A Tunnels and Trolls® play-by-post adventure run by khara_khang
There is something very strange going on in the sewers, like the momentary dizziness of an unsettling spell. It runs as an undercurrent and none of you can wholly define wherein the strangeness lies. But you have no time to dwell on vague feelings. You find yourselves straddling a choice of which of two party members to save: one from drowning and one from being eaten. Each of you, having thusly expressed some sort of horrified shock in one form or another has jumped into action, some rationally, some not.
Jax bobs up, gulps for air and finds his footing as firmly as one can in the muck. He stands, albeit nose-deep, in the glowing blue pool of oily water and seizes Shipy securely within his meaty grip. In the verdigris-colored slime, it is impossible to tell exactly where the blood worm is affixed to Shipy's leg, so Jax gives up trying. He backtracks, one arm holding Shipy's head above water and the other pulling hard on Tasyjai's rope. Eventually she helps both of them from the feculence and they collapse, drenched heaps of Orc, at the edge of the pool where they started. Covered head to toe in the oily phosphorscence, they are slick as greased pigs.
The second the worm is revealed, Bela's hands fly up. His arms are normally slender and his hands long-fingered, but both are quite the opposite in Orcish form. His eyes shut for a moment as channeled magic passes through him. Even as an Orc, his face looks gloriously noble, newly and carefully carmined by magic, which rouses and tempts him. In an instant his Take That, You Fiend spell reduces the blood worm to a meat bag of Jell-O. The worm releases its wicked bite and lies still in death. [Shipy takes 3 CN hits (9 total thus far).]
Shipy is stunned in and pain, but his Orcish form happens to be much tougher than his Hobbit form. When his held breath suddenly escapes and his lungs automatically suck in another, his newfound muscles prove that he is alive. His teeth grit and his eyes open to see Tasyjai hovering sympathetically, and Jax's meaty hand still gripping his arm like a vise. The true Orc was clearly just coming to terms with the possibility of drowning.
"You can let go, now, Jax. The worm is no more."
"See, this is why I avoid taking baths...." He spits out some water and coughs. "Er, thanks guys. Where's Midnight?"
Meanwhile, Midnight dexterously crossed the tweezers around Tasyjai as if crossing it were Elfs' play. [Midnight easily made her L1SR DX check to cross the tweezers.] Throwing caution to the wind, Midnight takes off after the rodent, which is already out of sight. As fast as she can, she races down the pipe, which gently ramps upward for about 30 feet before steeply sloping downward nearly the same distance. Her hastened footfalls echo like water dripping off stalactites in a vast submarine grotto.
The pipe slopes steeply down to another foul-looking pool at least 40 feet across. Whereas the last pool was placid, the surface of this pool is writhing and churning: dark shapes with fang-filled maws thrash around in the muck. From above the pool, long green root-like tendrils hang down to within a few feet of the water. The pipe on the other side slopes upward to another bend. The rodent is not in sight; somehow it must have escaped capture.
If Midnight had her druthers, she'd be anywhere but here. Her feelings of doom gradually sink to a new and perhaps ultimate nadir in her desperate effort to find Sweetsong. A blood-chilling scream sounds from beyond Midnight's line of sight.
Midnight, you have several options:
Both her release and her scream come as a surprise. Sweetsong's back slaps hard against the baked clay pipe, and in no time, the stinking marsh-breathed rodent is atop her. Still gasping for breath, she attempts to speak a word of magic, but it is the wrong choice. It takes too long.
The rat's rage to feed vents on her. Even as she is attacked, her horrified inner eye envisions her fate. The rat's foreclaws and jaw slam into her with preternatural swiftness, holding her down, slashing and chomping at her in a frenzy. The rat rips and pulls off entire pieces of her scale armor. Her exposed face and flesh sprout multiple flows of blood. This battle between Orc and beast is to the end. [Sweetsong's armor takes 12 hits and is destroyed. She then takes 4 hits off her CN (6 total thus far).]
Sweetsong, you have several options:
"Don't go in the water, Tasyjai," Shipy repeats, a little hopelessly---almost whiningly, it must be admitted. "It leads only to squiggly death."
The emotional high of saving Shipy is short-lived as Sweetsong's death scream echoes back down the pipe.
What do you do?
Tasyjai smirks at Shipy. "So that's what you call it: a 'squiggly death.'" She starts to wind up her mucky rope, but is interrupted by Sweetsong's screams echoing from down the pipe.
Winding up her rope as quickly as she can, she looks over at the others. "If you are ready to move, I think we should hurry up and find Sweetsong before it's too late." Straightening her equipment about her, she takes off over the tweezers to head down the pipe.
Jax gets up quickly, retrieves and stuffs his rope and grapple back in his pack, sloughs off the slime from the soles of his boots, and holds the tweezers for Tasyjai, Bela and Shipy to cross. The blood-curdling cry unnerves him. Sweetsong? Midnight? Who knows? They are all definitely out of their element here, and they're not even in the sewers proper. They had better start functioning as a team. "Stay close, people. We're getting picked off one by one." He crosses last, and hurries toward the sounds of struggle.
Bela's fury at the attack on Shipy pours into the worm, shorting out its nervous system and turning its ganglia to charcoal. He spits on it with Orcish gusto, then kicks it aside. He promptly crosses the tweezers and jogs down the pipe. (If he falls, then he will wade on out, hoping there is nothing else down there.)
Once he arrives at the second pool, he states, "The rat must have jumped over this, or much water would have been splashed about. We, too, will pass over." He removes a slide rule from within his sleeves and after a moment of deft manipulation of the tool, he says one word, "Gond."
A great cracking noise comes from the pool, and suddenly the middle of it turns to stone. A solid stone path has formed all the way across with only narrow channels of liquid along the sides. The stone is rougly embossed with the shapes of the mouths.
"There. Now we see how this obstacle measures up. Let us cross." Bela crouches low and follows Shipy across, trying not to step on the grotesque mouth shapes.
Bela's slide rule is a deluxe staff, a living thing in solid form. He used it to compute the dimensions of the pool. Bela cast the level 3 spell Hard Stuff. If the GM allows it, he used his staff to reduce the spell cost; otherwise, Bela just spent almost all of his Power.
Sweetsong draws a weapon and attacks the rodent.
This battle between Orc and beast is to the end.
Hopefully, the rodent is the one who dies.
Midnight adjusts her stride when the tendrils come into view. They are gently swaying, presumably in the wake of the rat who just passed this way. Those don't look very strong for swinging across. One glance at the fang-filled mouths below tells her that going through the pool is not an option either; even if she were to wade across, it would take too long and Sweetsong would be doomed.
Upon hearing Sweetsong's scream, Midnight suffers a flashback to when her village was attacked by Trolls two summers ago. Many of her fellow Elves were killed without mercy or discrimination: they were male and female, even children. The Trolls' intent was to raze the village, and they succeeded. Elvin homes leapt into flames and many of her kinfolk jumped to thier deaths in bids to escape the fires. Those who used their magic to fly away, carrying as many others as they could, were shot down with arrows. In her mind's eye, Midnight sees him again: the Human who led the Trolls in the attack. She swore back then that she would make him pay for all the lives he wasted. To swear again would be redundant; hers was a blood oath....
An idea comes to her. Turning her direction slightly, she makes a diagonal run up the side of the pipe. Once she is a few feet past the edge of the slime, with sheer determination and desperation, she does a leap of faith to the far side of the pool, hoping the extra height she gains by running up the side of the pipe will give her extra distance.
Jax and the others have no time to spare on Shipy's wounds. For the moment, it seems to suffice that he lives. Shipy curses quietly. He can always depend on evil creatures to work against him, but magic and friends?
One by one, each of you crosses the tweezers to the other side. [Tasyjai, Bela, Shipy and Jax all make L1SR DX checks to cross the tweezers.] You hurry on down the pipe, Jax and Shipy occasionally slipping on account of being covered in thick slime.
Meanwhile, Midnight has an excellent idea, but forgets to factor in her newfound Orc form; everything about it is different compared to her usual sleek Elfin body. Especially that part about balance. At best, she makes 22 feet along the pipe wall before she leaps spread-eagle over the waters. It is a clunky spearcast at best, and results in a most undignified belly-flop into the monster-infested, murky pool. Immediately, sharpened rodlike teeth converge on her, biting hungrily at a new meal. [Midnight takes 10 hits but 6 are deducted by her armor, leaving her with 4 hits from her CN.]
Treading water while fighting with weapons is an impossible task, as is swimming while being eaten alive. Looking up, she has no time to reconsider her earlier dismissal of the tendrils hanging down darkly. In desperation, she steps on something moving beneath her, shoves hard, and reaches a handful of tendrils. Quickly, she pulls herself up into their midst, out of the water.
Midnight's arms and shoulders ache. Her palms burn. A monstrously fat creature snaps at her from below. She glares down at it menacingly. It turns on its side and opens an impossibly large moon-crescent of a mouth. She sees the razor-edged teeth and realizes that her life literally hangs by a thread. Or two. Or three. The jagged teeth slash and clash against the dank air below.
The others appear like cavalry to the rescue. Bela computes a volume on his slide rule deluxe staff, then lifts a once-skinny finger and speaks a word of magic. To his surprise, the spell nearly exhausts him. Soon the writhing waters begin to glow with furnace-red flickerings that increase to an unendurable glare. Then there is a loud crack and the murky water instantly solidifies. The serpentine shapes are held fast by a suddenly unyielding medium. They perish, their jaws wickedly contorted in death.
The moment of victory isn't wasted. Tasyjai, Bela, Shipy, Jax and Midnight (who drops down from the tendrils) cross the newly solid ground in haste.
Sweetsong, trusting supremely in her own speed, grabs her sax and stabs it into the right eye socket of the rat. For a moment that hangs in time, the rodent peers with shock and surprise from its other eye, then squeals in agony as its prey removes the blade. With an ugly little sucking sound that ends in a tiny plop, the contents of the rodent's eye burst forth and cover Sweetsong's sax with gore. Injured and thoroughly intimidated, the rodent leaps over Sweetsong and disappears down the pipe just as the rest of the party arrives. Amidst shreds of her now-useless armor, they find Sweetsong, dazed and bleeding from numerous wounds.
What do you do?
For those of you not in the loop, calenril_i's actions were discussed and approved by me before he posted. As to the question of deluxe staff usage, the magical enchantment placed on each of you by Khang will not allow any magic item to work. Even deluxe staves should be considered dormant and non-functional during this adventure.
Jax can do nothing for Sweetsong, save rudimentary field triage, which he immediately applies on seeing her. He notes the vitreous humor oozing from her sax. "Nice aim, Sweets," he states as he cleans her wounds with a little water. "It saved your life."
Having done all he can do to help Sweetsong, Jax stands and turns to Bela. After the Wizard's last amazing feat, he looks spent (and perhaps confused at being spent). "Quite inventive, Bela. Is something wrong?"
Midnight doesn't appear much better off than Sweetsong and Shipy. "Uh, way to hang in there."
Jax looks at himself and then at Shipy, all dripping with muck and slime. He laughs and squeezes the foul juice from his cloak. He seems to revel in getting dirty. "Don't worry, dude. You look authentic now."
To Tasyjai and Bela, he offers his thanks. "You guys came through with Shipy. We work well as a team." Which brings him to a speech overdue.
"Uh, guys, maybe we should rest for a bit, do a little healing and gain some strength. And, uh, not to be preachy or anything, but we almost lost two of our number because someone may have forgotten she is an Orc now. We'll do best underground if we keep things dark and stick together."
Sweetsong, trusting supremely in her own speed....
Trusting in desperate panic, actually.
Sweetsong casts Poor Baby to cure at least 3 CON, hopefully. Then she looks at the rest of the party and says cheerfully, "Well I did wonder how dangerous this trip could possibly be; 'very dangerous' is how. Jax, since you're used to being an Orc, why don't you take point?"
Tasyjai looks over Jax's shoulder to check ou Sweetsong's condition. "I have a vial of healing potion if you need it, Sweetsong."
Turning to look over at Shipy (since we never really did check his wounds), she says, "How are you doing Shipy?"
Then she asks Midnight, "Anything major to report?"
"You guys came through with Shipy. We work well as a team."
Tasyjai just gives Jax a curt nod of her head.
"Uh, guys, maybe we should rest for a bit, do a little healing and gain some strength.... We'll do best underground if we keep things dark and stick together."
Tasyjai approves of Jax's sound advice. "Rest would be good for everyone right now. We also need to get acclimated to the change before we continue on."
"Jax, since you're used to being an Orc, why don't you take point?"
"I agree. Jax, how about it? I'll cover the rear."
"Quite inventive, Bela. Is something wrong?"
Taking a deep breath to clear his head, Bela nods. "It feels like somebody turned me into an Orc. Nothing is right. My staff---you know, this thing," he says, waving his slide rule, "is blocked from me. No help whatsoever. Those spells cost me everything I have. I am a pooped Wizard." Bela sits on the floor and puts his head between his legs.
"You guys came through with Shipy. We work well as a team."
"Thanks. And welcome to the team, Tasyjai."
"We almost lost two of our number because someone may have forgotten she is an Orc now."
"I'm an Elf, Jax. I am not feeling in the mood for jokes right now."
"Rest would be good for everyone right now. We also need to get acclimated to the change before we continue on."
Bela raises an index finger and says, "Me too."
It is obvious that 'sewer' is a misnomer. It has been more like hell, but you'd hardly begun to puzzle out this distinction before action created reaction. Now, gathered around Sweetsong, you are hypnotized by the glint of ghastly wonders. Don't worry; it won't last long. Nor will the echoing silence.
"Don't worry, dude. You look authentic now."
"Authentic, Jax? I never wanted to be an Orc! I was hijacked and forced into this against my will!" Shipy huffs, patting his flushed and oily cheeks. "I must say though, I always give my best performance when I'm all gooey."
Jax shrugs once, doubtful. "If you say so, Shipy." His sword-arm bulges and shines with an oily sheen as he flexes it. He seems about to make an even pithier rejoinder, but he decides against it.
"How are you doing Shipy?"
Shipy shakes off the question with a 'no-need-to-check' gesture, then winks at Tasyjai. Maybe Orcs really are tougher than Hobbits?
Hearing Tasyjai offer Sweetsong a healing potion, Shipy one-ups her by quickly digging through his pack, withdrawing a potion, and popping its cork. "Here, drink half of this, Sweetsong!" He lifts the tiny stone bottle to her lips. Together with her spell, the half-dose of sour-tasting healing potion restores Sweetsong to full health, her open wounds magically evaporating. Of course it does nothing for her destroyed armor. The other half he offers to Midnight, healing her fully as well.
"And now Bela, for you," Shipy squeaks, fiddling with one of his (dirty) socks. He continues in the same fifelike tone. "This will restore your lost power." He offers Bela a potion.
After Bela gulps about a third of the potion, he makes the most horrible contorted face and spits out what remains in his mouth. His tongue is coal black with the stuff. Reading the label, he discovers that he just drank "Buzzard Pus: Ink for Writing Only. Do Not Imbibe."
Bela chokes out the words, "You blubber brain! Are you trying to poison me?"
"Sorry, sorry, wrong sock! Left sock, left sock. My bad. Try this one." He produces a second potion.
The label on the second potion reads simply, "Power Potion." Somewhat satisfied, Bela swallows the potion in one gulp. His eyeballs roll upward, all the muscles of his body quiver with the passing of a beatific spasm, and then his body relaxes majestically, like a sapling that falls in slow motion.
Tasyjai catches Bela before he hits the pipe. She suppresses a sarcastic smirk as the Wizard snaps back to his normal self, his power fully restored, and stands again on his own. Shipy sighs in relief. Tasyjai only shakes her head.
Jax takes the lead at Sweetsong's and Tasyjai's suggestion. The passageway angles downward; no doubt many magical substances have slicked the sides of this section of pipe over the years. A soft orange light illuminates the pipe ahead and a sweet, sickly smell of pungent sap hangs heavy in the air. Ahead in the slope, many strange and brightly colored holes can be seen in the wall. The baked clay pipe makes a sudden vertical turn downward at the holes, and nothing else can be seen beyond that.
What do you do?
Sweetsong carefully checks out the holes in the walls of the pipe, looking for surprises. If she doesn't find any, she asks who has a rope.
Midnight thanks Shipy for the potion.
"Hold on one minute," she intones. She takes one look at Sweetsong's torn armor, draws out her dagger and heads back to the hanging tendrils. She cuts a few down, keeping a weary eye on her souroundings. Upon returning to the party, she fashions a crude jerkin for Sweetsong to wear and hands it over. "It may not be good handiwork, but it should at least offer you some protection."
"Jax, since you're used to being an Orc, why don't you take point?"
"I agree. Jax, how about it? I'll cover the rear."
"I'll take the rear," she says resolutely.
Tasyjai eyes Shipy as he preempts her offer of a healing potion for Sweetsong. Then she slienty turns her gaze over the rest of the party.
"How are you doing Shipy?"
Shipy shakes off the question with a 'no-need-to-check' gesture, then winks at Tasyjai.
Tasyjai nods her head. "Good."
"I'll take the rear."
Tasyjai arches an eyebrow in Midnight's direction and then shrugs her shoulder in indifference.
She asks who has rope.
"I have a 50' rope, 4 iron spikes and a small hammer, if they are needed," she offers, then turns to Jax.
"Same here: fifty feet, five pitons and a hammer. Looks like that should be enough to get us down." Jax pounds a piton into the bottom of the pipe where it begins to plunge. "Let's use your rope, Tasyjai, as mine will make more noise with the grapple attached. I'll go first and give the all clear when I'm down."
"Whoa, what a rush!" Bela says after taking the potion. "Thanks, Shipy, it worked as intended. But without my staff's assistance, making magic will consume my energy quickly. Perhaps I can make a temporary substitute to help. If anybody sees something like a sturdy staff, perhaps a long hard root, please call it out. Meanwhile, I think you other Wizards should see if you have the same problem."
"Same here. Fifty feet, five pitons and a hammer. Looks like that should be enough to get down."
"And I carry 100' of rope---silk. I think we can go do a lot with all this."
Bela's revelation that his staff is dysfunctional affects the other magic-users differently. A flash of worry crosses Midnight's features as she ponders her quarterstaff. Sweetsong betrays no worry, but casts about for a suitable piece of wood. She is unsuccessful. Tasyjai shifts her weight uneasily and tries to act unconcerned.
The rough-walled subterranean pipe is long and wide and has irregularly jointed segments as it approaches the vertical bend. With a 10-foot (relative) diameter circular (more or less) cross section, the pipe is tall enough to be out of reach, or perhaps only brushable by fingertips if you were to stand on tip-toe. A sweet, sickly smell of pungent sap wafts heavily in the air. Many strange and brightly colored holes line the near walls. The soft orange light illuminating the pipe seems to come from the holes.
Daunted by disaster, but determined to help nevertheless, Midnight works to fashion for Sweetsong a patchwork of armor fragments held together with a few well-placed, knotted tendrils. It works surprisingly well. It will not offer the same protection as her previous armor, but it should help deflect some damage. Sweetsong's thanks come in the form of a wordless Elven shoulder touch, which only another Elf could understand.
Silent as a specter, Sweetsong is the first to examine the holes in the wall where the soft orange light emanates, but almost immediately, she comes to a halt, making a frightening discovery.
"Not good," she says boldly, observing a single unsightly bulbous undulating larva inside each tube, while feeling a slight revulsion to them. The gooey sap-like fluid that holds them in place also generates the orange glow that ruins their infravision. She guesses that the stingingly aromatic fluid is probably also acidic to the touch. Were the undeniably unpicturesque larvae even worth destroying?
The moment has come, Jax realizes, as it always does, when outward circumstances and inner urges command an act, when curiosity and fascination threaten to tip the scale of caution, when the lure of discovery becomes so great and deep-hooking that he must take the initiative to correct the course of events. Wasting no time on petty measures, Jax takes his hammer and drives a piton into the baked clay pipe near the precipice of the vertical fluted shaft. With a tight sailor knot around the piton, he tosses the free end of Tasyjai's rope into the darkness of the drop.
"Now we see what's down there." Grasping the rope, Jax slides down quickly. To his relief, the rope is sufficient for the job; the drop is only 45 mini-Orc feet. His whispered voice is heard from below: "All clear!"
Shipy is the second to slide down. Jax maintains a defensive posture, head lowered, jaw outthrust and Orc eyes slitted like a golem guardian. And without more ado, anyone who slides down behind Jax and Shipy sees the same thing.
At the bottom of the shaft, the sewer pipe widens to 15 (relative) feet across, 12 feet high and bends towards the east. Thirty feet past the bend, a narrower circular pipe 8 feet in diameter in the center of the floor drops into darkness, leaving ample room to walk around the hole. A nearly overwhelming stench of sewage wafts from the east. Faint clicking noises can be heard coming from the same direction. Just beyond the opening of the narrow pipe in the floor rests the prone body of a rat, likely Sweetsong's assailant, its body twitching. A few feet beyond the rat, two man-sized rocks, possibly chunks of clay fallen from the pipe, rest at the sides of the pipe. The roof of the pipe seems matted with more tendrils.
What do you do?
"Not good," she says boldly, observing a single unsightly bulbous undulating larva inside each tube.
"Would you like to clear them out?" she asks while looking over Sweetsong's shoulder.
"It may not be good handiwork, but it should at least offer you some protection."
"Thanks Midnight. Any armor is an improvement over no armor. And I will keep a much better lookout for danger. I'm glad I'm not terrified of rats." Sweetsong glances around carefully, looking for signs of trouble and hoping there are none.
"Would you like to clear them out?"
Sweetsong shudders. She clearly does not want to mess with the larvae at the moment. She prays she won't regret the decision later.
She climbs down the rope and joins the others. "The lens probably went down that next vertical pipe. Or should we check out that rat to see if it had it?"
Tasyjai follows Sweetsong down the rope. Reaching the bottom, she draws her scimitar and awaits Bela and Midnight to join them.
"Very interesting..." he begins, approaching the glowing holes in the pipe wall, but he moves past without further comment when Jax growls his disapproval.
When he arrives at the bottom of the shaft, he comments, "As for that drop off, I do not like the looks of it. I agree with Sweetsong: if the lens were simply flushed down, I think that it would have gone in there. But I have a feeling it was carried. Perhaps the rats have it."
Once Midnight has climbed down, she asks Sweetsong, "What's got you so worked up? What did you see in those holes?"
To Jax, Midnight says, "I hope nothing heard the noise you were making with that hammer of yours. Better shake that rope loose; I think we might need it later."
Reaching the bottom, she draws her scimitar....
Jax nods with approval. "Nice." Real Orcs prefer scimitars.
"Better shake that rope loose; I think we might need it later."
"No. It's a steadfast knot; Taran taught me that one. Plus, we need to get back eventually."
"The lens probably went down that next vertical pipe. Or should we check out that rat to see if it had it?"
"Good idea. Whoever or whatever took out that rat may still be dangerous to us. Rat first, then the vertical drop."
Sweetsong
"What's got you so worked up? What did you see in those holes?"
"Larvae. Gooey. Best left alone."
"Good idea. Whoever or whatever took out that rat may still be dangerous to us. Rat first, then the vertical drop."
"I think that's the rat I stabbed in the eye, but I'm not a threat to the party." Brief nervous laugh. "Make sure nothing's coming up the pipe shaft before you cross it."
For a moment Jax waits for something to stir in the far reaches of that nighted sewer pipe, but nothing does. His eyes retreat to an ominous infrared gleam---the heat coming from the rat---and he feels a shiver crawl on his spine. HotVision™ gives no further detail.
Jax stands at the forefront of the group in the large sewer pipe. All too often, he muses silently, he involves himself in adventures guided by discredited sorcerers, accompanied by a riffraff of dubious mercenaries, and set in an underworld of the supernatural. Any future Archivist of his deeds would have to agree. [Yup. --ed.]
The silence in the pipe grows heavy and ominous.
"I agree, let us check out this rat. I do not like the smell of the down pipe anyway. Does anybody here have the ability to communicate with rodents? We can put a spell on the rat to subdue it so it will serve us."
Bela looks ahead with his infrared vision, fascinated by this side-effect of the morphing spell. He looks at his his hands, then steps on the floor and removes his foot; he is pleased by the way he can see the heat print left behind. He then looks at the hanging tendrils to see what they look like.
Jax follows Bela's gaze to peer above at the pipe, matted with some kind of fiber thicker than rope. His infravision lacks any further detail, but.... "Did you see that, Bela? Something moving up there? I get a negative on HotVision™, but I could've sworn... ah, nevermind."
"I think that's the rat I stabbed in the eye, but I'm not a threat to the party."
Jax grins tuskily, and lowers his gaze across the gap to the injured rodent. Again, his infravision obscures tiny details, but he can tell its breathing is labored. "If I were a betting Orc, I'd say something knocked its wind out after you poked it. It's that something I'm worried about---not to diminish your deadliness, Sweets." Another grin.
"Does anybody here have the ability to communicate with rodents? We can put a spell on the rat to subdue it so it will serve us."
Jax shakes his head no. "It might not be able to serve in its condition, Bela, but let's keep that option open. OK, I'm detecting the two boulders are slightly warmer than the rest of the pipe: this could indicate recent impact. We need more information on the rat, though, and this will only come by getting closer, or risking light." Jax draws his scimitar and heads cautiously for the rat.
"Make sure nothing's coming up the pipe shaft before you cross it."
"Right-o." Jax walks the thirty feet or so to the down-pipe and pokes his head over the ledge. "I see a soft 20' drop into some debris. No further detail on the rat. Somebody keep an eye on the tendrils. Midnight, let's get some light up here." Jax waits for Midnight to arrive with light, then if nothing else happens, he circumnavigates the mouth of the down-pipe to get a closer look at the rat.
The GM provided some details offline for this post.
"We need more information on the rat, though, and this will only come by getting closer, or risking light."
"Jax, you forget our other eyes. Maybe there are tiny magical things down here. Oh, and please keep an eye out for signs of silk. The old fear of spiders is haunting me. Did you ever see how fast a trap-door spider can move?"
Bela uses Detect Magic to see what he can spy. He is particularly interested in the tendrils.
Sweetsong casts Cats Eyes on herself and looks around, paying special attention to the roof tendrils and the hole. She is looking for any sign of the contact lens or danger. "I hate spiders and don't want to meet any, especially at this size."
"What kind of light did you have in mind? Something we can drop or something we can hold?" intones Midnight. "What has got me interested is why the rat stopped here? I know Sweetsong's knife thrust did not kill it, but served only to drive it away. But to come to a stop here after crossing this narrow gap, and now not acknowledge us. There has got to be something down this pipe that warrants caution."
Midnight picks up a small pebble, casts Will-o-Wisp on it and drops it down the vertical pipe.
"Did you see that, Bela? Something moving up there? I get a negative on HotVision™, but I could've sworn... ah, nevermind."
Tasyjai exchanges her scimitar for her bow and an arrow and shifts her gaze to watch above as the others check the rest of the surroundings.
"There has got to be something down this pipe that warrants caution."
"Or maybe it's above us," she says simply, examining the pipe ceiling for signs of movement.
"Jax, you forget our other eyes."
"Uh, right," Jax grumbles, as the Wizards presumably initiate scrying magicks. He watches from the mouth of the down-pipe as Midnight's glowing pebble falls, temporarily negating his infravision. "Uh, the rat?" he points impatiently. "I can only see it better from here with some light."
He calls back to the others, "So what do you see?"
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