Tests and Trials Game Thread

The night passes uneventfully and the party find the weather is significantly improved, there are even hints of blue between the clouds.

This turns out to be something of a concern for Mikram as they head towards the tomb.

"What the hells? What's wrong with the ceiling?"

He attempts to play it cool but he is clearly panicking. Also, it is much brighter, so he needs to squint.

"Is it molten rock? Why's it so bright? Can we hurry?"

The group return to the tomb unmolested by the sky.

((Another d100 from Kroshav for the mining, anyone doing anything special?))

49

((Kroshav will wait until there's a ceiling of rock overhead before trying to explain 'sky' to Mikram.))

((Ernos has nothing special going on.))

(( Cladmir was initially confused, but caught on as to what Mikram was all about.  Also nothing special going on. ))

(sorry for delay)

(Jaq would have wanted to go with her, can we backtrack and have him go with Thir?)

The prior night, Thir doesn't leave alone as Jaq tags along with her.

Once to the surface Jaq watches her take note of the position of the moon and follow the peaks of the mountains to the north, both now visible after the storm has passed. Thir seems ready to head directly west but pauses after a step, scanning the shadowy, distant tree lines. With a steaming snort of decision she spins on her heel and heads north instead. The going is slow in the deep, heavy snow but at least the wind isn't blowing. After about a half hour Jaq, and Thir, spot what at first looks to be a thin stream of smoke rising ahead of them. Moving cautiously ahead Jaq spots the hole they made and he jumped in. A 10' area around the hole is clear of snow, seemingly having melted, though there is an odd icy lip to the south of the hole that is nearly as thick as Jaq is tall and about half as high that spreads east and west. After confirming the steam wasn't smoke Thir isn't interested and pushes on north, in complete silence.

After another hour the pair reach a number of rugged, jagged outcropping from the west side of the mountain that Thir indicates Jaq should climb on explaining,

"Less mark in snow."

She then proceeds to move along smoothly, avoiding large patches of snow by climbing up or down. After an hour of this, well past the tree line surrounding the wide washout the Archives are located in, Thir descends back to more level ground and proceeds south west into the forest. As dawn approaches she'll start digging a hole into a pile of snow near the base of a tree and starts crawling in, she waves Jaq in with her.

"Sleep here. Hidden."

She then eyes Jaq suspiciously,

"Pee first."

Judging the size of the space, it's going to be...snug. Thir does insist though.

((Roll me four d20s Row))

----

Once Mikram gets into the tomb he puts his back to a wall and mutters, shaking his head over and over,

"Aye need a drink. That ain't natural. Not natural."

He needs a quarter of an hour to get himself back under control.

The party set to work after that and Kroshav makes quick work of the stone, even quicker than the day before. Kroshav, in the swing of things, feels his shoulder jar with a substantial impact from hitting a thin bluish seam of rock and stopping.

Mikram works his way over and examines it,

"Silver."

He taps the visible amount silver and listens against the seam.

"Not huge. Yer not able to dig through it? Aye guess its fine as a pillar."

With some testing Kroshav finds he isn't able to dig through it, plus it hurts his shoulder to hit it full out. After some testing, Kroshav leaves a 5' wide and 15' long stretch of pillar with the silver seam in it.

(Unless you want to try and get it out?)

Everyone else continues to help the work along, clearing dust. Mikram suggests the party head back after dark, to not get spotted by the dragon,

"Or something."

"Oof... yeah, silver isn't easy to dig through... would need different tools. Pillar sounds good to me. Maybe when we get this place back for Lurn, can carve something into the silver for him."

Mikram glares at the silver,

"Aye'm not good with smithing or shaping metals. Ye'll need another dwarf for that."

He does get a considering look on his face,

"But it would look nice on the statue if aye can hammer it thin enough to do some silver leafing with..."

((Otherwise the day is more or less over, anyone want to do anything special for the evening? The trip home is uneventful, if it happens after dark. If it happens before Mikram will only look at the snow and twitch from time to time, cursing.))

"I've mostly worked iron and steel, but we can probably figure something out, if we decide to go that route."

((Kroshav's fine waiting until after dark, he's had a productive day and finds it hard to reach a stopping point he's good with.))

((Was the "He looks back to..." part of something?))

((It was something that had been written earlier that got pushed down and replaced. Gone now.))

7878

Dice

Jaq follows along after Thir, once in a while trying to keep some simple conversation going.  "Does your clan have a name?"

When  they are about to sleep, he nods in agreement to....peeing...and heads the opposite direction to do the deed.

When they are at the hot spring, he will look around carefully for anything out of the ordinary.

"I doubt I can create enough heat to properly melt and shape silver, but softening it a little bit may be possible.  I can't say I know much of anything about metals, though."

((Guessing those rolls must be 16, 19, 2 and 1?

Investigation check for looking around around the hole, but passively he would have seen what was written above. As he approaches closer though- ))

Moving closer to the hole, very slowly and carefully due to the very slick layer of ice, Jaq doesn't get the impression of intense heat from the dark water below. It is definitely warmer than when he took his dip but not warm enough to cause all the melting, he thinks. Also, it was definitely warmer the night Thir joined them in the storm. He could feel the heat coming out from ten feet away through his winter clothes.

-

Thir waves Jaq off on his attempts to chat and looks around warily. When they are very close, Thir would lean in and whisper,

"Dragon have hearers all over."

Once Jaq is snuggled in close, shoulder to shoulder, she'd maneuver over him, awkwardly, to pull a cover over the entrance that she apparently made while Jaq was doing his business.  After getting situated again she would whisper to him,

"Clan Splinterbranch."

Jaq notes, perhaps with discomfort, that she smells of a combination of bad breath, dirty body, leather and cat?

She falls asleep rapidly if Jaq doesn't have any questions.

---

((Would you like to extract some silver to practice with?))

Back at the Archives, things are more or less as they left them. Joe is working on something with the Librarian and has gathered a number of inert, damaged golems and are busy talking magic.

A pile of pasta, in a large stone bowl rather than on the floor, greets the party. A red sauce with large brown chunks covers it all.

Joe will say to the party,

"Ahoy! I be thinking the food problem is solved! Pasta with a red sauce, I be flavoring it meself."

The bravest among you find that the pasta, something close to spaghetti, is slicker than it should probably. Getting past that and starting to chew, the brave one finds it to be almost the right texture, if slightly gritty. The sauce, that is closer to a solid than a liquid, has been flavored perfectly to have a nice tomato and meat sauce flavor! It is actually quite good...until one of those brown chunks gets into the mix. Those pop like grapes and are filled with something tarry that makes it difficult to chew or spit out but they do taste vaguely like meatballs.

Joe looks over from what she is doing on hearing the first gagging and spitting and say, like she is just remembering,

"Oh, aye you best be staying away from the meat grapes. They be something awful."

Heated water hole Investigation: 2

(Yep, you got the rolls from above figured out correctly.  You'd think I'd have figured out this dice roller better by now!!!)

The only question he has for Thir is , "Does anything live down in the warm water hole?"

He then will let her sleep, after saying, "I will sleep for a bit right now, then keep closer watch."  What he really means is he will do his four hours of needed trance now, but didn't know exactly how to convey that to Thir.  So 4 hours of trance and then he will be listening for trouble, but stay within the snow hidey hole.

Looking more closely at the ice, Jaq recognizes a pretty familiar pattern. Ice gets like this back home in Stenrek when it gets warmed up and melts a bit, like in the sun, but then freezes again at night. Normally an early spring kind of thing to see, where it might take a couple of weeks for all the ice to finally disappear. Here though, based on how many layers of ice are in the wide little ice wall that has formed down slope,   it looks like it the melt and refreeze process has been happening over and over. Given that the last few days haven't been warm enough for any regular melting, Jaq chalks it up the hole's heat.

Thir looks at Jaq and then to the hole and then back to Jaq. She gives a shrug that reaches her ears.

"Dunno. Not see hole until yesterday."

Jaq recalls that it was Kroshav that made the hole in the first place, the day Lurn was killed. It makes sense she doesn't know much about it.

---

Jaq comes back from his trance sweating and wrapped in Thir's arms, the bugbear snoring softly into his hair.

(Perception for the listening)

94

Strikingly blue skies greet the tomb diggers the next morning, not a cloud in sight.

8

Mikram goes up, head down, with the rest of the group. Unfortunately, just like people can't help but look down deep holes they are crossing, he looks up.

He immediately starts flailing and squinting. Yelling in dwarven he says,

"No, oh no nonono no."

Laced with colorful amounts of profanity.

He turns and extracts himself from the golem/Eula carrying him and starts crawling back down the stairs, breathing hard.

Kroshav will go to Mikram, "It's alright, you don't have to go... can I help you get back down into the Library?", he asks in Dwarven.