"The gods look after their own," Marikel advises as he waters the barrels.
He follows on quietly and lowers his voice as they come across the bloody scene. "That should have been at the base of the cliff."
He squints his eyes against the darkness.
"Banny, check around that corner to the right. If it's a tunnel, we should probably follow these footprints to left instead."
Committing the bizarre symbol to memory so he can re-sketch it at first reasonable opportunity, Vhailor makes with his task of being the Lightbringer. He gazes into the middle distance for a few moments imagining himself as a figure from his stories, a fierce gnomish warrior riding a battlecat into the fray whilst holding aloft a shining beacon of flaming light... but shakes his head to distance the thought and remain centered in the present. Carbonel mewls a mild disappointment as the torch licks near to his fur.
With staff in one hand and torch the other Vhailor has to resort to an awkward head nuzzle to settle his companion who becomes agitated once more. In quiet tones "He doesn't like the left one."
Banny freezes up a moment at seeing the puddle of half-dried blood, her gut lurching. Blood doesn't normally bother her... but if this is in fact Kerst's blood.... she swallows thickly after a second, then makes her feet keep moving.
Marikel's suggestion earns a short nod from her, the dwarf not quite trusting her voice this instant. She pads to the right, intending to glance around the tunnel bend briefly before they resume following the left-hand tunnel's tracks... and that stink... that her heart tells her leads to vengeance.
But first, the right-hand. If any of the three exits here lead up into town, that's important knowledge, vital knowledge, to Trunau's defenses-- even more important that justice for Kerst, much as she hates to admit it.
The right-hand tunnel slants slightly downward, heading deeper into the heart of Bloodmarch Hill. When Banny turns the corner, she finds that the decline continues until the tunnel terminates in a makeshift barricade; planks and crate lids have been nailed together and wedged into the passageway, with rocks and handsful of earth tamped in to fill around the edges.
Banny squints at this barricade, frowning a moment, then trots back to the others.
It looks as if the barricade was wedged in from this side.
Banny rubs at her jaw as she returns to the others.
"Goes downhill a bit, then ends up in a barricade," she explains. "The diggers must've done it, it's from this side. Dunno what might come from inside the hill that they wanna block off... maybe an older tunnel that leads outside?" She mulls this minor mystery over a few seconds, then shrugs.
" 'm more interested those tracks, though."
The dwarf leads the way into the left-hand corridor, to the displeasure of the cat, which emits a low growl and twitches the tip of its tail furiously. The tunnel is dark and narrow; the fetid smell grows stronger and the air damper as they progress. It stoops and swerves a few times without really changing direction, then terminates in a small cavern, little more than a widening of the corridor where the miners stopped and turned around.
The space is taken up by a wide shallow washtub, large enough for a man to sit in and half-filled with filthy water. The rock floor around the tub is wet and slick with mud, its uneven surface spotted with puddles. The smell in this dark cul-de-sac is almost unbearable, with no ventilation to carry away the miasma or mix it with fresh air. The room is unoccupied.
Alicia gives Marikel and the others a confused look. "Why would they have a [b]washtub down here?[/b]"
Vhailor takes on the discomfort of his feline companion and squirms within his skin. He shares Alicia's confusion about the washtub, and wordlessly offers his staff - suggesting that it's used to probe inside the tub to see if there's anything in it or settled upon it's base.
"Mining is dirty work. If someone from the town is doing it and they don't want others to know, they may clean off here. But that don't explain the smell."
Marikel looks about warily, leading with his sword.
"And that may not be water in the tub..."
"Blegh," Banny mutters as the rank wet stench grows stronger with every step. "Smells like a bloody orc's bathchambers-- if they bathed..."
She sees the gnome's offered staff and takes it, because she'd rather not stick her hands or even her axe into that stinking, dirty water. "Thanks."
Banny approaches the tub, nose wrinkled up against the smell, her eyes raking both the tub and the wet floor around it, for tracks or the like.
She pokes Vhailor's stick into the water, thumping around for the bottom of the tub.
Ali wrinkles her nose. "We've got two other tunnels to check if there's nothing of interest in the stink-tub."
"Blegh," Banny mutters as the rank wet stench grows stronger with every step. "Smells like a bloody orc's bathchambers-- if they bathed..."
And you would know.... Come to think of it, something about the smell does remind you of the things you try not to remember. It's not an exact match, but the tunnel reeks of unwashed flesh, and filth and damp and mud and blood and raw, rotting meat....
It seems obvious that the wet footprints originated here, but the floor around the tub is itself so wet that they're no longer discernible. Banny approaches carefully over the slick stone, its uneven surface masked with a layer of mud, and pokes with the gnome's staff into the tub, feeling absurdly like a witch stirring a cauldron.
Around the rim of the tub, some unusual scraping gouge marks are visible. The water is about a foot and a half deep -- and it does seem to be water, to the best of Banny's knowledge. On the dark surface float dry leaves and bits of grass, hair, and dead insects. At the unseen bottom of the tub, the tip of the staff scrapes through silt and sludge and ... something larger and firmer. She gives it a cautious poke with her stick, but there is no reaction apart from dumb resistance. It's too soft to be rock or metal, but the murk suspended in the water defeats Banny's darkvision as well as the torchlight.
"Leaves and grass? You don't get them in a mine. You barely get them in Trunau. And if those prints are from something that was in the tub, it can't have been too long ago. Even underground the prints will dry up. We should make following them a priority."
Marikel still has his voice down and his sword drawn. His unease, if not drawn from Carbonel, is certainly not helped by the creature's agitation.
Still discomfited Vhailor urges "Tip it out... tip it."
Noticing Marikel's concern, the gnome adds "The thingy Carb smelled isn't here at the moment..."
Banny uncomfortably shifts her weight from foot to foot. "Don't like this," she mutters. "Yeh... let's tip it out."
She lends her strength to tipping the tub, using the staff as a lever.
With effort, Banny manages to tip up the tub. The water within first trickles out, then begins to pour; quickly, everyone is near ankle-deep in they-don't-like-to-think-what. Banny moves around the upturned tub to get a look at whatever had sunk to the bottom, and Vhailor holds the torch nearer. It appears to be the haunch of some small animal, a marmot maybe, furry and uncooked, torn from the rest of the cadaver by powerful, toothy jaws. In the mud at the bottom of the tub, small bones are visible.
"A cauldron instead of a bath?" Marikel's voice is filled with confusion.
The water is cold, and there is no place for a fire beneath the tub.
After peering forward to get a good look, Vhailor recoils with a mild horror as the discarded haunch becomes contrasted in the light. Unconsciously he positions himself behind Marikel, placing the cleric betwixt him and the dismembered. Muttering "Whatever it is we should keep moving" before it comes back.
"Is the thing magical?" Ali asks, gesturing vaguely at both the haunch and the tub-cauldron-whatever-it-is.
"Maybe an orc was eating in the tub."
Marikel briefly pokes the haunch.
"Vhailor's right. Let's go and find this thing."
Alicia starts heading for the cavern where the fire was, keeping to the shadows.
Sloshing back up the corridor to higher ground, Alicia heads back the way they came, now leaving her own wet footprints on the stone floor. Arriving where the branch meets the main tunnel, she steps around the blood stain into the campfire cavern.
The fire seems to have been built from broken-up crates and dry brush from the surrounding badlands. It's not large, a makeshift affair. A rock large enough to sit on is situated nearby, and a battered iron pot is lying on its side. Further back in the space is a bedroll and winter blanket rolled out on the stone floor, along with a dilapidated leather backpack.
Ali slips over to the backpack, cautiously nudging it with a foot before investigating its contents.
Vhailor chances a glance towards Carbonel to see if the bedroll causes the same consternation... or whether it was just the musty scent.
Ali carefully opens the backpack to reveal a threadbare pair of trousers, some lumpy woolen socks, an ugly hand-knitted hat with earflaps, a comb and razor, a cheap round of polished metal that presumably serves as a rough mirror, a coil of rope with a grappling hook attached to one end, a handful of pitons, and some unappetizing dried meat and fruit with a few chunks of stale and gnawed hardtack biscuit: all in all, not an unsurprising set of belongings for a would-be prospector.
Fixating on the hand-knitted hat with earflaps Vhailor shakes his head and mutters "No accounting for taste" before blinking a couple of times and declaring "Not much here then... should we try the other way?"
Alicia nods and doubles back for the barricaded tunnel.
Banny is the last to leave the cave with the tub, still highly weirded out by the whole thing. What a tub is doin' in a place like this... why anyone would go to the trouble of getting it up here... and why you'd have a bit of raw animal rottin' away in it... it doesn't make sense, but it doesn't sit well with her, either.
She trails after the others resisting the urge to look back over her shoulder every few feet.
The backpack provides a welcome distraction, but no clues that Banny can make out. It's just stuff: stuff what any miner might have with 'em, and nothing to tell of blood and murder, or of things that leave wet footprints and smell rotten. Banny watches Alicia poke through the things, then shrugs. "I guess... we try that other tunnel," the dwarf says uncertainly. She had hoped for... someone, a solid foe, to accuse and to strike... not to find creepy leavin's.
"I can prolly tear down that wall pretty quick..."
Marikel eyes the clothing.
"Doesn't look like orc stuff?"
He turns to Alicia. "How big was the half-orc you saw? Could this be his stuff? Or might the miner who was originally here have been... removed?"
Marikel moves a few item around, then stands up.
"Where did those footprints go? There must be another way out. Is the barricade set up from this side? If so, whoever was here could only have left by the front cave. If there's no other way out, then we should take that barricade down so we... don't have to come back later."
Marikel nods and avoids a nervous glance towards the entrance.
The clothing is of a general size that wouldn't be unlikely for a half-orc or a strong human male.
Banny kicks through the blackened remains of the campfire and finds the source of the smell of cooked meat: what might be the other haunch of the marmot they found in the tub, this one skinned, boned, and cooked before it was partially eaten. Whoever was eating it looks to have had his meal interrupted ... by the thing in the tub? Or something else? She notes that the positioning of the stone by the fire is such that anyone sitting there to cook and eat would have his back to the cavern entrance.
Having searched the cavern with the campfire, the party turns around and skirts the bloodstain at the tunnel junction yet again. Taking the opposite direction from the washtub room, to Carbonel's tail-swishing relief, they round the corner in the downward slanting tunnel to face the barricade Banny described. It is an ungainly thing, nailed together from the sides of crates and spare planks of lumber, wedged between the tunnel walls with more force than craftsmanship, and gaps around the edges reinforced with stones, loose earth, and, here and there, a filthy piece of cloth wadded up; it looks as if it were made of any and everything a mining team might have on hand in a pinch.
It appears that, if some of the rocks and things around one side were pulled out, it would loosen the barricade enough that it could be tipped and removed in one piece in much the same way it was put in. Alternatively, of course, there's the brute force method of just smashing their way through the makeshift wooden wall.
Marikel goes to work on the rocks to the side.
"No sense doing unnecessary damage."
Banny makes a face at the other half of the marmot, and at the position of the campfire and stones. "Whoever was usin' this felt secure," she mutters. "Back to the way in..."
She trudges on to the barricade and begins wordlessly trying to aid Marikel in taking apart the barrier in the most 'leave-it-intact' way possible. "Somethin' funky was in that tub," she mutters. "Ain't there now, it seems, but... I just don't like any of this..."
Banny and Marikel start to shift the loose rock and soil from one side of the barricade, a handful at a time.
"Ain't there now, it seems, but... I just don't like any of this..."
Marikel nods between shifting rubble.
"Kerst has been murdered. There's nothing to like."
Frowning and hunching slightly as he concentrates Vhailor hushes "Shh shh shh... Something behind there... dry and rustly... keep digging... just carefully?" finishing his quiet warning with a shrug of the shoulders.
Banny and Marikel continue to dig away at one side of the barrier while Vhailor holds the torch and Alicia keeps a wary eye on the tunnel behind them. At last, the priest removes a rock and the surrounding debris crumbles away, leaving a good-sized gap for someone to grab the edge of the barricade and pull it free.
Banny turns mid-lift of a beam to look at Vhailor a moment. She nods, then returns to shifting rocks and bric-a-brac.
In a hoarse whisper, she says, "Marikel, y'might as well draw your blade-- I'll lift the last bit. If'n there's somethin' on th' other side, I can pop it in th' jaw as well with my fist as my axe."
Marikel nods to Banny and pulls out his sword and shield.
"If there's something there step back and give it a chance to come out. Miss Alicia, you stay back."
Marikel covers the edge of the barricade while Banny pulls it free.
"If nothing comes out, I'll go in first."
Mariklel lightly taps the hilt of his sword on his shield to demonstrate his better armour.
Ali draws her rapier and gives Marikel's back a dark look at the suggestion she stay back out of the fight.
Vhailor is more than happy to leave the lifting of blades to those before him, and instead holds the torch as high and wide as he can to generate the best spilling of light.
Banny
Marikel
Vhailor
Carbonel
Beetle 1
Beetle 2
Beetle 3
roll-off: Vhailor vs. Beetle 1
Once everyone has indicated their readiness, Banny lifts the barricade out of place. It's not extremely heavy, but its size makes it awkward and unwieldly. There is a musty smell from the uncovered cavern. To Marikel and Alicia, the space past Banny is dim and gloomy, but they can make out three beetles the size of dogs before their sight fails in the darkness beyond.
"Those are big beetles," Ali mutters. Almost on impulse, she draws and flicks one of her spare daggers at the nearest beetle.
Alicia's dagger somehow threads the needle between Marikel's shoulder and Banny's head and crackles into the lead beetle. Rather than sink into soft innards, however, it shatters the creature's outer shell and just keeps going out the other side, revealing that the carapace is dry and empty. It doesn't phase the beetle, however, which keeps on its six feet despite the gaping hole through its abdomen.