BB Day Trip: Spelunking

Expedition

Myska's Menagerie travel out into the mesa wilderness to attempt to locate another faction that may be in the area.

That morning, conversations of their plans shifted. Astrid believed that they may have been thinking of their predicament wrong. They were treating the company expeditions and the Scales of Justice as permanently opposed and it was their role to pick them up without the other falling. While two active forces are required to provide balance, it takes three active forces to provide stability. Astrid now thought the third active force was coming. Astrid let the companions in a bit on her dreams and her desire to go investigate the mesas.
  The companions set up Mr. Tengral to watch the workers on the blimp before preparing themselves for a day trip out into the mesas south east. Astrid summoned a white Clydesdale with a tinted purple mane as a steed. Chupta called out Rachit and summoned his carpet to allow for most of the party to have the stutter-step hours of easy travel through the day. Not every body in the crew had an easy time because Millie brought along with him on this adventure the two dwarven skeletons harvested from Silver Field along with the aarakocran ghoul hunched in a cloak to partial disguise it. The cloak and pants it wore were minorly stitched to hopefully break away if necessary to not ruin them.
  Picking southeast as their heading, Crush would take multiple flights up high to help plan their journey to maximize how far they could travel out and back in a single day. He did his job expertly and not only charted a swift course but began to read deeper into the terrain.
  Focusing his attention on possible dangers and creatures, the tortle locate signs of a great creature in the area. The undulations of swept sand, the wear upon mesas, the gouges through trees, and the scattered remains of carcasses violently torn asunder in all directions. The tracks connected dots in the druids mind. The signs showed both a solitary massive servant as well as prey killed by pack tactics. A desert hydra. Crush would keep this insight to himself. They barely entered it's territory as the party reached mid day but he would make note of it to return later.
  The intended journey was supposed to be 4-5 hours out and back by slight different loops to not waste the entire return. Near the end of their journey out, the companions found a dried out ungulate carcass near some hard shrubs. The limbs had been deftly quartered by a sharp knife but the remainder of the creature had been left for carrion feeders to eviscerate. Chupta wondered if a bear had done it and immediately sent out Jafi to look for hidey holes that bears might be in. From far above the animals saw three in the greater area around them. While Jafi was out doing that, Millie gave a dumbfounded response of, “Chupta, it's not a bear.” As he said it, he held his fillet knife up to the limb amputations to demonstrate the quartering technique..
  Looking around the area, the companions found a singular, humanoid boot print in the slightly moister ground beneath the bush. It slightly smaller than Astrid or Chupta's footprint, slender, and light. Chupta's experimental footprint pushed twice as deep into the substrate. With keen thought, they realized that the print was facing in the direction of one of the caves further to the southeast.
  Jafi was instructed to check it out. When the pat found the cave stayed wide enough for them to enter and continued on significantly beyond the first 30 feet with his echolocation, the party decided to head after. Over land, the troupe would take another half our to get to the cave. They were certainly extending out their day trip. Climbing up to the cave, the party committed to the choice at repeated moments.
  Entering into the cave, Jafi quickly came into sight before leaving again, taking point. Astrid put up dancing lights for Crush. The companions delved to see what they might with only the incantation of the lights calling out every minute or so.
  About 400 feet into the comfortably traveled cave the area widened into a large open space. Looking around, Astrid and Crush recognized that some of the rocks that would have fallen from the ceiling in the middle of the pathway had been moved to the side. Comparing sediment and moisture level on the ground and upon the ceiling, Crush identified a location that would have had a a very low burning fire sometime in the past week. It would have been more coals than anything used for cooking heat rather than any great flames for light. Millie would station his dwarven skeletons here as a support.
  The companions continued down the opposite passage to trek further. Another 3 minutes in, Millie found a thin shard of burnt bone on the ground in a crack discarded or forgotten. It seemed to be split from a leg bone the marrow was gone. Taking that moment to consider their course, Astrid cast a Location dweomer to search for temperance shards. They would continue until the spell gave out and then turn back. Millie took over the light duties with his own evocation.
  The timing plan fell way when they reached a wide intersection a minute before the spell gave out. The tunnels were wilder and cruder as they continued. Their path came in at an obtuse angle to by the joining part of the Y. Millie marked the rout back up. Astrid wandered minorly down the other paths to pick up what she could but mainly dawdled out the spell. They had hit their length but the sunk cost fallacy began to sink in and they didn't want to turn back too early.
  Chupta conjured a flock of familiars to explore the left path that slight graded upward again while the other turn to head deeper down into the earth. Crush's movement began to become uncomfortable as the tunnel became uneven. They continued another five minutes down this path before the party grew a bit anxious. Millie's “It's been a long time since I have been in barren caves with out a goal out hunting” Started to spark other conversations.
  Chupta gave out a, “I don't have patience for this. Why don't we make a loud noise and see what happens?”
“That is the least Chupta thing I have heard you say,” Astrid retorted.
The companions would have Crush throw a microboom before trepeditiously waiting... Any creature to fight them either was too far off or had been scared by the sonic attack in the gloom. Millie would summon his Arcane Eye to explore further ahead while the companions turned back. There was interest here but they needed to get back to the airship and the path was far longer now that it had been this morning.
  Millie's divination explored a honeycombing pathway for 30 minutes that eventually led to an underground river. In that chamber there were three other passages, one of which that was flooded. Choosing the massage of the closest matching tunnel that the eye had come down, the would find it's at the end of it's magic getting to another campsite suitable chamber. A quick guesstimation had it large enough to house up to twelve comfortable people to a cramped thirty.
  On the return hike out of the cave, some of Chupta's familiars returned to news of a few other surface level exits before a loud noise had scared them. Collecting the skeletons and getting out front, Astrid had a minor mind-tickle of something peculiar before continuing on. Crush would lead the troop on an indisputable forced march back to billow bluff.
  The companions checked in on the work of the airship's balloon before beginning the slow descent into the evening. Chupta spent his evening working on scrying Rary's Telepathic Bond.
Crush attempted to scry a handful of times. The attempts on Scizzord and Virtuoso both failed. Despite that, the final attempt on the gnoll accomplice of Virtuosa succeeded! Crush viewed the gnoll strapped with weapons crouched behind shrubbery as if hunting. Her bow was in hand but not drawn. She circled from one stalking point to another. Muffled conversation could be heard, it seemed to be something the gnoll couldn't understand but there was fear. She crouch and pressed herself down no longer stalking but simply hiding. She stayed there for a long time before picking herself up in the night and began to sprint into the distance and into the end of the spell.