The elf painfully made his way up the stairs. His body was aching from his injuries, the repeated loss of consciousness and the falls to the ground. Anearis listens to the halfling’s explanation. However, there were still a lot the party didn’t know. Trying to learn anything from this ggibbering mess would be difficult.

"Calm down.", suggested the elf. "We can help your friend. But we need you to tell us what is happening here. And what is this Red Moon your companion mentioned earlier."

Current's face curls in disgust as she now gets a clear view of the exploding assassins and Ura's explanation just deepens her frown. Walking back with the party and hearing the halfling's predicament, Current really wants to ask about this Bloth character, but not wanting to overwhelm the halfling, she lets the others ask their questions first. Meanwhile, being one of the less injured members of the party, Current heads to an open spot on the halfling's pump and does her best to assist his pumping.

"Then we need to go down there and see if we can rescue your friend," Ura reasons, keeping the mage hand at work.  "Tell us what Bloth looks like.  And how many of those damned cultists are down there.  ... And if there are any more townspeople from Lindenfeld being bamboozled by them besides the three of you," she adds after a moment.  Looking at Uthal and Anaeris, she sighs.  "And the two of you, start getting a little bit of rest while you can.  You both look like death warmed over right now."

The halfling's grip finally gave out and his momentum threw himself to the ground. As his ass met the stone, a shock to his system, likely combined with pure exhaustion, finally stopped the wailing. Juppo sat there for a second, simply staring as tears continued to fall down his face, and sweat poured off him.

"There were only a handful of us. Some went with the rest of the company to another site. Only me, Maas, and Bloth are left here." Juppo's head dropped, looking at the floor, only raising it barely enough to look up and see Current (and the mage hand) still working the levers.

"Not to say there weren't some casualties, but these machine force hot air down the tube to keep our divers alive while they're looking for salvage down there. We were promised good coin, and our keep of anything else we find, and it was worth it. All they wanted was some scraps of a weird black metal."

He looked up finally, to meet the gaze of the party members listening and looking at him. "We were told not to trust anyone who may come poking around. A rival salvage company called the Scarlet Moon might try to kill us and take everything. That's why we ran for those guards, when you all arrived."

Juppo curled up practically into a ball, hiding his face. The hair all over his body matted down. "I'm not cut out for this, I'm just an errand boy. And I should probably just face facts that Bloth is dead."

While Juppo is talking, Ura trails to the stairway and keeps an eye out for anyone... or thing... that might be coming up after them.

Perception: 17

Pausing, she looks over her shoulder at Juppo with an expression of sympathy. "It sounds like they needed you three to do some actual work. You're probably luckier than the others, in fact... every time we've run into these cultists, they were kidnapping people to use in humanoid experimentations. A gruesome fate." She sighs. "Listen, we can't promise you anything. But if we find Bloth alive when we go back down there, we'll do our best to bring him back to you."

Addressing her teammates -- particularly Current -- rather than the halfling now, she pulls one of the black spots out of her pocket. "The cultists also tend to carry these marked silver coins on them." She flips one of her two black spots to Current to pass around so everyone can have a good look at it (if they hadn't already). The silver coin has two unique symbols on each side - a closed eye on one, and on the other a skull with five droplets surrounding it. "Those are called 'Black Spots' - the marks of a defunct branch of the Theviranne Thieves' Guild that should have died out a long time ago," she explains. "They're assassins, and still considered a threat on some parts of the continent. Carrying them around actually makes me a little uncomfortable, since I've already been erroneously pegged as an assassin myself just for having them. Still, they're much too dangerous to leave lying about. So far I've managed to find three of them on these cultists, everywhere from Cathaan, to Midgard, to here.

I have a bad feeling about these black metal shards. I'd bet my newly acquired wealth that they're collecting more beskars, probably trying to summon another illithid eldar at their second site. We absolutely have to stop them before they open another portal and pull something even uglier than the last feeble-minded elder brain we fought through it."

She returns her attention to the stairwell, feeling a deep-rooted sense of frustration. "They'll be expecting us whether we charge down there right now, or take a breather. But there really isn't any place safe to rest right now. Do any of you have some ideas?"

"So are your divers at the end of those tubes, or down the stairs?" Austin says from her own pump. She glances to the tubes attached to the pumps. "And if at the end of those tubes,, then how do they get the metal up here?" She considers a moment. "And, if we pull up on these tubes, can we pull the divers up with them? Do you have a signal to get them to return up?"

Surveying the stairs and the hall beyond, Ura sees and hears nothing, beyond a squishing sound of the black tentacles still lashing out from where they were summoned, on the floor.

Juppo crawled the few feet to the waters edge and propped himself on his knees, looking down at the water's surface. He had stopped crying, either because he had calmed down or simply run out of water in his system, or both. His breathing had calmed as well.

"Bloth is still down there. When the machine stopped, air stopped going to him. He could use the air to rise to the surface, but only the divers can control it. We could pull him up, but what does it matter? His corpse will bloat and swell soon enough, and float on up."

"How far down is he?" Ura asks.  "And do you have another dive suit you can hook up to these machines that one of us can use?"

Wiping his arm across his nose, an action that would have had only a slightly less gross result, had the hairy halfling been wearing a shirt, he looked towards the other pump, near Austin. 

"That one is just soaking on a shelf below. Anyone could pull it up and wear it. How deep and far Bloth might be, is anyone's guess. The tubes are only a couple hundred feet long though." 

Current can't catch the coin that Ura throws in her direction, but the coin stops in midair before reaching Current's face slowly rotating before Tide reappears in front of the Genasi, having zipped over and caught the coin. Beckoning for the sprite to bring the coin closer, Current takes a look at it and just shakes her head. "I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before. But I haven't spent much time on the surface to be fair." When Ura mentions Illithid's and Elder Brains, Current racks her mind as she tries to pinpoint where she might have heard of those things before, but eventually just asks, "Illithid Eldar? Elder Brain? Are these the tentacle creatures that I mentioned earlier?"

As the conversation turns to Bloth, and when asked for suggestions, Current chimes in, "I can go down without a suit to try and rescue Bloth. Or at least find his body. It might be safer than any of you, because if I get stuck down there for some reason, or you get distracted from the pumps, I wouldn't even need air." If the others look at her strangely, she just shrugs and says, "Some of the perks of growing up underwater I guess."

"As far as continuing farther into this cavern is concerned, I am not sure that it would be a good idea at all. Without the element of surprise, and based on the abilities of that one mage, we seem horribly outmatched. Is there any way that we could get the authorities involved? I'm certain they would be happy to help subdue a defected branch of a thieves' guild."

Ura laughs dryly.  "They've infiltrated the authorities.  The last assassin we met was a member of the Guard. He tried to kill us, and his fellow guardsman.  We managed to rescue the guardsman and escape."  Shaking her head, she says, "I think you have a good idea, but I'd rather you took someone with you.  Working in pairs greatly reduces the chance that you'll meet an unfortunate end on your own."

As Current suggested getting help from the authorities, Anearis shook his head. ‘’As Ura said, our foe’s grasp on this continent is strong. They are the authority. We are on our own. We must stop them because no one else will.’’ 

Uthal gently sets the man he was carrying down and then moves a bit away before placing himself on the ground. "We have seen many times that the people in power in this kingdom would rather treat the symptoms than the illness. If we are going to stop whatever is happening from happening then it will be the five of us who do it."

Juppo listened to the party speak about what their next move would be. Obviously even with the information gaps that the party had as to exactly what and why everything was happening, they were still knowledgeable beyond the halfling's understanding.

Staring once more at the water's surface he speaks to himself, though still within close enough proximity for members of the party to hear. "We thought we were treasure hunting on a royal-funded expedition. The legend of Sardynea. Bloth, what have we gotten ourselves into?..."

Still an enormous change to his earlier stature, the beads of sweat having subsided, a single tear falls into the water.

His attention is diverted though as Maas finally opens his eyes.

“So I am pumping this one for no reason?” Austin asks with a sigh, stopping.  She moves to the water’s edge then nods to Current.  “I’d say our first busienss should see if this diver is alive or not.  would you go down and check?”

Current nods, "Anybody up for coming with me?" Until it is time to leave, she continues pumping, on the off-chance that Bloth is still alive. If possible, she will have Tide pump once she goes underwater.

Ura waves Current off of the pump and takes over, re-summoning her mage hand and working the other pump.  "Go on, I've got this.  Don't go through life assuming everything's hopeless.  Might as well stay home and cry then," she says with a wry grin.  "Go down there and find this Bloth fellow, and trust that if there's even the tiniest chance you can save him, you chose to take it."

Uthal shakes his head and stands up, walking over to the tubes and taking what he thinks is the easy path, beginning to pull them backwards up onto the land. He stops immediately if either of the workers voice a protest.

Athletics: 9

"What are you doing?" Maas, half stumbling as he rose from the ground, attempted to stop Uthal, but he himself stopped and staggered upon hearing Juppo's melancholy response.

"Bloth's already dead. They're helping recover his body." The halfling had been spiking between extremes, emotionally, since the party had met him. He now stared at the water's surface, once again, a look of defeat upon his face. No longer frantic about saving Bloth, Juppo seemed to accept, as fact, that Bloth was no longer alive.

Maas was not so ready to do so, and walked over to Uthal, assisting in pulling the tubing onto the shore. Quietly, though louder than a whisper, he spoke to Uthal: "Take it slow, in case he's still alive down there. He won't know what's happening." The human then worked silently as he and Uthal heaved the dripping tube onto the rock.

The pump continued to shoot air through the tube, which was hot to the touch, but not unbearable. A taught metal cable ran along, looping through notches on the otherwise flimsy tube. It was an easier task at first, the cord having dome give at first, but then Uthal felt more weight behind the work as he lifted it up and out of the water. 

After approximately fifteen minutes of lifting, much of the solid ground around Uthal and the nearby crates were filled with piles of the tubing, but they had not yet reached the end.

Ura keeps pumping, but looks over at Anaeris.  "Hey.  Move all this pipe junk into the hallway just in case that cultist who got away decides to come back.  Might as well make it difficult for him to reach us so we can run away.  We can deal with moving it out of the way later if we want to come back."