Skittering Darkness

Skittering Darkness
Date	11/13/25
Storyteller	Dag
Tier	Expert
Player Characters	Phyl, Sanaa, Hogo, Swaying Petals (special appearance by Enyo)
Rewards	350 exp, 1200 gp
Result	Success
Author	Tire
Downtime	20

Log

Day 1

Our party arrives at the Crossroads, meeting up with Enyo, a Drow from the Darklands. They've come to request a team to sabotage a chuul farm. I've heard of these before, so I make a few notes in my book about them, as well as the Xulgaths we're working to sabotage. Apparently, they harvest chuul chitin for use in making cataphracts, apparently a sort of fleshwarp native to the darklands. As long as we aren't caught, we should be fine. But one of the problems we have is that none of us have been to the so-called "Nar-voth" before. A prior team in these cavern paths have made it down far enough to encounter Xulgaths in the past while hunting a magma worm. But we've never gone quite that deep, and while Enyo isn't keen on the idea, she does relent and guides us to our destination.

Bestiary Update Chuul: Predatory crustaceans who can live both on the surface as well as in caverns, including the ecosystems of the Darklands. They're quite large, and obviously have a notable shell. Despite being amphibious, they primarily hunt terrestrial creatures. There aren't many they won't eat, but they hate eating xulgaths, due to their stench.

Xulgaths: A species of reptilian-like humanoids who primarily live deep underground. They come in many shapes and sizes, but almost universally have some kind of odor problem.

Day 10

Luckily, the lack of sun on the surface has prepared everyone for days upon days of wandering through the dark caves. Hogo and I partake in sightseeing as I catalogue the local flora and fauna. Hogo also seems to annoy Enyo with how talkative he is. But the days go on and we eventually arrive to a set of tunnels. Enyo isn't quite willing to proceed, so we decide it's probably fine for us to leave her behind and have her guide us back to the surface, and that we can find our way to the farm.

Sanaa and I prepare the group to sneak through the caverns, since we aren't supposed to be caught - the best way to do that is for them to never find us in the first place. It'll also make sabotaging the farm and exfiltrating the area easier. We pick a path through the winding caverns, before finding ourselves beset by local hostile fauna and flora. Some cave fishers and violet fungus attack us, Hogo shows incredible restraint in not discharging his firearm. Luckily, these creatures aren't much of a threat, though the poisons that the fungus possess make things painful for Sanaa and Hogo. I stayed healthy by keeping my distance. I take the opportunity, while Swaying Petals treats the wounds of the three others, to explore a bit more, ensuring not to overextend too much. I prod both routes from this initial cavern, finding one route that forks off even more confusingly, and another route that heads mostly in the direction we're looking for. Our mutagen wears off, but knowing that there are hostile fungus who don't rely on vision, we switch our tactics to light steps as we proceed.

The path winds a bit more and we enter another larger chamber, seemingly filled with stalactites and stalagmites. Turns out, these were more ambush hunters, creatures known as dark mantles and ropers. The dark mantles prove annoying while the roper proves deadly, ensnaring us all and attempting to kill and eat us. It very nearly kills me. Luckily, much like the violet fungi earlier, the roper also has a weakness to flames, and so Sanaa and Hogo are able to slowly whittle it down - with Hogo finally discharging his firearm, the one that looks conspicuously like a Rathian. I'll have to ask him later when he got one of those... thanks to Petals, I'm able to survive. We take a bit more time to properly heal up this time, as the fight was much more harrowing thanks to our reliance on using our hands for various activities.

Continuing on, I see a slurk acting hostile to something we can't quite see. There is another route, so we decide to avoid the territory dispute. The cavern loops back onto another portion of the cave the slurk was in, and I see a group of xulgaths hunting it. With their backs turned to us, I quietly urge our group to move on, as we're obviously now on the correct path. Not much further along, the caverns open up and we see a xulgath standing guard. Nice and quietly, I bring the group up by dodging behind stone pillars - luckily, these ones weren't also ropers. We dodge into a passage obscuring his chances of finding us, and we can see a structure made of wood ahead through a passage. I take a quick scouting pass and see a xulgath in what appears to be a camp, and moving forward, I witness some larger xulgaths tossing a slurk into an enclosure. I can hear the chuul inside the recessed pit. I sneak back to the group to come up with a battle plan - the chuul seemingly have sensitive noses, so Sanaa and I devise a plan to first use some steelscour to destroy the lock and gate, and once its eaten its way through, I toss a durian bomb into the enclosure. Heading back to the enclosure, waiting for the xulgaths to move along, I move silently to the gate and enact the plan. I might have wanted to wait a bit longer, since the xulgaths were still nearby and heard the commotion, but not close enough to do anything about it or me. I find a different route to sneak my way back, listening to the chuuls taunt the xulgaths as they escape, and to the xulgaths commanding that they retrieve their poisons to recapture them. The chuul should be able to outrun them, so we've at least managed to disrupt their operations for a time.

Sanaa seemed dejected at not being able to poison the water supply, but relents and agrees that the best course of action is to escape the enemy territory. Luckily, the commotion draws the attention of the xulgath guard we snuck by earlier near the entrance, and we are able to leave the way we came easily. We eventually make our way back to Enyo, who rewards us for a job well done and for returning with the entire group alive.

Bestiary Update:

Cave Fisher: Cave dwelling crabs, though not the crustaceans we were looking for. They have a tendency to stick to the ceiling, and launch their filaments to drag their prey to them. Quite an annoying creature, but luckily is just a nuisance. Quite slow at that.

Violet Fungus: Cave dwelling hostile fungus. No sense of sight, likely uses vibrations to detect any nearby prey, who it then attacks with poisonous tentacles. Weak to fire, and is weak willed, though possesses no signs of possessing a mind with which to exploit such a weakness, as they would opt to attack nearby creatures instead of fleeing from an area that is on fire.

Dark Mantle: A cave dwelling mollusk that blends in as a rocky feature, so is likely an ambush predator. Can stick to ceilings and can shed a form of darkness to hopefully incapacitate prey with weaker vision senses.

Roper: A much larger ambush predator than the dark mantle. Similarly to the cave fishers, they can attach their sticky tentacles at a quite impressive distance, though it doesn't directly harm its prey with these appendages, it does drag its prey to its mouth, which is quite deadly.