Vhailor shows no interest in chasing after the spider, instead creasing his brow and wondering "It must've been here a long time to get so big... if it wanted to eat the kiddies I'm sure it could've earlier... you know... unless we've just evicted it from it's safe place..."
Pushing his lens free glasses back up the ridge of his nose Vhailor harrumphs, then thinks a moment before adding "Best we poke around a bit anyway? If the spider had any snacks before we might find something to help identify who it was... the snack I mean... or we could find out it only ate dogs... no wait that's worse... Lets just take a look eh?"
"Thank you," Marikel nods to Banny as he struggles free of the thick webs.
"Of course it's no immediate danger to anyone except us but I don't want to leave it here either. Who knows when the next nosey, disobedient child will come exploring this place."
He briefly glances to Alicia.
Ali snorts and stalks off toward the door to the south in a huff, throwing it open and poking her head inside.
Banny looks between Marikel, and Alicia, and shakes her head slightly, saying nothing. She settles for wiping off sticky webbing from her axe, and nodding at Vhailor's suggestion, helping to poke around in the spider's former lair.
"Be careful. There may be more."
Marikel tears away a last shred of web and follows after Alicia.
Ali yanks the handle of the iron door, but it doesn't yield to her tug. It seems to be locked.
Meanwhile, Banny carefully examines the area around the giant spider's web. The animal bones are clearly the remains of its meals: some are as small as a chipmunk, some as large as a young coyote, but they are all relatively recent. It would appear that the spider hasn't been resident in this hallway for more than a month. There are no signs that it has preyed on anything humanoid.
The cabinet over which it draped its web is fragile from exposure to years of the spring rainy season which, while brief, is torrential. When Marikel's longsword struck the rotting wood, it opened a splintering crack through which Banny spies something metal on a shelf within.
Applying her axe, Banny removes the doors from the cabinet. Inside are two sealed iron flasks, a battered steel scrollcase, and two intact glass vials of a clear liquid, mixed in with illegible pulpy masses that might once have been books or sheafs of paper and several shattered bottles.
Momentarily stymied, Ali breaks out the lock picks and gets to work.
"Oi! Got somethin' in this burnt-up cabinet," Banny says, catching the glint of metal. She busts the old furniture open in short order, brows arching as she pulls out the things with in. "Hey, what's all this..."
Banny spreads the objects out onto the floor, turning them over. She unscrews the case's lid to see if anything is within, then inspects the various flasks and vials, sniffing at them. "Don't think they're hooch," she smirks.
Momentarily distracted as Alicia gets out her assortment of small tools, Vhailor is blindsided as Banny starts supping on liquids unknown. He lurches forward overlate to stop with a "Well, that's not... umm..." pursing his lips and pushing back his glasses frames before continuing "...what does it taste like?"
If the scrollcase betrays parchment content then he smiles and offers his hand as safekeeping "Can I look at them? Master let me categorize his books... might be I could see if they're fun... I mean, useful... or valuable"
Marikel frowns at Alicia's locked door.
"Why would the door be locked?" he asks suspiciously, shifting his grip on his sword. "Was it locked last time you were here?"
He takes a step forward, then back as Alicia kneels at the door.
"Hey, wait a minute, where did you get those?" he demands as Alicia pulls out her lock picks and fiddles with the lock. "Where did you learn that? Have you been..."
Marikel's attention is diverted when he hears Banny call out. With a suspicious glance at Alicia, he heads back over to Banny and Vhailor.
"What is it? Were they left here recently? Hidden perhaps?"
Alicia just rolls her eyes and continues working the lock.
The clear liquid tastes like ... water. Rather stale water. It also looks and smells like water.
The scroll case has, in fact, protected three scrolls from the elements for who-knows-how-long.
Ali's first attempt at unlocking the iron door fails, as the inner workings of the lock are rusty and stiff with disuse. Tuning out Marikel's questions, she frowns and continues working....
Spellcraft 1:
Spellcraft 2:
Spellcraft 3:
Taking the scrolls Vhailor carefully unrolls them before taking a few moments to scan their contents.
"Is it possible that they're church items, after all this time? If so, we should take them to Miss Varvatos."
Vhailor involuntarily pulls the half read scrolls a little tighter towards himself...
Marikel frowns, but purses his lips tightly.
Alicia finally succeeds in jimmying the door; it opens with a rusty screech and a breath of cold, stale air, revealing a dark annex housing a stone stairway leading down, presumably into some sort of basement. She also sees two filthy rats the size of large dogs in front of a pile of trash and debris which is presumably their nest.
One lunges at Alicia as the door opens, taking her by surprise and ripping open a large wound on her leg.
Vhailor has just re-stowed the scrolls in their case and turned to Marikel with a half formed response on his lips as Alicia sees the door opened. His witticism disappears as his thought turn instead to self defence.
"Ow!" Ali yelps, fighting the urge to clutch at her bloodied leg. The rogue stabs at the overgrown rodent with her rapier, then attempts to put some distance between herself and it, moving to the side of the door.
Ali returns as good as she got, her rapier piercing deep into the oversized rodent, before pulling back, her back against the edge of the smashed-open cabinet.
The second rat charges past its bloodied nestmate and nips at the priest, who is only moments too slow to react to its approach.
Carbonel bares his teeth and hisses at the rodents, while Vhailor frowns and thinks. Taking a step back from the coal face, his hand goes to his side to roll against the woolen fabric of his overcoat. Projecting his will and intent unto a spot directly between the two rats he opens his mouth... though no sound immediately issues. Moments later the hissing aggressive noise that his feline companion is making is multiplied upon itself and it sounds as though a housecat the size of a bull mastiff is seeking bloody vengeance upon the rats...
"Alicia!" Marikel's voice is filled with concern.
He reaches for her and instead finds his leg savaged by the oversized vermin.
Marikel stabs back at the wretched creature and composes himself.
"Stand back, Miss Alica. Banny and I can hold them."
Marikel's longsword flashes down, cleaving the rat nearly in two. Sliding limply off the blade, it has no reaction to the angry feline sounds Vhailor conjures out of thin air.
"Oi, what's this--" Banny's head snaps up from inspection of the little bottles. She blinks as things happen quickly, rat-biting and rat-slicing and so forth.
Taking a step in, she tries to stomp the over-grown rat's skull down into the burnt floorboards.
The dwarf steps forward into the doorway, but the rat in the annex evades her descending boot. Perhaps spooked by Vhailor's invisible cat, perhaps merely unwilling to be poked again by Alicia's rapier, it turns and runs down the staircase, noticeably limping and leaving a trail of blood behind it.
"Bleedin' hells, this church's a damn wayhouse for pests," Banny grunts. "This a cellar, then? Might be a whole nest down there. Should we go look? You two took some nasty bites."
Ali tries to hide a wince as she lets her guard down and shifts her weight. "I'd just as soon look upstairs before we start poking around downstairs," she says.
"Here, Miss Alicia, let me take care of that."
Marikel places a strong hand gently on her shoulder and channels warm healing energy through them all.
"It doesn't look like this place is hiding anything to do with Kerst, but we should definitely remove these vermin. So, chase the spider before we chase the rat?"
Marikel takes out his crossbow and loads a bolt into it.
Nervously hopping from one foot to another Vhailor queries "Umm.. aren't there town guard people who could do that though? Shouldn't we focus on Kerst?"
"Kinda agree with the gnome," Banny says. "This building prolly oughtta be cleared out, sooner or later, but rats didn't kill Kerst. An' rats didn't make a secret path up right into the heart of town, either. Let's shut the door, scrawl a warnin' on it, an' finish up here. If we have a nice day with nothin' else to do I'll come kick in rat skulls all you want."
Nodding along to Banny's words Vhailor has a flash of thought and adds "Oh... the scrolls. Um, I don't think they were the Temple's work... I mean they've got real magic on them -" realizing and stammering "I.. I mean more the" waving his hands around in a caricature of casting a spell "and not from the Goddess." cough "Could only make out the one that opens a lock though, need to look at the others again later."
"I wonder what's in the basement that they would want to make sure they could access in hurry, then," Alicia ponders aloud. "Especially since they kept that door locked otherwise..."
"Miss Alicia is right. Those rats ddn't lock themselves in. And if those scrolls weren't put there by the church... Someone has been here. Let's keep looking."
Vhailor takes Marikel's words as validation that the scrolls are not to be submitted to the church... and swiftly stows the case before he thinks twice about it. Taking up his staff once more, and pausing for a brief scratch to Carbonel, he takes up position at the rear again.
Banny looks thoroughly bemused by Alicia and Marikel's conclusions. "Hang on," she says. "So we open a locked door that leads down to a basement kinda thing, we find rats on th' other side, an' th' obvious thing to you folk is that someone locked those rats in there? Couldn't it mayhap be that.... bein' rats... they just found some natural hole or other kinda way in to the cellar of a burnt-out buildin'? I mean, rats... basements... kind of a natural sorta match... I dunno you need to blame Somebody for that. Ain't like the foundation here is gonna be water-tight, you know?"
She shrugs. "An' sure, folk have been here. Alicia's been here, it sounds like. Prolly every kid in town's come through here on a dare at some point. But whoever put those scrolls there did it afore a spider put a web over that whole section, so it probably wasn't anytime in the last day. I still ain't seein' what this has to do with Kerst, or with that whole 'cliff path leadin' up right into town'."
The dwarf shrugs her shoulders. "I'll stay with you lot an' poke where you want, but the sun ain't standin' still and we still got to make sure the council knows about that path up. Makes me itchy, thinkin' that's been there as long as it has."
Marikel looks thoughtfully at Banny.
"You're right, it could be coincidence. But I'd rather check thoroughly than miss something that may help us find the murderer."
Marikel heads down the stairs after the rat then stops.
"It won't take long to find any natural rat holes that big and prove you right, Banny. Vhailor, bring a torch."
Alicia presses her lips into a thin line and follows after Marikel down the stairs, rapier at the ready.
Banny raises thick fingers to rub at the bridge of her nose, opens her mouth as if to argue further, then shrugs and shuts her mouth with a little click. Instead of speaking, she unhooks the battered flask from her belt and knocks back what little remains of the morning's applejack.
Shoulda brought two flasks, she thinks, as she follows down the stairs.
"Honestly I think that stuff in th' cupboard's been there at least since th' damned fire," Banny mutters to herself as she brings up the rear, but, as her words are half-lost to the mouth of her flask, it's possible they go unheard.
Startled into action Vhailor has no qualms in complying with Marikel's request to fashion a wooden burning stick to assist in their explorations.
Once Vhailor has lit the torch Alicia provides, Marikel steps into the dark annex, heading for the stairs leading down. Before he takes the first step, however, a third heretofore-unseen rat darts forward to defend its nest.
Marikel jabs at the creature with his sword, before stepping further down the stairs to let the others through at it.
He sniffs as he runs the creature through.
"Hmph. I think you're right Banny. Hopefully there's not many more."
Alicia steps into the gap Marikel left, stabbing at the rat as well.
Marikel extends his blade, and the rat practically impales itself on it rather anticlimactically. As the priest steps onto the top step and Vhailor's torch shines into the annex, it becomes clear that, in addition to the twitching corpse, the rat droppings, and the dry brush and chewed paper and cloth that the rodents have been nesting in, there is a metal chest tucked away in a niche next to the staircase.
Alicia catches sight of the metal chest and, without prompting, goes to investigate. She wordlessly motions Vhailor over to provide light, then goes about inspecting the chest for traps and locks.
Vhailor complies, similarly interested to see what forgotten treasure might be contained within the box.