The Realms of Horror (Ch. 1)

[Newbie Newtype]

Horace answers Renald, "But we have reason to trust my divination- I am certain the two paths are equally perilous places of no return, with no apparent third path to speak of unless we find a way to make our own path. What we now know is that some kind of puzzle is involved."

He tries to think, and speaks to the party as a whole, "My memory is weakening, but I recall the divination mentioning our possible fates should we travel too far. It could be that the riddle is revealing a solution to a secret passage along the way, but Renald does heed good warning: The 'solutions' in of themselves could only reveal more peril should we neglect to check the surrounding integrity."

[Spoonweaver]

Karamon receives a weal and woe response, signaling both good and bad possibilities. A glimpse of a hallway filled with magical orbs flashes into Karamons mind. The image is gone before Karamon has time to take note of any major details beyond the orbs.

Catt finds nothing of notes down the pit. However, when she pops the lid off the third pit, she sees a snake slither into one of many small holes in the pit wall. Further exploration reveals a dark tunnel big enough for someone to crawl through, 10 ft down in the pit.

[Bob the Hamster]

Catt re-ties the rope closer to the snake pit, quaffs her Potion of Hide From Animals, and goes down to explore the snake pit and the side-passage.

[Spoonweaver]

The snakes seem harmless. The passage is dark and small. There's a sharp turn in it about 30ft in and Catt can't see beyond that. It would be a tight fit, but Catt could crawl through the passage if she chose to.

"What are you doing down there?" Reynolds calls from above the pit.

[Bob the Hamster]

"Just making friends with the snakes!" Catt calls up.

She decides that the tight passage might be a better fit for Slickens, or for a Holy man's magic eye, so she leaves the side-passage for the moment.

Since the hide-from-animals potion lasts a little longer, Catt spens a little more time examining the bottom of the pit, trying to see if there is anything other than snakes down there, and whether these are the sort of snakes that like to bite people or not.

Then she will head back up and describe what she saw to the others.

Does the bend in the side-passage suggest which of the rooms/passages above that it might lead underneath?

[Spoonweaver]

The passage seemed to go off to the left and slightly down. If it led to a room the party had come across it would need to double back quite a bit. At the bottom of the pit, a skeleton of what seemed to be an adventurer could be seen impaled on the spikes below. A snake was slithering around the skeleton. Catt wasn't sure, but these snakes seemed pretty venomous.

"Well, a secret passage like that could be our way past several traps. As long as we're careful not to end up liek that poor soul on the bottom of this pit," said Renold.
Johnny seemed very uneased by the news of a skeletal corpse.

[BMR]

"Right, so we have yet another secret passage. Unless my count is mistaken, that brings us up to four. This is starting to become rather troublesome. If there are this many passages here, who knows how many more there may be. Perhaps the order of the day is to explore this immediate area and uncover all the other passages we might finds?"

[Gizmog]

"Snakes? What do they look like?" Slickens runs up to the side of the pit, trying to get a good look. There's some good eating on a snake, the ones out front looked too scrawny. Could there be a plump specimen down there?

[Newbie Newtype]

"Karamon, that spell you cast with the vermin to see through its eyes. Would it be possible to do the same for the serpent to explore the passage?" He wonders aloud.

[Spoonweaver]

The snakes seemed to be avoiding the main passage. All except a particularly big looking one. It seemed to look at Catt and then the others before slithering back down the small tunnel.

Meanwhile, Renold made his way over towards the green devil face. Johnny on the other hand kept a good amount of distance bother the face and the pit. He seemed to be trying not to touch anything.

Outside the tunnel, Wilstra was getting nervous. "If we just stand here do you think they will even share what they find with us?" She asked her new friend. They had met recently and Wilstra had been talked into going on this trip against her better judgement. Now things seemed to be getting a bit out of hand and she wondered what she should do. If she took off her cloak, she might get stuck out in the rain. If she just stayed here, the whole trip might have been for nothing. She wished the only person she could talk to while in this cloak was more talkitive.

[Gizmog]

Slickens is curious about that snake, if he saw it. If he did see it, he's curious whether or not that's a normal snake behavior. He's curious why that snake would be going down the tunnel and not hanging around the other snakes. Might be time to go down that hole, Snakes or not.

[Spoonweaver]

The snakes don't seem to be acting strangely. They are avoiding everyone and the light seems to scare them away.

[Newbie Newtype]

Wow, no wonder Karamon never responded I accidentally called him Renald in my previous post. I just fixed that but I may need to think of a new post in light of newer ones anyway.

[BMR]

While the others are inspecting the hole, Kamaron approaches the green face to examine it alongside Renold. He asks the man: "Any clue what this is supposed to be? A portal of some sort? Or just some really garish decoration?"

When he hears Horace call out to him, he leaves Renold and goes back to the pit.

"No, unfortunately. I already have the spell active on Catt, so I won't be able to do it again quite so soon. However, we can still use it I believe."

He retrieves another rat from the wicker cage on his belt and offers it to Catt.

"Touch the rat, and I'll have the spell transfer to it. Then we'll toss the rat into the pit. Once one of the snakes attacks it, I'll transfer the spell once more, allowing me to see through that snake's eyes. With as many snakes as there are down there, I can keep switching my sight around from snake to snake as they touch one another, thus allowing me to 'explore' the entire area down there."


OOC:

Am I imagining the face right? The face is on the wall, and the 3-ft mouth looks to be pitch black like an entrance of some sort?


Regarding Chain of Eyes

It lasts for 10 hours, so Kamaron could conceivably just sit there the entire day 'exploring' the area. And if the snake is attacked by something, he'll just transfer vision to the attacker.

[Bob the Hamster]

"Neat!" Says Catt, and she gives the rat a tickle behing the ears.

"You ain't gonna like this next bit, little guy!" She tells it.