Obsidian Vault Reclamations: Mine Delving Part I
Last week, three characters almost died and it was all my fault. This week, two characters came even closer to death and it had nothing to do with me. And then I fell and practically broke my legs. But, let’s start at the beginning of this week. (As a note, the player for Octavia was absent this week, so she played no role in these events)
After successfully making our way down to the first gallery, we decided to check out the shorter shafts first. Our logic was if we fell, we probably wouldn’t die. Probably.
The first shaft we looked at was about twenty feet deep. The bottom was moldy as far as we could see, and while it had a ladder, moldy wood was not exactly something that’s conductive to climbing easily down it.
To that end, we decided to look at the other, 30-foot shaft. On first inspection, it had a pile of rubble from a cave in at the bottom. Some bones. Some pants. Carric descends first, using a safety line to secure his way down the shaft. On reaching the bottom, he sees a 70ft gallery, with the entrance being only about 10 feet from one end. After he makes his way down, Haltz, myself, and Ronin also descend.
Ronin and I both begin investigating the rubble. I find that it is easily not a cave in – The pants, for one, are at the wrong angle. But on further inspection, we’re interrupted by an investigating grunt/cry.
Everybody turns, and I spotlight an ugly, wretched goblin type thing with my lantern. Startled, it turns and runs, diving down a shaft along a rope tied to it. Carric and I both run after. Carric isn’t fast enough to catch him, and I fall flat on my face, extinguishing the lantern in the process.
Not pausing, Carric jumps on the rope and climbs down after the goblin, landing in a pile of awful nasty detritus – Sticks, mud, plant bits, and the like. He does see the goblin scurry into a tunnel, and while the rest of us climb down after, he goes in and looks.
It isn’t a large enough tunnel for the rest of us to fit in, and it goes out further past the mine. Haltz feels a breeze, and we guess this might be another entrance to the mine for the goblins. Not being able to enter the tunnel, I suggest that we fill the bottom of the shaft with some of the rubble, ensuring at the very least we won’t be backstabbed on our exploration through the rest of the mine. This is done using stones from the not-cave-in, and in the process we find that it looks less like a cave in and more like a set of nasty, awful, goblin beds.
The room also has a second exit, a shaft that leads down into piles of things. Broken barrels, sacks, half eaten limbs, and the like. Again, Carric descends first using a safety line. Midway down the shaft, the safety line comes into good use when half the ladder is missing and broken, leaving just a single pole on one side before resuming its normal form.
Before he can reach the bottom, a javelin comes flying out of the dark, clattering off the stones next to his face. Dropping the last few feet and taking some minor injuries in the process, Carric tries to hide in the rubble at the bottom but sees nothing. Haltz and myself, having seen and heard the spear, secure a line and I descend rapidly on it, ignoring the ladder.
As I descend, Carric stands – and almost fatal move. As he does so, the javelin thrower reveals himself, skewering Carric and sending him immediately unconscious. At this point, the great goblin charges me, his two-handed morning star swinging at me. Thankfully, my armor saves me from damage, and Hatlz arrives behind me, a much-needed boost.
He swings at the goblin before being fully down, using the rope as both a fist weapon and a balance for a kick. Sadly, neither connects, but the Goblin’s attack on Haltz hits. I swing, missing as well, and Haltz makes a second attack that also fails. The goblin, not content on one hit to Haltz, smacks him one more time, this time dealing a significant amount of damage to him and knocking him unconscious as well.
At this point, Ronin – who had managed to not notice the javelin in the first place, notices we’re having the snot beaten out of us and joins us at the bottom. As if trying to make up for his lack of noticing, he attacks the goblin, one punch missing wide but the other slamming into the goblin.
I swing again, but again I miss. Proving his worth, Ronin smacks the goblin again, and my next attack finally hits, my glaive cleaving the goblin in two. The inside of this goblin is as corrupted as the outside, covered in black and green nastiness, and somehow withered without impeding the goblin.
Ronin tends to Haltz and Carric, and then searches the room while I watch the entrance behind us. He finds a preliminary mining tunnel that leads to the main shaft, and after he is done searching I look at a pair of bodies in the corner.
One is a peasant, their throat slashed. The other is a man in gear similar to the guards in the town, his armor and side punctured by a hole that match the one made in Carric by the javelin. On him, I find a locket, a small painting of a woman inside. Thinking it might be of use, I put it in my pack. It may come in handy later. I also investigate the shaft, and as I look into the main shaft I see a guard fall screaming down it. He hits the net that Haltz had secured previously, but the fall was too great. His scream is silenced in a way that only death can manage, and continues falling down the shaft beyond us.
After resting for some time, allowing Carric and Haltz to regain some of their strength, we make our way to the main gallery. We test the rope to the surface, and it is secure. At the very least we’ll be able to make our way back up. Deciding the best decision was to press onward, we head down to the moldy shaft, with Ronin leading this time due to Carric’s injuries. Ronin lands, seeing the entirety of the cavern is filled with the mold. Spotting an interesting puddle with a corpse in it, he heads towards it. The corpse seems intact, but the breastplate it was wearing is quite a bit dissolved.
However, the room disagreed with the invasion, and was suddenly filled with a loud, wretched, screeching noise. I was most of the way to the bottom, but the shrieking startled me and I fell the last few feet, landing heavily. At this point, I reach in and find my second wind, bringing me back up to full fighting shape.
Carric and Haltz descend fairly quickly, and Halts quickly identifies four fungi that are emitting the shrieking. Letting Carric know which ones they are, Carric fires at each, but they remain in their ear-splitting noise mode.
Ronin, meanwhile, has noticed that the puddle has started moving, if slowly. Seeing Carric firing at the fungi, I make my way towards one, but a dart from Haltz kills it before I can reach it. However, this distraction allows me to spot that the puddle REALLY seems to like me. It is slowly reaching out towards me, and noting how slow it is moving I grab a flask of oil and throw it on the thing.
With that opportunity, Ronin lights the thing on fire with his torch while Carric finishes the fungi off, allowing our hearing to return to normal. With a few more arrows, Carric stops the now-flaming puddle, which quickly sputters out as the oil is consumed.
The area secure, we look around, finding another passage leading to the main shaft and two shafts leading down. One is unfinished, simply a hole that ends after a short distance. The other one leads about forty feet down to another gallery. It is there that we call time on the session.
In all, we managed to not die a horrid death from the goblin, possibly seal an entrance of theirs, and clear a room of fungi designed by a wretched god. Who knows what we will come across next week.
