Wicks holds up a ration-bag that had been empty during your travels through the town the previous day. "These kindly women have helped us to resupply some of our rations for the road, in gratitude for clearing out the mines, and agreeing to look for the Mirror. Glad to contribute some coffee out of here to keep you alert and awake." His worried expression hasn't quite left his face. Clearly, the things you were shouting last night left an impression on him.
Dhice rubs the sleep out his eyes as well, and joins the group for breakfast. "So, this mirror. Where do we start? I think we need to wrap up this loose end and head for the elven homeland as soon as possible." There's something in his voice as he speaks of the elven homeland. A tinge of awe, and a hint of eagerness.
Dhice's eagerness was totally understandable. Not many mercs saw the interior of the Elven realm. I agree. The faster we get things done the better. We elves are an enduring folk, but even we cannot stave off sleep forever.
"We had been searching for the bloody thing ever since Tollerhelm was sacked. Your report of the golden-flowing river was the best intelligence we had received yet in our search. If I were you, I'd start there," Helga theorizes.
"Smash-Cut to the dungeon!"
Lyntel gives Grigor a quizzical glance and then leads the group back to the golden river. She lets the warriors climb down first, then quickly follows.
As they enter the darkness, Lyntel reaches out and touches Emma's armor while muttering something under her breath.
Emma's armor begins to glow with a turquoise light. Lyntel returns to her usual place at the middle of the group and waits.
Dhice folds his arms and takes a moment in deep concentration, at which point you can detect a subtle shimmer around his arms. Once re-attuned to his Earth element, he reaches out to the gravel and dirt that surrounds the sewer entrance.
All around him the rocks and dust swirl around and form the familiar, loosely dog-shaped form of Muppy (this time dry, not a mud-ball).
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Emma stands there as Lyntel magiks her armor. "They will see me coming," she mumbles, then grins mirthlessly.
"Excellent."
The golden river flows just as it did yesterday. The river of gold is flowing from your left to your right when you stand. To your right is a T-intersection where the gold flows in both directions. To your left, where the river seems to be originating, there is a metal gate that spans the sewer. There's a door in the gate on the walkway, closed. The gold flows around the cage bars in the middle section. The bars appear to be iron, and are approximately a foot apart.
There are disturbances in the filth and refuse of the sewer that weren't there yesterday, either. What do you do?
Lyntel takes a long look at the paladin and shudders slightly. The light of Emma's armor changes to a very foreboding shade of red.
Dhice walks up to the grating and tests the door to see if he can open it. If he can't, he looks at the party and tries to estimate if they could all slip through the 1ft bars as easily as he can. Certainly Lyntel and Archepex could, but Emma and Bathilda...? Harder to say.
If the door is well locked and we can't all slip through the bars, then he takes a look at what might be involved in dislodging a bar. Do they run floor to ceiling, or are the bars themselves connected by welded cross-pieces?
I'll run Bathilda on autopilot for now.
The door's locked by some internal mechanism within the door's handle. There's a keyhole, but no key appears to be present when you glance around the surrounding floor of the sewer. The gate itself isn't embedded in the ceiling, but it does reach up high enough to prevent anyone climbing over. There are three horizontal cross-beams that are embedded in either wall that support the iron gate.
Yeah, I started responding hours ago, but had to get things done here at work:
Bend Bars/Left Gates
Means that I quickly and silently pop the gate off of its hinges.
Dhice is fussing around the stonework, inspecting the crosspieces that support the gate, mumbling about weak points and how he would best alter things to weaken the gate...
...and Grigor walks up and heaves it from its hinges.
"Well that's one way to do it, I guess" the Channeler says good-naturedly.
Grigor is able to effortlessly pop the gates off its hinges. Unfortunately, the gate is damaged by his straining, meaning you can't put the gate back on the bars.
Just as he is setting the gate down, leaning it against the wall nearby, you look down the poorly-lit sewers beyond. The light source in this area doesn't extend past the gate. There's another T-intersection where water from the right-hand side is merging with the liquid gold flowing from the left-hand side. What do you do?
"Anybody have a source of light we can use to explore? We don't all have Elf eyes."
Watch yourselves. There is something large in the water. Don't get too close.
The ruddy light from Emma's armor fades to about half of its normal brilliance when she moves past the gate that Grigor tore off its hinges. The area beyond appears to be draped in a supernatural darkness that muffles the light from Lyntel's spell. Apart from the sound of the liquid gold flowing past you, all has fallen silent in the sewers. It's quiet, and dark; the light from Emma's armor extends about 15 feet in a dimmer light, and 7 feet in normal brightness. Lyntel knows that her spell is normally twice as effective at illumination. What do you do?
"Hey, Archepex, can we get some recon action going?"
At Lyntel's warning about something lurking in the water, Dhice positions Muppy well behind the group, ready to splash around in the water to serve as a distraction. The elemental remains still and out of the water for the time being, but he's ready to act at a moment's notice.
You got it.
Archepex slides his mask down, secures the monocle over one eye and twists his brooch. He "falls" to the ceiling, doing half a flip in the air in the process. Mule ends up clinging to his arm like a bat, though his outspread wings clearly show his displeasure until they vanish from sight.
Hold here. I'll see what's going on.
-What is about to happen
Carefully, Archepex crawls over the bars at the top of the doorframe in the sewer gate, clinging to the ceiling. The stones forming the roof of the sewer tunnel are wet with moisture.
He advances to the T-intersection and sees the false gold river flowing in to join the stream from the left. To the right is a slime-ridden nightmare. There's greenish gunk all over the walls, viscous and slimy in its consistency. The slimy area ends just before the T-Intersection. Looking closely at some of the slime on the ceiling nearest to he is, he notices that the slime has a rhythmic undulation going through it periodically, as if it had a pulse. You can see through the heat sensor in the monocle that the slime is warmer than the ambient temperature.
The slime is in the water too, floating on the surface and stuck to the walls of the waterway. The false gold covers it up when the slime enters the T intersection. The tunnel to your right with all the slime extends about a dozen feet before it gets too dark to see further.
To his left, where the gold river is flowing from, no slime. The tunnel looks much the same as it does back where the party is waiting. The tunnel extends two dozen feet before banking right at a right angle; you can see better in that tunnel due to the faint golden light from the water level.
It's all quiet in the sewers, beyond the sound of the water flowing by. You feel uncomfortable, like you're being watched by something out in the darkness.
Lyntel whispers to Dhice as Archepex scouts: Do you think we should follow the river back up to its source? I imagine that the river transforms near the mirror.
Lyntel whispers to Dhice as Archepex scouts: Do you think we should follow the river back up to its source? I imagine that the river transforms near the mirror.
that seems like the best way to start out, yes
Archepex returns and relays his discovery. We will almost certainly be ambushed. He concludes.
After hearing the report, Grigor says:
"I believe the best route would be to follow the gold river and find our way to the mirror. However there is something that bothers me about the other tunnel. This is a dead city. Why would there be fresh sewage running through these tunnels? They should be dry or stagnate"
"I hadn't thought of that Grigor. That's a great point. As curious as that is, I wonder if we're overthinking this. We have no real information about what we're walking into, so as I see it, we either charge up the golden river towards its source or we back off and do some serious scouting of the city above ground." The tone of his voice makes it clear that Dhice is eager to charge ahead. You're reminded of his eagerness to get this task over with so the group could head for Elven lands.
"I just see liquid, I don't see...or smell...any actual sewage in this sewer," Wicks observes. "The original builders of Tollerhelm routed an underground river through their aqueduct system, from what I've heard. This is just river-water that's been spelled to look gold, not sewage waste."
The halfling unattaches his lantern from its leather loop on his backpack and lights it, frowning at the reduced light it gives off. "Bierman has the right idea, I think. Let's progress down the cleaner tunnel and find this mirror of theirs so we can move on."
So saying, the Mousetrap Mercenaries venture further into the sewers, following the golden river's flow. They follow the tunnel that the river is flowing through as it curves and bends, reaching the underbelly of every house in Tollerhelm - even though their occupants are all long gone.
As you progress, the light from Emma's enchanted armor grows dimmer and dimmer, as does the light from Wicks' lantern, until they're both basically just glowing in the dark. There's still some illumination from the gold river itself, but it's faint now, and getting harder to see by the moment. You find yourselves tripping and stumbling over loose bits of stone and debris as you travel.
Dhice's summoned elemental, Muppy, is bringing up the rear of the group. Suddenly, you all hear a splash, and you look behind you to see Muppy has fallen into the river of false gold! It's struggling to stay above the surface, but something has hold of it below the surface of the water and is dragging it downward!
Grigor runs to the side of the golden river, raises his sword and shouts "Wicks, put some light on the water so I can see what I'm killing!"
"I'm trying!" Wicks shouts, waving his lantern around. He accidentally smacks you in the side with the lantern itself as he waves it. It's barely more than glowing, even though the fire on the inside is clearly burning "brightly".
"Something is eating the light. Do we have a mage who can stop that, or something?!?"
"I might be able help you with that, Grigor!" Dhice shouts as he steps as far from the water as possible, pressed up against the wall of the tunnel. He scavenges a rough, fist sized stone and instructs Wicks, "Wicks, hook the lantern on this and let go when you feel a tug" Concentrating on the stone, Dhice tries to levitate it and the lantern.
Whatever has Muppy hasn't harmed it yet, but is dragging it down below the surface of the golden river. If it stays below the surface for too long, it'll begin to take harm, but it hasn't yet.
Your stone fist accidentally pins Wicks himself to the ceiling! In the dark, the halfling wasn't able to move out of the way of your spell in time, and now he wriggles against the ceiling cobbles like a bug in a bug collector's gallery.
Your idea turns out to be fundamentally sound, though! Wicks drops the lantern, and it's caught on a rocky outcropping of the fist you made. The lantern returns to its full brilliance, revealing a decapus in the river about 20 feet behind you! Its tentacles were creeping upriver all along behind you as you walked, and now they're striking! More are erupting from the surface of the water now that the light trick has been discovered! What do you do?
Grigor starts hacking away at the tentacle holding Muppy.
Hack and Slash ...
Taking a risk and doing damage to the tentacle beast.
Cowering against the wall, Lyntel wrecks her brain for any information about this beast that might prove useful.
Archepex draws his sword and drops from the ceiling beside grigor. Time to hold the line.
Grigor chops through the tentacle holding Muppy down with one cleaving strike! However, he puts too much of his own effort into the swing, and his wild blow knocks him off balance! With a shout, the fighter tumbles into the golden river!
Grigor, you're in the water now, trying to keep your head above the surface, and the injured, angry decapus is in the water with you, and the current is sweeping you towards it. What do you do?
Lyntel: Decapi are normal octopi that became a separate species as a result of a wizard's magical experiment gone awry in ages past. Now, the Decapus is drawn to watery areas that are high in magic concentrations, being drawn to arcane energies like a mosquito to a bug zapper. Their overriding concern is to devour anything that has a magical signature; like the earth elemental, or an elven wizard.
Aside from their keen senses for anything magical, though, they're just beasts - scary, multi-tentacled beasts.
Archepex sees Grigor go into the drink, too fast to help him keep his balance. Gritting his teeth firmly, he slashes at another tentacle that had emerged from the golden river, knocking it aside and opening a bloody gash in it. It retreats a moment, waving, and then strikes back, stabbing at you with the speed of a striking spear! Mule screeches a warning! What do you do?
Dhice mentally commands Muppy to wrap around and boost Grigor out of the water:
The elemental manifests its Hazard and Forceful abilities in such a way as to eject Grigor from the water, launching him bodily from the river and back onto the bank.
Exactly how gracefully he lands is an open question...
Archepex swings his blade around just in time to parry the tentacle.
Nice roll, Dhice!
Moosh, Would I take a negative to trying to swing at the beast while being held upside down by Muppy over the water?
Give me a Defy Danger roll first - the danger you're defying is coming too loose from your wild swinging and falling back down.
Defy Danger
Grigor is able to take a swing while being held, but something inconvenient happens...
Hack and Slash
... hitting the experimental reject for points of damage.