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Hue begins to pick his way towards the light, keeping a keen eye out for traps. The others follow behind. Hue: Before long the keen-eyed halfling sees a line tied low between the zurkhwoods, zig-zagging around. Small bells were attached to it. It seemed to be an early-warning system rather than a trap, but it was cunningly crafted.
Hue: You find signs of tracks and small footprints (your size-ish) but it looks more like forage than a garden.
Alex, Maddy and Kalanzar made their anxious way through the water, and were careful to keep moving once they hit air so those behind could follow. Hue was already moving, so, wet and shivering, you follow in a somewhat battered line. Fortunately, another few minutes of crawling brings you to the end of the tunnel. It opens into a large cavern that is full of zurkhwood trees and other fungi. A soft orange glow from some phosphorescent fungi dimly lights the cavern, but deep in the "trees" you can see a brighter light source flickering.
You all go through. It seems like a normal trip through a watery tunnel.
Precious pushed through the murky water, crawling as best he could over the slippery-yet-sharp tunnel stones. Alex followed behind, much more cautious than the first time she entered the water-filled section. Maddy and Kalanzar followed behind, Maddy having the hardest time due to her size and fear, but her strong constitution helped her hold her breath as long as necessary. The tunnel starts heading up again, and before Precious's distress becomes too dire, his head comes up out of the water. Hue: You came out about twenty feet past the edge of the water line. You've been waiting on this side for about 8 minutes. The air on this side is warmer, and there is dim light down the end of the tunnel. Can you describe what Hue's been doing for 8 minutes and what Preciuos sees when he comes out of the water?
Where you are the tunnel is partially flooded. Your hands and knees are wet but your head is above water
Precious is following Hue. I assume that Alex will take the potion and then follow, then the others. If that's not the case, speak now, or forever hold your peace.
Precious can get in front of Alex. It won't be graceful, but he can do it.
Precious crawled forward underwater, grabbed, Alex's ankle, and pulled her back as quickly as he could. The water was icy cold, and in Dawn's light you could see she was blue and unbreathing. Precious has to crawl almost on top of the woman in order to get to her head - it's a good thing he's a dwarf and not Maddy's size. As Precious awkwardly kept her head above water, Maddy contorted herself to grab Kalanzar's bag and pass it forward. Precious pulls it open with his teeth (while holding his breath) and sticks it under the warlock's nose. She immediately begins to cough and thrash, and the dwarf holds her head sideways as she vomits water out of her lungs. A few moments later and Alex is awake and stable. She's shivering with cold, and squished up against Precious, but she's alive.
You've been in the narrow tunnel since you left Kip behind.
You're all 20 minutes into the tunnel before it starts to fill with water. Once it's too deep, you guys sent Hue ahead with the rope, and then Alex went rogue and followed.
From Alex's point of view he was sucked into the thin layer of algae on the side of the tunnel wall. The way ahead looked clear, though still underwater
Okay, we are definitely not all on the same page about your situation. I've updated the slide deck with a very bad sketch. You are all in single file in a tunnel about 2-2.5feet in diameter. Small creatures are crawling. Medium sized creatures are belly-crawling. There is no standing, no turning around, barely any room to move. The tunnel is flooded as you head downwards into it. Precious is in a half-flooded tunnel, on hands and knees. Maddy is behind him. This is very difficult terrain. You can hold your breath equal to your 1+Con modifier minutes. Once you are drowning (which automatically happens when you try to breathe or speak underwater), you have Con modifier number of rounds, in which you are dying. You cannot stabilize under water. Precious, please retcon your post. You can get her out of the water, but it's HARD. You're not wading in, you're crawling in. There's no dry land to toss her onto. You can back up and pull her out until her head is out of the water. If you want to do CPR, it's a medicine check at disadv because of the very tight circumstances. Apologies for not making this clear enough.
I lifted the hook off of Kingsworthy. When he tried to hire some folk to hurt Prem, and Dounia called him out. After, she lifted the purse he was going to use as payment. It had 10 platinum, and I gave 2 to each of us, plus on each to Yoy'ya and Prem. Also a strange hook fell out, and it turns out it will stick to any wall, then come off when you want it to.
Alex begins to back up, but the tunnel is tight and the going is difficult. Her devil's sight does little to help when she's trying to swim/crawl in reverse. Pushing backwards with her hands, she scrapes her back and belly on the sharp rocks, as she struggles not to breathe the water further into her lungs. She gets almost back to the others when her vision goes black, and she gives in to the darkness. Still holding the end of the cut rope, Precious suddenly sees Alex's feet come into view in the filled tunnel in front of him. Fifteen feet from him, her legs give a sudden spasm, and then stop moving.
Alexandra does her best to use magic against the algae, but as she automatically opens her mouth to speak the magic words, she instead swallows a mouthful of murky water. Suddenly in danger of drowning, Alex begins to thrash underwater.
What spell is Alex using? Make your roll.
They did not mention that.
Precious wrote about pulling it back out and seeing the cut end. If you want to retcon and say that you grabbed it, you can.
@Alex - tug your rope? Alex didn't have a rope.
Alexandra swims after Hue, unknowingly trapping his rope. She sees him cut the rope, and then get sucked into the wall! Within moments he's gone, the flooded passage ahead of her empty.
PM'd Hue
Hue takes the rope and begins to swim/crawl through the tunnel. The sides and bottom are slimy, helping the halfling squirm/swim, trailing the rope behind him. Alex, imagining the beach, launches her larger body after Hue, though for her it's much less swimming, and more squirming. The tunnel is tight enough that she can't stroke properly with her arms, and has to have them outstretched in front, doing her best to approximate a swimming motion. Fortunately, she's able to keep her forward momentum going. Unfortunately, she gets Hue's rope caught between her body and the ground, and the halfling jerks to a stop, caught by the rope around his ankle. Precious feels the rope stop spooling out not long after Alex enters the submerged part of the tunnel.
Is Alex following Hue into the deep water? Or will she wait for his signal? Also, she can't actually "swim" in here, the tunnel is much too tight. She's been belly-crawling for a while now.
You head into the tunnel, on hands and knees, and eventually for the larger of you, on your belly. The tunnel is slimy, a slick layer of algae growing in the moisture that coats the walls and floor. Despite this, the stony ground is sharp, and you soon have a few cuts and scrapes on hands, knees or belly as you make your way through the tight tunnel. It goes on and on, heading slightly downward. The water starts to pool around you as you go forward, getting deeper as you go. After twenty minutes or so, it becomes likely that it will eventually fill, or mostly fill, the tunnel.
Hue looked around for any sort of helpful fungus, but only found a very thin layer of a hard, scrubby lichen. Even if he scraped it up off the rock, it didn't yield much of anything. Kalanzar and Maddy stared at Kip's final deposit, somewhat stumped. It looked somewhat like an amphibian's egg - round and slimy. But those types of eggs were laid in water, and meant to stay wet. This was already starting to dry, the slime becoming gummy and gluey. There was no colour with the darkvision, but the surface seemed opalescent but opaque. It was sturdy enough not to be immediately fragile, but it probably wouldn't be hard to smush, or break open, if you wanted to. Hue begins to head into the tunnel. He would need to go on hands and knees, but with his slight stature, it wouldn't be a difficult trek. At least not from what he could see here.
What skill does one use to investigate potential carrion crawler poop? Although I’m rooting for larva. Kip Jr :) Use whatever skill you think would be appropriate.
Rereading our adventures with what I know now, it really speaks to Corey's mastery at world building. It's just as entertaining the second time around :)
Awwww, did Kip leave her a larva? Maybe a larva, maybe a poop, maybe something else....who knows?
Kip quivered and twitched as Maddy took off the gear. He butted her head, and gave her an affectionate, if rather gooey, lick. Then he made a strange sounds, one you've never heard him make before. Almost the exact same whine you heard from above. The carrion crawler makes a strange, shuddering motion, and you hear a wet splat. Then he gallops straight up the cliff and out of site. One the ledge, where he'd been standing, lays a wet, slimy globe, about the size of a grapefruit. Ahead of you, the narrow tunnel stretches into the darkness.
It was a difficult climb, but aside from a slip from Alexandra early on, and a close call from Hue, everybody made it up to the ledge. The cliff continued up and up into the darkness, but the rangers' innate sense of direction told them they'd climbed 14 times the height of the previous cavern. The ledge led to the right, widening out a little before entering a tunnel. A very tight tunnel. From high above you on the seemingly endless cliff, you hear an eerie whine. Maddy: Beneath you, Kip goes absolutely rigid. His head swivels up as he attempts to see the source of the sound. Several of his legs move as if he's about to run up the cliff, but he follows your directions and stays put. He seems excited rather than scared.
The problem with that is you'd have to do one at a time, the whole length of the cliff. There's nowhere safe for several people to stand/wait while everybody else comes up the same 50 feet.
I was going to reveal what happens with fails as it happens, but of course with pbp that doesn't really work, it would take forever. If you fail, you fall. Dex save DC 12 to prevent an injury. Critical fail on the climb roll doesn't give you a chance for dex save. Anybody below you on the climb can attempt to grab you for a Dex save DC14. If they catch you, STR save DC 13 to stay on the wall. Fail and you both fall, triggering dex saves for both. If you fall, 2d4 damage for each height increment. If you fall on the first climb roll, 2d4. The second climb roll, 4d4 etc. If you use light, you cannot see the glowing path, and the climb rolls increase in difficulty to DC 15. If you do not have darkvision, your climb rolls are DC 10. Good thing Kalanzar can bestow darkvision. Anybody with a climb speed (aka Kalizard and Kip) don't need to make any rolls. As for Kip - he cannot help with climbing. He can carry Maddy up, but she's the only one "trained" to ride him. If you want to carry a small character with you, I'll need an animal handling skill for each climb increment, DC 10. What you do with him at the top is up to you. You can try to communicate with him about his desires if you wish to.
The climb will be athletics or acrobatics. DC is 5 if you don't use a light source and can see the path - it's almost like climbing a ladder. But those without darkvision will be at DC 10. I'll need 4 climb checks to get all the way up, it's a long way.
Everybody ranges out along the base of the cliff, which runs about twenty feet in each direction. The rocks are very craggy, with plenty of hand-holds, but based on the words of the kuo-toans, you're looking at a climb of at least 200 feet. It's Precious who spots it, when Maddy moves away with Dawn, leaving the farther end in dimmer light. Some phosphorescent algae, growing on a likely-looking foothold. Some more, a little ways up, on a sturdy looking handhold. Up and up, the algae marking the best route to climb. He can even see what looks like a narrow ledge 20 feet up or so, a dim line of algae. But when Maddy comes back, looking for a path, Dawn's light washes out the faint glow. Maddy knows that Kip could make this climb without any problem. However, the fish folk had warned of a tunnel with a tight squeeze at the other end - it sounded like a place too big for the large bug. Meanwhile, Alex stares up and considers just flying. The cliff is so high, and the dark so absolute that for a moment she feels vertigo, as if she's staring down a deep well instead. The warlock feels a deep, almost nauseating, sensation of premonition, as if being warned that flight in this place would be dangerous. As for Hue - he was muttering to himself and searching for equipment in his pack, not noticing the colourless, blind centipede that wriggled out of his pack through a small hole in the bottom.
You say goodbye to the kuo-toan family, and head carefully through the mine-field that was this cavern. Precious keeps you pointed in the right direction, and an hour or so later, you come to a hole in the ground. The dangerous cavern continues, but you can see that the hole becomes a tunnel, and continues straight ahead for a while. You descend carefully, back into pitch darkness. Dawn lights your way as you try to figure out how long it would take to pick the bones out of a fish. About twenty minutes later, you come to a path on the left. You can see that it curves to the right at a steady incline. Deciding to see where this goes, you follow the path, which quickly leads to the base of a very tall cliff. The nearly-vertical wall stretches away up into the darkness, well past even Alexandra's ability to see.
The kuo-toa don't have any more advice to give. I'll need some survival rolls to follow their directions.
"A troglobite is a delicious fish, one with many bones. As for heartbeats - I have never thought to count!" The kuo-toa listen carefully to Hue's instructions, and the injured female sighs in relief as the first one is applied. "Thank you! This helps already." Having rested long enough, the others help her to her feet. "We will move from this dangerous ground. I hope you are able to follow your river upstream, and find your spawning grounds again."
They pull out a notebook that seems to be made of large, oval scales, and flip through it. The writing looks like complete gibebrish. After a moment's consultation in their language, they turn to Precious. Alex continues to translate for those who don't speak undercommon. "You're very close. But you're too deep. You need to keep going through this cavern, but very carefully, because of the ground. At the other end, there's a tunnel that goes that way," she points very specifically to the NNE, "and you want to take that one. After walking for the time it takes to pick all the bones out of troglobite, then there will be a path to your left." The flip a page and consult it, then look up to the ceiling, considering. "You need to climb, about 14 times as high as this chamber. At the top, go to the right, and there will be a tight crawl. It'll be wet and slippery inside, don't drink that water. When you come out, you'll be near a place where the svirfneblin mine their ores. They can point you the rest of the way."
The fishy adults looked at each other with concerned expressions. "Ah, the capital. We had heard of strange happenings there. Our village is quite far away, but we will approach with caution. Thank you for the warning." Maddy tried not to look sad as she answered with help of translation, "I have no idea." She took a breath, "I have no idea where I am in the Underdark and what that means for the surface. Do you?" "Know the way to the surface? No, we have no need to leave the depths. But the svirfneblin trade with the surface-folk. Perhaps you could seek them out?"
There was no safe way for Kip to get down to pick up the kuo-teens, so they had to stay to listen. However, in typical youth fashion, the news was seemed to be more exciting than scary. The adults, however, looked serious, and thanked them for the news. "Where did this happen? Darklake is a big place. "I'm from a small village on the surface. I was taken from my home and brought to the Underdark as a slave. I was lucky and escaped and now I'm trying to get back home." Loogoome nodded as if she expected that answer. Her husband (who had introduced himself as Glubboono) asked, "Do you have very far to go?"
"Oh! We are from a small village on the west of Darklake. Ghaullappool. But we are returning from a pilgrimage, and trading on the way. The most dangerous place is here! We did not come through this way before, and we will mark as dangerous for other travellers!" He pulls out some chalk and sketches a strange, simple rune on the ground. "This means the area is not safe! I will mark the walls at the other end, to keep our people safe if they come this way." The younger kuo-toas speak quickly to him, and he makes a hideous expression which is probably a smile. "My spawn wish me to tell you that we also saw a giant running through here, but she seemed harmless. And there were some slavers, but they do not want our people, so we traded with them instead. Do you have anything to trade?" Again the fish-teenagers spoke to their father, and he asked, "Where are you from? You are not all people of the below."
I keep giving you guys NPCs to interact with and ask questions of, and it's just crickets. You have two hours while Hue collects fungus. Anybody want to know anything about these guys, or the area they've come from?
There is sufficient fungus for Hue to find what he needs, but the ground is so dangerous that it will take double the time to safely collect everything.
The injured kuo-toa has a broken arm and several broken ribs, as well as lots of cuts and abrasions. The fish-folk take the berries with suspicion, but are delighted when they actually try one. It helps with the injured ones surface injuries, but her broken bones will take more than a magical berry to heal.
Loogoome spends several minutes struggling with the rope, trying to get it around themselves, under the armpits, and tying a knot. Finally they call up, and Maddy and the other Kuo-toa begin to heave on the rope. It's difficult, as the edge of the hole is jagged and they have to be careful to prevent the rope from fraying and snapping. Loogoome cries out in pain several times, and is panting by the time they're hauled up over the edge and to an area Maddy deems safe. The two smaller fish folk throw themselves on the rescuee, causing another cry of pain, but Loogoome draws them both close in a hug. The spokes-fish begins examining Loogoome's hurts, and for a moment, you're all ignored.
The fish folk watching in amazement as the drow became a lizard. One of them shouted something down to their stuck companion, in their language. Probably warning them about what was coming. Maddy found a place to tie the rope off, just in case. Then, the shepherd holding one end, the lizard scampered down into the hole with the other. At the bottom he found a kuo-toa with a large backpack, loops of rope draped all around them. Their back was clearly injured - they couldn't sit up straight, and certainly couldn't stand. They watched with wide eyes as the rope-bearing lizard climbed effortlessly down the sheer side of the hole they were trapped in.
The fishfolk will say that their trapped friend can't climb, but they could hoist her up with the rope. Or somebody could climb down and get her, or Alex could levitate her up. Or levitate Maddy down and up again to get her.
With Precious and Hue alert for danger from within and from without, Maddy checks the ground carefully and inches towards the hole. The footing is treacherous, but she gets close enough to see that the hole is about six feet in diameter and about 25 feet deep. Definitely too narrow for Kip, and the ground wouldn't support his weight.
Survival to pick a safe path. Once you're close you can tell by looking
The ground in this whole area is unstable, you guys have had to tread carefully for hours. You'd need to get close and have a look at the pit to see if Kip would fit.
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