"Who is Chaxaxeudum?" Namura called after the illusions, her body still practically shaking with anger. Every time they uncovered something new, she seemed to be left with more questions than answers. She turned back to the rest of the group, specifically making eye contact with the rogue. "They're going to try and suck us dry, Lero. Do you really think we should follow them straight into a trap?"

Buama is at the back muttering to herself in more than one language as she whips through trying to analyze what she has heard. Not a religion with any historical backing so could be new. It definitely has some arcane bent. Her eyes go wide. "I thought that was deemed a failure." She claps her hand over her mouth not wanting anyone but the party to hear anything and looks to where the illusions are and then around the room again. When it seems like she can whisper she says one word very quietly, "Naether."

Lero laughs, "You're right, Namura. Lets just walk away..." He turns to leave just as Buama whispers her word.

"Oh, what was that Buama? You said you want to follow them? Well now, that just leaves Namura outvoted." He turns back around and shrugs at Namura, "What can I say?  Majority rules."

"I am all for a little cleansing but should this side activity cause us to perish then our original mission will be put into jeopardy. Now they might be responsible for the dark site as well, in which case we will have to return and get this combat training you speak of Lero." With that Azi sheathes he sword and waits.

Duncan began following Lero, shrugging towards Namura, "There's nothing else we can really do, might as well push forward." With that Duncan moved forward trying to keep his eyes on everything at once. 

"So we're doing this?" Namura let out a sigh, looking down the terrifyingly long tunnel. "Fine. I'll take point." Even if she was not entirely on board with this plan, the ranger always felt most comfortable taking the lead.

Being the first person in line, she didn't realize that the floor of the cavern was an illusion until she found herself plummeting through it. She felt Lero try to reach out and pull her back to safety, but she fell right out of his grasp. Luckily, she had the ring of feather fall, and the descent became more scenic than terrifying. 

The tunnel opened up after about 60 feet into a giant cavern. The cavern was 50 feet tall, and housed a lake glowing with Aether. Unable to change her trajectory, Namura allowed herself to dive silently into the water. As she surfaced, the elf could hear Lero calling out to her. Unsure of what dangers may be lurking nearby, she decided not to call back. She didn't want to give away her position, and at the moment she felt as if she was on the cusp of discovery. People didn't put up illusory terrain's to hide nothing, so there had to be something here. 

Namura spotted a tunnel, and decided to investigate that first. A ways down it, an older tunnel formed an intersection. She surveyed the area, unsure of where to head next. Remembering Lero's chalk trick from earlier, she decided she needed to do something like that to ensure she didn't lose herself in these tunnels. The ranger turned back around and made her way back towards the cavern, hoping to find a glowing rock or something. 

Just as she was about to enter the subterranean lake's cavern again, she caught sight of Lero hanging from a rope. Namura saw him seconds before he saw her, and so she quickly ducked back into the shadows of the tavern. The hunter wasn't entirely sure why she was hiding. Perhaps it was habit, or perhaps it was the fact that she was almost certain Lero had purposefully tried to grab her by her behind. In any case, she was curious to see how things would play out from there. 

BEFORE POST 428
"While it is most certainly a trap, we should follow them. We could cut off the head of the snake and make our goal much easier. Besides, we might be able to ask about the two missing bits of the ritual detailed on the walls. It's rather brutal, and perhaps shouldn't be recorded, but I think it should be. As for Xunzoghudaad, I have no knowledge of the name. Probably the leader of their little cult. Naether though? That is a really silly name."

AFTER POST 428
Flux follows Lero, who is right behind Namura. When Namura falls, Lero starts to tie rope together, using 3 ropes. Lero goes down, and when he shouts up that "It's about eleven feet short! Maybe eleven and a half!" and "There's something weird about the water here!", Flux climbs down as well. As they do, they start the ritual for Detect Magic, as their thopter starts flying around, looking for Namura. The servo stays with the group up top of the hole, informing them of events.
Suddenly, a rock the size of a basketball flies right past Lero, who then shouts "See anything?!", to which Flux replies "A rock just hit my thopter", causing it to crash into the lake. A few moments later, Lero dives in, heading for land.
"How deep does the lake look, Lero?"
"It looks pretty deep!"
"So more than 60 feet deep or ambiguous?"
"What the hell is an ambiguous!?"
"Is it too hard to tell?"
"Yeah!"
"Hopefully is isn't too deep; I do want the servo back"
Flux climbs down the rope further, their ritual nearly complete. The dangle so that their legs are no further than 4 feet from the lake, as Lero reaches his goal - a pillar - and starts to swim to a wurm tunnel he can see in the rock. As the Detect Magic ritual comes into effect, Flux realises that the lake has high concentrations of raw aether, and that is the source of its glowing. Noticing a source of refined aether 15 feet below the surface, approximately where their thopter fell in, Flux dives in to retrieve whatever remains. As Flux surfaces, Lero waves them over. Upon reaching Lero, Flux inspects the wreckage of the thopter. Realising just how damaged it is, Flux notes that they should reinforce it next time they repair it (Third time's the charm). The two head a short distance into the tunnel and spot Namura, who is leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.
"Took you long enough."
"We don't have a ring with properties such as your ring, and we wanted to make sure the lake was safe."
"You didn't hear us calling for you?"
"I did hear."
"You didn't respond"
"That's it... I'm going back up."
"And how do you intend to do that?"
"I wanted to see how long it would take you. If I couldn't swim or if there had been a monster, I would have been dead. There are some tunnels over there that I found, one seems to lead upward."
Looking back into the cavern, Flux notices the mushrooms resemble ones that they have seen in their book, mushrooms that impart sentience and life to the ground on which they grow, creating elementals.
"Lero, Namura, we may be in for a fight."

Seeing Lero and Flux climbing down after Namura, Kreithee decides to go down too for their path could be through that lower tunnel, if that wasn't just a pit trap to another Naether perversion lair.

When it reaches the end of the rope, Kraithee scans the lake looking for his companions, seeing that Lero was waving Flux to a wurm hole on the wall, Kraithee lets go of the rope and starts swimming toward them.

Reaching them at the same time that Flux says "Lero, Namura, we may be in for a fight." Without saying a word Kraithee takes a scan of the area.

11 Perception

Buama rolls her eyes and shimmies down the ropes finding they are not that far above the water, but far enough to make it impossible to reach. She works with one foot and a hand to make a loop to keep the foot in. It is a bit of a strain due to having all her gear.

"Well, Elto, I'm thinking your calculation for this would be about 50/50."

She gets the end of the rope pulled up and held in her teeth as she fishes with her free hand in one of her pants pockets. She finds a hook and ties it to the end of the rope. Now for the hard part. The rope is held in her teeth again about two feet from the end.

She stabilizes herself and looks like she is plucking something off her sleeve or maybe pulling something out of her sleeve. She works to be holding the item she pulled out by one end. Suddenly there is a 24' foot wooden ladder dangling from one hand. A screech as it pulls at her arm escapes and she bites on the rope a bit harder.

After a few breaths she tries to see if she can figure out how to lift the ladder to the end of the hook. Well, if she can hang on long enough and not slip off the rope. Hopefully she could make it stay hooked even if she got dumped into the water. She had the urge to start laughing at the whole idea which would not help.

((Does it work? Stay tuned as only the DM knows for sure. ;) ))

Azi waits up top until everyone else has climbed down, as he wishes to stand guard.  Once everyone has started down he too will begin to climb down.  He is very careful in this placement of his feet and hands, and once at the bottom of the pit/top of the cavern he lets go.  He flies towards the water but is able to land with ease.

"Where to next Namura?  I am completely out of my element down here.  Not looking to have anyone else falling in pit holes."

(Fall damage = 19 dmg, slow falls ignores up to 25 dmg.)

"I wanted to see how long it would take you. If I couldn't swim or if there had been a monster, I would have been dead. There are some tunnels over there that I found, one seems to lead upward." Lero hears Namura explain as he walks away. Once at the edge of the water, Lero dives back in to make his way to the hole.  He passes Kraithee as he does and Azi flies past overhead. 

When he finally makes it to the rope, Buama is dangling there with a huge ladder. He tries to help as much as he can from the water to keep it steady for her as she hooks it into the rope.

The party descends down the trap, entering into the large, glowing cavern below. Since a wurm never stops digging, it's well-supported that this is where the wurm continued it's trail, but feel into the cavern after tunneling for about 60 feet. The cavern itself is massive, spanning a distance up to 800 feet, and approximately 50 feet tall. A large pool of water rests in the basin, its source unknown, which glows a hauntingly-stunning seafoam green. Various flora and fauna line the ceiling and its stalactites, as well as the walls of the cavern, themselves glowing that seafoam green due to the concentrated raw aether present in the cavern. 

The party makes it way down the rope and ladder contraption perilously created by the party members, plopping into the water and then swimming towards the mouth of the tunnel created by the same wurm... following its trail and hoping for a happy resolution. As the last party members emerges from the water and enters into the mouth of the wurm tunnel, you see the ladder begin to fall, as the rope which kept it supported falls from its anchor up above, slowly descending into the water as your hopes of escaping fall with it. The party stands there in a silence which is briefly disturbed by the pitter patter of water dripping from the stalactites above. As the monk, Azi, looks out, he sees the cavern seem to move... like the rock itself is adjusting shape, twisting and contorting. Some tiny creature, made out of stone with small mushrooms on top of it, races by from the wall to your right and rushes into the water past you, disappearing in a flash.

"Any way to tell them we come in peace, Flux?" Lero asks as he watches the water ripple behind him. His leathers are soaked at this point, along with everything else he has on him.

"I'm not sure what these creatures are, but it looks like we've been given no choice but to walk through them." 

"While they are likely sentient, they are more like beast than man. In that regard, Namura would have more skill showing we have no ill intent towards them."

Flux is distracted by the elementals, hoping to find a particularly large one.

Fate has a funny way of working. As if the Great Conduit felt Flux's hopes of finding a particularly large elemental, not only one, but two huge elementals, blow out of two of the side tunnels, as rocks and dirt fly everywhere. Having felt the tremors, the party was prepared, and quickly acts first to get the drop on these two creatures. They are towering, nearly 15 feet tall and 15 feet wide, with a host of aether geodes sticking out of them. Strange mushrooms, with tendrils hanging loosely from the top, glow atop each of them.

She double takes at the little rock creature, but then comes the rumbling. Something was coming and suddenly two very large rock beast with mushrooms on them jump out. She realizes what they are.

"They are vulnerable to damage caused by sound. Immune to poison." She yells this out as she aims her weapon at the one closest to her (EA1).

BOOM! Her thunder cannon echoes through the cavern. The slug hits home along with the hit from the magical thunder sent with it.

"Eat that!"

Flux follows up Buama's shot with a vial of acid. The elemental, staggering from the bullet, cannot dodge it, and takes 13 acid damage.

"If your weapons can be infused with aether, do it. Your weapons won't do so well otherwise."

Lero leaps forward nearly drawing his rapier, but at the behest of Flux goes for his dagger instead. With the elemental (EA1) nearly upon him, he slices forward with his aether-infused dagger and hears the sound of metal on stone as it fails to take hold (miss). He then springs off the elemental and moves back behind Namura. "You're up, dear," he nods to the elemental in front of them.

Seeing this elementals sprout from the earth, probably animated by the same Aether that Kraithee to life, made it think for a instant that the renewing of Aether depend on the birth and death of Aether creations. A eternal struggle: Aether creates life that materializes in this existence and then is destroyed for it to return to the Aether.

Buama yell gets Kraithee attention and it decides that it isn't its time to join the Aether yet. Bringing his hands to its mouth it uses the Aether in the air to amplify the sound waves of his words: It is your time to join the Aether, not mine!

(Cast Thunderwave at AE1 using a 2nd level slot. DC 14. 12 thunder damage 32 total damage due to Thunder damage vulnerability)

Azi draws his sword at the sight of the massive creatures, immediately engaging the one closest to him.  "Allow me to keep this one busy while you take out the other.  Just don't leave me here too long."  He brings his sword back and it swings toward the creature with stunning speed, but the beast pulls back. Azi gives chase throwing a spinning kick towards the beast but he brings up his large arm to block it. 

"Look here beast, I am your prey today." Azi raises his freehand to form a defensive position.

(OOC Attacking EA2, AC is 19 now, and all things have disadvantage to hit Azi.  1 ki spent)