The Tunnelers Campaign Session 5

Played Tuesday, June 24^th, 2025.

It is June 5^th, 2003.

After the previous evening of reviewing home movies, Ash and Jel have to decide how to spend two days while they wait for Jill’s preparations to be done. A few tunneling projects are considered: Ash suggests digging in the field in 0504 which they crossed the day they arrived, or going to the bridge at 0506 where they glimpsed something that called out to their tunneling-senses while hitchhiking. Jel is hesitant to call attention to 0504, so at 10:00 am the two set off to the bridge. They startle three sleeping blacktail deer as they cross the field.

Arriving at the bridge, the party firstly learns the name of two adjoining roads (the Sheriff Hank Woodward Memorial Highway, and Fern Drive) and secondly that the bridge where State Route 9 crosses the lower Dundarave river is the location of a large and enticing drainage tunnel, next to which is a small campsite with the telltale signs of belonging to a fellow Tunneler. Idly dug holes dot the embankment and a pickaxe leans against a part of the bridge, but nobody is immediately visible.

Ash shouts into the tunnel and gets an immediate response as the tunneler HomeOnTheLoam, real name Jerry Garcia, emerges holding Fred the canary. Jerry swiftly parses the newcomers as fellow Tunnelers and introduces himself and Fred. He explains that he thinks this is the source of the Dundarave tape, due to the sounds of frogs at night and the drainage tunnel having a partially submerged structure appended to it which he is considering trying to drain.

The conversation turns to yetis — Ash remains concerned about them, and Jel gets defensive when it is implied she doesn’t believe Ash about them. Jerry is amenable to the idea of yetis but vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of contributing to an ongoing argument. “They’re like an ape right? Apes can climb. And I’ve seen weirder stuff than a yeti. There’s someone here with a worm.” The conversation immediately turns to the worm, which Jerry has seen: it is kept in a two foot long lead case, it has a lamprey like mouth, and he doesn’t like to look at it.

After the subject of the increasingly infamous worm is exhausted, Jerry leads the party into the drainage tunnel, to a mysterious door that he has broken open with his pickaxe. Inside is a flooded room, in which small shapes (presumed to be fishes) are swimming about. This is in fact an alternative treatment of the dungeon Where Once Was The Sea, described as a more industrially produced space of concrete and pipes. Jerry explains that he has not explored much further due to lacking wading boots, and that he could probably dig a drainage tunnel but would feel bad hurting the fish that would be left stranded.



Jel, a much less squeamish urbex enthusiast, lights a lantern, turns on her camera, and boldly marches into the water, sloshing across the room and frightening away the “fish,” while Ash waits nervously on the stairs. When Jel enters the next room over, the water sprites that have been mistaken for fish begin to swarm, forming a dome of water in their flooded room in which they school and strobing brightly at Jel — I rolled a neutral reaction, so they don’t want to fight, but aren’t sure how else to communicate. Jel, now in a less flooded room, takes a moment to assess her surroundings. Of note are a set of stairs going up that also seem to have water flowing up them, and a canning jar full of sludge with a paper taped to it: the word “swamp,” in a child’s handwriting. Panicked by the idea of being seperated from Ash, she throws the jar at the water dome. The sprites disperse rapidly, and Jel hauls ass back to the stairs where Ash hauls her out of the water.