Re: Iron Gods - Gameplay Thread

[lapis-lazily]

Wasting no time, Seski slithers up to examine the corpse. She begins rifling through the dead half-orc's pockets with a seeming disregard for the deceased. "It's Parda, from the second missing expedition. And it looks like whatever did her in also took anything worthwhile she was carrying."

[Ferret]

Digsby kneels down next to her and examines the body. "Weren't no monsters or animals that did this either. She was stabbed ta death, probably by a dagger or summat."

[Perci]

"Many tried to caution her when she joined those. It appears their warnings went unheeded, and bore truth." Yakaika adds.

[Shinigami02]

Leaving the body be for now, the group continues. Finding a strange glow illuminating the next crossroads, they follow it to find its source.

A brightly-lit cavern opens up here, its twenty-foot-high ceiling thick with stalactites. A rocky shore overlooks a placid pool and stream, fed by a trickle of water leaking from a narrow fissure to the north. A small garden of toadstools and dark mold grows along the banks. The glow illuminating the room seems to be coming from the pool, where sickening crunches can be heard. As Seski first slithers into the room the thing in the water seems to react, as a frog-like creature about the size of Digsby climbs out of the pool, bits of flesh dropping from its jaw. It would appear the source of the light is the creature's bulbous eyes, which burn with the intensity of the sun.

[Ferret]

The frog turns its gaze on the party, blinding Sherifa, and bites Seski on the mid-section, but eventually falls to the party's barrage.

[Shinigami02]

Waiting until Sherifa's vision returns, the party follows the stream of water that feeds the pool.

A shallow creek runs through the middle of this cavern, while to the south a stony bank rises up from the water. Thick carpets of green and gray mold and fungus grow on the bank, particularly around a trio of three-foot-high, vaguely body-shaped, foul-smelling mounds.

[Ferret]

Digsby peers closely at the mounds. Hm... buncha halflings under there. What used ta be halflings, anyways. The first expedition were a halfling group, weren't they?"

[Shinigami02]

The group turns to leave, but on their way out large masses of the mold peel off the corpses, revealing themselves to be three small slime molds. The resulting fight is short but brutal, and free of the molded cover the group finds a valuable opal stowed away in one pocket.

Returning to the split and going the other direction, they find a chamber, one side holding a sizable pile of rubble. Searching the rubble turns up a great many ropes and strings, as well as small strange constructions, of metal, as well as a scattering of Silverdisks.

Leaving the rubble pile behind, the group continues down one of the paths, into a vast chamber. The ceiling rise sharply to a height of easily 30 feet, while the entrance opens onto a 5-foot-wide ledge that curves along the wall to a lower level about 10 feet below. In the middle of the cavern sits four ramshackle huts made of what appear to be strips of metal, hides, and some sort of fibrous plant matter, while in the southern-most part of the chamber a dark pit descends ominously towards the depths of Golarion.

As the group's members are taking this in, a trio of humanoid creatures, dressed in little more than loincloths, an extra strip across the slightly-raised chest of the one in front, approaches the end of the ramp, two of them with shortswords drawn. As they walk their skin's color seems to shift and change to match their surroundings, making it hard for the eye to follow them. "Halt!" The one in front commands, arms crossed before her as her companions move to flank her.

[Perci]

"Hold!" Yakaika barks, "We've no intent to intrude, merely to locate a lost mage by the name of Khonnir."

[Shinigami02]

The woman looks uncertain for a moment, before her face hardens again. "A few have passed through, not many but some. None the less, we can't let you just pass through. Our leader wishes to speak with..." She pauses and sizes up the group "three. She wishes to speak with three of you."

[Nobody7713]

"That's an interesting choice of number. Divide us in half, so that you can ambush us one half at a time with the other half being none the wiser until it's too late," Quin points out, frowning.

[Shinigami02]

The woman takes a step back, raising her hands in an attempted placating gesture. "I swear, no trickery, just orders," She says, casting a glance to her two companions. "We've had bad run-ins with surface folk already, our leader just wants to take some precautions. And it's a bit cramped as is."

After a quick discussion among the group Seski, Sherifa, and Digsby (with Skovik on his shoulder as normal) volunteer to go meet with the leader. The woman leads the volunteers to a tunnel on the far end of the cavern, as the two still-armed men warily watch Yakaika and Quindarion.

The woman leads the away team into, as promised, a very small and cramped cavern. The floor of the cavern is littered with bits of junk and scrap metal, seemingly spilled over from what seems to be a precariously-built heap of a hut in the northwestern corner of the cavern. The woman taps three times on the most sturdy part of the hut then steps back.

"Luepel, is that you with our guests?" An elderly voice reverberates out of the hut. "Definitely not what I was expecting," The voice sounds again, this time suddenly directly in front of the three, as a humanoid shape almost seems to materialize out of the shadows and mottle background of the junkyard. The leader of these people, seemingly an older woman, looks the trio over. "I take it you're seeking what lies in the chambers beyond the metal wall, like the others that came this way?" She asks, leaning against the cavern wall and staring down the group.

[leonathemoth]

Sherifa shrugs a little. "I...I guess? I m-mean we're looking f-for the others" The shy gnoll stutters out.

[Shinigami02]

The elder nods once. "Other groups have come through, passing our caves and continuing further on. Of course, we are supposed to prevent surface-dwellers from doing so, but..." She pauses, seemingly studying a bit of dirt under a nail. "I could offer you safe passage through the caves, and maybe even provide some information... if you'll do something for me and mine. I'll even throw in a... trinket we found beyond the Metal Wall. I'm sure it'll prove useful to you," She says.

[Ferret]

"What sorta trinket?" Digsby asks, eyeing the old woman suspiciously.

[Shinigami02]

"One of the wonders of the ancients, they're not so unusual in this region of the surface, are they? It's amazing how much power they could pack into a small item, and all seemingly with only a minimum of magic," She says, giving the dwarf a knowing look.

[Ferret]

Digsby pauses for a second, then nods slowly. "Well then, Ah guess it'll all depend on what yar askin' us to do."

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