Chapter 5 - Wave Echo Cave

With everyone having taken care of business in Phandalin you meet up with the others and start your journey to Wave Echo Cave. Taking the better part of four hours, the trip through the rather tough terrain is relatively easy, given the fine directions provided by Gundren.

Arriving at the location marked on the map, you struggle to find any sign of an entrance, but after some investigation you get a solid clue. Emanating from the side of a hill you hear what sounds to be waves crashing onto shore and then nothing. After a few minutes of silence the sound repeats and you're able to trace the origin to tunnel, well hidden behind some thickets and other vegetation.

The entrance tunnel leads into a large cavern supported by a natural pillar of rock and containing three stalagmites. In the western part of the cave, behind the column of rock, are three bedrolls and a heap of ordinary supplies — sacks of flour, bags of salt, casks of salted meat, lanterns, flasks of lamp oil, pickaxes, shovels, and other gear. Amid the supplies, you see the body of a dwarf miner, dead for some time.

The northeastern section of the cavern has collapsed, forming a ten-foot-wide, twenty-foot-deep pit. A sturdy hemp rope is tied off around a nearby stalagmite and dangles down the side of the pit, at the bottom of which is a rough-hewn tunnel heading northwest and east.

Easily working his way down the rope Gerbo hops down the last few feet, kicking up just a bit of dust when his boots hit the ground. Straining to see anything in the darkness, the gnome fires up his lantern, and peers down each of the two tunnels.

With irrefutable logic leading the group to the left, you find yourselves in an area of numerous intersecting passages. The ceilings here are only six feet high, and several of the passages end in partially excavated rock faces.

The search for tracks turns up absolutely nothing on the floor of note, which Karma finds a little odd. It's almost as if the floors have been cleaned recently.