Expedition 46: The Foreman is a Bit Intimidating

### Summary

We head to the Quivering Stones with prospector Mel'din, and find a safehouse, various rock creatures, and an abandoned mine housing an undead beholder.

### Detailed Writeup

On the 2nd of Monsarran, the group decides to earn some money by heading to the quivering stones with Saphira Goldhammer's new prospector, Mel'din. Torr speaks to Mel'din the previous day, and they head out to find promising minerals.

We head inland along the mountain range, as that is where Mel'din thinks we are likely to find better ore. We prospect a bit, and Mel'din has a penchant for licking rocks to find out what kind of rock they are.

We come across a stream with a nice bridge of stone over it, but in the stream is a stone door with writing and images of handprints. The writing is in several languages, but no one can read it. Torr decides to put his hand on the handprints, and can understand one of the languages that replies, in Dwarven: *"Why do you wish to enter?"* Torr and Yezra are unable to convince the voice that we should be allowed to enter, but Clarity succeeds. The door swings open magically.

Inside is a downwards staircase, and the stream of water continues down the side of the stairs in a purposeful gutter. The stairs lead down to a large room with damp, moldy sleeping bags, and the voice repeats in the same languages, *"This is my safe house. If you need protection stay the night, but do not linger for more than 24 hours."*

There is a door on the far side of the room, with writing that no one can read (at this point we suspect one of the languages must be dwarven, but as Torr cannot read this is a problem) as well as a handprint. We try the handprint, but nothing happens. The small gutter of water continues underneath the door, so Torr uses Shape Water to stop the flow of water so we can look inside. We see another staircase continuing downwards. Clarity looks under the door and is able to summon her owl familiar, Soren, on the opposite side. Soren sees that every stair is painted a different color, and at the bottom is a clearly manmade square chamber with writing on the walls. In this room is a bed, a bookshelf, a desk, a rug, and a crossbow on a tripod. When Soren is halfway down, Torr hears, *"If you are not my friend, and I am not dead, you will die."* After some consideration, we decide to leave, but not after Torr decides to headbutt the door. The doors close behind us.

On the hike forwards, Clarity tries to convince Mel'din to come work for us as a prospector instead of Saphira, since she's not very nice to people, especially her employees. He's a bit put-off by this, especially when getting clapped on the back. Yezra then comes and talks to Clarity and reiterates that she'd like to get paid what Saphira is giving us, so we shouldn't lie immediately. Torr hand Mel'din a biscuit and says "here's your traveling potato," and Mel'din stuffs the whole hard biscuit into his mouth.

Suddenly, we see movement out of the corner of our eyes. Nexrin investigates, and sees that one 8-foot boulder is darker than the rest of the rocks, and is warm. The rock unfolds into a 10-foot tall rock creature. Torr, again, is the only one who can speak to this rock.

"Can you speak, rock?"

"This one speaks one of our tongues."

"I am Torr, and you are?..."

"I am Mae."

"These are my friends, it is good to meet you, would you like a potato?" and hands him a biscuit.

"We have not seen you individuals before. I am not hungry for that."

"I have not seen creatures of your skin before. I am a dwarf, and you are?..."

"We are Magma Xorn, Children of Katraka."

"How many children of Katraka are there?"

"There are many smaller children, but we are the two eldest. We search for answers."

"Answers to what question?"

"How to free her. She is trapped, in place and in time."

"That sounds terrible, my condolences to you. Is there any way we can help you get your answers?"

"Perhaps. She is the mother of this land. Without her, the land is lost. Though she is chaos, a different chaos takes over without her."

Torr asks if she knows the Uflophans - he describes one.

"We suspect the hybrid offspring of the deep are involved."

Torr has pissed himself at this point. "Were you following us?"

"We were once we saw you."

"Why?"

"You are new and unfamiliar. You may be a complication in already complicated issues."

Torr asks about the four factions and tries to suss out whether they are one of the four factions. They explain that they share territory at the volcano with the Raaluflophans, but it is not clear if they are allies or foes, and they seem to equate Katraka with volcano.

Torr wants to fight them but we discourage him from doing this, and eventually, the Magma Xorn wander off.

Mel'din makes out a mine in the distance, and we head towards it. There is a large cave entrance that has caved in and is covered in rocks, with a sort of rail-structure heading through the entrance. There is a different type of rock creature at the entrance, with a metal band around its neck. Nexrin recognizes it as like the Galeb-dur from FerRoc. Again, it only speaks Dwarven and only Torr can talk to it.

"Is this your mine?"

"No, I am just the protector of this mine. This is a taconite and magnetite mine. It is under the Utorruflophan council."

"Say, do you like cool rocks?"

"My likes are not relevant."

"Hey, what is your opinion of Magma Xorn?"

"I have not heard of them."

"What is your opinion of Raaluflophans? Just an unrelated question, no reason."

"They are the enemy. They try to destroy the Utorruflophan's work."

Torr asks about the band around its neck, and it is a word that he cannot pronounce. He suggests that we dispel magic on it, and we do so. A high-pitched squeal comes from the collar, and Torr tries to pull the collar off. Tiny purple tentacles are pulled out of the creature's neck, and the collar keeps screaming. The creature looks around, confused, and gets in an aggressive pose.

"What the fuck is this thing?" Torr hits the necklace with his rapier. "What do you remember?"

It growls in an unintelligible language, and we fight this stone creature. It animated two other boulders into similar creatures, and a 1-inch long purple creature with long tentacles climbed out of the void metal collar, but it got squished by one of the Galeb-dur. We manage to knock the Galeb-dur unconscious, but we do not think it is dead.

We clear some of the rubble from the mine entrance and send Soren through the small hole to explore the mine. There are skeletons, as well as one minotaur skeleton on the ground. In the entrance hall there is a hole in the ceiling, which Soren can fly through. There are three chests in the room, as well as a barrel and an axe. We throw a grappling hook up, and it catches on one of the chests.

Nexrin climbs up, and as Clarity follows, two of the chests and a barrel turn into mimics. We fight them, Nexrin throwing one (along with himself, who is stuck to it) down the hole, and Clarity throwing two fireballs in the small room, hitting Torr. After we defeat them, we find 58 copper pieces, some gems, and a magical handaxe.

As we explore the mine further, Mel'din points out that the tunnels are of two types: one very smooth and one rather rough, there must have been two methods of digging used.

We come across a room with skeletons, who are lazily clawing at the walls and who have chains leading to the ground. We shoot the skeletons, and an incorporeal undead comes out of the ground. Yezra and Clarity both do some minimal damage to it, and then Nexrin handily finishes it off in one turn.

We decide to go after the minotaur skeleton that Soren saw, but it is gone, so we continue on and see the open chamber ahead. It's a 140-ft spherical chamber, with a levitating box in the dead center. The minotaur skeleton, now animated, along with four other skeletons are in the bottom of the spherical chamber.

Inside the box comes an eye... It's a zombified beholder, well-attached to the box in the center, so it can't move too far. We attempt to fight it, but we learn that it has a disintegrating ray and paralyzing ray so after a while we decide we would like to not be disintegrated, so we back off.

During the fight, it says, "Are you my new workers?"

Torr shouts back, "We are here from the Utor-Uflofan council. Your undead are seriously out of date."

"You should get me new workers, these won't let me move. I've excavated everything here. Move me along."

We leave the undead beholder foreman, and it shuts itself back inside its box. On the way out of the mine, we shoot and kill the minotaur skeleton.

We decide to travel back home through new territory, which was probably a bad idea, and we come across some dense brambles with three bushes in the center, with berries that look like goodberries. Clarity picks one with mage hand, and Torr eats it, regaining one hit point. We decide we should harvest these, so Clarity tries, but soon the bushes start animating...

As we try to run away, Yezra is downed by the dozen needle-blights and Mel'din is grappled by the tentacles of the large Ambushes. Torr attempts to save Mel'din by cutting the tentacles and grabbing his leg, but his leg feels weird and slippery, and his leg almost detaches....? Torr has a suspicion that Mel'din is not fully human.

We head back home, worse for wear after the long day, but happy to receive quite a sum of money each from Saphira.