"Yes then you get the dice.  And yes, I'm a chef by trade but my specialty is vegetable stew so unless you have a plan that allows for that, I could chop and peel for you. Oh yes and we do have pixies among us."

"Aye, all right. Just be sure ye roll th' honest dice..."



"Aye, fine..."



"Meh, that's one less bigfolk mouth to worry about feedin', then..."

Ruth rolled the dice to check how the weighted dice were fixed. She set those two aside. "The weighted ones increase your odds of rolling seven"  Then she rolled the honest dice.

13:15, Today: Ruth Bairn rolled 7 using 2d6 with rolls of 3,4.  Rolling for nutmegs

"Looks like seven megs for me and four dice, two honest for you.  Oh and it's at least two less. Robin is asleep in my backpack. He's a bit tired after he broke their leaders staff."

"Oh, ye folk broke that thing, did ye? So that's what that boom was, I bet. I figured it'd backfire on 'im-- just didn't know he'd have help doin' it. Serves 'im right, I dare say. Don't sit on the lid of a boiling pot, me grandmere usedter say."

The old halfling takes the four new dice, and Ruth gets some nutmeg.

(Anything else to discuss? Or shall we finish cooking, serve dinner, and jump forward in time several hours?

I'm fine either way.)

Happy to serve dinner and leap forward.

Dinner is vegetable stir-fry. It's pretty darn good, really. (Ruth thinks she's a better cook, but the old halfling is good. She's just even better.)

Everyone rests for hours, using the cots in the barracks.

(Ruth, cross the dice off your character sheet, replace with nutmeg. ALSO the cook is pleased with you helping him and being a cook yourself, so he gives you a small amount of one more spice. What is it?

Everyone should be all healed up now.

I think we should start at dawn the next morning. If no one disagrees, someone start us off...)

The halfling also kindly gave her some Birdseye chillies as well.
Also I don't think coal will be unstressed until she's able to buy more.

In reply to The GM (msg # 194):


By the time Ruth returns, Brakenjawz has polished his armor and sword back to their usual luster and is relaxing on one of the cots as he relaxes, listening to the others as they also prepare to rest. One eyebrow rises at the appearance of the halfling with her, but the smell of the food forestalls any comments he might otherwise have made. Instead, he thanks them both for the food. He's awake for a while longer, reading from a small book; eventually, however, he lets out a wide-mouthed yawn, puts the book away, and beds down to sleep.

Early the next morning, he walks out through the now-abandoned spider den to the exit on the side of the hill; there, on the side of the hill, he kneels in silence for almost half an hour. Once he returns, he looks around at the others.

"Has anyone found a privy?" he asks. If no one has, he goes in search of where the cultists attended to such needs.

Upon his return, he carefully dons his armor and picks up his things, and waits patiently for the others to ready themselves to set out as well.

"Let us find the halfling before we leave," he rumbles, "to see if we can get something to start the day. We can take the surviving cultists back for justice, then whoever wishes to continue shall set out with Reed and myself, to investigate this cult's links to... the aforementioned demon lord." Clearly, Brakenjawz does not wish to speak the creature's name without strong reason for doing so.

(I can understand that, but you can go outside (during rest time) and get one of the pickaxes and get some rocks, as the broken-arm cultist suggested. Then just replace Coal with Good Throwin' Rocks on your sheet (and unstress))

Yes. I shall do that.

"Makes sense," says Fran, "but what about this last door? It's locked, but it's been making me a little nervous. Does the Spider Key open it, too?"

---

quote:

To the north end of this barracks-room, there's a closed door... but a little to the left of that, there's also a sort of doorway that doesn't actually have a door, that looks like it's a stairwell to the second floor, where there's some kind of... pulpit? For someone to address the people who used to be congregated down here on the ground floor?

Gwendolyn took some of the vegetable stir-fry away over to a far cot away from the rest of the group's view, making sure to thank the chef first. Once properly alone, with her face at least hidden from sight, she unclasped her mask in full. She allowed herself to eat the warm meal slowly, so as to relax. It wasn't quite as nice as a good bug, or even her birdseed, but she wasn't about to turn down a free hot meal.

Once she'd rested and had gotten her mind and magic back on track, she set about repairing her equipment. First her mask, which she was thankfully able to enhance back to it's usual state. Then, once it was secured to her face, the rest came easily.





"Agreed." Gwendolyn stretched out her wings, grateful that her silent yawn would be masked. "Perhaps some food could be nice first... But we should check that door before leaving. I'd argue we should also be sure to walk around the hill in full before we leave, just to be thorough."

Quintavia was about to restring her bow, but joined the others at the door they were worried about

Ruth stood beside Quintavia with a rock in each hand.

Brakenjawz also moves over to the remaining door, although he doesn't look very worried -- if something dangerous had been present, it would have bothered them while they were resting... right?

"Um... who's got the key? I know it's not me..."

Brakenjawz looks at Gwen.

Gwen tries the key in the door.

It unlocks. Everyone looks at each other.

Fran carefully opens the door...

Um... huh. It's a room. A small room. Bigger than a broom closet, but hardly the size of the "barracks" area you're standing in as you look in this last room.

There's no sconce on the rough stone wall for a torch, but there are two (hooded-type) lanterns hanging from iron hooks in the wall (currently unlit).

That's it for the walls. Now for the floor. It's simple stone, like in the barracks.

But in the floor are stairs, going down. A stairwell. A spiral.

Two lit torches are brought.

That's a long way down.

One torch is dropped down the middle of the spiral of stairs.

It falls.

And falls.

And falls.

There's a noise. Did it hit? Yeah, you think so... but then it sort of bounced out of sight-- like it hit a step near the bottom and bounced... to where you can't quite see it nor its light anymore.

"Wow," says Fran. "It's one of those. Of these. ...Yikes."

All members of the Adventurers' Guild know what this means (even Reed, who's the newest member to join). The Guild rules are very clear.

"...The Upper Reaches..."

When a new location from out of the ancient past appears, it usually brings something unusual with it. But maybe one out of ten times... there's stairs. Or something. A way down to The Upper Reaches, the vast system of caverns and tunnels running under the continent of Tethys.

Which means it's a way UP, too.

The standing orders are clear: on finding such a thing, all Guild members are immediately to head down and try to find an established community of dwarves or at least kobolds, so that the new entrance to The Upper Reaches can be reported to the dwarves, mapped, and guarded. (Well, with a party of this size, one Guild member is allowed to head back to a town or city to report the new find.) Nothing else takes precedence.

(I figure we'll send Fran.

The cultists will be glad to get away from those stairs. Esplen knew about the stairs, but he didn't tell the rest of them. The halfling cook will leave too.)

"Well," Brakenjawz says after a long pause. "This changes things, doesn't it?"

He rubs his chin -- as always, making much less sound than one might expect from steel on steel movement -- then turns a serious eye to Fran.

"Are you willing to report this?" he asks. "The way back should be passable, even alone. As for the captured cultists...." He rubs his chin again, then sighs and nods. "Do what you must."

He then looks toward Reed.

"I apologize, friend, but I cannot accompany you to face your hated foes. This must take precedence."

He takes one of the lanterns and lights it, then draws his sword with his free hand. Thus illuminated and armed, he begins to carefully descend the stairs, leading the way into the Upper Reaches.

OOC: Added the lantern to his equipment slots

"Sorry Reed," says Ruth. "None of us can accompany you until we've been down and found some Dwarves or Kobolds to report to.  Of course," and with this she grins, "if you accompany us then afterwards we can accompany you, if we survivr "

Gwen clicked her beak. "Alright, yeah. Right behind you, Brakenjawz." This was more than a little annoying, considering the threat this Anthraxis person posed, but finding some sort of outpost down there first was a necessity. She made sure to be toward the front of the party, looking around carefully as they descended. Truth Seeing would hopefully pick up anything trying to hide on the stairs...

"Who knows, maybe we'll find the Ruins of Uzirian before we run into anyone else?"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:05, Sun 17 Mar.

"I predict they'll be willing to walk back to town, with me guiding them. What choice do we have? I'm not going to baby-sit them here, and they're too beaten-up to run for it with their hands tied-- there's enough rope and things to tie them all together, too... by the necks. That'll stop them running off. Don't worry. And I'll tell the Guild right away what we've found, too. Leave marks down below-- maybe I can rejoin you later."
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:34, Sun 17 Mar.

Fier had been snoring till dinner and then had dozingly partook of the good food. When the sairs are found he frowns looking down at the light falling and falling.

"Well this is gonna suck. Shouldn't we wait for Fran to return? Her throwing skills are more then on point after all. And who knows what those cultists get up to with just one guard with them."

Quintavia audibly gasped at the discovery, and quickly wrote it in her journal.  An entrance to the Upper Reaches! A fantastic find!!

"Yes, indeed!  We must document this and make contact as soon as we're all prepared to leave."

OOC: Yeah I know the setting has an underdark, but it totally slipped my mind before when I was posting that the Upper reaches were THAt, and not some northern place ont he world map lol! Reed in game would know this though.

Reed shakes his head.

"It's okay. I understand the necessity of the Adventurer Guild's protocol, and I think its a good one. Part of the reason that the forces of civilization and Nature have been able to work together to contain this type of threat up till now is due to our superior systems for sharing information and cooperation. Sending Fran to the Guild is great as the Guild MUST know about this, but really I think it's important that our Dwarf and Kobold allies underground know too. The more eyes that can know about this, the harder it will be for the bad guys to make moves unnoticed." he said.

"And this is one of the strongest, most heroic groups I've ever worked with. You guys are not newbie adventurers by any means. Even one of you has the potential to fight and kill multiple cultists at once, and that's saying something. This was a large group of armed men, backed by a dangerous magic user." he continued.

"But even that being the case, we're not invincible or perfect. Sometimes, shit happens. And if the very worst happens, we need our allies to know about this entrance and about this plot so they can continue the good fight after us."

He considered.

"Either we send Fran back to the Guild for now to update our surface allies about this, or I can go and do it. I have...methods of travelling fast when I need to. But I think Fran may have needed to go back to the Guild for something anyway, so that's why she's my choice."