The Ekuepool Campaign

Yes, during your conversation the snuffling at the door has continued, and when the door is cracked open, you find yourself face to face with a very large lizard. It resembles the other lizards you've seen except this one is even larger, probably twenty feet long, head to tail, with black scales and glowing red eyes. It draws in a long breath to get a full whiff of the scent it was trying to get from under the door. Behind it, you can see, is a room twenty feet wide by thirty feet long with stone walls and no other visible exits. In the room are three other enormous lizards of the same variety, lounging and even clinging to the walls by means of the suction cups on their toes, and behind the lizards, on the opposite side of the room from you, is a large iron trunk, nearly five feet long, the lid of which is open and from which comes the gleam of a large number of shining coins. 

Anakis jumps a little as she comes face to face with the large red-eyed black lizard, but calms herself and smiles calmly at the lizard. "Hey there, mister lizard. I've met one of your family earlier today. But you're definitely bigger. Do you live in this room with your friends as well? May we come in and look around?" As she talks, Anakis slowly reaches into her bag and feels around for some rations.

Aluzira holds her breath waiting to see what happens next, she hadn’t expected whatever was on the other side to be quite so large.  Then, snapping out of her momentary surprise, fishes out a ration ready to hand it to Anakis to feed to the lizard if she needed more.

Reaching into your pack, Anakis, you find that you have just one day of rations left, having given out one each to the three lizards you encountered earlier.

The lizard is laying in front of the doorway, seemingly unconcerned with your presence, and not particularly inclined to get out of your way. What do you do?

Anakis finds her last ration and decides better than to give it away. With the lizard seemingly not all that concerned with her and not willing to get out of the way, she decides to try something crazy and slowly reaches out to try and pat the black lizard on it's nose and give it a little scratch (Animal Handling: 2).

The lizard eyes you warily with one of its huge eyes and licks its long sharp teeth, but tentatively allows itself to be patted and scratched, snorting contentedly. What are you hoping to accomplish with this overture?

(OOC - so basically, Anakis sees the treasure in the room and wants at least some of it. She wants to get in there, but she's also running low on food, so doesn't want to give that up either. She's hoping she can coax some form of friendship or at least be allowed to pass without getting into a fight, after all, he looks like a friendly, albeit very large, lizard.)

Anakis giggles as the lizard snorts as she scratches his nose. "You like that huh? I can give you more head scratches and belly rubs if you let me come in, mister lizard?"

Okay, the lizard is laying in front of you, indifferently blocking the way. To find out if nose-scratching is the right thing to get this lizard to become friendly enough to move aside for you, make a DC 15 Wisdom (Animal Handling) check. Even though you already failed your first check, the lizard seems to like something about the way you smell, giving you advantage which amounts to a second chance in this case. If you fail by 10 or more, you risk moving the lizard's attitude in the wrong direction.

(OOC - gulp, here goes!)

Anakis Animal Handling: 3

The lizard pulls its head away from your hand and continues to bar the way to the coin-filled chest. It stares back at you as if to say What else do you have for me?

Anakis pulls her hand back, then looks to the others, "There's a chest in there with treasure. I really want to go in, but I don't think mister lizard here is going to let us in."

“Here Anakis, try this,”  Aluzira says handing her a ration.

Anakis takes the ration from Aluzira and nods confidently. She turns to the large lizard blocking the doorway and holds out the ration tentatively for it to sniff and then will flick it just inside the door and to the side to try and get it to move over a bit to clear the doorway (Animal Handling if you need it: 18).

The big lizard in the doorway follows the food to the right and begins to hungrily consume it, leaving the doorway clear and giving you access to the first ten feet of the room. The other three lizards in the room begin to take interest, however, and crowd forward to see if the visitors have something for them as well.

As Ash enters the room he looks around and says, "Hey, there's a lot of secret doors in here," pointing out three false sections of wall around the room, one immediately to the left, one on the right-hand wall, and the other across the room behind the treasure chest.

After handing Anakis the food, and watching her feed the lizard, she looks up at Ash’s statement.  “Could it be coincidence that there are three doors and three lizards?”  She asks her brows furrowed in thought. 

"Well, whatever the case," Anakis says as she moves in a little further, "We're going to have move quickly. I don't know how long that bit of food is going to hold them off."

(DM Question - is there a clear line that Anakis could make to the treasure chest?)

Not really, no. The idea is that the lizards are forming an obstacle to progress across the middle of the room with their bodies, although not willfully so, but just by being there. I’m open to a variety of approaches. Just say what you’re doing and what you’re trying to accomplish.

Anakis takes a deep breath, then uses Thaumaturgy to make the sound of a heap of rats in the far side of the room in the hope that the lizards would move to investigate (Deception if you want it: 10), then runs headlong towards the treasure chest.

I'm going to resolve this with a DC 15 Wisdom (Animal Handling) check, so that roll would fail, but I'm giving you advantage, so roll again to see if the lizards clear the way for you.

(OOC - no worries... here goes then.)

Anakis Animal Handling: 20

Edit: Bahahaha