Steepletop Copper Claim

Cookie Beams, the head of the local Black Claw chapter, posted a job for new recruits to clear out some slimes which had infested a mine. Cookie didn't seem interested in any of our backgrounds, which is good; she seems to take the stance that Running Bend is essentially an independent Black Claw. I might be able to stay here for a while.
 
The others who answered the ad where:
Rontar Feldrak - Worshipper of Onatr, a forge god, who apparently punished him with laxatives? Definitely need to hear that story some time. Relatively chill for a cleric. I've asked him to look at that gun: he said he'd try to repair it.
Zug - Half-orc. A little simple, but sweet. Excited to be in the front-line.
"Saint" Urbain - PRICK. A cleric of some life deity, totally self-righteous and will sell out the rest of the party if they do something they disagree with. Just THE WORST.
Tosl - Pretty quiet guy. He apparently got some sort of magical powers by opening a plane to Mechanus. I checked and he said he'd only done it the once, by accident. But worth keeping an eye on; he might be able to open something into the Feywilds. Have to take the long game here.
 
Apparently some Mining Guild rep named Seraphina Sapphire bought this copper claim on the cheap after a bunch of slimes showed up, and then hired the Claw to clear it out. Beams said that the job was essentially a membership test, to let us access the lodge.
 
The mine is about an hour outside of town, SSW. Outside of the mine we ran into an encampment of miners. Their leader, Eric, asked us to try to recover a missing miner, Kevin, or at least some bracelet he had. There was also a dwarven miner, Debbie Douchebag, who got REALLY aggro out of nowhere and threatened us against stealing her undergarments? So, obviously, Zug and I decided to do it to teach her a lesson.
 
Outside the mine was the abandoned miner's camp. We found Debbie's chest and a false bottom. She'd rigged it to explode with lightning when the false bottom was opened, which HURT. But I found her journal and some dwarven lingerie. (To be fair, if she hadn't been so combative I'd have been down for seeing her in it; a dwarf in lace is A LOOK and I feel like she could have pulled it off?). I took everything and asked Tosl to read the journal, it's apparently mostly a ledger, plus an account of her plan to run off with her lover. On our way out I told Debbie that someone had come through and triggered the trap, destroying everything. She was buying it and then "Saint" Urbain spoiled it by telling her that I did it and she went ballistic. Those two assholes deserve each other.
 
Inside the mine, we dealt with six slimes. They appear to eat metal, so they'd chowed down on the mining equipment, and on Kevin. They'd eaten all the metal on his body, and in his body; his corpse was all bloated and oozing. I think the slimes must have sucked all the metal out of his blood. It was disgusting, and smelled AWFUL. The bracelet wasn't there.
 
We also found a contract, but Tosl burned it, so maybe Sapphire doesn't own it anymore? I'm not really sure how that works. Also, several barrels of some sort of mead. Not very good, but strong as hell, and hey, free refill of my wineskin on the way out!
 
Most importantly, Zug accidentally hit "Saint" Urbain with a rock. It was HYSTERICAL. Unsurprisingly, the "Saint" completely overreacted, it almost turned into a fight. Which, in fairness, would also have been pretty funny.
 
At any rate, the slimes were apparently stored in some weird storage room that was buried underground. The miners cracked through it and broke open the jars the slimes were contained in. (I took one of the jars back with me: it glows purple around the rim so I washed it out thoroughly and then put it in the Roomring. I love the color, and once I got the slime smell out Gin was all over it. It's a pretty good penguin bath.)
 
The slime-jar room had two exits: a door and big hole in the floor. Zug forced the door enough for us to see that the other side was completely caved in. I tried dropping a rock with light on it down the hole and it fell till I lost sight of it, and then there was a splash. I'm pretty sure this might be part of the Aerovault. I need something that can fly to get safely down there, but it'll be worth it. (I could also see if Kihosud can flood it enough to swim down, but that would be... iffy. Getting him to stop would be hard.)
 
Once we'd cleared out the slimes, we headed back to town. Beams paid us 20gp apiece, and let us into the Claw tavern. Not sure why Bertiel wanted us here, since it seems like just another frontier town, but it's not too bad. Might even be able to stay for a while.