The Fourth Adventure

[mushgnome]

Turn 5

Holding tight to Ursa's rope (the dotted line on the map) the party crosses the short distance to the Chasm. It's slow going, pushing through the thicket of giant puffballs, and Dame Simonetta is the trailblazer.

At the southern edge of the Chasm (the spot marked X on the map) the rope terminates and our Heroes discover the remains of Ursa's camp. Here are the specific items they find there:

• Hundreds of feet of rope, coiled and stacked

• Women's clothing including a brown druid's robe, neatly folded

• Wooden cudgel

• Backpack

• Bedroll (rolled up and lashed to the backpack)

• Two paper envelopes... hard to read in the dim light... ah, there we go, thank you friendly passing sparkle moth, looks like one is addressed to "Frederick" and the other to "Adventure Club"

For the benefit of the newcomer Wilbur I will add, it looks like there is another cavern area to explore on the opposite side of the Chasm, but there is no obvious way to cross. There are a few rusty iron spikes and rotted bits of rope littering the area around the Chasm, suggestive of climbing attempts by previous generations of Adventurers.

[acodispo]

When they reach the camp Willie goes very still. He has been worried about what returning to the underground would be like for him. Now that he's here he's not so worried any more. And besides that, Ursa's either dead or in bad trouble, and he'll do all he can to help a fellow Hobbet!

He murmurs very quietly, more as a way of "tuning" his mind to where he feels it needs to be right now than out of expectation of any answer: "Hello? is any ... thing there? please help me see what happened here?"

Then he opens his eyes and looks about the camp site, and then the cavern, trying to look with the sight of the underworld rather than the surface...

Willie makes a MYTHOS check!

[kipper]

Dame Simonetta picks up the two envelopes. "If these are any indication, Ursa was expecting something untoward might occur." The one for Frederick she puts in a pocket, but she opens the one addressed to the Adventure Club and attempts to reads the contents in the dim light.

Dame S won't voluntarily make a MYTHOS check

[mushgnome]

OOC: Willie rolled a 6 on his MYTHOS roll, so it's probably a good time to pause and review this experimental mechanic. I want to introduce this to the game in a way that is transparent and fun for the players.

A quick note: I've been trying to avoid the phrase "sanity check" (I try not to stigmatize mental illness) but the thing is, it's a clear and accepted term, and everybody knows exactly what I mean when I say it. So unless one of you can come up with a better suggestion, "sanity check" it is, just for clarity more than anything. But I don't really think of Mythos = Insanity so much as an attunement to the supernatural or "being in the know."

There are two types of MYTHOS checks: Opposed and Investigative.

Opposed checks are for situations where someone is trying to stop you. Both parties roll a d6. If you roll higher, you succeed. If I roll higher, I stop you. If you are willing to risk a MYTH increase, then you can "push the roll." This gives you an extra d6, and you use the better of the two dice, but if the bonus die is the higher of the two, you have to make a Sanity Check.

Nobody is opposing Willie, so it's an Investigative check. The interesting thing about Investigative checks is, they always succeed! The MYTHOS wants to be discovered. It has a way of sneaking up when your back is turned and worming its way into your subconscious. Investigative checks don't determine success vs. failure; they determine how well you succeed. On a roll of 1, you learn the bare minimum to advance the storyline. On a roll of 5, you learn everything there is to know. But on a roll of 6, you learn a little too much and you have to make a Sanity check!

And then the Sanity check mechanic is simply, roll 1d6, and if it's higher than your current MYTH, your MYTH goes up by 1. But if your MYTH reaches 6... uh oh!

Crunching some quick numbers: If your current MYTH is 1 (like Willie) then you have about a 13.9% chance than an Investigative check will raise your MYTH to increase to 2. (1 in 6 chance of rolling a 6, and then 5 in 6 chance of failing your Sanity check). If your current MYTH is 5 then you have a 2.8% chance (1 in 36) to roll double 6's, which raises your MYTH to 6 and your character becomes an NPC under the DM's control. I'm okay with those odds; what about you?

Stay tuned to learn what mysteries Willie has unravelled with his roll of 6...

[mushgnome]

Dame Simonetta is well-educated and has no trouble reading Ursa's letter, despite the dim lighting conditions. It reads:

Deerest ADVENTURE CLUB,

Thank you for your help with my reesarch. I stand at the brink of a great Discovery!

Please bring my equipmant back to the surface for safe keeping. I won't need them where I'm going. Don't try to follow! It is much to dangerous and you aren't ready yet. But I hope you get to see how beautiful, someday.

I shood be back soon, but if something bad happens to me promise to keep an eye on Frederick. He has a stick up his ass about "The Rules" but he is loyal friend and saved my life many times. You can trust him.

Have a good Adventure my friends!

This Is The Way,
Ursa Underfoot

Dame Simonetta has only a 1-in-6 chance to read the letter in the dark conditions, but succeeds on the first try. (I would allow a thief to use their read maps/languages ability to improve these odds.)

Between her successful reading roll on the first attempt, and Willie's 6 on the MYTH check, this is very nice, we don't have to draw things out. I can just dump all the exposition and we can get on with the fun.

[mushgnome]

Willie opens his mind and learns 3 things: a description of the current area, a major clue, and an unsettling fact.

• Area Description: The Grand Chasm connects the Adventure Club Megadungeon to a vast (and dangerous!) underground wilderness. This is why this area is teeming with life: it's like the tidal zone between the land and sea.

• Major Clue: Willie feels dumb for not having noticed this before: With the lights out, he can see a lot farther! He can see all the little glow-creatures on the other side of the cavern, or on the ceiling, whereas with a torch or lantern, he could only see up to 30' radius. But with the lights out, his vision isn't limited by the range of his lantern. It's kinda like, the stars are still up there in the sky during the daytime, but you can't see them because the Sun is too bright.

• Unsettling Fact: SPIDERGOAT IS WATCHING YOU!

This knowledge makes Willie feel less innocent than he was before.

Having rolled a 6 on his Investigative check, Willie must now roll a 1 on his Sanity Check to keep his MYTH steady at 1. He just misses with a roll of 2, and his MYTH increases 1 point to a new total of 2.

[mushgnome]

DO ANY OF THE HOBBET HEROES ATTEMPT ANY OF THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS?

• Read Ursa's letter to Frederick

• Search Ursa's backpack

• Find out what Ursa's got in her pocketses

• Peer down over the edge into the Grand Chasm

[ehiker133]

Always aware of his own proclivities, and given Ursa's current known condition, Dougal is not at all surprised to find himself quietly going through the pockets of Ursa's clothes (and then pack) to see what sort of clues he can find out...

[mushgnome]

In the pockets of Ursa's robe, Dougal finds:

• Coin Purse

• Pouch of mistletoe

• Ring on a string

In Ursa's backpack, Dougal finds:

• Ursa's magic smokeless pipe

• Nearly empty pouch of pipeweed stems and seeds

• Half a ham sandwich, a pickle, and 3 hard-boiled eggs

• Water/wineskin, feels about half-full

• Iron spikes, 12

• Small hammer

• Silver mirror

• Chalk

(The other Hobbets see Dougal doing this.)

How inconspicuous is Dougal?

1d6=2, not very

[mgtremaine]

Kiplyn watches as Dougal conducts his search...... "Is that Ham Sandwich? Is it still good, I mean someone should eat it."