Back to Camp

Continued from Slowly Healing.

The DM: It is still July 4th; the sky is covered by puffy clouds, there is no rain and the temperature remains cool and comfortable.

Lexent: "Vafrandir, would you be willing to assist me? I can't carry all that much by myself."

Vafrandir: I'm with you! Off we go.

Vafrandir: To be clear, we intend to move camp closer.

Lexent: Indeed.

The DM: Splitting the party, I roll and no ill-happenstance results from it. Marcule is able to get Pandred down the mountain, and might even be able to signal somehow with a spell or something (no idea) to let you know they’re coming. Together, without needing to say so, you make an agreement about some place you saw that morning, so you know just where to meet with each other. However, none of you are a ranger, so I will need a wisdom check from every person in the party.

Vafrandir: I roll a 1.

Lexent: 14

The DM: You both find your way back to the camp, and to the agreed-upon meeting place.

Marcule: I will do my best to take care of Pandred.

The DM: That place ... do you want it to have any special characteristics, commensurate with the area? It's alpine tundra, so there are no trees. Here are some suggestions of what an alpine range offers. Note the "Features" section.

Rolling dice, I do indicate the presence of a single hot spring, so that's probably going to win the choices. No "chalets" obviously.

Vafrandir: Yes, a hot spring gets my vote. Preferably against a rock face to help shield from wind as well.

Lexent: Your first sentence is almost word for word what I was writing. Hot spring, please.

The DM: That’s a safe bet, Vafrandir. The hot spring is little more than a trickle; it makes a pool only one foot in diameter before tricking about fifty yards downhill through an inch-wide crack in the rock surface, where it apparently returns to the subsurface. The pool is about 4 yards from the rock face, which is 18 feet high and forms an angle, 20 feet north-south and 10 ft. east west, with the hypotenuse towards the southwest. Stretching south and west is a small plain of glacial debris, with stones ranging from fist size to gnome-sized.

The DM: “small plain” = 500 yards across, tailing out where the slope breaks into 10 foot wide gulleys and ponds on the southwest edge.

Lexent: The perfect size for resting an ankle.

The DM: the temperature of the hot spring would be 65-70 degrees C; though of course no measurement of that kind would be comprehensible to the characters.

The DM: Let’s see; you can’t get the cart onto the glacial plain. The best you can do is park it 250 yards from the hot spring. The terrain is too rough for the wheels otherwise.

The DM: Marcule and Pandred, I need those wisdom checks. We’ll pick this up Friday, as agreed. Out (but I’ll check back in half an hour).

Lexent: That seems a manageable distance. How much farther from the abrasion zone of the cirque are we now than at the previous camp?