You turn Aria over so she’s facing up. You can tell she’s breathing softly but she’ll be out for a couple hours. Then you go and retrieve your shovel without any issues. 

Just as a quick update for you guys, it looks like Teufelshunden is going to be stepping back as a player. They privately messaged me a few days back asking if we could port the game to Discord, otherwise they would struggle keeping up here, and unfortunately I don’t feel comfortable moving the campaign since I don’t have discord and I’m familiar with the system here, along with the fact that everyone else would have to be comfortable moving as well and we would need to find a way to handle dice, characters and stuff like that. I did say in my response that they might not struggle keeping up with the campaign now as it’s clear that the post rate has really slowed. I haven’t received a response back which is absolutely fine as it signals that they probably are holding true to their original statement and will unfortunately be leaving us. 

Would you guys want me to look for another player or two to pad out the party once again or are you happy to stick with the group we’ve got? We haven’t gone far at all in the campaign so far (technically only 1% so if our progress so far is an indicator of how long this might take, the campaign might end up being far longer then I expected at first, bordering on several years) so they wouldn’t need to catch up on much at all? If we did gain a few new players it would likely increase the pace of the campaign quite a bit as I originally intended for this to be a larger party campaign so the impact of it being casual would be lessened as there would always be a rotation of players to keep things flowing. 

Sorry it’s a long post, there was just a lot to cover, looking forward to some responses to see how we will move forward :)

[TL:DR Teufelshunden has stepped back, should I recruit some new players to possibly speed things up?]

Eggo Lass stares at the unconscious Aria and then looks to Auridrey, "I'm just as surprised as you." She asks, "That strongbox down in the other room, you think you'd be able to pick it if it's locked?"

[[
I'm happy to continue with the current amount. I'm also fine with adding another player. (With a loosely connected storyline, makes it easy to have people added.)
]]

[I’m fine with either adding people or leaving group as is. Leaning slightly towards adding because tougher fights will be more difficult with a smaller party.]

“I have no clue how to pick locks. I could throw my shovel at it though.” Aridrey says to Eggo Lass.

"I'm not sure if I can do what you ask, what I can always try. Lead the way to this box." Hugh smiles. Once at the box, he pulls out a few thin slivers and first tentatively pokes around the lock (Investigate for traps 11), then tries to disable any trap he finds (Dex 10), and finally tries to pick the lock (Dex 10).

You open the box with extreme ease, as the hinges seem be entirely busted and the lid is almost entirely broken through. At the bottom of the box is a key, just as Aria described, lying perfectly horizontal. (I know your check for traps was for around the box but I’ll apply it here as I you’d probably be on high alert already) As you check for traps you notice nothing about the strongbox, but you do see that on the handle of the key there are two discreet magical glyphs etched into the brass, glowing like lava. What do you do? 

[I think I’ll look for a few new players as that seems to me that people don’t mind too much, I’m not sure how many people will even be interested so we might not even get anybody new, but I’ll keep you guys updated]

[Just put out a thread, should get some responses soon :)]

Alright, we've got our three new players which should be plenty! We have:

Preyfire: Playing Sly, a Mammon Tiefling Wizard.
Bjorn_Stahle: Playing Sigurd, a Variant Human Ranger.
RippedRhinoVikings: Playing Bilyur, a Forest Gnome Monk.

I've privately contacted each of them with further campaign details so they should be joining the party soon and will be ready to play!

[[

Coolio! Welcome to the party, Prey, Bjorn, and Rhino.

As a heads up, this will be another busy weekend for me.

]]

Eggo Lass is hesitant upon hearing of the glyphs, "I'm not sure I'm too comfortable with these around." She takes a moment to examine them, "Hmmm."

[[ Hoping could help someone with an Arcana check. ]]

"I must say, those runes look quite suspicious", a voice comes from the entrance. A lanky tiefling with pale features and holding a staff seems to have entered the tomb behind you. She pats down some dust that has settled on her pale pink robe. Her lips crinkle in obvious disapproval at the audacity of the environment to bother her.

"Although if that gutted lagomorph over there is your handywork, consider me less worried."

The woman rifles through a pristine looking book and jots down a few notes while looking at the people present. Well, what a colorful and decidedly small party, in more ways than one.

"You can call me Sly. Pleased to make your aquaintance, even though the circumstances are decidedly.... disagreeable. I am here to, as they say, "dungeoneer."

Quote from VitusW >>

As a heads up, this will be another busy weekend for me.

 

 [[No problem, with such a large party we should still be fine numbers wise. Sorry if I’m not replying as fast as I would be usually, all my DND Beyond Notifications have just stopped being emailed to me and don’t appear on the app at all so I’ll be checking as often as I can for new posts instead!]]

((OOC: Yeah, we have noticed the same thing about the notifications in other campaigns. It's been a bit of a bother since the start of the week))

[[
I think the notifications thing is sitewide right now. I've heard a lot of other people having the same issue, myself included.
]]

Eggo Lass turns to the tiefling wizard, "Ah, there you are Tharkûn-- wait... you're not Tharkûn." She gives a sheepish smile of embarassment, "Hello, Sly. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I'm Eggo Lass." She pauses for a moment, trying to get to a place in the room that's a little more out of the sunlight, "More dungeoneers are always good. You haven't seen an annoying tabaxi around by any chance have you?"

[[Ah cool, good to know it’s not just me, hopefully that’ll get solved soon enough. BTW, Preyfire (and any other players who weren’t aware for that matter), Tharkun was a character who left, and also just so happened to be a Tiefling Wizard. We never really explained where he went, so let’s just say that after defeating the rabbit he decided to go through the portal by himself to continue alone. I might have him come up as an NPC later on, but more likely they’ll be killed somewhere within the dungeon at somepoint like pretty much all the other adventurers. And the ‘annoying tabaxi’ Eggo Lass mentioned is called Ivory Shazltaf, who’s a high level, egotistical douchbag of a wizard that thinks she can beat the dungeon all by herself. It’s unlikely that any of the new characters have seen her as she’s already made her way over to the next dungeon (she took advantage of the rabbits blind left eye and snuck past rather than face it head on to reach the portal) Hopefully new players will have read through the thread when they’ve got an opportunity, but I’ll explain a few things if they come just to make sure whilst we’re still in the process of introducing new characters :)]

((OOC: ah I see, will edit my post accordingly, thanks Shiverquill))

The tiefling nods politely in the drows direction, "The 'New Queen of Tyraa'? I think she left after you entered the dungeon. From what I've heard of her, I find her lack of pragmatism disturbing. It reeks of bad things to come. Rest assured, not all members of the studious persuasion are so ignorant of collaboration."

"Although I'm sorry to say, I will not be able to do anything about your unconscious elf friend over there.", referring to Aria.

[Awesome, you seem to have caught up really quickly which I’m so very grateful for, it makes my job a lot easier! Now that I think of it, it’s probably best that I recruited some new players when I did as a lot of players won’t receive notifications now as they’re not functioning, so obviously they’ll assume that there’s no new posts, so we might not have as much interaction as usual until the notification issue gets sorted]

[Teufelshunden (Tharkun’s Player) just reached out to me saying that they’d like to continue playing but with a decreased post rate which is great news, ignore what I said previously lol!]

"Welcome, I'm Hugh. Could you check the key here to see what you can make of those rune?" Hugh stands and moves to make room for the tiefling.

OOC: Hello everyone! I'm new to the thread, we can roleplay my character arriving if you want. I have chosen not to read through the previous posts in order to better roleplay not knowing what has happened. Can't wait to start playing here.