to search the cave, he discovers a few leathery pouches made out of a large fish’s swim bladder. Inside the pouches, you find 13 pieces of polished red coral worth 10 gp each. In addition, a waterlogged backpack contains a magic bottle, an everburning torch, a rotted coil of rope, an empty flask bearing the initials “E. M.,” a hammer, six pitons, and a dented flute.
You continue forward into the adjoining cave. The floor slopes down here--the water is ten feet deep, forcing you to swim to make progress. You are only a short way into the cave when suddenly two barrel-shaped octopi burst from their hiding spots in the silt at the bottom of the cave! They reach for Calvin with their tentacles! One manages to wrap around his legs, but the gillman kicks free before it gets a good hold.
Calvin jockeys to get into a better position before he slices into the octopus that tried to grab onto him.
+2 if flanking
Tobar backpedals through the water to get out of reach of the octopus before firing.
Gideon swims toward the uppermost octopus, trying to slash at it with his machete.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Before pressing on, Weyve takes some twine and ties the everburning torch to his back so that the lit end sticks up over his shoulder.
"That will give us some light down here. I could also cast light on a small object and levitate it ahead of us if we need it."
Weyve shuffles back out of the reach of the octopus. He mutters some alien words, and his eyes and skin turn blue, and a dark mist seems to rise off of him.
He points at the octopus and a cloud of shadows falls on it.
As Tobar backpedals, Weyve moves and traps the closest octopus with its own shadow. Gideon swims up and slashes the other mollusk with his machete, allowing Calvin to flank it and finish it off.
The remaining octopus struggles in vain to escape. It squirts a cloud of ink into the water, obscuring it from sight.
Trusting that it's pinned in place, Calvin sweeps his longsword through the cloud of ink.
Gideon swims forward until he is in front of Weyve, taking a swing at the cephalopod despite the cloud of ink.
Tobar squints, lines up his crossbow, and does his best to skip a bolt along the surface of the water at the octopus.
Tobar fires a bolt into the ink cloud, the wet think announcing a solid hit. Gideon thrusts his machete at the octopus, but cuts through inky water. Calvin sweeps his sword in a wide arc, managing to catch the octopus with its edge. It floats to the surface of the water, limp and unmoving.
Gideon breathes a sigh of relief when the octopus floats to the surface, unmoving. "Dibs on the next spear we come across." he says in a dry tone.
-Posted with Wayfinder
"Anyone feel like calamari?" Weyve quips. "They actually do make good eating if you prepare them right."
"There are those small spears the grindylows had. That might do until we find a bigger one."
Weyve takes a quick look around before proceeding.
"Now that we took care of the guard dogs, shall we see what they were guarding?"
Weyve doesn't find anything of interest in this cave. You take a few moments to recover from the fight before swimming across the cave and back into shallow waters. After a sharp switchback in the tunnel, a gradual upward slope leads out of the water and into this roughly round chamber with a dome-like ceiling. The floor is covered in a mixture of sand and coarse stones. Rising from the ground near the center of the room is a massive statue of a hand, carved from a smooth, pearlescent, sea-green marble. The hand is bent back at the wrist and posed as if to catch something or to cradle something in its palm. If anything more exists of the statue, it is buried beneath the earth.
The grindylow that escaped earlier is here. Of greater concern, a giant grindylow the size of a human reclines in the hand as if it were a throne. Upon seeing you, she slides down off the hand, rises to her full height and bellows, the sound echoing off the chamber's walls!