Reroll

We get back to the house without incident; as we approach the door, I notice the basement windows are blacked out.

Which brings me to a logical question: “Where are the basement stairs?”

That brings Betty and Ed up short.

“I haven't seen any,” Betty considers.

Ed purses his rather fat lips… which he really shouldn't do, as it makes him look like he wants to put something hard and meaty in there… and tilts his head, “I'll run a sweep for secret doors.  And…” he looks up, “Yep, same prey, same approach.  There's no way that's a real nest.”

I have my illusion nod, “Then it's probably safe for me to visit. I'll go have a closer look.”

I walk the Illusion around the back before letting it dissipate, and fly up to have a close look at the ‘eagle’... did I mention flying rocks? Because it does.

The eagle ignores me entirely as I approach, which is of course a dead giveaway that it's not real. I get close, and the eaglets ignore me as well.  I go so far as landing on the nest… or trying to, anyway.  My talons grasp only empty air. After a bit, I land on a flat surface slightly below the apparent position of the nest, and I feel a tingle as my feathers try to spread a little… static electricity?  I tap around a bit with my beak, and get the general shape of the real object beneath the illusion: A hexagonal tower, about three inches on a side and a foot tall, standing straight up in the middle of a circular platform.  Crystal maybe? Huh.  And even knowing the nest is completely fake, I still can't see through it.  Interesting… I did get the Cantrips feat, though… I focus for a moment and touch the crystal again… no magical aura.  Okay… I'll need to pick up the Technomancy sphere tomorrow… which will probably be good for keeping our phones charged too.

Of course, active tech kind of implies an active power source.  I do some more exploring with my beak… okay, so the crystal is in a circular dish facing upwards, with a slight curve on the sides, and what seems to be a drain hole for water. Hmm… well… I'm not going to learn much more just from this.  So I fly down back to the door… and it's closed. And I don't have hands… oh, right.  That's trivial to fix.  I fly around back, take on my fully human form from the Transformation feat, and then walk around and open the door.

“Ah, what'd you find?” Ed greets me.

No reason I can't go first, “It's unreal. There's a crystal in a dish making the scene… it doesn't seem magical, I plan to test for technology tomorrow.  You?”

Betty jumps up and down a bit, clearly excited, “I found the stairs!”

Ed rolls his eyes, “Fell into them, more like.”

“I still found them, so nya!” Betty retorts.

I raise an eyebrow, and Ed explains, “While I was looking for a secret door, she was wandering around looking as well, and the floor broke underneath her in a room I hadn't yet checked.”

“Yeah, it's in one of the rooms affected by the collapse,” Betty giggles.

“Yes… I figured it'd be better if we explored as a group,” Ed adds, “Safety in numbers, don't split the party, et cetera.”

I nod, “Sensible. Let's go…” we call the pets, and they lead me to one of the damaged rooms: Yes, those are stairs.  Metallic stairs, with metal walls, a cover that certainly looks wooden when closed, (but is obvious metallic when open)… and an adjacent section of wood that's rotted through and has a big hole from where Betty (presumably) put her foot through.

I pause before we head down, “Was it locked?”

“No,” Ed shrugs, “it wasn't an issue.”

I nod, “All right… you have trap duty handled?”

“Oh yes,” Ed confirms, and we descend into the basement.

We find ourselves going down a square staircase, which lights up from tiny white crystals mounted in the ceiling, each lighting up when we get within line of sight of the crystal and fading out again when we round the corner. The turns are fairly tight, each going down about ten feet before taking a sharp right turn to the next segment.

I count forty such turns, and frown. I consider and think for a moment: Knowledge (Geography) tells me we're below the water table here… but the temperature is comfortable, my ears aren't popping, and it's quite dry: I'd have expected some water from the damaged roof, if nothing else.

At turn forty-two, we encounter a break in the pattern: A metal door. That is, of course, Ed's department. I just sit back and look at it as he works.  It's eight feet tall, four feet wide, has what looks like a palm reader on the left, based on the hand-like print in the hexagon… well, if hands had four fingers and two thumbs… and no obvious mechanisms otherwise: No hinges, no slit in the middle, just a plain silvery-metal door in a frame of the same material, surrounded by walls of the same, hundreds of feet underground.

…and this is taking far longer than the front door.

Betty bests me to asking, “Aren't you in yet?”

Jim continues fiddling with it for a while, then shakes his head, “No, and I'm not going to be any time soon. After taking ten didn't work, I tried taking twenty… no dice.”

Ah, that's why it took so long: Taking twenty takes twenty times as long… two minutes rather than six seconds for a lock, “So you're saying I should just blast it down, then?” 4d6 damage from my stone blast isn't much, but as I still have Gather Power, it is essentially at-will when I don't need to move, and as a physical damage type, that will regularly beat the hardness of most common metals - and even adamantine occasionally - so I should get through the door eventually.

“How about we knock first?” Betty asks.

Wait… “Seriously?”

She shrugs, “I wouldn't do that in game, but… well, do we actually want a fight?”

I consider, “No, not really.  Okay then….”

Ed knocks… and the door booms hollowly.

A good minute later, he knocks again.

We give it a few more minutes and a few more knocks, and then Betty shrugs, “All right; we tried.  Have at it….”

They take a few steps back, and I start blasting the door. Gather Power to cover the spell point for a blast, over and over.  It's quite loud, and the individual rock bursts don't do much… each one does dent the door a little more than the last.  But the door doesn't heal, and I can do this all day.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

After about five minutes, we can see a little bit through the door.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

At about the ten minute mark, the door is wrecked enough that we can just step through without worrying about cutting ourselves on the edges… and my ears are ringing, but that's minor.  Less minor is what my nose tells me….

Ed beats me to saying it, “The air is fouled. We'll need to give it a while to clear naturally.”

I take a brief look inside, holding my breath… ah, knowledge skills… “Dungeoneering tells me we have a week until the first room is breathable, if we leave the top open.  But we should leave now, as the air at the bottom of the stairs will be bad soon.  Come on…”

We all head back upstairs… forty-two floors is very annoying when you have to walk… but fortunately, Pathfinder really doesn't have a stamina system, and eight hours of walking uphill is no more tiring than eight hours of walking on flat ground… and that's before anyone needs to make a check.  Forty two floors takes far less than that, so we’re fine, despite the fact that normal people would need to be in very good shape for that climb to be a non-issue.

We open the top hatch fully when we reach the top so that the area can air out properly, and - because we slept in - we start to settle down for the night.  As we do, I remember, something… so I resume my human old form.

“Oh, and just in case I haven't mentioned it yet,” I begin, “I picked up a Traveler's Cloak last Reroll; I have rations for three.  Here…” I pull out the three daily ration packs my Cloak makes every day, “Eat up,” and I hand one to Ed, one to Betty, and open the third myself, “The pets will still need Dream Feast, but it should free up a few slots for you, Ed.”

He nods as he accepts.

We eat in silence… the food is plain: Hard tack, jerky, and some dried fruit… with no spices beyond a bit of salt.  Filling? Yes… there's a full three meals worth of food in each pack, for folks that are very active: These things have to be three thousand calories, at least.  Nutritious? Also yes; meat and fruit have all the vitamins and protein we need. Tasty? Not really, it's quite bland… the items are salted at best; there's not so much as a dash of pepper.  Still… it'll do.

Eventually, we drift off to sleep.