Session 1: Ascent through First Find

Crash

Tumble

Crash

Smash, tumble, crash

...

SPLASH

Okay so you’re all agreed. You shouldn’t have moved that plinth.



Everyone comes to First Find for their initial venture out here in the Reach. It was where the Prospector found the first of the raised temples and the cache of treasures underneath. It’s easily been cleared out by two or three groups before you, but it’s the best place to get an idea of what you’re looking for when you go out on your own. Seeing as you’ve all just arrived in this part of the world, you all met up over drinks in the Devil’s Hall or on the way up to the First Find and decided to get acquainted with the area together.

As expected, there was nothing much. Everything aside from the heaviest masonry has been picked clean. Rumours would put this as one of the region's great pillar temples that soared high into the clouds, but this place is barely a story above the ground, shorter even than the Noodle.

Still, somehow you got it into your heads that maybe there was something more to it. While exploring what must have been the great antechamber of the temple one of you shifted the central dais that was quite obviously out of position, and something below it… clicked.

That’s about the time the floor gave way and before you knew what happened, the group of you were falling down a paved funnel that gave way to broken terrain and a rough, bumpy fall into the darkness, followed by a very cold dive into fresh and mercifully clean water below. Everyone’s fine; you all landed in a deep pool underground, and have all your equipment on you, all be it a little knocked around. But it’s cold, and dark down here. There’s light coming in from the tall hole in the ceiling you’ve made tumbling through above which is otherwise dotted with stalactites that are far out of reach. Beast and some of you have found your way to a shoreline that feels like cold ash to the touch. The cavern you’re in is vast, and stretches into the darkness around you. You can hear echoes in the distance from your fall

You're cold, and quite deep below the earth's surface with no immediately easy way back up. So what now?

Florian lights the torch and it's clear you're in a vast subterranean cave, and scattered around are patches of recently made debris similar to the ruined temple's architecture above you. Water is dripping in from the stalactites above. At the far side of the scree beach to you, you can see the cave network continues onwards out of sight down a tight looking side passage, albeit obstructed by a rather substantial looking boulder.

So it's obvious that the earthquake must have shaken up the geography around here; that funnel you fell through would have led to another part of the temple; a holding cel, a deathtrap... not this place. The geography here will likely criss-cross between the cavern and the temple complex.

Something is stirring beneath the water though. It splashes away from the light as you illuminate the pool. Seems that you're not the only living things in this cave.

Tezoc yanks the boulder sharply and with a fluid motion, rips the giant rock from it's resting place. He gives out a great, mighty roar that echoes throughout the cave, disturbing a colony of bats living in the stalactites that flutter towards the hole in the ceiling.

The rock can be shifted, but now that it's been unbalanced Tezoc's finding himself right in the path where it'd roll if he let it go right now. It looks like it could be rolled carefully and dropped straight into the pool if he took the time and put his back into it, or he could let it go and risk himself and anyone immediately behind him getting caught in the rockslide.

Meanwhile something stirs beneath the surface of the pool.

Tezoc's moving towards the edge of the pool, pushing the boulder right to the lip of it. Beneath the surface of the water, glittering in the little light you can shine there, are scales. Many, many scales. They're moving, down first out of sight but in a motion that looks like it's trying to build momentum for a lunge. It is large, reptilian and hungry.

The ground here looks slippery and unstable; shifting sand and pebbles. Tezoc's moved the big obstruction to the exit to the room, but there's still a scree slope leading up there and all it's going to take is a moment's distraction to risk a slip at the top of it and fall straight into the water.

While your eyes are on the water, you can see the bed of it is not just mud and grit, but some of the original temple architecture. This would be something worthy of study and sketches of them alone would get you some clout and interest with the scholars in Camptown; assuming you get back there alive.