Cauldron Bubble
The Season of Still Stone
"Can we trade? Our spider for any useful local knowledge you can share? We are unfamiliar with the area."
The warrior tips his head to the side, his neckless of teeth and bone clinking against one another as he seems to consider not just your words, but your manner as well as the way Mina and Cob seems to draw closer to you at these words. "Trade good," he proclaims, seating himself on a wide flat stone. "Come from Cauldron? You go to Cauldron to trade?"
So it is that you are regaled to the sight of the two spiders being butchered with impressive swiftness and only mildly alarming cracks and squelches as the warrior, Gorok Farstrider, explains what he knows of the cave and its environs. It seems you have inadvertently stumbled into the local hunting grounds that the mongrelmen of Cauldron use to harvest both mature spiders for their chitin and meat along with their webs and eggs. "Eggs make good whelp-food, helps them grow strong and healthy, but they are dangerous to get so there are always contracts to get more of them for the larder..." he emphasizes the point by cutting open the thorax of the female spider and scooping out a double handful of eggs that he places in a wedge of chitin he had ripped off the back of the male.
After he has harvested all the eggs he covers them with another chitin piece which he laces up with braided spider silk that he had passed through crudely made holes on the sides to create a kind of covered pot of spider eggs, which he further seals in with a combination of cave dirt and spider guts heated over a quick fire to make a crude kind of glue.
Mina looks faintly ill when Gorok adds a strategically placed spit or two into the pot to make it gel, but really that just seems all the more impressive to you. Use everything you've got.
"What's Cauldron like? Big pot?" Cob asks, adding with sudden suspicion. "They no
eat visitors in big pot?" From his manner you guess that was a problem he's had to deal with before.
Cauldron, you learn is a large, mongrelmen settlement built along the shores of a small thermal lake whose bounty of shell-fish, salamanders, and bone-reeds feeds a large population. As many as fifty families, almost three hundred humanoids in all. Apart from the lake the other major trading good of Cauldron are the alchemical concoctions of its shamans whose reagents are harvested from the local spiders, like the fangs Gorok crushes and adds to one of his many pockets, and the
vegepigmy tribes of the nearby Midnight Jungle.
"Good-for-you that you didn't stumble into them, smarter than the spiders, more of 'em," the lizardfolk proclaims. "Hunt you with
thorn-dogs."
Admittedly you
could have done without the detailed description of how packs of thorn dogs go after unprepared travelers down the narrow tunnels, boxing them in until the final rush when they tear at the soft flesh of the face and neck, but it is clear Gorok is a practical treasure trove of information about the caves 'south of the Long Road and east of the Chimneys'. That description of his leads to a question of just what these Chimneys are.
Apparently there's an old xulgath mining town west of here, its airways breaching the surface. Not that many folks would know for sure on account of the fact that it still breathes the noxious fumes of its long dead makers, forging some of the best steel in the region under the watchful eye of the 'the Brass Salamander.'
"Salamander, like..." you pluck one of the lizards out of the nearby webbing, the withered husk still showing the feathery gills just under the head.
"No," Gorok shakes his head. "Clockwork construct, made to be half-xulgath half-climbing beast. Make fine steel. Not as fine as dwarf, but good for blades. That is where I bring eggs to Cauldron to get more supplies."
"Why?" It sounds intriguing, granted, but there are a lot of intriguing places in the deep caves of the world. It doesn't mean you have to poke all of them.
"Get steel knife from trading hides once, use until it breaks, no more steel knife. I bring secret of steel to tribe, make knives for many,
many generations." He pauses a moment, as though he had not been asked to articulate the idea in full before. "Brass Salamanders make things, make steel because they were made to do so. They not know how to keep secret like living smith."
Clever... assuming he does not get killed off by ancient malfunctioning xulgath constructs at least. You turn to the others. "I think we could accompany Gorok on the way back to town at least."
Mina nods and Cob bounces in a vaguely approving way, and so you are off.
On the way to Cauldron which of your companions do you want to find out more about?
[] Cob (Goblin Rogue)
[] Mina (Human Witch)
[] Gorok (Lizardman Ranger)
OOC: This is also your chance to help make the character sheets if you have any specific ideas, though it is not necessary. I can do them all myself if you are not feeling inspired or just want to be surprised. 
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