>>5285121Towards the end of what your internal sense of time tells you must be at least an 8-hur, ceaseless march, you begin to fumble. You grow sloppy, uncoordinated with exhaustion, nearly losing your footing over a deep ravine above a now-dried underground riverbed, replete with alien-looking fungi plumbing the moisture still hidden within the softened and cracked stone there. Only the quick action of the Bastard—close at your side and eager to impress after the favour already showed to him—saves you from embarrassment and inglorious injury.
Perhaps it is time to rest?
You carry on a short while longer, looking for somewhere more suitable to rest than the narrow chasm-passage. The Botanist proves useful here, as does the South-Merchant—both concur, independently and in their own ways and for their own reasons, that lowering yourselves down to the fungal growths and following them to their place of greatest growth should yield a pleasant encampment—maybe even somewhere where you can restock your water-stores. You follow their advice, and come upon…
“What is this?” you ask.
“It’s… A grove!” the Botanist exclaims.
“Wait, an actual grove? A…. Surafce grove, underground?”
“Yes,” the Botanist gleefully explains, rushing forwards to pinch and stroke at the strange fungi-like things filling the high-roofed, wide, and lichen-filled cavern which your party now finds itself. “These are PLANTS!”
“But… How?” asks the South-Merchant. “A plant requires water, yes, but also sun.”
You peer closely at the strange not-fungi here, with their wide, thin, splayed-open caps and layers. They are reddish-green, dim and dull as most colours appear in absolute darkness even to your Darkvision. You can see their mycelium—their ‘roots’, you are corrected when you point them out—trailing down to the wide, shallow stream which winds its way through this place, carving it wider bit by bit over geologic time. Certainly you see no sunlight, though—not unless the nature of sunlight ahs been grossly misrepresented to you.
“Perhaps these plants have evolved to thrive on geothermal energy instead?” the Botanist hypothesizes. “I would dearly like to take samples here, for study. My profession ahs long sought a way to bring the surface’s cultivated plantlife down belowground, for purposes of growing medicinal herbs found above!”
“I do not trust a plant which grows without sunlight,” the South-Merchant says. “We should refill our water here, at this… Oasis, of sorts... Then press on.”
Both look expectantly to you.
Your muscles ache, your head pounds, your eyes fight to shut themselves even now… But you are Dragonborn (or at least, you grow worthier of that title each day), and you could force yourself to continue until you find somewhere else to rest.
What do you do?
>Rest here>Keep moving>Stay here a short while with the Botanist and one or two others, while your scouts advance to find accommodation further ahead 