Above & Below

Taking a shot in the dark, Kurama will place his torch on the ground and walk forward down the stairs to see if his hunch is correct.

Effort sends Cadmael to rest on Kurama's shoulder as he walks ... not the least because Cadmael can, actually, see in the dark and guide him from hitting walls if necessary with a few gentle pecks of the beak.

You all watch as Kurama sets down his torch and starts moving down the stairwell alone. Cadmael flits up and onto his shoulder. They slowly descend and exit the light cast by your torches and weapons. In a minute's time, they've vanished. You hear fading footsteps, but they become imperceptible soon after as well.

Kurama:

 Effort:

"It worked!"  Kurama yells back up the stairwell.  After hearing no reply for a few moments, he surmises that they cannot hear him and mimes a success symbol in front of Cadamel in the hopes that Effort would see it.  Then turning in the direction opposite of the stairs, Kurama will "look" and see what he senses.  (Since I'm assuming the space is still pitch black, using perception for his other senses)

Perception: 10

Kurama:

Burik turns to Effort. "So...did it work? Or is the monk dead?" 

Pip's eyes grow wide as he turns and peers down into the darkness.

Effort opens her eyes as Cadmael transmits his message back to her. "Huh," she says, pressing her torch into the wall and smothering the flame. "Looks like our new monk friend was right."

The rest of the party follows suit, putting out their torches and dispelling their magic. Carefully making their way down the stairs, Burik and Effort lead the way with their darkvision. It's still incredibly dark, and the stairs only present themselves in shades of dark gray and black. Still, you all make it to the bottom safely, refinding Kurama and Cadmael at the bottom. Burik quickly casts light again on his hammer. 

You all look around for a moment. You're in another stone room at the bottom of the stairs. This one looks even less refined in its work and carvings. There is a very basic archway above the doorway to the stairs, and at the opposite end the room slowly widens until it splits into two halls. You can see, even from here, that each leads to a room not far down. Kurama reveals that there's a faint musty smell coming from the room to the left. He hasn't picked up anything coming from the right. No sounds and no movement in either direction. 

Weird, says Brask, reigniting a torch.  He looks around the room, and kicks the stonework in places, just to test how robust it is.  He walks over to where the room divides, and also attempts to smell any difference between the two rooms for himself:

Perception 17

I reckon I like the one that smells better.  It's weird to have no smell in a place like this.  I don't trust it.

Unless someone stops him, he's going to walk down the hall towards the room to the left.

Brask, you catch the same musty smell that Kurama noticed. In fact, as you approach the room to the left, you hear a very faint dripping. Intrigued, you keep heading that way, waving your torch across the entryway as the room opens up again. At your feet and around the door frame, you notice bits of dark green and black mold scattered around the stone. It's the first life you've seen since you entered Whitehold. Then, as your focus moves into the room, you see more life. Fungus, spread across the corners of the room, with some sprouting from the walls. Each crack in the stone seems to produce tendrils of differently colored mushrooms, and at the far back corner you see the source of the dripping noise. A single drop of water falls from the stone above, landing in a soft mat of lichen and fungal growth. 

There are more mushrooms here than you've probably ever seen at once, Brask. The most common seem to be small, brown button mushrooms crowded around the source of water. Around those are smaller clumps of branching, green mushrooms with long stalks. Among those is a single white, milky-colored mushroom with silvery specks. Further along the corners of the room are quite a few small, purple mushrooms. They don't appear connected but emerge from the stone close to one another. A small, brown mushroom with a reddish mark on its cap that looks similar to an "x" sticks out of a crack in the stone, and a small, green, slimy mushroom sits in a small circle clearing amongst the denser brown and purple fungi.

On the opposite side of the room, another dark doorway leads further into the depths of the mountain.

Roll a nature or medicine check if you want to investigate any specific mushrooms. Everyone can do this if you follow Brask into this room.

Brask turns his back to the new room and faces the rest of the party.  He points with his thumb over his shoulder.  Mushrooms.

Then he walks into the mushroom cave towards the brown one with the 'x' mark.

Your party joins you (if the rest of them want to), and pauses in awe at the variety of life this deep in into an otherwise frozen mountain. Now that you all think about it, it is significantly warmer down here than it was outside, or even in the upper reaches of the castle. Leaning down, Burik examines the common, brown button mushrooms. After a moment of consideration, he runs his pointer finger along one of the caps.

Burik: 10

"Ha!" He calls out, the most excited anyone has seen Burik in weeks. He plucks one of the mushrooms and tosses it into his mouth. "Brown caps. We used to snack on these in the mines. Gives you a nice boost." Burik regains one hit die of health: 2

He fingers through the small mat of brown caps near the water source. "A few dry ones, but there's at least four more good ones here. I'm still recovering a bit from that fight topside, but you should all take one."

Pip kneels next to some of the tiny purple mushrooms. He turns his head, almost against the stone floor, to get a look at it from different angles. 

Pip: 19

Sniffing it, his face grimaces. "Mm, no good."

Dice roller is really a pain sometimes. Original rolls were 25, 3 (for HP), and 15. Never edited them.

Seeing all of the vegetation inside of the room, Kurama begins to pull out his notebook as he examines all the different species of vegetation growing there.  "I wonder how they were able to grow in an environment like this?"  Kurama mutters to himself as he scribbles some notes down, "It was always to cold for most things to grow back home.  Perhaps its because of..." he'll continue to mutter to himself until he's shocked out of his solo discourse by Burik's exclamation.  "They're edible?  Fascinating!"  he comments as he plucks one, examines its texture for a bit and then finally eats it, jotting down some random notes as he does so.

Mushroom healing (I'm assuming he also heals (1) HD but let me know if he picked a poisonous one or something :p: 7

That depends - did you pick the same kind Burik did? Or one of the others described? :)

Kurama took one that he thought looked similar to the mushroom Burik grabbed :)

Yup, you're all good then. You can still explore the other varieties if you wish.

Brask points to the single brown mushroom with the 'x' on it.  What's this one do?  he asks loudly to the whole group.  He will make absolutely no attempt to identify it himself, as he knows nothing of mushrooms.

Haha, love it. At least he's wise enough not to just pop it in his mouth.

Effort will join Brask observing the distinct little mushroom. "I wish I knew more than I do," she says. "Gorta wasn't exactly a hot bed of fungal knowledge. Kurama? Want to give it a shot?"

Effort reaches out and casts Guidance on Kurama. 

Nature? check on the 'x' mushroom: 21 + 4

Kurama, you immediately get a sense of awe looking at this mushroom. It is giving off a strange energy...and you don't just sense it within the mushroom. It seems to go deeper into the stone, following the mushroom cap down into the crack where, you're guessing, the rest of the fungus extends into the mountain. What that energy means, and what would happen if you eat it, you're still not entirely sure. But this is unlike anything you've seen or sensed before. 

Kurama spends a long moment staring unmoving at the "x" mushroom before jotting down a couple of notes.  Then plucking it from the wall he says, "There's something... special about this one here.  Hopefully this doesn't kill me."  And before anyone can stop him, he'll pop the fungus into his mouth and eat it.