No Rest for the Dead in Avlor

Balian walks up beside Squiggles, examining the kuo-toa, and gives it a kick.  "Reckon it's edible?  I could go a bit of grilled fish right about now..."

The thief then leaves the gnome to his examinations, and wanders slowly around the perimeter of the room, fingertips running along the wall, looking for anything out of place.

Perception: 25

Investigation: 21

OOC - take your pick of the rolls...

Squiggles, the kuo-toa has a scepter, two pearls, a scroll of revivify and a scroll of teleportation circle.

Jarl, the drider has a longsword, a longbow, 8 arrows, and a bottle of drow poison.

Balian, you don't really see anything that looks out of place on the walls.

We're taking a short rest here, I take it?

Looking at the scroll, Squiggles says "Well this is intriguing.  I have been studying these but hadn't unlocked the knowledge yet.  Do you mind if I attempt to transcribe it? The scroll will disintegrate after that"

(Yes please: Jarl will want one too, so while everyone else should be able to start it while he's doing his ritual spells, it'll need to go a little long so he can have one as well. He's also going to use the charge on his Pearl of Power to regain a 3rd level spell slot.)

"Are we going to need the spell on the scroll to find this resonator?" Jarl asks. He holds up the weapons. "Anyone want either of these? I'll keep the poison."

(I totally didn’t think about hit dice. I’m still finding my footing as a cleric tbh)

"Well I guess I'll take the arrows, unless you have need of over-sized toothpicks."

Hit Dice: 8

So we're fine with not interrogating either corpse?

OoC: The thought of animating the corpse to talk to it never occurred to me though I don't know either can talk

"A fair point on that teleportation scroll.  I'll hold on to it for now"

During the rest, Squiggles will cast Identify on the disk we found earlier in the sarcophogai room

(I didn't think I had Speak with Dead prepared but turns out I do...)

    "I could speak with one once we get rested up here... Though, does anyone know if I will be able to understand them? These things come from below, right?"

Balian

"Unless he's using a lot of make-up, pretty sure we have a Drow in our midst, can't he translate for you?"

The half-elf slings his backpack off his person, and uses it as a pillow as he stretches out on the ground, leaving the others to their rituals and whatnot.

(DM: What are the exact rules on speak with dead? Can only the cleric talk to and hear the corpse?)

“I don’t mind translating, if it comes down to it,” Jarl says, more cheerful now. “My drones can’t talk, so it’ll be nice to see what one would sound like if it could.”

(OOC: If no one takes the longbow and longsword, Jarl will stow them for later sale or trade. But he can’t use either himself.)

I think everyone can hear it but it only responds to the caster. I'm assuming Jarl is going to give you undercommon translations of your questions? You can ask up to five questions, and the creature is likely to answer as it might have in life (e.g., it can lie if it would have done so when it was alive).

Squiggles:

Did anybody else want to try to identify anything during the rest?

Since we're short resting, would Squiggles have time to do the ritual fir the hat and scepter? I don't think there's anything else

Sure. In total that would add 30 mins to the rest assuming all three castings are rituals. Just so everyone's aware, each person can learn basic properties of one item during a short rest, though doing it that way, if anything were to require attunement that would require a separate rest (and you wouldn't learn if something is cursed without casting identify).

     "Do you think we are going to get anything but lies from either of them... Unless you could help with that, Celric?"

“It may also want to boast of its master.”

Are folks waiting on me?

Squiggles finishes his sequence of identification rituals just before the group of you try to get as comfortable as you can for a brief rest in a cavern with water all over the floor. He discovers that the hat is a hat of wizardry, and the scepter has a lightning enchantment on it: it can be used as a quarterstaff, and has one remaining charge that can be released on a hit to do an extra 4d6 lightning damage (at dawn it will recover 1d4 charges up to a maximum of 4). You also would have recognized having seen them before (e.g., Jarl's) that the two pearls you found on the kuo-toa are actually pearl of powers (I like the grammar I have to use there to get the tooltip to work).

Your rest passes uneventfully.

Regarding hit dice, if you want to you can roll one at a time and see what you get before deciding whether to roll another one.

What's your plan re: trying to speak with one (or both?) of the dead?

(OOC: I was waiting on Celric to see if he would cast zone of truth with speaking with the drider....

As a note on the tooltips, you can change the words that appear by inserting a semicolon after the item linked and then you can type whatever text you'd like to display [tooltip]pearl of power;pearls of power[/tooltip].... You see a large green, winged creature ready to melt your face)