"First of all, the elevator wasn't up, Cat and the angel girl posessing my body pulled it up. I have a vague memory of it. Next, there's a set of stairs heading down, they may have gone that way. Next, the area wasn't open, someone hastily put a rickety bridge to get to this side, and orher than the ancient structure that doesn't match anything else, we can't pressume they were here. They probably don't know about the underdark passage, and if they didn't know the ghouls were here, they'd have died to them if they came down here. They just recently started working with this mine, they haven't started mining in bulk, they probably spent all the last couple years just rebuilding the entrance and the first level which looks recent as opposed to down here that looks untouched. Add that to the pristine ecosystem in what is clearly a washout for tools, my theory is they didn't come down here in a hundred years. They probably read the warning and said, 'someone' needs to check it out. Also they probably don't know the mine at all since they were unwilling to do anything without the map." Deep breath, "I'm out of mana, I need to relax, no buzzies today."



I'll be in the tent.

[Interactions Required]

Yulya returns up the ladders to the southern end of the mushroom cave, She feels something important has been omitted from the Badger ring manual and confirms the effect with Ashley
Uh Cat be sure to use this ring only twice per day! Then give it to Alice!

The hole was fresh. I looked at it thoroughly. No signs of erosion or oxidation. There are 2 types of beam holes here. Ancient ones an fresh ones. The ancient ones don't fit the fresh rock we found on the road and the fresh ones here were made a day ago. Soo - Sherlock Alice concludes that there must have been 3 separate beaming events. One a long time ago here, one when we went back to Phandalin and one a day ago. Possibly to scare off that bear we encountered.
On top of that, the rock we found didn't look like it was lying out there for ages. Someone would have found it. Eventually people like Daran would have heard about it and wondered what magic caused this. And that dwarf would have recognized a rock from his own mine I'd say, even if drunk to the point of alcohol poisoning. So whoever makes those beams isn't a monster from this mine but someone who's capable of walking around outside in civilization. Probably a wizard unless we have guys with laser weapons here as I said.

Yulya is not entirely convinced.
As far as I recall Sir Nundro said such rock would be encountered in the mine. Still it eludes me why someone would carry it to a road outside of Phandalin. Yet there is something even more concerning. Sir Nundro was unfamiliar with this type of damage. Meaning he had never been here. Nobody ever mentioned Mycoids either. How is this possible? Was this area sealed off? I see only two possibilities. Either the Rockseeker brothers are very unfamiliar with their mine - or they intentionally withheld this information from us...

We blocked the elevator. Unless any survivors climbed to another level or flat out teleported - I guess a beam wizard could, they should not have been able to leave this level. Weird.

You are correct, I had not considered this! Nobody should have been able to leave this level of the mine after we entered. However the elevator was up when we arrived. Someone must have survived and come up. I cannot really make sense of anything that is happening here. I will leave it to Ashley to send a wasp to investigate or not.

Alice looks at the bandits with dismay.
Even in death you mock me. Who took your money but left that treasure? Well, I'm not gonna strip you here in a kill zone, that's too much even for me. And dragging you up as mushroom food is too much of a hassle. Or what do you think, Cat? Somehow it would be kind of entertaining! If it wasn't for those beam holes...

Alice keeps discussing the incident with Ashley while being shoved back up by an unusually nervous Cat.

"This all must have happened just before we got to this level. I doubt it would be loud enough to hear from the level up, and I don't think they left the area to get back to the shroomies."

Wait, you think whoever did this did not get out alive either, and perished down there after opening the chest? That would explain why the treasure is still there while the bandits had no money. But it doesn't exactly increase my enthusiasm of going in myself. Can't you send a wasp in there to investigate? But when we're up at the shroom level! A wasp is a cantrip right? There's no excuse not to have a wasp at all time except maybe around those noise-sensitive shrooms!

Following Cat, Alice picks up a severed bandit arm as present for the shrooms.

"As for the rock, maybe one of the bandits took it out with them? I still don't think Nundro would have intentionally lied to us just to hide that there's a weapon of mass destruction in their mine and we were sent here to die. Right? But I'll have some words for them when I see them again.

Alice dismissively waves the bandit arm at Ashley
Nah, The hole was fresh. I looked at it thoroughly. No signs of erosion or oxidation. There are 2 types of beam holes here. Ancient ones an fresh ones. The ancient ones don't fit the fresh rock we found on the road and the fresh ones here were made a day ago. Soo - Sherlock Alice concludes that there must have been 3 separate beaming events. One a long time ago here, one when we went back to Phandalin and one a day ago. Possibly to scare off that bear we encountered.

On top of that, the rock we found didn't look like it was lying out there for ages. Someone would have found it. Eventually people like Daran would have heard about it and wondered what magic caused this. And that dwarf would have recognized a rock from his own mine I'd say, even if drunk to the point of alcohol poisoning. So whoever makes those beams isn't a monster from this mine but someone who's capable of walking around outside in civilization. Probably a wizard unless we have guys with laser weapons here as I said.

But you've got a point. We blocked the elevator. Unless any survivors climbed to another level or flat out teleported - I guess a beam wizard could, they should not have been able to leave this level. Weird.

Alice looks back at the passage, uneasy of leaving the mystery unsolved, and then back at Ashley
Wasp pls!

That description is obviously not copied correctly. Instead of saying "it had three charges" twice, there is a missing line that after the third charge is expended, any additional down will cause instant death or something like that. So you get up 3 times per day but you are cheating death so for the rest of that day if you are downed again you are killed.

I added a note for what was salvagable.