Nia would try to throw a rock across the chasm. If there really is another side to the void, she’d try to gauge how far away it is. Nia would also take a look at the altar and see if there is anything about it that is familiar. Really old might mean elven, or perhaps on of the many faiths whose pilgrims passed through Oron-yána. On Sat, Aug 9, 2025 at 10:30 PM Stuck Ey via Emerald Flame < emerald-flame@lists.incorporeal.org> wrote:
Updated character sheet corrected it to Ruin Lore, added Forest Ecology and Geology as skills. If you think more details makes sense, cool.
Dax would chuck a rock into the chasm and see how long before it hits bottom. Others would see Dax examining the walls and construction, answering back what he knows if they ask, or gasping if something is a "revelation". How wide is the chasm?
On Friday, August 8, 2025 at 11:22:04 PM CDT, bss via Emerald Flame < emerald-flame@lists.incorporeal.org> wrote:
On Friday, August 8, 2025 12:50 PM Stuck Ey via Emerald Flame wrote:
Is it the entire chamber that is also glowing (ceiling too), or more localized to where the clay/mud lies? Shrug, not that it matters, will slink along with the into the rest of this place. Does the complex look old, or especially well made? Dax nervously trails behind the others carrying his glowing orb.
Dax might be the most prepared to determine the nature of the chamber and corridor seen leading north. The construction is solid, but old. It may not be /especially/ well made, but it must have been made to last, given the apparent age of the stone and nature of the construction. However, it is not pristine, and there are signs of natural breakdown and wear and tear in the chamber and hallway.
[While reviewing your character for how I wanted to continue this description, I noticed two things: your sheet says "Runic Lore", which is fine, but just in case that's a typo, from Remembers the Past, the ability is named Ruin Lore, which is at least partially relevant to this question, so I thought I'd mention it for clarity. The other thing of note is that Remembers the Past gives you two more skills to be trained in via Knowledge Skills, and I don't see that on your sheet, just the three from Knowledgeable. So I think you have two more skills that you're due, and it might make sense to pluck those out of the ruin/treasure hunter or Yalan/Burclynth Company vibes that you've got going on. If you choose to go that route, I think there's some additional information worth giving that would just come to you naturally as a delver into ancient/lost locales.]
The entire chamber is glowing, though so is the mud...
On Thursday, August 7, 2025 3:52 PM Mike Bloy via Emerald Flame wrote:
Gegren will scoop up some of the mud and store it with an eye towards seeing if its properties change as it dries and/or refining it into something useful for a device. After that, he'll get out his dagger again and follow Nia to investigate further into the complex.
...having done this, and eventually stashing the mud in a bottle or some such, Gegren and the rest of you note that the mud is also itself glowing, suggesting that the event did something to both the general surroundings and environment. It casts a small but vibrant blue; not enough to be a usable light source on its own, but time might tell if there are other interesting properties to it. Nothing in particular changes with the mud after it's gathered, but given the nature of the blasted mud on the surface of the room, it seems reasonable that any sample taken is already dried out, or will dry out on its own.
On Thursday, August 7, 2025 12:28 PM murph via Emerald Flame wrote:
While it may not be wise, Nia is not particularly curious about the mud.
She will light a torch and move towards the hallway to see if there are clues about this underground chamber’s purpose outside the room itself.
She will walk with her torch in her shield hand and be prepared to draw a weapon if necessary.
[It sounds like everyone's interested in the mud briefly, but also in continuing on, so...]
You all head through the corridor leading out of the room and deeper into more chambers. The unassuming hallway soon widens, and simple pillars make two rows to the sides of the corridor as you pass through the middle. Same as before, these are of an older, dark stone, showing some signs of wear but nowhere near compromised. You encounter no signs of life as you travel through this area, still lit just by Nia's /everburning torch/, the light casting shadows on the walls and on your faces as you travel deeper within.
[The problem of torches seems like one of the first things that a high magitech society would solve, so I'm considering your basic torch to essentially be a somewhat fancy/less temporary torch with benefits like never needing to be fueled, though it probably still goes out when underwater or that kind of thing. Not quite a flashlight in terms of reliable utility, but you get the gist of it I think.]
At the end of the corridor you reach a wider, more open room, on which you on a slightly raised portion, much like an apse, with an area roughly 30'x30'. A simple stone altar rests in the middle of the area, again showing some normal wear, and the ceiling above you arching into a semicircular dome. The light from the torch barely reaches the top of the dome, so you cannot make out much, but there does not seem to be anything particularly ornate with how it is constructed.
What is perhaps more striking is beyond the altar, at the end of the apse; no more than six stairs descend to what would have been the nave, if this was a church at all, but the stairs instead drop to a deep chasm, a tear that runs through the whole chamber, as if it the room was broken in two. It's unclear how the whole section did not cave in, as you can see the earthen walls and ceilings where the stone work gave way, almost as if the chamber was stretched and ripped in two by titans.
Naturally, more stone debris is prevalent at that end of the chamber, but you cannot see from where you are what, if anything, lies beyond or below.
-- bss (Brian S. Stephan) | https://bss.zone/ | GPG: 0x80895FCB _______________________________________________ Emerald Flame mailing list -- emerald-flame@lists.incorporeal.org To unsubscribe send an email to emerald-flame-leave@lists.incorporeal.org _______________________________________________ Emerald Flame mailing list -- emerald-flame@lists.incorporeal.org To unsubscribe send an email to emerald-flame-leave@lists.incorporeal.org