Looking at the mushrooms Lorien licks her lips. "Does anyone know anything about mushrooms. I love a nice mushroom dinner. But some are poisonous and some even stranger!"
Arianna recognizes a bunch of these. There's quite a few different kinds - some of them edible, some of them poisonous. There's enough to feed six people for a day in edible mushrooms. They're not all equally tasty - some of them are quite bland.
You can also gather poisonous mushrooms, if you like.
Arianna helps the gather the mushrooms, though it's clear from the face seh makes that she's not a fan.
"I never did like mushrooms," she mutters, "the texture was always too weird for me."
"Well, you get used to them... some can shoot big clouds of spores, though, and you want to avoid those." Rhiannon noted. She did keep a bit of geomancy at the ready to throw up a wall if needed, but otherwise, she was content to follow along with the rest of the group as they moved through.
Kesh eyes the mushrooms skeptically, but the life of a mercenary sometimes means eating whatever's available, so he pays close attention to which ones Ari gathers and which ones she leaves alone.
Gren eats a handful. "I do prefer them sauteed with a little butter but our cook did used to grow a variety of wild mushrooms for salads and the like. These aren't bad."
Gren looks skeptically at the rat tunnels. "To be honest, I have no desire to go crawling through those tunnels. That last nest was not dangerous so much as it was tedious."
"You thinking there's a secret door? Trap? Both?" the wyvaran asks as he joins the bard in poking and prodding at the dead end.
It is a dead end. Keshokkar finds no secret passageways either.
"Well, at least we know what's here. Might be a good place to hole up if I plug the tunnels." Rhiannon observed. "South past the coffin room, then? We haven't been down there yet."
Arianna nods, having been silent since leaving the rat chamber.
"Are those little walls of yours permanent Rhiannon?" Kesh's tone is clearly impressed. "I thought they were temporary, or maybe you could only have a few operating at a time. Imagine if we had a whole company like you--instant siege-lines, living artillerists and matchless engineers!"
As the group retraces their steps, Gren shines his torch at the various elements of the cave around them.
Thinking back to Kesh's comments on the structure of the place, he says "So what have we seen so far? An apparently desecrated burial chamber, we found a secret door that led to a series of unfinished caves and one intact burial chamber. The only sign of desecration was on the locked door by the frogs. After the locked door, the only enemies we have faced have been either of the natural cave dwelling type or the skeletons which may have just been tied to that burial chamber...
"I can only have so many of them at any given time, but other than that, they're permanent until something breaks them down or I let them crumble. Range isn't really a factor once they're up." the Geokineticist explained. "And yeah, people with my talents have been... earnestly recruited... in the past. I actually did a few stints with the Free Defenders during the siege - not as a full-time soldier or anything, just a civie volunteer with useful talents. I always liked building more than breaking, though, and putting the Citadel of Ravens back up - mostly - was more fun than chucking boulders at the Huun. Unfortunately, earth magic is in short supply, and they had to hold the Wizards back for true emergencies." she grimaced slightly. "Can't say they were wrong about that, but it woulda been nice to turn loose everything we had and break their backs then and there."
"This place is just stone," Arianna answers Zatinya, "I only want to find my sister, but this place is so huge and so vile I am losing hope of ever finding her alive."
Lorien puts her hand on Arianna and just whispers. "Faith manages!"
Kesh grunts in acknowledgement of Rhiannon's story. "We were on the opposite sides of that one, sorry if the Fireclaws dropped anything on you. Just a job, you know?"
He shifts uncomfortably at Arianna's lament, but doesn't speak. He thinks Ari's sister is almost certainly dead already, but the ranger is already upset enough.
"South past the coffin room, sounds good. Let's press on."
"...oh wait, there has been some desecration down here but now as much. Almost like something drove the evil back beyond the brick wall..."
Gren follows behind the others and begins paging through one of the books he brought. It appears to be full of religious symbology. Judging by the noises he is making, it doesn't appear that Gren is learning anything new that will help their situation.
Rhiannon stopped dead in her tracks as Kesh spoke, and a few pebbles rose from the floor and started to spiral around her hand. "You worked for the Huun?" she asked, a distinct note of concern in her tone. The foreigners had besieged the walls of Bard's Gate for more than a year, until the gathered armies of other inhabitants had shown up to drive them away from the city's walls (and hadn't yet gotten back from chasing them). The Huun were a known terror on the open field, but a well-defended, modern city of Akados was a bit more than they'd been prepared for. Between the many adventurers calling the city home, the various allies of the city, the power of the Wizard's Guild and other casters, and the sturdy dwarven-made walls, the Huun hadn't been able to break through and devastate the city.
Admittedly, mercenaries were mercenaries, but... well, the invaders weren't exactly popular. If word of that got out, it wasn't likely anyone else would want to hire them...
Arianna gives an appreciative nod at the support of the others, however, when the subject of sieges and mercenaries come up, she frowns.
"Who are the Huun?"
Rhiannon paused for a few more seconds, processing that. "Ooooooh. I, uh, didn't realize you were that new to the area." she said. She cleared her throat a moment later. "Ahem. The Huun are a bit of a mystery, really. Their homes seem to be in the east somewhere, and they've been quite a plague that way over the centuries. Sacked the great city of Tircople a few times, got four Great Crusades launched against them... heck if we know how they got across the Gulf of Akados or marched over the Isthmus of Irakaina without anyone noticing, though. I'm leaning towards some kinda great teleport ritual, myself. A big fleet from Foere and Oceanus, plus our own out of Telar Brindel, managed to wreck their ships after they started camping outside our walls, and then Foere's King Ovar marched an army up to break the siege. That dragon of his was pretty cool. That was, oh, two years ago now? The Huun ran north to the desert instead of getting smashed against our walls, and last we heard, King Ovar's been pursuing them - with a good chunk of our own population helping - ever since."
Gren's head pops up from his book and he smiles. "Stories like that make me doubt the old wisdom of hoping to live in 'interesting times'. I will say that the Huun's invasion offered pleanty of business opportunities for my uncle....I hope one of you is paying attention as we walk. I have been searching through some of my books on Muir and Thyr and which cult might be responsible for the desecration....I hate how there is so little information though. There must be better books in Bard's Gate. Open question for you guys though - If this was a burial hall for Muir and Thyr, why would those four sarcophagi be all alone down here in an unfinished part of the structure behind a hidden door."
"My sister and I lived about a day's travel from where I met all of you," Dalen says after a long pause. "We had heard of some great commotion coming from the coast, but we never heard much out in the Grove of the Moon."
"I'll leave that up to Lorien. I'm not sure it matters too much one way or the other..."
"I am not one to disturb the rest of the faithful, but whatever here is, will be tainted by evil. We should liberate them and prevent the defilment of the bodys, to raise as undead menaces!"
Lorien adds after a few moments of contemplentation.
"Besides, they might have something valuable on them." the wyvaran adds.
"New coffins in an old crypt usually smells like undead to me." Rhiannon observed mildly. "And not random, either - planned."
"I'm pretty sure we already poked through those coffins after Lorien blasted them with positive energy..."
Gren looks up again from his book. "It's taking longer to walk past the sarcophagi than I remember..."