As things do in these sorts of situations, problems with our new outpost started before the carts even finished being brought in and unloading could begin. Gerrie, along with Tim and Spud, went into the mine to ensure it was in a sufficient state for our miners to get started. More likely, it was to find what kind of damage being lost to the Forest for centuries had done to the place. Certainly not a trivial undertaking, and it was clear the task was more dangerous when the three came rushing out, being chased by some manner of tentacled monster. The creature was not terribly difficult to deal with, but it alerted us to the fact that securing the mine would be a far more time-sensitive priority than it had been. Wouldn't want to go down in the books as the caravan that went out into the woods reclaimed by the Forest only to disappear mysterously the night we arrived. Too many of those as it is.

We regrouped and gave our instructions to the crews we hired to join us. Once we were sure progress setting up camp and securing our immediate area from the outside would be in good hands, a group of us descended into the mine to ensure no surprises would be popping out to eat one of us in our sleep. Between more tentacles on legs and spiders with giant mushrooms, it seems safe to say the mine was full of presumbaly Bloomed creatures. I could feel Lucretia's desire to capture them for study before she voiced them, but it was decided that our camp was in no state to hazard containing a live, hostile creature. Resources would be our first and greatest problem for a while as we got this camp upgraded to an outpost. As such, we did our best to dispatch the creatures and secure the mine.

There were a few hiccups along the way. Zarn's owl scouted for us, but ended up getting caught in the aforementioned mushroom spider webs. Given the nature of the webs and the spores the spiders released, I was thankful Gerrie had brought air helmets for us to wear down here. The webs proved exceptionally flammable, which was good for dealing with the spider problem, but without knowing what sort of supplies or resources may be further in the webbing, and general concerns about fires and mines, we hurriedly worked to stop the flames from doing too much damage.

It wasn't all bad, though. We found some documents in the mine that were surprisingly still legible, and there were the remains of what I can only assume were crew that had been in the mine at the time, along with strange canisters. One such container had ruptured, and a glowing wall of squishy crystals grew up from it. Gerrie's tools indicated this was likely producing all the air that made our helmets largely unnecessary for normal mine operations. I'm sure Lucretia is going to enjoy figuring this puzzle out. Overall, once the threats within were dealt with, the mine was in surprisingly good shape, and with Gerrie's direction we should be able to fix up the admittedly low amounts of repairs to the structure.

Now what's all this about another owl in camp?