The Forest - Chapter One

[spiderwrangler]

"Well glitter-wings, shall we scout it out a bit? Our bear may be good at making doors, but not sure how well he'd be able to climb down that stone shaft. If it's worth all of us investigating further, Kzri should be able to help us get him down."

Kast tightens the straps of his pack and tucks his cloak in at the waist to keep it secure. Approaching the entrance to the shaft, he looks up inside the tower before kneeling briefly and crawling forward and moving down into the shaft head first. He reaches out to Kzri <alert/follow/food/maybe>, and moves to the side a few feet down the shaft and pauses to allow her room to descend on a strand of silk, peering ahead through what visible light there is to see any details of what might be waiting below.

He attempts to suppress his feelings of unease at entering an underground stone dwelling.

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If he notices anything *bad* above them, he'd halt before moving into the shaft.

[willpell]

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Shall I assume everyone descends into the shaft?

[Amara]

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Rían goes if they go. If possible, and no one contests it he'd go in front... Best anything nasty hits him first.

[willpell]

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Is he still GiantBear? I'm not certain he'll fit down the shaft....

[Amara]

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It's only 1m/level, so it wouldn't take too long to wait out...especially since a few minutes already passed with Rían waiting on them to decide before he even made the hole.

[spiderwrangler]

If the rest of the party wants to go down the shaft together, and as long as Kast doesn't see anything alarming during his brief venture into the shaft, he'll return to the surface with Kzri and start preparing a Bear SlingÔäó out of her silk for the purpose of lowering Rian down once he returns to a more manageable size.

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Since it's her nature, I'm assuming that Kzri would succeed at fashioning some kind of harness pretty easily, but let me know if you want KAst to make a Use Rope check.

[willpell]

Without too much trouble, you all make it to the bottom of the vertical shaft. The passage that slopes away below is faintly lit from beyond the limit of your ability to see clearly (all three of you have low-light vision); the light has a nauseating light-violet cast to it. The tunnel is bare earth, but seems to have been packed to an incredible density and flatness, making it almost as solid as stone.

Search checks, please.

[spiderwrangler]

Search check.

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While the table I'm reading from only has Climb, Hide, Jump and Spot as her skills with bonuses, would Kzri make a search check with no modifiers? Somethings like 'ransack a chest for an item' wouldn't make sense for her, but finding a footprint or signs of someone's passing would?

If so... 1d20=11... not that she did that well anyway.

Also, if it comes up, she also has Tremorsense and Darkvision to 60ft.

[willpell]

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Search checks involve Intelligence because they involve actively and discriminately looking through things in search of other particular things, as opposed to Spot which is just noticing things that especially stand out. There might be cases where either check is appropriate, but in this case the Search check is called for because of something that would be utterly meaningless to Kzri, so she can't Spot for it instead. "Looking down the tunnel" would in fact be a Spot check, so that's not what this is about. This check is passive, but it still involves something that only an intelligent creature would identify as anything other than part of the landscape.

[spiderwrangler]

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ok, that helps my understanding, thanks. If I'd thought about it more, I probably could have figured that the lack of any int score would prevent her from using skills based on it.

[Amara]

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I shall roll my most amazing roll... a flat 1d20!
Dear lord, going from playing a +7 skill monkey cleric to Rían again is painful, hahaha
Nioca, you still there?

Rían does what he can to help with the apparent search, but doesn't seem to see anything.

[spiderwrangler]

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Rían does what he can to help with the apparent search, but doesn't seem to see anything.

The dice still love you, I see...

[Nioca]

Vualn Search: 11

[willpell]

Kast spots a faint glimmer among the rubble of the knocked-in tower wall which fell to the bottom of the shaft.

[Amara]

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Can Rían smell anything down here, perhaps?

[willpell]

Rian's nose is filled with the musty, organic redolence of a tunnel through damp earth. Which is a bit odd, since the earth he's standing on isn't damp.

[spiderwrangler]

Kast moves to where the glimmer caught his eye and carefully shifts some of the debris in an attempt to reveal whatever it might be.

[willpell]

You find a glittering clear crystal in a truncated-octahedron shape, about the size of your fist.

[spiderwrangler]

"Hmm...", Kast holds the crystal out for the others to see, "What do you make of this? Doesn't look like anything I'm familiar with."

[Amara]

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I could make an equally nonexistent knowledge check or just save everyone the trouble and we could not laugh at the poor bear.

The bear redirected his attention and squinted at the crystal, but certainly knew nothing of it, either.
He did sniff around, however... If he could at least determine where the smell of moisture was coming from properly, he could perhaps make himself useful.

[willpell]

The smell is everywhere - some clings to the crystal and to some surfaces of the tumbled bricks (presumably the inward ones), but it's stronger coming from down the tunnel.

[spiderwrangler]

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Not that Kast would be able to track it, but for my knowledge for RP purposes, is the odor Rian picking up strong enough to be detected by the rest of the party?

Turning to Joyce and The Fey, "Does this look familiar to either of you?"

[Nioca]

Vualn looks the crystal over for a few moments, then shakes his head. "Crystals like this are frequently used for arcane purposes. I must admit that the purpose of this particular one eludes me, however."

Knowledge: Arcana - 8 (Crit-Fail)

[Amara]

Rían starts to sniff along the ground, and heads closer to the tunnel. He didn't recognize the crystal, and certainly wouldn't have been able to communicate anything, even if he had been able to recognize it, so he decided he'd put himself to what use he could currently provide.
(Even if he doubted he would pick up anything useful.)
It was still certainly worth a try. The crystal had the same scent that was coming from down the tunnel, in the very least.

[willpell]

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The smell does not stand out significantly enough to be worth mentioning except to Rian. They can probably detect it, but more at a "background noise" level than as anything they'd really notice.

@ Nioca: Skill checks never crit-fail, but a total of 8 doesn't get you anything.

"Hm. Eightfold symmetry is unusual, but it could mean a lot of things. So, so far we have 'some underground-dwelling group magically created an aboveground tower with a crystal in it.' Not much to go on."