Sylva follows the blood trail, silently mourning the half-elf who apparently bled out after having mounted her trusty steed. She tries to imagine what the poor girl was feeling.
“Whoever did this deserves to.. die.” Sylva says die, but the word she was thinking was ‘suffer.’ “Let me go in ahead. Is there any magic that can give me a telepathic link to one of you?”
She’s mostly asking Nox, but perhaps Sakuachi has a few magic tricks of her own?
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Continuing on Nox wonders what wounded the elf, soon enough they come upon the grand hole and he marvels at the wound in the earth as well as the shocking speed at which someone set up a descent to it.
"I don't have any such ability Sylva. Also your wounds are still fresh, perhaps we wait a while until Batman here can tend to them all? I could stand to catch my breath as well after such a trek."
One might wonder how he could claim that when Hildy's been the one walking, but maybe he's just saying it so everyone else can have an excuse to rest a moment.
Sir Batman just stares at the well.....
"Nothing I know," Ravenna says, shaking her head. "But let's keep moving. There might be others we can save."
Sylva turns to Sakuachi and asks, “What about you? Any spells that let us communicate by thought or by whisper?” If yes, she’ll ask how far away she can be for the magic to keep working. And unless the spell range is measured in miles, another possible follow-up: would Sakuachi be able to warn the sprite as she’s close to stepping out of range?
She’s not sure whether, in Stealth Mode, she should go in alone and report back—or if the others should trail behind.
Sakuachi shakes her head. "Unfortunately, I don't have magic of that sort. But I can silence all sound you make for a minute, if you to want to quickly scout ahead and report back."
Sylva likes that. “So I can sing to myself while I scout. Forty-second Street is a forty-second song. Double-time it back since I can run noiselessly… if this can work, cast away!”
If the spell is cast, Sylva might look like she’s lip-synching as she disappears into the well.
Sir Batman begins paging through his Player's Guide .
Now, where was the Chapter on Splitting the Party....
Sylva silently descends the staircase leading down into the well. The old wooden stairs descend 50 feet before reaching the bottom. The floor at the base of the well is made of tightly packed clay soil. Stones along the eastern wall of the well have been removed and replaced with a large, sturdy wooden door.
There doesn't seem to be any immediate dangers down here. Sakuachi's silence spell is short-lived, expiring shortly after Sylva finishes exploring the well's bottom.
Sylva feels a temptation to go in further, but she knows she would be too far from her teammates to call for help should she find herself in a fix.
She slowly, stealthily works her way back up the well toward the party and reports, “No immediate danger at the bottom. I dared not go in further without you.”
Ravenna nods, relieved to see the tiny sprite return. "After you, then."
Sir Batman jumps in the well!
Sylva replies, “I don’t.
“Should I keep five-hundred paces* ahead of the rest of you and warn you if there’s hostiles that will see our light? Or… we could just travel as a group since if there are hostiles, you gotta see ’em to hit ’em.”
Meanwhile at the bottom of the Well...
Sir Batman blinks.
It's fricking dark down here!
He reaches into his pack, grabs a torch, flint and steel, lights it and grins.
Ooo! A door!
Once you are ready, you open the door. However, when you do, a wire on the other side slips off the ring that was holding it! A satchel full of rusted scrap metal loudly clatters to the ground in a noisy heap--a crude but effective alarm.
The torchlight reveals a zig-zagging path of packed dirt that descends down a ten-foot-high underground chamber. A tattered red banner hangs from the ceiling near the two tunnels. On it is a stylized depiction of a regal human woman in profile, wearing a crown and surrounded by a halo of white light.
Sylva scouts ahead down the path as the rest of you follow at a distance. The path eventually splits, leading into a tunnel to the northeast and a larger cavern to the southeast containing what appears to be a dining room table.
Sylva takes note of the banner, but she doesn’t say anything. It’s obvious the half-elf’s murderers heard that alarm, if they’re still here.
A dining table? Did these jerks sit down to eat while their victim rode off bleeding out?
She looks at the table for signs of recent use—food intact or bitten or plates of crumbs, cups half empty or half full, chairs neatly pushed in or haphazardly pulled back…?
A long table surrounded by rough-carved chairs fills most of this cavern, which has all the trappings of a Mendevian dining area. Metal plates and small cups are arranged on the table, as if for a meal. Empty pantry shelves fill an alcove to the north. A row of four paintings adorns the area’s southern wall. These four paintings depict, individually, a flaming
Mendevian pasture, a tranquil town along the Sellen River, a blood-soaked Sarkorian battlefield, and a somber tiefling in three-quarter profile.
Beyond the dining room, statues, upholstered furniture, and old crates fill every corner of a storage cave. Hanging from the northern wall is a small framed painting, though it is smudgy and indistinct. There are no other exits from this room.
Sylva is losing her patience. She wants the half-elf’s killers to pay, but now starts to wonder if this was her home. If her people were invaded and she fled to warn others, get help, or just try to survive…?
Seeing that there are no exits, Sylva looks for places someone might be hiding. The people who would eat would be the right size for those table settings, but the killers could be smaller… though she really hopes not to find a fellow sprite was the killer!
It does occur to her that if someone is hiding, they may be hiding from the killer(s)…
“No exits,” she whispers. “If someone’s hiding, they’re as likely scared… not proof of innocence, but I won’t be so rash to presume guilt.” She’s certain the half-elf did NOT deserve to die as she did.
Sylva's search uncovers a trap beside the painting on the wall! The ground around that part of the wall is rigged to collapse beneath anyone who steps on it.
Though interesting from a historian’s perspective, none of the relics in this room are valuable enough to warrant the trouble of transporting them. However, some useful adventuring basics are stuffed into the crates, including 10 sunrods, a set of infiltrator thieves’ tools, a set of expanded healer’s tools, four lesser elixirs of life, and four doses of moderate antiplague.
She warns the others of the trap.
She just stares blankly at the healing elixirs for several seconds before finally blurring her thought: “That poor woman… she just had to go here. Who the hell chased her away from the…?”
She really isn’t crazy about stealing from the dead woman, even if it’s possible she was a thief herself. But she takes the infiltration tools (at least if they’re usable to her), and assumes everyone will want one of each drink. She doesn’t need a sunrod.
“Everything about my missing moment led me to believe this is who I am. Nobody’s home; I help myself.
“But all I really want is that woman’s killer. And… I didn’t even know her.”
She hops onto the table, making one more futile attempt to find someone hiding. Frustration gets the better of her—“Godsdammit!”—she whips a cup at the collapsible floor!
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Nox paces around the room for a bit examining various items as Sylva goes and deep dives on everything before anyone else has a chance. He also listens as she delves further into this apparent murder mystery that she's built up in her own head.
"Sylva... what are you on about? There is no indication that she lived here, you have no evidence that she wasn't killed by wild animals or some lasting band of devils or demons. People in this world die, and plenty have been by our hands. Why is it you suddenly have particular issue with this one person, living in perhaps one of the most inhospitable places in the world?"
He rubs his tired eyes underneath his beetle helmet, "Even if we find the woman's killer what then? Are you going to bring them to court for justice or are we going to kill them as we have every other being that has been an inconvenience in our journey since the missing moment?"
He begins collecting the things from the crates together stuffing a pair of sunrods as well as one of each potion bottle into Hildy's saddlebags.
"If you can't calm and collect yourself here then go back up top. We've no need for unruly emotions right now."
“If I could choose to not give a damn, then I wouldn’t give a damn.”
Sylva’s eyes remain locked on the cup as it bounces, then slowly rolls along an arc… too light to break the floor, which would’ve been needlessly destructive.
“Sorry for… that,” she says sincerely. “I’ll be fine,” she lies.
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Nox sighs under his helmet once again and turns on his saddle to face Sylva. Taking on the tone of one who's trying to help instead of just yell at someone for finding terrible ways to grieve.
"You and I have been together long enough to know well enough that you are lying. You haven't been well since we faced that incident with the deranged fey and all of their lackies."
Sir Batman seem truly oblivious to any of Sylva's manners, as the champion of Mazludeh walks the parameter of the chamber repeatedly....
The sprite seems to be on edge....
Sylva doesn’t deny that she’s been struggling. “I gave up my blades because I was sick of blood and guts raining from the bellies of my opponents. Fighting without weapons gives me the peace of knowing I… just knock ’em out.
“I mean, there was that ship where everyone died even if we let ’em be, but mostly…” She trails off for a moment.
—then she blurts, “I don’t wave a wand or say magic words. If I’m saving a life, I’m sewing wounds together, connecting all the severed veins and arteries and closing off slashed organs. And checking a pulse and… what if the pulse was weak, or it was only too late because she rode to the wrong person? I’m not a doctor!” Her eyes well but her voice stays strong as she tries to hold her s$!$ together. “I never had someone ride up to me on a horse bleeding, okay? Usually anyone riding slumped on a horse is alive, aren’t they?”
She turns her back to Nox. To everyone if it’s possible.
“Don’t you get it? I wasn’t examining her body because I wanted to know how she died. I wanted to save her. She rode to us for help and she died and her blood is on my hands.”
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Nox slumps with a long aching pain, "Sylva... we are adventurers. It comes with many costs, including the knowledge that we can't save everyone no matter how hard we try." He lets out a long tired sigh born from knowing the pain she's going through in his own way.
Straightening in the saddle he looks at her, "We must save ourselves in the conflicts that find us before we can have a chance to help others in trouble, even then we may not save everyone. But we can still do our best to save who we can, and right now that means we have to get to deal with the master behind the missing moment."
Hildy and Nox both move over to Sylva where Nox dismounts and places a hand on his fellow sprite's shoulder. "I know how it feels to lose someone... to lose a part of yourself. I also know if we aren't strong now then so many more will be subject to that same pain. We can stop that, you can stop that."
“Thank you,”[ Sylva says meekly. She doesn’t look at Nox, nor does she flinch from his touch. She simply closes her eyes and takes a few breaths.
When her eyes do open, she faces Nox. “I’m still not okay, but I’m okay enough to explore the other tunnel. If anyone is in it, I’m sure they heard the alarm.”
Her left hand falls to Lemonsbane’s scabbard as she moves forward, hesitating at the dining area’s threshold to make sure the others are ready to move.
You head back to the entry hall and head north down the corridor. After a short time, the path splits again. To the east, the steep tunnel doubles back on itself as it descends towards a sturdy wooden door. To the north, a handful of shiny silver coins glimmer on the ground, where the tunnel forms a T-intersection to the north and east.
Sylva notes the coins, and considers the crude alarm, the half-elf riding off while bleeding. What if she was an adventurer? What if she found some treasure exploring this place, set off a trap and…?
“A handful of coins is a weird thing to drop in a creepy tunnel. And it’s even weirder if the person who made you drop ’em didn’t bother to pick ’em up… but not weird at all if a trap or a beast spilled the coin.”
Sylva slows her approach, since if there really is a trap or beast about, it means to spill blood.
Sir Batman bravely approaches the haphazardly dropped coins. He begins counting them.....
The silver coins are likely a lure, and an effective one at that, as Batman stops to count them. There are 10 silver pieces worth of Mendevian coinage in all.
"Fools! Now you will face my wrath!" a voice shouts from the small den east of the intersection. A man who had been hiding under a matted bearskin rug hurls the rug aside and stands up, brandishing a war razor! The man has a horrid appearance, with bits of skin and even whole appendages stitched together to give him a patchwork appearance. At the same time, three cat-sized beetles with oversized mandibles skitter down the northern corridor towards Batman! Their oval-shaped bodies are covered in dull-colored scales, and short, club-like antennae stem from shallow grooves in their heads. Crude faces have been painted on their carapaces.
“Did you kill the half-elf woman? Did she flee with an open wound from that vulgar blade?”
Sylva does not wait for an answer.
She strikes swiftly—but the thick armor dulls her first blow, and her second is deflected harmlessly!
An ill-timed intrusive thought pops into her head: What if the half-elf died thinking she’d avenge the victim before?
..6...8...I skipped something...6...7...8...9...10!
Sir Batman looks up from his counting excitement clearly marked on his bronze-colored bat-shaped face!
He glances at the crazy razor dude and The Beatles.
Who really did shoot Lenon?
Sighing in respect, the Champion of Mazludeh Enters his Stance, Raises his Shield and Strides so that enemies and allies are within 15'....
Tag! I am it! Come and git sum!
Ravenna delivers a powerful kick to the patchwork man, but Ravenna's bullets miss their mark. He raises his steel shield and strikes back against Sylva while the beetles rush forward to bite at Batman, one getting past his defenses and tearing the paladin's flesh!
Sylva bears the pain and retaliates—and with enthusiasm, seeing how bloody the attacks are.
“I will not accept surrender from you, murderer. The only mercy you’ll have is a quick death, though you deserve to suffer.”
Sylva’s first kick connects. Her punch strikes armor—she strikes the armor with her fist again, so hard it leaves a little dent!
(If anyone happens to notice that the armor has several dents, likely caused by a large blunt weapon, maybe don’t tell Sylva.)
Sir Batman--Reacts--quickly Shield Blocking the feeble attempt at messing up the sprites face!
The Champion does shed a single tear at the beating that Sylva took, but well you know....
The bronze-colored sprite does Stride(Step?) into the bully with a razors square, waving to Sylva across the Flank.
Sir Batman then reaches out to poor injured Sylva, patting her gently on the arm.
He then Strikes!
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Nox was caught off guard by the sudden appearance of the thug and his bug minions even though he tried to be ready for a surprise attack. Hildy and him kept their distance and he started to weave the shadows in the room together in a protective soothing shell for Sylva while she shouted about not being willing to accept this man's possible surrender. He frowned under his beetle helmet and made a note to speak with her again.
Nox heals Sylva. Ravenna misses with her shot, but fakes out the armored man as Nox moves in to attack. Unfortunately, he still comes up short. Sylva strikes hard, shattering the man's wooden shield as he moves to block! She follows up with another solid strike.
Snarling with fury, the man slices at Sylva again. The beetles pursue Batman, snapping at the paladin.
Sylva fights with all her might!
—but the opponent is too strong for her—her fist strikes armor; her leg kicks the wind! Thanks to Sir Batman’s distraction , Sylva manages to land her third strike!
She hisses as she lands her blow!
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Once again needing to bind Sylva's wounds with the cloying dark in the area the sprite weaves his spell. It's clear that they are having diminished effects though on Sylva's rapidly deteriorating body. She also seems unlike herself in the moment, but a topic for another time.
"~Maaybe let's not beat the s~+& outta my friends, All the Tiiiiiiime~"
Sir Batman--Reacts--quickly by granting Sylva his Champion Reaction!
The Champion of Mazludeh then glares Intimidatingly at the War Razor asshat!
He Raises his Shield!
He then Strikes!
As Nox heals Sylva, he begins a catchy song. The three beetles begin to dance along, but the patchwork man does not succumb to the earworm. Ravenna lands a glancing shot across his shoulder, while Batman and Sylva deliver more solid blows.
Despite his grievous wounds, the man does not relent, continuing to slice at Sylva! He lands a critical hit, but she dodges the follow-up blows.
The beetles rip and tear at Batman's flesh!
Sylva also refuses to relent.
She first focuses on her awakened power—
—shouting her vengeful rage in a storm of ice!
She then clobbers the armored man!
Sir Batman--Reacts--quickly by granting Sylva his Champion Reaction!
The bronze-colored sprite then screams like a little sprite!
That ain't tickling!
The Champion of Mazludeh then winks at Sylva's good idea!
Storming Breath (Fire)
He then Strikes at War razor!
The patchwork man reels as he is burned and chilled by the sprites' dueling breath weapons. A critical strike from Sylva takes him down! The beetles are all injured but still fighting!
Ravenna's gun thunders as she shoots one of the beetles in center mass, causing it to explode into chunks of goop! Nox's tendrils weaken the other insects, and it's only a matter of a few more moments before all of them are slain!
On the patchwork man's body, you find a +1 striking war razor as well as several keys.