Bay 12 Games Forum

Willis: Tsunami!

THAT gets a response.  The wave of water seems to destroy the darkness, battering it out of existence and opening huge rents in the area ahead and behind.  For a bit, it's like the darkness no longer exists.. being replaced by ordinary illumination of light and shadow.  You can see the mica studded walls go wide.. this is a bit of a cave, and there are wide passages in several directions.  Through one, you can see water in motion.  Not a great torrent, but a narrow trickle, like a spring.  Another goes upwards, twisting and turning out of sight quickly, and high enough for passage while standing.  Inside a third you can see tall red columns, cracked and separate from each other.  In none of these directions can you see the odd darkness; Willis banished it good.

..Behind you, however, you can see a little of it in the distance.  Willis did focus his spell forward, after all.

Willis uses Rapid Fire!

Sessha uses Flurry of Darts!

That's a lot of projectiles into nowhere.  No response is heard.. you are firing small things into space where you don't know the targets, and, unlike the mist, just attacking anywhere doesn't seem to work.

Any more ideas?

Press on? / Retreat?

"Hey, Sessha, can I come on your next murder mission?"

"What?  No!"

It's her alright.

Exploring the darkness.. well, it makes things press.  You end up roping yourselves together, in case the blackness presses in, and walk only a short distance apart.  The blackness does press in and surround you, but it doesn't touch you.. although it still dances, moving at the edges of the light, pulsing.. and otherwise resembling a living thing.  A living thing, which, according to the scan crystal, it is not.

The chasm eventually grows narrower.  There's still enough room to walk comfortably, but both walls can be touched without extending ones arms.  A few minutes later, a grumbling sound starts, and everyone's hands go to their weapons.

Then a rock falls down, and smacks into Sessha, hitting her for 19 damage!  It just came out of nowhere.

Let's use a scan crystal on the strange darkness and see if that gives us any info as to what's happening with it.

Nothing!  Unlike the mist, the dancing darkness doesn't seem to be a proper monster, so to speak.

Gained 8x Garnets

For the next three days the fissure party rests.

Everyone recovers 1, 2, and 2 HP.

Trence is at 66/100 max HP, Willis is at 45/77 max HP, and Sessha is at 151/184.

Days passed, 7.

On the seventh day, when you go back to the drop zone to pick up the food, the darkness stands out to you.

..It's closer.  It's lapping at the edges of the base camp, and you don't feel confident about going to the southernmost glowstone torches.

Crikey

"Nature.  Dorren's elemental armour spells don't cover Nature.. and nothing down here should resist that, either."

Sounds good to you.

You go with the minimum, with them just dropping down food, climbing gear, and the nature arrows.  It takes a good walk down the main hallway to find the stuff, but they're wrapped in padded packages and attached to parachutes.  Neat!  There's a lot of silk fabric, too, enough that you wonder if the robots have some way of making the stuff.

Willis gained Nature Arrows!

Exploring upwards is difficult work.  You need to put pitons into the wall, driving them in with hammers, and sending ropes around them.  The web shooters do help some, but it's still a slow process.  Eventually, after a solid day of work, you manage to get up the sixty feet until the slab chimney widens out again, the smooth slabs becoming covered in a pebbled surface.  There's a few hundred sqare feet of pebbled granite, with a low ceiling, ending in a pit, with the far wall another fifty feet away, and the bottom ending in more slabs.  Above, you can't see all the way up, but it goes as far as the glowstones can easily light.

Once Sessha gets up, she identifies the pebbled surface as being full of garnets.  Cheap gemstones, but still gemstones.

Max HP recovers by one point.

Days passed, 3.

Sounds good!  The shifts are Trence, then Sessha, and then Willis, to reduce the odds of both kids being up at the same time.

...wait, is that why Sessha always arranges the watches this way?  Curses.  At least the alcove camp is much more comfortable and less scary than the Base Camp was.

After a night, all characters regain one of their damaged hitpoints.  Trence is at 60/100 Max HP, Willis is at 39/77, and Sessha is at 146/184.

You think that properly resting for a day will recover more hitpoints.  Also, a Restoration potion will probably restore more max HP, but you don't have any.

Here's what you have left in inventory.. as well as what ended up up top.  You can have those items dropped down for you, at some risk of losing the items.


In addition, the robots are willing to supply you with more stuff, dropped the same way, into the narrow section you initially fell into.  There will be some risk of the items getting stuck or going missing somewhere above you.  Cheap stuff will be free, but particularly expensive or unusual items.. well, the robots will expect some compensation once you're back up.  You're high level adventurers, they know you can afford it.

Free stuff:

Climbing gear.
Food.
Camping Gear.
More glowstones.
Basic potions.
Another Willis-related elemental arrow.
Basic [+1] power all-elemental weapons.  (In case of more mist)

Feel free to suggest any more items you'd like them to supply you with.  The robots can probably come up with it, but there will be some risk of it not arriving down here, and if it's valuable they'll probably want it back or want money for it.

Also..

Do you just rest as much as you can, or do you want to try futher explorations of the Fissure Maze?  You have not tried to penetrate the strange, dancing darkness or go up or down the Slab Chimney.

Sessha uses Trick Shot!

This works!  Doing so causes the knife to shatter the crystal into tens of thousands of pieces.  You'll never pick up all the pieces, however..

Pick up as many as you can?

Pick up enough for four or five items worth?

Pick up enough crystal to count as just one item?