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Descent
The party began exploring the dark cave, lit by Leon’s hammer. They encountered strange black webs that recoiled from light—creations associated with the Mad One. El cut through the webbing with a flaming sword, which sent vibrations thrumming deep into the tunnel.
The Deep Lake
Blank
The lake at the cavern’s base
The group descended a spiral staircase into a massive cavern. This cavern contained no natural light sources; however, the party could still see within it, for it was flooded with a strange, ghostly sort of glow that gave impressions of form but not color. The cavern was cylindrical in shape. At its base was an underground lake, and the top could not be seen as it was too dark. A wide path wound around the periphery of the cavern, leading into the lake.
Guantanamo proceeded to leap into the lake from above, while the rest of the party raced to meet him at the path’s end. Guantanamo found inscriptions ringing the lakebed describing a passageway to Gurmakhar (“The Hall of Passing”), a land where souls reside after death. The inscriptions claimed also that the passage had been blocked by Gimīlhizar, which was the Mad One’s name before his Fall, and that a guardian had been set to watch the passage. At this point the party discovered that there was a seemingly-bottomless hole at the lakebed’s center.
Not knowing how else to proceed, the party decided to return to the ship. It was then that Aderyn spotted the limb of something high on the cavern wall as it darted back into darkness. Reaching out through magic, he sensed its shape, judging it to be some sort of hairy, many-legged creature. Guantanamo recognized it as being made of the light-hating magicks of the Mad One. It did not react as the party left.
Returning to the Ship
Returning to the ship, Guantanamo spotted a pillar of thick black smoke on the horizon. Leon postulated that the ship (in truth, a ship hired by the Ninth House) following them had chanced upon one of Guantanamo’s explosives, and had been destroyed.
Aderyn reported to Captain Lahar that they’d found nothing of note in the caverns, and requested they leave as soon as possible. Concurring, the captain then had the crew set sail once again. Secretly, Aderyn marked the locations of both the island and the cave on a map.
5 XP