The response sounds, thankful yes, but not affirmative to your ears. The woman mimes first to the now freed warrior, then to his feet and at last down the tunnel to the west. He will not be coming with you.
That's fair, but also surprising. I get him not wanting to join us, but traveling down here alone and blind seems hazardous. Especially if he's not planning on claiming more than the hammer he has in his hand.
If he knows the are that well is there any chance we could trade him an escort for as far as our mutual path goes for a map*? It's not like we have somewhere specific to be.
* On that note, would the grey dwarves have one of those? A compass is only so useful without some additional references.
"Right, time to clear this out and get it back home, leave the trash where it belongs," Vex's proclamation has the gift to awake you from ruminating like a
grick with a tasty morsel.
Hope these assholes get a dope slap for this. If the strange magic man isn't obviously doing hurting anyone then kicking him out is a serious loss.
The healing alone could be life or death in the field, or simply when times get lean and otherwise survivable injuries can spiral out of control.
Honestly in that regard I'm surprised that the elders in the tribe haven't acted on this issue yet. No one seemed surprised Kori could do it, just dismissive and distrustful. However distasteful you find someone, useful is still useful.
Akorian has the Create Water cantrip, so the sponges aren't necessary.
For armor, I think we should get the Drow suit. It's expensive and recognizable, but good quality and we can wear a robe over it to hide its appearance. It's also portable wealth that can be easily carried.
That's a fair point*, and also indirectly addresses how we can support ourselves at a minimal level while traveling.
Probably your intent from the beginning, but I didn't really give a second thought to mending past the convenience of fixing our stuff in the boonies.
Most of our wealth will probably come from adventuring and trading, but being able to fix any arbitrary non-magical item by throwing d4s at it till it's repaired is hilariously useful in as low power an area as we're currently operating.
That's easy money, and more importantly an in with suspicious settlements that haven't seen us before.
Once we're in town we can negotiate for higher paying work from the locals.
Good job on that.
* Might still be worth taking though, since they're very light for their value and probably sell well in most places.
——
On a medium term planning note, it seems like Cob will probably actually have to be our first contact guy for a bit. Grey eyes has an amazing ability that will be really useful going forwards, but the fact that she's incapable of speaking in anything but the birth tongue of her conversation partners is a problem given how secret languages seem decently common down here.
We can't diplo, and we need someone to get us in the door without being stabbed, so he's pretty much the only option.
Given that, maybe we could try starting with goblins? He'd be better at that task, and goblin tribes would benefit more from a magic handyman than many other settlements in most cases. Once we build up some resources we could kit out something that looks more respectable for a traveling tinker. Maybe get a trade caravan going patterned after Roland's setup.