Chapter Eight: The Virid Coronation

The path down to the cove is narrow and twisting, but centuries of use have left a well-trod trail that provides sure footing. The cove itself, a small, sheltered semicircle fine gray sand and calm lapping waves, is quiet and still in the cold, foggy night.

Farfar has spoken little on the walk down. but he remarks that Gorham was in a strange mood during this evening's negotiations -- even more jovial and madcap than usual, but at the same time more insistent that the family yield up the Sphere, and more direct in his threats and intimidations.

"I am no fool. It became clear to me that he had run out of patience with these negotiations, and I had stalled him for as long as I could. 'Tonight I will claim my prize,' he said to me at one point, and I knew that he believed it."

Down on the beach he takes a few steps into the water and withdraws a large conch shell from his bag. He takes a few long, slow breaths, then inhales deeply, raises the conch to his mouth, and blows out a long, eerie note.

For several long minutes, nothing happens. Then a head surfaces from the water, several meters out.

The thing that slowly emerges has the color and translucent sheen of bull kelp, but its form is human. It crawls out until it is about six feet away from Farfar, and you can see the lower half of it is long, smooth, and finned. Farfar begins to speak -- a short, musical phrase in a language none of you recognize. The merfolk in the water croaks a few words in reply and reaches out to offer its hand.

To be continued...

Farfar steps aside. "Only the hand of a merfolk can guide you to the temple," he reminds you as he begins rummaging through his bag. He pulls out a tin flask. "You'll need to link hands in a chain. But first, drink this. It'll last one full day, so...don't get stuck down there any longer than that."

Who wants to be first to drink from the flask and grasp the mermaid's hand?

Zangua takes a drink of the salty potion and recalls his brief sojourn in the Plane of Elemental Water. He reaches for the mermaid's hand and she grasps it tightly. With his free hand, Zangua takes the hand of the next party member to drink, and so on.

Once the chain is formed, Farfar takes a step back. He starts to stammer what probably would have been a few words of encouragement or well-wishing, but the mermaid starts to crawl back toward the ocean, dragging the party along with her. As soon as she is able to submerge she begins to swim in full, her long and powerful tail propelling them along a downward angle to the east.

She soon accelerates to a tremendous speed, forcing you all to grip as tightly as you can to hold on, and levels off as her descent takes you to just a few meters above the ocean floor. The darkness is total here, but after a few moments the mermaid's skin begins to emit a curious glow. A phosphorescent tattoo consisting of labyrinthine spirals appears on her back.

The mermaid slows down and comes to a long, sliding stop in the soft seabed. Thick clouds of silt rise up, obscuring what little you can see from the glow she emits, and she begins to crawl along the ground for a few meters. Then, quite suddenly, she plunges headfirst into the silt.

Half-swimming, half-crawling, she pulls you through a long, narrow, twisting tunnel that descends, curves, and rises up again. Whatever mechanism the potion uses to allow you to breathe underwater is affected by the silt; it is harder to draw breath here.

Finally you emerge and the mermaid lets go of Zangua's hand. All you can see around you is darkness, the mermaid's skin only illuminates a few feet of space around you, and there is nothing to see but silt. She makes a few short, high-pitched cries and gestures, then begins to burrow back down into the silt, her duty apparently discharged.

Your move, players!

Who wants to swim up with Zangua? Felor has not turned his spear lamp on yet; those of you without darkvision can't see a thing.

Zangua and Leth ascend for more than 500 feet before swimming into a ceiling of smooth, flat stone.

Apparently it does, you just shoot with Disadvantage!

We'll say Felor turned the lights on for you, because it'd be kind of nuts if he didn't.

All you can see in the glow cast from Felor's spear is the featureless ground you emerged from, a vast plain of sediment that seems to extend in all directions. Looking a northeasterly direction, however, the ground seems to incline somewhat.

Zangua leads the party up the slope.

Soon, the tops of broken pillars can be seen emerging from the substrate, massive and evenly spaced about sixty feet to either side of you. About a quarter mile ahead, there is a faint glow that silhouettes a broad dome-shaped structure.

You seem to be inside a vast undersea cavern.

You approach the dome, which crowns the top of a large stone structure half-buried in the sediment.

A small object drifts in the water about 100 yards ahead of you, not far from the structure.