LOL
Flying around the edge of the island, the aura shifts from +6 to +3 at the waterline or at the edge of the dock on the north end of the island. Overhead, the aura extends up in a rough dome to a maximum height of 60 feet/20 paces.
When you hit the water, it is wicked cold and Halie needs to make a Stamina check vs. the cold vs. a Ease Factor of 9 or lose a Fatigue Level. The water is very murky (visibility about a pace), so she's going to have to proceed slowly carefully. Under the dock, the aura curves slightly in toward the island shelf (for lack of a better word) – not straight down, but not 45° either. So, directly under the dock, it's a Magic+6 in the water. If you go straight down from the edge, it soon shifts to M3, and when you angle back toward the island under the dock, it becomes M6 again.
How much time does Halie spend exploring under the water around the island (and risking Fatigue loss from the cold?)
6+3Stam+2Selkie=11.
She'll surface and call for Jeor to accompany her, just in case-- then she'll nose around for a while, until she loses two fatigue levels. Which is however long it takes to make three more checks.
(Seems like Soak from Thick Hide/Thick Fur should buffer against cold, but there's no mechanic for it :/)
Okay, that should be good for about half an hour of swimming and diving and what not. The loch bed runs out about ten or fifteen feet from the edge of Eilean Chon before it drops off. About ten feet below where it drops off, Halie thinks she sees a hole in the side of the island. Or it may be a shadow. If it is a hole, it's not very big...maybe a foot across. It's too dark and murky to see in, though.
Is she going to check anywhere else, or confine her exploration to the island?
Halie comes up, changes back into an eagle, back into a human, dries her skin off, and turns back into an eagle, swearing profusely like a fisherman's wife the whole time. She then tracks down Drystan: "I need to find a seal skin. It's a matter of great importance."
"We don't get seals very often," Drystan says. "And I don't believe that we have any seal skins here." He waves over a girl (who looks to be not quite a teen) and says something to her softly in Scots Gaelic. She promptly runs off, only to return a few minutes later. She shakes her head and says something to Drystan, who turns to Halie again.
"No, we don't have any seal skins in the stores."
((Iirc, Caoimhe ní Súilleabháin came with Talia. Has she stayed on the ship since she arrived a couple of days ago, is she around somewhere, does she have her sealskin somewhere obvious, like hanging from her belt or something?))
Caoimhe is out, drinking and dicing; she wears the skin from her belt but she wouldn't give it up or lend it out unless forced to do so.
Halie looks relieved to hear the "bad" news. "There's some kind of cave underneath the island, too small for me to enter. An otter could make it through easily, or a beaver."
"A beaver, eh?" Wallace says. "What kind of cave are you looking at, here? And you going to be able to show me where it is?"
(I assume Wallace is the beaver?)
"No kind of cave I've seen before. I will show you." She takes heartbeast form, and ask Dalla to use her Mastery of Animal ability to change the sea eagle into an otter (don't have my books to check the spell level on that, but I think she should be able to pull it off-- it's easier to change an animal into another animal of the same size than it is to turn a person into a much smaller animal). She'll suppress her Parma for the magic, the dive in and show the tunnel to Wallace.
((Yes, Wallace is a beaver, Drystan's familiar.))
Changing Halie's Sea Eagle form into an otter is Base 5 ("Change an animal into a different animal."). Range could be Touch (+1) or Voice (+2), Duration could be Diameter (+1) or Sun (+2). So we're looking at Level 15 (Touch/Diameter), 20 (Touch/Sun or Voice/Diameter) to 25 (Voice/Sun). I'm thinking more likely the Touch/Sun version, which would cost 4 Might Points.
So, Halie is an otter (for now), Wallace the beaver. What's the plan? Is she going to go in first and have Wallace bring up the rear, or is he going to go first? (Note that the Eurasian Beaver is not a small animal. Wallace is going on four feet long, plus the tail, maybe a foot and a half tall, and a little over a foot wide.)
Also, what are you going to do regarding being able to see?
Possibly a InTe version of True Sight of Air, to see through the dirt obfuscation? (No books til I get home from work.)
"True Sight of the Air: Lets you see clearly through all manner of obfuscation in the air nearby, including smoke, fog, and dust, even if the obfuscation is magical."
She'll fatigue herself to try and spont an Aquam version of that ("True Sight of the Otter"?), while within the +6 aura of Eilean Chon:
15+3In+0Aq+2Stam+6Aura+6=32, halved=16, which is sufficient.
She'll take a breather, and then just before we go in, if Wallace and Drystan allow it, she'll try to spont a touch/diam version of the same spell for Wallace. Same total, and the roll is higher than the previous one, so it'll work. Oh, but it has to penetrate because magical creatures can't lower their innate MR, so it probably doesn't work-- that'd be 5 pen if you round up from halving, or 4 if you round down.
Halie's True Sight of the Otter doesn't work on Wallace – not enough Penetration.
See, the problem isn't so much that the water is murky (well, it is for the first few feet), but that after a few feet there's just not any light up in the cave/tunnel.
The thing goes in for a couple of feet then angles upward for a few feet (and hits stale air) before it angles slightly downward again for a couple of feet, then "opens" into a, for lack of a better word, bulb-shaped space not more than three or feet long and a couple feet wide. Halie can feel something underneath her paws besides dirt, but in the pitch blackness, it's hard to tell what it is. Feels like small, flat, sharp pieces of stone.
Faerie eyes can see perfectly in darkness.
D'oh! Okay, she can see fine. Wallace, no so much. Since Halie has Faerie Sight, does that mean she's in front, or behind?
And the things on the floor of the space are small, parchment-thin shards of something fragile that shatter whenever you do more than lightly tap it.
She'd go first.
The shards-- "What does this smell like to you, Wallace?"
Once she gets his nose properly situated, he takes a few good snuffles. "It smells like dirt," he finally decides.
She bites her tongue on the "Dirt has a smell?!?" response, and instead say "Thank you. Doesn't look anything like dirt, though..."
She'll spont/5 some super low level InTe: "Is this some kind of mineral?"
((C'mon, he's a beaver...if you'd stuck a wood shaving under his snout, he could probably not only tell you what kind of tree it's from, but how high the tree was, what time of year it was cut down, and how old the tree was when it died! Now, if he had been a mole, on the other hand...
))
Not a mineral. I'm assuming that you're going to go the "Twenty Questions" route and keep sponting Intellego X until you get it, in which case the shard is Animal.
They have giant noses! It was worth a shot.
She'll also do a non-fatiguing InVi spont to see "Is this vis?"