Since the two-legs are using lights to explore to the north, Scath will sneak in the darkness to the south and explore slowly, sniffing the ground.
As Scath quietly snoops his way forward...
The steps down make it harder to see up ahead, as the ceiling lowers along with them, although Scath's small stature helps to compensate for that.
A pair of tables are set up with chairs around them, a small oil lamp sending up slow waves of smoke - the source of the smell - recently snuffed. Small paper rectangles are strewn about the table. Scath can just make out the shape of large shipping containers and crates at the edge of his vision.
Scath slinks slowly along the ground, his belly rubbing and his nose working. He slides sideways to the other wall, to get a better look in the other side of the room.
"Looks like a sleeping room to the north," Victor says quietly. "Definitely the birds, but no one's home. Should we explore deeper in or try the other direction?"
"Look this area over to make sure nothings hiding then move to the rest? We should make sure the tunnel is completely cleared out before we return to the halfling at least."
"Fair enough," Victor says quietly. He moves carefully ahead to the blocked path and peaks around the corner to get a look at the rest of the room.
"Oh," Victor mutters. "Well, it looks like we've got a murder up ahead. Or a slaughter more like. Because that is a lot of blood."
"They should get some kind of security if they plan on using these tunnels, I can't imagine a place that had this happen be safe for travel."
"All of this, under my favorite coffeehouse," Armon mutters with a huff, before frowning at Victor's statement. "Blood? Is there a body? Or other remains...?"
"Mostly blood and blood stains. Looks more like the place a killing took place a bit ago rather than a fresh murder scene."
Tobias moves right into the cave and into the murder-room when he hears the tale of what happened down there. He brings his light with him and takes a look around.
What had happened here? Where did that hole go?
Tobias enters the room and comes to roughly the same conclusion as Victor, but Tobias also investigates a bit more thoroughly (having entered the room).
Proximity makes it relatively apparent. Where it goes is questionable, but it's definitely meant to be a drain. Scattered in the far corner are shattered boards. Tobias gets the idea that the room is meant to be a latrine. The proximity to the sewer system makes it seem likely it drains back into that, so the room is only there mostly for privacy.
What's more interesting is that the leather scraps around the room have a few studs mixed into the strips, suggesting that the leather was originally utilized in someone's armor. There's no body in the room, though there's enough pooled blood to suggest there should be one somewhere.
"Baldy! There's a body somewhere, but this doesn't go anywhere I wanna go!" he calls back. "Maybe it's in the dead croc? Is there somewhere else to go?"
"Try to find it then we'll explore the rest" Juniper calls out to him from a safe distance."We already looked inside the creature."
"I doubt that the body eaten by the alligator would leave this much blood elsewhere. Hmmm. Alright, let's keep going. There has to be somewhere else." He backs off a bit, going to search behind him and look for another path to explore.
The group moves forward to look through the remainder of the room and check for another exit. The room that was mostly empty before has small metal rings hooked into the supports, and combined with what they had seen in other rooms, suggests they're for tying up hammocks. The southwestern room is reminiscent of the northeastern room in the northern chamber. Unlike the northern chamber, there aren't any shredded objects, a single wooden platform sitting atop a hole in the ground, another latrine, but more functional... and less covered-in-blood. There's nowhere to go in this direction, and nothing particular to see here.
The water out to the east sits placid and silent, Scath just barely hidden from the dim light by the elevation changes and abnormally shaped walls.
Having grown increasingly queasy since seeing the grisly scene, Armon merely turns up his nose at the sight of the second latrine. He was certainly the adventurous sort, but the sensibilities of his upbringing were still readily apparent. With nothing of importance to see, he is all too eager to get out of the room.
"To the other room, then...?" he suggests, gesturing out of the chamber. Between the signs of apparent murder and the presence of deadly predators, his optimism was rapidly waning.
Juniper shrugs. "Clear whatever is left then heading back is really our only option." She moves forward to continue the hunt.
Scath moves swiftly to the side as the light encroaches upon him, to keep his cover.
Juniper moves forward into the room, light making her easily visible as she takes the steps down into the room, which prompts movement from somewhere in the shadows of the room across from her.
Juniper is able to make out half of a figure in the dim light, clearly smaller than human but larger than Tobias, the beak making the silhouette obviously that of a bird-person. A voice calls out from the same direction, feminine but gravelly.
"Look far too good to be wandering around in the sewers, human. What are you doing down here?"
Victor walks toward the other direction, trying to stay near the front so he can intercept anything else hostile. "We're looking for someone!" he calls back toward the voice.
"And who exactly is it that you're looking for, then?" came the same voice.
"I think their surrounding us, be careful." Juniper warns the others in a hushed voice as she draws her dagger.
Scath sneaks through the dark toward the voice...
"Lovely," Victor mutters softly. "Does anyone remember our friend's name? I seem to have forgotten."
As Scath climbs onto the boxes furthest to the south he catches sight of another Tengu only a few dozen feet from the two-legs.
You can climb onto a higher box in order to gain a better view, but you'd be moving into a position that would only be shadowy for most two-legs.
Scath will continue sneaking along the back wall, and climb the boxes that are taller in the bottom corner, where the blue square is on the map. That keeps him in the dark. He knows about Tengu, and they don't see well in absolute dark. The dim light is better for them than the humans, but as long as he keeps out of the main area of the light, he should be ok. Plus they are distracted looking at the humans in the center of the light.
As Scath slips into the darkness, the group hears a pair of clicking noises from the direction of the voice, and then a low click off to their right. Otherwise, the creature on the other side of the room seems to be perfectly content to wait for the others to discuss precisely who it is they're looking for.
The Tengu nearest you is fidgeting, and it looks like she could go in either direction at any moment.
"Nan is their name," Armon volunteers, erring on the side of honesty for the time being. "They should have passed through here some time ago, but they never reached the surface."
Hearing the clicking, the noble bristles slightly, finding himself leaping to a few unpleasant conclusions. Still, he forces a pleasant smile onto his face. "Surely we can come to some kind of accord. Once we find our friend, we will be on our way."
Tobias shuffles up in front of Juniper, sword at the ready, and grumbles. He puts his shield between his party and the bird-people. "Show yourselves!", he calls.
There's another sharp clicking sound from the figure standing at the edge of the light.
The person who had been talking before moves into the light, revealing more obvious bird-like features as she moves into the range of the brighter torch light. She squints at each person in turn, obviously not particularly trusting, but also not hostile. You're vaguely aware of more movement on the other side of the crates, odd-sounding footfalls moving closer from the right... and further, as well. At least three creatures in the darkness. Those on the other side of the crates still aren't quite visible. "My name is Korva Fushi. My sisters and I were brought here by your... Nan Comiveros. He brought us here by boat. He was to help us travel onwards to Westcrown as well."
Then another Tengu moves into the light. "Had a contact he was supposed to set us up with." she adds, snapping her beak irritatedly. "But when we arrived, he left and came back a day later. Said he couldn't find his contact."
Korva takes back over, "Went up the hallway and made a cozy nest. Next morning, he wasn't there, and a giant lizard was."
"Ate two of my sisters." says the second tengu, beak hanging open slightly as she finishes, focusing on a point down and behind the group.
"Couldn't leave. Don't know anyone. Don't know where to go. Wasn't our fault Nan died, but..." Korva adds, shaking her head.
"Figure friends of Nan would want to know where Nan went. Would probably blame us. Wouldn't be the first time." finishes the other.
"Our... sister was staying in the other end of the side. We heard her screaming, and you screaming back. She's..?" Korva asks, leaving the question lingering.
They're not sharing the whole story, and bouncing you back and forth between them seems to be the only thing making it less obvious than it is. They do genuinely seem to be a combination of irritated and dispirited, though.
Scath relaxes a bit as the birds go to put up their weapons. He remains silent though, in case things turn south again, but leaves it up to the two legs to talk things out. Something doesnt' seem right, but he can't put a claw on it.
"Your sister was more than a little mad," Victor replies. "She was rambling for a while, then attacked us." He hopes that these bird people are less hostile than the last one, but he still keeps his bardiche in a defensive position anyway.
"Well, we did slay a rather large crocodile..." Armon offers, leaving out that the others killed it before he could even blink an eye. He winces at the mention of their other sister, realizing who it was they were referring to. The cleric speaks a bit more tenderly, hoping that more hostilities would not rise. "As for your sister... Chough was her name, yes? She... left us with little choice. I am sorry."
"Yes..." Korva says, before nodding slowly. "She had been growing aggressive, even towards us recently. We had found her in the Shackles when she was just an egg with no family. As she grew... it became more obvious that she was not like us." she says, motioning to her sister, who begins to speak.
"We had to leave the Shackles because of something that she did. Once her temper began to get the better of her down here, we sent her to the other room. We can't blame you for what you had to do. You would not have been the first person she killed. Now that the crocodile is dead... perhaps there is a place for us above ground... and preferably out of town."
Feeling his feline nature taking over again, Scath wiggles his rear and sneaks down the crates while everyone is busy talking and distracted, and then sneaks up so he's in 'pounce range' of all four birds and crouches down mischieviously.
"No offense, but I see why you kept her away from others. She was fierce in a fight too."
He frowns. "And would you mind dropping the double talk? It blasted hard to understand a word you say."
"Chough was a troubled girl." Korva responds, sounding a bit more annoyed.
Tobias is suspicious, as usual, but for whatever reason he can't pin down whatever it is that he's suspicious about... He grumbles, actually somewhat upset that he can't think of anything to blame these tengu for.
Then he sheathes his sword and relaxes his stance. "Beggars can't be trusted to do anything but beg." he says, simply. "Sympathy doesn't help either them or us."
"Maybe we could get you all to surface to avoid you all falling into madness as she did but we do need your help before that, we were sent here in search of a contact could you help us locate him?"
The Tengu who had done most of the talking looks between Juniper, Armon, and Victor, and clicks her beak together once before sighing. "Right, then the whole story. Nan brought us to this sewer from Riddleport. Went back out on his little boat to who-knows-where. Came back a day and a half later smelling like a bilge rat that's just barely saved itself from drowning in rum. Told us that we were on our own, 'cause his contacts had flaked, spent the money we paid him on rum, then went off to some corner of the place. Chough went wandering which didn't seem a danger; she couldn't wander far."
She pauses for a moment, "Next thing we know, Chough is screaming. We ran to see what was wrong, and found him in a privy with Chough in the next room preening. Blood everywhere... so we waited a day for everything to be easier to.. move. On our way back through, that huge lizard came up out of the water and ate one of our sisters, then slid back into the water." she says, shaking her head and looking distant for a moment. "So the next day we threw Nan into the water near his boat. Figured it wasn't much different from falling in and getting eaten and it might have saved more of my sisters. she pauses for just a moment once more. "My fault, really. If I hadn't been talking about how we were gonna make sure Nan got what he had coming to him, Chough might not have gotten any ideas."
"That is... unfortunate," Victor replies. "I... I'm not exactly thrilled that your sister murdered him, or that you hid the body, but I can't charge someone who is already dead with a crime. And at least we know what happened..." He sighs. Well, this has certainly turned into a fine mess.