Spellcraft to identify magical properties:
Tayanella you ponder the items for a bit and study them, their magical auras and make up.
You are able to identify the 50 arrows +1 with keen, seeking, cunning properties.
The rings are a mystery to you and are unable to discern their magic.
The lute itself is merely masterwork, but its strings are magical Deadly Strings. The strings, when attached to any stringed instrument magically size themselves to it. They allow the the user at the cost of 1 point of bardic performance to strum the strings and cast a Burning Hands spell, but with sonic components instead of fire. The damage is still 1d4/level capped at 5d4, and in all ways works like burning hands aside from the elemental change. Its use per day is limited only by bardic performances.
Tayanalla relays what she learned to the rest of the group.
"Somebody else will have to identify the rings, they're a mystery to me."
"I'll restock my quiver with these magic arrows and I suggest that Lump try out the magic lute strings."
With guidance:
Ring 2 you were unable to figure out.
After the fight Ash will fly over to make sure everyone is ok, and then check on her pack and move them back to the warmth by the heatstone. With fly still enabling her she can check on the melting over by the ceiling spot, and work on smashing that open.
Oh, and she will try to look at the ring.
"Hmm, yup its a ring!"
Day 19 - still
No luck on the ring. You fly up and look under the hanging blankets to check the progress on the ice around whatever glowing thing was trapped. It has melted more and you start to claw and smash at the ice to get at what is within. It takes some time, and eventually your flight runs out and you use the ropes and climbing gear.
Slowly, you work through the ice and find a pocket of air. In the center of the pocket you find a glowing irregular piece of stone or metal. Within the pocket you find more of the brownish mold spores that were covering the creature. You do not feel as strong a cold emanation from these. On the far side of the pocket appears to be tunnel of sorts with a large sheet of ice or glass covering its entrance.
"lemme see that thing."
Lump grabs the ring, "You clowns, its obviously a Ring of Animal Friendship."
Ash will grab the rock. "Hey a glowing rock, and some more mold in here, and a tunnel." she shouts down. "Want me to bring it down, or do you all want to come up here?"
Karkoran stands down below as Ash explore the cavity above. "Bring the rock down and some mold too. Be careful though. I want to examine that mold. I wonder how it relates to the mold on the remorhaz."
"What's in the tunnel!?" he booms back up.
I fly the rock and mold down to him and then return to check out the tunnel at the back.
"I'll look at the rock. The mold sounds gross. Also, so, uh... what about those other items? Anything we can use? We might wanna equip ourselves accordingly. This animal friendship ring obviously doesn't do much for me, but maybe you can attract a new elk with it. Or a remhoraz."
I'll examine the mold and start culturing it maybe.
The rock seems to be glowing from within, and not a happy friendly glow, more of a sickly throbbing glow.
The mold, well it looks like mold. The colony scraped off seems similar in appearance to that on the creature, but it doesn't seem to radiate cold because you think its dormant currently. It was in close proximity to the rock and you and Lump surmise the rock might have inhibited it, or possibly even mutated it.
"I don't like the look of those glowing rocks. I wonder what they are and how they came to be here?"
Tayanella examines the rock, with Lump. Tayanella, you have heard of these things before, although don't recollect a lot about them, but sometimes deep within the earth or from the stars, some rocks radiate a natural type of chaos that can slowly harm life or change it. It is also said that some magics can bring about this type of radiation. You suspect the rock is maybe not safe to be exposed to for a long period from what you have heard.
Karkoran, you set up your lab, and get out some petri dishes and begin culturing the mold spores, and taking time to examine them. They seem particularly fast acting, and in the presence of warmth of your body or the heatstone spread rapidly. You compare and contrast them to the ones from the remorhaz, culturing them both. The spores are so tiny that you cannot tell anything useful.
"I don't think we should bring those rocks along Lump, they can't be safe."
You think the 'chaos' is less having to do with Chaos as a meta-concept and more just a term that less science-y people would apply to something that will mess up your health (since they don't know about genes)
and stuff, maybe entropy or something would be appropriate.
"hmm, there must be something that could contain them."
You think that a solid box of lead or some other shielded material might protect life from the stone.
"... lead might work, though not sure if we can get our hands on that or if that effort would be worth it. The Loremaster or one of his underlings of a scholarly bent might find it interesting enough to pay for a sample. Or Kark could use it to maybe speed up his herb garden."
"And maybe Kark could use it to grow himself another arm, or a third eye." Taya says to Lump.
"Hey Ash! What's up there in the tunnel? See anything behind that glass?"
"I will take a look at it. I am looking at the mold from the creature and the mold that was near the rock. "
Karkoran will do some alchemy stuff on the rock too, pour some chemicals on it and what not.
You recall little about the danger known as brown mold, but as you compare the two mold types and determine that they are not quite the same. The one type that appeared to be in a symbiotic relationship with the remorhaz, was perhaps a normal kind, aggressive and responsive to heat, growing at a rapid rate when exposed to heat, which the remorhaz ridges would have provided. Normally it can go dormant when exposed to cold, and the mold that you notice on the remorhaz corpse has already begun to wither and die from the cold down here, or at least go dormant. That which you took to culture and kept in the area of the heatstone seems to do ok. The tiny amount of it that you culture, causes you know harm with its chilling power to draw in heat, but it does grow rapidly in the warmth.
The mold that Asheranthi recovered from the cavity with the radiant rock, is a different version, more tolerant to cold, remaining only dormant in the cold, and while still responsive to heat and warmth, and even tolerant to fire, is less aggressive. The rock itself, while not exactly magic, seems to have some power and ability to alter life, in the same manner as your mutagens, just at perhaps a slower rate. Perhaps further research would reveal more about the rock. So far the group feels it is not exactly a safe thing. You have heard of more potent sources of such radiation, making people sick very quickly. Though none of you feel sick, you are somewhat squeamish about its presence until you can discern its nature more. The suggestion of a lead box or the like is wise. A extradimensional storage space would also serve to keep it away from you.
Asheranthi's exploration of the tunnel reveals that the 'glass' is actually a magical field of force, after some quick detection of magic.
It is not immediately clear how to get past the wall, but she continues her exploration. There may be another opportunity to remove some of the ice to get at more of the wall to see if it is anchored in the ice or to any stone anywhere.
"So someone put those nasty rocks down here intentionally and blocked off the tunnel behind them?" Taya muses to the others.
"Maybe they were trying to warp or change these ice worms for some purpose?"
"Could be. Extra arms and eyes are quite useful."
"Anyway, I've got another heatstone Asheranthi if you want to try to melt away the ice surrounding that see-through wall up there."
"Thank you Taya, I will start some melting up there."
"I think we can hammer our way through the wall of force if we need to."
Ash will return to the upper tunnel and melt around the wall of force.
Asheranthi goes back up and places the heat stone to attempt to melt it there. As before, it may take a full day before you notice much in the way of progress. Below the group continues to examine the bizarre stone and the mold.
"There might be something of interest in that other nest."
Can we get to it to try to thaw it as well? Maybe Grobly could use some fire on it?
"No way I can damage that thing. But I bet Kark can."
While the mold stuff is cooking away, I can smash away the ice with my hooves on the second ice nest or use my weapons even.
"Best to conserve our resources and melt our way around it."
'We can try to examine the other nest while we wait and see if it has a similar blocked passage behind it."
It will take some time again to melt around the force wall so you have hours to wile away your time in the caves. You spend much of it stomping, smashing and hacking your way into the second ice nest. There, again you find two frozen remorhaz eggs, for a total of four now.
You find two large monstrous humanoid corpses in the second nest. Lrage white and fur covered.
- no idea
- success
Gorbly whispers "Is yeti!"
"Should we destroy these eggs and remove the threat before it is born? Part of me thinks the world would be better without them, but part of me wants to let them be born and live out their lives in this remote wasteland."
"i can see the merits of both, as well."
"I think we should wait on the eggs and see what happens. Either they are already dead and frozen. Or they are supposed to be cold, and subjecting them to heat will kill them or cause them to hatch. If they hatch and the larvae are dangerous it will be easy to squash them. I for one am curious. There is food for them. We can also feed them our meat if we don't want to let them eat the corpses. I am for reburying the frozen victims in one of the nests again. "
"After we are done with those, lets take all of our loot and get up to the tunnel by Ash and wait for the melt. If it takes as much timeas before, it will be another day, and we can regain our powers and use them to batter through the force wall if the ice melt reveals nothing. We can reflect on the battle, although I want to tinker with the mold and the rock some more. Any other options or ideas? Up in the tunnel we are out of the way and harder to get to since it is vertical, although these things can tunnel. We killed the big mama easily, so perhaps we are fine for now."
"Hatching the eggs would be cool. Maybe we can train them to be guardians for our super secret base."
Ash will transport her raptors up to the top. Her flying doesn't last very long, but she can also shapechange to some medium sized flying thing to help move equipment and people or use the rope.
"I think I will go back outside and get my sled and the bear traps while we wait for the ice to melt. There isn't much else to do for now?"
If no one objects, Karkoran will make the lone trek back to the surface to retrieve the sled and bear traps that they left behind.
Lump will go with Kark if there is no other need for him to be here, or he will stay if Kark is dead-set on going alone.
Karkoran and Lump, you are able to make it outside easily with Karkoran's unerring direction sense. You retrieve your stuff and head back in. The travel takes some time, and you encounter no other creatures. As before some parts of the tunnels provide a travel challenge, and require some climbing or the like, but no danger.
Upon their return the rest of the group waits in the upper tunnel, watching the ice melt. It is apparent after some time, that the ice melting is only revealing that the force wall is covering an entrance to a stone tunnel, and that the ice came after the tunnel was sealed with magic. Upon reflection, this means that the tunnel and magical wall predates the ice, which means thousands of years.....
"Do you all think it is worth trying to break the wall of force?"
"Save your arrows, I can batter it down with blows. I just need to cast a few spells."
While we wait overnight for spell refresh time, I will study the scepters more. Karkoran is thinking perhaps to use the scepters to fuel his weapons.
"Lets keep these eggs frozen too." Karkoran will keep them next to the icy frozen mold area, off away from the heat stone and people.
While we wait, he pokes around his mold cultures some more. Anything additional worth learning? Was the mold on the remorhaz symbiotic in nature? I like how the mold grew on it and used its heat. How is it different than the mold by the radiation rock?
Karkoran will try a blend of the two molds in a single dish.
Day 20 - morning
You wait some time and then recover your spells and prepare for the day. Lump and Karkoran can attempt their various methods of tackling the wall.
The place the frozen remorhaz eggs near the brown mold to keep them chilled. Karkoran continues his experiment with the dangerous mutant mold spores.
You know that the molds are slightly different. The one on the remorhaz is probably the base stock mold, and the one in the upper hall where you are now is a different version, mutated by long proximity to the radiation stone. The symbiotic nature of the remorhaz and mold was more that the mold lived on the creature, but did not infect it parasitically. The mutant mold you have and in particular the mold you are trying to blend is likely to have different properties. You have heard of symbiotic and fungal creatures, where the fungus or mold lives on and in the host creature to various levels of boon and bane to the host.
You feel as though your experiment would generate something akin to this.
"Sounds like a bad idea Kark."
While we wait overnight for spell refresh time, I will study the scepters more. Karkoran is thinking perhaps to use the scepters to fuel his weapons.
"What sounds like a bad idea?"
Pouring beakers of reagents together and trying to play mad scientist, the minotaur only half pays attention to what is going on around him.