Saera and Chortles both pelt one wolf with projectiles while it runs in, severely injuring it.
One of the wolves nips at Rod, while the other moves toward Zandu. Both wolves, snarling and hungry, rip into the flesh of their foes.
Immediately, one of the wolves falls to the ground in slumber.
"Wow! Look out!" Janira yells.
Wolves
You guys Zandu is up, but then the rest of the party, anyway...everyone can go.
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"Gah! No! Bad dog! Down!" Rod yelled, feeling the teeth get waaaay too close for comfort as the wolf latched onto the armored portion of his forearm. Then, a whizzing past his head forced him to look in Chortles' direction. "Hey, watch where you aim! I'm here too, you know!"
Rod snarled as he looked at the meat left on the ground. They're just hungry. Killing them wouldn't be fair; they may have pups to feed... great, starting to sound like my dad. Wrapping his free arm around the wolf's head, Rod attempted to retaliate the latch by wrestling the beast to the ground, preferably in the direction of the mutton. If I can just get it to notice the meat over me...! Rod thought, trying to force the wolf to the ground. "When I say down, I mean DOWN!"
The snarling wolf takes a bite at Rod as the fighter tries to grapple it, taking a chunk out of his arm and trying to drag him to the ground. Rod slumps to the forest floor unconscious as the wolf tears at him.
The remaining wolf, severely injured, howls in pain and turns around into the woods. The sleeping wolf is soon dispatched.
"Oh, dear!" Janira mourns as she moves closer to Rod. "This is most unfortunate...but I think he will be okay."
She removes a wand from her belt pouch and taps him several times. A divine light causes his wounds to heal.
"Is everyone else okay? Oh, let me get that, Zandu," the halfling says.
The group continues forward into the trees.
The dense forest opens to a wide clearing at the base of a sheer cliff. Thick vines cover the surface of the cliff stretching 30 feet overhead.
“Here! The cave entrance is behind those vines,” Janira says with a broad smile as she walks to the cliff’s face. She pulls back several layers of vegetation to reveal a narrow crack in the cliff’s surface.
“This is where I saw the gillmen enter.”
As she motions toward the aperture, the surrounding woods come alive with the sound of small animals fleeing some unseen danger and a large creature crashing through the undergrowth.
The halfling worriedly remarks, “Quick, take cover before whatever it is spots us!”
As if she’d summoned the creature with her words, a massive horned monstrosity emerges from the trees. Standing eight feet tall on a pair of cloven hooves and wielding a tremendous axe, the bull-headed creature roars with unbridled anger when it spots the group.
Janira screams, “A minotaur! There’s little chance we can stand against it. Take this bag,” she continues, pulling off her backpack, “and head deeper into the caves. Finish your mission. I’ll lead it away from the caves, lose it in the forest, and join you as soon as I can. Now go! GO!” She heaves her backpack intob the cave, casts a spell, and darts off toward the minotaur before turning to lure it away.
"I said GO!"
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Saera reloads her musket with black powder and a bullet before she follows the others.
When the giant minotaur appears, she momentarily freezes in place. Janira runs off to face the minotaur, and Saera stares at her.
Janira!
It leaves a bad taste, but Saera does as Janira told her to and hurries into the cave.
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Rod smirked as Janira rushed off to deal with the minotaur all by her lonesome. "Hehe... I like a lady who can take care of herself. She's got guts... I imagine we'll be seeing her again soon enough. For now... work to do."
Truthfully, Rod hated to leave her to tackle the beast herself, especially without her gear. But it wasn't his place to make those calls... yet. He would, soon enough. "Come on. It would be poor of us to not honor her valor." He said, taking the time to light a torch and lead the way.
As he walked, he made sure to keep an eye out for anything suspicious; perhaps something in the grotto's stucture naturally attracted the gillmen here. Seems those late nights in the lodge's library might pay off a bit...
The group sees the minotaur chasing after Janira through the trees, fighting its way through the dense undergrowth. Soon the cacophony of the chase fades and the sounds of the forest slowly return to normal.
This cave system stretches deep below the foothills of the Kortos Mounts, though most of it is accessible only through a narrow keyhole tunnel mostly hidden by vegetation. The tunnel seems to be between 3 and 10 feet wide and vary equally in height. The caves are damp, with water dripping from stalactites and the distant rushing of underground streams creating an eerie backdrop. Things also seem slippery.
The caves’ walls are patterned with blue-green luminescent fungi that provide dim light. Petroglyphs—most depicting marine animals or spiral shapes—periodically decorate the tunnels’ walls, becoming increasingly. The rough surface of the carvings provides a natural platform for the fungi, causing it to grow thicker and making the carvings glow slightly brighter than their surroundings.
The narrow tunnel twists and turns for several hundred feet before slowly opening to a wider passage. A large hole spans the cave’s width and stretches ten feet down the path. Nearing the chasm and peering in, it appears that the bottom of the pit contains a small bundle of cloth.
and the pit is at least a year old
The pit proves to be approximately 10 feet square for its length and width, but 20 feet deep. It fills the width of the tunnel, and there does not seem to be an easy way to bypass it.
From this high up, Yagga can't tell what the cloth bundle is.
An inch or so of water seems to cover the bottom of the pit, but aside from that Zandu doesn't notice anything else aside from the cloth bundle.
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"I have a rope," Saera informs the others. She retrieves her silk rope from her backpack, and tosses it in the others' direction.
"I you try to get that cloak, I'll see if this bag contains something we'll be able to use while exploring."
Saera picks up Janira's backpack, and opens it so she can take a look at the contents.
The bag contains the following items: potion of barkskin, potions of cure light wounds (2), potion of feather step, potion of vanish, scroll of entangle, scroll of gust of wind, scroll of identify, scroll of mage armor (CL 6), scroll of obscuring mist, wand of burning hands (CL 3rd, 4 charges), wand of cure light wounds (CL 3rd, 8 charges), acid, alchemist’s fire (2), holy water, smokestick, tanglefoot bags (1), thunderstone; antitoxin, sunrods (2)
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Kneeling down at the edge of the pit, Rod looked about and ran his fingers along the edge. Standing back up, he squints before addressing the group. "This pit isn't natural; from the structure and erosion, I say it's been here for roughly a year. I'm willing to bet our water-breathing buddies are responsible for it's construction. But it means they've been coming here at least before Janira found the place by about 6 months."
Taking the rope from Saera, he starts to fasten it to the sturdiest stalagmite he can find. "You know what this pit means, right? It means something else has been bothering these guys. Something that's been venturing in frequently enough to warrant a pit to keep them out... or something else in. Keep your eyes peeled; we don't want to get jumped."
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Chortles shakes himself to regain his composure, "This place is beautiful." He walks to the petroglyphs and admires them. He touches the fungi trying to determine its usefulness.
Using a dagger he scrapes a patch of the fungi off the wall. Slicing off a bit of his rope he ties the fungus to an unlit torch.
He walks to the bag and pulls out a potion of cure light wounds, potion of vanish and the wand of burning hands.
Peering over the edge of the canyon Chortles comments,"I don't trust that rope to get me down there."
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Zandu will take the scroll of mage armor, the holy water and a sun rod.
"This'll give us even better light."
Zandu cracks a sunrod and holds it in one hand before casting mage armor on himself.
potion of barkskin,
potions of cure light wounds (2),
potion of feather step,
potion of vanish,
scroll of entangle,
scroll of gust of wind,
scroll of identify,
scroll of obscuring mist
wand of burning hands (CL 3rd, 4 charges)
acid,
alchemist’s fire,
smokestick,
thunderstone;
antitoxin,
sunrods
tanglefoot bag
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"There's nothing specific I'd want, but I guess I'll carry the remaining items."
If no one else want to take something from the bag, Saera empties the remaining items in her own backpack. She folds Janira's bag up, and also puts it in her own.
Saera then walks over to the edge of the pit, and watches Rod climb down. She then takes some distance from the pit, and runs toward it.
With a mighty leap, Saera ends up on the other side of the pit.
With a running jump, Saera easily clears the pit, even doing so with room to spare.
At the bottom of the pit in the water, Rod finds a finely tailored cloak that seems impervious to the water it sits in. It also seems to have been the source of magic others detected, because there is nothing else but rubble and water in the bottom of the pit.
Seeing Saera clear the pit, Zandu takes a running leap and attempts to jump across. However, with the extremely slippery conditions in the cave, his foot slips slightly on takeoff, and he lands roughly, with his chest hitting the side and his arms grasping desperately for anything to hold, before slipping and falling twenty feet into the pit below. He hits his head as he falls and it seems to have knocked him unconscious.
Zandu's fall looked worse than it was. Though it looked briefly like he was knocked out by the fall, he opens his eyes and comes to, though still lying on his back in an inch of water.
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Rod picked up the cloth, turning it over as he inspected it. "I get a distinct vibe of magic from this. Not sure what it is, but it--" he cut off, as Zandu attempted and failed to make the leap across the pit. Rolling his eyes slightly, Rod walked over to help the wizard up to his feet.
"You know, there was a perfectly good rope over there to climb down. I find it much more reliable than a magic spell... or slippery rocks." He stated, before handing Zandu the cloak and investigating the far pit wall. "See if you can tell what kind of magic is possessing that, while I get the other end of this rope up the wall." Tying a loop, Rod tossed the other end of rope to Saera. "Hey, sweetheart! Mind tying that to a stalagmite up there? Much as I love slogging through low tide..."