*************
The Glimmering Caves [I, II, III, IV, V]
The Glimmering Caves is a multi-level, 'subterranean' type dungeon infested with spiders, recommended for four to five level-one or four level-two adventurers.
Quest: A Diamond in the Rough
Prospector Osfyr wants your help to clear out the caves and any other potential threats lurking within. Be wary though, for the caves are said to cause an unshakable madness, followed closely by the growing whispers of some unknown entity. And if you happen to see the mysterious lights known simply as the Glimmering, then it may just be too late! Does something sinister threaten the Prospector's operation? Or can you escape with a sizable bounty worthy of the Galantheart Mining Company? Gather your party and take on the Glimmering Caves today!
Delve Grade: E
This grade has been given in accordance with the Adventurers' Guild Initiation Act (AGIA), which serves to inform adventurers as to the kinds of dangers they may face in a given delve. The rank of 'E' may indicate that the overall structure of the delve is practical for inexperienced adventurers to complete with minor difficulty. On average, E-ranked delves take less than a day to complete, and do not require the use of consumables.
Level Cap Status: This Delve has been 2nd level capped. Experience gains cannot exceed the '600 experience point' threshold for level three advancement.
Difficulty Multipliers
Experience Yield (EY) and certain loot drops will benefit from a multiplier in accordance with the selected difficulty. These multipliers do not apply to Delve Sets.
Normal I: x1.0 multiplier
Intermediate II: x1.5 multiplier
Advanced III: x2.0 multiplier
Veteran IV: x2.5 multiplier
Heroic V: x3.0 multiplier
Available Loot
Coin: copper - silver - gold - special; 71.39% delve distribution.
Gemstones: common - uncommon; 9.41% delve distribution.
Potions: common - uncommon - rare; 6.63% delve distribution.
Spell Scrolls: 0th to 3rd level; 5.16% delve distribution.
Adventuring Gear: common - uncommon - rare; 3.55% delve distribution.
Armaments: common - uncommon; 2.69% delve distribution.
Delve Sets: common - uncommon - rare; x1 set piece guaranteed per 'Boss' clearance, then 1.17% delve distribution.
Available Delve Sets
Tongue of Ba’eldintra: martial and ranged weapons only.
Matron’s Folly: light armor, medium armor, heavy armor, and shield only.
Additional Information
Location: Glimmering Mountains, Western Mistlecross, Areshlian
Wayshrine Status: Inactive
Odyssey Status: One 'Odyssey Path' available.
Bestiary Information: Unavailable (Party Leader has not yet cleared this delve).
'Elite' Boss Information: (Party Leader has not yet cleared this delve).
'Minor' Boss Information: Unavailable (Party Leader has not yet cleared this delve).
Map Composites: Unavailable (Party Leader has not yet cleared this delve).
*************
“Well, there it is.” Terminus resounded quietly, as his eyes flashed blue momentarily, “My preliminary scan was successful, so you should be seeing related delve information pop-up in your system overlays here shortly. Unfortunately, I can't provide advanced specifications, since His Highness has yet to clear the delve.”
From where Orcus’s party sat at the top of the small chasm, hidden well within a cluster of overhanging foliage, they could see down into the entire cultist camp with relative ease.
There were at least a dozen people intermittently separated by a series of tents and field accommodations. Among them, two much more heavily armed individuals stood guard at the entrance to some wide cave tunnel on the far side of the chasm. On the approach, they had also noticed a few more spined devils circling around the chasm, further solidifying Orcus’s idea that Garimor had a few extra fiends under his control. Sneaking up to the ridgeline had been a slow process, but thanks to the priestess, Orcus had been able to move about relatively quietly.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
--- Blessing of the Trickster active [Orcus]; chance to stealth doubled for the duration: 27 minutes remaining ---
Orcus glanced up into the system overlay for a moment, ensuring that the ability was still active, before skimming Terminus’s scanned data. There was a lot to take in as far as the delve was concerned, but he couldn't get wrapped up in it right now.
“…Closer…”
A sudden whisper and ringing in his ears stole Orcus’s attention all of a sudden, and he looked into the chasm. All around the ridgeline, a faint breeze caused an eerie sound of rustling branches and leaves. He was certain that he’d heard a voice...
“—Are you listening?”
“What?” Orcus furrowed his brow, glancing at the priestess confusedly.
“I said, there aren’t any signs of adventurers.” Arlette murmured back, “By the looks of it, these guys out here haven’t been up to much. They look… bored? Almost.”
“Probably just the grunts.” Oriax shrugged, “Not strong enough for a fight, maybe? Wouldn’t be a first.”
“It’s possible. The other adventures could still be inside the delve. Although…” Terminus pondered momentarily, “I doubt they could spend any serious amount of time on the inside.”
Orcus furrowed his brow, stealing his focus back to the party’s discussion, “Why?”
“Most of the world delves have a weekly reset.” Terminus further explained, “If a run isn’t complete in a certain amount time by the end of the week, which just so happens to be tomorrow night, normally it would just kick you out and teleport you back to the beginning’s ‘safe-zone’ outside.”
“Perhaps… Zagadan found a way around it?” Seku presented the question, “I never met him personally, but I heard that he was a very competent person. Someone that was easy to follow into danger, because he was always looking out for you.”
“I hate to burst your bubble of optimism, Seku, but delves are magical constructs.” Arlette shook her head, “I’m not a mage, per se, being that my magic is divine in nature. But I do know that magical constructs are based in arcanum. As far as I understand it, they require massive amounts of ley line energy to function properly. There’s simply no way someone like Zag could bypass something like that. He’s a—decent fighter, I’ll give him that, but he lacks a certain, eh… intellect? Easy to get along with, sometimes, but he’s far too stubborn.”
Orcus smirked somewhat, “You sure know a lot about him, for someone that doesn’t like adventurers, priestess.”
“Guh—this has nothing to do with liking adventurers or not!” She raised her voice awkwardly, but quickly covered her mouth. Lowering her tone to a whisper, Arlette added, “I’m just saying, delves are beyond the means of low-levelers like us. Even for him. Back me up here, Terminus?”
Terminus squawked, “You are correct, priestess. All the world delves require downtime to replenish their reserves. Just like me, Your Highness. When I enter standby mode, that’s exactly what I’m doing too. Of course, mine is a daily sub-routine, but it all functions the same, more or less.”
Orcus nodded, pointing his finger down toward the tunnel, “Then if we wait long enough, the adventurers will reappear down there? Assuming they’re still alive. Yes?”
“Well, we could wait and find out.” Terminus replied, “A little observation goes a long way.”
“I say we kill them all and take their stuff.” Arlette mentioned nonchalantly.
The party looked at her shockingly.
“What?” She shrugged with an embarrassed chuckle, “It was a joke, relax. Obviously, I didn’t mean it like that… although, we should investigate their stuff. They might have something incriminating we can use. It might be worth taking them out altogether, I don't know.”
The Prince of Demons looked around to the rest of his party, none of whom seemed to be disagreeing with her idea. Grumbling, Orcus said, “Is that all this party is capable of? Murder?”
“…Yes, mister Orcus.”
“…Yep.”
“…Preferably if there’s loot.”
The responses came in around the exact same time more or less, ranging from embarrassed to casual to proud, and Orcus simply stared at them in a state of momentary confusion. Admittedly, he should have seen it coming. His entire party was filled with deplorable vagrants. In any event, that made things rather easy for him.
“Very well.” Orcus nodded approvingly. Turning back to face the chasm, he added, “We will wait for the cover of night. Until then, let us gather more information. Seku, take up a position on the far ridge. Since you and I can speak to one another telepathically, it will make things much easier. Oriax and the priestess will set up our base camp just down this ridgeline and away from the flight path of any onlooking fiends. Bird, you go with them. Conceal your presences at all costs. At twilight, we will make our move.”
“Come on, big guy.” Arlette tapped Oriax on the shoulder with a whisper, and a brief glimmer of silver energy shimmered across his body, making him somewhat harder to see even in the daylight, as she added, “Try not to trip over anything on our way down. Okay? That kind of healing I do charge for. You know, the stupid kind.”
--- Blessing of the Trickster removed [Orcus] ---
--- Blessing of the Trickster added [Oriax]; chance to stealth doubled for the duration: 1 hour remaining ---
“Hey, whatever you say, swindler…” Oriax whispered back, as he followed her back down the way they’d come a little while ago. Their voices grew quieter and quieter as they left.
“Ugh—you and those nicknames. Can’t you at least find one that suits me?”
“How about… pickpocket?”
“…No.”
“Cutpurse?”
“No!”
“…Pirate priestess?”
“I don’t run that kind of business. I have standards, you know.”
“So, you are a swindler?”
“Ugh… fine, I suppose.”
The Prince of Demons rolled his eyes and turned back toward Seku, but she had already disappeared into the brush.
----------------------------------------
It was dark in a matter of hours.
The chasm sunk into a shadow almost, as the sun passed beyond the rocky ridges to the east. Though torches had been lit down among the confines of the camp, there were still far more pockets of darkness than there was light.
Seku had taken up her position on the far side of the chasm, sitting in a depression of the ridge that gave her a good line of sight on the tunnel entrance just below.
Little of note had occurred in that time, however. Orcus and Seku had relayed some information to one another over the course of several hours, but without much variation in the goings on down below, there wasn’t really much to say.
Bizarrely, the two armored guards standing at the entrance to the cave tunnel did not move so much as an inch the entire time. Terminus’s tactical overview scan did not reveal any information about them whatsoever, which lead him to believe that their 'Difficulty Rating' was of too high a level, or that their record data was being obfuscated in some way. Either way, the Prince of Demons didn’t like it.
Meanwhile, the rest of the camp appeared quiet, beyond the coming and going of mere cultists. Orcus didn’t see any signs of adventurers or Ishu. And the only traces of Garimor, were the spined devils that Orcus presumed were his.
Where are you? Orcus thought to himself curiously, wondering where the enigmatic cult leader might be.
It wouldn’t make sense for the cultists to go in after the adventurers. The mayor said Garimor had the place under siege, after all. But if what Terminus said was true, wouldn’t all this have been over by now? Though the exact timeframe was uncertain, it had been several weeks since the adventurers left Endsmeet. Even if they were hiding inside the delve as little as a week ago, shouldn't they have been kicked from the delve by now? And captured immediately? What was the hold up?
“There’s something happening down there, mister Orcus.” Seku said telepathically, roughly thirty-minutes passing since their last interaction, “Look at the tunnel entrance.”
Orcus suppressed his inner thoughts momentarily, and looked down upon the cave tunnel.
A line of bedraggled, weary looking humanoids stumbled out of the cave tunnel, three of them bound in chains with their mouths capped by metal plating. Following them, an unmistakably Ishu woman.
However, she was much different than Seku in appearance.
Where Seku was clearly humanoid, this individual had the upper body of a woman, but the lower body of a snake. Suspended upright by a long, serpentine body, her tail coiled behind her as she slithered beyond the line of prisoners. She was adorned in golden jewels, particularly three large golden loops dangling around her left forearm. An arrogant expression etched her pale features, as she commanded the enslaved to march forward.
“Who is that?” Orcus asked at once, peering across the chasm to where Seku’s small, shadowy form was barely visible to him.
“I…” Seku stammered, a sense of confusion and fear in her voice, “I-I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before. But she's...”
Seku couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence, and Orcus simply resigned to watching.
As the line of prisoners was marched through the camp, the other cultists gathered to watch. Slowly, they made their way toward the largest ten at the center of the area, and the prisoners passed inside before long.
The Ishu woman reached for the tent flap behind them, but paused, and turned. Glancing into the sky, she opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Instead, a loud echo of unintelligible hisses and whispers seemed to release instead. However, the Prince of Demons recognized the infernal language immediately.
“Return. Return to me. Return to your master.”
Suddenly, a group of three spined devils that had previously been perched in various areas around the chasm, swarmed around the center of camp and above the heads of the other cultists. One by one, they landed at the Ishu woman’s feet, and prostrated themselves before her. With a simple nod, she turned and walked inside the large tent, and the three fiends followed her.
Orcus smirked somewhat amusedly.
By all appearances, the spined devils weren't under Garimor's command at all!
And who in the hell was that Ishu woman? What was she doing with those prisoners? Were they adventurers? Commoners? And why were their mouths capped? A sudden stream of new information still didn't make anything make sense. No signs of Zagadan, no signs of Garimor, and absolutely no idea what was going on down there. Things were starting to get interesting.
“Seku, back to camp.” Orcus said at once, and began to slowly edge his way back down the ridgeline.
The Prince of Demons wasn't sure what to make of this new revelation, but two things were abundantly clear to him: He had an idea to get those prisoners, and it was a stupid one.