Fellowship of the Dice

Fumbus smiles his toothy grin at Merisiel. "Thanks! I feel like a thousand gold pieces after that. I'm glad to have such a good team to work with."

Regarding the books, a larger person would 'look over Carver's shoulder' to read along. ... not so much a valid choices for the small goblin. Instead it's more like he looks 'under Carver's elbow' to get a reasonable angle. "Ooh! So maybe we were just at the right place at the wrong time to get all this itch. The underground lake needs some sort of healing magic to stay healthy, but that thousand years is up and needs a refresher."

"He hands the book to Fumbus when done, "Sounds like it could be as simple as the healing stone that enchants the lake and the baths has finally run dry of magic and now we are all just wallowing in one another's dirty bath water. If we could pick out the old stone and replace it with a new one, or toss a new one into the water we could harmonize them and fix the whole thing!" He says it like he knows what he's talking about, clearly the butcher doesn't, but he fakes it well enough.

"Easy as fileting a gnoll trout from the Ash Mountains." He smiles at Merisiel as she finishes up bandaging the group, "Thank you."

Merisiel nods and says, "Well, then, let's find one of those stones. And bring that book up with us, so in a thousand years, people can refer to it again."

She looks over at the stone dog. "But there's clearly something else weird going on down here. Why did we encounter those illusions and this thing? Someone has something they're trying to hide down here."

Fumbus scratches his head, not having any easy answers. "I dunno. A thousand years is a long time for other things to move in and make this their home. Or highwaymen make it their hiding spot. Monsters to crawl up from the depths of the earth. Dark wizards make a lair." He's totally spit-balling, throwing ideas to see what sticks.

"Yes," says Merisiel, thinking out loud, "but that book was in this guarded room. Why was it down here instead of up there, in the hands of someone like the owners of the hot springs or a temple? It may all be coincidence, but something smells like a two-week old dead fish."

Having looked through the books and old furniture, the heroes have some possibilities. They could go back northwest and look at the tunnels there. They could take the corridor to the west, which turns into narrow stairs down. They could investigate a wide passage south, which leads into another room.

Merisiel looks around says, "Now, if I were a nest of healing stones, where would I be?" She turns to the others and says, "Downward seems like the most likely possibility."

Fumbus scratches his dirty scalp, still feeling the itch. "Water tends to follow gravity, so if we're going to find some caverns of magical water, heading farther down seems a safe bet to me."

Merisiel says, "We're looking for stones, not water, aren't we? It's the stones that are magical, not the water. We need to find a magic stone and throw it in the water to purify it for another thousand years."

"We could still be wrong about the stone." He points at the book, "Maybe these here book was left here, guarded, on purpose, then over the centuries people just plain forgot it was here, people barely remember what they had for breakfast the day before. I say we go down, if we find the water, we can confirm that its not like a dragon corpse rotting in it, and we can then search for the stone if its not down there." He shrugs, "Honestly I don't know, let's just make sure we don't get lost."