"Glim...if that doesn't work, can you use them to pick up whatever is down there and bring it up? Or can you use your shadow to do that? I can tell you when you're close."
The Dolphin's in the water for a few moments when suddenly there's a lot of turbulence... and blood in the water. Something in the water you can't see has attacked the summon. It tried to fight back, but it vanishes as it gets defeated. Not too long after, a head pops up out of the water, with seemingly out a body attached. Halfway between a fish and an elf, with an annoyed expression on his face. "You all have to be the most annoying peasants I have ever seen. Can you either get in the water so we can drown you, go in the cave and get lost, or just leave?"
Carwel pulls his bowstring and take aim, but holds his fire as his desire to respond to a threat wrestles with his curiosity... and loses. He lowers his aim and calls out, "What even are you?"
Scarlet waits for Carwel's question to be answered and is very thankful she hadn't entered into the water.
"Please, my glorious aquatic friend. We know you must be hungry...," She retrieves from her bag some of the dried fish she had caught that morning and will toss it into the water. "Clearly, it is a hunter of fish, and even larger prey it seems." She then continues, "There is no reason us peasants can't be friends with such a noble fishlord as you. We will gladly leave your abode, but can I ask, did you see a human man come this way earlier? He would have passed by your home here and gone into the cave."
Richard shakes his head. "You do realize that the missing villagers are probably on a journey through it's digestive tract?"
"Glim...if that doesn't work, can you use them to pick up whatever is down there and bring it up? Or can you use your shadow to do that? I can tell you when you're close."
"I could if I was able to communicate with them, but that's something I'm not... uh oh, what was that..." says Glim as he watches the commotion start in the water.
Richard shakes his head. "You do realize that the missing villagers are probably on a journey through it's digestive tract?"
"Maybe not. It only threatened to drown us, not eat us... so maybe they're just... aggressively marking their territory," Glim hypothesizes.
Richard shakes his head. "You do realize that the missing villagers are probably on a journey through it's digestive tract?""Maybe not. It only threatened to drown us, not eat us... so maybe they're just... aggressively marking their territory," Glim hypothesizes.
"No, The amount of trickery and illusion tells me that this is a fey beast. Do you think the elven mermaid is it's true form?" Richards's musing start to take a dark turn. "In fact, I would suspect the villagers have a deal with this beast. They were hiding something. I would surmise that the deal would include feeding it adventurers so that the villagers would be left alone...if not, earning something even more lucrative."
"We're not peasants, we're heroes!" The Imp states indignantly, placing her fists on her hips.
"Are you Mr. Nuglub? Did you eat any villagers?" She fixes the aquatic creature with a steely glare.
The creature reaches out to grab the fish as it gets tossed, inspecting it for a moment before popping it into his mouth. He happily chews away on it, as Scarlet manages to identify the creature. The water, the illusionary treasure, the fishy appearance, this can only be a Fossegrim, a water fey found in the Land of the Linnorm Kings and Varisia to the south. They're mischievous, cruel, deceitful, and prone to drawing people to their waterfalls then drowning them. They do not however eat people. Settling onto his back and becoming more visible, he pulls a fiddle from the water, resting it against himself as he begins to quietly play while lazing on the water.
"Ah yes, I know exactly who you speak of. You can tell yourself he came through here, you're looking at his footprints after all. Also, lots of bold accusations thrown out. Why would I want to eat the locals? Probably taste like nothing but grass and mushrooms... Also, you may want to get your mans head checked. He seems to go on some dark tangents... You're the smallest little hero I have seen then. Also, don't compare me to the Nuglubs, they're vile little creatures."
Scarlet chuckles a little bit at the insults flung about by this Fossegrim. He mirrored her worries about Richard's head exactly. She could lobotomize him and see if that helps, but not being an expert at it, she'd rather not screw up his odd brain.
"No, Impy. Richard. His race doesn't generally eat people. Fossegrim are what we would call fey though. Typically found in the waters to the south. Also in the Land of the Linnorm Kings, as we call the region," she clarifies with a vague gesture for the sake of the Fossegrim, who may not give two shakes about what land-dwellers call anything. He probably has his own names for such places.
"Since you speak common, I'm sure you have a name in the common tongue or could translate it from Aquan. Could I ask it of you?" she asks with a tilted head and a slight smile.
"Fossegrim. You mean a species that murders for pleasure instead of sustenance. I'd say that this makes it more deserving of eradication, not less." says Richard with distaste.
Pretty on the outside, but ugly on the inside. thinks Richard"I am not your employee nor your slave. I will speak my mind whenever I choose." Richard says calmly. "Lick it's spittle if you so choose, but I will not trust it." Richard readies his bow and leans against a tree.
"Richard!" she exclaims with extreme dissatisfaction coming from the generally cheery woman. "Humans murder other races and each other much more than Fossegrim. Should we eradicate you because of the acts of some humans who have decided to murder? Did he try to kill us? No. So stop being a prick and if you can't say something nice, shut up."
The Fossegrim lets out a loud high pitched laugh, ringing like bells through the glade the pond's in. "I must say, you two are a lot of fun to watch! Just for that little exchange, I'll give you my name. No need for a translation, it's something you can understand. It is Dropi. Honestly, if you keep up like that, I don't even mind your presence. Been ages since I got any new entertainment."
"Dropi, you said Nuglubs, as in many. Do you know how many are living in the area?" asks Glim.
"Dropi, you said Nuglubs, as in many. Do you know how many are living in the area?" asks Glim.
"Oh a fair few, a fair few. Newcomers the lot of them. Still, they make such fun little dances as they clutch their throats. Enough are here that the culling of the stupid ones hasn't affected them too much." He explains rather simply, taking way too much joy in describing them.
"Well...that's fair...but rude..." It, however, got Dropi to open up. Ignoring Richard's comeback, she focuses on the enemy before them. "Dropi, do you particularly dislike the nuglubs, or do you have a general desire to drown anything and everything?" She has no qualms fighting this being, but only if it is truly evil. For all she knows, it could be a guardian over this pond against the more evil fey that pass by it.
The Imp fidgets, understanding that she's not the best equipped for handling a tenuous negotiation with a pond monster.
She remains alert, her small fists balled at the ready, in the event the conversation takes an unfortunate turn.
Dropi lets out a small hum, gently playing his fiddle as he contemplated the question presented. "I do have a particular dislike for the nuglubs, the little brutes simply do not understand that they shouldn't antagonize their betters. But, if something doesn't entertain me with their actions, well, they can entertain me with their death."
"You speak so carefree of death. Do you feel that by us swimming into your water to take delight in the illusions of your treasures that we would be antagonizing you? Would you so readily drown us or other humans who would pass by?" Here is the clincher. She wonders if he truly has intent to kill them and if he is just subdued by her weaved words for the moment. If so, for the sake of the village, she may have to agree with Richard. At least she will feel secure in her desire to find truth. "Please don't be evil. I don't want to harm you..."
In a way, she is attracted to Dropi. He is good-looking, even for a fish-race, but it is more that she knows so little of them that she would love to learn more, and would enjoy having a friend from his realm without just killing them.
Lowered arrow still nocked on his bowstring, Carwel has remained silent while others more inclined to talk to this fey do so. As much as he loves hunting, man or beast, he has no desire to kill something not his prey. He also doesn't want it to try and kill him if he turns his back on it, either.
Dropi looks at Scarlet as she asks that question, staring at her for several moments. Then he smiles and proceeds to drop below the surface of the water, seeming to melt and fade into the liquid as he does so. Never giving a proper response to her question, leaving her to guess as to the answer.
"I could have told you that...Idiot." Says Richard ready to move on.
Scarlet folds her arms about herself at Richard's harsh, unfriendly words, as well as at Dropi's actions. She thinks to herself a number of things. Where on her face was once happiness and a thrill of adventure, now there is pain, sadness, and a reluctance to be part of the group. She lingers toward the back as they all enter the cave.
So the Fossegrims will take care of the Nuglubs for us if they get to close... so now we just need to find them and lure them here...
Glim's mind churns through ideas as they enter the cave.
"I could have told you that...Idiot."
Carwel looks at Richard like the investigator is the idiot. "That's unnecessary and detrimental to working together. Between your insults and your pretending like you don't realize they're insults, I'm not impressed at all."
"SQUWARK!"
Carwel glances at his vulture as he follows Glim into the cave. "Indeed."
The cavern starts off very wet from the waterfall, with visible mud on the inside. However, as you go deeper in, it quickly becomes very dry. It's however obviously not a natural tunnel. It's too perfect, a cylindrical shape that turns and twists as it heads deeper into the earth. Bran's footprints are visible for a bit, but then seem to completely vanish all of a sudden.
Frowning, thanks both to Dropi's devious and uncooperative words as well as her companion's arguments, The Imp scuttles ahead as the party enters the cave. "Best for me to be up front... so I can scare anyone who comes after us." Her joke doesn't quite achieve her usual level of mirth.
"This cave is strange," she says in consternation. "And as best I can tell, Bran up and vanished right here." She gestures to where the tracks end abruptly.
"Strange caves for strange days... or strange fey. And maybe strange magic..." responds Glim as he gets ready to cast detect magic. "Let's see what tricks the fossegrims or the nuglubs left in here."
Richard takes a few moments to looks around. "So we have a something interesting." He moves up to the the trap. "let me take a look."
Scarlet keeps her distance from the rock that Richard is investigating and lingers near Carwel. She looks upward to The Imp and says, "Make sure you give him space. You never know what it is. Perhaps I better..."
She begins to cast a spell with an infusing quality of darkwood. It is effective, but with quiet words. A shimmering white suit of armor, decorated in celestial colors equips itself to her body and then fades in its brilliance until it is all but unseen. This happens before Richard approaches whatever he sees. Scarlet stands a good 15ft back if possible to still be in the cave.
Richard walks up to try and disable the trap, before realizing... it's a rock. Just a rock that stands out from the rest of the rocks because of the scuffs and extra mud on it. It's an oddity, but after inspecting it for several moments, he notices something on the wall above the rock. Finger prints. It all clicks together. Bran wiped the mud off his boots before proceeding further in, pressing a hand against the wall to balance himself as he did so. Seems he didn't want to be followed.
"Well, there's still only one way to go forward at this point."
Scarlet nods to what Carwel states and with arms folded about herself and scythe cradled in her arms, she follows him. The light from her scythe illuminates the cavern around them, giving sight to the unseen far ahead . As a human, she can only see outward into the darkness shed by the light forty feet. Anything beyond that, she is blind. Even so, only within the 20 feet of her light do her eyes see anything clearly. Anything could be hiding in the shadows and gloom in the distance.
The Imp heeds Scarlet's words and hangs back while Richard investigates. Her eyes wander, taking in the cave. "Have any of you ever seen a cave like this? I sure haven't. It's so smooth!" She muses, referring to the cave's eerily perfect shape. "But I haven't seen too much of the world yet. Maybe they just have smooth caves here?"
The party proceeds into the depths of the cavern, walking seemingly almost straight into the mountainside at first. It begins to steadily slope down after a bit, still maintaining that near-perfect circular shape. Though there are cracks running here and there that show that it is not entirely stable. Just as the tunnel's about to reach a point where it's going to become too steep to just walk, a second tunnel intersects with the first, and there are signs of efforts to make the path easier There are three ways to go now, a path heading steeply upwards via stairs carved into stone, a path heading steeply downwards via stairs, and a path heading mostly flat to the left.
Glim eyes the three passages and considers the choices.
"Carwell, do you see which way Bran went from here?"
"It looks like he took pains to conceal his tracks. I can't see anything.
"However, since we haven't seen the tracks of anything else, I hesitate to say that he was following anything. He perhaps came in here to explore? Which way seems most interesting? Up or down seems more worthy of exploration to me."
"No, Impy, I've never seen a cave like this."
Carwel's musings rouse her from her hurt and she mutters, "Or, maybe he came in here to avoid something? We'll never know if he was hiding his tracks." She shrugs. "That communicates to me he was being followed. I'm wondering though, maybe up the stairs first? We can explore all the ways...but hopefully this isn't an extensively large cave."
"Oh! I hadn't thought of that. I don't have the opportunity to flee much.
"Up seems fine to me."
Carwel bows theatrically to whomever is first in the marching order, with his arms indicating they should take the lead up the stairs.
"Well, I wouldn't take my word for it. Do you see other tracks? Maybe from creatures who followed him?"
Carwel for his part, cannot see any signs of creatures having followed the man. But Glim for his part notices that the steps... are worn. As if someone has walked up and down all of them many, many times. Not in any particular direction, but just that they've been used a lot.