Makara IC

List for my own reference
Art Supply Stores (x)
Art Galleries (x)
Tailor Shops (x)
Jewelry Shops (x)
Music Stores (x)
Lizard Stables (x)
Potions Shop (x)
Apothecary/Herbalist Shops (x)
Florists
Spider Pens
Spider Races

---

Art Supply Stores
Various paints and brushes and everything you'd normally expect. Maybe a few specialist goods only Parveth would have seen due to elves having long lifespans to perfect strange techniques that take too long for human-like lifespanned people to master.
There sure are a lot of different kinds of white and black paints.
If asked what they make the paint from, it's about what you'd expect. Oils and such from plants and animals. Sure different plants and animals than you're used to, but essentially the same.

Art Galleries
These, fortunately for Ketha, do range from common to super fancy.
The art itself is a bit all over the place in subject. Parveth would be familiar with this type of situation as while some elven artists will focus on one kind of thing, just as many will explore various styles and subject matters.
So you've got a lot of portraits and scenes of battle or adventure or religious works as well as landscapes and locations.
Some of the galleries are focused on a particular kind of subject matter and others aren't at all.
There's one that's focused entirely on sexually suggestive works.
There is a particular style you see commonly for portraits to be just in black and white but using the various shapes of black and whites they have to express certain things.
Overall though Parveth feels like the art scene is less developed than she'd expect.

Tailor Shops
The quality of goods on offer varies greatly. While they do have wool-type clothes, mostly clothes are made from various grades of spider silk. Unlike the art scene, none of you have ever seen the variety and quality of clothes on offer in this city. Clearly this is one of their focuses of cultural expression. You're allowed to feel some of the clothes as the fancier places and "smooth as silk" doesn't do it justice.
(So if you guys want any kinds of clothes in particular it's probably available.)

Jewlery Shops
Same varieties of metals you'd expect. A lot of gems though. Many none of you have seen before. Some you've never heard of. Also pearls from Undersea creatures and stuff like that. Aside from the Duergar/Deep Gnome place you wouldn't compare their artistry to that of dwarves. As compared to the surface elves, the styles are a bit different. More focus on the gemstones than the metalwork.

Music Stores
There are certainly musical instruments that are new to you guys. Not really being a person who knows musical stuff particularly well I can't really figure out what to make up here so if you've got ideas...
They don't shy away from using materials like bone or monster parts.
They have sheet music available.
Parveth again thinks they're less developed artistically speaking in this manner than the elves of her home.

Lizard Stables
Something of a simplification here. Not all of them are really stables since lizards come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. And if fact it's not just lizards. There's various reptiles too.
There are places devoted to pets and others devoted to beasts of burden.
There's only one place that focuses on combat companions. They mostly leave that to spiders.
As far as mounts go, that's really more sitting on the beasts of burden types than it is them being especially focused on being good as mounts. So, like riding an Ox. You can do it, but it's not going to be great at what you'd want a horse for.

A particularly talented type of medium size pet lizard (note: medium as in for a pet, not Medium sized creature), called a Cantustilio, catches Adelinde's eye. It sings in a pretty and fairly complex manner. It's not easily mistaken for a song bird, but it has its own nice sound to it. It sings for attracting mates and generally when it's happy. It's rather docile and apparently sleeps a lot to conserve energy (which is mostly will expend on short but fast moving hunting or singing). It's also very intelligent for a lizard, being about the intelligence of the average dog, so it's easy to train.
When Adelinde asks how much one would be, they answer with 30 gp and the explanation that this is typically a luxury animal, thus the high price. (For comparison a Pony is also 30 gp, so this is the exact kind of creature a little drow girl will claim they wish their parents would buy them and most won't ever get.)

As for the beasts of burden they come from Small to Large. They explain that there are indeed larger lizards in the Underdark, but those ones are all pretty hostile and it's not like this Underdark cities have large enough roads to deal with that anyway.

If you want something for combat purposes it would also be Small to Large size.

In case you guys are only picturing four legged land reptiles still, there are things like crocodiles and snakes too. Just not as many as there are lizards.

Steam browses the various stores, generally browsing and making small chat before finding the pajama section. Her eyes go wide, she almost starts drooling, and she rapidly goes about acquiring some very kush pajamas.

((Steam buys some DOUBLE FINE pajamas! This requires her to pay 6 gold less for cursed goods, but I was considering why she wouldn't go for the most comfortable thing she could and I couldn't figure it out.
--Double Fine pajamas 15 gp))

Apothecary/Herbalist Shops
There are a bunch of various normal kinds of herbs and concoctions. Some are familiar to some of you, some are kind of similar to something you know, others are completely new and clearly involve Underdark specific plants and animals. Some of it's medicinal, others are like "X creature doesn't like this", stuff like that. Some stuff is more culinary. If there's anything in particular you're looking for just ask.
But I don't really have much in the way of mechanics for that stuff.
Healer's kits is one thing you could get.
Herbalism kits of course.
There are a large variety of antitoxins for things, mostly spider poisons but also for other poisons. They also have the more expensive but more general type of Antitoxin listed in the phb. (The drawback is that it's less potent than antitoxins for that specific toxin. Like if you bought Wolf Spider Antitoxin it might be like Advantage & +5 to the save.)
This also goes for diseases, even an equivalent to Antitoxin which I guess we're calling Herbal Ointment. Same price as Antitoxin.
They have Potions of Healing as per the PHB.
And lastly, what you've all been waiting for folks, they have poisons. They have basic poison as per the PHB but also lots of other stuff. If you're looking for a particular type of effect or price range, just let me know. They of course have Antitoxins for all of the poisons they sell.

They also have herbal scented soaps.

Potions Shop
This is the only one in the city, but it seems well supplied. It's a fairly decent sized shop too. The owner is a female drow and there are two attendants, one an adult male another a teenage girl.

Because I am lazy and don't want to come up with prices for every potion type thing in the DMG and figure out rules for spells as potions and make up my own and price those...I'm just not doing that. Instead here is a short list of individual items you can buy.

Holy Water (25 gp)
Alchemists fire (50 gp)
Acid (25 gp)
Potion of Healing (50 gp)
Potion of Greater Healing (100 gp)
Potion of Superior Healing (250 gp)
Potion of Climbing (60 gp)
Potion of Water Breathing (100 gp)
Elixer of Health (120 gp)
Eversmoking Bottle (Only one available) (This is a non-consumable item) (300 gp)

In addition to these singular items there are a few package deals available.
The first type is Mystery Packs. They come in a variety of colors. Name said color you want and I'll figure out the contents based on that as a theme.
The contents of a Mystery Pack are, as noted by the name, not known until after you open the pack. There are labels on each bottle that identifies the items inside.
Another part of the conceit is that there are "lucky" packs with at least one unusually good potion for the cost you're paying.
Mystery Packs won't contain Holy Water, Alchemists fire, or Acid. The lowest value item possible is a Potion of Healing.
The options for Mystery Pack potions are pretty much anything in the DMG or a spell effect.

The options for Mystery Packs are:
4 Pack (400 gp)
6 Pack (580 gp)
12 Pack (1000 gp)
24 Pack (2000 gp)

The second type is Gambling Packs. These are like Mystery Packs in that you don't know the contents before you purchase and they have color themes. They are unlike Mystery Packs in the following ways: You don't know the contents after you purchase either (there's a bit of an alchemical substance that even prevents you from Identifying them in each bottle) and the contents include things like overstock potions, screw ups*, leftovers from experiments, and again "lucky" potions. They note that overall potion strength is probably higher for the potions in the Gambling Packs to make up for the unpredictable nature, but they can't really know for sure.
They also have a bonus potion that's "free". Though since they're setting the prices that kind of a dubious claim.
*The screw ups are promised to still have effects, they are inactive "bad flavored water potions".

The options for Gambling Packs are:
5 Pack (350 gp)
7 Pack (500 gp)
13 Pack (750 gp)
25 Pack (1300 gp)

Parveth wants an herbalism kit and casually uses another 5 gold of Steam's cut. She chats up the herbalists/apothecaries some, interested if they have similar herbs down here to those above, and shares her own herbal poultices if they'd be interested in that.

((Herbalism Kit - 5 gp. Slightly more less money for cursed goods.))

The herbalists (two co-owners in this particular establishment) are very interested in what Parveth has to say. When she offers her poultices their eyes gleam with delight. Parveth and the herbalist pair wind up chatting about herbs for well over an hour. At some point Parveth inquires about using some of their herbs to try and make similar poultices. They are happy to let her try. It takes a bit to get the process right with the foreign herbs. So two poultices just don't turn out useful. They keep one of the remaining two that do and Parveth keeps the other.
When Parveth asks to purchase the herbalism kit, they refuse to take her money and give it to her along with some Underdark herbs for making more poultices.
She'll later discover several extra things in the herbalism kit. 1 Antivenom, 1 Herbal Ointment, 1 small bottle of perfume, 2 bars of herbal soap, 1 vial of Drow Poison, and 1 vial of Giant Blue Widow Spider Venom.
Drow Poison can be found in the DMG page 358.
Giant Blue Widow Spider Venom has the stats of Serpent Venom found on the same page, but also... If the poison damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the target is stable but poisoned for 1 hour, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed while poisoned in this way.

Florist
You enter a fairly large shop. It's lit entirely by various bioluminescent moss and fungi in blues, greens, and pinks.
In the center of the center of the shop is what looks like a chair atop a turntable, covered in white fuzzy somewhat seeding dandelion-like flowers.
Hanging from the ceiling are bell shaped flowers.
Along the left-hand wall are aquariums with aquatic plants that look pretty though you're not sure if they technically qualify as "flowers'.
There are various flowers around the store, most of which aren't very colorful. These are various shades of brown from dark brown to off-white. They might not have pretty colors, but they have pretty shapes or nice scents.
There is a section of the right-hand wall devoted to what appear to be roses, but they're all black, white, or mixed black and white. Including the stems and thorns.
Along the back wall are flowers that seem to be made of various colored crystal. They don't look carved and they bend the way plants normally do, not break like crystals would.
There are also a few fairly large things that seem similar to carnivorous plants you've seen on the surface. (Meaning regular irl ones, not actual man eating plants which are also a thing.)

When you approach the chair, the white flowers move slightly in your direction the way a sunflower follows the sun. The florist will explain that this plant is called Cavebed and welcome you to sit in it while you enjoy looking around. She'll explain that it's a fairly sturdy plant that is very soft and fluffy (though you could tell that by sitting in it) and that it occurs in caves and tunnels in the Underdark on the ground and sometimes crawling a bit up walls where it acts as bedding for creatures. It uses their body heat as energy to grow and a few of the little seeds will stick to creature's body for a while, transporting them to other locations.

The white and black roses are known as Vampire's Roses and they're a little magical. If held or on a person that has some kind of weakness to sunlight, the rose will provide protection for about a minute before turning to ash.

The crystalline plants in the back are also slightly magical and are exactly what they seem, a magical blend of crystal and plantlife.

Steam does in fact lounge on the Cavebed, but is otherwise irrelevant in the scene.

Adelinde looks around the shop examining some of the flowers, patting one of the cave bed flowers as it follows her with a giggle and generally just admiring the look of things. She stops for a moment at a group of black and white roses, considering them for a long moment with a slight flicking of her tail before coming to a decision and plucking out three and taking them to the counter. "Excuse me, I was wondering if it were possible to have these woven into a hairband and how much they'd be?" She asks as she places the flowers on the counter and explains how she wants it to look.

The florist is a little surprised by the request but says she can do it. She asks for 4 gold, 1 for each flower, and 1 for the work.

Spider Races
You arrive to something like an arena. Your guards made sure to bring you at the time they figured you'd find most interesting. A mixed spider race with no riders. The race track in this case is set up to also be something of an obstacle course.

There are, fittingly, eight spiders in this competition.

Note: I am using actual size categories for these descriptions. As a reminder, Medium is person size. Large is horse sized. Small is regular dog size (though some dogs are Tiny and some are Medium because... yeah).

The most noticeable is the largest, a Large Cellar Spider. (While technically the same size category as other Large spiders it has very long legs and it's body is higher up off the ground.)
Adelinde knows enough to comment that Cellar Spiders eat black widows.

The next is a Medium Black Widow. Even Steam knows what the deal is there.

Then there is a Large Tarantula which looks like it has very thick armor. Any of the characters might be wondering why this is in the race at all as it's unlikely to be as fast as most others or do very well with obstacles.

Then there is something you weren't really expecting to see, a Phase Spider. Ketha is the only one who knows what this is. It's a Large blue and white colored spider that can shift back and forth to the ethereal plane at will.

Then there is a Small Jumping Spider. Parveth is the one who recognizes what it is.

Then there is a Small spider none of you recognize and Ketha notes is probably not something that is found on the surface at all and may not even be technically a natural creature, though she's not sure about that. It looks kind of thin and flattened in places, especially its legs.

Then there are two brown spiders that are just regular spiders more or less. Ketha knows the types of these but, I'm not going to bother with the research. There is a Small brown one which Ketha notes is generally pretty fast. The other is Medium and dark brown with light brown speckles, Ketha notes these are fairly agile.

A drow comes around asking for bets before the race starts.

The way this works is, let me know if you're betting or not.

If you are betting, tell me the amount of money you want to bet. Also tell me your bet for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. Rewards will be determined based on how many you get correct. You can't bet the same spider in different places.

Steam bets 4 good and 6 silver on:
1) Jumping Spider
2) Tarantula
3) Phase Spider

What a specific and weird amount of money to bet, until later when she goes to exact zero or accidentally wins funds.

Spider Races Continued

As the race starts, the Cellar Spider has the lead, followed by the Small brown spider. When the spiders begin to encounter the obstacles is when things change up. The Cellar Spider has to slow down, but rarely has to do more than simply take longer strides to walk right over them. The strange flat-ish one actually compacts it's body to get through narrow spaces without having to slow down as much as most of the others. The Medium brown one's agility allows it to basically dance, roll, and maneuver quickly around many obstacles, barely having to slow down at all. The jumping spider, which tends to fall behind prior to obstacles makes up distance by shooting forward and over them in high powered leaps. The obstacles hinder the Black Widow the most, and the Small brown spider second most. The Phase Spider, unshockingly, phases right through them. And probably the most enjoyable to watch, the Tarantula simply plows right through the obstacles, smashing them aside rather than attempt to carefully maneuver through/around them.

At one point the small spider and the flat-ish spider try to maneuver through the same hole at the same time and this slows them down so much they never catch up with the rest of the pack.

The black widow at one point leaps to bite at the Phase Spider. The Phase Spider not being stupid, phases out of the way. The black widow apparently being smarter, timed this such that it was distracted and when the Phase Spider phased back in a moment later, the Tarantula collided with it. While neither were seriously injured, this slowed them down enough to lag behind.

Near the end of the race, the Black Widow manages to bite the Medium brown spider which careens over into the Cellar Spider's way. Avoiding the soon to be unconscious spider requires the Cellar Spider to slow down just enough that the black widow gets ahead of it. However in a final upset, the jumping spider leaps practically straight forwards and across the finish line coming in first.

1st place: Jumping Spider
2nd place: Black Widow
3rd place: Cellar Spider

For getting 1st place correctly, Steam wins 10 gold. (So her profits are a little over 5 gold.)

---

Spider Pens

Again, just a simplification. Spiders of many different kinds are raised in all sorts of places.
I'm not going to cover all the ones the characters wind up seeing, just a few interesting ones. Though I will note they only manage to see a fraction of what is available. They see an assortment of weaving focused spiders including a variety of Orb Weavers and the like, not really shocking since spider silk is one of the main resources here.

Note that all of the following things are still natural creatures, some of them just have bloodlines of mixed planes the way somewhere in Steam's ancestry there is a water elemental and somewhere in Adelinde's is a devil (or at least someone who made a pact with devils that transformed them into being a little bit devil themselves).

They get to see two kinds of spiders with celestial heritage.
-The first is pretty odd. White Prince Spiders range in Medium to Large sizes and are white with crystalline looking eyes. Unlike other giant spiders they aren't covered in hairs... at all. They're totally smooth. They also don't have fangs and instead they have mouths with sharp shark-like teeth shapes as part of their exoskeletons. As such they actually chew food. They're very elegant and supposedly quite intelligent.
-The second are as close to adorable as spiders can get. They're known as Cuddle Spiders. They're cat sized spiders with long smooth fluffy hair all over, it even drapes over their eyes much of the time. They're very specifically pet spiders and would likely do very poorly in the wild as they're not very active and are exceptionally docile. They sleep a lot and only make silk to climb around where needed and to wrap up food or eggs. They, quite true to their name, will cuddle up to humanoids (and presumably other creatures) as they sleep, going so far as to wrap their limbs around them in a hug. They eat fruits and vegetables in addition to the standard spider diet of animals.

The group also gets to see some spiders with elemental heritage.
-The first isn't super impressive. These Parachute Spiders have air elemental heritage. They're very light weight and can make parachute webs that allow them and whatever they're carrying to slowly and gently fall or sail around in strong winds.
-The next are probably the most useful. Water Web Spiders have water elemental heritage (like Steam, unlikely they're related on the elemental side of the family though). They can breath underwater and swim well. Most importantly their webs work just fine while wet and even underwater so they're great for fishing and waterside defense.
-The last are a bit strange. Rock Spiders have earth elemental heritage. Like trapdoor spiders they can tunnel a bit and pop out to grab prey and drag it back into their little hidey hole. Their tunneling ability doesn't exceed that though, so tunneling isn't a possible use for them. Rock Spiders can transform their exteriors to take on all manner of earthen appearances, from stone to any gemstone you can name, to allow them to camouflage themselves. Also their webs have a shiny crystalline nature.
-The drow here do not keep fire elemental related spiders for a few reasons. The first is that they are practically impossible to tame. The second is that web works are very common in the city and some fire elemental spiders make web out of fire that not only quickly spreads through other webs, but also transforms those webs into fire webs. Which would result in the city being on fire pretty much everywhere and all the other spiders that aren't resistant or immune to fire dying.

The group gets to see a few with demonic heritage as well.
-The first are called Hook Fiend Spiders. They're dark red and black, which color is dominant depends on the spider in particular. They have red eyes. They're aggressive and their legs are covered in large hooks as well as small barbs. They, like the White Princes, don't have regular spider fangs. Instead they have mandibles and hooked teeth that each can move about independently to rend flesh while trapping it in their maw. They come in Small and Medium sizes.
-The second are Yellow Princess Spiders. These mustard yellow spiders have a sheen to them. This is because they are lightly covered in a sticky acidic slime. They have eyes of seemingly random coloration, even independent of their other eyes. When a creature touches them they will often get stuck while also getting slowly burned by the acid. Their bite is acidic rather than poisonous and they are completely unaffected by acids or poisons. Their slime exudes a bit off of them when wet and this allows them to slowly move across the top of bodies of water that aren't too roughly churning. Their webs share their acidic and sticky properties making them excellent for traps as they are harder to get out of that even most other giant spider webbing. And lastly, Yellow Princesses have a gaze attack which can cause temporary madness.

The last of the notables if the Death Spinner Spider. The guards actually show you this one right after you've visited with the bowyer, as the closest of these live in the Mushwoods.
It takes a little bit to find them as the one you find and their handler is a bit farther out in the woods patrolling for threats/people trying to cut down any of the mushwood trees they aren't authorized to.
When you find them, the handler is more than happy to stop for a while and tell you about them. Apparently the cohort of undead things following along are fine with this too.
The handler explains that Death Spinners come from the Shadowfell and have necromantic power. In order to explain this, they have to explain the Death Spinner live cycle. The Death Spinner doesn't have poison in their fangs, instead they extract the liquids present in their prey/dead things they find. It is dual gendered and has a retractable ovipositor which it uses to deliver thousands of eggs into a corpse. These eggs will hatch in under a day and begin spinning webs inside of the desiccated corpse in order to be able to control its movements. This process creates a form of undead not much different from your garden variety zombie, aside from the fact that if you kill it the remaining living spiders will swarm out and attack. The death spinner has a sort of necromatic web linking it to the undead it's created, allowing it to direct them under its will. The tiny, regular spider sized spiders, in the undead creations will over time lay eggs of their own. Which will be pushed around intentionally or as a result of the undead moving around until they come in to contact with each other. The eggs a semi-permeable and the first stage Death Spinners inside will attempt to eat each other and thus gain the energy to grow larger. This repeats over and over and over again until there are one or two baby Death Spinners about the size of a human skull. By the time this happens, the undead is usually reaching the end of it's structural integrity and the tiny spiders are reaching the end of their lifespans. Then the baby Death Spinners will hatch, full of the nutrients they need to last for a while in case food isn't readily available for quite some time, ripping the corpse open (though this isn't as impressive as it sounds as we're talking about a frail withered up husk by that point). If possible they will join the mother Death Spinner's horde for a while until they molt a few times and are full sized, at which point they'll head off on their own to start the cycle anew.
The handler will also note that in some rare cases weird stuff happens, like the Death Spinner winds up in a situation where there is powerful necromantic magic present. The most common result from this is that instead of a zombie, the Death Spinner will create a webbed Mummy.
While the handler doesn't mention this, Ketha gets the idea that it might be possible to at least temporarily disrupt a Death Spinner's control over its horde by dealing radiant damage either to it or the individual undead. Though she's not familiar enough with them to know for sure or know the details of how that would work out.

So yeah. There are a lot of things besides those. If you guys are interested in buying some spiders there are all sorts. Certainly more variety to choose from than the lizards.
Either let me know you're not interested at all or give me some kind of idea what you're looking for as well as a price range you're looking for.
Some examples of types would be: Pets, Mounts, Combat companions, Guards, Poison makers, Trappers, Hunting companions.

Gold's (again)

So we're back to this. If you could each list what you want from here that'd be helpful. If you want to change your choices or ask about different stuff feel free. Also if you want to decide you want some previously listed stuff from a different place that's cool too. This is the final stage of the shopping though. So for Gold's stuff throw down all your remaining moneys and tell me how much that is.
Also please include how cursed/strange you want each individual item to be: None, Little, Very.

Steam starts to approach the shopkeep, but thinks again on the things she's picked up and scrambles back around the shop again, putting some items back and picking up some others. She shows the fish & moth bangles to Parveth. "Check it out! It's you and me! See, you're this one because you're flighty and dusty and aggress at light sources!"
Steam also asks if the mask that is unquestionably very cursed could be giftwrapped.

---

850 gp
11 pearls for trade in, each worth ~125 gp, or ~62.5 gp each for half-price sell back
~66 gp for additional discount from pearl buyback
Net value of 1603.5 gp

--Wooden mask with obsidian lens.
Curse level: Very
Fun gift for Char, not to wear but I'm sure she can find a use for it and whatever weird magic is in it.

--Thick amber bangles, one with a tiny fish and the other with a moth.
Curse level: Low
Intended for Parveth & Steam to each wear one.

--Pink coral bangle studded with amber
Curse level: Low
Steam wears it

--Cashmere Cloak with a White & Black checkerboard pattern
Curse level: Low
Steam wears it

--Gold necklace with a hollow heart charm
Curse level: Very
Steam wears it

--Cobalt chair figurine with swirls painted on
Curse level: not cursed
What it do, how it be????

--A burgundy cashmere scarf with an orange spiraled line running down it making the appearance of diagonal stripes.
Curse level: not cursed
maybe they like it, maybe they don't here we go

Adelinde looks through the items for a moment before coming to a decision and heading towards the counter.

---

I've got 123.6gp left

• domino mask and it's black with white features.
  Cursed level: not cursed
  (because it'll go nicely with the dress)
  
• A single thick bone bangle with jade beads
  Cursed level: little
  (because it'll go nicely with the sword)
  
• Fox fur cloak with the hood being the fox's head type thing
  Cursed level: very
  (because I wanna see where this goes)
  
• Crow feathers cloak
  Cursed level:little
  (because it'll go nicely with the dress and/or possibly my regular gear)
  
• A glass ring with a rose shaped "gem" that's also glass and part of the ring.
  Cursed level:very
  (ditto the fox cloak)
  
• A brass ring with various runes etched in black on it
  Cursed level:little
  (because reasons)
  
• A brown leather purse with a vaguely U shape with a diamond shape branded on it and a square branded inside of the diamond brand.
  Cursed level: surprise me
  (how does one curse a bag without rendering it useless?)
  

Ok shopping all done.

Now some stuff you might want to do that's not shopping. I'm open to suggestions but here's what I've got off-hand.

Going to see the Crystal Cavern people keep mentioning. (Y/N?)

Food. You kinda have to do this. Let's say twice. One light meal, one heavy meal.
I don't want to go into all the options right off-hand so let's put this into categories which I'll expand on after you select two.

Light Meal Options
Cafe/Tea shop
Street Vendors
Bakery

Heavy Meal Options
Restaurant
Inn/Tavern

After the group exits Gold's, Steam skips up to Ketha, holding something behind her back and wearing a worrying amount of cursed goods. "Hey, uh, so, I picked up something, and I thought it would complement your complexion, and uh...here." She holds out a burgundy cashmere scarf with a thin orange line spiraling down its length, forming tight diagonal stripes. "I checked with Gold and he promised it's not cursed, and it's very soft and it feels warm and I know you don't want to wear stuff over your armor but this is sort of right in your neck area so maybe?"
She continues walking with Ketha, holding the scarf out to the dragonborn until she gets a response.

At some point the group heads off the see the oft-mention Crystal Cavern. When they get there they see why people kept mentioning it. The painting they saw earlier doesn't do it justice. Though also it was clearly an old painting. The cavern is huge and roughly spherical with crystalline growth all along the walls and even ceiling. However it's about two thirds empty, clearly having been mined over a large period of time. However, it's still stunning in it's massive size and beauty. It's lit up with both magical lights and luminescent moss and the like. The area that's being worked on is pretty obvious since there are a bunch of large lizards as beasts of burden, many drow with tools not just at ground level but also up on webs being maintained by giant spiders, some of which are also being used to haul baskets of things up and down.
Still the cavern is so large you can just turn your head and not have the workers in your vision at all. The crystals themselves appear to be predominantly various kinds and colors of quartz (including a big area of rose quartz) and somewhat less so a great deal of amethyst, but there's plenty of other kinds too. You can easily see beryl, citrine, emerald, garnet, peridot, and tourmalines and can tell there are many others. Even where the mining work has been long finished there are clearly still a few crystal growth and veins remaining. So with the lights and the crystals you get these vibrant refractions of light playing across everything and elsewhere a glittering like you were up amongst the stars.

Not terribly long after the group has been looking around for a while, the foreman comes over and exchanges some words with your guards and they let you know she's offered to let you each gather a small souvenir if you want. She even suggests you're free to have one of the workers and a spider help you out if you want to actually mine out something yourself. But otherwise you're free to just look at the carts that are awaiting pickup and just take your pick from there.

((I'll note to be clear they're not talking about anything crazy like letting you walk off with a fist sized ruby. How much of whatever you wanted to take would be based on what you want. A fist sized chunk of most kinds of quartz or amethyst would be perfectly fine. A thumbnail sized emerald is about as much as you'd get on the other hand. Basically no huge expense, really is meant to just be a nice souvenir.))

---

Light Meal
Everyone's doing Street Vendors so... that's simple.

There's a bunch of different things and they're all small amounts so I assume people are getting more than one thing.
There's shish kebabs of lizard or rothe along with mushrooms and either vegetables you're unfamiliar with, slices of tubers of some kind, or kelp.
There's mushroom meal breaded chunks of deep fried meat.
There's mushroom meal balls with octopi or squid tentacles inside.
There's steaming hot buttered tubers. Peppered optional.
There are things similar-ish to sausages in a flat kind of mushroom meal bun.
There's basically what are small ring shaped pretzels.
There are dried kelp bowls full of these very flaky crunchy nuts that taste somewhat like hazelnuts.
There are cheese filled mushroom caps in various sizes.
There are syrup covered mushroom meal balls. The typical syrup is a more honey-like flavor (if you didn't know it wasn't honey you'd think it was honey really) and a more fruity flavored syrup.
There are shredded meats in kelp bowls, mushroom meal bowls, mushroom meal buns, or kelp buns with a variety of sauces.
There is jerky. One advertises that it's spices with a certain mix of secret ingredients, including a kind of spider venom.
And lots of stuff like that.

Heavy Meal

The group splits up for this one. Steam and Ketha elect to eat at an Inn or a Tavern. Adelinde and Parveth go to one of the restaurants.

Tavern/Inn
Ok the question here is.... do you guys eat at whichever Inn the group winds up staying at (which we'll discuss if you pick this choice) or just at some random Tavern?

Restaurant Choices
I'll list three. There aren't a ton (there's like... maybe six), but these are the interesting ones.

Black Silk: A very fancy place with set courses. Co-owned by a drow and a halfling.
Food Magic: Another rather fancy place where the chef flavors the food with magic, allowing for a greater focus on texture and flavor pairings.
The Supposed Sun: Run by a trio of ex-adventurer chefs who will serve you whatever the hells they please. Features a lot of unusual ingredients brought in my their core of adventurer clientele.

Ketha eyes the scarf over while Steam shows it off. She holds a claw out under it to hold it once Steam hands it over, a thumb carefully caressing the cashmere. "You didn't have to," she replies...

Tavern Dining
Meal Option 1: Lizard or Rothe steak with roasted tuber, roasted diced mushrooms, a spicy brown colored pepper-like thing, and a small loaf of mushroom meal bread with butter and/or sweet honey-like syrup.
Meal Option 2: A whole fish, sauteed white mushrooms and kelp, and a small loaf of mushroom meal bread with butter and/or sweet honey-like syrup.
Meal Option 3: A lobster, a large pile of grain-like seeds flavored with something salty, blanched long stringy mushrooms, and a small loaf of mushroom meal bread with butter and/or sweet honey-like syrup.
Optional stuff...
Soups: (Bowl or cup) Clam chowder or a lighter soup made with bone marrow and kelp.
Salad: A cold crunchy kelp in place of lettuce and some bits of other veggies, of course including mushrooms.
Bread: Just... more bread really.
Beverages: Mushroom beers, mushroom wines, something like Vodka, something like Rum. Also water I guess.

Black Silk
You enter and thankfully one of the guards made you a reservation earlier when interest was mentioned, so you aren't waiting around for an hour or more for a table.

You sit down and find out there is a menu, but there aren't choices. You're getting a sixteen course meal.

1st Course: A crab cake with a very rich sauce.
2nd Course: A soup rather like leek soup.
3rd Course: A spiced egg in a delicate glass cup. The yolk is on the runny side. The white of the egg is chilled while the yolk is very warm.
4th Course: A small plate of some kind of black pasta made from who knows what. Has a sauce similar to pesto. Arranged in a web-like shape.
5th Course: A slice of a bluish fleshed fish with butter.
6th Course: A very tender cut of rothe.
7th Course: Crushed ice flavored with two different sweet syrups.
8th Course: A single large meatball of lizard meat and strips of mushroom around the outside.
9th Course: Small roasted tubers and something similar in taste to a carrot, but it's round.
10th Course: Mashed kelp and tubers with a savory sauce.
11th Course: A kelp salad with a vinegar based sauce with a hint of a cinnamon flavor.
12th Course: Three tiny sandwiches of mushroom meal bread. Two vegetable types and one sliced meat.
13th Course: Various slices of cheese.
14th Course: A slice of cake. It's not really vanilla or chocolate cake, you're not sure what it is but it sort of falls in-between and has a light brown color. Topped with a sweet creamy sauce.
15th Course: A tea cup of some kind of sauce or thick soup with a savory flavor.
16th Course: A small plate of some fruit-like things shaped some of like strawberries on a bed of flat circular nuts. Surprisingly half the nuts also have a sweet flavor.

During the meal you're offered light or dark mushroom wines with a bunch of names that are totally meaningless to you or teas which also have names foreign to you.
At the end of the meal you're offered another tea or a cufey (which is their mushroom based version of coffee).

Adelinde ends up trying some of the kebabs. picking some of the rothe and vegetables ones.

---

Later on, at the inn the group had selected as Adelinde changes into her new dress. "Thank you for joining me tonight Parveth. Do you have anything fit to wear for the restaurant? I think my other dress should fit you if not?"

dress:

Steam’s eyes sparkle at the Crystal Caves and she’s generally in awe of the place. She picks up some kind of colored quartz as her souvenir. Something purple, or translucent tinged with orange would be cool.
For the light meal, Steam gets in on the mushroom meal balls covered in sweet syrup.

“Course not!” The water genesis beams, continuing to chatter while Ketha inspects the scarf. ”There was some other stuff I thought you might enjoy, but they did stuff like covering your face, or couldn’t be worn with your armor, or were pretty cursed, and you don’t really seem about that life, and your armor seems like it could be sort of uncomfortable, and so I thought to myself, ‘Steam, first off, you’re rocking those wrist bangles and everybody knows it. Second, if your armor wasn’t comfortable, what would you want to get it there?” She pauses for a beat, before raising her hands in a half-hearted tadah. ”Scarf!”

At the tavern, Steam goes for the whole fish and asks for beer and extra bread to accompany it. She’s a fairly hearty eater in the meal, and attempts to get a couple of refills.

---

In the crystal cavern, Parveth has a slight smile on her face, genuinely appreciating the beauty of the place. She pulls a small chunk of quartz as her souvenir, not particularly going for a specific color or shape as long as it’s easily pocketable.
For the light meal, Parveth picks up a dried kelp bowl filled with nuts, and munches and crunches as they mosey about town.

Being prompted about a dress, Parveth takes a beat to really consider, before giving a half-nod. ”I hadn’t considered that... I do not have more appropriate garments. If borrowing your dress is acceptable, I am amenable.”
She takes a private bath before putting on the dress. She actually cleans up pretty well, and while she’s not going to turn many heads she’s still pretty. Her hair is let down and curtains around her, pooling at her hips and shimmering slightly as she moves. She seems vaguely uncomfortable in a dress, but only until the two are prepared to head on, whereupon she offers an arm and a slight smile to Adelinde.
Whenever conversation lulls, either on the walk there or during the meal, she asks, ”So, Adelinde Aronway, how did you become interested in the bardic arts?”

In the Crystal Caverns, Ketha takes up the offer to mine some red amethyst...

For the light meal, she has the breaded deep fried meat, the sausage in mushroom bun, the shreaded meat in a kelp bun with sauses, and the jerky with secret ingredients. Halfway through eating she had realised that this was the best food she's had in about a week, and decided to enjoy more than what the others were...

Ketha turns her eyes to Steam's smiling face and raised hands as she finishes her explaination, before returning back to the scarf. She mulls over her next words for a few seconds, before settling on "Thank you." She hangs the scarf around her shoulders without wrapping it around her neck, leaving them to drape between her pauldrons...

At the tavern, Ketha goes for the rothe steak, and gets the clam chowder with it. And the salad. And the bread. And the beer. For all she knows this might be her last good meal so she's damn sure gonna enjoy it. At this point, the scarf has been properly tied around her neck, but pushed out of the way for some of the food...

At soon as the scarf is placed properly around Ketha's neck a voice from just below her ears speaks up, though not so loudly to be overheard by other patrons. It sounds like it asks her something, but she doesn't understand what it says as the words are in Undercommon she's fairly sure (since she's been hearing it all day long).