The mineshaft was totally unremarkable. It was, if anything, remarkable in how nondescript it was—slightly dusty, solid wooden supports, arched roof and good footing, and…
“It’s quiet,” Harriet murmured with a smirk. “Too quiet.”
“That’s because the ambush was already triggered,” her mother pointed out evenly. “It’s narratively redundant to have another one here, so trying to force it won’t work.”
Rolling Perception (Wisdom) | 1d20+1, Best of 2
“No, mom, I was trying to see if there are any traps—”
Traps
Traps can be found almost anywhere. One wrong step in an ancient tomb might trigger a series of scything blades, which cleave through armor and bone. The seemingly innocuous vines that hang over a cave entrance might grasp and choke anyone who pushes through them. A net hidden among the trees might drop on travelers who pass underneath. Unwary adventurers can fall to their deaths, be burned alive, or fall under a fusillade of poisoned darts. A trap can be either mechanical or magical in nature. Mechanical traps include pits, arrow traps, falling blocks, water-filled rooms, whirling blades, and anything else that depends on a mechanism to operate. Magic traps are either magical device traps or spell traps. Magical device traps initiate spell effects when activated. Spell traps are spells such as glyph of warding and symbol that function as traps.
“—by invoking meta-aware ironic references. But I can’t find any, so I’m pretty sure there aren’t any. I even had Advantage, because obviously traps are trouble!”
Detecting and Disabling a Trap
Usually, some element of a trap is visible to careful inspection. Adventurers might notice an uneven flagstone that conceals a pressure plate, spot the gleam of light off a trip wire, notice small holes in the walls from which jets of flame will erupt, or otherwise detect something that points to a trap's presence. A trap's description specifies the checks and DCs needed to detect it, disable it, or both. An adventurer actively looking for a trap can attempt a Wisdom (Perception) check against the trap's DC. You can also compare the DC to detect the trap with each character's passive Wisdom (Perception) score to determine whether anyone in the party notices the trap in passing. If the adventurers detect a trap before triggering it, they might be able to disarm it, either permanently or long enough to move past it. It might call for an Intelligence (Investigation) check for a character to deduce what needs to be done, followed by a Dexterity check using thieves' tools to perform the necessary sabotage. Anyone can attempt an Intelligence (Arcana) check to detect or disarm a magic trap, in addition to any other checks noted in the trap's description. The DCs are the same regardless of the check used. In addition, dispel magic has a chance of disabling most magic traps. A magic trap's description provides the DC for the ability check made when you use dispel magic. In most cases, a trap's description is clear enough that you can predict whether a character's actions locate or foil the trap. As with many situations, die rolling doesn’t override cleverness and good planning. Use your common sense, drawing on the trap's description to predict what happens. No trap's design can anticipate every possible action that someone might attempt. You should expect an adventurer to discover a trap without making an ability check if an action would clearly reveal the trap's presence. For example, if someone lifts a rug that conceals a pressure plate, they have found the trigger and no check is required.
“You know, kiddo, I don’t mean to be flippant or anything,” Cassandra said flippantly, “but you’re not gonna believe what happens next.”
Harriet scowled, already mustering her mulishness. “You check my work, ‘cause you’re a butt?”
“We wait for your father, because I miss his company.” Harriet’s mother waited two beats before grinning at her daughter. “And in the meantime, I check your work.”
Putting deed to word, Cassandra scowled at the tunnel and began muttering about narrative irony, lazy scenario design, and domain tropes. Carefully, she surveyed the area, hands on her hips, determined to wield the power of her genre awareness to make up for the terrible visual pattern recognition reflected in her low Wisdom score—and glad that she could confidently analyze the fullness of the nearby tunnel without having to actually physically advance down it.
That, after all, might trigger a trap that she’d missed before her husband could arrive.
Rolling Perception (Wisdom) | 1d20-1
“No traps, huh, Mom?”
“You musta done good work, kiddo.” Cassandra rubbed the top of her daughter’s head as the latter pressed up into her leg. “You’ve done a lot of good work today, and I’m proud of you.”
“Yeah, well.” The Rogue smirked mischievously. “I gotta deliver when I go up to bat, right?”
“Kiddo,” a deep voice filled with love rumbled from behind them, “we’ll both be—careful!”
Rolling Perception (Wisdom) | 1d20+6 (Best of 2)
Jason’s hands landed on the shoulders of his wife and daughter before their startlement took them any further down the passageway.
“Tripwire here and here,” he said, pointing, brow furrowed in concentration. “There’s a tile there on the dirt floor. That part of the wall is smooth stone where the rest is all rough, and there’s no dust in that line across the tunnel.” He looked at the other two, taking in the way they were looking at him, and his look of puzzlement deepened. “What? Is it the book? I liked the Count guy’s name. It reminds me of Sesame Street!”
Their eyes tracked over to the book that, yes, was in the hand he hadn’t been pointing with. “A Tale of the Vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich,” Cassandra read from the spine in a tone of utter bafflement. “Why does that sound so familiar?”
“It does?” Jason angled the book towards the other two so that they could read the cover. “It’s a romance, Agate said. Between, uh, this vampire Count guy and some sorta monster aberration thingy?”
“The Latest Scorching Tale of von Zarovich’s Adventures,” Harriet read, snickering, “the Adventure of the Androsphinx of Set… and the Mind Flayer’s Return to the Marilith’s Tomb!”
“Far be it for me to criticize your reading material, dear,” Cassandra said non-comitantly, “but… unpack?”
“Oh! Unpacking, of course!” Jason’s enormous hand slapped against his even-larger forehead, and he began rifling through his backpack. “Two each for each of you two!”
“Aw, Dad! Is it my birthday? How’d you know what I wanted most in the world?”
“Because I know you, sweetie. And I wanted to make sure we all had healing potions just in case. That’s what I’m here for, right? To support you both.” He beamed at them. “And this book will teach us a lot about this place, you know? Even if it’s just about how they think and what you’re like. Didn’t your book, I don’t remember which one it was, say something about how you can tell everything about people by the books they write?”
“Oh my god, Dad.” Harriet flushed crimson, backing away from him—and then abruptly stopping before she tripped over the tripwire she and her mother had missed. “It was art, and I am so completely over the Expanded Universe, okay? Even if, yes, that one story was really good.”
“Mind flayers,” Cassandra said absently, staring at the book in her husband’s hand. “Strahd. Why are they so familiar? Why isn’t the System telling me anything about them? There’s something there, it feels like it’s… just mostly redacted?” She shook her head angrily. “Give me what you can, for fuck’s sake,” she whispered.
And her demand was heard.
Aberrations are utterly alien beings. Many of
them have innate magical abilities drawn from the
creature’s alien mind rather than the mystical forces
of the world. The quintessential aberrations are
aboleths, beholders, mind flayers, and slaadi.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
Psychic. Mental abilities such as a mind flayer’s psionic blast deal psychic damage
Divine Sense
The presence of strong evil registers on your senses
like a noxious odor, and powerful good rings like
heavenly music in your ears. As an action, you can
open your awareness to detect such forces. Until the
end of your next turn, you know the location of any
celestial, fiend, or undead within 60 feet of you that
is not behind total cover. You know the type
(celestial, fiend, or undead) of any being whose
presence you sense, but not its identity (the vampire
Count Strahd von Zarovich, for instance). Within the
same radius, you also detect the presence of any
place or object that has been consecrated or
desecrated, as with the hallow spell.
“I have never,” she murmured, “seen Query giving such godawful results. It makes me grateful for whatever’s reformatting that into what I’m seeing, and I hate that I have to feel that way.”
“Dear?” Jason tilted his head at her.
“It’s nothing useful,” she said after a moment. “There’s psychic damage, mind flayers have psionic blasts, I doubt we would stand even the slightest chance against them.”
Rolling Perception (Wisdom) | 1d20-1
Rolling Perception (Wisdom) | 1d20+1
“That’s nice, but more importantly?” Harriet turned towards the tunnel they’d arrived through. “Whoever’s sneaking around over there, show yourself!”
“Oh!” Jason handed the book—and a small bag of alchemical supplies—to Cassandra and turned back towards the entrance. “You must be Trio!”
“Dat’s me,” the man said, and both Cassandra and Harriet flinched backwards.
“How’d you sneak up on us like that? You’re right here! What the fuck!”
“Ma’am,” Trio said politely, “dis is a mine. I work here. Dat makes me part of da background, for rich folks like ya are.”
“Why are you named Tree-oh—oh no, no, don’t you—”
“It’s ‘coz I got tree o’ deze, Miss,” the man informed Harriet with a shrug and a vague indicator towards the appropriate location. “Deze nuts, pardon my Undercommon, yeah? It’s congenital, it is, an dey can’t fix it just like they can’t fix a finger y’lose. Dey get tangled fierce, so I’m Trio so’s to be laughed at.” He waved his left hand at them for emphasis, and all three of them winced at the mangled remains of two of his fingers.
Rolling Insight (Wisdom) | 1d20-1, Best of 2
Rolling Will Save (Wisdom) | 1d20-1
“That fucking sucks,” Harriet said after a moment. “All of this magic, all sorts of alchemical bullshit and literally Gods and Clerics, and nobody can regrow a finger? What the fuck! And who the fuck makes fun of someone for that kind of thing? Your coworkers are dicks without any respect!”
Trio blinked at her for a bit, face wrinkling. “Kind of you, Miss,” he said eventually. “Ain’t usual, but kind of you.”
“But drop the fake accent, okay?” Harriet grinned at him impishly. “It’s inconsistent enough that it would rapidly get annoying, and we need you focusing on whatever you’re supposed to be focusing on.” She blinked suddenly, then looked up at her father. “Which… is what exactly, dad?”
“Tracking, pumpkin.” He nodded respectfully to the miner. “Trio here knows the mineshafts and knows tracking.”
“Easy here, with strong prints in the dust.” Trio shrugged, glancing briskly at each of the traps that Jason had found. “Typical kobold stuff, just larking, nothing fatal, probably. Just embarrassing, yeah? Means they want to say they’re around, but they aren’t saying we can’t come in. We run across the good stuff, we go home, y’understand?”
They all nodded, and he bent down and cut the tripwire through with his dagger, dancing out of the way of the spray of foul-smelling liquid.
“Then let’s go and find your mentor. And try not to die; for once, you lot don’t seem like assholes.”