[Let's Play] The Legends of Skyfall: Monsters of the Marsh

[deaddmwalking]

That's sucky. If it's defeated, we should be able to dump the pieces in the room and lock it up. Figuring if we hack it again we get hte same option - and eventually we might get in trouble. Half vote for checking if that's true.

[Thaluikhain]

Stand and watch, can always fight it again if needed.

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to stand and watch.

[Beroli]

Your curiosity overcomes your unease in the face of these weird events, and you stand back, though with your weapon cautiously ready.

In a few minutes the dismembered Zombie is whole once more and clambering to its feet. Eyes staring blankly and arms again held before it, the figure ignores you and shambles across the living quarters to the stairs. Laboriously it begins to climb them.

There seems little to do but follow it. One behind the other you slowly climb the stairs, then pass along the passage into the main cavern.

It becomes apparent that the Zombie is not interested in you at all, but is intent on some mission of its own: quite conceivably revenge on the person or creature responsible for its imprisonment and death.

It will only attack you if you seek to interfere with it, and when you leave it alone it stolidly leaves the cavern by the shored-up passage out to the defile, thence out on to the plain and off to the North.

Return to investigate the dilapidated door?
Leave this cavern complex?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 3 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[deaddmwalking]

Is leaving the complex supposed to be following the zombie? I admit that I'm a little curious, but I don't really want to leave. Half vote for checking out the door.

[Beroli]

No. The entry you turn to for leaving the complex is the same if you do so after releasing the zombie or as soon as you arrive at the complex. As far as you currently know, the zombie has entirely left your life. It is possible that some future entry will start with "if you previously released a zombie from a cave complex, stop reading this entry and turn to XXX," but none you have been past so far has.

[Thaluikhain]

Investigate door.

[deaddmwalking]

Make it a full vote for the door.

[Beroli]

Clouds of dust are stirred up as you cross the room to the ruined door. A hefty kick dislodges it from the remaining rusty hinge, and you move into the room beyond.

These were obviously the sleeping quarters for whatever group once lived here. Your original thought that they were Frogmen, based on the depth of the stair treads, now seems unlikely as there are remains of a dozen bunk beds, now mainly collapsed due to the rotting of the wood and the rusting of the iron. There are some foot lockers in here as well.

(It asks if you want to search, but as this isn't an interesting choice I'm assuming yes.)

Most of the lockers hold nothing more than shreds of cloth, the remains of boots and personal items, plus a few coins. You find a gold piece minted nearly two hundred years ago and pocket it as a keepsake. There are a number of papers, but none have writing in a language you can read.

One, however, has been rolled in a leather tube. It starts to fall to pieces as you try to unroll it, but you manage to spread the pieces out on the floor. It is fairly obviously the working plan for the excavations here, which do not seem to have been very extensive. According to the plan there are three rooms down here and one along the Northern passage upstairs before it turns West. The passage leading West from the main cavern looks the most interesting, as it first passes through a room and then ends at a large 'X'.

The rooms down here, the stairs, and the rooms to the West above have all apparently been developed from existing natural caverns, passages and fissures in the rock. Only the other passage, which leads North before turning West, appears to have been entirely artificial, and it looks as though the passage to the West had been intended to extend further than it has reached, judging by the dotted line extensions on the plan.

However edifying you do or don't find that, you now have nothing to do but to leave the complex.

You climb the loose rock to the mouth of the tunnel which has been bored through the scree covering the entrance to the 'large cavern, and make your way down the gentle slope. The roof is only five feet high, so you have to stoop. When you reach the open air, you find the exit blocked by a large holly bush.

Crawl through the foliage?
Take the worst the leaves can do?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 3 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to crawl.

[deaddmwalking]

Crawl.

[Beroli]

You are in a narrow defile. To your left it runs South East down to a narrow, muddy valley which leads away to the North East around a shoulder of the Mount. A large meadow stretches away on the other side of the valley. To your right it curves around to the North, narrowing as it climbs higher into the Mount.

In front of you is a large holly bush, partially concealing the mouth of a small cave.

Behind you a small rivulet tumbles along the Eastern side of the defile to form a stream in the valley.

As there is only one way you have not explored from here, you go right.

The defile bends gradually round to the North, then to the North East, getting narrower all the way until your shoulders almost brush the sheer rock-faces on both sides.

In order to continue you will have to walk up the stream bed itself, but it only looks a few inches deep.

Walk up the stream bed?
Go back to somewhere you have been?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 3 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[deaddmwalking]

I'm willing to walk up the stream bed. Surely we won't drown if it only appears inches deep. Probably leeches will get us.

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to walk up the stream bed.

[Beroli]

Just around a shoulder of rock, the defile pinches out. The stream itself issues from a narrow tunnel, some four feet wide but at least ten feet high. If you wish to go in, you will need a torch as it is pitch-black within.

Light a torch and enter?
Go back?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 3 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[deaddmwalking]

We have a torch - there must be a reason. Let's go in.

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to light a torch and enter as well.

[Beroli]

You are in a large, dark, underground cavern, apparently carved out by the water over many centuries. The floor is firm and sandy and in the Northern corner you can just make out a pool which feeds a trickle of water winding across the cavern and out through a tunnel in the South Western corner.

Several cascades of water tumble into the pool from various points in the rock wall above.

The Eastern part of the cavern seems to extend for some distance into the darkness beyond the range of your torchlight.

Investigate the dark Eastern part of the cavern?
Advance to the pool along the left bank of the stream?
Advance to the pool along the right bank of the stream?
Leave the cavern?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 3 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[deaddmwalking]

Left bank pool first, I think.

[JourneymanN00b]

I vote to advance to the pool along the left bank of the stream, as that is the only choice that does not involve a fascist direction.

[Beroli]

As you near the pool, you notice two places where there are isolated prints of booted feet. At the edge of the pool you gaze down into its depths. The water is clear and your vision only slightly impaired by the ripples spreading from the small cascades feeding into the far side of the pool. It seems to be deep as you see the sides rapidly descend beyond view. Just at the limit of vision you make out what seems to be a skeletal hand. A few small fish flick quickly into view nearby and as quickly swim back into the depths. You have time to note that, although only about four inches long, wicked-looking jaws take up almost half their length.

The far wall shows a number of ledges above the pool, which should make for easy climbing, in contrast to the rest of the cavern walls which are much smoother. The small cascades emerge from four separate points where holes about a foot in diameter can be seen.

Swim across the pool?
Step to the other side of the stream?
Investigate the dark area of the cavern?
Leave the cavern?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 3 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[deaddmwalking]

Swimming looka bad. Stepping to the other side seems alright. Half vote for that

[Thaluikhain]

That sounds reasonable, stepto other side.

[Beroli]

The pool is about twenty feet across and forms a semi-circle against the end of the cave. The water is deep and clear, but you cannot see the bottom. Ripples spread out across it from the water running down the rock.

These miniature cascades emerge from several separate spots in the rockface, where there are a number of holes about one foot in diameter. The rockface has numerous ledges and looks easily climbable on the other side of the pool, though too smooth to scale elsewhere.

It looks better from this angle, but it's still the same pool.

Swim across the pool?
Investigate the dark area of the cavern?
Leave the cavern?

Name: Andrew Bond
Sex: Male
Expertise: 13
Vitality: 17/20
Fortune: 14
Equipment: Sword, dagger, fifty feet of rope, some torches, flint, steel, tinderbox, 2 doses Potion of Healing (+8 Vitality), Ring of Fortune (double all Fortune gains), Centaur Amulet, 3 Tablets of Strength (+1 Expertise and +2 Damage for one combat each).
Provisions: 8 days, Centaur Leaves in effect until the end of day 19 (real food needs to be eaten when day becomes 20)
Travel time so far: 12 days, 5.5 hours
Deaths: Captured as a slave and worked to death, stabbed with a poisoned dagger, drowned when a dam collapsed, captured as a slave and sacrificed

[Thaluikhain]

Investigate everything including dark areas of caverns.