Tomb of the Serpent Lords: A DnD 5e Campaign Journal

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Tomb of the Serpent Lords
A D&D 5e Campaign Journal​

Legends speak of Khemet, land of the black soil. Khemet, whose kingdom was old when the earth was young. Khemet of the fertile valleys and rivers! Legends speak of Khemet. Of its vast wealth, of its powerful magics, of its glorious dynasties!

Legends only speak of these things. For Khemet is an old land, long past its prime. Its great dynasties have long been swallowed by the black sands. Its glories are faded by the passage of time. Its vast territory has been conquered, its great wealth plundered, its magics stolen. Now Khemet exists only as a curiosity. A quaint reminder of the past.

But legend still speaks, and not all that was lost has been stolen. Many tombs yet lie undiscovered beneath the sands, their vast wealth ripe for the taking.

If a tomb can be found. If the would-be grave robber can survive its traps. If they can navigate its depths. If they can avoid the avarice of adventures and the greed of nations. If and if and if again. Always if.

And yet…

The reward is so great. Wealth beyond imagining. Power beyond compare. Men have died, and killed for less.

And people speak of Khemet. Not just of old legends, but of new ones. Of lost tombs rediscovered. Of fortunes made and lost. Of wishes made real.

It is to this land you make your way, seeking fame or fortune or what-have-you. For a new tomb has been discovered and you wish to make your names plundering it.

You and every other would-be adventurer, mercenary, and patriot.

Introduction
Welcome to Tomb of the Serpent Lords, a D&D campaign journal run by me (the DM) with Walker and Aleph as the PCs. This campaign log will take players through a megadungeon I am currently making and which will hopefully take the players from levels 3-17 (or 20 if they get all the side content).

Originally started as a Demo to help me get a feel for how the dungeon was coming along, the three of us had enough fun that it has become an onoging campaign played once a week (and with me frantically building the dungeon just a bit faster than the players go through it).

The story will be told through a series of in-universe writings by these characters (and written IRL by their players) as they explore the tomb, as well as the occasional informational post (such as what merchants have what for sale, what the campaign setting is, etc).

 

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Prelude
(Read to the players at the start of the campaign to set the tone)

You have traveled far to get here, following rumours and hearsay and a river that didn't exist as little as a week ago. Or so the locals tell you. An earthquake had shifted the course of a minor river flooding, the once barren desert and washing away the sand. Revealing one of the fabled tombs of the Priest Kings which once ruled this land.

You can barely see it from where you stand - just a glint of reflected sunlight to mark the tower of crystal and iron which rises above the water. But you can see the tents. Rumours of treasure has drawn adventurers and where adventurers go, merchants follow. Already a small tent city has begun to crowd the riverbanks as merchants compete to sell rope and nails and food and candles for exorbitant prices. Give it a month - assuming the tomb is as lucrative as the rest - and you'll see an entire city here.

Which means you'd better get started if you want to make some profit of your own.

 

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Angèle Bright (Aasimar Monk - Way of the Astral Self) [Aleph]
Angèle (or more commonly "Ange") is a slender, fair-skinned (though lightly tanned) girl of about 5'4" who looks human at first glance. Closer inspection reveals the golden-brown, pupiless eyes and the unusually reflective golden freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose and cheekbones, down her arms and over her upper chest. Not to mention the small golden feathers that grow naturally from her honey-blonde hair, or the way both freckles and feathers glow faintly in low light with a muted warm radiance.

Recently turned nineteen years old, Ange wears goldenrod yellow monk vestments over loose white linen pants and shirt, with sturdy, close-fitting brown (steel toe-capped) leather boots and bracers, giving her the overall air of a small walking beam of sunshine. She keeps her hair braided back down to her shoulder blades and has an assortment of piercings: a silver feather ear cuff on her right ear, a golden snake on her right, yellow topaz studs and golden barbells across the bridge of her nose, through her tongue and at her navel. A small necklace with miniature silver feather, golden angel and silver scroll-and-quill charms marks her as a casual but earnest worshipper of Akadi, the foreign sun goddess Sarenrae and Oghma/Deneir respectively.

• Sarenrae, the Everlight; foreign sun goddess of light, redemption, honesty and healing.
• Akadi, the Queen of Air; primordial goddess of elemental air, speed and flying creatures.
• Oghma, Lord of Knowledge; greater god of the creative spark; inspiration, invention, knowledge and thought.
• Deneir, the First Scribe; lesser god of recorded knowledge; art, cartography, glyphs, images, literature and scholars.

Ange fights with a bronze spear, wings of radiant ki and her bare fists, although she does have a holster of bronze throwing darts on each thigh.

---

Eidele Aquibel (Tiefling Rogue - Scout) [Aleph]
Eidele is a tiefling with smooth, dark red skin who stands about 5'5" on strong legs with a wiry, compact build. Her blue-black hair is cropped short and messy under backward-curving horns that hug her scalp, and her eyes are amber with horizontal pupils like those of a goat. When she bares her teeth, her canines are visibly elongated, and her spade-tipped tail has tiny ridged scales down its length, though her feet are human, not hoofed.

Approaching twenty (with about six months on her girlfriend), Eidele dresses surprisingly well, with a fine navy-blue coat belted at the waist over studded leather armour, an emerald green silk shirt underneath and a black silk scarf around her neck. Her breeches are calfskin, professionally modified for her tail to fit through with a scabbard on each hip, and her boots are custom fitted.

Eidele initially fought with paired knives that she has since swapped out for a Valoisienne rapier, as well as a light crossbow she keeps slung on one side of her pack when not in use, with her bolt quiver opposite it.

---

Necria Starwatcher (Winged Tiefling Cleric - Twilight Domain) [Mournival]
Necria Starwatcher inherited her surname from one of the nuns at the hermitage where she was raised, the stars being sufficiently celestial for a devotee of Selune without the hubris of a lunar name. She normally stands around 5'6" but her atypically massive wings, scaly skin stretched between thick, ossified spurs of bone, lend her a sense of gravitas that the twenty-two year-old usually lacks.

Coppery skin, bronze eyes, and dark hair contrast with the greys and silvers she usually prefers to wear, but in these violent times she travels clad in armour more often than not, a single earring on her left ear. The holy symbol of her goddess lies prominent around her neck, a heavy weight that nonetheless brings comfort in times of doubt. A fine silvery lunar tattoo on her brow matches it, but is subtle enough to be easily missed.

In combat, she takes advantage of her flight to position herself beyond the reach of her enemies and punish them with radiant flame or necrotic resonance, although she carries a shield and sword when needed.

---

Darvin (Half Elven Fighter - Battlemaster) [Mournival]
Darvin's previous employment as a lieutenant of the City Guard ended abruptly after an astonishingly violent series of murders, proving that revenge does not in fact solve all problems. He has not learned his lesson. Surprisingly aged for a half-elf, Darvin shows a distinct weathering from his original career as a mercenary, with a number of scars that make it difficult for him to move as freely as he once did. Nonetheless, his strength still remains, and his brutal cunning makes him an asset to any party.

He stands around 5'9" and boasts an impressive array of scarring, a striking contrast against his sun-burnt skin. The earring on his left ear likewise catches the eye. Dark eyes and lighter hair suit his surprisingly gaudy clothes, with a particular fondness for blues and greens that extends even to the cloth and paint on his armour, except for the red blade on his shield.

In combat, he is the front of the line, holding the enemy in place for his colleagues to tear them apart, and he calls commands to that effect even as he carves or crushes his foes.

---

Lisbeth Betschart (High Elf Wizard - Order of Scribes) [Estro]
Lisbeth Betschart is a recent graduate from a prestigious Anglian university, having acquired her knowledge of wizardry, history, and the natural sciences over the course of a decade of higher education. In the years since then, her luck at finding employment ran close to dry, proving that talent is no substitute for connections in a country where money is everything.

Now in her early thirties, she dresses in loosely fitting and hard-worn Anglian travellers clothes, her thick black hair chopped short and firmly stuck under a wide-brimmed hat. Extremely tall, at around 6'2'' if she would ever straighten fully up, she is also equally thin and pale in an exaggeration of the high-elf ideal, the points of her ears well reddened from where they extend from under her hat. Her skin, especially around her forearms and face, are marked by arcane formulæ and calculations drawn on in ink, and redrawn as often as they are smudged.

In combat, her perpetually twitchy manner and demeanour is subsumed by her endlessly practiced spellcasting motions, as she throws an ever broadening array of spells designed to obstruct, disrupt, and finally hurt her opponents.
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Contains Spoilers Up To The Current Threadmark

Merchants

Helen Rohesia: Anglian historian. Kindly Grandma energy. Human. Works for an Anglian university as a historian, part of an informal expedition. Not interested in weapons, is interested in historical relics and artefacts of non-monetary provenance. Very sweet. Gives out baked goods and heart candies. Specific area of study is ancient Khemetian diet, nutrition, culinary techniques, farming methods, etc. Doesn't pay as well but if you tell her about the dungeon she asks really insightful questions which let you remember stuff better (second knowledge roll of your choice).

Hammer: A Dwarf. Was part of the Alegmagne army and was sent into this tomb to investigate. Rest of his unit died and he deserted, deciding that he could make more money selling to adventurers then he ever could in the army. When asked about his past lies shamelessly and poorly. Has a selection of random magic weapons and armor he sells at a 20% discount. Selection changes daily.

Peter Godfrey: Anglian halfling, exotic animal merchant. Bought snakes.

Alfhild : massive mountain of a female goliath from a country up near the mountains claimed by Reuteia after it collapsed in the war. Strong interest in botany due to lack of good farmland and desire for better techniques. Didn't tell the party about any of this, but matched recovered plants to fossil imprints. Let's players re-roll nature checks.

Adventurers

Krogen Battlehammer - dwarven necromancer, travels with a pack of skeletons, probably killed Jason, likely to try to kill us since we beat him up and threatened him.

Jason Funderberker - nasal-voiced Anglian newbie adventurer, got killed by skeletons, had a letter promising a 300gp reward if his body was returned to temple where he'd prepaid his resurrection fee. Rich - 300gp was his allowance.

George Thunderworker - enormous Anglian veteran fighter with a battleaxe, loud, macho & cheerful, congratulated his son on first death. Rich.

Lael Brighteyes - half-elf adventurer killed in tomb. Pre-paid resurrection fee but did not promise reward for return. Also forgot to specify which temple.

Unknown adventurers - Valoisienne elven wizardess & human rapier & shield fighter. Saw through Eidele's lies about having cleared the area already, continued along the left branch of Sweetheart's Lake.

Colette's Company - Party of five Valoisienne adventurers, encountered mid-combat against a lizardman champion and pack of frogs. Offered to porter several unweighty items back to the surface and offer us their full sale value as compensation for the save.[/h2][/h2][/h2][/h2]

 

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The Continent and the Great War

The history of the Continent can be divided into two eras. Before the war, and after.

Before the war, the continent was a place of many nations, dominated by 4. These nations lived together in (relative) peace, each great power holding the other in check and allowing life, music and art to flourish. It was a golden age when nations competed not through force of arms but through force of culture, each attempting to outdo the other with their great achievements.

Then war broke out. Religious tensions, a web of alliances and real politik dragged the continent into a devastating war. Magic and technology of unprecedented might were brought to bear by all sides. The land was ravaged. People were killed. Whole towns and cities depopulated. In the end, not a single nation achieved their objectives, and their paltry gains failed to offset their massive losses.

Tired, out of resources and trapped in a stalemate that seemed it would never end, the great powers (now 5) agreed to end the war. Nominally, the Treaty of the Center ended the war and brought peace to the continent. In actuality, it is merely a ceasefire. Even now the great nations race to rebuild their armies and improve their technology as they prepare for the next round of conflict.

Nations

Alemagne is a new country, founded by the orcish mercenaries formerly employed by Valois during the war. Employed in the Karnesh mountain regions, these mercenaries broke contract and claimed the land they were fighting on for themselves. All of the great nations lost land to it as it claimed the mountains at their common centre, and none of them were happy to lose it, but the resources to take it back were depleted by almost a decade of campaigning, and so for now it continues to exist. Young, hungry and the least emotionally scarred by the war, Alemagne has been throwing its weight around in the recent years of peace. The core Alemagnean population is orcish, but they're rapidly gaining goblins, tieflings and other stereotypically "evil" races through immigration away from persecution, as well as refugees from all over who are willing to take a risk on starting a new life, as it offers a generous immigration policy to attract people to farm its new land and join its armies.

Anglia is a loosely bound confederacy of island-based city states and their coastal colonies dominated by semi-formal merchant houses. Public offices within Anglia are elected positions, and the competition for such things is fierce. The various merchant houses spend lavishly as they seek to gain such offices. Recently, this competition has taken on a more martial bent as the minds of the citizenry turn to war. Money that was once spent on artists now goes to adventurers and expeditions which bring "discovered" (looted) cultural artefacts home bearing lost magics. Would-be officials no longer seek to impress how rich they will make their constituents, but how secure. As a side effect of how many governmental duties are off-loaded onto the civilian sector, Anglia has a notably two faced approach to diplomacy. When a country complains "one of your merchant fleets just stole all our diamonds" Anglia simply shrugs. They can hardly be held accountable for the actions of individual citizens after all. When that same country imprisons Anglian citizens for trying to steal all their diamonds Anglia is quick to throw their weight around because "how dare you imprison Anglian citizens!" The Anglian population is majority human, but halflings occupy most of the higher places in governments and merchant-houses; an artefact of the country's founding as it was originally a halfling nation until about 400 years ago when they welcomed a sizable human diaspora into the country. Those humans integrated easily into the existing culture and several were even adopted into existing merchant families (or founded their own). Halfing dominance is slowly changing as successful human entrepreneurs lobby for the removal or alteration of tax laws that disproportionately benefit halfling-run businesses.

Lidha is a country split down the middle by the Great Li, a river system that counts much of the east Karnesh mountains, most of Lidha and extensive slices of Valois and Reutiea as its water basin. The incredibly abundant farmland has birthed an extensive bureaucracy under the throne to manage the state-governed schedules of planting and harvests - a bureaucracy so expansive that the throne, while venerated, is a largely ceremonial position with little power to enact serious change. Its cropland made Lidha rich, and in time it gained marriage ties to the Tesarite throne, though these cross-species unions rarely produced offspring. The Lidhan population is "half-elven"; not entirely half-elf, but a mix of human, elf and half-elf with a substantial halfling diaspora on its eastern coasts. Over the past century or two, humans and half-elves have come to substantially outnumber the pure elves.

Lidha faired poorly during the war, losing large portions of its territory to its northern and southern neighbours. It also failed to capture any coastal territory.

Reuteia is a theocracy ruled by the High Priests' Conclave in Ruttgard. It is a deeply religious country governed by the temples and driven by the economic guilds who pay tithes for their trade monopolies. The events of the war turned the Reutish army - formerly known to be based around heavily armoured mounted cataphracts - towards increasingly heavy use of black powder explosives, advanced siege equipment such as early cannons and rare but devastating magical war vehicles - a direction that has seen the Artificer's Guild gain increasing power, backed by the Temple of Gond. The core Reutish population is human, but they have a large halfling and gnomish minority in their eastern coastal regions and an equally prominent dwarvish population to their west around the border with Tesar.

Salcurne is a small, mountainous country just north of Valois and Tesar that's locked between mountain ranges to the south and sub-arctic ocean to the north. Fiercely isolationist and reluctant to involve itself in the affairs of the continent, it didn't really get involved in the war due to being functionally almost impossible to invade - something that paid off in the lack of economic damage it suffered, but which has left it lacking any firm alliances on a shifting board that is gearing up for Round Two. Known for their clockwork and their archers, Salcurne's military is small, but can basically fill an entire mountain pass with flying pointy things from obnoxious range. They have very, very good crossbow technology, including repeater crossbows, as well as some of the more advanced firearms on the continent. The Salcurnite population is mostly human and half-elf, with a small number of pure elves and an aarakocra minority who are rarely seen outside the mountains.

Tesar was founded by an Ancient Gold Dragon who is in theory still slumbering somewhere in the central mountain range. In practice, there have been no confirmed sightings in over three hundred years, and the royal line's claims of biennial pilgrimage to their great ancestor's resting place are seen with scepticism by some. Nonetheless, dragonborn of various colours still occupy the imperial throne and much of the hereditary noble castes in a caste system rules by the gold dragons. Below them, a mixed dwarvish and human population dominates the rugged, inhospitable country, clustered around the northwest coast, the fertile northeastern farmland and the Reutish border to the south, with the centre of the country sparsely populated and largely a mix of temperate desert and steppe. The country is mineral rich, and its extensive mines supply much of its wealth.

Valois is an elvish kingdom with a high fantasy/chivalric romance vibe. Their military consists primarily of wizards and magic-knights supplemented by mercenaries to bulk out the army. When the Alemagnean mercenaries broke contract to form their own nation, Valois was forced to increase its use of summoning, previously only used as shock troops, to shore up their armies. A growing faction within the country advocates for the use of necromancy instead, as the undead are cheaper and easier to create than summons or constructs. Several notable successes during the end of the war have given this faction prominence, but it is meeting considerable entrenched opposition. Valoisienne culture is dominated by elves, with eladrin enclaves towards the northeast and a human commoner population who have little influence on politics.

 

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Religions

The Faerûnian Orthodoxy worships the gods of Faerû, and holds as doctrine that one should pay primary homage to the god or gods most relevant to one's life and career and worship the others as a combined pantheon. Direct prayers from outside a god's domain - a lifelong resident of a single village worshipping Shaundakul, for instance - is offensive to the god whose domain has been trespassed on by one who has no right to it. In equal measure, though, the Orthodoxy is strict about temple attendance and proper veneration taking place only in consecrated temples or on official holy days, and requires worship of the combined pantheon. Severe shame attached to those who shirk their prayers or are lax in their piety.

The Reformist Faerûnian Church is a breakaway faction from the Orthodoxy that is some three hundred years old, although its more progressive attitude towards the worship of multiple gods dates back some way past that. The Reformist Church encourages a personal relationship with the gods that speak most to a worshipper's passions or ideals, and strives to extend worship out of the temples and into one's home and daily life, with house shrines and iconic jewellery being worn not just by recognised priests and clerics but by laymen and commoners. Worship is informal, but expected to pervade one's life, with day-to-day activities often incorporating aspects of the gods - cooking songs or work shanties are a common type of religious hymn.

The Golarian Caliphate is a foreign religion that gained a foothold in the west of Tesar some forty years ago and has been spreading rapidly through it. The pantheon of Golar does not directly oppose the Faerûnian gods, but differences in worship and culture have caused conflict between their mortal worshippers. Nonetheless, the religion is attractive to many, advocating regular worship and religious prohibitions and duties that its believers claim to promote a better, healthier and more fulfilling way of life.

 

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Heroes

General Rrath Karash is the Commander-in-Chief of the Alemagnian Army, an orcish battlemaster who led the original mercenary force under the elves and who personally steered Alemagne through the early war period after its formation. His strategic and tactical acumen and personal skill with a halberd are a major factor in why the young country survived the war at all, and while he's stepped down from administrative and political leadership to better focus on the army, he remains a major influence on the government and a high-level fighter who is not beyond Getting Personally Involved in border disputes. Much, much, much smarter than a lot of people think when they hear the word "orc", though he has pretty much conclusively lost the advantage of being underestimated at this point since everyone knows it.

Lord Arthur Heward is an Anglian human who's a biiiiiiig proponent of the "Unified States Militia" - essentially the idea that rather than the various states and merchant houses all sponsoring or maintaining individual military units who join up and mostly fight together in times of war, they should have a unified militia with regiments and divisions that are sponsored by states or extremely rich individuals like him in return for social recognition and generous tax breaks which are trained from the start to be a cohesive fighting force. His ideas have actually gained a fair bit of backing over the course of the war as the serious fighting with other nations has exposed flaws and friction between the various Anglian state forces, and he's pushing very hard for the newly emerging firearm technology to be made a mainstay of his New Model Army, the way he's done for his personally funded regiment (the 103rd "Flint-Fire Drakes"). A pistol-wielding Fighter, he may be more business than battlefield but he's killed several people who assumed he was just a rich fop of a noble throwing money around in honour duels.

Lidda Thorngage (or Laurel Thistletop, or Lavinia Tealeaf, or Luthra Turen, or...) may or may not exist. If you believe the rumours, she's an Albinese halfling whose record starts as one of the premier assassins of the modern day - either a rogue, a ranger, an Arcane Archer fighter or some multiclass thereof. The names change a lot, and many of the feats attributed her are just outright implausible, but it's certainly true that a number of quite well-protected and important people in various theatres who were causing problems for the Anglians wound up dead with an arrow in their left eye. The rumours are split on whether she has no loyalties and just works for hire or whether she's a classified asset officially attached to the Anglian Alliance of city-states. Although for some reason it is almost universally agreed that she is a female halfling who always uses "LT" names, despite descriptions of her diverging wildly.

Laelia Casia is a human Lidhan warlock pacted to some powerful celestial; nobody is sure what. Where a lot of others had reputations before the war, Laelia came out of nowhere after her husband was killed in the first year of the conflicts, fighting against invading armies, evacuating her people to safety, trying to call for an end to the fighting, avenging her husband's death and generally being heroic. She started as a peasant, but wound up with a huge following as the rigid Lidhan bureaucracy fractured and crumpled simply because she was doing something and a lot of actual people in charge kept dying. With the result that she's now a major force in Lidha's recovery but has no idea what to do or how to go about doing it. Known to have been cut down at least twice on the battlefield and survived; her wounds healing in a burst of radiant energy - whatever her patron is, it's invested in her survival.

Lucan Korfel was a half-elven Lidhan bard, the son of the elven Grand Secretary of Lidha - a role that had lasted through multiple generations of kings - who turned to the stage and was a well-known performer when war broke out. He changed his tune and became a firebrand who lambasted the rigid, stratified government for its inflexibility and rigid incompetence in defending their territory, playing his instrument and making speeches for defence of their lands, for peace, for inspiration, for unity against invasion and oppression. He served as a celebrated morale boost and rallying point for his people and achieved remarkable success as such, as well as discovering a remarkable strategic mind that had been languishing unused. Tragically, he was assassinated in the closing years of the war - a crippling blow to Lidha's morale, and something that along with the damage their bureaucratic infrastructure took is hindering their efforts to rebuild and recover. Nonetheless, he may achieve even more as a martyr to his people than he did when he was alive.

Duretta, High Priestess of Silvanus is an absolutely fucking terrifying arch-conservative Reutish tiefling druid. Claims the entire Black Forest along a major transit route for the god of the wilderness; actual literal legions marched in there during the war and never came out. Very, very, very Orthodox, worships Silvanus with absolute dedication and pays precise, careful respects to the rest of the pantheon as a whole because she's so druidic that prayers from her to any other specific god would offend them. Mostly stayed in the Black Forest before the war, but since it started she's been travelling and preaching a lot more. Has a frightening number of very big, very scary monster companions and familiars, the most famous of which is a literal no-shit owlbear she has somehow tamed (or, well, gotten to like her; it still fucking murders anyone she sets it on).

Karll Munggen is a Reutish gnome artificer who is one of the more progressive voices in Reutish culture and who is also a biiiiig name in the development of early musket and firearms technology. Somewhat friendly trade links to Anglia that he's using to fund and develop his inventions. Also leant a lot of explosives & vehicle technology to Reuteia's war efforts. Despite his progressive views, he's actually a mediating force with the conservatives due to his very public full dedication to Gond - he's trying to play peacemaker and smooth over religious schisms and keep the country together, he's just having trouble with it due to a) being a war profiteer with a weapons manufacturing business and b) honestly being more suited to inventing things in his workshop than talking to senior priest-politicians. But nobody else seems to be speaking about peace within Reuteia, and they all know there's another war on the horizon, so... he's stepping up.

Saint-Cavalier Seraphine Berengar, generally acknowledged as the paladin of her age, is a Salcurnite human sworn to the Golarian-Tesarite sun goddess Sarenrae, though she has close ties to the Valoisienne temple of Amaunator. She made her name twenty-odd years ago in a big quest to stop a cabal of thirteen fiends from escaping hell and corrupting various holy sites across the continent, had barely finished that when the war kicked off, and has not appreciably slowed down since. Epitomising "Good but not Soft" and with an extremely intense personality that has no time or patience whatsoever for "necessary evils" or "weakness of character leading one to do bad deeds", she took part in the war mostly on Valois's side but also stood out of or even against some of the fighting on moral grounds - her part was mostly "defending Valoisienne territory" rather than "assaulting other countries". Currently thought to be in Lidha making reparations and putting down evil.

Seraphine quested with a party that includes a human cleric of Amauntor (Father Hugo Ambroys), a female gnome bard (Ella Shadowcloak) and a male elven wizard (Immeral Ariessus), all of whom are also pretty big names, though Ambroys was getting on a bit during their big quest and Officially Retired prior to the war, while Ariessus is now much more politically active and doesn't go adventuring as much, so only Ella still travels with her.

Baern and Beloril Balderk are dwarven brothers from Tesar; a barbarian and a draconic sorcerer respectively. Formidable in battle, especially because they're rarely seen apart. The Battle of Karasta, where they went head-to-head against orcish shock troops and Valoisienne constructs led by Rrath Karash, is famous for the sheer devastation left afterwards - Baern vs Rrath is said to have been a fight that shook the mountains. (The dwarves won the day, with the orcs retreating and partially routing after losing too many of their Valoisienne constructs to Beloril). Rumour has it that Baern was severely injured in one of the last battles of the war, with conditions anywhere from "lost a couple of limbs and an eye" to "lying comatose somewhere deep in a mountain fortress, uncertain of ever waking up" to "outright dead and not rezzing for some reason".)

Nala Mystan is a dragonborn member of the high Tesarite nobility, a second cousin of the Mohradyllion royal family. A Tempest Cleric of Talos, she brought storms and lightning to bear against Tesar's enemies, wading personally into Lidha to take the fight to Valoisienne and Reutish invaders and getting briefly trapped there when Alemagne took over the mountains between her and her home. She's been distracted since the war by increasing strife with the Golarian Caliphate's proselytising in the west of Tesar, but her feats during the war gained her many followers, and she's not shy about instructing them. When the peace breaks, Tesar will have far more stormcallers and tempest priests ready to fight for its honour.

Comte Galinndan Caerdonel. Elderly even by elven standards, he's a serious contestant for the title of Most Powerful Wizard On The Continent and a regular attendee of the Valoisienne court (where he has held a noble title for more than five hundred years). An archmage of the school of Conjuration, he's the Crown's chief advisor in the field of Valois's thriving magical research and development industry and essentially the major military manufacturer of the magical constructs, summoned elementals and bound monsters that Valois have fully switched over to using as shock troops and infantry now that they no longer have their orcs. While he's never actually set foot on a battlefield, he was nonetheless very influential in the war, and he is not at all happy about having to deal with people at home making ridiculous noises about replacing his constructs and elementals with fucking necromancy.

The Fist of Selûne is an enigmatic Valoisienne vigilante assumed to be an elf or eladrin who started to become known a year or two into the war. Originally operating on the Valoisienne coast, they have been sighted on the Tesarite border, in Lidha and even as far south as northern Reuteia. Dark-cloaked and silver moon-masked, they fight bare-handed in the Way of Mercy, gently putting down aggressors from all sides, healing the vulnerable, (sometimes even raising the recently dead) and never killing or crippling. Although popular as a folk hero, they're an irritant to militaries as they also make extensive use of infrastructural and material sabotage to hinder large forces, and have not stopped their operations in the wake of the armistice.
The Blade of Shar, who may or may not be the Fist's nemesis, is thought to be a human or human-adjacent female rogue, who began operating in public approximately six months after the end of the War, possibly in response to the activities of the Fist of Selûne. She began operating in Anglia, but has now graduated to working worldwide. Her primary weapons are a paired whip and blade, but she has been known to make use of poisons and ranged weapons, taking advantage of surprise to quickly and brutally murder her targets, often in public. She does not seem bound to a particular nation, however, accepting contracts on valuable individuals or items belonging to any nation, group, or faith other than her own – particularly those aligned with Selûne, or who have been saved by the intervention of her Fist. Her propensity for public assassinations of major figures, often those involved in preparing their nations for the next war to come, has drawn the ire of many, but her open willingness to work for coin or favors has made her too useful to remove – so far.

 

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Languages

Script​	Depiction​	Languages & Dialects
Common​	English​	Common, Halfing, Temple Reutish
Dwarvish​	Russian​	Dwarvish, Giant, Gnomish, Goblin, Orc, Primordial
Elvish​	Greek​	Elvish, Court Valoisienne, Sylvan, Undercommon
Infernal​	Korean​	Infernal, Abyssal
Celestial​	Trad. Chinese​	Celestial
Draconic​	Arabic​	Draconic, High Tesarite

 

[Aleph]

"The First Delve" - Letter to Teacher from Angèle Bright
(written 28-29 Kythorn 1608 in the Tomb of Serpents)

Dear Teacher,

Well! It looks like the rumours about Khemet and a new tomb being uncovered and stuff were true! Good thing we detoured, because I think this place is going to be good for us. It's only been a day and we've already made so much money! I'm nearly halfway to being able to afford-

... okay, I should back up and tell this properly.

So, we got out of Starhaven okay, without being arrested or anyone giving Eidele trouble for being a tiefling (or, uh, for any other reasons). I mean, I did have to punch a goat, but that wasn't related to us getting in trouble or Eidele selling potions again; it was my fault for trying to cut through his pasture (sorry Mr Goat!) Eidele booked us onto a riverboat heading downstream to this new place she'd heard about, and... whoo-ee! Tent town! It's really new here; the tomb only got uncovered recently (or dis-covered? It's still pretty covered up, so probably discovered) so everything's still being set up. Give it a season or two and there'll be some more permanent structures (and it'll probably expand into a full city), but right now the theme of the architecture is very much "lots of fabric absolutely everywhere and a few wooden structures that are starting to be put up".

Eidele says everything is horribly overpriced and that the merchants here are all price-gouging bastards taking advantage of the gold rush to make a killing off idiot prospectors with more money than sense. But that's Eidele for you. She's mostly just annoyed about how the ridiculous mark-ups are going to cut into our profits, I think. We have a nest-egg to save up, after all.

Anyway, Eidele found us a place to stay in one of the nicer complexes of lodging-tents; probably the second- or third-nicest inn that you don't have to pay absolutely eye-watering sums for, and then Amity and me had some girl time while Maegan and Eidele found us lodgings in a comfy two-bed private tent. We left Maegan and Amity (and most of our money) to settle in as we went off to investigate the tomb everyone's so excited about. It's really interesting! The river we came down apparently got diverted by the Mirriheim quake, and its new course has washed away a lot of the sand around here, flooding part of the desert and exposing this ancient Khemetian ruined tower of crystal and iron that's half broken-off at the top, sat out in the middle of the water. A lot of the water is actually pouring down into the tomb, which caused us some problems later on. But more on that when we get there.

First, new friends! Yeah, we were out by the riverbank, scoping out the tower and deciding on our approach, when we bumped into another two people doing the same thing! And get this! One of them has wings! She's this beautiful tiefling cleric with gorgeous wings - actual, physical wings! - sprouting from her back, and she can fly! Like, all the time, whenever she wants to! They're sort of bat-like, leathery skin stretched between extended digits, and the same copper as her skin, and really big, like, a lot bigger than mine, probably because they have to lift her mostly through lift and aspect ratio and stuff instead of mostly through ki or magic. Her name is Necria Starwatcher (ooo, I should ask if she's from Starhaven when I'm done writing this; the names sound like they might be connected), and she's got a nice half-elven mercenary in her employ called Darven. She seemed as stuck as we were on how to get across - she can fly, but I think she'd struggle to pick up Darven in all his plate armour and everything - so Eidele bartered for passage with one of the boats going back and forth and let them come with. Because, you know, clerics can heal people, and Darvin is a big strong fighter with plate armour who can stand between us and people with sharp things. Pretty good deal, all in all. Well, Necria and Darven were a good deal. The boat passage was ten gold just to row us over to the tower. What a rip-off! Tch.

Speaking as a tiefling, those wings are not normal. And she looked very disconcerted when Ange bounced up to her with her typical enthusiasm and started peppering her with questions. I'd guess she's had an even rougher time of it than we have. The mercenary is just a mercenary; he's in it for the pay. Makes for a perfectly adequate meatshield, though. And he's both enough of a distraction to draw fire from enemies and enough of a looming threat to intimidate compliance out of the recalcitrant. I've no problems with him being along for the ride, especially with the cleric paying his wages.

Once we got into the tomb, things got good. The route inside involves climbing up the iron-crystal tower and then rappelling down the inside, and it connects to the tomb through its sublevels. There are several levels, but the water has flooded much of the inside, so the only solid ground is the upper level of stone walkways and rooms above a flooded lower floor. I'm a little worried that the water might flood them, too, but the level doesn't seem to have risen appreciably over the course of a day, so I think we're safe in the short term.

The architecture here really is fascinating. Everything is made of stone and this strange black crystal - a lot of the rooms coming off the walkways don't seem to have doors, just shattered parts of the black crystal that've been smashed and left broken (probably by previous prospectors). The rooms are unnaturally precise in their geometry, built with perfectly straight walls and perfect right angles in each corner, not deviating at all. I borrowed Eidele's string to measure the first three rooms that were arranged in a row, and they were all exactly the same size, down to a hairpin-width. I wonder how they achieved such fine tolerances with such strange materials? It reminds me of the great Khemetian pyramids, but they're all solid stone, not this black crystal stuff. Is it obsidian? Some variant type of sand-glass? Ugh, I wish I had a mason with me. Though they might have no idea either; this place is old. If you know anything about it, give me a hint maybe? Pretty please?

Of particular note were a number of strange glowing crystal flowers growing from odd black metal vines in the walls. Eidele pulled them loose and pocketed them (we sold them later for, like, a hundred gold each!!!), and they stopped glowing. We found another in a room a little further on (after some noise traps that Eidele easily disarmed - that's my girl!) that was unlit but still attached to a metal-vine in the wall, with a metal bush thing (Eidele says it looked like a Joshua tree) beside it that was on fire - and I think somehow making the rest of this place so hot? There were all these lines of warm stone radiating out from it through the walls and floor. Eidele theorised that the crystal flowers were magical power sources that could produce light or heat, and she was right! When she pulled the flower loose, the fire went out, and when she pressed it back to the vine and let the tendrils reattach, the fire came back on! A bit sputtery, but we'll see if it heals like trees can with grafts.

Of course, then we came out of that room and ran into a dwarven sorcerer with a bunch of skeletons under his command. Eidele and I took down one of them (<3), and Darvin bum-rushed the sorcerer and made him cry uncle. His name was Krogen Battlehammer (just his name, apparently, he's not actually any good with hammers), and after Darvin scared him into confirming he hadn't found anything yet, we sent him off in a different direction - only to find a pack in the room across the hall that he'd come out of that held a letter from some poor dead adventurer called Jason Funderberker requesting revival if his body was found! Well, I charged after them, and although we had to give up a couple of the crystals Eidele had collected, we got the body back - it was the only skeleton wearing clothes, which I should've noticed at the time, dummy. We took him back to the temple where he had his resurrection costs already paid, and his papa - a huge veteran adventurer with giant muscles and a big axe called George Thunderworker (the adventurer, not the axe) - rewarded us with three hundred gold for rescuing his son. I wonder why the different names? Did his son just mispronounce it, or is there some kind of illegitimacy thing going on? Or adoption? Oh, or is it a deed-name? I'll ask next time I see them!

The boy is an annoying, nasal-voiced, incompetent idiot who died on his first day on the job because he was too busy admiring himself in a wall-length mirror to react to a bunch of skeletons walking up and stabbing him repeatedly through the chest. Though I'll note that probably means Battlehammer murdered him, instead of just stumbling across the corpse by happenstance and deciding to raise it as a minion. Something to bring up when I next see him; I can likely get quite a bit out of him in return for not revealing that titbit to the huge, dangerous-looking father.

Thunderworker's obviously a veteran, one of the jolly carousing warrior types who see death and revival as a milestone. Actually congratulated his son on his first death, if you can believe it. Still, both of them are well-inclined to us, and if I pitch the right sob story we might be able to call on Thunderworker for protection or a character statement, should it come to it. There's no way a warrior on his level didn't take part in the Great War five years back, and he might have a reputation we could use - though whether an Anglian's backing would help or hurt our image is an open question.

Okay, okay, enough Eidele-cynicism, this is a letter to Teacher! We spent the night out in town, I popped out to see Maegan and Amity while Eidele sold the crystal glowflowers we'd collected and Darvin and Necria put their money in the fancy local bank (that's apparently run by a dragon??? Gotta follow up on that, I just gotta.) Then I treated everyone to a nice meal to celebrate our newly-formed team, and we all went back to our respective lodgings to rest and catch Amity up on our day, which is where I'm writing this (Eidele and Amity are in bed).

Speaking of, they're calling me over. Gotta go!

---

Right, it's tomorrow! Uh, today. I wrote the stuff above yesterday evening, and now it's lunchtime; you get what I mean.

So, this morning, after getting back together (and dealing with a slight emergency in the tent before we could meet up with Necria and Darvin again; no biggie, all fixed, just some early-morning grouchiness from you-can-guess-who), we were back into it for another go! After all, there are other prospectors here! We can't just sit around waiting for them to get to all the good stuff! It was a lot darker around the entrance because of Eidele stealing all the light crystals (whoops), and a swarm of nasty-looking centipedes had emerged from the water onto the walkway at the bottom of the last abseil. Perhaps emerging because of the light being gone? I should've tried lighting up and seeing if it scared them off. Ah well.

Necria flew Eidele and I down and we all held the rope taut for Darven to zip-line down it. Nothing much had changed except for the gloom - fortunately, we can all see in the dark, haha! - but around the room Jason had died in, we encountered a little rat sat in the middle of the passage. Which talked! I soooooo badly wanted to ask it how it was talking, but Eidele stood on my foot and took over. It made up a bunch of baloney about a great and powerful Rat King it served that demanded tribute (in the form of food), and Eidele responded with a bigger bunch of baloney about a bigger Rat King up on the surface who would punish anyone who claimed his title falsely, and the rat seemed to buy that and went back into the room Jason died in, with the big wall mirrors and the little stalls and the water fountain trough things (how do those work? What are they for? Are they conjuring the water? It can't be for horses to drink from; the room's too small. Maybe it's for cleaning hands and faces? Like a really fancy washroom?)

Obviously Eidele followed it in despite (because of) it warning her not to, and had to throw them a ration to get them to not attack her. I guess that room is theirs now? At least until another prospector comes through and drives them off. They're welcome to it, I say. The rats, and the prospectors. I don't wanna kill things that can talk who just want to have a home, but... brrr, rats.

(Also, I think Eidele's silly counter-fabrications might have given them the impression that the surface world is ruled by a great rat king and we all serve him? Eh, probably not important. What are they going to do, go looking for him? Heh.)

So we went on a bit further, thankfully finding some more light from the much bigger glowing crystals on the ceiling (I caught Eidele eyeing them, given how much the little ones went for, but I dunno how we're gonna get them down), and oh. Oh, Teacher, you should have seen it. The path split into a left and a right hand branch penning in another big flooded area, and in it... oh, she was gorgeous. This huuuuuuge snake swam over to say hello, all dark blue and green scales that blended with the algae in the water and big soulful eyes (like, actually big; her eyes were the size of my head. But also metaphorically). She was so sweet. Big enough to swallow me whole, but Necria (who really is lovely) generously gave me this potion that made me smell like a friend to animals and beasts, and with a little help from that I was soon petting her all over! I climbed right up on her head and spread my arms and legs out to give her the biggest hug I could! She loved it!

The path had collapsed, which necessitated another bit of Necria flying us over and then us helping Darvin cross with the rope (I really wish I could fly more; it's just not fair that it's so tiring, I want to be able to spend all my time in the sky! Necria's so lucky for having her wings out all the time!) Sadly, some group of rude people breaking into some sarcophagi in an open space off the right-hand path were burning something nasty and smokey to provide light for themselves and ward the big sweetheart off, so despite my coaxing she wouldn't come near. I think she sort of understood Draconic, but not very well. Or maybe she isn't very bright. We had a bit of an argument with the sarcophagi raiders - and okay, maybe Sweetheart apparently ate a few of them, which is terrible, but I strongly suspect they might have started it by attacking first; you know how prospectors are and she does look a bit intimidating to people who don't recognise how adorable serpents are when you get to know them. Darvin said as much (well, without the "snakes are cute" bit, but I recognise I'm in a minority on that score) and the leader guy punched him in the face, which he... didn't really seem to notice? It was a pretty terrible punch, honestly. His form was awful, he didn't put his torso behind it at all and his wrist was horribly out of alignment. He signalled atrociously, too. But in the end, they looked like they had the sarcophagi locked down, so we moved on to the next room.

Where there were more snakes! Little ones this time - or, uh, normal sized ones? I made friends with them too - they came right up and wound around my arms in little hugs - while the others explored. There were some countertops and cosmetics in this room - you know, looking back (and technically across; we're opposite the water from it now and I can make out the torches the sarcophagi-raiders are using and just about see what I think are the snakes), I think it might have once been some sort of shop? Cosmetics, probably. And the one next to it, with all the terrariums on the walls and the big table in the middle... pet shop, perhaps? Magic snakes would be a pretty cool pet, and the big table would let a shopkeeper take a few of them out and show them off for a prospective customer. Maybe it used to be heated from below, so you could have a few out to bask there. What would that make the room full of greenery where Eidele got ambushed... a grocer's or apothecary's or gardening store or something, perhaps, gone wild? Or maybe it was always a small garden, and it's just become all overgrown.

You know, I don't think this was always a tomb, I think this part was some kind of... subterranean complex, maybe a hidden town, and we're in the bit with the shops. It'd make sense, right? The desert is hungry; it chews up land and eats it. But if you bury all of your settlements, you don't have to deal with the sun, and you retain access to the surface through those big towers that no dune can drown; they're too tall. Though then what would they have done for food...

... Eidele says I'm getting distracted. Anyway, yes, we picked up some cosmetics that we might be able to sell. Necria picked out the expensive ones, though according to her they're also toxic? She was very insistent that we only sell them to people who know the risks and won't hurt themselves with them (I knew she was a good person!) Then in the room adjoining that, there were all these strange glass boxes with more snakes inside!

I'm pretty sure they were stasis chambers of some sort. Most of the boxes were smashed, but a couple were still active, with thicker metal-vines feeding into their backs. Whatever magic they were casting filled each box with a sort of orange tint to the air, and rendered it as hard as steel and completely immovable. The snakes inside weren't moving, breathing or showing any response. I got the meatshield to help me yank the metal-vine out of the back of one of the boxes, and as predicted the orange field flickered out and the snake came to life. Or returned to life. Or returned to not-being-in-stasis. Whatever.

Point is, whoever these people were had devices - cheap, mass-producible devices - that seem to almost freeze things in time when they're active. I've never heard of magic that can do that. But imagine the potential uses. I bet you could even trap a fiend or a lich in a large enough field like this - it wouldn't be able to reform because it wouldn't be properly dead, but it wouldn't be able to act either. And gods know any wizard would pay a fortune to learn the secrets behind such power.

Something to prioritise investigating. Unfortunately, there was no apparent way to get the metal-vine out of the back of the box without breaking it, and as soon as we did, everything went to shit, thanks to my feather-headed girlfriend's love affair with a bunch of eldritch serpents abruptly hitting a snag as soon as the drugs wore off.

Okay, that is a really mean way of putting it. But yes, it turns out the 'I'm nice and friendly and don't mean you any harm' potion didn't last very long, and I'd gone back through to the maybe-a-shop room and coaxed all the little snakes into a cuddle-pile in the corner. When I felt it fade away I yelped and jumped onto the counter and, well, they weren't real happy about me startling them. And, uh, maybe also turned out to be magic? So everything kind of turned into a blur of them turning invisible or making it super-dark, like, not-even-I-could-see-through-it dark, or spitting a magical projectile at me (I think mostly by accident), or whatever the other two were doing.

No idea. The one we woke up was doing something, but the meatshield distracted it while I got the fuck out of there and found the cleric holding Ange by the scruff of the neck, which sounds like it was deserved. Whatever it hit him with wasn't visible and didn't seem to affect him. Still not going back in that room, though.

Aww. That means there's one little snake still held in stasis. Maybe I should go over and free it later, so they can all be together. And also stick a sign up saying, like, 'dangerous snakes in here, no loot, we already checked!' so that nobody goes in and kills them. Poor things. I'm glad we didn't hurt any. But yes, Necria was really worried and, like, physically picked me up and flew me across the room to get me away from them! She's a lot stronger than I thought! And really quite pretty. Especially with those wing muscles.

... I'm still loyal to Eidele, though. She's my honey. Gosh, it still feels weird to say that. I'm almost grateful to that bastard for... well. Almost is only almost. Still hate him. Glad he's dead.

Anyway.

With that branch of the path pretty thoroughly explored save for what was behind the sarcophagi-raiders (who didn't look amenable to letting us go poke around through the door behind them) and the path beyond the snake room crumbled away into the flooded lower floor (where Sweetheart had gone back to swimming around in the centre of the open space), we went back the way we'd come and poked around the other fork. There was a room chock-full of greenery and plants that not even Eidele recognised (!!!), and another corpse with a "please help resurrect me" letter - this one from a Lael Brighteyes, and it didn't offer a reward, just friendship (we're still gonna get him back to the temple, though). I guess we don't need to guess at what killed him, because Eidele was leaning down to steal his armour and a couple of health potions (she says he doesn't need them right now and can afford to give them up as a cost-of-revival) when she got swarmed by, you guessed it, MORE SNAKES! Flying ones! Oh, they were so pretty! But they were also trying to bite my girlfriend, so, y'know, I punched them. Well, alright, maybe I also used a little bit of ki to move swifter than flesh, but there were like twenty of them and they were trying to bite Eidele! They did bite Eidele! A bunch!

So I knocked them all out with little bops to the head and then tucked them under the leaves with kisses for their ouchies to sleep it off and make better choices next time. Meanwhile, Darvin and Necria were fighting a much bigger snake that dropped down from the ceiling and... well, I was a bit distracted, but what little look I got at it was creepy. It was not cute at all. It looked almost dead, all withered and emaciated - and it definitely didn't react to being hit like it should have. In the end it ran (slithered?) away into the bushes and hid. Very, very well. Honestly, I wouldn't even have been able to whack it with my spear before that if Necria hadn't called out where it was; for a fifteen-foot constrictor coiled up on itself it was shockingly well camouflaged. It did not like her sending holy flame at it, though. If we see any more I'll know what to use on them.

You know, for all she claims to be all cynical and mean and just money-focused? I wasn't even done putting the unconscious snakes (I reeeaaally need to get one of those as a pet) in their cuddle pile among the undergrowth when Eidele said we should take Mr Brighteyes' body back to town and get him revived too. Not because of any reward, because he hadn't promised any. Just because it's the right thing to do. She really is a sweetheart deep down. You just gotta look past the grumpiness to get it.

He'll owe us. That's all. We need all the allies and social debts we can get in this cutthroat, daylight-robbery gold rush town. I'll charge him 200 gold for the revive on credit and tell him he can pay us half of what he dredges out of this place until he's paid it off. And he'll be grateful enough to back us up in future if we ever need it. Nothing soft-hearted about it.

She grumps, but she cares actually. Even if she did just yank on my hair for writing that.

We were all getting a little tired by this point, so after passing another probably-a-shop-once at the base of some stairs - Eidele went in and grabbed an armful of jewellery and barely dodged back out of the room before this giant stone slab slammed down and sealed it off-

Pretty sure it was conjured into place; it fit too flush for anything else. Conjured matter usually fades after, what, 24 hours? Pretty good anti-theft measure for a functioning store; shoplifting loses you a day's profits but traps the thief in there with you. There may even be a way to undo it from the inside. Maybe I shouldn't have ducked out. If it's gone by tomorrow, I'll have a look for a way to dismiss the stone before grabbing any more jewellery. Or just tell Brighteyes to bring a ration pack, a book and a bedroll, make him set it off deliberately and claim 75% of the take once it lets him out the next day. That'd probably clear his debt in one go.

... we stopped under the mezzanine floor the (MOVING???) stairs (def. going back to look at those later) were leading up to and made temporary camp for an hour or so to rest. That's where I'm writing this now! It's a neat little place that looks out over the water towards the snake room and the other prospectors. Sweetheart is moving around out there, nosing at the ceiling for something; I'm not sure what. Necria is writing too (another scholar! I need to ask about her goddess, and also if she has any books), and I think Darvin's working on a map.

There are some more animals here too; flightless featherless snake-turkey-things. Snurkeys! I fed one of them a few bits of rations and it let me pet it, and there's another one sort of pecking at the floor around me now. They don't seem too interested in us. There's a set of doors behind us that we'll look into once we've got our breath back, and some beakers and plants on the countertops around the pillars holding up the mezzanine that Eidele is looking at in between reading over my shoulder and snatching the paper away to make her additions. Some more amphorae, too. I guess we'll see what's in these ones when we're ready to start up again.

Okay, that's about it for what's happened since I last wrote. I'm going to pack this away now and practice my forms. You never know who or what's gonna need punching next!

~Angèle
- Eidele

 

[Walker]

Necria Starwatcher's Continued Documentation, Adventure Log, and General Discussion of Noteworthy Events, Vol. 3(.5)

D0: Arrival

(Note: Am retroactively rearranging date scheme to match delve, for convenience; hence, .5.)

Have arrived at site; tomb surfaced. Already surrounded by miserable squalid hive of scum and villainy, importing cruelty and exploitation, exporting ruthlessness and corpses. Have also secured lodgings, describable by similar adjectives.

D1: Encounters

Looking back on previous descriptors, am forced to concede was somewhat overdramatic, to which am already prone – in own defense, had just discovered rapidly expanding tent city is not only absent any form organized religion, but also lacks libraries, archives, bookstores, or indeed any other form of literary collection. Am briefly tempted to offer own writings as nucleus to found such, but would be height of hubris to present own writings, private recollections, to world for criticism instead of reserving for self-reflection – and am reasonably tall regardless.

Also, have noted presence of draconic influence in encampment, enacted with typical subtlety and reserve, bearing much similarity to being brained with gold brick. Very observable. Very ominous.

First expedition into Tomb today, emphasis necessary. Note: will need to consider more memorable titles in future (Darkglass Escarpment? River's Maw? Devouring Hole of Greed and Murder, Symbolizing General Behavior of Invading Adventurers?). Already profitable – but first.

Have made – acquaintances? Allies? Friends?

Darvin, of course, loyally present; entirely dedicated to promised reward, and has done his best to ensure my survival and welfare to that end, despite own attempts to contrary. Am grateful for his work, despite personality, general bearing, and total lack of tact.

Nevertheless.

Pair of girls, slightly younger than me? One, Eidele Bright, a rogue or scout of some kind, moves with grace that would be catlike, except descriptor is already overused. Surprised she does not clank, considering amount of sharp pointy metal (presumably) carried. Profit-oriented – can hardly criticize, considering own interests. Skulking tiefling seems a stereotype, though. The other – Angèle Bright, Celestial blood. Upon seeing myself and Darvin at riverbank, plotting entry, immediately bounced over and began inquiring about wings; not an unfamiliar experience, but rarely so immediately upon meeting, or so frankly. Flustering therefore hopefully understandable, given circumstances. Was cheerful, chipper, cheery, chatterbox, other words starting with c; an alliance formed almost naturally within moments, despite own efforts otherwise – even willing to cover ferry fare, will have to repay her tomorrow.

For completion's sake – am myself a Tiefling, unusually possessed of wings; suggests erinye or horned devil. Darvin, half-elf mercenary, formerly retired, starting to show signs of age, still possessed of astonishing strength. Have claimed am interested in collecting funds to finance an army against an unknown prophesied threat, while Darvin is in my employ.

Should perhaps have specified said threat expected to emerge from 'drowned tomb within the sea of Khemet's sands' but too risky – others might have attack of good sense and decide to leave. (Note: meter, rhyme scheme better in original Celestial; translation needs work. Use original name for Khemet – Heartland of Black Sands)

On note of boats – tomb located in middle of river, because universe abhors convenience. Not only middle, but under, in fact, complete with rickety wooden elevator, fortunately bypassed by simple expedience of own wings. Angèle's flight apparently more limited than my own, explaining her interest.

Tomb itself unusually well-shaped, despite damage over time – already filling with water, but visible stonework clearly magically executed. Also noteworthy – vines of metal, growing glowing gems, some already looted. Candidate for transplant & cultivation? Unusual amount of black crystal also, mostly damaged or broken, but remarkably sharp – presumably a display of wealth or power. Notably, discovered a fireplace linked to gem by vine wherein removal of gem extinguished fire; gem did reattach to vine afterwards, but poorly, will return to check if reintegration continues.

Have also encountered first other party, necromancer dwarf Krogen Battlehammer. Upon encounter, immediately called my Lady's grace to drive back his undead, while E. provided cover fire and A. demonstrated latent aggression by powdering skeleton – then rendered moot by Darvin's proficiency with Lay on Hands, namely by laying hands on necromancer with clear explication of physical harm. Negotiations proceeded & released him to continue looting. Subsequently discovered equipment of adventurer requesting raise and offering reward, Jason-something, & returned to corpse-caller to repossess appropriate carcass, despite objections. After resurrection, Jason suggested that he had been murdered by pack of skeletons – necromancer culpability almost certain. Should hardly be surprised, as consorting with the undead invariably suggests an inability to coexist with the living. Not a priority, but a target. Jason's father a veteran adventurer of remarkable size, named George, veteran enough to consider death a rite of passage. Reward came to 300gp, combined with 500gp from sale of gems and acquired onyxes, total profit 200gp/person; quite good, for a day's work. May be willing to assist in necromancer elimination.

Invested 100gp in 2nd Earring of Message, as precautionary expense.

At 400gp/day, assuming I also pass my earnings to him, and given that the High Priestess has offered to cast the spell at cost, D. will be able to afford the components for True Resurrection in just over two months.

Will inquire if D. also interested in documenting his perspective.

강철과 불꽃으로 기록되지 않은 계약서

D2: SNAKE

Translated from Infernal to Common, Darvin's contribution: 'I can't write.' (Taken literally, actually reads as 'Contracts unwritten in steel and flame' – Infernal as language shares devils' proclivity to dramatics.) Desperately yearn to punch him in face, yet must refrain. Am uncertain what sin merits such punishment, but assure you of my repentance, my goddess.

Descent into Horrifying Tomb remarkably banal – fee paid by yrs. Mob of Centipedes colonizing entrance; may need exterminating. Note: acquire oil flask.

Have encountered rat, claiming to represent rat king, demanded tribute, Eidele demanded tribute in return in name of Rat King supposedly served, situation degenerated into comedy rapidly. Survived dangerous escapade at only loss of one ration, and likely need to fear wrath of furious squeakers if deception ever discovered. Would be shivering in terror, if not for desert climate (warmth remarkably comfortable, actually)

Further progress down corridor revealed more flooding & split into two branches, both collapsed, as well as central lake, occupied – by SNAKE, capitalization required. Using my Potion of Animal Friendship, Angèle has befriended it. Probably. By virtue of natural buoyancy and obvious affection for large potentially hostile wildlife, of all things. Am impressed, yet also deeply concerned by demonstrated (absence of) threat recognition. Later events prove me right, naturally.

Southern Corridor occupied by another party, hiding from SNAKE; using smokers to pacify it while looting sarcophagi – if harm intended to SNAKE, A. will likely demand vengeance. D. punched in face by leader for crude commentary, not sure he noticed. Am very jealous. Bypassing, also encountered smaller side rooms containing loose snakes (normal-sized) & number of terrariums, mostly unoccupied. Two w/orange walls still snake-inhabited, connected to black vine from wall. Collected a number of amphorae containing cosmetics, some toxic – will need to make buyer aware, for reasons of safety. Was unable to investigate further, on account of potion wearing off while A. was shepherding snakes into corner; moved to pick her up and fly off, at which point discovered snakes also spell casters. Feel somewhat cheated, considering spent decades earning grace of goddess to manipulate fundamental nature of reality itself, feat replication by small number of unintelligent crawling reptiles rather unfair. (For future notice - when Animal Friendship wears off, Mr. Snake is not your friend.)

Nonetheless.

Was at least able to carry her out of harm's way, then exited to corridor with haste. As corridor terminated, moved to explore to North. Was obligated to play ferrywoman again. Exploring, found room containing large amount of unidentifiable greenery; have taken samples and will explore possible uses. Also attacked by small swarm of flying snakes, and medium-sized rotting snake – am sensing theme. E. attempting to loot armor off corpse, Lael Brighteyes, when swarmed; A. proceeded to knock entire swarm unconscious. Aversion to killing small cute things may be problematic in future. Luckily, rot snake less cute, D. able to hold it long enough for all to assist, despite toxin and unnatural resilience – but vulnerable to holy radiance of goddess, naturally. Presence of unnatural lifeform has concerning implications. L. purchased resurrection insurance, so will retrieve when returning – am growing unpleasantly familiar with process of dismembering/carrying bodies for later use.

Next room up a level, only reachable by magic stairs – move only downwards, bewilderingly; why not both directions, or reversible? All currently preparing to break for lunch, D. looking somewhat strained from effects of venom, but claims will recover momentarily. Also updating map – quality of cartography excellent, but seems emotionally conflicted at task; cheered and saddened in equal measure by it. A. writing also, presumably keeping own records – may ask to compare. Myself am mostly noting own hesitance to looting, possibly due to theft-averse upbringing; despite companion's pressing need for coin, feels too much like robbery for own comf

Sound. Will return.

 

[BossFight]

Time

• Players can take two short rests and 1 long rest a day. Taking a long rest or a 3rd short rest automatically ends the day.
• Out of combat, 1 hour IRL = 10 minutes in game for the purpose of tracking resources.
• Torches, lanterns, and other consumable sources of light last 1 hour IRL.

Encumbrance

• Players have a number of encumbrance slots equal to their strength score. Each slot can hold 1 item. Armor counts as a single item, as does a single weapon or shield.
• Clothes do not take up a slot.
• Certain items - such as a bag of coins - count as a single item for the purposes of item slots. They are as follows
  • A bag of 100 coins
  • 3 days rations
  • 10 Iron Spikes
  • 60 ft of rope (with or without grappling hook)
  • 20 arrows/bolts/bullets
  • 20 caltrops
• Certain items (such as a backpack) can grants extra slots. They are
  • Backpack (3 extra slots)
  • Chateline (5 Extra slots, nothing larger than your palm)

Light Sources

• Light now requires concentration.
• Darkvision has it's range reduced by half. It now lets characters see in darkness or dim light as if it were dim light.
• Characters in dim light have disadvantage on perception checks and -5 to passive perception.

Hirelings

Hirelings will not fight, nor will they walk into obvious danger. Players who fail to protect their hirelings may find them running away and develop a reputation which makes it difficult to hire more.
Hirlings tend to have 10 in there most relevant stat, and 8 in all the rest.

Hiding

• A character can roll stealth as an action to hide during combat (assuming there is somewhere to hide). Characters with a passive perception lower then the stealth roll cannot see the creature.
• While hidden, a character has advantage on attack rolls and attack rolls against them are made with disadvantage
• Players may take an action to make a perception roll to find a hidden character. They roll against the stealth roll. Characters who make this roll can call out the location of the hidden character. This does not break stealth.
• Characters may choose to attack a random square in the hopes a target is hidden there (or make an AoE attack). If they are correct, they roll against the stealthed character as normal.
• Making an attack breaks stealth. As does leaving an area (shadow, dense foliage, etc) where a character can be hidden.

 

[Aleph]

"A Bad Day" - Letter to Teacher from Angèle Bright
(written 29 Kythorn 1608 in Rushtown)

Dear Teacher,

Today wasn't a good day.

... I'm not sure where to start, really. I guess the end of my last letter works best? I was just finished writing you when Sweetheart came over, looking sort of curious, so, I mean, I petted her some more, duh. And read her the parts of my letter that were about her, though she didn't seem all that interested. She ate one of the wandering snurkeys - just, nom, gobbled straight up! The others didn't really seem to care. Actually, I wonder if they noticed? You do get things like frogs sitting next to an ant trail licking up sticky globs of them that the ants don't register as they just keep marching past. Maybe she's so big and the light is so dim and her movements are so slow that they don't really register her as a threat. Or maybe they just have really bad eyesight and hearing.

... actually, I wonder if they're even normal beasts? Something's gotta be keeping Sweetheart fed, and either she's got an incredibly limited appetite for her size or she feeds partly on magic or something, because there aren't enough snurkeys down there to be a viable population capable of sustaining her and we didn't see much else on the floor. I mean, unless there's a huge thriving super-nest of them a little further down that those two adventurers are gonna tragically be snuffled-at to death by. But I think that's kind of unlikely.

So maybe they're more things like the magic snakes, or the light crystals? Or that mace. Maybe they're engineered, fast-grown beasts being released from some... some kind of magic snurkey-making plant whenever the population gets low, and the weird passivity is because they're literally created to be eaten. Magic can create food, right? It's not even that hard. A food-making spell turned into the kind of living metal-plant tool we've seen down here would explain what the ancient Khemetians did for food in this big underground complex, right? I mean, that one garden room can't have sustained a floor this big with conventional crops, so there must be more extensive food production areas somewhere. Going by the plant room, it doesn't look like there's been any exchange with the surface for a looooong time, but there's still life down here.

Ugh. Now I'm annoyed we didn't bring a snurkey up to show to Mr Godfrey. Or maybe a few breeding pairs, if it turns out they do reproduce like normal animals. It'd suck if other adventurers wiped them all out just to have things to eat down there. They're probably historical. Maybe I'll ask Helen if she has any fossils or ancient Khemetian recipes that mention them.

... anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I didn't really describe where we took our break very well. The moving stairs next to that jewellery place shop that sealed itself closed when Eidele stole from it led down from a triangular-ish mezzanine floor projecting out towards the flooded section (that presumably wasn't always flooded; this must have been like a balcony walkway looking deeper down into the complex). I think there must have originally been two sets of stairs, one on either side, one going up, one going down. But when I went to look at the other one it had collapsed, so there's no proving that.

We made camp under the mezzanine, just in front of a big pair of doors in the wall directly below the middle of where the mezzanine joined to the wall. Holding it up near the water were two... pillars? Trees? Stalls? They were trunks of that black metal plantlife we've seen in vines and bushes and stuff, growing out into super-straight, perfectly symmetrical branches like the spokes of a parasol and budding a bunch of metal leaf things that all overlapped. They had sort of square stone blocks they were growing up through, like waist-high counters, and then smaller ones that came up to chest-height like a shelf to make a two-stepped countertop-and-shelf. The leaf-roofs reminded me of the fabric roofs of market stalls, and I think that's what these were - the waist-high counter and the chest-high one cut closer to the treetrunk would've had products on them, and their proprietors could have just stood around selling to people making their way past.

I'd have tried to climb up on the leaf-roofs to see if they could take my weight, but things happened and I couldn't. Maybe next time.

One of the counters was hollow underneath and stuffed full of amphorae - bigger ones than the cosmetics we got from the room with the snakes. The other had a bunch of stuff on top of it; beakers and plants and stuff all tangled together. The plants had vines growing into some of the beakers, or each other's dirt, or right into the main central treetrunk, or even all three! Some of the beakers had weird liquids in them, others were empty, others had residue like they'd been filled and emptied many times. I guess this is what that market stall was selling? Something alchemical, perhaps. A living potions lab! If I thought it'd survive being removed from the trunk, I'd advocate to bring it back up and study it, but I think anything like that will have to be done in situ.

The others were all doing their own stuff as we took a break. Eidele was tuning her crossbow and looking at the jewellery she got and the alchemy stuff. She couldn't work it out at all. The sealed clay pots turned out to have some kind of cold meat paste in them (probably another stall selling to passers-by). And I don't mean cold like "we're underground next to a big flooded big and it's cooler than it is above the surface" cold; I mean cold as in actively chilled! They're like winterbreath jars; things to keep food fresh! Maybe this was even where they got invented - more use for them here than in cooler climates up north, right? These ones were really big, though; twice the size of the amphorae we took. Next time we go past I'll take a sample of the meat (assuming, again, that it's not been looted by unscrupulous sorts by then) and see if I can get it identified. Or maybe haul a whoooooole pot up for Helen; she'd love one.

I'm not necessarily against it, but I'm going to put my foot down and say that we bring porters down to carry the things if we go through with it. Those pots were big and heavy and we want to reserve our own backpacks for stuff that's more valuable than whatever Rohesia pays for an old winterbreath jar. They're not exactly advanced magic, so we might not get much for them - and Rohesia's expedition didn't seem super well-funded, regardless of how valuable the pots are to the historical record.

Well, we can try, at least. Meanwhile, Darvin and Necria were writing. I wanted to see what they were doing... but first! A couple of other tomb prospectors showed up. An elven wizardess - very stereotypically Valoisienne; white and blue robes, staff, blonde hair in those crown braids they like, snooty look, etc - and a human swordsman with a rapier and shield, probably hired to be her guard. I got in front of Sweetheart in case they decided to pick a fight with her, and Eidele came out with a big fib about how we'd already cleared out this whole section of the tomb and they should go down the other fork and investigate that door we saw behind the sarcophagi-raiders - the Sarcophaguys; they're the Sarcophaguys now; it's easier to write than "those people who were breaking into the sarcophagi next to where the magic snakes were and who were rude about Sweetheart but maybe a bit justifiably if she really did eat three of them".

The judges will also accept 'the greedy idiots who are practically begging some undead horror from inside those sarcophagi to wake up and rip them all apart'.

As opposed to us clearly not being greedy at all, she means. (That was sarcasm). Regardless, the wizardess and her escort didn't buy Eidele's fib, but they didn't seem to want to make a big thing of it (probably because we outnumbered them and they might have thought Sweetheart would've helped), so they just said something about how they'd try their luck looking for anything we'd missed. Eidele got bristly in that way she does, and I think Darvin was ready to back her up and fight them off, but Necria was against it and I gave Eidele the sad eyes and she left it alone. They moved on, I decided to leave Sweetheart to her lunch as she gobbled down another snurkey - it's not that she's a messy eater, it was just a little disconcerting watching the rest not even react at all to her swallowing two of them whole - and I went to see what the others were doing.

And like I said, Darvin and Necria were writing! Darvin was drawing a map of the tomb that I included one copy of with the first letter and made another copy to annotate in this one. He sort of grunted at me when I tried to read over his shoulder, though, so I went round to Necria. Who was journaling! She's writing this log of notes and observations for historical purposes in case anyone ever comes back here in the future or wants a first-hand account of our explorations, which seems super thoughtful. Maybe I'll start archiving these letters somewhere instead of just sending them off to you? They could serve the same purpose!

For any future people reading this, like, a century and a half from now; hi! I'm Angèle! Though, I mean, you probably know about me if you're reading this in the future - in fact, wow, you might actually know more about me than I know about me; like, you probably know when me and Eidele get married and where we settle down or... oh boy, you probably know when I die if you're reading this far enough in the future; that's super weird. And kind of creepy! Mystery reader, it's not nice to reduce people to just the date they were born and the date they died and the things they accomplished in between that are relevant to your history studies! I mean, those things are obviously why you're reading, but try to think of us folks in the past as people, too! We weren't all that different to you, you know! We had likes and dislikes and quirks and thoughts that weren't relevant to big historical stuff, but which still mattered!

All this to say that the most important things about me are that I love Eidele and Amity and books and birds and snakes. And flying. Flying is great.

Oh, also, I should explain Teacher, otherwise these letters won't even make any sense. I'm what's called an aasimar. My kind are sort of like inverse-tieflings, in that we're the result of celestial heritage getting into a mortal bloodline, but much rarer. Tieflings are supposedly the bearers of some old bloodline curse for their ancestors' infernalism (which by the way is very unfair if true; stop punishing kids for their great-great-whatever grandparents' sins, gods!) and often have (adorable!) tiefling babies (such cute little horns!), especially tiefling mothers. But celestial blood lies dormant for generations, only rising to the fore when a baby is chosen by a patron of some sort, who has a plan for their life and guides them through dreams to achieve it.

That's Teacher! (By the way, Teacher, sorry for the diversion here, I'm just explaining for posterity and I'll get back to telling you everything soon). I don't know what he's like or what kind of celestial he is (Master Thanis could never work it out either, though I have all his notes and theorising), or even if he's actually a he, but I've been dreaming of feathers and light and a voice I can't describe the sound of for as long as I can remember. He's not really a very talkative or straightforward teacher; he's super cryptic and doesn't say much or lay things out for me. Instead I get vague feelings and prophecies and visions. He's the kind of guide who encourages you to think for yourself and work out the solution on your own with little nudges, you know? Asking the right questions to get you to think about the right answers. But I'm still glad he's watching over me, and I tell him everything in letters like this.

In the name of historical accuracy, I should add that she's never seen any sign her guide gets these when she burns them at her little altar. Or that it needs them, since a celestial patron that can't see what its chosen mortal is doing sounds pretty useless.

But we've never seen any evidence against, either, and I suppose writing them makes her happy at least and at best gives her patron some insight into her thoughts. And in the latter case, I can at least be sure it cares for her.

Hard not to, when you spend enough time exposed.

Aww. She says the sweetest things. Though, wow, I'm going to have to figure out a different way of sending these to you if I want to also preserve them for posterity. Maybe I can make two copies and burn one? Or make a little drawer in my shrine and leave them there to soak up holiness and be where you can get at them?

... I'll ask a cleric, I guess. Anyway, where was I?

Right! Necria! Did you know she's fluent in celestial? It's been ages since I met another speaker! 有一個志同道合的朋友真好. Also there was a line in Infernal that I think Darvin wrote, which she'd translated, so apparently we all know that too. Maybe we can use it to give battle commands! You know, "궁수들을 공격하라!", that sort of thing. I'll mention it tomorrow. She explained all about how she's writing for posterity, and I explained how I'm writing to you and told her a bit about you. She asked if you'd 'sent' me here, which sounded a bit silly - you never 'send' me anywhere; that'd be way too straightforward! I told her how we're here for money to build our futures, and she seemed to doubt that money would buy safety, what with the war and all. Which is true, but that doesn't mean we won't still need money to, you know, live and everything. We'll need a house and food and stuff, after all! For safety we can just go back to Salcurne and settle somewhere well away from the border; nobody's really got a reason to invade, and if they do... well, we could always escape out to Golar by boat, if we really had to.

I asked Necria why she was here, if not for money, and she got real quiet and didn't seem to want to answer.

That's actually - typically for Ange - a really good question. Why is she here? It's obviously not money, but she tried to push us deeper into the tomb after the fight later on and capitulated mostly because Ange was in no condition to be delving any deeper. And even then she insisted at first and went off to pray before changing her mind. So something is driving her; something urgent, something important enough to put herself at serious risk. Darvin has nothing to do with it, he's just hired muscle - and on an expensive retainer, too. Starwatcher is the driving force behind them being here.

She's a cleric, and a devout Orthodox Selûnist. Selûne's domains are, what? Moon, moonlight, and stars, obviously. Beauty and purity, love and marriage; neither likely to be relevant here. Navigation and navigators, tracking, wanderers, and seekers - maybe? Diviners and dreams, astrology and fate and fortune-telling - very possible. Lycanthropes, at least the kind that don't eat people and just have to deal with a shitty curse fucking up their lives - irrelevant. And autumn, I think, but it's early summer now, so that's not a factor.

So, of those domains, given she's clearly here for religious reasons, I'd guess two overall possibilities: one, she's questing, acting as a seeker and explorer of these newly uncovered ancient ruins. It'd explain why she seems more focused on seeing everything down there than profiting from it. Or two, she's received some kind of dream or divination about something sacred/antithetical to Selûne down there that her temple - or her goddess - has bid her recover/destroy. I'd say that-

Okay scratch that, Ange just brought up a third possibility. I'd discounted lycanthropes initially, because they don't seem to have any relationship to an old snake temple in the desert. But this place is very old. Old enough that it might actually predate the curse. And if it was built by yuan-ti like Ange speculates... they blended themselves with snakes, and there are horror stories about them being able to turn captured trespassers into broodguards for their young. If someone else stole those secret methods and tried with something furrier and fucked up bad...

Mmm. Well. I'll keep an eye on her and see what she wants, I guess. But if she's here to look for a cure to lycanthropy, I've got no issue with that. Hell, I'll even help. Fewer werewolves around will make the world a little less dangerous, and Ange and I live here.

Okay, enough speculation about Necria! If she's not comfortable talking about why she's here we should let her be (though if she really is trying to cure werewolves, that's really good and noble of her and we should totally help!) Anyway, I changed the subject to her goddess, and... um. Yeah.

That didn't go so well. I think she's Orthodox. She did not like how I was worshipping three gods - well, four, but even the Orthodoxy allows dual worship of Oghma and Deneir; they share the same domain. She went off on one of those conservative rants about how I couldn't dedicate everything I am to three gods at once (I don't see why I've gotta dedicate my whole life to a god I worship; can't I just dedicate a little to them? A silver piece might not be a gold one, but it's better than nothing!) and how I'd be offending Akadi by praying to her when I don't spend all my time in the air (how can love and admiration be offensive?) and... yeah, it was a big mess.

At least she didn't blow up about Sarenrae being Golarian? I guess she's progressive, maybe. She healed and protected me a bit later, so it hasn't spoilt things so much as to ruin our baby-stages friendship, at least. I'll... I dunno, I can't apologise, because I've not done anything wrong or that I'm sorry about, so it wouldn't be true. But I guess I can try to do something nice for her to mend fences? Maybe offer to go flying with her tomorrow evening? We'll see.

Eidele finished looking through the jewellery she took and gave me a couple of bracelets from them, because she's a sweetheart and knows I've been missing mine since we had to sell them in Rui Farise. They were basically the only things that fit, though. A lot of the other stuff was... I think it was for dragonborn? I've seen things like it on Tesarite nobility who've come through the monastery (though the styles weren't Tesarite at all). You know, thick piercings to go through tough scales and frills, big chunky rings that would never fit a human, rings designed for horn piercings that you can hang chains on... gods, Eidele would look so pretty with some silver horn jewellery-

For the hundredth time, no. I am not getting holes drilled through my horns, or stuck through my ears, or stabbed through my lips or tongue, to put shiny things through. You do realise some people can heat metal to red-hot with a word? My horns might not be touch-sensitive, but they have live bone inside that is connected to my skull. No thank you and stop asking.

Spoilsport. She's fireproof, but she still gets super grumpy whenever I start talking too much about how easy it is to just get a little ear stud or lip ring and starts bringing up Heat Metal. I'm pretty sure she's actually just squeamish. And, I mean, she sure seems to like my piercings. One of them, at least. Oh, she just read that over my shoulder and blushed, haha! I love it when I can get her to do that.

Where was I?

Right! These ancient Khemetians seemed to like piercings as well! I wonder, were they dragonborn? I don't remember any big dragonborn empires here; they had their snake god, which... I'm not saying it's impossible for dragons to worship a serpent-god, but it feels out of place. Maybe they were snake-people instead; yuan-ti. There are loads of living tools around, things like those metal vines and the mace and whatnot, and they were meant to be masters of the arcane secrets of life; once-humans who hybridised themselves with serpents to become a new race altogether. There's speculation in some books I've read that they even created the... lizardfolk.

Right. Yeah. The lizardfolk.

I was putting my new bracelets on when Necria heard voices from above us, up on the mezzanine. We didn't really want to deal with any more adventurers, so we made for the big doors, and they just? Popped open? When Eidele went near them? She didn't do anything! But behind them were a couple of lizardfolk, who looked angry to see us. They said... they said this place; the whole complex, is holy ground to their people. That we were tomb robbers, defilers of sacred land, اللصوص القبر. Then more showed up from down those moving stairs; the voices Necria had heard, and it was four more lizardfolk and a big chieftain or champion or warrior of some kind and a shaman who said the same. I tried my best, but a fight broke out all the same, and we...

---

She's been staring at the page without writing anything for twenty minutes, and refuses to just skip ahead without explaining what happened. So I shoved her at Amity and told her I'd do it.

You know the start. We were fenced in under that mezzanine by half a dozen lizardfolk, plus some kind of big warrior-caste leader and a shaman; two through the door, six coming up from between us and the way out. It turned into a 망할 재앙 almost immediately. Which it was obviously always going to be, since we were outnumbered and flanked on two sides. Three, if you count the giant snake in the water.

But wherever Starwatcher picked Darvin up, he's worth every copper piece she's paid him. He was moving before any of us, going straight for the shaman fast enough to take a chunk out of the counter as he bulled through it, and proceeded to keep five of them tied up there for most of the fight. The big one slipped by him, though, and charged over to Ange as one of the smaller ones darted out of the corridor and stabbed me. Starwatcher did something that poured divine energy into us all, taking the edge off any blows that connected, and stayed between us and Darvin to support both fronts of the fight.

Ange...

Fuck, I get why she was distressed, okay? The whole holy ground thing, it really shook her. And it's not like she was staying out of the fight or leaving us out to dry; she was attacking them, she even brought her wings out when the big one charged over to her and Necria, though the shaman did something to stop the usual burst of divine power from hurting it.

But she hesitated way too long to go on the offensive, and she was pulling her punches all fight. I've never seen her miss so many strikes or deal so many glancing blows. Even with her wings out looking all bright and angelic, the lizardfolk seemed to work out after a while that she wasn't actually willing to hurt them. I shot the shaman in the throat and Darvin finished him off with a javelin (while still fending off four of them and barely taking a hit; seriously, worth every copper piece, I'm not kidding), but Ange wasn't even defending herself properly and actually caught one of my arrows when I tried to shoot the asshole who'd just stabbed her, so I had to drop the crossbow and go in with the knives to give them another target.

Having me actually in stabbing range of angry lizardfolk with edged weapons gave her enough motivation to start taking the fight seriously. She pummelled the big one, but he got her with this... exploding mace thing; I'll let her describe it. Caught me in the blast too, though not as badly; Starwatcher's divine healing stuff protected me from it and kept it from killing Ange. I got around behind the big one and went in twice with the knives, and Starwatcher finished him off after killing the small one with the spear who Ange had stopped me from shooting. Ange looked like she was going to try to put herself between me and the last one, who was still in the corridor with a couple of javelins, so I yelled at her to go help Darvin. Where she proceeded to go back to pulling her blows again like a fucking idiot.

Javelin lizard looked at me, looked at the dead big guy, ran off. Guess he didn't like his odds. I tried another crossbow bolt at the one who was going conspicuously un-punched by glowing astral angel wings, but Ange fucking blocked it again with one of the same, so back into melee it was - and again, that gave her the motivation to put the fucker down (though not out; she knocked him unconscious rather than kill him). It was just cleanup after that; Darvin and Starwatcher took out two of the remainder and I got past the third and knifed him in the back. Victory, success, good feelings all round, yada yada.

Then Darvin beheaded the unconscious one and things got nasty in a wholly different way.

Ange shut down immediately. Retreated onto the countertop behind her, curled up all foetal, wrapped her wings around herself, refused to look at me. Starwatcher exploded at Darvin; she was furious at him executing a downed foe - or a captive; I didn't get a good idea of their argument because one of the lizardfolk had dropped this weird little snake that'd retreated under the stone counter, and I was busy fishing it out and shoving it in a pocket. But I heard Darvin basically say it was his job to look out for Starwatcher on what he called an 'ill-conceived endeavour' and that any deaths were pretty much her fault for putting him in situations where he had to defend her. She didn't take it well. Stormed off, wings flicking all agitatedly. I didn't care, because I was more focused on Ange.

I could've been more gentle with her. But fucking hell, she'd frozen up in the middle of a lethal fight! What happens if she dies down there? I mean, in practice we have enough to revive her, but... you get what I mean. We're trying to build a future here. A future that needs her. I can't do this alone. She promised we'd...

Fuck.

I was mad. I yelled at her. Broke into Infernal, I think; the curses are better. I don't remember exactly what I said in the heat of the moment, but she started crying again and that knocked me out of it. Swapped to a gentler approach, reminded her how important her life is, why we're doing this, that we have to think of the future. I think it worked.

It did work. I mean... I'm still...

It made me feel better in the moment. I still have doubts. I'll... I'll get to those later. But Eidele made me feel better when I was crying and upset. She always does.

That's why I love her.

I wanted to leave, once the fight was over. Eidele backed me, and Darvin... well, he said I was useless, but I specified 'for fighting', so I think he meant it in a nice way. Necria didn't like the idea of going back at all, though. She argued about it... I don't remember exactly what she said. Something about needing to go deeper. But then she went and prayed and came back and agreed that I wasn't in any condition to fight anymore, which... I don't like being a burden. But they were right.

She pulled me aside as I went to talk to Sweetheart and get myself back together. Reminded me that the people down here have a home, but that I have one too, that I'm fighting for. It helped. (I think Darvin said something to Eidele as well, because she looked a little shaken when I came back and she's started using his name instead of just calling him 'meatshield' or 'half-elf', but she won't say what except that he's smarter than she'd taken him for.) Hugging Sweetheart helped too. She was really distressed. I think either the violence upset her or she liked the lizardfolk too and didn't know what to do when we started hurting each other. I cuddled with her for a while, and had a bit of a cry, while the others... dealt with the bodies. I don't know what they did with them. They were gone when I next looked.

Darvin wanted to burn them, but I pointed out that a funeral pyre in an enclosed underground space without great airflow wasn't a good idea. So we took the knives and javelins off them, as well as that mace, and then lowered them into the water. I got Starwatcher to say a short prayer as they sank. If this is their sacred ground, they're at rest here now, and beyond the reach of any more adventurers wandering around.

I gave Eidele a hug and a kiss for being such a sweetheart and now she's retreated off to the other side of the tent to pretend she's not a big softie by picking a fight with Maegan over the cooking schedule. So I'll run down the list of what they found on the lizardfolk.

All of them except the big leader and the shaman had knives on them, to start with; half a dozen in total. None of them are meant for combat - I've sketched their shapes in the margins for you to see what I mean. One was too thin to really risk in a fight, another was basically just a square with a hilt and one edge sharpened, almost like a cleaver. Another hooked forward enough to unbalance the whole knife, and a fourth had these protruding teeth sticking out from the blade making it impossible to slice with. The last two were the ones Eidele kept; the weird curvy one and the one without a hilt or guard or handle. I don't know what these could have been for; I don't know enough medicine to tell if these shapes are useful for, like, surgery or cutting sacrificial animals up or whatever. They were all this yellow-tinted iron-like material I don't recognise. I think it might be siderite? Which, if so, wow; nobody's ever figured out what that is or where it comes from; it crops up in some of the really really old Khemetian records, but they just call it "a rare mineral from the heavens", which isn't super specific. Maybe with these we can figure it out!

They had some javelins too. Most were wooden, but there were two made from the same bronzeish material as the mace head - so they're probably grown? They didn't explode though, thankfully. Evidence is mounting for a lot of the production capability down here being based on magic metal plants. Darvin took them, since nobody else could really use them. And he also took the mace.

Right, the mace. Wow, that thing was weird (and painful!) I'm certain it was grown, not made: the haft was one of those black metal branches like the tree-pillars and the vines... I should come up with a name for that stuff. I'll call it blackvine for now, but remember it's not just vines, it can be bushes and trees too. So, it was a blackvine branch, clearly grown to fit into the hand, with a sort of bronze-rind fruit serving as the mace head, a bit like a coconut combined with a cactus fruit. And whenever the leader guy hit something with it, it exploded! It just burst into shrapnel and peppered anyone nearby! He had this move where he'd swing it and bring his shield up at the same time to block the backblast hitting him, though that stopped working when he threw his shield away to hit things harder, so he was bloodying himself up too. But every time the fruit burst, another one would just grow from nothing to full size immediately.

Evidence of fast-growing magical plant-tools: found!

Oh, Eidele says she also picked up the little snake here. But I didn't know about him until later, so he can wait for now.

After crying on Sweetheart for a bit and petting her with my wings (which she loved), I realised that the lizardfolk weren't the only ones living here, and the poor snakes would probably wind up dead too if we left them down here. I mean, you can see it, right? Some group of tomb robbers charges into the plant room or the cosmetics shop, looking all scary, the snakes lash out because they're scared, the robbers react lethally... and then they all get killed when they were just living here in peace until we showed up, fighting back only because they were frightened or provoked.

So I asked the group if we could rescue them before that happened, and Necria maybe wanted to make up for the "no, we have to keep going" thing because she agreed it was our moral duty to protect life wherever we could. I left my stuff with Darvin so she could fly me across the water (Sweetheart followed us about halfway; I think she was curious about us flying) and then tried to explain to the snakes what we were doing. They didn't really get it, so she just put them to sleep one by one and I gave them little bops on the head as carefully as I could to keep them asleep (sorry snakes! It was for your own good!) Unfortunately, she didn't have enough magic to put the last one, the one still in the stasis box, to sleep. So we had to leave it there, safe in the stasis field that other tomb robbers hopefully won't really know how to break or care about. Sorry little snake! We'll come back for you tomorrow, I promise! We were quiet enough going over the water that the Sarcophaguys never knew we were there. They'll have a surprise if they poke their heads into that room expecting the snakes to still be there! But I guess they also won't take the amphorae if they think it's still guarded (which are probably worth going back for, actually; those things earned us a fair chunk of cash).

We got the five we did rescue into sacks and flew back across to meet up with Darvin and Eidele, who'd gone to retrieve the flying ones that swarmed her (no sign of the icky necrotic one), I got my stuff back, Darvin took the snake-sacks and Lael Brighteyes' body (wow he's strong) and we all bid the tomb a very relieved goodbye. I did try lighting my speartip up when we got back to the entrance shaft, and the centipedes did scatter away from it just like I predicted. Guess they came out because of the dark after we took all the crystals! Something to remember if we stumble across any more.

Then it was off into town to make some money.

---

Our first order of business was obviously finding the snakes a good home. We poked around town until we found an exotic animal merchant; an Anglian halfling called Peter Godfrey. He had his hair combed back in one of those greasy-looking styles and a, what's it called... cravat? Like Eidele's silk scarf, but tied differently. It was very fancy, whatever it was. And he was wearing it even in this desert heat, which, I'm going to be honest here, is pretty punishing for people who aren't resistant to fire and grew up in a cold mountaintop monastery. Anyway, there was a little bit of an accident after he demanded proof that the snakes could do magic, but Eidele smoothed it over and he gave us a lot of money for them all. I'm already halfway to getting something with enough oomph to use as fuel, and it's only been two days! And we got him to promise he'd take care of all the snakes, too. If he doesn't, I'll smack him one and rescue them again.

What my snake-besotted girlfriend is leaving out is that the 'accident' was her failing to tell them apart, trying to pick out the levitating one to demonstrate their powers and 'accidentally' rousing the one from the box she hadn't charmed, which promptly nailed Godfrey dead-centre with a paralytic ray that almost dropped him on the spot. He was not happy. I had to point out he'd asked for a demonstration and we'd given him one, as well as hinting we were more than willing to go find another trader, before he sucked it up and shelled out 560gp for the lot.

I'd say 'thankfully, they're his problem now and we can forget all about them', but something tells me Ange is going to insist on more mercy missions for any other 'innocent animals' we find. And in fairness, more than two hundred gold apiece for hauling some unconscious beasts out of a tomb is good money. We'll probably do business with him again, allowing Ange to visit her oh-so-adorable little friends.

Ugh, it's annoying when she's all thoughtful when I'm trying to be grumpy at her for having it so easy in this heat. We sold off the amphorae for another 300 gold, but Darvin was starting to have trouble by that point. His wounds hadn't recovered at all - I think it was that necrotic snake's bite, or maybe something the shaman did. I tried to heal him while Necria watched, and she said it was like healing magic thought he was already dead, so his wounds weren't healing for the same reason you can't fix up a corpse. Scary! I told him to come get fixed at the little Sarenite temple on the east side of town, and Necria wanted him to go to Selûne's (which, I just want to point out: healing is literally one of Sarenrae's major domains; she's even called 治愈之光; Selûne is more prophecy and astrology and beauty and navigating and stuff. So I was right. Just putting that out there and making it clear.)

But in the end it didn't matter because he marched off to a chapel of Tempus instead. Tempus! The war god! He didn't even ask them to heal him, he was just like "make this stop interfering in me killing stuff", and they did this creepy ritual where they made cuts on his arms to 'bleed the weakness out' and chanted about him spilling blood in the red god's name and.... eugh. I was willing to help pay for it even so, but he made Necria pay for the whole thing because he got hurt in her employ and it's apparently in their contract or something.

Seriously though; Tempus. I get why he's a god; wars happen and you gotta acknowledge the divinity who rules over them, but what kind of person dedicates part of their life to someone like that?

Bleh.

Eidele remembered the little snake she'd pocketed at this point and gave him to me. He's such a cutie! Very small, he reaches from my fingertips to about four fingers past my wrist; eight inches or so at a guess. His scales are dull and a pretty, dappled grey-white that would probably look almost silvery if he was shinier. And his little nose! It just cries out for booping! (The harmless kind of booping, not the punchy kind of bopping). He's odd, though. Very passive for a snake; he doesn't make any effort to get away when handled, even when it's Eidele holding him. He goes rigid for a bit just after you pick him up, too (and then relaxes again and curls around your wrist like a bracelet, which is just the cutest!) I asked Necria to take a look at him and she said he was a little bit magical; something to do with illusions. So I took him along to Oghma's temple and asked a priest to find out what he could - and apparently his scales have a spell patterned into them! An invisibility spell! They don't know how to get him to cast it, though.

So here's my theory. I think he's a wand. A living wand; how cool is that?! If I bond with him, maybe I can start turning Eidele or myself invisible! Though don't wands sometimes crumble to ash if you drain all the magic in them? That'd mean he'd die if I used him too much! I'll have to be careful and keep track of how he's feeling. And also work out what command word makes him cast - probably something in Draconic? Definitely the best find of the day, in my opinion.

Eidele argued that since I got Dizzy (short for 'Disappeary') and Darvin got the mace and javelins, she should get all the money from the jewellery she stole (she carefully left out that Necria didn't get anything, but Necria isn't here for money anyway and didn't seem to mind - though she did insist it would work both ways if anyone else got unique stuff). So we went looking for somewhere to sell them and the knives, and found this lovely little Anglian lady from the University of Cuthbria called Helen Rohesia. She's here on a sort of semi-officially-unofficial expedition from her university - her field is ancient Khemetian history with a speciality in their diet and farming and cooking techniques, so she was in the area already and diverted here when she heard about the tomb opening up. She's so nice! She even gave us heart candies and baked treats that used ancient Khemetian recipes she'd reconstructed! (They were yummy.) I told her all about Sweetheart and the snurkeys and my guess about it being an underground complex where people lived which relied on magically produced food and she was like "young lady, I only wish my students were as bright and inquisitive as you" and told me to keep an eye out for any more evidence down there.

I'm just going to point out that this tomb hasn't even been uncovered for a tenday yet and already there are three Anglian groups here; Thunderworker, Godfrey and Rohesia. Is anybody surprised that the islanders are the ones who showed up to a prospective payday first?

Eidele is being mean, but she liked Helen too, I could tell. She sold her all the jewellery (including the bracelets she gave me) for a hundred gold or so, as well as four of the knives, and when Helen was like "you can't keep two of them to stab people with; those are historical artefacts!" she agreed to pass them over too as soon as she found better ones with hardly any fuss. Helen isn't really interested in weapons, but any future cultural stuff like amphorae or those meat pots or wall-rubbings will go to her. Though she only has so many funds available, so we might have to accept some credit from her until she can get a message back to Cuthbria asking for a bigger grant (university lingo for money given to an expedition to pay for everything!)

Definitely seeing her again, if only to enjoy talking to an actual historian who's just as curious about this place as I am.

Right after getting the money from Helen, though? Eidele went off into a Valoisienne jeweller's for, like, half an hour, haggling really fiercely. And she came out with new jewellery for me! A whole set! The barbells for my tongue and belly are nice little gold balls, and my bridge piercing is the same; simple and unobtrusive in gold, but she also got me these gorgeous yellow topaz studs for my ears, and a gold ear cuff shaped like a snake to contrast my silver feather one, and a golden snake bracelet to match Dizzy (I actually think those last two might have been pulled out of the tombs, though they're clearly made for humans - there are others entrances that've been unearthed, some of which are getting really popular and crowded because they're on land. Which is why we're going to keep using the one out in the river with the rickety gantry going up to it; it puts prospectors off.)

Eidele wouldn't tell me exactly how much she spent on all these, but if I know jewellery (which I do), this probably cost her something like half the gold she got from Helen. All just to cheer me up after the lizardfolk! I wanted to jump on her right there and cover her with kisses, but she got all shy and gave me the not-now sign and pretended she didn't do it just because she loves me and wants me to be happy.

It's just so we have a high-value fallback if our funds run low again. You can't steal piercings like you can a coinpurse. Remember Rui Farise? All our money going missing in that con shack of an inn? Having 50 gold's worth of jewellery to sell off saved our asses back there. This is practicality, not sentimentality. I'm not putting holes in myself just for a financial contingency, but Ange likes doing it regardless, so she might as well wear something expensive enough to be useful in a pinch.

Yeah, you can decide how believable you find that. Necria was curious about what the monks thought of me having jewellery and decorations and how I got into it in the first place. But you remember all that! So no need to go over it again!

If there's one unambiguous positive to her proclivity for poking bits of gold through herself, it's the hilarious expressions she makes whenever someone asks about how she got started. They never stop being funny.

ANYWAY, our last stop - before dinner, which Necria paid for at a nice Reutish res-tent-aurant - was a florist. Botanist? Apothecary? I dunno, she was a huuuuuuuuge goliath called Alfhild who wasn't very talkative and had a tent full of desert plants. But she had a look at the samples Necria took - I asked for one of each type and I've got them pressed in the Khemetian history tome we picked up in Starhaven - and brought out some fossil plant imprints and said it looked like the ones down in the tomb diverged from a bunch of now-extinct flora in this region something like five or even ten thousand years ago!

I'm gonna have a lot of thoughts about how old that means this tomb is, but they can come later after I've had some time to reflect and meditate and think.

We tried to get Lael Brighteyes revived as well, but we ran into a bit of a snag with that and had to give up on it until tomorrow morning.

Specifically, we ran into the snag that the pea-brained moron didn't think to write down which temple he put down a revival fee at. We went through half a dozen that all, without exception, assumed he was a member of our group and that we could be argued into paying for him ourselves instead of finding the place he'd put down a deposit. Eventually I pointed out that he couldn't possibly have been dead longer than eight days and so another one wouldn't put him past the tenday limit for revival. We'll go asking around after a good night's sleep, without the conspicuous corpse-in-a-sack putting gold coins in all the clerics' eyes, and charge him an extra 50gp for the hassle. Maybe smack him, too. For now he's outside the tent where he'll keep and won't make Maegan start yelling about cleanliness and hygiene and whatever else she can think of to scold us over.

You know, like Eidele says, it's only been seven or eight days since the tomb got discovered, but both bodies we found down there were almost skeletal. I wonder if there's some kind of magic down that speeds up decay? If it all got turned into a big tomb complex, that'd make sense, right? It might even explain that icky necrotic snake! And Darvin's wounds not healing! If we kill anything else down there, we should leave the body in place overnight and see what happens. Also, note to self: ask Helen about ancient Khemetian burial customs. She might know something.

I went flying before bed, and saw Necria up in the sky too, looking up at the moon and praying. I didn't go over to her, though. Maybe tomorrow. It didn't leave me as happy as it usually does, but it helped settle my heart enough that I think I can get to sleep now. And tomorrow... I guess we'll be going back into the tomb.

I hope you visit tonight. I feel like I could really use some guidance right now.

~Angèle
- Eidele

(If she doesn't wake up looking happy and content again, I'm hunting you down and setting you on fire. She can't go back into that tomb without a rationale for why she can fight whatever we find in there. You're meant to be her teacher. Teach.)

 

[Walker]

N.S. Log - Delve 2, Second Phase

D2 (cont):

Interruption not hostile; pair of looters – human fighter, light armor, rapier & shield (very stereotypical, no creativity) and elf wizard, excessively blue/green robes, arcane runework, spectacles, generally twiglike (impressively, even more stereotypical). A. of course immediately leapt to defend SNAKE from adventurers, completely disregarding SNAKE most dangerous entity in room by significant margin.

Attempted to negotiate passage to further depths; E. claimed already plundered, clearly skeptical. Interjected to 'request' sum total of their knowledge of tomb, then allowed to pass without harm – further information without physical danger? Worth risk of reduced profit.

D. still suffering under effects of venom, incidentally – will need to keep eye on.

Discussed religion with A (recognize not relevant to documentation of delve, but beg reader's indulgence in occasional personal digression, considering evident benefit to remainder text). Reformist. Should, myself, be the same – own departure from Reutish orthodoxy, eventual settlement in Valois indicate same, yet discomfited by both her faith and willingness to believe the best.

Conversation aggressively summarized:

A: Oh, you're writing? That's so interesting! Is that Celestial? That's so neat! I'm writing to my teacher too! What're you writing about?

(When describing A. as brimming, overflowing, with excitement & good cheer, am not exaggerating.)

N (faithful [to Selune] narrator): Keeping documentation of this tomb, for use by further generations. Your Teacher?

A: Oh, yes, I've learned a lot from Teacher! I'm writing letters for them too! Who are your letters for?

N: I dedicated myself to the faith of Selune, Witness to Darkness, whose grace shines on those who strive in dark places and against dark forces. Have you chosen a faith, or does your monastery not require it of you?

A: Oh, well, I worship Akadi and Sarenrae and Oghma and Deneir each in turn,

N: And you divide your worship freely and recklessly among so many gods, to be pulled in turn among each of them to whoever's blessing would be most convenient?

A: It's not a question of convenience, is it though? It's just that each of them has given me so much in my life, and I can't help but be grateful to them for all for the things they oversee?

N: You don't fear the consequences of letting your faith and fealty be so freely scattered among so many domains, so many gods?

A: I worship them, but I also love them. I don't think it can be wrong to love someone.

Meanwhile, E. sorting through jewelry, reserved a few bracelets for A. then remanded remainder to party custody.

Am forced to consider own reaction to conversation with A. - clear Reformist, as am, yet reflexive distaste for polytheism. A. and E. ambitions prosaic, comprehensible; seeking to build "nest egg" (wing pun?) for safety, security – but what safety in war? Failure inevitable, yet – no reason not to try, perhaps?

Will pray on it.

Also, note to self - blackmail D. into contributing.


Have returned after delve. Not dangerous, but – emotional risk too great to continue, ultimately; A. compromised, E. compromised by A, have had disagreement with D.

A. also aasimar, suggestive in own right. For reference – aasimar similar to tieflings, but bloodline celestial rather than infernal; tieflings usually breed true, while aasimar require patron to access hereditary benefits. (Mesztel and Hammerhand hypothesize celestial influences already present in all sapient mortals, greater threshold of supernal influence needed for supernatural effects.) References to Teacher therefore likely about daeva responsible for awakened bloodline. In some sense, celestial sanction comforting – but pressure, consequences continue to mount.

Tomb occupied. Of course. Large, habitable structure, furnished with conveniences; life finds a home. Lizardfolk, developed society, disinclined to neighborliness.

First discovered upon approach of voices from above, at which point moved to conceal selves behind nearby door – and when opened, found occupied by pair of spear-bearing lizardmen. Meanwhile, several more dropped from upper layer behind us, little pretense of stealth.

Layout: trapezoidal platform, flanked by stairs; two centrally located metallic pillars surrounded by larger counters, each covered in assorted alchemical solutions. Shorter side leads to SNAKE lake, larger has door to (presumably) further encampment.

A. only fluent speaker of Draconic, so all communication relayed through her; naturally, immediately attempted to befriend new snake-like entities. Was informed tomb considered sacred ground, immediate demand to leave or die, discarding all ill-gotten gains.

Unsurprisingly, E. not receptive, D. likewise; both refused in Common, prompting visible reactions from lizardmen. Simultaneously, voices above revealed another gang (gaggle? group?) lizardmen, including shaman and warrior, both markedly larger than peers. Approached, reiterated previous sentiments. Despite mounting tension on all sides, A. continued to try to negotiate; almost seemed successful momentarily.

Then – violence.

Not sure who initiated, or why, but D. and warrior moved almost at once, both with same intent, hunting casters – D. sprinted towards shaman, smashing through counter around metallic pillar, as warrior lunged for A. using explosive flail, attempting to catch myself, A. and E. simultaneously. Leapt into air, called on Grace of Goddess, as E. faded back to fire support w/crossbow. D. carved into shaman while remainder distracted, and E. took advantage, while self employed sacred flame, but A. not willing to telling strikes, actively avoiding harm. Continued to hold, but stalemated quickly.

Then A. exploded.

Not metaphor.

Two wings of golden light unfurled from her shoulders with incandescent glory, and for a moment I felt sunlight and warmth on my skin even in these stygian depths, as the fury of her manifest soul drove the lizardmen around her staggering backwards, scorched and shaken. Eidele, of course, gazed drunkenly at her like she'd had every thought but Angèle emptied out of her head, and even I was struck silent by her revealed radiance. I'm not sure about Darvin's reaction, but I'll ask.

(Beg indulgence for purpleness, necessary for effect.)

Add. from D: 증인, 영원한 불꽃, 그녀의 영원한 영혼 자체의 분노가 황금빛 영광으로 나타납니다. 특히 날카로운 바위와 거의 같은 용도로 사용되기 때문에 보라.

(Trans, appx.: Witness, the flame eternal, the very fury of her eternal soul itself, manifested in golden glory. Behold, as it is put to much the same use as a particularly sharp rock.)
D. remarkably poetic, even in/for Infernal. Also, rather cynical, surprising none.

A moment's pause – then violence resumed, intensity heightened.

Champion continued to flail at us, while lizardmen flung javelins from afar; E. responded with crossbow bolts, but A. not only struggled to do harm, but more than once reflexively intercepted E.'s shots w/soul-wings, hesitant to do necessary violence. Meanwhile (from brief glances) D. pinned formation of spearmen (spear-lizards?) against shaman, forcing them to engage or expose caster. Light of Selune continued to grace us, providing succor against wounds, but continued to be whittled down under sheer weight of fire. Was forced to call on Selune's darkness as well, stripping injured foes of life.

Then, of desperation, or sensing opportunity, E. stowed crossbow, drew daggers, lunged – A. transformation remarkable with spouse in imminent danger; sharp, disabling strikes to joints, flurry of blows with butt of spear, dropping one and driving warrior back. D. simultaneously driving group so hard that felt need to step back, open line of fire for shaman's larger cast; mistake, as freedom of movement allowed D. to pull javelin and impale shaman down same new avenue. Death of shaman drove warrior to frenzy, but with momentum broken, could not compensate wavering morale – warrior landed telling blow to A. and E. promptly eviscerated him – twice; at which point own necrotic spell seemed more coup-de-grace than actual contribution. With warrior felled, turned to assist D. though hardly needed it, considering ease with which handling four spearmen.

A. closed quickly, but continued to try for nonlethal strikes, again blocking E.'s shots, now perhaps deliberate, and E. resorted again to melee. Two more fell, A. knocked third unconscious, and D. halved fourth. Oddly, small snake escaped from torso of deceased enemy, acquired by and stored by E. but will need further investigation. Thought violence ended, released combat focus, then – D. spun, axed through captive. Execution obviously lethal.

To shame, reacted poorly – immediately turned on D. demanding explanation. Received it as well – asserted his responsibility to my protection, not that of unconscious captive; too much risk in 'ill-considered endeavor' already. Cannot gainsay him – yet, are we not called to be better? Civilization, humanity, so easily discarded beyond the bounds of our lands? D. little regard for such things, known, but consequences of his approach to life also self-evident.

Turned away before any truly unforgivable commentary on either part. Overheard simultaneous argument between E. and A. as well, discussing A.'s hesitance to allow lizardmen to come to harm, regret at invading their sacred places. Have already considered and accepted necessity of it, but still not pleased with own actions, here – familiar with pain of losing home, history, loved ones. Necessary – a lesser evil to prevent a greater one. E. went from condemning to cajoling, eventually, seemingly reconciled, and A. requested temporary cessation of delve.

Yet again, reacted poorly, trying to push for further exploration in interests of seeking target. When opposed, turned to seek Augury, but answer already clear for me to see – all too emotionally compromised to continue in combat-effective fashion, too risky under current conditions. What good knowledge when not used?

Conceded. D. started on looting corpses, while A. turned to cuddle SNAKE, attempting to comfort it, then suggested we collect, extract spell-serpents and sell them to merchant; E. mounted token protest, but ceded point unusually quickly.

E. and D. also apparently had meaningful conversation, given E.'s sudden willingness to address D. directly instead of through me, occasional glances, dramatic pauses – have asked both, but D. claims simply pointed out obvious to her, nothing significant, while E. asserts was simply given something to think about that prompted some reflection.

I simply happened to, in the course of our conversation, remind her that the two of us are employed under very different terms - my separation from you will not involve legal proceedings.

Unnecessary laconics rather irritating, A.'s communicativeness much appreciated in contrast.

Original plan to pile and burn bodies, but when poor ventilation highlighted, elected instead to bind and sink into SNAKE pond; something will eat them.

Offered prayer to Selune beforehand; Semuanya not within my purview, probably would not care, and kind of a dick regardless. Don't know what good it'll do them, but felt better about it, at least.

E. and D. continued to loot bodies, while A. and self – in contravention of all conventional wisdom against splitting parties – flew across SNAKE's puddle to southern rooms; was forced to carry her due to lack of energy to maintain wings. During flight, conversed with her, attempted to offer reassurance – reminded her that she had a home also she was building, and that the home of her dreams was no less valuable than the home of this tribe; both sides fighting for the same reasons.

Party-split song now stuck in head. Mistake.

Landed outside rooms and peered in to see spell-serpents mostly quiescent. In interest of expedience, stood outside room and hammered sleep spells until all unconscious, then A. used ki-point manipulation? to render all more permanently insensate (non-lethally). Had to leave one behind, in stasis box, as divine energy was growing beyond ability to channel safely. Stuffed remainder into sacks and flew back, avoiding SNAKE's peckish gaze and hungry stares of Sarcophaguys (term coined by A.), rejoining E. and D. safely, who had during interim returned to previous arboreal room, collected small swarm of flying snakes in another sack (why does D. have so many sacks? Will answer reassure me or give more cause for concern?) in hopes of further mercantilism. Also collected corpse of Lael Brighteyes, to in theory be resurrected at temple.

Upon return, prioritized snake disposal and D. repair, noting A.'s attempt at healing failed as if channeling holy energy into corpse, simply dissipated without lingering; snakes sold to merchant (Peter Godfrey) w/specialty in animal trade, including entertaining interlude where merchant insisted on demonstration of magic, received firsthand as paralysis curse. Remaining weaponry, jewelry, sold to archaeologist, Helen Rohesia, interested in studying historical Khemeti artifacts – nearly scolded E. for considering using priceless historical relics as implements of violence, then offered rest of us pastries. Cannot but respect one so bravely dedicated to pursuit of knowledge and preservation of the past. Cookies also tasty. Plant clippings identified by botanist, Alfhild (goliath, expectedly titanic), as divergent lineage of extant plants, no particular value known. Passed some samples for A. to press and to add to both records; always good to have another potential archivist even if too fond of less-impressive celestial body.

Brief interlude; E. insisted on detour to jewelry shop, purchased variety of assorted ornamentation for A. supposedly as saleable currency if needed for rapid departure always to be kept on self. Am frankly somewhat offended that E. expected would not recognize as blatant attempt to bribe way back into wife's good graces; considering spent half-hour haggling for items most appealing to spouse while A. steadily reddened, appears likely to succeed. Also retained tiny snake, apparently artifact, attached to A., goes rigid when worn, scales form spell pattern for invisibility. Named "Dizzy" short for Disappeary; apparently SNAKE also now named "Sweetheart" – should perhaps require naming by committee, unless wish to be searching Tomb of Shiny Stuff and Sweet Snakes That Would Totally Never Hurt Anyone Ever, Why Are You So Mean To Them.

A. remarkably fond of piercings; should remind D. to acquire Earrings of Message for all. (Asked her why; answer mostly blushing and oblique references to monkish disapproval and "someone cool.")

Rather than turn to actual deities of healing, D. insisted on turning to church of Tempus for respite from curse, and (not unjustly) expected me to fund it. Tempus' rites disturbing & uncivilized, of course; Selune might require ritual purification, fasting, confession and scouring under moonlight – Tempus required ritual bloodletting, by both supplicant and priest, with anointed weapon, oath of violence to Tempus, sanctifying next combat to Him, retelling of warlike deeds during which curse suffered (D. surprisingly poetic, disturbingly creative).

Found another problem. L.B. failed to specify particular temple to provide resurrection; by process of elimination, have confirmed not Tempus, Selune, but will have to continue searching – fully intend to charge for inconvenience.

On bright side, have successfully bullied D. into sharing own thoughts on enemies faced; hopefully will be drawn into further contributions.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would much prefer to refrain from sharing with even a trusted reader my observations on our delving experiences; however, my ostensibly heroic employer has seen fit to blackmail me by insisting that her documentation must contain a record of our enemies for thoroughness' sake, and if I cannot be expected to provide my insight on the subject, she will request it from Angèle; thus, woefully, I am forced to lay bare my insights for any passing inquirer rather than have my good name besmirched. Therefore, it is my most insincere pleasure to present to you, in the addenda of this sordid tale: Darvin's Bestiary.

For personal reasons, tend to fly when praying at night, feels closer to Selune, The Maiden Whose Shadow Fled From Her. Tonight, saw A. on wing, radiance unmistakeable, carrying something. Only airborne for a minute, but made good time to camp outskirts. Should perhaps ask, but has earned some trust, I think, and do not expect deliberate malice from her.

Besides, height of hypocrisy to accuse others of keeping secrets.

Total income 440gp, less 105gp for expenses; 335gp combined with saved 387gp is 722gp stored.

 

[Walker]

Threats (Potential & Actual)
Currently Not Hostile

Darvin, why exactly an entire section about each of our strengths and weaknesses, along with detailed tactical plan to knock out/kill us???
Professional courtesy.
This makes twice in one day now that I actually have to agree with Darvin. Some decent tactical assessments will be useful. However, rather than just considering what needs to happen if one or more of us get taken over by some asshole with mind-influencing magic, I'm going to make the case to put some thought into mutual support and team formations.

Darvin (Pseudonym): Half-elf, usually with plate and shield, wielding battleaxe or warhammer

• Strengths: Heavily armored, melee specialist, tactical coordinator, very resilient
• Vulnerabilities: No esoterics, average movement, slowed by armor, limited range options
• Tactics:
• Nonlethal: Should the need for my incapacitation arise, the most efficient tactic will be to simply not engage – every other member of this sorry band is capable of outpacing me. If required by circumstance to face me in head-on clash, it would be advisable to take advantage of my limited mobility and ranged attacks to control my movement and refrain from facing me directly, instead kiting me from a distance until I am no longer able to continue fighting. Incapacitating or control spells may also be an option, but their unreliable nature means that they should remain a last resort rather than an immediate reflex.
• Lethal: In case of my elimination, a direct confrontation is again inadvisable; ideally, I should be engaged while at rest and without my arms or armor, preferably by the rogue and the monk simultaneously. Otherwise, spells of an immediately lethal nature or which prevent me from being able to engage in melee in my preferred manner, as well as kiting me from a distance will both be effective. Heat Metal, particularly, will prove effective. Swarming me with a group of lesser combatants will simply result in my using them as shields, but a single champion may be able to pin me in place for others to target. Attempting to use the remainder of the party as hostages against me will probably have little effect.

Necria Starwatcher: Tiefling, winged, bearing symbols of Selune

• Strengths: Strong mobility esp. vertical, healing support, esoterics (spellcasting)
• Vulnerabilities: Limited melee options, few direct damage spells
• Tactics:
• Nonlethal: My erstwhile employer is perhaps one of the poorest options to need to incapacitate; her mobility reduces the effect of most control spells, and her support abilities mean that ignoring her to target other enemies makes for a difficult fight. Priority should be given to spells which can temporarily separate or stall her, allowing for any other entities to be eliminated before simply pinning her in melee. Ideally, nonlethal engagement against her will not be necessary.
• Lethal: Eliminating her is a simpler prospect; she should be given high priority as a target, and engaged with lethal spells if possible, or pinned in melee – if grappled, she will struggle to break free, and can be locked down for an alpha strike or incapacitating attacks, to be eliminated later after her allies are dealt with. Attempting to target her by surprise is difficult, but will prove very helpful if successful, as many of her support spells take several seconds to cast. Her possession of an Earring of Message means that any such attempt will either need to succeed quickly or account for the imminent presence of several well-armed, well-trained, very violent adventurers. Using me as a hostage probably will not phase her, but her growing fondness for both the rogue and monk, Angèle particularly, mean that either of them may be used against her.

Angèle Bright: Human Aasimar, monk vestments, spear and throwing darts, proficient with bare fists & glowing spiritual wings

• Strengths: High mobility, strong melee damage output, sociable, agile with good reflexes
• Vulnerabilities: Emotional, little resilience, limited ranged options, active ki expenditure
• Tactics:
• Nonlethal: Incapacitating the monk is difficult, particularly without causing her undue harm – however, rendering her unable to inflict harm is much easier, either by taking advantage of her emotional attachments, or by simply forcing her to engage harder opponents; while her flight and wings give her an advantage in reach and mobility, she struggles to trade hits against opponents who can survive her (admittedly formidable) flurries of attacks. Control spells struggle against her, but any that do land will have an outsized effect in preventing her from responding properly.
• Lethal: Eliminating her is simple, but very expensive. Monks are difficult to surprise, move quickly, can deflect most projectiles and evade most spells, and shake off the ones which do land surprisingly easily. As such, the most effective way to kill a monk is simply to pin them against something they must protect, and then to grind them down with a small number of high-value elites; she strikes quickly enough to fell a swarm that would surround her, but an enemy who can shrug off her first attack and then strike back with equal force is a definite threat to her. Furthermore, of all the party, she is most vulnerable to emotional manipulation and the most likely to cooperate with a hostage-taker if she believes the lives of her associates or of innocents are at risk, particularly her partner.

Eidele Aquibel: Tiefling, horned, light armor and blades, crossbow

• Strengths: Versatile, options at range or in melee, high damage output very mobile, wide skillset
• Vulnerabilities: Less robust, depends on allies for opportunities, no esoterics
• Tactics:
• Nonlethal: Incapacitation is difficult, due to both high mobility and strong damage output; if working with allies, likely to carve down single targets with rapid efficiency; distance also no guarantee of safety, considering armaments. Control spells probably not effective. Melee tarpit with low-value disposables will likely slow her and force her to overkill weaker enemies, allowing her to be left as a last target to be whittled down at leisure.
• Lethal: Elimination will be easier, if she can be taken by surprise – if not, she may slip away and re-engage on her terms. Attempting to hold her partner hostage will likely backfire, due to both their competence and her particular willingness to violent revenge, but Angèle's presence may be used to pin her in an unfavorable encounter from which she would otherwise disengage. Swarm tactics will again prove effective at curtailing her mobility and capacity to control the flow of the encounter, and she does not have the resilience or esoteric abilities that make a few disposable hirelings a liability otherwise. Bring sledgehammers.

Complications:

• Giant Snake (SNAKE) (Sweetheart!):
• A Gargantuan Snake, Colloquially Known As Either SNAKE Or Sweetheart:
  
  • Strengths: Size, resilience, brute force
  • Vulnerabilities: Magic, mental effects, restricted spaces
  • Priority: Not Hostile (Melee: Low/Caster: High)
  • Tactics: The serpent's sheer size indicates a certain amount of magibiological adaptation, as does a diet atypical of most snakes, both in terms of items and of size – as if the other hodgepodge of mystic reptiles was not indicator enough. As such, while it is possessed of the strength and resilience common to most other enhanced animals, it is also likely to demonstrate a certain resistance to supernatural effects no matter their source. If combat becomes necessary, priority should be placed on spells which either produce indirect effects, or which do not rely on physical harm to incapacitate or kill, particularly those which are capable of affecting the mind; sheer bulk offers it a certain corporeal endurance, but its mind remains that of an animal, and is likely to be as easily shaped or shattered as most other beasts, albeit aided by its innate thaumaturgical capacities. Melee against the creature is self-evidently unwise, but will be necessary in preventing it from reaching casters until they are able to target it effectively, in which case a priority should be placed on distracting it and obstructing its movement, as well as targeting weak points or sensitive locations which may have an outsized effect on its capacity and willingness for violence, such as the eyes, nostrils, thermoreceptors, or inside the mouth. In case of combat, there is a very high likelihood that Angèle will attempt to intervene on the side of the snake, and Eidele may be forced to stalemate her while others face the beast. The typical countermeasures against her will still apply, although there is a significant chance she will seek revenge afterwards. Alternatively, if some other group of adventurers attempts to attack it, we will be required to intervene on behalf of the animal, in which case we may treat it as a particularly notable tank, which will hopefully remember not to crush or eat us - the novelty of being the side with the giant monster will at least be appreciated.
    
• Snurkeys:
  
  • Strengths: Numbers, Tasting Bad
  • Vulnerabilities: Violence, Giant Snakes, Being Eaten
  • Priority: N/A
  • Tactics: Should you happen to require my expert tactical insight against this foe, I regret to inform you that even my brilliance will fail to avail you against so terrible and implacable a foe, and your wisest course of action is to fall supine and pray for mercy, that the remainder of us may be spared your presence.
    Regrettably inedible, on account of awful taste - rather like charcoal and rotted fruit, with bitter accents

Enemies

Lizardfolk: As a rule, these reptilian humanoids are not prone to complex machinery or works of high arcane esotericism, but their average spearman is a loyal and competent warrior with steady morale, their performance against me notwithstanding, and their shamans are capable of spells of remarkable potency, either to bolster their allies or hamper their enemies. Their champions are difficult to injure, with strong scales and armor, but are not skilled on the attack. They rarely deal with warmbloods in good faith, but tend to hold to established, long-standing agreements. Expect poison, ambushes, attempts to divide and conquer, and cunning use of simple tools and spells. They very rarely work alone, but the ones that do are dangerous.

• Spearmen
  
  • Strengths: Numbers, adequate damage, support from shamans/champions
  • Vulnerabilities: Individually weak, vulnerable to non-targeted or area-of-effect spells
  • Priority: Low
  • Tactics: A single spearlizard is not a threat, but in groups and supported by their shamans, they become significantly more dangerous. Their weapons are simple, but effective, although they lack the drill that mark many professional fighting forces. Their spears and javelins struggle to inflict serious harm, but the whims of war are fickle, and stayed only by wisdom and caution. Alone, pin and duel them. In groups, throw area-of-effect spells or force them to engage on your terms by drawing them off or threatening something they must protect; holy places, nurseries, or food stores.
    
• Warrior
  
  • Strengths: Remarkable resillience, caster support, frenzy
  • Vulnerabilities: Mediocre damage output, no ranged options, no chase
  • Priority: Medium
  • Tactics: At first glance, a warrior is difficult to kill and difficult to disable. The first is true, but irrelevant, and the last is false. Kill their shaman, and they will be driven to frenzy, and while this furious flurry of attacks is dangerous to any nearby, the simple solution of standing farther away often severely hampers their options. They also tend to struggle against a true heavy or large groups, but this one compensated for its difficulties with esoteric armaments (an exploding mace, allowing it to threaten everyone around it including itself), suggesting an ominous level of technological adaptation.
    
• Shaman
  
  • Strengths: Esoteric spells, armed support
  • Vulnerabilities: Poor physical combatant, struggles in melee
  • Priority: High
  • Tactics: Always kill the caster first. Shamans will attempt to hide behind their less valuable comrades, enhancing their champions and soldiers of the line to face danger in their place. Allowing them to do so and engaging on their terms is very unwise, and often fatal; bypass their lines by whatever means and kill the shaman first, which will harm the morale of their soldiers and drive them to fear or foolishness. If not possible, incapacitating them with control spells or simple mechanical obstacles will also buy time to hunt their comrades, although it is by no means a permanent solution.
    
• Champion
  
  • Strengths: High damage, resilience, poisoned weapon
  • Vulnerabilities: Melee-restricted, poor movement, can be swarmed
  • Priority: Medium
  • Tactics: The threat a champion poses is notably greater than that posed by a warrior, as demonstrated by the significantly more potent weapon it bears - as such, melee combat should be limited only to specialists. Its weapon appears to be coated in a toxin of some kind, capable of inducing unthinking range, necessitating that anyone engaging in melee directly be capable of withstanding an onslaught of attacks, as even a single strike may render disengagement impossible. Engagement should prioritize removing any allies capable of enhancement or hindrance effects, before tying them down with a single melee specialist, while ranged support whittles them down from a distance, or uses esoteric spells to reduce their capabilities and render them a non-threat. It remains a threat even in the absence of their allies, but allowing its allies to assist it makes a clean kill nigh-impossible.

Beasts: Most adventurers view beasts as simple, weak enemies, capable of posing no real threat to any serious combatant. This tends to end with an unpleasant demise at the hands of a magically-enhanced animal with a grudge against adventurers. Animals of any kind spend their days in a brutal struggle for survival which matches any dungeon a party might face, and disregarding them as harmless is an invitation for a disproof. Instead, face them as you would any opponent without a serious stake in the fight – in mortal combat, they may match you blow for blow, but rare indeed is the creature which insists on a fight to the death when it is not necessary.

• Giant Frog, Magical:
  
  • Strengths: Spell-like ability, quick movement, semi-acquatic
  • Vulnerabilities: Desiccants, subvertable, low morale/coordination
  • Priority: Melee: Low/Ranged: High
  • Tactics: These oversized frogs – and morphologically, they are frogs, not toads – are possessed of surprising arcane abilities, a remarkable dexterity and fluidity of movement, and the intelligence of a normal-sized frog. Alone, or in groups with others of their kind, they pose little challenge to even an unprepared adventurer, and can be isolated and cut down with relative ease. It is only in the company of others capable of giving them direction and unity that they become anything resembling a true threat. Their arcane abilities may prove a surprise upon the first encounter, but any competent party can make preparations against the possibility of induced sleep or charm effects, and the brevity of the former and the lack of scope of the latter render them both less dangerous than they would immediately seem.
    
• Metallic Crocodile:
  How doth the little crocodile/Improve his shining tail/And pour the waters of the Nile/On every golden scale!
  How cheerfully he seems to grin,/How neatly spreads his claws,/And welcomes little fishes in/With gently smiling jaws!
  
  • Strengths: Armored hide, aquatic advantage, grappling
  • Vulnerabilities: No coordination, easily pinned, no esoterics
  • Priority: N/A (Operate singly/packs)
  • Tactics: These beasts demonstrate a respectable understanding of ambush tactics which some adventurers would be well-advised to emulate - they seem to lurk in larger bodies of water, waiting for an isolated target to present itself, before latching on and dragging said target underwater, an environment which advantages them, and where its allies will be unable to assist it. Their armored hide also protects them well against physical attacks, rendering direct combat a struggle, especially while fending off a devouring beast attached to one limb. As such, moving in groups remains a priority, and no source of water should be approached without caution. Local prey animals also seem sensitive to their presence, and unusual behavior on their part should be noted. In direct combat, any thaumaturgy not reliant on direct physical attack seems effective, as does sheer brute force - the former being obviously preferable in the interests of preserving and harvesting the animal's hide.
    Will record taste if opportunity arises. The taste, unfortunately, is rather a disappointment, rather akin to chewing on metal much like that of their hides, Necria hypothesizes that the metals which accumulate to form their inconveniently protective natural armor also leech into their musculature and further physiognomy over time, which means that eating them may result in long-term heavy metal bioaccumulation and a slow poisoned death by degrees.
    
• Spider, Giant:
  
  • Strengths: Poison, dexterous movement, web-based area control
  • Vulnerabilities: Poor range, low morale,ambush-dependent
  • Priority: Melee: Medium/Ranged: High
  • Tactics: A stark demonstration of the lethality of which even the lowest animals are capable, these arachnids allowed us to pass their webs before ambushing us from behind while we were focused upon the discovery of an unusually intact cache of valuables; within seconds, they had entrapped us all within thrown webs and begun to feed. One struck our cleric near-lethally, almost downing her, and the other leapt upon the porter as he struggled free and fled, bringing him to death's door – without access to magical healing, at least one of us would likely have died there. However, once we were in open combat, they struggled to maintain the momentum with which they had begun the encounter and fell swiftly to fists, axe and crossbow bolt. As such, priority should be given to clearing them out of any environment in which they appear, to prevent them from taking advantage of an ambush, with melee combatants holding them in place to prevent them from reaching more vulnerable targets, while casters and other ranged attackers prioritize whittling them down as rapidly as possible; they are likely to attempt to flee after significant injury, but should not be allowed to do so if possible.

Undead: How does one kill what has already died? Quite easily, actually - the weaker ones are made from those with little enough ability for violence as is, and the stronger ones are those who were simply unable to manage the rigors of actual combat and died; it seems that having died before simply gives one more experience at dying again. The undead are dangerous, to be sure, but the fear they engender in the inexperienced and weak-hearted lends them a strength greater than that they actually possess. Lesser undead are often weak threats, better bypassed to eliminate their stronger masters, then vanquished with indirect methods, while greater undead are frequently possessed of major weaknesses which render them effectively impotent against a prepared opponent. Combat against them should always prioritze the necromancer responsible for their reanimation, followed by casters, then lesser and greater undead - oftentimes, the weak ones can be used as shields against the melee specialists. Attempts at negotiation with the undead invariably end in failure, as they insist on believing themselves superior to the living, despite their consistent failure to remain so. Expect necrotic damage and draining of physical or mental abilities, as well as a crippling vulnerability to radiant damage. The majority are weak, in mind, body, or soul, but a very few are risen again by choice, rather than forced - these are lethally dangerous, and to be faced with caution.

• Skeletons
  
  • Strengths: Unbreakable, low-investment, easily replaced
  • Vulnerabilities: Breakable, low damage, low resilience
  • Priority: Low
  • Tactics: Skeletons are commonly used by necromancers in tarpits, slowing high-value targets and preventing them from engaging while targeting their more vulnerable allies first. Do not prioritize engaging the skeletons until their support has been dealt with, whether this means a higher-tier undead or a particularly ambitious necromancer. A lone skeleton is barely a threat, but in swarms, they can be surprisingly dangerous if treated lightly, and should be met with holy radiance, area-of-effect attacks, or drawn into tight spaces which limit their engagement – their lack of intelligence without intelligent direction makes them easy to deceive and destroy.
    
• Krugan Battlehammer: Dwarf necromancer, prone to targeting vulnerable-seeming adventurers
  
  • Strengths: Assorted skeletons, dwarven resilience
  • Vulnerabilities: Lack of melee skill, no stronger undead
  • Priority: High
  • Tactics: We have dealt Battlehammer not only an injury, but an insult, and he is sure to seek to repay us in equal measure – and a dwarf who perceives dishonor will offer repayment only in death. When he attacks us, and he will, we should disregard his skeletal minions and prioritize his death, even at risk of taking injuries ourselves; the rogue and the cleric will find their ranged abilities to be of use here, and Turn Undead will prove its worth. I question whether Battlehammer truly bears the name, frankly; though my knowledge of the clan is primarily from an antagonistic perspective, I am led to believe that they prioritize fighters and clerics in their combatants, and the violation of their ancestral spirits which necromancers commit is considered nigh-anathema.

 

[Aleph]

Aquille-Bellegrade Monastery

Sitting on the border between Salcurne, Valois and Tesar border in the highest of the three major mountain passes into Salcurne, the monastery is dedicated to the study of the astral plane, astral creatures and the astral self. As a religious institution, it primarily honours Oghma, Lord of Knowledge; greater god of the creative spark; inspiration, invention, knowledge and thought, and Deneir, the First Scribe; lesser god of recorded knowledge; art, cartography, glyphs, images, literature and scholars.

As a secular institution, the monastery is the main repository on the continent of astral lore and arcana, boasting an extensive library and a long tradition of studying the esoteric ways of the soul. Its white-robed members are often called on for assistance in fighting aberrations that hail from beyond the known planes, spectral or ephemeral apparitions that mundane steel and fire find no purchase on, or complex maladies that defy the attentions of those versed only in physical ailments.

Approximately half of the brothers and sisters of Aquille-Bellegrade are monks (and nuns) who follow the Way of the Astral Self. Of the remainder, most are Knowledge Domain Clerics or Scribe Order Wizards, with the remainder being an eclectic mishmash drawn to the monastery for their own reasons: one or two Divine Soul Sorcerers, a few Paladins who have taken the Oath of the Watcher, a handful of Bards who follow the School of Lore, etcetera.

Acolytes of the monastery are more numerous, but have not yet learned to wield mystical power of their own, and do not have class levels. They have proficiency with Calligrapher's Supplies and two of Arcana, History and Religion.

Members of the monastery must be within one alignment of Lawful Good, and observe the following restrictions:

• Vestments must always be worn (a stole and embroidered over-robe or jacket bearing the symbol of the monastery, coloured according to the member's chosen role over simple clothes of white or pale grey) to display one's allegiance and origin as a brother or sister of Aquille-Bellegrade.
• Meat may be eaten with no more than one meal each week, except when recovering from severe injury, in which case it may be eaten with one meal each day.
• Complete abstenance from alcohol and other recreational drugs is mandatory, and displays of overt wealth are strongly discouraged, as are the trappings of indulgence and luxury.
• All brothers and sisters must contribute to the gathering, recording and preservation of knowledge (generally through the writing or copying of religious and arcane texts; a monk or nun should always have a project they are working on). They must oppose the destruction of knowledge wherever possible, and teach any who ask it of them without price or prejudice.
• Aquille-Bellegrade exists to study the astral plane and defend the Material Realm from the malice of astral predators. A brother or sister of the monastery will lay down their lives for this cause, should it come to pass.

---

Sister Angèle Bright is a nun of Aquille-Bellegrade in good standing who passed her apprenticeship as an acolyte and became a full nun at the age of seventeen; having spent a year in service there, she is currently travelling. Her partner, Eidele Aquibel, was dismissed as an acolyte at the age of fifteen but retained as a ward of the monastery until her departure with Sister Bright three years later.

 

[Jensaarai]

So the two players have two characters each?

Also, some interesting home rules. The Rest limitation is especially neat, and I'm also a fan of the simplified inventory management.

 

[Aleph]

"Axes, Frogs and Crocodiles" - Letter to Teacher from Angèle Bright
(written 30 Kythorn 1608 in the Tomb of Serpents)

Dear Teacher,

I'm adding this at the top above where I originally started this letter: because I want to get this out of the way first; I am totally fine. You don't need to worry! I went down for, like, five seconds, if that. Then two whole different people got me right back up. I was never in any real danger and even if I'd died I might've finally got to meet y ahaha ignore I wrote that it was just a joke don't tell Eidele she'd be really mad; like really really mad, like I really hope I scribbled that out hard enough mad.

Again, in short; I'm fine, it was scary, but I'm okay and we made new friends and everything's fine.

With that out of the way, back to the original start of this letter.

Another day, another delve! Whoo! So before re-entering the tomb-complex today, we went shopping around early this morning. Darvin insisted on me and Eidele both getting little magical Message-sending items so we can communicate silently - I got one of my new topaz ear studs enchanted (Eidele's such a sweetie), but of course she's still all squeamish about piercings so she just got a boring old ring. Even though, I'd just like to point out, her justifications about earrings getting caught on things and hurting you or being superheated still apply to pinkie-rings. Maybe even more so, because her hands are way more important than her ears! Uh, for her work and stuff, I mean. Not that I'm saying her ears aren't important and pretty, because she's Eidele, so all of her is important and pretty.

Point is, she's totally just being squeamish.

I can slip off a ring a lot more easily than I can get an earring off; I'll risk it. Also, we had to head back to the tent for the funds to buy our Message-jewellery - good idea from Darvin, worth the hundred gold. There was a bit of stalling and verbal dancing around about whether either of them were going to follow us back before Darvin just came out and bluntly asked if we were trying to keep them away from where we were lodging, to which I said 'yeah, basically', which he just shrugged and accepted.

Fuck help me, I'm actually beginning to like him.

Since the Potion of Animal Friendship was so useful last time (and just in case Sweetheart might have forgotten me since yesterday), we all pooled in to buy another one (that magic seashell Eidele bought has been a big hit, too; really worked yesterday according to Maegan!), and then it was off to find Mr Brighteyes' temple! Which... we failed to do, because it turned out he was a big dummy who didn't even put his deposit down in this city; it's over at the big temple of Corellon Larethian in Atum-Ka. Which is super stupid, I just want to say! I mean, come on! You're making it harder for yourself to get revived! What the heck?

Eidele said basically the same thing, but in harsher language (I really need to remind her to watch her mouth) once we got him brought back on credit at... Sarenrae's temple! Yeah, they were really nice and covered the cost themselves after we explained things to them and said they'd contact his actual temple for remuneration once he was alive again and told us who they were! I didn't exactly say 'I told you so', but I think I was pretty vindicated by them being so nice and generous, all in all. Eidele and Darvin sorted out giving the priests the details of who they had to contact for the money, and Eidele... uh, had a chat with Lael. You knew the kind, where she does the glaring and the lots of sarcasm and the pressure and reminders of how they fu messed up until they're half scared of her and half wanting to impress her.

I think it could maybe have worked a little better if she hadn't been wearing his studded armour at the time, but he admitted that he'd given his word and agreed to play porter for us on our delve today in return for being revived.

Her attempt at getting us some better prices from the boat men... um... didn't go as well. She did try! She was really cool and confident as she offered them a ten-day contract with us for a bit less money each day instead of all trying to get us to pay them 10gp a trip and us refusing to pay any of them for a second trip out of principle after they ripped us off once. But unfortunately it didn't work.

Demand outstrips supply by too high a margin; they're raking in so much with their chokehold on river transit that they don't need guaranteed steady income. Bastards.

So that didn't work, and Darvin paid our way across at the usual stupidly expensive price (I think Eidele might genuinely be planning to find blackmail on one of them or something - we'll see). But then, once we got down into the tomb again... surprise! Someone was living in one of those empty rooms just off the Pallid Pond! (Eidele doesn't like the name but I think it fits). He's a dwarf who calls himself Hammer and he'd set up this little tent and a bunch of wares - mostly weapons; Valoisienne rapiers, Alemagnean axes, Reutish arquebuses, you name it! He'd piled up a bunch of those black glass shards in one corner of the room, too; probably all of the ones that had been lying around that he could find. He seems to have learned how to work it somehow, because he was selling these very light, well-balanced knives he'd made of the stuff. Eidele had a go with one and looked like she was seriously considering it, but apparently they can shatter on a bad hit and he charges a lot to repair them, so she decided against it.

He had a bunch of other things, too. Some more of those mace-heads like the one Darvin has, though I don't think these ones regrow; they'd just be one-off booms. More of the javelins, too, and some kind of potion along with all of the beakers and meat pots from below the mezzanine last time. And some mithril scale armour, which, wow, that must've been a find and a half. Or maybe he got it off a dead adventurer? Hmm.

I don't really know what to think about Hammer. I mean, that's not his name. And he's obviously lying about a bunch of stuff. His accent is super fake and not very consistent - he swings between something I think is meant to be northern Anglian and something else I'm not sure even fits on the continent. He said he was born in Alemagne, and when I played along and asked if he meant the territory that it gobbled up when it was founded, or if he meant a spiritual rebirth or something, he was just like "nope, I'm five years old!" Anything about his origins or who he is, he tells big bold falsehoods without even trying to hide that he's doing it. I think he's trying to annoy people into not digging any deeper, or maybe reinvent himself completely and leave his past behind.

But at the same time, he's very honest about other things. His wares, the risks of his glass daggers, and even the fact that he's a deserter from Alemagne. His squad got killed down here, which... well, I believe him, but he's being a bit speciest about it in generalising some very negative opinions on lizardfolk as a whole. He's in hiding from the Alemagnean military now - I don't know what he thinks he'll do if they send another squad down here; he's not been shy about sharing his desertion and they get really, really aggressive about that kind of thing. But he sounds like he's here to stay, and he does seem to really want everyone to stay safe down in the tomb and promised to see any bodies we brought back cared for and given proper rites and burials or whatnot.

On the other hand, he thinks Sweetheart is a boy called "Sir Thundersmasher". And he was really obnoxious about it, too! He went on and on and on! Honestly, what kind of big stupid doo-doo-head could see her and think she's a big dumb brute who goes around smashing things and being all macho, huh? And-

They argued over this for literally five straight minutes without pausing for breath while the rest of us waited to get on with the delve. I had to pull her away. She was starting to rant again as she was writing, so I've confiscated the letter and her pen and ink until she stops.

As for Hammer, I don't trust him as far as I can throw him, and the glass daggers are a blatant scam given the likely breakage rate and the 50gp he's charging for repair, especially when the siderite(?) ones work just as well. But he's at least a known quantity as a vendor, and if he gets his hands on any more high-grade stuff it might be worth trying to haggle him down or trade in loot that's not worth the trouble of hauling out of the tomb. I arranged to trade him rations at an above-cost rate once he runs out of that meat paste stuff, and I can probably swing getting at least one of the empty pots back to Rohesia once he's finished everything in it, which should make her happy and get us a bit of extra cash. Depends on whether a) he thinks the empty winterbreath pot is worth anything and b) he thinks he has a decent chance of selling it to adventurers on their way out.

Eidele is so mean sometimes, seriously. But also sweet with how she's thinking of Helen. People never believe me when I tell them she can be both.

Moving forward, guess who we ran into again? Eidele's friend, the little rat! I think he was planning to shake us down again, but Eidele'd obviously been planning for seeing him again. She stomped forward and used her thaumaturgy to make the ground tremble and her voice boom and her eyes glow blood-red and was all "you DARE to waylay us, the honoured servants of the Rat King? Your treachery shall not go unpunished! He will visit doom upon you and your entire warren, you perfidious little apostate!"

It was very, very scary and also kind of a little bit sexy, but apparently Mr Rat didn't appreciate the second bit, because he bolted back into the maybe-a-washroom without even getting a word out as if his tail was on fire and all the hounds of the hells were after him.

You just gotta know how to talk to them, I guess!

(Right afterward, she turned to Necria all smug and self-satisfied and bragged about how her tiefling magic is just as cool as Necria's wings, and Necria got all adorably flustered and went "I'm taller!" and Eidele got all pouty; it was super cute! Necria's usually so composed and mission-focused, it was nice seeing her be silly for once! Though I think Lael was almost as freaked out as the rat; he's been kind of nervous around Eidele ever since. I mean, more than he already was after she sorta-slightly-kinda bullied him into playing porter for our delve after stealing his armour.

... I'll try to be nicer to him and cheer him up a bit once I'm done writing this.)

We continued on to the Hex. I don't think I mentioned this part before; it's this big roughly hexagonal walkway that's broken away on the right, with a deep pool of water in the middle. There are stairs leading down into it, so I think this must be, again, a sort of gantry-balcony thing at the top of the structure. This would have been the top floor, and looking down over the edge you'd be able to see all the way down into the lower floors. The stairs would have let you get from floor to floor - in a way, this would've almost been the stairwell bit of the complex, this open space with a vertical shaft from top to bottom criss-crossed by stairs. And there are two flights of stairs, so maybe they were moving ones like the ones near the mezzanine! One going up, the other going down! If that's the case, though, they're both broken. No movement. And the water's too murky to see down very far.

... dang, I could have used Light on a ball bearing and tossed it in to see how far it went. I'll need to remember to try that on our way out. I'll tell Eidele so she reminds me.

All four previous times we've passed around the Hex, it's been empty. This time, unfortunately, it wasn't. There were four lizardfolk there - two spearlizards, two with javelins - and... well, two dead adventurers. We had a scuffle with them - Lael stayed back in the corridor out of the line of fire, Darvin and I charged forward to start thwacking, Eidele sent a few quarrels the right way and Necria flew out over the water. We took down the spearlizards. I remembered our talk and, um... well, I didn't kill either of them, but I didn't hold back like I was yesterday; I used my spear as a spear instead of a staff.

It wound up that Darvin and Eidele killed the two spearlizards, and then the javeliners dived into the water and swam away. We took the bodies back to Hammer, and - bad accent aside - his grief over their deaths sounded genuine. They didn't have letters of revival or anything, so we left them in his care and he promised to see that they would be taken out of the tomb and laid to rest respectfully. Necria gave them their rites, and we all turned back around and trucked on.

When we reached Sweetheart's Lake, she was eating another snurkey (seriously; where are they coming from? They must be getting replenished somehow!) I was a bit worried that she wouldn't recognise or remember me from yesterday, or that it would turn out it was only the magic making her be friendly (hence why we brought the second potion), but nope! She's still a sweetie, even without any magic charms! I lit my spearhead up a bit and waved it in a figure-of-eight when I was up on the mezzanine and she came right over and followed it, fascinated. You know, she's obviously not, like, sapient or anything, but she does seem smart for an animal. Curious, you know? There's something soulful about her eyes. A wisdom to them. Ah, now I just want to hug her again!

Before that, though, we diverted through the garden room and I lit up my spearhead to scare the rot snake off - Necria spotted it running away again; it really doesn't seem to like light or radiant energy. I caught Lael shuddering as she pointed it out. Hmm. You know, I theorised it was something about the tomb that made his body decay so fast, but maybe it was the rot snake's bite instead? The adventurers in the Hex hadn't skeletonised, but I think they'd only been dead a few minutes.

Well, whatever. It didn't want to mess with us, and we didn't chase it. The jewellery room was open again, but someone had been in and cleaned out another armful, so Eidele tried to get the last lot. But this time, she wasn't fast enough! The wall slammed into place against and she got stuck and I was afraid she'd be in there forever - or, you know, at least all day - and I couldn't find any way to open the door and it was like-

I just got ambushed and clung to by a tearful girlfriend. Should've known it was because of this. I was fine, for the record. The wall - it wasn't conjured, by the way; it's a drop-wall suspended up above the door that's pulled down by gravity, though the tolerances it's made to in how flush it fits are ridiculously fine - the wall dropped down and caught me inside, and a few minutes of prowling around the inside of the shop and looking for another way out yielded nothing. Eventually I tried putting the jewellery back where it was, lining it up right, and that made the wall retract back up. So we threaded some string through all the necklaces and rings and shit, I retreated outside and handed it off to the resident meatshield and strongman, he gave it a good yank, and we got the valuables out without any issue as the wall came down. Ten minutes total, tops.

Not that I blame Ange for freaking out, after the way we woke up to Amity gone last year or that whole clusterfuck in Velin that got me tossed in jail for having horns and a tail while she was in the bookshop. Or the labyrinth bullshit that sick warlock fuck pulled on us. Come to think of it, basically any time we get separated unwillingly turns into a disaster. I'm half tempted to get us checked for some kind of curse.

But in this case, a rare exception, it was fine.

Fine, but really scary! I hate it when we get split up! Like, it's one thing when I'm just nipping off to bundle up some cute snakes, or Eidele's grabbing something in the next room. I'm not so clingy that I need everyone to be in sight at all times - Maegan and Amity stay back in the tent while we're out prospecting in the tomb-complex and all. But there's a difference between doing things in different places or working on different things in parallel and being split up by outside forces, you know? And the last one sucks. It suuuuuuucks and I hate it I hate it I hate it.

Urgh.

We had a bit of an explore of what was behind the doors under and atop the mezzanine. In retrospect, we could probably have got away with looking back there yesterday, before going back after my, um, episode. There weren't any more lizardfolk, and it looks like there might have been quite a bit of loot back there that got, um, looted. After we did all the work of fighting over it. I'm half annoyed and half ashamed.

I'm just annoyed. Next time, we make sure to collect any rewards for a hard fight and check any rooms just past our furthest point so we know what we're passing over. We could have had a major payday from whatever was in there.

We've stopped here for a bit, and I'm writing this from one of the rooms we're taking an hour to recuperate in. I can hear some sounds of fighting going on deeper into the tomb, but they're quite a long way away, and the echoes in here are really, really unpredictable. Also, Eidele forbade me from going off to try and help. There's quite a bit back here I could describe, but it's mostly all empty so I'll let Darvin's map do the talking about the layout. The major things I'd call out are the following:

• The walls back here are all boring stone, not pretty crystal. I think these were back rooms that the general public weren't meant to see. If this really was a sort of commercial and shopping area of a subterranean town, this bit was probably for staff or servants or employees; workers rather than customers.
• One of the rooms with a weirdly light door that Darvin had to lever up with my crowbar is this strange vertical shaft without a floor that goes down until it hits the water. It's obviously some means of transit up and down the facility, but what? Maybe some kind of vertical corridor for a Floating Disc? Or maybe you're meant to levitate up and down it? Or, heck, maybe it had something super weird like altered gravity so you could walk up the walls. Or maybe you're just meant to be a reptile person who can crawl up flat surfaces or something. Not really sure.
• Two of the rooms have these... hip-high stone counters with circles and squares of different stone set into them flush with the countertop, about palm-size. We're in one of the rooms now, and the insets are hot - like, really hot; "ow burn my finger" hot. I got Eidele to poke one and even she says it's uncomfortable. The other weird counter is mirrored across from us - the back rooms here are symmetrical across the central corridor, more or less - but the insets over there made my finger go numb instead, and when Darvin pinned a snurkey to one, it passed out (Lael is carrying it for us in case it's valuable up above).
  
  • I think maybe the hot-insets counter was a hearth for food preparation? This place and the long countertops set up in the next room and the way it opens up onto another (overgrown) counter out beneath the mezzanine kind of gives me the vibe of a street food stall. I dunno what the numbness hearth could be for, though. Humane animal slaughter, maybe? But that hardly seems like a street-stall kind of dealie.
• There are a bunch of trees growing into the rooms and snurkeys wandering around here, by the way. I thought for a bit that this might be where they were coming from, but I've been looking around and have yet to see a snurkey tree. Darvin killed and cooked one of them on the probably-a-hearth, and it turned out to taste absolutely transcendentally awful, yuck yuck yuck, ew ew ew, bleagh. We gave it to Sweetheart to finish off because none of us could manage more than a couple of bites; one for "what does this taste like oh wow it's horrible" and two for "I must have mis-tasted that, it couldn't possibly have been that bad OH WOW, NO, I WAS RIGHT THE FIRST TIME, IT'S FOUL".
  
  • Either Sweetheart's tastebuds don't work anything like our tastebuds do, or she's been tragically deprived of good-tasting food for so long that she's forgotten what it's like and I'll be her friend for life as soon as I can get some bacon down here.
• One of the rooms at the back was full of (empty) shelves and had a wall partially fallen away, with some kind of tunnel/long hallway behind it. Completely flooded, so we didn't go looking, but more evidence that there's a lot more to this complex than just the bits we've seen (and most of it is underwater, bleh).

Lastly - or technically firstly, because we explored this bit first - one of the rooms off to the side of the mezzanine backrooms had shattered crystal everywhere, broken murals on the walls (mostly of lizardfolk) and five podiums scattered through it. One had a sculpture on it of this froglike creature (maybe a slaad??? What other frog-creatures are there?) It obviously wasn't made for human eyes; parts of the colour scheme were only visible as heat. But the really weird thing was a spotlight of that amber stasis-light from the snake pet shop illuminating it, acting like a solid glass cylinder encasing it. Necria's prophesising said it would be good if we could break the projector and get the statue out, so we tried a few things - hitting the light really hard, throwing radiant energy at it, using Necria's creepy bell-toll of death on it. We even went upstairs and Darvin tried to dig through the floor from above! But in the end we had to give up.

Moving on now! More writing later!

---

Alright, I have another chance to write, and the frogs are all outside and I am not sopping wet, because I did not go in the freezing cold water full of slime and crocodiles. Which means my paper is fine and I can continue this letter!

So, we marched on from the mezzanine, across the broken stairs that once led up to the other side of it, and almost immediately encountered a message scrawled on the floor saying DON'T DRINK THE WATER. Which, I mean, I wasn't planning to? That's why we brought waterskins, duh. But I guess some other people tried and something nasty happened. Ooo, I wonder if it was that Valoisienne pair from yesterday who wrote it? Or maybe Collete's group? Or someone we haven't seen yet.

Well, regardless, we'd no sooner read this ominous message than we found a room off to the side of the path where the floor had cratered in and flooded, forming a natural pond. What had cratered it, you ask? I have absolutely no idea. Maybe Sweetheart was swimming around underwater and banged her head. Maybe some powerful fireball or whatnot went off. There was a metal table floating (??????) in the water with blackvine growing off it, but heavy as it was (although not that heavy if it was floating?), it couldn't have fallen very far, so that's probably not it. Hmm. No, I think it was probably broken from underneath and the table was originally above the hole when the floor gave way.

It wasn't a barren little pond, though; there were frogs there! Big ones! Human-size ones, in fact. Eidele thought for a moment that maybe they might be people who'd been transformed into frogs, and the message on the ground was a dire warning trying to save others from the same fate, but then Necria had a look at them and it turned out they were magical, but enchantment-y magic, not transmutation-y magic, so not people. Well, I mean, they might have still been people; people come in all shapes and sizes. But they weren't transformed people. And they were basically just animals, so they weren't people-people after all.

But they were magic, and interesting magic at that! It turns out it's not just the spell-snakes! All the animals here are magical; the frogs had arcane patterns on their bodies too! I snuck up to get a look at some of the things that had fallen into the pool and fished one or two bits out, but when I tried touching the water I got all sleepy and just popped straight out like a light! One of them had sleepy-magic patterns on it, see, and its slime was a powerful soporific that had been seeping into the water. I barely even realised what had hit me! There was a fight after I went to sleep, but I was only half-awake for most of it so I don't really remember all that much.

In summary, Ange fished a weird box covered in dangling rings that probably had straps attached at one point out of the water with her spear, then poked her hand in and immediately passed out. Starwatcher and I tried to rouse her - Starwatcher only managed to get her to murmur blearily and light her spearhead up for a moment, so I suggested revisiting the discussion about that thing from the sex shop in Starhaven, and that woke her up just in time to get hit by another dose that had her swaying on her feet when the frogs attacked.

Fortunately, Ange's muscle memory is good enough that drugging her to the point of snoring only makes her stop holding back, and Darvin's apparently both tough enough to just power through intoxication and also unbothered by Ange's wing-strikes snapping past his head with barely an inch of clearance, so it didn't take long to wrap up. Though one of them was a fast little fucker; fast enough that it gave Ange brief trouble trying to hit it, and she did start sleepily criticising Darvin's form while he was punching them. The other frog's slime was some kind of charm effect that makes you think it's your favourite animal in the world for a few seconds, which Ange and Starwatcher immediately decided was a mucus of Human Friendship to parallel their potion of Animal Friendship.

I filled a waterskin with the sleep-slime, because that'll be invaluable if it keeps its potency for even a few days, not to mention how much it'll drive the price up. An instant soporific in liquid form? Yes fucking please; give me a pint of the stuff. So many uses.

Right! And I got this idea; what if all the animals in this place are like Dizzy? With spells patterned right into their biology? Maybe that was part of the culture here; living tools, trained spellcasting beasts, all that stuff! I should talk to Helen about it and show her Dizzy. Speaking of whom, I worked out his command word! I started by trying things like الخفاء and خفاء, you know, "invisibility", but then I realised that this place is oooooold, so I tried more general root words like خَفِيَ (which means something more like "to be hidden, to be unknown, to vanish"; خفاء is the verbal noun form), and that didn't work, so I wracked my brains for a bit and tried a couple of attempts at reassembling the archao-Draconic root and finally hit on خ ف ي (in Common that'd be... I guess "k-f-y"? I pronounced it "k'fya", and that seemed to work). Etymologically I guess that'd be the root for almost all words related to, like, inconspicuousness and things being hidden; you can see it in تَخَفَّى‎ and اِخْتَفَى too.

Anyway, I figured that derivation out and vwip! Dizzy went rigid and about a quarter of his markings disappeared and I wasn't there anymore! Except I was! Like, I could see myself, but I was all weird and translucent and partly see-through, like a coloured window!

And, uh, then Eidele yelped because she thought I'd gone missing so I had to reassure her that I was still totally fine.

She vanished with absolutely no warning while we were looking over the tools she hauled out of the pond. And then said "look! look! see!" while still invisible.

The tools, for reference, are that box thing, which we couldn't get open, some kind of self-inking quill fed from little ink canisters that attach behind the nib and some black glass knives of various non-combat purpose - scalpels, cleavers and so on. Looks like these people made their tools out of the stuff, not just their walls. Hammer likely found whatever tool or method he's using to reshape the stuff down here and appropriated it, quite possibly from the stash we cleared out behind those mezzanine doors and then retreated before looting. Asshole.

In the end, sorting through all of the things we'd found and getting the frogs into sacks (Eidele thinks some people might pay good money for human-charming mucus and sleepy-slime even if they're not pretty, and like she said, she filled her waterskin with the sleepy-slime just in case it still works when it's away from the frog - I'm really hoping that works too!) took long enough that my invisibility wore off. Some of Dizzy's markings had disappeared; it looks like he had four spells in him and now he has three. We'll have to see if he gets any back, because I'm still pretty sure that he might die if they all get used up, or at least stop being magical, and that'd be really sad! I'll have to treat him like he only has two more spells in him, just in case, and if he turns out not to regain them I'll let him go somewhere nice when he's only got the one left. Or just, you know, keep him as a cute little bracelet. Either works.

So with frogs bundled up in bags (being careful not to touch the sleepy-slime soaking through the second sack - alliteration, whoo!), we ventured on - but not too far, because no sooner did we get to this branch off to the left of the path around Sweetheart's Lake than we heard fighting sounds! We left the frogs with Lael and charged off to see who was fighting, and. Um.

Like I said. I'm totally fine. It was all over really quickly and I came out of it basically unhurt, or at least not badly hurt.

We, um. Well, we rushed in to this big room, and there was a fight going on. Five Valoisiennes, all women - only two were still standing; a swordswoman and a caster. The other three were on the ground. And the two on their feet were flanked on all sides by these three big frogs and a lizardman. A champion. He had this... axe. A really big one. My size. All golden and two-handed and heavy.

I called out to him, I remember that much. Said that if he retreated, we wouldn't pursue or attack him - I wanted to give him a chance, you know? But I had a clean shot behind him to one of the women on the floor, and she looked in a bad way, and he was focused on the swordswoman (Colette) who was looking really battered and I just thought "if I rush past him without attacking, maybe he'll see we don't want to fight, and even if he doesn't I might distract him from the swordswoman" - who was dealing with him and two frogs all at once - and I thought I could use what little healing I have to get the lady on the ground off death's door if she was in trouble and...

Well, he hit me. Right in the spine. I didn't see it, obviously, but it must've... it must've been a beautiful move, from a purely martial perspective. He'd've had to have spun towards the direction I was coming from to bring the axe around after me, fast enough to catch up, and hit right across my upper back. All I remember is getting knocked off my feet - just the impact at first, hard enough to knock all the wind right out of me. The pain didn't even kick in until I hit the ground.

It hurt a lot.

Then nothing.

Darvin - I asked him quietly because he was the only one who'd give me a straight answer; Necria avoided the question and Eidele's face did something so scary when I even went near the topic that I backed off right away - Darvin says that he got me back up with a potion right after. Apparently I finished the fight - mostly just guarding another of the ladies on the ground and punching some frogs past his head. Eidele went for the Champion and almost eviscerated him from behind. Necria used her divine protective shield thing again, and the caster (Margot) basically charged through a couple of the frogs to heal me after she saw me go down trying to get to her friend.

I basically don't remember any of it. Darvin says I was lucid, or seemed to be. I was responding to things, fighting; I didn't seem to be, you know, operating just on instinct or loopy like I was at the pond when I was half asleep. But it's just not there in my memory. I remember hitting the floor, and then a fog of pain, and the next thing after that I can clearly piece together is hugging Margot after it was all over and the frogs and lizardman were dead. I think at the time I remembered her healing me, and I remember feeling really grateful, but the actual healing itself, along with everything else in the fight? Gone.

I've read about brief memory lapses after severe injury before, especially with near-death experiences. But it's really, really creepy to be missing time like this. Really creepy. I didn't tell Eidele or Necria, because I didn't want to worry them (I'll have to hide this bit from Eidele when she stops messing with the frogs and comes to read over my shoulder). Darvin filled me in on the stuff I lost. He said he'd seen other people taken the same way once or twice after really bad hits.

I really hope he's right that it's rare and that it turns out just to be a one-off. I don't like feeling a hole in my memory and not being able to reach what's in it.

But enough of that; the Valoisiennes! There were five of them, all young elves (well, young by elvish standards; I think they were all in their second century or so), all women, all obviously wealthy, though only two of them gave off big obvious "Valoisienne nobility" vibes. The noble pair were:

• Chevalier Colette Arouet. She's their leader, and is a chevalier of the Order Nocturnis, serving Selûne (which Necria seemed really interested in). She's all tanned and slender with purple hair and has the whole 'magic knight' thing going on. Very posh and sort of haughty in a noblesse oblige kind of way, but nice! I asked if she was a paladin like Saint-Cavalier Seraphine and she started to tell me about being a chevalier, but Necria dragged her off before she could finish and I didn't catch what they talked about.
• Dame Margot Bessette. Their mage! Or maybe druid? She was dressed like a Valoisienne wizardess, but it had a nature-y theme and she cast a healing spell on me. Valois don't really distinguish between the different kinds of caster in the same way other places do, as long as you take their particular approach to it. Anyway, she's even paler than me (you can tell she doesn't get out much) and super curvy and really quiet and shy, but she liked being hugged with my wings and was sad when they dissolved. She's a really great hugger! I'm gonna have to try for more cuddles when we see her next.

The other three were wealthy but not noble, and I think are members of lesser houses who've come along with the nobles to make their fortune or because of alliances or something:

• Jaquette. Another mage with this cool purple stripe in her (black) hair, maybe mimicking Collete, maybe just because she likes it. She's got the darkest skin of the group and these really thick glasses, and is all short and mousy and cute. She was kind of woozy at first - she was unconscious until Necria healed her and didn't seem at home with the violence - but later it turned out she's also really smart and intense when she gets going with the curiosity.
• Cecilia. She's the one I was trying to save when... you know. She's a rogue like Eidele, but instead of being grumpy and practical (in a loveable way!) she's all cheerful and happy and smily. She and Eidele had a bit of a verbal duel that Cecilia kind of ducked out of by saying she didn't care about the thinky stuff and was just there for cool fights and treasure. She was bouncing all over the room and pestering our group and asking questions and juggling knives and stuff. I think it was a practiced routine, too. Like how I play up the innocence sometimes while Eidele hangs back and watches. She's the group's distraction and provoker, I reckon. But nice all the same!

Unfortunately, only Jaquette and Cecilia were lucky enough to have survived unconscious.

• Ermentrudis was dead. She must be another of their frontliners, because she looked all stocky and muscular and strong. Necria asked Colette about doing her last rites, but Colette said they'd get her back up so I assume they're all pre-paid at a temple and we'll get to meet her later after she's revived.

Eidele and Darvin wound up negotiating for the four of them to transport some of the things we found in the room up to the surface and sell them for us - I missed most of the negotiating, but Colette is apparently going to give us full price for these huge ampohorae full of really strong booze we found, as thanks for saving us! We also found a couple of mason jars with preserved creatures in them (a snake and a salamander) which we gave to Lael to carry.

Put together... I think this was a bar? It's this big room with nooks that have tables in them around the edge, and it has a long countertop that was probably the bar itself with (smashed) shelves behind. There were four smaller amphorae as well, also with booze in them, that we kept. And two - well, three - big person-sized cages hanging from the ceiling, one of which had fallen down on the floor. I reckon this was some kind of drinking establishment and the mason jars are full of spirits like how they sometimes put a worm in super-strong booze, and the cages were... maybe for dancers, so you could watch them as you drank?

Anyway, I was a bit distracted because while Eidele and Darvin were negotiating with Colette and Cecilia was bouncing around distracting everyone and Margot was sticking close to Colette after my wings dissolved, Jaquette squatted down next to the Champion and started dissecting him! Eidele broke off from the money talk to ask about it, you know, the way she asks people about their interests and gets them talking to get along with them, and Jaquette absolutely lit up and started giving this great big lecture about lizardfolk anatomy! She drifted out to comparative anatomy with other lizard-like races, and how this one looked almost dragonborn-y, and then Necria got involved and they started...

Okay, so basically they were rehashing Suithrasas vs Applonia with the whole "interrelation of species by crossbreeding and speciation" vs "segregation of species by divinely inspired genesis", with Jaquette taking Suithrasas's position (positing a draconic origin point for the divergence of all reptilian life) and Necria maybe not surprisingly backing Applonia (although I think she's taking a fairly base reading of Applonia's texts and maybe ignoring some of her later work where she walked back some of her more Orthodox arguments about solo-divine genesis and acknowledged pantheonic cooperation and things like the Ebriean Suzerainty where you had Shekinester the Empowerer, Jazirian and Bahamut all contributing to the state church and the royal suzerain bloodline).

Confession time: I maybe prodded them along a little by bringing up the yuan-ti and the conflicting stories about whether they shaped themselves or were divinely inspired and if the latter who exactly divinely inspired them (which btw was totes worth it because Necria referenced an argument from someone called Yleleiliet about a proposed divine descent of Seumunya from the World Serpent that I have definitely not read and which sounds super interesting, though she also took the neutral position on Bahamut vs Tiamat for who the true creator-god of dragons is, which bleh, come on, why would you credit Tiamat's account, yuck).

But things didn't get really interesting until the topic sort of meandered from divine creation to the planar origins of dragons. They were kind of getting off-track here, and they looked like they were having so much fun that I didn't want to interrupt with too much of my view (though I did jump in to correct them on a couple of points of astral lore; no biggie, not many people study it in-depth), but they were basically arguing about where dragons come from and why they're so magical and whether they're really native to the Material Plane or are actually from somewhere else and are just adapted enough to our world that banishment no longer boots them back to their original home.

My theory on that? It's kind of out there, but... we know that lesser demiplanes can be created and destroyed. And we know (well, okay, it's not known known, there are contesting points of view, but Iranapha lays it all out in her text on planar interactions and her arguments are really convincing!) that the Material Plane as it exists today is the synthesis of some planes directly feeding it (like the elemental ones) and others influencing it (like the divine ones) and others sort of existing around it (like the astral plane) and a few very carefully and deliberately locked off from it (like some of the nastier abyssal planes). Basically it's like a combination, right? A mixture.

So, what if this isn't the first Material Plane? What if there've been others before it, formed from different combinations of the other planes? Different pies baked before this one in the same dish, as it were. Dragons are super powerful; they can fly and planewalk and survive almost anywhere. What if they don't seem to come from anywhere else but also don't fit the Material Plane as it is now because they predate it in its current form? They'd be the last faded remnants of a bygone era and a bygone world - a bygone plane, where magic was far stronger than it is in ours, that somehow came to an end and left the centre of interplanar space unoccupied for who knows how long before the energies of the eternal realms mingled and coalesced again in a different pattern to make the world we know and love today.

I dunno. It's a crazy theory, but it would explain why dragons are so unique. Like, you've got celestials and fiends that you can identify because they're native to the divine and infernal realms, you've got aberrations that are wholly alien to the world as we know it, you've got all kinds of horrible monstrosities native to this plane that are grouped together as "it's a horrible monster with hooks for hands or whatever that was probably made from magical experimentation gone wrong or awful curses backlashing or something else like that". But dragons are their own thing. Anything draconic is unlike anything else, it's uniquely and fundamentally dragon-like above all else. Even in how they respond to some types of magic.

To me, that sounds like a trait best explained by an origin more unique than just being another kind of big scaly magical lizard.

My scholarly girlfriend's rambling aside - she's literally covered a fucking page with this theory - Darvin eventually interrupted the academic row by picking Starwatcher and the elf up by the scruff of their necks and holding them apart. Arouet's one of those stuffy better-than-thou privileged types who's focused on personal glory and turns up her nose at the thought of people needing money to live because she's always had so much that poverty is an alien concept to her. Bessette is a flinching wallflower and the other mage is essentially Ange at her most book-obsessed with none of the awareness of when to shut up. And the rogue... yeah, I'm with Ange on her. I tried to get some information out of her about who they were and why they'd come down, and she stonewalled me by playing the meatheaded glory-seeker. I heard Starwatcher try to interrogate Arouet, too, and she got given a similar run-around, something about being capable of telling people why she was here but not being meant to.

On the other hand, we're getting full price from those amphorae of alcohol out of the lot of them without having to lug the things out of the tomb, Arouet is honourable enough that I'm cautiously optimistic about actually seeing that money, and we can almost certainly depend on them if our positions are ever reversed and they come across us in the middle of a fight we're losing.

That said, if we find them in trouble a second time and Ange gets hurt bailing their asses out of the fire again, I'm leaving them to die on any third encounter. At least Darvin took that fucking greataxe. I'll make him get rid of it if Ange keeps flinching when she catches sight of it out of the corner of her eye, but as long as she settles down enough to tolerate it, I'll be glad to have that kind of striking force on our side. Personally I don't care either way. If he kills enemies with it, that's a win for us, and if we sell it we can probably look forward to a hefty price for all the gold it's made of.

By this point we were almost overloaded with stuff we'd found, even counting Lael and Colette's group taking some of the load for us. But we pressed on a bit further, round the corner to the far side of Sweetheart's Lake from the entrance! There was a big open area looking out on the lake - or out over the balcony, I guess - that had a bunch more craters in the floor (maybe more headbumps from Sweetheart?) and lots of broken mosaics of lizardfolk. Also some white powdery stuff on the floor. Not sure what that was and I forgot to get any samples. Just behind them, back a bit from the water, were two rooms connected through a broken wall. One had a bunch of podiums with big poseable mannequins on them (I put them all in sparring stances, just for fun) that I think was probably a tailor's, with clothes going on the mannequins? They weren't lizard-mannequins, but then they weren't detailed at all, really. Their heads and hands were just balls. They were big, though - ten feet. Either very tall people lived here or they were for some very odd clothes. The other room, though... it was weird, and full of metal trees with these odd ruler-straight branches that had thin spikes branching out at perfect right-angles. I... basically have no idea what those were for, back when this place was still inhabited. Tell me tonight if you think of anything!

There wasn't much back that way - oh, there was a tunnel we didn't explore, because we went out to the waterside area first, where there were some frogs. And a bit that was probably a market stall once, full of shelves, but it had collapsed into a crater right beneath it. There were bronze discs scattered all around it, some about palm-sized, some dinner-plate-sized, some on the floor, some floating (?????) in the water (maybe they were the bronze-fruit stuff Darvin's mace and those javelins were made of? Is that stuff buoyant? I should check.)

We were about to go investigate those when a giant crocodile (or... maybe a normal-sized crocodile? Crocodiles can get pretty big. Okay, I asked Eidele and she says it's actually not much bigger than normal crocodiles can get. But it did have six legs and copper-gold scales, which isn't normal for crocodiles) lunged out of the water and grabbed Darvin and pulled him under! Necria and Eidele seemed to have it handled, and I'd already taken my potion of Animal Friendship to try and make friends with the frogs, so I went around gathering up them while Necria and Eidele went into the water after Darvin and killed the crocodile (and apparently also found and killed a second one?)

Oh. Eidele says they nearly didn't actually have it handled. Whoops.

Darvin and Starwatcher were fighting two sequential life-or-death battles against a pair of magical crocodiles that could vomit some kind of toxic paralytic gas, I was trying to lift the fuckoff heavy corpse of the first one off the bottom of the flooded lower floor, and Ange was skipping around making friends with frogs. And getting charmed by one when she hugged it to celebrate enchanting it.

A round of applause for the keen senses, piercing insight and abiding wisdom of an astral monk, please.

Mean! I'm telling you, she's so mean to me! (But I'm glad because if she's teasing me it means she's calming down from that near miss and she's not checking I'm alive every few minutes like she's scared I'm going to stop existing if she isn't touching me.)

(Even if I think maybe I'm kind of in for it when we get back to the tent.)

(I should probably make sure Maegan and Amity go out to get some pastries before she lets me have it, because I don't think it's going to be quiet.)

Anyway, everything worked out and they got back out fine. And I didn't get wet, which was nice. I charmed four of the six frogs we saw around there - one ran away before I could get it to like me and another got eaten by the crocodile while we were investigating the probably-a-tailor's-shop. Actually, the frogs with human-charming-slime seemed really hard to affect with the potion-magic. Maybe they're resistant to enchantment effects themselves? Or maybe just things that would beguile them the same way?

Hmm.

Well, Darvin helped haul the crocodile carcasses out (he's so strong!), and we skinned and deboned them to see if we could sell the hide and skeletons to collectors and then fed most of the meat to Sweetheart. Oh, it turns out the bronze javelins Darvin took off the lizardfolk yesterday are kind of alive and a little bit scary; he stabbed one of the crocs with both of them and they grew out into branches and roots and needles and tendrils inside them, anchoring the javelins in the wound and hindering them and doing lots more damage inside. Definitely avoid getting hit by any more of those we see! We had to cut away huge extensive chunks of the flesh they'd grown into to get them out at all, and it made them a real pain to skin around.

There was a flight of stairs leading upwards for once, not downwards, at the other end of the water/balcony-side open area, by the broken-down shelves that were presumably once an open-air stall selling those little bronze discs, so I cut up my rope (note to self: get more rope) to make harnesses for my new frog friends and we went up there. That's where we are now! There's an upper floor facing this huge archway with lots of gorgeous decorated engravings and carvings of reptilian creatures in various scenes; battles and speechifying and so on. And, uh, one gouge that looks a lot like Sweetheart's head, but I forgive her. I took rubbings of as many carvings as I could with Necria's help to fly me up, and also copied down the archao-Draconic words above the top of the arch, which I think mean something like "Great Hall", or possibly "Hall of Revelations", it's... kind of hard to tell. I can't really make out much of what's past the archway because the big hall on the other side is raining from the ceiling for some reason, probably leakage from the river above us, but I think there's a big pair of double doors down there with two little sets of stairs leading up to it, parallel to the wall. We'll check that out next, I guess.

For now, we've found a small side room near where this upper floor bit is broken off looking out over the lake - I'm pretty sure there was originally a flight of stairs here leading down to the pet shop we found the spell-snakes at. The side room also has a staircase, but it's all blocked up and collapsed and full of rubble, so we've just barricaded the door and are using it to take a bit of a rest, with the frogs tied to the door handle outside. I'm gonna try to talk to Lael for a bit and see if I can't cheer him up some; he's been looking more and more flinchy since we met Colette's group. And maybe ask Necria if it's a bad sign that my back keeps twinging where the ax

I normally wouldn't wrap up a letter like this while there's still more of the day to go, but I maybe used up a bit too much paper on taking rubbings of those murals and this is my last page and I'm starting to run out of space, so I'm going to have to end this here and write the rest in a new letter once I buy some more paper. Until then!

~Angèle
- Eidele

 

[BossFight]

So the two players have two characters each?

Also, some interesting home rules. The Rest limitation is especially neat, and I'm also a fan of the simplified inventory management.

Click to shrink...

Thanks! Time passing in the dungeon is a core component of how it functions (it controls random encounters, how far other adventurers get, etc) and since the core method that dnd uses to measure progress is spent resources, having time pass based on the use of those resources rather than, say, an IRL timer seemed like the best move.

I also like the simplified encumbrance rules, though these I stole from an OSR.

 

[Walker]

Delve 3, First Phase

D3: Theater

Have decided to risk remaining in tomb at this time for sake of efficiency in delving, am taking advantage of opportunity to update records.

L.B. resurrected at temple of Sarenrae, mostly due to A's efforts to advertise Sarenrae's virtues - very smug about it, unfairly. Upon expression of displeasure at imprecision, protested no remuneration owed, choice obvious – disappointed by such racism. D. offered to correct error in retrieval, resurrection, but E. made more tempting offer of service as porter, considering can clearly not be trusted with anything else. Accepted. (Not sure can be trusted as porter, either, but will exact retribution as needed should situation arise.)

Have also regrettably spent some amount of hard-earned coin before returning to tomb; 25gp each from party fund to replace expended Potion of Animal Friendship. D. also purchased several flasks oil, surely no cause for concern there.

E greatly displeased by boatman mafia monopoly, but attempts at negotiation mainly unsuccessful – not currently interested in securing long-term contracts at expense of short-term profit, due to limited supply and high demand. Will consider alternatives, but not priority.

Encountered dwarf merchant by tomb entrance attempting to sell looted gear presumably from dead adventurers, named Hammer. Clear pseudonym, no last name, claimed to be born in Alemagne, yet clearly more than five years old. A. immediately asking about reincarnation, spiritual rebirth, not sure if convinced or playing along. Current stock bronze javelins, explosive mace-fruit, bear-shirt potion, mithril scale armor, and black-glass weapons. Most items either unnecessary or superfluous, but priced appreciably, might revisit when return. Also got into argument with A. about if SNAKE named Sweetheart or Thundersmasher. Frankly pointless, considering name clearly self-evident.

As departed, yelled warning about lizardmen – well-intentioned, but somewhat prejudiced against culture, intelligence, sociability, parenting. A. clearly uncomfortable, but persevered.

Re-encountered E.'s bosom comrade, but before any productive conversation, E. immediately drew innate magic, called up thunder, shaking earth, glowing eyes – excessive to gaudiness. Rat agreed, considering immediately fled in terror, at which point E. turned and directly stated:

"The wings are cool, but so is tiefling magic."

Being calm, composed, classy individual, responded coolly with cutting comment – and if believed, reader, have excellent copper to sell you, good quality, very reliable.

Floated upwards, gazed imperiously down nose, retorted, "I'm taller." Should clearly not be allowed to devise own rebuttals – in fact, clearly wiser never to speak again.

If not killed by E. from envy, mortification will surely suffice.

Approached circle of water in pool only to find four lizardmen stripping adventurer corpses; just spearmen. A. attempted to negotiate, but barely spoke before met with flying javelins. Positioned over water, called sacred flame. D. eager to violence, charged – then stopped short. Lizardman charged forward, but intercepted by D's axe; carved through collarbone into ribs, then tossed sideways into pool. Second attacked D., deflected, A. retaliated – kicked harder than speared. Fusillade of javelins continued. D. struck by severe blow from remaining lizardman, staggered but opened opportunity for E. to plant bolt in throat, at which point remainder leapt into pool & swam towards lagoon.

Looted appx. 50gp from deceased adventurers, then returned corpses to Hammer. Offered a prayer; Hammer seemed sincere in sympathy.

Had to move past greenery room with rot snake; A. cast Light on spearhead to scare it away.

Upon reaching aforementioned jewelry room, E attempted to appropriate remaining valuables; was not able to escape before door slammed shut. After some panicking by A., flailing at door, replacing items on pedestal reopened door. Tied all items to rope, then D. yanked & removed before closed.

Checking other rooms, found mostly empty podiums – but one with orange light, containing frog statue of unusual size, made of gold, ornamented other metals. Projector contained within light, rendering impossible to open. First assumption Slaad, but Augury suggests Weal. Explored surroundings, tried upstairs, unable to disconnect. Found more empty rooms, containing containers and often shelving – picked clean by, presumably, preceding plunderers. Also metal door sealing shaft leading downwards, opened by abnormal key previously found.

Downstairs, found another room with empty shelving, then one with stone panel covered in various shapes, of different materials. A touched, burned hand, taught best – or not, since poked E into also poking, demonstrating insufficient heat resistance. (Was tempted to repeat experiment in hopes of statistical significance, but wise enough to refrain.)

D, of course, went and grabbed snurkey – not sure if have previously described, but appear as some kind of snake-turkey, placid, unmotivated, often eaten by SNAKE, to no apparent fuss from fellows – and attempted to cook on heated panel; successful, but taste apparently appalling. Have returned to custody of SNAKE, consumed with enthusiasm.

Passing further on, found flooded room, large pool containing two human-sized giant frogs, ominous writing on wall reading "Don't drink the water." (Would be nice for wall messages to be something encouraging, but nothing to that effect yet.) Frogs show magical indicators enchantment, not transmutation, so apparently not transformed people – small blessings. Approaching water also unnerved frogs, but appear to be some collected items at bottom, so looting mandatory.

A, of course, approached frogs, amiably, used spear to fish out one item – metal box, roughly arm-sized, but wider, four rings on one side, one on opposite corner. Then reached out and touched water, immediately stumbled back and dozed off. Concerned, took opportunity to check usual mental indicators – stable pulse, no temperature variance, no pupil dilation or erratic movements, breathing steady and strong.

Then E approached and whispered in ear, and A sprang awake blushing madly.

At this point, consensus reached that would need to handle frogs to extract value from pool. D took lead in approach, A unsurprisingly insisting on nonlethal tactics. Following violence as comedic as dangerous – D used mailed fist instead of weapons, never landing a telling blow, while A used wings and fists to brutalize poor amphibians, with E contributing occasional crossbow bolt to vulnerable locations. Hovered above and called flame, with occasional break to poke A back awake again.

Was expecting great quest, full of danger and excitement, fighting legendary evils for sake of deity. Am instead doing pest control.

Subsequently, carried A over to middle of pool to retrieve sunken items, in very prosaic use for mystic soul magic. In addition to previous find, also collected quill, orange feather, nib fused to ink bottle, along with extra bottles to be swapped in, and several knives of black glass, surgical design – all passed to L.B. to carry. Also wrapped frogs in sacks, one to L.B. and one to D.

In pursuit of knowledge, tested frog mucus on self to identify enchantments – one frog effects of Sleep, while other replicated effects of Animal Friendship, or at least effects as described. Spell of Human Friendship? Since applied to human by animal, could still be Animal Friendship. Am growing accustomed to idea that animals in tomb simply get spells that have worked hard to earn. Patterns on frogs also appear to match arcane patterns for said spells, though am only proficient in casting sleep.

This revelation apparently inspired A, who began whispering invisibility-related words to wrist snake, without mentioning to rest of us. As such, when disappeared, E immediately panicked, calling out in fear concern. A's idea of reassuring statement – "See, see, I'm invisible!" not precisely ideal, but sufficed for E.

Continuing down hallway, found branch off main curve to south, from which heard sounds of combat. Accelerated pace, breaking past two sets of doors into another room containing four large amphorae filled with alcohol, and pair of sealed jars containing a lizard and a snake. Used door into larger room, leading over counter – larger space, containing several nooks on walls with stone benches and tables, some even intact, as well as – unnervingly – two human-sized birdcages on ceiling, one, destroyed, on floor. Shards of broken clay and glass spread over floor, but more intact amphorae in back.

Room also contained one (1) large lizardman, carrying enormous golden axe, four giant frogs, and two adventurers (both Valoisienne, spellcaster and chevalier according to A, very traditional pairing) – as well as two more incapacitated, one deceased. A immediately sprang into action, first calling out to offer surrender or disengagement, then darting past lizardman to treat injured adventurer – at which point it(? Lizardman genders always complicated subject to discuss) demonstrated axe in fact larger than A by hitting her with it.

Objectively masterful strike; single horizontal blow to spine approximately thoracic six, punching clean through and severing spine, arteries, lungs, crushing heart, then motion continued to launch across room from sheer impact - blunt force probably splintering ribcage, sternum, driving bone into lungs, rattling brain against inside of skull from sheer impact. Death likely nigh-instant - probably didn't even feel it.

Asked me later what happened. I…

How do you tell someone "I watched you die, and then someone else had to save you because I was too slow to do it myself?"

She dropped with sickening crunch from massive trauma, smashed across room – behind me, heard E take sharp breath to scream, horror or rage, myself hesitated, torn between assisting those still standing and aiding teammate – but D's reaction immediate and effective. Without hesitation, sprinted after her, following same path; instead of taking advantage of unbalancing to attack it, shouldered past it to A and dumped Potion of Healing into her. Despite everything, am still surprised by unexpected showing of altruism, and a little touched too, to see does still care despite all grumbling. Will ask if interested in commenting, and will not even force into contributing this time if hesitant.

The question is not of altruism, which carries no benefit, but of alliances - one who will not act to succour those who trust in the strength of his blade will find no reciprocation from them in turn, and so any wise adventurer guards the lives of her allies more so than she does her own, for any warrior worth the title knows that their life depends on the shield of the ally at her side and the spells of the supporter who shelters behind him.

Believe this is as close as Darvin gets to expressing fondness.

E, shrieking fury, pounced at lizardman warrior in frenzied flurry of blades, as knight moved to support her in the same; warrior hit back as hard as received, driving both to newer heights of violence, while mage moved to heal A despite onslaught from frogs. Called Selune's Sanctuary, restoring health, moved to reach entire room.

In brief flurry of violence, knight got lucky, landed lethal strike to warrior – already grievously wounded, like all extant combatants, while A returned favor to heal caster. D meanwhile having exhausted reserves of generosity turned and carved up frog, then surged towards other frogs to intercept. At that point, simply process of elimination – while moved around room using Cure Wounds to raise adventurers, D and rest simply carved up all remaining opposition, hardly a fight.

Offered rites for deceased, but informed not necessary due to imminent revival. D immediately inquisitive about possibility of payment, but managed to interrupt conversation. Colette – chevalier – appeared gallant, charming, collected, but twitching, tense grip on weapons, shifting focus suggested front to repress recent stress of near-demise. Am not unsympathetic, considering own prior experience. Tendency to ornate language nonetheless regrettable. Interestingly, Colette member of Order Nocturnus, servants of Selune, which drew A's attention and attempted discussion degenerated rapidly into flirtation. Not sure if A noticed, but E definitely did, and was forced to intervene and distract Colette from A lest E do more violence.

Asked about presence here, but was evasive – even when pressed on subject, simply confessed was not at liberty to discuss. So dissuaded, moved to topic of order status, curious about condition of sibling faith. Ominously, condition good, but looking to prepare for impending outbreak of war to win prestige and glory in war, even at expense of civilians/noncombatants who must suffer. Knew it was coming, yet to hear it so baldly expressed, endorsed by one supposedly sharing my faith…

D also took oversized golden axe, for obvious reasons – boys and their toys.

Meanwhile, other caster – possibly druid – accompanied D to investigate lizardman corpse. Scientific investigation always worth it, so turned to join, when she began hypothesizing about potential theories of lizardman descent and relation to dragons. In fairness to her, Draconic hypothesis of reptilian humanoid origins common theory, but clearly flawed in number of obvious ways, which felt necessary to highlight. Her theory – lizardfolk clearly reptilian, therefore must possess some degree of relation to same, moreso than to other sapients; morphological similarity taken to indicate cladistic adjacency, drawing phylogenetic tree with species closeness based on number of shared traits, focusing on reptilian features. Insisted that said heritage must stem from draconic origin, as only reptilian sapients with power enough to create species. Am forced to disagree – not only does she disregard humanoid traits (bipedalism, omnivoracity, hands) despite clear relevance, also does not give primary sources due credit. Bahamut, Lord of Balanced Scales, and Tiamat, Queen of Revenge both take credit for creation of dragons, claiming plagiarism by the other, but lay no particular claim on lizardfolk, who serve Semuanya, The Survivor, while Yuan-Ti, whom she cites as cousin species, worship entirely unrelated deity in Zehir, The Serpent In Darkness, as matches their nature as hypothesized outsider entities. Yleleiliet argues Seumunya in fact descended from World Serpent, sharing no lineage with either draconic deities, or any human pantheon. Magical alteration to existing human lineage far more plausible, especially considering human acquisitive tendency with regards to existing deities or cultures. Besides, dragons crossbreeding known to produce dragonborn, which highlight elemental dependencies and draconid morphologies, while lizardman exhibit features most common to crocodilians.

Argument at this point interrupted by D picking both of us up by scruff of neck, which not very dignified, but better than alternative.

Dispatched party back to surface, but carrying majority of items both from adjacent room as well as current set of collected frogs, with agreement to repay full value contingent our return; generosity prompted as response to intervention. Despite D's skepticism, evidence of altruism's mutuality. Also spared burden of carrying loot during proceedings.

Having indulged in diversion, moved back towards main path opening onto set of rectangle rooms – possibly one originally subdivided. Broken floor, filled with water, extending under existing structure; may want to return with aquatic options made available, waterbreathing & appropriate weapons. Room occupied by yet again more frogs, this time exhibiting unusually nervous behavior, responding at any sign of presence. At northeastern corner, some pedestals mounted with oversized wooden mannequins, will admit was expecting animation and an attack. A, unafraid, immediately reposed them, while D moved back to western room through broken wall. Rest of party followed, but A and E moved north to explore possibility of befriending frogs, while D & self remained closer to south, investigating sacks of some spilled mineral. Split party – mistake, should have paid closer attention to amphibian behavior.

Distracted by absence of A and E, turned to check – and in that moment, D attacked by large crocodilian of some kind. Exact species uncertain, but skin of coppery gold, with bulk to match. Immediately latched onto D and dragged underwater – no small feat considering size, strength – releasing cloud of noxious gas. E and self moved to assist, crossbow bolts and necromancy, but should have considered own position above water, as second crocodilian leapt up to latch on and drag under section of floor.

In such position, E continued targeting D's opponent, while did same in hopes of reducing enemies to secure aid. At this point, discovered own enemy also capable of shooting acid, necessitating hasty maneuvering, and was too distracted to continue to assist. D managed telling blow, ramming javelin through eye, then moved to me, but struggled with landing attacks without injuring allies in process, while E appeared distracted by attempting to collect corpse of other beast. With D's assistance, was able to dispatch with reasonable efficacy, employing necrotic force, before allowing D to retrieve corpses and returning to surface – as E was struggling to accomplish on own, lacking necessary strength to move massive animal. Removed metallic hide and collected bones, under expectation may have value; was tempted to also taste some amount of meat, but considering previous culinary experiences herein, and possibility of accumulated metal toxicity, thought better not to risk.

D also mentions that appropriated javelins used began, upon landing, to grow metal in organic fashion into wound, latching onto target – assume property of javelin and not of beast, but if so, suggests potential uses or misuses of said item.

In case curious – A spent entire fight collecting and herding giant frogs for later use, not totally certain she recognized ongoing life-and-death struggle.

Past artificial-ish lake, found another set of stairs leading downward to southern route around SNAKE, allowing us to map reconnection back to original entry of tomb. Also found plethora of mosaics depicting various typical religious scenes, presentations, wars, etc. but with singular unusual variance – all major humanoid entities depicted appear to be lizardfolk. Naturally, decided to set down for brief rest here, and are debating merits of continuing on against retreat again to surface – for once, appear fairly united in intent to continue, even A, who is doing much better than last time.

Need to keep an eye on her, ensure no lingering damage from injury - my fault, after all.

Glad to see our cohesion and cooperation improving, and cannot help but think it augurs well for our future.

 

[Walker]

So the two players have two characters each?

Also, some interesting home rules. The Rest limitation is especially neat, and I'm also a fan of the simplified inventory management.

Click to shrink...

Aleph is playing Angèle and Eidele, and I'm playing Necria and Darvin.

For fonts, Ange writes in Trebuchet, Eidele in italicized Times New Roman, Necria in Georgia, and Darvin in Verdana.

 

[Jensaarai]

Aleph is playing Angèle and Eidele, and I'm playing Necria and Darvin.

Click to shrink...

I imagine one can get used to playing multiple characters in a d&d game, but how do y'all handle the in-session RP?

 

[Walker]

I imagine one can get used to playing multiple characters in a d&d game, but how do y'all handle the in-session RP?

Click to shrink...

I try to avoid spending too much time talking to myself, mostly. I find that generally dialogue between my own characters feels a lot more scripted than when I'm improvising something in response to one of the other PCs or an NPC, which is very convenient for playing out set conversations, but doesn't encourage much in terms of creativity.

 

[Aleph]

Ange and Eidele are a lot more chatty with each other, and it helps there that they have a strong character dynamic (bubbly optimist vs pragmatic cynic) to generate short periods of interaction. In general I don't tend to have them talk to each other and each other only (barring mentions of them being in quiet conversation during a short rest, etc), but I'll quite often mention them interrupting each other while one is speaking, or toss in an offhand mention of how one is reacting while the other does things.

 

[Aleph]

"Theatres and Theories" - Letter to Teacher from Angèle Bright
(written 30 Kythorn 1608 in Rushtown)

Dear Teacher,

Well, I'm back in paper (I bought a bunch this time so I wouldn't run out again) and feeling kinda sore and appropriately scolded. Eidele yelled at me and then hugged me a lot and then... um... well, you know, reassured us both that I was still alive. But, like, in a really mean way where I didn't get to c okay that's enough detail haha ANYWAY. Maegan was furious at me and gave me this whole giant lecture when she got back. With Amity helping, which made it, like, a thousand times worse, and... you know what, I don't actually want to talk about this. At all. You maybe saw, and if you didn't see then it's not really important to my teachings, and... and I'm going to go cuddle for a while and come back to this later.

---

Right, enough sad time. Eidele is in bed and still fuming just a little bit about my near miss, so she's probably not going to contribute much here except for when she demands I come over and show her what I'm writing (I think she's watching my expression to decide when to do so). But she's a little preoccupied at the moment, so it'll mostly just be me. Maegan and Amity are in another room just across from us that she rented for the night to, um, get them out of the tent while she let me know how she felt.

I left off in my last letter when we were in that little stairwell room on the upper floor, over on the far side of Sweetheart's Lake. Darvin tried eating some of the alligator meat, which was apparently foul - and also metallic. It makes sense, given how their hides are all coppery-gold - even their bones have streaks of metal in them, sort of fibrously wound through the... um... bone... grain? Bone fibres? The metal elements go along the lengths of the bones, never across, the same way you'd expect from... I don't know, strands of wire twined into a rope; sometimes visible on the surface, other times mostly below the surface. Very organic; they're not symmetrical or regular at all.

The question is, where are they getting the metal? Because I prodded at it a little and as far as I can tell, it is real copper and gold. Which would imply they're eating it somehow, but... where from? Maybe the blackvine draws up minerals from the soil and there are herbivores that eat the blackvine and then the crocodiles eat the herbivores? We've only really seen snurkeys and frogs, though.

Could the blackvine be intended as a mining tool as well as all its other uses? Something to send roots out into the soil to absorb ores and deposits and then concentrate them in fruits? It'd fit the living-tool thing these ancient builders seem to have favoured.

Bah. Lots of questions, not a lot of answers. Speaking of living tools, Eidele tried a few drops of the sleep-frog slime she collected on Darvin, and boy was she mad when it turned out not to have worked - she poured it all out onto the floor right then and there! And then got me to give her some of my water to clean out her waterskin and make sure all the slime had gone. She cleaned it out twice more in the river after we were out (which... fair; the slime is a little gross) and then got busy putting the sleep frogs on top of the charm frogs so the charm frogs would fall asleep and not hop off to do their own thing while we were resting. She's so clever!

I spent the time talking to Lael. He was a little hard to get to open up - I guess it's been a scary delve for him, and he's still a bit miffed about Eidele pressuring him into it, and Necria hasn't been talking to him much and... well, Darvin isn't really a talker at all. But I told him about how I was trying to learn Elvish and asked him for help with the pronunciation and simple phrases (he was a little bit snooty about it being 'obvious', the same as he was about just assuming we'd take him to Corellon Larethian's temple and ignoring all the others, but it wasn't too obnoxious), and he warmed up pretty quickly.

Ελπίζω να βελτιώσω τον αλφαβητισμό μου στο μέλλον!

(That means 'I hope to improve my literacy in the future', and I got nearly the whole thing on my own with only a couple of bits of help from him!)

Unfortunately he didn't know any Dwarvish, which is a bummer, because the Dwarvish alphabet is complicated and headachy and shares a bunch of symbols with other languages that have totally different phonemes and it's used for, like, a quarter of all the languages I even know about? A third? It's used for loads of languages, is the point, because the dwarves were the first ones to create a written form of Primordial and so a bunch of other Primordial-descent languages like Giant just copied their script.

Maybe I can ask Hammer if he can help me with the annoying tricksy alphabet and dumb grammatical cases. He probably wouldn't lie about knowing Dwarvish, right? Right. Probably.

Towards the end of our break, we heard some noises downstairs and went to look - we left the frogs upstairs in the stairwell room - and there were two more lizardfolk down there. But these ones were weird! They were the same sort of subspecies as the other ones we've seen, not like that more dragonborn-y one that... hit me. But they were thin and sickly and hungry-looking - the word I'm kind of wanting to use is atrophied, actually - and their clothes were totally different from the others we've seen. Those were wearing, you know, usual lizardfolk attire; hides and oilskin leather and maybe a few bits of jewellery or ornamentation that show clear signs of being from the complex here, probably scavenged - the shamans and the big warriors have some, but not much.

These two, though. Their clothes were ornate, but decayed. The metal bits were beautiful; these big gold necklace-chestplate things - oh, I know there's a word for them, I'll look it up later - and arm and thigh bands, but the clothes parts that were clearly meant to connect those bits up? All long since rotted away. They were cleaning up the little shop-stall with all the shelves collapsed into the hole in the floor and the bronze discs scattered around, and I tried peeking out and saying hello, but they replied with something short in a dialect I couldn't work out.

Hmm. It was definitely some form of archaeo-Draconic. Sounding it out as best I can remember...

Okay, I just spent a minute or two playing with the phonemes as best as I can remember them and I think it was something like "n-n m-sh-g-l-n". Hmm. They might have been telling me they were busy?

Point is, whatever dialect they speak, it's really old. I tried to tell them I was friendly and offer to help sweep up all the discs on the floor, and one of them rolled a fruit over (I think maybe he thought I was asking for help?) but they started sort of ignoring me after my first few tries and I eventually gave up and left them to it.

You know what I think? I think they're just like those cute little spell-snakes in the orange stasis light-boxes. I think they're really, really old, from back when this place was still a functioning city, and they've just been... sleeping, or dreaming, or locked in time, as the world has turned and the centuries have passed, and they've only just woken up as pillagers start messing around with their home. The gold bits of their clothes seem to match what we've seen on some of the statues around here, and while they share a subspecies with the other lizardfolk we've seen, they're using a wholly different, far more ancient dialect and are dressed and behaving nothing like them.

Hmm. I wonder where they were, before they woke back up? And what, specifically, woke them?

Oh! Right, so, speaking of the cute little spell-snake, we went and rescued the last one! Necria flew me and Eidele down and we tied Eidele's rope to the top of the broken-off upper balcony for Darvin to slide down. Eidele says we should bring the hammer and pitons tomorrow and suspend a rope ladder along the wall that Necria can stow at the top when we're not using it. That way we can use that path as a shortcut, but nobody who can't fly across to set it up can exploit it!

So, we went down and cracked open the last of the boxes, and me and Eidele and Necria all ducked for cover given how cranky the last snake we let out was, but Darvin drew himself up all big and menacing and went "GRRR!", so of course it hit him with its spell. Which turned out to be a teleport! He just went pop and then he was twenty feet away, out over the water, and fell in with a big splash! It was okay; he didn't sink and Necria went to help him out while I bopped the little guy on the head and put him out. We also checked out that place where the Sarcophaguys were, but the sarcophagi were gone (I guess they just hauled all of them out completely) and the big door behind them was another of those solid stone drop-slabs that the jewellery shop had.

The door just before where we ran into the Sarcophaguys, though; that was really interesting. It led into a little room that had some more stairs down into the water and another of those weird vertical shafts in it, but in the middle of the room was this big mass of braided vines all converging and wrapping around each other into a pillar that came up to head height, feeding into a huuuuuge crystal sphere the size of my head that they were feeding into.

I poked it, but it didn't feel crackly or weird or warm or anything. Just glassy.

But from that crystal, more of the vines spread out and out and out, branching as they went, into this super-fine network of strands and roots and mini-vines that wound into the walls and ceiling and floor. I tried to count how many there were and that went nowhere fast, but having done a quick count-a-small-area-and-then-estimate-the-rest guess, there are probably eighty-plus vines leaving the crystal itself that split out into well over six hundred by the time the really fine ones reach the walls.

Best guess, this is the power source for all the crystal glowflower lights we've been seeing, as well as anything else with motive force in this place. That burning bush by the entrance seemed to control the heat, and this is likely a similar lynchpin. If so, that answers my first question, which was why the fuck something this valuable was still there - I found signs of some of the delicate strands having been ripped out of it, so presumably whoever did that got spooked when the lights went out. It looks like this stuff is capable of regrowth - the burning bush is back to how it was now; no more flickering, and the torn strands going into the sphere were repairing themselves.

We could potentially work without light, but I'm willing to bet that things like the stone drop-slab need this to function too, and I'm not willing to take the chance that ripping it out to sell will drop a bunch of impassable slabs across our path as we explore this place. Also, while we can operate in the dark, it'd be more of a pain. We'll leave it for now and come back for it once we've picked everything else clean.

That was about it for that side of Sweetheart's Lake, so we went back up to the upper floor and left Lael with the frogs in the little stairwell. Eidele was super clever and used some of the frog-slime and some stone dust to disguise the seams in the doorway and the engraved text above it (which just said 'Stairwell' as far as I can tell) so you couldn't even tell there was a room there!

One of my better efforts. More to the point, it's a trick that's worth remembering for later - it might come in handy at some point, if we can figure out a way to conceal a door and then get into the room behind it without ruining the disguise job. Good place to take a rest.

That's my girl! Always thinking ahead! Now, it was still sorta-raining from the ceiling of the hall beyond the archway, bleh. Not like a downpour, just sort of a drizzle as the water from the river leaked through. Which raises the question: is the rock porous, or are there cracks it's seeping through? I should probably check; the latter might suggest structural instability. And either way, whether it's coming through porous rock or cracks in the riverbed, we can probably get it sealed up with stone-shaping magic to save on our laundry budget and not be so cold all the time.

... Eidele just pointed out that our laundry is covered under our lodging fees, but you get my point; it's still cold and wet and I don't like my clothes clinging or my hair getting all sopping wet and sticking to the back of my neck because some of us don't just chop it short, Eidele. Luckily, when I complained about getting wet, Necria was really sweet and spread her wings out so I could hide under them and stay dry!

(She also kinda smirked at Eidele when she did it. I don't know if they're competing over whether magic or wings are better, or if they're competing over me, but it's cute either way. I hope it's the first one, though. Necria's very pretty, and her wings are very nice and she's surprisingly strong when she picks you up in a princess carry, but she's not the one I love. I wouldn't want her to be disappointed or pining or sad.)

The hall is surprisingly wide - wider than it is long, in fact; forty feet from wall to wall. I wonder why? It seems an odd thing to do, and I can't imagine that it saw enough volume of foot traffic to need to be so wide for space reasons. Maybe they were just showing off? Hmm. At the other end it opened up into two side-halls flanking a set of elevated double-doors with two sets of steps leading up to them. The left-hand side-hall was blocked off by rubble, though, and the doors were leaking water at a bit of a worrying rate, so Necria decided we should go right.

The right-hand side-hall turned out to be a rather pretty little place with a mezzanine floor that- well, I'll get to my theories on it in a bit. But basically there was a little booth in the adjacent wall with some tables and a gorgeous jungle-mural and a special glowing crystal-flower, a set of stairs up to the mezzanine and an absolutely humongous statue against the far wall of a coiled snake balanced on its tail, wrapping around the world-disc in a plaited coil and peeking its head up through a cut-out section of the mezzanine. Super common motif among snake gods, and I don't know which one specifically this one is, but it's beautiful. It's also solid marble and must weigh about forty tonnes, but Eidele has plans there that she can talk about later.

More immediately, there was also a big man with a (very ugly; I think it was sick or something) dog standing over a dead body in the middle of the hall, doing something shady. He had a crossbow and, you know, the body had a bolt in its chest, which seemed a bit suspicious, so I got in front of Necria just in case of any sudden flying pointy things and called out to him, doing the whole naive innocent thing while Eidele got her crossbow ready. He tried to bluster about how it was too late for his poor friend who he definitely hadn't shot blah blah blah and that he didn't trust us not to stab him if we got any closer blah blah blah, but Darvin got fed up with the obvious lies in about ten seconds and just straight-forwardly accused him of murdering the guy and ordered him to drop the weapon.

Which he didn't. Obviously. You know, I wonder if that ever actually works? I've never seen it work. I guess you gotta give them the chance even if you're pretty sure they're not gonna take it, though. Anyway, the dog went for me so I flipped over it and brought my wings out and got Shady Murderer Guy with a back-sweep, then moved in close and broke his neck with a crescent kick after Necria rang her doom-bell over his head. The dog was actually a lot harder to take down than he was - the others were having trouble with it, and even I barely got it with a flying spear kick!

I was having trouble aiming because someone forgot the usual warning for her wings and flash-blinded me while I was trying to line up a shot on Crossbow Man. Wound up taking a flying leap off the balcony to come down on it with my knives after Starwatcher stabbed it with that rapier of hers and it retaliated by taking a chunk out of her leg.

Murderer Dude had two money pouches and his poor dead victim had no money or revival letter on him at all, so I think we can be pretty sure about what happened there. Necria examined the body and it looks like he shot the victim once in the back and then once again in the chest when he turned around.

People can be really terrible sometimes. I mean, I get not wanting to share the wealth down here; everyone is here to get rich, obviously. But I hope it doesn't turn into an awful war of everyone killing each other out of greed. So far we've gotten along fine with the other adventurers we found who haven't been all murdery themselves - I mean, we had a bit of a scuffle with Krogan Battlehammer (but it looks like he killed Jason) and we got Jason and Lael revived, and those two Valoisiennes yesterday we just nodded at and moved on, and Colette's group we outright saved. Obviously we're usually on guard against things turning nasty when we run into other people, but I don't want things to reach the point where it turns into a killing spree for sure.

Bluh. Everlight bless that hope. Anyway. We went up onto the mezzanine and found another of those washroom places like the rats' room, with little fountain(?)-booths and a big double-sided mirror in the centre that had water-troughs under both sides. We decided to chip out the mirror and went and brought Lael and the frogs over while we worked, but Necria and I noticed a hole in the wall while Eidele and Darvin were getting set up and went to peek through. And it's a good thing we did! Because there were lizardfolk on the other side!

Okay, so to lay this out properly, a quick diversion. This part of the complex was a theatre at some point; the double doors we'd decided not to try lead into a big auditorium and stage with vertical rows of seating in a semi-circle looking at it. I think they're vertical rather than the normal kind of theatre-seat arrangement you see, with each row behind and above the last, mostly just for space reasons - after all, the builders must have had to chip every last spadeful of stone out of this place while they were building it! Even with magic, you want to minimise space in that case! I think the side-hall we came through must have been some kind of waiting room, where you could have caffe or tea in the little booth or at any number of little tables that could have been dotted throughout both levels of the mezzanine and chatted to whoever you came to see your play with while waiting for it to start. I bet there was a little food shop on the ground floor. And the snake was a big fancy decoration and talking point!

Hmm. Maybe the other hall had the ticket booths? We'll see when we get there, I guess.

Unfortunately, the whole theatre - almost three floors deep at the lowest part - is flooded, with the waterline coming up to just below the mezzanine level and about halfway up the double doors we'd avoided opening (hence the leaking - I think the water level built up higher in there because the doors were closed so there was no way for it to drain out into Sweetheart's Lake). The stage and all the seating and stuff were wholly underwater, but lucky us, there were some gantries right at the water-line that we could walk on. I think these must have been lighting? There were metal blackvines wrapped around them, and several light-flowers that looked different to the kind we've seen elsewhere - I think those must have spotlights that could furl their petals in to focus their light like a bullseye lantern. Aunty Ella says they have stuff like that in some of the bigger, fancier theatres you find in cities (note to self: next time we visit a big city, go see a play at a fancy theatre with Eidele).

Unfortunately, it seems like the lizardfolk had also worked out that the gantries were a way across the flooded stage, because they were hacking at it with spears and axes and stuff. There were three spearlizards, a shaman and another of those warriors like the one back at the other mezzanine with the explodey mace, yesterday (maybe their warrior caste just really like mezzanine floors?) So we were in a bit of a pickle, because, you know, not only would they hear us if we started chipping the big mirror out of its base, but also if we left them to it they'd break all the gantries and then Eidele would have to fly me and Eidele across and Darvin would have to swim, which he's bad at, because plate armour is heavy. So we decided to fight them!

I just want to point out that by this point I was damp, on account of having moved out from under Necria's wing during the fight with Shady Murderer Guy, but not drenched yet like everyone else, because I hadn't dived underwater like they all did. But of course the gods decided that couldn't stand, and we all had to squelch back out of the tomb together.

It actually didn't start too badly. Well, I mean, it kind of did - Eidele was definitely not working on "we'll just chase them off" like I was, and neither was Darvin, so she shot the shaman right away with a very meant-to-be-lethal crossbow bolt. I think she was still keyed up and mad about me going down earlier, and didn't care that this was a different group. But, like, I yelled- uh, I won't share exactly what I yelled, but I encouraged them to go away, and the warrior shouted something very impolite back, but Darvin was blocking the catwalk and Necria brought out her Faerie Fire to make a bunch of them easier to hit and I flying-spear-kicked another lizardman and their shaman jumped into the water and swam away so we didn't have to kill him.

And then apparently I'd advanced too far out over the water, because the warrior dived in, tackled me off the gantry and pulled me under.

Let me tell you, Teacher, drowning? Not fun. Drowning while being grappled by a big burly lizardman in freezing cold water with a big rent in the back of your tunic that makes you feel even colder somehow? Even less fun. I tried to wriggle free but he was, like, really strong, so I brought my wings out and buffeted him away but that still left me underwater, and he was very big and in the confusion and bubbles and twisting around he wound up behind me and... well, I kind of panicked.

I panicked enough to manifest my wings in full.

The fight didn't last long after that. The others had killed a couple of the lizardmen by the time I broke the surface, and while the warrior followed me up, his leap out of the water at me put him in prime position for a thrust-kick-backwing-flare combo that smacked him out of the air and Eidele got him in the throat before he even hit the ground. Uh. Water. Gantry? You know what I mean. And, well, you know how I get when I'm like that; everything is so intense, and there was one lizard left and he was trying to break the catwalk instead of just running away and I was so mad so I... finished him off.

I feel a little bad about that, now.

But then there was flying, and I got to do some loop-the-loops around Necria and strafe Darvin a couple of times and then come down and cuddle Eidele and, you know, it's always sad when my wings dissolve and I wish, I wish, I wish I could fly more often (I'm so nearly there; maybe the stuff we sell from today will get us enough money, but if not I'm sure the next delve will push me over the limit, and I've already scouted some of the local magic shops for any that have apprentice artificers or wondrous artisans and there are a couple that might have broken stuff that didn't work but would work for me, and... ahhh, I'm so excited! I can't wait! It should work, right? Master Thanis always thought it would! Soon we'll find out! Here's hoping!)

There was another hole across the stage, but we decided that we probably couldn't handle another fight in our condition, so after Darvin scavenged the warrior's weapon (some kind of club made of woven blackvine with sharp black glass chips in it that is apparently - I checked my books - called a mahacuitl), we carefully chipped the wall mirror out and then slowly started carrying it back (it wasn't heavy, just awkward - it needed two people; one at the front and one at the back).

Since we passed the snake statue on the way out, I'll let Eidele talk about that here:

It's not nailed down or attached at the base, and it's worth a fucking fortune. Several thousand gold at least. More if I can provoke a bidding war.

That's the only good news.

The bad news is that it's solid stone all the way through, probably weighs forty tonnes or so going by some quick abacus mathematics, is fragile enough that if we drop or knock it we could crack the head clean off under its own weight, and is too big to even get out from under the mezzanine in its current pose, let alone out through the hall.

Fortunately, Starwatcher proposed a spark of genius that might net us that fortune. There's a transmutation spell that can animate objects. Even really big ones. Usually it's meant to get things to fight for you, but an animated object can a) change pose even if it's made of something rigid and b) move under its own power. At a fair clip, too; equal to a human. The statue would never fit through the rain hall in its current post, let alone down the stairs that we're going to need to take it through (zero chance of it getting down the gap from the broken balcony), but if it's stretched out in a line it should just about fit, albeit we'll have to be careful. I checked against Darvin's maps, and it's roughly a thousand-foot run from its current position to the base of the shaft. Two minutes - two castings of the spell - will probably be enough to get it there, and it'll be large enough to get over the rubble pile without damaging itself or slowing en route. Should be able to bridge sections of the collapsed path without having to go through the garden room, too, just on sheer length.

That lets us get it to where Hammer is. At that point we have a choice. With a bit of luck, we can stash it in one of the rooms next to him, call that delivery and let whoever buys it handle getting it up the shaft. I'll certainly try to haggle for that. But in the event that we have to put it on a ship for delivery (which will need a fucking huge barge, which means I'm going to have to negotiate with that fucking cartel of boatmen again, more's the pity), I think I have a plan. There's another transmutation spell that can enlarge or shrink objects or creatures. Hit it with that and it'll go down to about ten foot high and only five tonnes. Five tonnes, with a sturdy crane rig set up at the top of the tower, some good pulleys and a couple of dozen grunts to haul on the ropes, is enough to lift.

Only issue is that shrinking the thing only lasts about a minute. It's sixty foot up the tower, thirtyish to the top of the water outside, and I'm generously going to say that five feet in ten seconds is probably the best we can lift it at. Call it fifteen feet a minute to be safe. That's still six castings to get it all the way up from inside and all the way back down again. Getting a wand that can do that will be another thousand gold on top of the couple thousand we'll already be paying for the animation wand, which adds up to half the price of the statue gone. Granted, three or four thousand is still a very nice afternoon's work, but...

Hmm. I'll think some more on it. See if we can squeeze some more profit out some other way. I've already given Rohesia a heads-up that she's going to want to contact her university for some grant money - Anglians love getting their hands on other people's sacred treasures and showing them off - and odds are I can find a Tesarite interest group to leak things to closer to the time that'll drive the price up a bit higher. Though I do want to sell it to Rohesia if possible. If it has to be in any rich asshole's collection, an Anglian university at least won't be a private one.

It'll be for the cause of knowledge and learning! Way better than sitting in some dusty old noble's palace being shown off to people he wants to look good to! Anyway, we paced out the route that our big stone snake friend will be slithering along, since we couldn't very well carry the big mirror down the rope ladder, but we met a horrible surprise on the way out! The mezzanine where we'd fought those first lizardfolk, just past the jewellery shop alongside Sweetheart's Lake, was collapsed! There's just a giant pile of rubble there now! And Sweetheart was hurt! The poor thing was just covered in stone dust and had a bunch of cuts and she was shying away from me like a kicked dog! We'd brought the bodies along, and Darvin helped drag the murderer and his dog over so she could eat them (it's... not something I'd do to a good person's body, but he was pretty awful in life so at least he can do some good in death), and I coaxed her close enough to give her a little burst of healing ki that... well, it didn't help very much, but she seemed to appreciate the thought, at least.

There were bodies in the rubble too, though. People's bodies. Necria and Eidele looked at them while I was busy with Sweetheart.

The ones we could actually examine were both humans wearing uniform equipment. Anglian, for what it's worth, but that doesn't say much: they have no unit insignia so they're not an official force from any of the city-state or merchant-house militias, and Anglia does arms dealing to anyone who'll pay. "Anglian gear with no unit insignia" is basically a synonym for "anonymous hired mercenaries"; these fuckers could be from anywhere.

Doesn't explain why the mezzanine collapsed on them, though. The obvious conclusion is that they got into a fight with the snake, but that's surface-level thinking. These guys were professional enough to be kitted out in deliberately anonymised gear and they'd come down here in a trained group. People like that aren't going to pick any fight they come across just for the hell of it, and there's no point in fighting the snake; those smoke braziers we saw the first day can keep her at bay and killing her nets you nothing but a giant corpse you can't transport back up the shaft that'll fill the entire - and I mean the entire - complex with the stench of rotting meat. Shit like that is how you make the entire tomb inaccessible by way of sickening miasma. They wouldn't attack her, and if she'd attacked them they'd just have retreated through the doors where she can't follow and waited her out.

No, I think they got into a fight with another group. I asked Hammer, and he said they were a squad of eight when they entered the tomb - all human, didn't speak, ignored him, moved into the tomb in formation. We only unearthed two bodies - the rest were under so much rock there was no way to find them, let alone examine them - but the matching uniforms on those two say nothing about who else might have been under there. Two or more large groups of professional tomb-pillagers running into each other, without Ange to be sweet and disarming? It could very easily have come to violence - and that could easily have drawn the snake to take advantage of the confusion to snap up a meal. One sideways swipe of the head would've been enough to take out the pillars, either by accident or on purpose, and then a hundred tonnes of stone come down on both sides.

... it's not that I don't believe Eidele's theory, because she's probably right. But I really, really hope this isn't going to turn into a free-for-all down there. Please, Everlight. Keep the peace on this venture. Shield us from strife and conflict.

I asked Necria if she could fix my tunic on the way out, but she doesn't know Mending - and I feel kind of bad for asking now, because she looking really guilty for not being able to help. Hammer had some new stuff when we got back past him; another moon sickle and some adamantine plate (where the heck...? A dead adventurer, maybe?) He offered to buy the mirror for 500gp, but we're going to see if we can look around town for a better deal first. I had to pay the elevator fee (5gp!) to get it up the tower, too, instead of just climbing up on the ropes like we have done before. And after everything that had happened, by the time we got out of the tomb we were all just really exhausted and not in the mood for haggling. We went to Peter Godfrey to drop the frogs and snake off, reasoning that the not-alive stuff will keep until tomorrow, and I just took care of keeping them placid while Eidele and Darvin did the talking (or, well, Eidele did the talking; Darvin did the standing and the menacing).

This ran into a bit of a problem when Lael refused to give the frogs up. We'd thought the effect of the human-charming frogs was temporary, but apparently not? Maybe it has more and more of an effect the longer you're in contact with it. Whatever the reason, he just wouldn't agree to part with them! We tried getting him to stop touching them, and he did, but even after a few minutes nothing changed. Eidele tricked him (and then Darvin forced him) into touching the sleep frogs to knock him out, but then Peter wouldn't buy them from us because he thought they were Lael's and that we were trying to mug him, soooo... in the end we just sold him the snurkey and the teleporty snake and took the frogs with us.

(The snake teleported me this time when we showed off what she could do. It was fun! Felt like an all-over clench, like something squeezing me in a fist, and then I was, like, twenty feet straight up in the air. Necria caught me again. And held me really close as she flew me back down. I might need to have a gentle talk with her and explain that our relationship isn't an open one - we'll see. Hopefully she's just worried about me after my near miss, not, like, wanting kisses. Though if she only wanted cuddles, maybe...? Uh, that is, as long as it's only cuddles and nothing else. But she looks like she could use more hugs than she's getting in her life.)

(... Eidele please don't glare at me when you read this, I promise I'm not thinking of her that way; you know I'm all yours.)

Uh, what else... I also stopped at a scribe's to get more paper, and the guy at the desk was a young-ish kid who, um...

She almost got ripped off at twice the price by some bored, brainless little pissant minding the shop for his father, whose apathy lasted exactly as long as it took me to rip him a new one and threaten to ruin his shop's name in the gossip networks of every adventurer in the city. I still might. Four gold for ten sheets of paper is actively insulting, the little mouthbreather. And for all his old man's grovelling and scraping, I don't for a second believe the little rat wasn't told to hike those prices by the parent who actually owns the shop.

... yeah, Eidele got kind of mad and yelled at them for about five straight minutes and I wound up not only getting a hundred sheets of paper (no more running out!) but also getting them bound into a pretty leather-bound waterproof journal! That's what I'm writing this in! (I've put the earlier letters into it too). It can be our student-Teacher book!

While we were near(ish), I also stopped in at Sarenrae's temple to pray and ask one of the dedicates to fix my tunic with Mending where the axe... left a hole. I have a scar there now. Eidele showed me with a couple of mirrors; it's a ragged sort of white line on my upper back, about two fingers wide, right across my spine and level with my heart. Apparently magical healing doesn't work as well when you... you know. Die. Even just for a few seconds.

It's right between where my wings emerge, too. I'm... not sure how I feel about that. He must have been aiming right for them.

I took the chance while I was at the temple to ask the senior Priestess to do a Sending to Auntie to fill her in on where we were and that we're all back together. She replied with two of her own and I filled her in about the... getting hurt, and then just sort of sniffled and thanked her for consoling me in the third one. Urgh, there's never enough words in Sendings! It's so unfair! Hearing from her again was nice, but she's very busy and has to ration her magic so it probably won't be a regular thing. Still, she'll pass the news on, and sent best wishes and sympathies back, which I... really needed, honestly.

Our last stop before heading home was Alfhild, because Necria wanted the bronze-rime fruits she picked examined. Alfhild didn't recognise them, and said that they were probably magic - actually, I think specifically she said "places like this with old magic, it can seep into the stones and plants and beasts". But you know what? YOU KNOW WHAT?

I WAS RIGHT!!!

She cut open the fruit and it was full of this weird blood-like fluid (ew) and had a snurkey embryo inside it! They do grow from plants! I knew they couldn't be normal beasts! Necria guessed that if it was all part of a plant life cycle, the snurkeys must serve as seeds, so she dissected the embryo and sure enough, she found this little hard organelle inside it, just below the heart, already fully formed. I actually kind of suspect the... pit? Stone? Seed? Whatever it is, I think it probably forms first in these fruits, then the baby snurkey develops around it - Necria said it had necromancy magic on it (which makes sense, since things that revive dead bodies are necromancy, and this is producing new life from a dead body), and looked a lot more fully developed than the little organs. I didn't watch because it looked so cute all curled up and I didn't want to see it get cut apart.

But that implies that the life cycle here is that the plant creates fruit, the fruit hatches into snurkeys, the snurkeys wander around and... die? get eaten? is that why they're so passive about Sweetheart gobbling them down, if they're meant to be fruit? And then new plants grow from the snurkey bodies.

Why create this? Well, Alfhild thought it was a way of making artificial meat - she offered to buy the seed for 300 gold, and while she dropped that down to 200 when we told her how foul snurkeys taste, she still bought it and offered us another 200 for a live snurkey (so that'll definitely be worth it next delve - I should try to get one of those seeds for myself, too). She thinks she can work the bad taste out with selective breeding. I broadly agree with her that these are probably created as feedstock for predators - oh, maybe the ancient Khemetian's anatomy made them need large amounts of blood or meat, if they were snake- or lizard-people? But I'm not so sure that any selective breeding is needed. I mean, we've been seeing huge amount of these metallic vines, right? And those metal-scaled crocodiles, which must be getting their metal from the snurkeys; that's why they taste foul, that's why the crocodiles tasted awful too; Darvin said both of them were all metallic and yucky. So the metal in the food chain is coming from the snurkeys, which in turn, if they're plant-born... must be getting it from the soil.

...

... I wonder how much ore is in the ground here? Nobody's ever done much land or mineral prospecting in the Khemetian desert - I mean, until about a week ago, any kind of settlement here would have been impossible; it's only the new course of the river making this place at all habitable. But all the metal in the beasts and plants down there has to be coming from somewhere, and the only two places I can think of are some kind of engineered plant that transmutes metal from the earth and sand to grow (note to self: ask Necria to investigate blackvine with her magic detection but don't tell her why), or mind-boggling amounts of ore in the ground. And not just the black iron-stuff of the blackvine. Copper. Tin. Gold. The land value of this region might actually be worth even more than the contents of the tomb, if we're sitting on a gigantic mine deposit. And it'd certainly explain why this underground city-complex is here and mostly underground if it started as a mine and the city got built on top of and then down into one of the biggest deposits of metal ore on the continent.

Hmm.

I think... maybe I sit on this for a while and don't tell anyone. Not even Eidele, because she'll get... ideas. I'll poke at a few things and try to get some soil samples magically analysed without giving the game away and also look into the history of this region. This is the sort of information that could be very valuable, and also very destabilising, and also maybe potentially set off another war.

Luckily, I don't think anyone else is going to work it out soon. Not unless they think like me. And not many people do.

We've left the frogs in the lodging stables for now - it took a bit of talking, but Eidele got the staff to agree - and paid for a room for Lael overnight so that he can at least have somewhere nice to sleep it off. I guess we'll just have to hope it wears off by the morning?

Eidele's calling me to bed (for sleep, not more sexy times - it was very fun reassuring her that I'm still alive and totally okay but I think I'm maybe sexy'd out for a couple days now; she was very thorough). Dreams are fine, though, so I hope I see you tonight! Love and kisses!

~Angèle
- Eidele

 

[Walker]

Delve 3, Second Phase

'Wings of white and eyes of gold are signs of hope in stories told.'

Or so saying goes, wrt. Aasimar.

Had known A's heritage, intellectually, but to see it firsthand is different experience entirely; to realize that while two members of party reviled for infernal heritage in blood, third forced under equal weight to bear expectations of all hope sharp contrast; tiefling blood thought to mark unlawfulness, villainy, often heard accusations of such very carefully directed around me by those afraid of drawing ire, while celestial heritage apparently signposts prophylactic and panacea against all possible ailments. Both bloodlines inflict heavy burden, but infernal forced on victim, usually breeds true (as if am horse), while celestial always a choice, aasimar must accept duties that come with heritage; wonder if am not envious and attempting to escape stereotypes of own bloodline and imitate the celestial by embracing, nigh-demanding duty for self to prove own worth – but I anticipate myself.

While resting, D also took initiative to sample crocodilian – while irony of eating creature that tried to eat me does appeal, D did not seem enamored of taste. E decided to test secretions from sleep-enhanced frog on D, with yrs on standby as observer; did not notice significant physiological or psychological reaction, mucus apparently losing potency after an hour or less. Probably not a chemical reaction, considering stable conditions and short timeframe. Nonetheless, E was inspired to stack frogs, putting half to sleep and necessitating portership, duty inflicted mostly on attached frogs and L.B. with whom A is attempting to cultivate friendship, or at least lack of animosity – reasons why understandable, but not sure worth investment for "hireling" soon to be discarded, especially considering lack of usefulness for anything except portage; nonetheless, did seem accepting, if grumpy about recruitment, which frankly low price to pay for resurrection. Good to minimize number of enemies, I suppose.

Investigated back towards original path, intending to complete circuit back towards location where spell-serpents, but encountered pair of lizardfolk clad in unusual garments, unlike those worn by previous enemies – unlike previous encounters, wearing beads and feathers, these dressed in remnants of fine clothes, gold cloth, clad in jewelry, with bangles and thigh-bands of gold, set with precious stones. Not armed, and frankly rather sickly, clearly noncombatants; further supported by choosing to clean up area, right shelves, clear away debris rather than fight. A tried to communicate, but dialectical difficulties impeded communication, along with lack of interest on their part in any discussion beyond fulfillment of perceived duties.

Returning to previous location with spell-serpents, in interest of retrieving left-over serpent in stasis – had to fly A and E over open gap, then set up rope for D to climb across. Found previous set of looters missing, along with gear, so were able to operate without hindrance. A eager to violence, but felt the need to assess capability first, so D volunteered to test, menacing at snake before simply vanishing in burst of sound from collapsing air to fill vacuum. Momentary concern, quickly assuaged by sound of profanity from nearby lagoon, where D clambered back up wall – impressive, considering clad in full plate and carrying pack at time. A punched unconscious, meanwhile, and tucked away, and all moved to room just past sarcophagi to find unusually large round crystal seated on base of interwoven metallic vines, with some infiltrating into crystal after having been previously damaged. Based on previous such crystal found on first day delving, hypothesize is acting as power source for significant part of dungeon, powering lights and probably heat as well, perhaps air purification and growth mechanisms also. E raised possibility of removing it as deterrent to adventurers, for preservation of own loot, but pointed out likelihood of also attracting monsters to move in, as well as difficulty of looting when majority of mechanisms nonfunctional. Currently, are planning to retrieve during extraction from next delve, contingent on collecting all nearby crystal flowers beforehand while light still available. Will need to pass spellsnake back to merchant, and should run new fruit by Alfhild, as did not recognize.

On which note, room full of murals to which we returned also full of said flowers up near ceiling, will need to collect. Continued through there to explore southwards; considered opening new set of doors, but water leakage through intimated too high a risk of flooding. A complained about rain when passing through, so offered to use wings as umbrellas for A and E, though personally rather enjoy feeling of rain on patagia, particularly when warm; hypothesize acts as radiator to assist in core temperature management, with large blood vessels relatively close to surface capable of carrying heat and using entire surface of wing as radiator, and can be withdrawn in cold climates to help shield torso and provide warmth. D, unusually, paused for a moment in rain, removing helmet and letting fall on upturned face, eyes closed. Almost seemed peaceful, momentarily, before donning helm and returning to usual violent self; wonder what he was remembering? Might ask, but suspect too private to discuss.

Moving further, D in lead, almost immediately ventured into room with massive, exquisitely carved marble statue of giant serpent encircling world; common theme amongst reptilian deities. Disk alone broader than I am tall, while serpent towers enough to reach next floor up from where we currently stand. E of course immediately planning to steal it; have suggested potential utility of Animate Objects in endeavor to her – should perhaps not be enabling, but frankly am interested in seeing such spectacular archaeological find retrieved, studied. Also to side, curved section with number of tables, seated underneath beautiful painted mural of tropical jungle underneath light crystals directed at subject.

Also occupied by pair of corpses, one on floor with pair of crossbow bolts embedded, other, guarded by (frankly somewhat ugly) dog, standing over and searching through corpse of former, carrying crossbow – in process of dying by idiocy.

A naturally immediately asks is friend hurt; for once, am fairly certain was trying to discombobulate as prelude to violence – cheerful teenager, quite good at it. Insisted no intervention required. Stepped forward to offer medical assistance, but Looter claimed didn't trust us, raised crossbow as if to menace. (Should mention A during entire time positioned directly in front of me, occluding line of fire – and have already seen her catch projectiles from air bare-handed. Acts bubbly and ditzy, may not even be acting, but is also one of deadliest personal combatants have ever seen; Darvin considers her a serious threat.)

On which note – fairly certain D took raised crossbow as personal insult, stepped forward and threatened "drop weapon or be dropped," very poetic start to gruesome violence. Dog and A moved almost simultaneously, A literally vaulting over dog to burst out wings and strike at Looter, who took shot at A only for bolt to be caught mid-air, mid-flight. D meanwhile swatted at dog, lunged for looter as moved out of way to call Bell of Lost Souls and E fired past me, though missed. Dog tried to attack E for that, but A intervened, taking advantage of D's distraction, then sprang to Looter and did some kind of short stomp kick to throw off balance, before high arcing twisting kick from above to base of neck; beautiful strike, lethal almost instantly, probably didn't even feel it.

D tossed a javelin at dog, and followed up with rapier – close combat not forte, unfortunately, took fairly severe bite in process, along with some strange disease; should leave melee to D. A joined in, but apparently not fond of harming animals even in mortal danger, so D stepped in, disregarding another bite to distract – then E leapt off staircase where had retreated to land on beast with pair of blades and aggressively stab to death, mauling in spray of gore that coated dog, E, self, some spatter on D.

Might be working off some stress from wife's temporary deceasement.

Looter carried 150 gp in two pouches and pack of bolts, along with crossbow and dagger, appropriated by E. Other corpse already stripped; offered last rites and to be retrieved for Hammer on ascent from delve. D also, in interest of thoroughness, piled dog and master together and decapitated, destroyed heads – was apparently planning 'field rites' involving oil and fire, but E pointed out smoke in dungeon probably unwise; tabled in favor of feeding to SNAKE when opportunity arises.

Advanced back up stairs discovered by E during hasty retreat, to second level of mezzanine – statue arguably more impressive when at head level; details impressively finely carved, intricate and yet lifelike, to point not only of individual scales, but distinct patterning and positioning on each scale, rather than uniformity, bespeaking a truly laudable dedication. Eyes, in particular, exquisite work, despite fading of color, almost appear to track viewer while they move.

Have checked with Detect Magic just in case; turns up negative.

Also found unobstructed doorway leading to another split room with water troughs and mirrors, similar to that with E's friend and Jason's corpse, except this one with break in rear corner of wall. E pondering possibility of 'acquiring' and transporting mirror to surface, with D's assistance to pry it loose and move it; while plotting, took opportunity to move to break and investigate – wise decision, frankly. Looking through, saw a theater, flooded, with rows upon rows of seats, stage in front, catwalk above with adjustable hooded lanterns containing lightflowers to shine spotlight upon actors; all flooded now, water nearly level with catwalk and ourselves, almost three stories above.

Theater also occupied – by lizardfolk; three spearmen, one warrior, one shaman, spearmen working to chop away at catwalk presumably to render inaccessible to non-aquatic species, while warrior and shaman supervised. Immediately apparent could not steal mirror without drawing attention, and further that allowing to proceed would render significant portion of tomb inaccessible. As such, turned to universal solution for all such problems – violence.

Had excellent plan, D in front on catwalk, blocking, A support from behind, E and self choosing targets of opportunity, specifically priest as per D's notes on combat targeting. Naturally, went to hell almost immediately. Began well; E firing on priest, D prepping javelins as approached, missed and landed in water, supplemented with own Faerie Fire for ease of targeting. A contributed by taunting invective at warrior; rather inappropriate, judging from reactions of other lizardfolk. Warrior responded in kind; definitely inappropriate, considering shaman's scandalized reaction and that one spearman nearly fell into water. D continued steady advance forward, but rapidly exposed to factor had not considered – lizardmen aquatic, so simply stepped into water and swam towards us, while were trapped on catwalk.

D trapped on catwalk, unphased, trading blows with approaching lizardfolk – simply shrugging spear thrusts off armor while whittling down with small smooth strikes from axe, when abrupt interruption from warrior, not against D but against A; sprang out of water, lunged for her in four-limbed tackle, then slammed off catwalk into water – and A already fairly small, against bulk of warrior as large as D. With natural aquatic tendency, vanished underwater in moments. E already driven off priest with hail of bolts, fleeing in terror from her murderous tendencies, so able to pay full attention to horrified expression as separated from partner again; fear, rage write large on every tense plane of face, but this time, no panic, no terror – as though trusted A would return victorious, against all odds. Faith, of a different kind.

And, as have long known, faith is always rewarded – Ange exploded again, in now-familiar golden outburst, bright enough to be visible even underwater. For a moment, we feared that even that might not be enough, as the murk of the water seemed to drown out even the brightness of her light. Then Angèle expressed her soul a second time, and if the first had been a thing of glory, this was a declaration of intent. Her projected soul-wings became tangible things of flesh and blood, and golden light flooded from her eyes and mouth. Radiance poured from her frame, and the sound of her wingbeats filled the room, water sloshing over the catwalk in violent waves that very nearly unbalanced both us and them. We had perhaps grown inured to the usual sight of her wings, but what we saw now was not the pale reflection of celestial grace but the fullest manifestation of it, and it would have shaken the hardest of hearts.

Perhaps denotes human capacity to disregard wonder that while lizardmen gawked at A bursting through water surface carrying (or rather launching) other warrior, E and self both continued to fire, and D chopped down another, considerately dragging corpse onto catwalk to save E's bolts. More javelins flung at D, but casually deflected off plate, like rain on skin.

Remaining lizardfolk also affected, but shaken, rather than uplifted as we were, and all took full advantage, in rapid flurry of violence; necrotic resonance and E's crossbow bolt to eyesocket felled warrior, and remaining spearman met with D's axe followed by A's spear, cannot have lasted more than twenty seconds after A revealed herself.

Then, as soon as violence ended, flapped up and buzzed around me a few times, trailing ethereal aetheric feathers, swooped at D, who had fortunately already stowed axe and shield, then swooped down to attempt to embrace partner with all six limbs simultaneously – if was being generous, would describe as majestic descent akin to swooping hawk or falling crane; actually more similar to chicken attempting to smother egg.

In fairness, chickens actually quite scary when roused, capable of remarkable violence despite harmless appearance.

(Do monks have spirit animals?)

Must admit, think this is the first time have seen A happy – have seen her cheerful, angry, sad, compassionate, and mischievous, by turns, but genuine, unalloyed happiness first seen finding freedom in flight and with her E, and that happiness likewise reflected on E's face seeing her joy. Myself hovered a few minutes there, watching them, looking at corpses of lizardmen – seeking only to protect home from depredations of ruthless tomb raiders, considering fallen masonry of once grand temple – now fallen to ruin, all legacy of its builders lost in mists of time. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

Tell myself necessary for greater good, that needs to be done lest evil befall the world, have grace of Selune to assure me is so. Gods move their pieces, and mortals brag of their great works. A, E, I all parts of gods' greater plans (D assume some fortunate anomaly) – but if so planned, then why such suffering? Know classical answer of course: Evil has plans also, and only by concerted cooperative effort can it be defeated – but any end reached by evil means is marred by the evil done to achieve it. Must wonder whether can really justify own actions when by any objective metric, am villain inflicting needless suffering on innocent villagers solely to assuage own fears, whether they be of potential horrors rising from depths or of own irrelevance in face of world's steady slide to another war like that before.

In case curious, while was ruminating, A accosting E eagerly, D looting bodies, collecting more javelins – has also found sizeable club of woven iron vines, studded with black glass; seems quite enamored.

Am now jotting down notes while E steadily chips mirror free with D's help, Selune's guidance upon them as they work. A currently attempting to train frogs with L.B. into simple behaviors, stop come go etc., am fairly certain is not currently under any relevant sorcerous effects. Probably. Although hard to tell, has perhaps devised natural immunity simply by already exhibiting behaviors that would be produced by suc

Stand corrected, has just attempted to hug frog for command compliance; need to go poke her awake before E gets distracted again.