"This ain't looking good"
Murphy pushes the door shut again, hoping the villagers dont have much to pound on it with.
"Come on, help me move this!"
Reggie sets his shotgun on the floor and grabs one end of a heavy pew/bench and tries to move it to block the door. Needless to say the rather scrawny artist fails.
Outside, the agitated voices gradually become lower, it seems like they have lost your track for now.
Daniel heads to Reggie to help him with the bench,as little noise as possible, barely managing the task.
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"Good thinking"
Murphy looks about for some sort of light source, like a lantern.
Daniel helps Reggie and once the pew is in front of the door you all take a deep breath. Murphy however, isn't so lucky and there is no light source at hand besides the professor's lighter.
We're safe...at least for now...but what next?
"Maybe theres a back door...?"
Murphy looks about the space they are in, hoping for an obvious exit.
And there is one!
Behind the unused altar is a trapdoor...as the professor notices it he sighs loudly and mutters
Great...tunnels again.
"Hold on Herr Professor. Let's take a look around."
Reggie scans the chapel.
Charlie leans against the barricaded door, listening for sounds of pursuit or, if he can manage it, peeking through a keyhole or crack between the doors.
Perception
There are no windows and the only lightsource is the professor's lighter. There are some torch holders but they are empty.
No candles and the altar is empty, there is no shelf or any other furniture besides the pews.
There is no paper or anything else you could easily burn.
Charlie indeed finds a crack to peer through, but outside is only the desolated, moonlit graveyard.
Reggie examines the altar.
"Might be a kind of blasphmy but if we smash this we can use some of the keroscene and maybe some gunpowder to rig up some torches. Someone would have to sacrafice a shirt, or a jacket, jacket would be better."
Reggie pulls out a fire bomb and a couple of shells as he looks for help in quietly destroying the altar.
Destroy the altar? the professor asks incredulously, but then he shrugs and adds
Oh, don't think I trust very much in God, I just think that this wood will either burn like tinder or not at all, heh.
"You may be right but it will mainly be the cloth and oil that is burning, and it is damp in here so that should help. In any case we'll need light if we are going below again and this is easier to break than a pew."
To Caarlie: "Say Charlie do you see a sexton's shed out there? They must have kept the digging tools somewhere. There may be supplies."
"Looks like this place hasn't been much of a Church for some time now, so don't feel bad about taking what we need. Besides, desparate times and all"
Charlie indeed notices another dark silhouette that could be some sort of shed about 30m away.
"Aye, there's something out there. Let's go check it out, who's coming?"
The professor raises a grey eyebrow
Oh well, that sounds like a task for the more athletic folks, this race across the cemetary was about the sportiest thing I've done during the last ten years, heh.
Daniel takes a deep breath, then decides to challenge his unaccustomed luck.
"Great. Somebody cares to come with me?
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"I'm with you."
Reggie grabs a sack and his shotgun.
Quickly and as quietly as possible you leave the chapel and reach the shed. About 200m and 400m away you can still see two torchlights wandering through the village...there is also the barking of at least one dog audible.
Inside the old shed are several rusty pickaxes, shovels, and a new and pretty sharp spade. There is also an old bullseye-lantern with enough oil for at least two hours of light.
"Should stick together..."
Murph follows on.
Daniel picks up the lantern and the spade, then as good as possible without making too much fuzz and without spending too much time searches scans through the shed.
Do the pickaxes look, as if they might still break anything before they will break?
The pickaxes look like they are still in a condition sufficient to smash in a door or other softer materials than stone.
Besides the afore mentioned items you also find a sack with nails and half-empty bottle of some kind of liquor.
Daniel takes the sack himself, then turns to Reggie and Murphy, if he is there, yet and whispers:
Grab the Pickaxes, they might come in handy if we need to smash through a door or two. If one of you has a free hand left, there is a bottle with some stuff in it. I don't know what it is, but perhaps it burns if we don't find it useful for anything else.
Reggie grabs the bottle and the sack of nails. He probably cant manage a pickaxe and the load he has already but he'll try if no-one else grabs one.
Charlie grabs one of the pickaxes, but takes a look at the handle of one of them. "We could soak a piece of cloth in alcohol and wrap it around one of these pickaxe's handles, that might be enough for a torch."
Murphy grabs whats left...
"We can make up a torch later if we need, the question is now where are we heading?"
"Back to the Professor, back to the tunnels?"
'That's the idea. They don't seem to be searching underground.'
"Good a place as any, let's go"
"Maybe they're afraid of the tunnels? The three we... met earlier seemed to be a search party if anything else, but I wonder if they know what happened to them?"
Wasn't it still the plan to get to the Whateley house after we looked for some kind of archive in the chapel, as the professor proposed?
Yeah, that was the plan and I still have hope that underneath this hatch here, we find some kind of archive! Someone please pull it open.
With concerted effort, the hatch is soon opened and under it there is a room whose walls have been boarded with simple planks and in which several rusty filing cabinets stand. The thick layer of dust on every surface gives proof of the fact that no one has been here for a long time.
Bingo! I knew they must have kept this stuff somewhere...no one likes to lose his history.
Charlie searches the room for any hidden doors or exits that might lead back into the tunnels.
Perception
You don't find any and you feel more than a bit reliefed...
The Professor rubs his hands as he enters the room
A bit dusty, but I think we can find some answers here, mhm?
We have to be careful, though. I don't think it would be a good Idea to work down here with the hatch fully closed, yet we have to make sure nobody on the outside of the chapel sees any light. Besides that, I will gladly help you searching those files for whatever may shed some light on what is going on around this hell of a town.
"I'll stand guard outside, let you know if anyone is coming. I was never a bookish type," Charlie says, tossing the shotgun's barrel up to lean against one of his shoulders. Then he climbs back up to the chapel's main floor and moves to stand sentry in the shadows next to the door.
Stealth
Perception
The prfessor nods to Daniel and opens the first rusty drawer
Registers of birth...we need a plan, otherwise this amount of files will just drown us...any ideas? For what exactly are we looking?
First of all, let us look if we find the Whateley family in there, then the names of the other people here we know - Osbourne, Blair, Hobbes - not that I think she had anything do do with all this, Reggie - perhaps we find something out of the ordinary
Reggie looks at the clearly disused chapel.
"Look for when the marriage records stop. Perhaps the priest left a note before..."
That is a great idea, Reggie, thank you!
Marriage Records - good idea!
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Gather Info
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