Dellen was on the verge of telling these new buddies of his that if making their merry way across the land meant also going down a mine and getting jumpscared by undead hiding in puddles⦠he was fucking out. But that comforting witch guy appeared, and so he decided to stick around for a wee bit longer. Maybe the witch could sic his goat on the⦠oh, the goat was already eating the salty undead… I guess you could say he was too ungu-late.
Orny’s first contribution was to get this place disco lit! Casting Dancing Lights at the far end of the long salt cavern around the corner turned the place into a Fallout Roller Disco, briefly, since Percy then cast Daylight onto his sword â the highlight of any sun-worshipping tengu. The place was well lit up, between these utility spells and the torch and Kona’s ioun torch.
Dellen therefore, felt comfortable running through the murky puddle/pool (depending where you stand) with Percy and Kona following him and everyone else bringing up the rear. Dellen had brought up Detect Magic and Malicia had slipped into what shadow remained. Around a small bend, a sub cave, she spotted a makeshift resting place â a campsite maybe? Dellen saw nothing magical about it, but his attention was taken by the sudden appearance of more Puddleghouls (they’re not Puddleghouls) at the end of the cavern where it led to a waterlogged tunnel.
The Saline Zombies (they’re not Saline Zombies) were so astoundingly awful that the party cut them apart with astonishing ease. I guess you could say that their time in the mine has made them seasoned undead fighters. Seasoned⦠Fuck you, that was golden. Anyway, the Sodiumidichloridians (that’s not a thing) proved to be so little challenge that it set the party up nicely to underestimate them badly, but my dice rolling kind of gave them the impression that these things could be walked all over.
Walking over the bodies, the party took a brief look at the campsite. They found 3 desiccated mules, staked to the ground, which fortunately didn’t come back as Mulezombies because I definitely don’t have those pawns. Also there, super crusty bedroll, which Malicia picked up and cracked and a crusty strongbox. Malicia had no luck picking the lock. Floki and Kona both took cracks at splitting the strongbox open, because maybe whoever made the strong box hadn’t considered that someone might try to force it open because it was their first day on the job. It had to be tried, but axe and â¦Jesus, Kona, are those claws?… claws couldn’t break the box open. They took it with them, then pretty much forgot about it.
They ventured down the tunnel in a large, confident, easily flamestrikable huddle until they reached another salt cavern. Again, this cavern was covered with murky water and that was enough to send Kona and Floki scampering across it noisily like toddlers with new waterproofs. Other people making a bunch of noise is its own kind of stealth, so Malicia didn’t bother doing her kind. She and Nobody moved across the cavern in a more reserved way, while Percy cast Weapon of Awe.
They found that the cavern branched; to their right, Malicia could see a dark tunnel down which there was some sort of device and the back wall of the cavern was actually a wooden barricade through which another cavern was visible. Peering down the passageway Malicia could make out four sturdy posts set in the ground, with ropes leading to a heavy, sturdy pan, a few yards in diameter. She didn’t know what that was for. Mining… salt?
By this point, Kona was already over the barricade, with Floki attempting to follow him, but getting stuck on the barricade and then pulling some of it down on top of himself as he tried to free himself. Orny, Dellen and Percy moved quickly across the floor of the cavern. Malicia and Nobody made their way over the barricade, with Floki making it over on the second attempt. But Kona was already running into the next cavern and discovering a big blue ball. The sphere sat on an island in the middle of a big puddle, was about 20′ across and glowed dark blue (technically, all light except dark blue was being eaten… JIM) at least that how it seemed to Kona. He could make out what looked like shards of blue glass on the ground and there were parts of the sphere that were crazed and cracked. There was a large section of the outside of the sphere missing and Kona went to go see what was in there.
What was in there was more Jumpscares, as two undead lunged from the inside of the sphere, although neither the grasping hands or the swinging pick-head made immediate contact, while the pick, swung by a glowing blue undead eventually struck and caused a kind of numbing cold that the big man shrugged off. Everyone moved in at variously different speeds, Dellen casting Protection from Evil on Kona and Orny whipping out the Rope of Climbing to get over the barricade. However, no matter how slow they moved, they had all managed to clear the main area of the salt cavern (the one without the sphere in it) which was good because the ceiling seemed for a second to have caved in. Turns out it wasn’t the ceiling, just a lot of it – the hammering had been to loosen a massive slab of salt that hit the water with tremendous force and filled the cavern with salt dust.
Outside the sphere, the others battled valiantly but things weren’t so easy when all the front line fighters were off fighting other stuff. Malicia tried to stay out of combat, firing her shortbow. Dellen couldn’t hope to go toe to toe with so many opponents but he really only had Nobody who was more likely to last longer than he so he cast Sanctuary on himself. Orny hovered around the periphery, laying Evil Eyes with mixed success until he decided to summon a gorilla to help them out. The gorilla didn’t last too long as it was badly affected by the undead that turned on it. Nobody and Malicia took Constitution damage too from blows from the previously super easy to defeat undead. Nobody’s gun experienced some sort of catastrophe, but he was able to continue with the butt of the pistol with some aplomb. Dellen meanwhile, channeled his inner Tersplink and did a top job of laying some buffs on Malicia with Shield of Faith and Bears Endurance, to offset the undead’s special damage.
Rising out of the shin deep water, was the glowing Blue Warrior… looking a lot like the one they’d just ended a dozen or so seconds ago – replete with heavy pick. Kona rushed (because Kona only ever rushes) over to the Blue Guy and started tearing at him with his Rage claws… so presumably he was still raging while he was talking to Floki… which maybe explains why Floki was doing all the talking.
Floki, meanwhile was deafened and so didn’t hear any of this go down and his attention was so taken by the sphere that he plain didn’t notice. Orny eventually got his attention. Nobody and Malicia did and advanced on it, daggers drawn. Nobody managed to disarm it – again – then duck out of the way of a counter. Malicia moved to flank but couldn’t land a telling blow past this thing’s decent armour. Percy summoned his Spiritual Weapon and Kona and the scintillating Scimitar of Sarenrae struck the Blue Warrior down. Phew! Glad that’s over for ever and ever, right guys? GODS FORBID THEY SHOULD SEARCH HIM. Dellen was now ready to get back to traveling somewhere other then underground and so set off to warn N’Kechi of the danger.
Now that it was quiet with less splashing, Orny explained his theory of how the sphere was actually a localized negative energy particle field that would respond to a targeted beam of frequency modulated magnatomic quantum interference that would effectively reduce the reciprocating necromantic phenomenon that was maintaining the integrity of this configuration of the crystal lattice structure. Kona looked at him blankly, picked up a pit prop and rushed directly at the sphere, smashing into it. The glass-like shell crazed and crackled but held.
Floki, Nobody and Malicia all took time to consider the rest of their surroundings, checking out side tunnels and the previous caver. Orny sighed, gave up trying to tell them something useful and warned them that the Blue Guy would probably show up again. Probably with hand gestures so that they couldn’t get it wrong. When he was still getting blank looks from Floki he Heal hexed him, thus curing his mysteriously inexplicable hearing loss.
Sure enough, the Blue Warrior rose again, from the site of another miner’s corpse, changing his previous Blue Warrior corpse into a zenj miner. Percy was getting tired of this guy who – on the scale of ‘knowing when to stay dead’ was scoring particularly low, even for an undead guy. He let loose with a Searing Light spell, which is one of the joys of playing a Cleric and let the sunshine into the Blue Warrior’s life, whether he wanted it or not (he didn’t want it).
With Kona continuing to smash the sphere with a pit prop and Orny pitching in with his daggerwhynot? Thrima, who had been kind of sucking it up all night, almost as hard as the undead, sank her teeth into the Blue Warrior and Malicia appeared behind him and sneak attacked (snuck attuck?) him for great justice, killing him… again. Phew! GODS FORBID THEY SHOULD SEARCH HIM.
Kona eventually shattered the sphere, presumably still in a rage, since he wasn’t doing it at a reduced STR. The light-eating effect left the sphere, leaving behind only dark glass fragments and there was a palpable and welcome change in the air pressure and quality of the cave, like someone opening a window in a fart-clouded Fiat. They got busy searching practically everywhere but the corpses – what does this mined section look like, what does the slab look like, what’s down this tunnel? – Before Floki and Orny finally got around to looking at the corpses. FINALLY.
Orny found a chain around the female corpse’s neck and on that chain there was a key. He pocketed that, although Kona saw him do it. After a while, they also got around to finding what the formerly blue guy had on him: studded leather that wasn’t fancy but that hadn’t seemed to suffer for all its long stay in the salt mine, a +1 Heavy Pick that was the only thing continuing to glow blue albeit a friendlier blue and a locket on a chain around his neck. People seemed confused about what a locket was so there was a moment where they were going to try to open it with the substantial key they had found. They gave it to Malicia to open and Malicia, knowing what a locket was because she is a girl, opened it without having to get her lockpick kit out. The outside was engraved F.C. and the inside contained a miniature painting of a little girl and a kindly looking man. If you imagined a dinosaur instead of the kindly man and put a decade or so on the little girl, it was easy to see that the little girl was a younger Athyra.
And for (I hope only) a couple of weeks, that’s where we’ll leave them.
“0.1st level Time Thief.” Lolz. I used to call Charlie our little Sleep Assassin.
Babies. Whoduthunk.