Victor raises an eyebrow at the... well frankly cheesy, name. "I see. Well, unless your employer has some immediate aid to provide aside from his... companion, then I believe I should put my efforts into treating this dog. He's not quite gone yet." He turns and calls back through the door before dropping to one knee and examining the dog's wound. "It's clear. And if anyone knows how to bind wounds, I believe I could use some aid!" He tears a strip of fabric from his sleeve and begins to bind the wound, hopefully well enough to save the beast's life.
It's fairly clear that the bandage isn't enough to mend the dog's wound... but it's certainly enough to staunch the bleeding. He's stable, but he'll need aid to recover.
He actually looks to be a fairly mighty beast, though feral and mangy, it was clear why the others followed him. He'd be a terror to tame... but he'd also be a terror as a companion - or guard.
Tobias sidles into the stable, a length of fabric from his clothing in his hand. "I will help...big bald man." he says, and kneels beside Victor. "... It seems you've done an adequate job on your own, though... Here, let me see what else I can do."
Victor breathes a small sigh of relief as he manages to staunch the bleeding, though actually curing wounds is beyond the skill set of a simple knight. He can't help admiring the dog a bit. While no beast could ever be as proud as his partner, the powerful hound would make a deadly companion should he pull through. "Perhaps another could use the loyalty of a faithful hound. Something to consider later." He looks at the halfling and gives a small nod of acknowledgment. "It seems he'll live. Good. A proud beast should not die alone in the dark."
Armon is perfectly content with allowing the ostensible dog expert to handle the guard dogs. A loud, distinct crack alerts him to the fact that he had handled them, all right... just not in the way he had expected him to.
That's a pity, he thinks with a frown, sauntering over to the door after Tobias. He inspects the opening briefly before carefully slipping through.
He takes extra special care to not let any of his clothing get caught on the door - he had to keep up appearances, after all. Once he is on the other side he makes a show of dusting off his sleeves. Armon's eyes turn to the heavily wounded (and bandaged) hound. "Hm. Could you pacify him if I healed him? Or would he just run off?"
Victor looks a bit uncertain and shrugs. "He's still feral right now. I'm more used to working with trained dogs, so there is no guarantee. I will try my best if you are able to heal him though."
"Hello again, Sanita! I'm glad you and Scath got away from the situation outside the Opera house ok," she says with a smile when she sees her. "So Scath will be joining us? Great! And the Shadow scout, sounds mysterious! Are they who Scath has always been working for?"
Misha watches the others fretting over the animal after things are sorted out. She isn't sure why they are wasting their energy on a feral dog, but if that is what they want to do she isn't going to stop them. Instead she amuses herself for a bit creating sparks between her fingertips before getting bored with that and beginning to search the area.
The cat in question climbs down the wooden posts to the ground, and joins Sanita. It seems to be glaring at her for some reason. Then again, cats seem to glare at people often.
The girl blushes and bites her lip, but then continues on gamely. "Oh, you again... Ms. Misha yes? Yes, we made it out fine. Yes, Scath's always been the companion of the Shadow Scout. Before anyone gets any ideas, I have no idea who or where they actually are, so no use beating me for the information." She says quickly and firmly. "And the only creature I know of that knows who they are is Scath, and good luck getting him to talk... other than 'Yowl'." She scratches Scath's head, which seems to do nothing for the glare.
Scath seems to agree with Misha, and as she goes left to search the room, he goes right, to cover more ground faster. Scath uses his nose as much as his eyes.
As Misha searches the left side of the stables, she sees a whole lot of nothing. Mostly rubbish that's been left to rot. Old leather straps hang uselessly off of walls, metal bits flicker on the ground, but everything seems rusty. As she continues onwards, she notices a silver glint up near the rafters. Closer investigation reveals a silver ring dangling from a nail.
As Scath and Sanita move in the other direction, Scath snuffles around... and smells something rather strange. The right side appears to be much like the left, until he reaches the portcullis once more, which is blocking off the majority of the next room. It's iron and has a rather large key hole. On the other side, off to Scath's right isa poorly disguised door hanging slightly off of its hinges, leaning a little open. There are several crates piled up in the room behind the iron bars, and the wall behind that space looks like the interior has rotted quite a bit. Scath can see some of the outside bricks, mortar broken down in between.
Further into the building, off on the left, is a pair of offices, with two halfling-sized desks. The room smells old and musty, the tops of the drawers covered in dust that's only barely disturbed.
As Sanita is searching one of the stables, several of the leather straps begin to lash out at her, as if trying to grab her, but unable to reach.
Anyone made aware of the tracks: Know(Nature) 15
DC 30
Sanita jumps back. "Moving leather?"
Scath goes silent, and then climbs up into the rafters, moving slowly and silently as he stalks whatever he saw.
As Scath slips up into the rafters, Rexus, who had just come into the room, and is brushing himself off - and standing behind the folks wearing armor - furrows his brow at the leather straps leaping at the woman. "Mage Hand?" he almost mutters to himself.
+2 each.
If no one else had already Juniper would use her mage hand to retrieve the ring and examine it before pocketing it and looking around once more.
Leaving Armon to decide whether to heal the pack alpha or not, Victor gets up and heads toward the stalls. He drops to one knee, trying to look nonthreatening to the two dogs. "It's alright you two," he said. "Come here." He whistles softly, holding out two strips of dried meat as a peace offering.
Each of the dogs seem immenseley afraid of Victor, especially after he was so successful in shutting down their Alpha. They don't at all seem interested in the food.
Don't make me regret this... Armon prods the feral dog with his wand, before stepping away to put some distance between them. It was a bit of a waste, but it seemed such a shame to leave the animal in such a sorry state.
Just as quickly, he hurries off to searches the offices, losing interest in the dog. Or perhaps he did not want to risk getting maimed. He looks through the small desks, but seems almost hesitant to do so, taking only a cursory glance into each of them before sliding them shut.
Victor sighs and shakes his head. He returns to the dog and drops to one knee as Armon heals its wounds. "Easy boy," he says softly, waiting to see if the dog is going to react with hostility. He sets a hand on its shoulder.
The dog recovers a bit... but he had been very close to death. He's still a short distance from being awake, but he seems to be breathing easier than he had been moments before.
Misha wanders around inspecting the area. After a bit she seems to focus on something on the ground. She crouches down to take a closer look and thinks for a while. Standing up, she turns to the others and says "I think there's a gremlin in here somewhere, these tracks look like the sort one would make!"
Victor turns his attention to the room, finally. "Wait, a gremlin? Here? What would such a being want in this place?"
At that very moment, there's a very loud cackle that seems to resonate from three corners of the room... though slightly out of sync with one another... and in very different voices. Debris begins to fall from overhead, perhaps frighteningly, most of it appears to be roof tiles.
Then something in a foul language is shouted from the side of the room with the portcullis.
You spot something small moving up in the rafters, in the southwestern corner of the room, when you look in the direction of the cackling.
The feline races over the rafters, toward the southeast corner of the livery, bouncing from rafter to rafter!
Victor spins around, seeing the cat in the rafters running off like a maniac. "What on earth..."
Whatever this 'Gremlin' thing is, that you've found, it's very... odd. It's very mangy, with huge ears, and very reminiscent of an off-blue opossum. It snivvles at you, and then hisses, before brandishing tiny, useless looking claws and teeth. Then it yowls back. Whatever it is, it's also not very clever. And it's missing about half of its fur.
While it's doing its threat display while Scath charges towards it, he gets a good look at a membrane between its arms and legs before it dives towards the Portcullis, unfortunately, Scath would get a good chance to bat at him, before he could.
The creature goes tumbling from the blow, making it release a strange chattering noise, Scath having shred his wings and back with the swipe. End over end he goes for just over a second, and then crashes to the ground on his head and shoulder, tumbling a few feet further before coming to a skidding, unconscious stop. With another squeak.
A strange creature goes fluttering from a crafter in the top left to somewhere in the middle of the room. (Approximately Two squares left of the top left side of A1.)
DC 29 (also 30 for Scath)
You spot a second fluttering figure hopping across the rafters on the southern side of the room. It lands above one of the stalls.
Juniper sees the cat knock the strange creature off the rafters knocking him out cold. "How long has this place been in such disrepair, we won't last long if this is our main base."
Rexus thinks for a moment, before speaking. "Well... in theory, since about seventy years ago when the Rebellion last ended... though I haven't looked that far into this location specifically. Though... anything that's hidden by the Silver Rebels is sure to have fallen into disuse at the very least."
Misha watches the exchange between Scath and the gremlin with curiosity. When the creature plummets to the ground she watches a bit longer before satisfied the creature has been put down.
Instead she turns her attention to the portcullis and how to go about opening it. "Don't suppose anyone sees a key lying around?"
"I still have the key from my inheritance... I could see if that will work." Rexus offers, but his sense of adventure doesn't to moving through the apparently-gremlin-filled chambers. At least not yet. He does look at the strange blue, patchy creature, but doesn't get too close to it.
Scath moves to the southwest corner, hunting for the one that was over there. If he finds it, he'll charge it!
"I believe it's worth a shot," Victor tells the noble man. "I doubt we would have been sent here if we hadn't been given something to help us get inside." He gestures for the man to come in. "And don't worry about the gremlins. It seems that our new ally has them well taken care of. We'll make sure they don't cause any problems."
As Scath prowls back towards the central column, and then back to his initial position, he sees two more of the little beasts, one to his northwest, and the other to his southwest. Both are up in the rafters with him, wellhidden from the light below.
Rexus moves to look towards the iron portcullis, and immediately shakes his head. "The keyhole on the portcullis is far too large for the key I have."
Tobias patrols around the stables area before heading to the halfling-sized offices. He begins poking around them, blowing away dust and opening the occasional drawer to see if anything of interest lies within.
"I suppose it was too much to hope for that things be easy," Victor sighs. "I'll help look around and see if there's anything that we can track down. Brutus, search."
"I suppose I could have missed something," Armon remarks with a shrug, leaning against the halfling desk. Much of his attention has since been taken by that strange cat that has been following them around, and the odd... prey that it found. The noble grimaces at the little vermin distastefully. Indeed, it seemed that this cat was good for exterminating more than just mice. It all made him more curious about who this 'Shadow Scout' really was. Yet another mystery to solve.
"ROAAARRRGHHH!!!!!"
Again, the cat roars and leaps from rafter to rafter, heading toward the southwest corner, landing next to the blue creature there with a roar!
When Scath closes, both of the critters withdraw. One slips right between his paws and out the front door, the other moves at top speed towards the portfolios, slipping through a small, disguised opening in the top.
Having snuffled the blue creature earlier, and sneezing heavily, trying to be the scent out of his nose, searching around in the back room has the same effect, but with more dust. Brutus apparently doesn't like the scent at all.
"Hmm, there must be some way past this portcullis," she thinks as she wanders about, looking for any signs that it might be bypassed.
"I wonder if Scath could fit through the bars?" she thinks aloud.
Misha, as the others before her, could clearly see a door a half foot off the ground hanging strangely askew from the wall, and several crates piled up around the outer edge of the room, all covered. Otherwise, there's little of note that's readily visible with her quick glance.
Scath pads over on the rafters to the top of the portcullis, and sniffs at where the creature vanished into. He checks it carefully before putting paw or nose through it.
It certainly looks like a safe entry point for someone small or smaller that could get up there. It could feasibly be widened as well. Some of the ceiling tiles that had been covering the gap have been disheveled. Scath smells more of what he's quite certain is gremlin. And rats. You can see that several of the crates below have been gnawed on, but the things that have spilled out are quite inedible, horse shoes, nails, a half-eaten saddle, spare bits (but the bridles are all either useless or outright missing). There's also a fair amount of spoiled food collected in the space just below Scath, and just to the side of him, a trap door, that still looks well-hidden... save for the fact that it has been propped up by a wooden block. You smell rot and sewage coming from the room... And either blood, rust, or iron. It's impossible to realistically tell.
Off to the side, the not-so-secret door is hanging open into the adjoining room behind the portcullis.
Scath will squeeze through, and look around for anything interesting, like keys to the portcullis, levers/ropes to raise the portcullis, etc.
Scath doesn't find any sort of keys while looking about, but he does find some leather goods undamaged in the next room. He can also easily see the others on the other side of the portcullis, eyes glowing in the halfling's dull light (assuming he brought it out). What he does notice is that the exterior wall is rather... crumbly. The mortar has fallen to pieces on the inside, not obviously so, but it wouldn't be too hard to knock out bricks for the others to come in through.
Scath sniffs at the crumbly wall, but doesn't rip it open, just yet. As it leads to the exterior, and there's no real reason for him to do so if he's a cat. He does bat at it experimentally, letting some of it fall to the ground, to see if the two-legs figure it out on their own.
After that, he begins hunting around for the little blue thing that's really fun to pounce on...
Scath looks around the two rooms he's in, and doesn't spot any more of the tiny blue critters. Wherever they've gone they seem to have disappeared from the immediate area. On the other hand, Scath has something more annoying to deal with, as his fur starts to grow itchy to the point of being actually distracting.
"I wonder if it might be possible to find a way to bypass this gate. Or even force it open. I'm not finding anything of much use."
Tobias shrugs. "I could help you try and force the gate open, if you like." He rolls his shoulders and cracks his knuckles. "Unless you think you're man enough to do it yourself, shiny-head."
"I'll take all the help I can get," Victor says, fighting hard not to roll his eyes. "Assuming you have enough strength to be of any help at all, pipsqueak."
"Hold a moment, I think the cat might be on to something," Victor says as he hears Scath knocking something around in the next room. "This wall is a wreck. Perhaps we can try to shift the stone and go around the gate. If you're so eager to help, give me a hand with this stone pipsqueak." Victor goes over to the damaged wall and pulls at a few of the stones, seeing which ones are loose and which ones aren't.