Thomas was neither the stealthy nor the patient type. But he did his best to follow Guru's example.
Thomas and Hanzo may both read Guruthos' spoiler from earlier. Joriannika knows there's something important she's learning from her surroundings, but she can't quite grasp it. She's actually at a loss for words.
Guruthos waves the others forward, then moves to the south wall to inspect the concealed door.
Guruthos, you're almost disappointed that there aren't any traps lying in wait. It just seems like your standard, run of the mill, ancient, poorly hidden due to time, secret door.
Joriannika walked ahead of Thomas, behind Hanzo and Guruthos. "Ugh, I can see why this place was locked up all this time- Oh! Now, how did I miss that?" Joriannika exclaimed as the others inspected the secret door, pointing it out by their interest.
"Hold on now, there might be loose masonry or something, let me check..."
"Nope! Looks sound," she said, patting the wall for emphasis.
Hanzo wasn't much more patient than Thomas, but he was wary of falling prey to the hazards of rushing ahead. He nodded to Guruthos, taking up a position on the other side of the door, just in case. By this time, his hands held knives once more, one of them the strange notched one that Guruthos had found and given him. He wouldn't be surprised again, he told himself.
Joriannika gives the elf the 'all clear' and Hanzo readies himself next to the door, should anything unsavory emerge once the door is open.
Guruthos hands Joriannika the torch and draws the mithril dagger, then opens the door.
With the party gathered and as ready as they're gonna get, Guruthos carefully takes hold of the revealed mechanism in the stone wall and gives it a push. There's a loud crack and a rush of putrid, foul air hits your faces, as the door unlocks and swings inward.
Five feet beyond the door is stone wall. To the immediate right is stone wall. It appears to be a corridor that extends to your left and turns south. The portion of the outer wall at the bend has caved-in, rubble from the tower mixed with earth filling in the gaps.
It is completely dark as before, except for the light from Guruthos' torch and Thomas' spear.
What do you do?
"I bet you a copper that there is something down here that the kobolds were looking for, but didn't find. Maybe they would have, if the roof hadn't collapsed on them." His curiosity increases and he urges Guruthos to move on.
The masked elf sheaths his dagger, takes the torch back from Joriannika and proceeds into the corridor with caution, staying alert for traps.
Hanzo also kept an eye out for traps. Crazy old tower builders must have built traps. Their idea for decorating was an iron maiden, for crying out loud.
Before they moved on, Joriannika wedged a piece of rubble in the door, so it couldn't close on them.
Dusting off her hands, she followed Guruthos and Hanzo, rapier in hand. She wasn't totally sanguine about whatever they might find here, either.
"whaa! That smell! Smells like kobolds had been living here for years." Thomas followed the group without any comments.
The stench of death is nothing new to the masked elf; it almost reminds him of home, which is not a particularly relished memory to him.
Guruthos rounds the corner and views the cells. He carefully peers inside the first cell, checks the door for traps, and if none are found attempts to open the door. If it is locked, he will attempt to pick the lock.
If there is nothing to be found, he will move to the next.
Guruthos approaches the first cell. The door is shut and locked. The metal slat is shut, covering the view window. With some effort, he slides it open and the piercing echo of metal against metal reverberates for an excruciatingly long time, seemingly magnified as it bounces off the walls of this narrow corridor. You hold up your torch in order to cast some light into the room. This room is messy. Claw marks on the wall look horrifyingly like tally marks. You see the decomposed remains of a former prisoner...well, not former. They obviously died as a prisoner, in their chains. Died of starvation. The door looks trap free.
You go to pick the lock but can't quite manage it.
Maybe I should have grabbed that key... instead of leaving it where the bones had fallen..., Guruthos thinks to himself.
But rather than go get it, for he knows not whether it would even work, he moves on to the next cell. It is also locked.
What does everyone else do?
"Oh... oh, no..." Joriannika looked stricken, picturing how the terrible smell might have come to be. She looked in the rooms Guruthos had opened, hoping her suppositions weren't true.
"For the smell to be this bad, this couldn't have happened that long ago..."
"Oh, those poor people!" Joriannika lamented.
"Yech," Hanzo said succinctly. Joriannika gave him a hard look, and he shrugged. "What? It smells terrible. They're not going to care." Despite his attitude, he had to wonder whether the townsfolk knew about what had gone on here. Were they complicit? Bad way to go.
"I doubt they have anyth... any clues," he said, amending what he was going to say at Joriannika's warning look. "But sure, let's open these up and see."
I'm completely kidding! Let's say Hanzo saw it, savenger that he is.
After the elf has moved on, unable to open the first cell, Hanzo and Joriannika take turns peering through eye-port. It's hard to see due to Guruthos having stepped away and Thomas not yet around the corner. Hanzo pulls out a rusty key he acquired back in the barracks. It fits and, with a grunt, he unlocks the door.
The prisoner inside is mostly bones, with small scraps of decomposed flesh still clinging on. At the sound of the door being unlocked and the creaking of old metal hinges, several rats scurry from under the remains and down into a drain.
There might have been a pallet once, but it's long been torn to shreds.
You also see the clawed tally marks on the walls. It's a scene that might haunt you for days.
Hanzo felt a chill, looking at those innumerable tally marks. Poor bastards. That could have been him, sitting there. Waiting to die, all alone, counting the empty days and nights... why in the world had they been left here, when the others were gone?
He passed the key to Guruthos, to let the elf perform his search more easily. At least, he told himself that was the reason he stepped away from the cell.
Joriannika turned to Thomas, feeling ill at this mistreatment of prisoners. "How could they? I've a mind to let the Baroness know just what I think about this!" She fumed, but took a breath (not deep, due to the smell) and let it out to calm down before saying a murmured prayer to Shelyn over the dead man or woman.
The words stuck in her throat. There was no beauty in this.
Thomas, you find bits of fingernails embedded in the walls, near the floor where the tallies are the sloppiest.
You deduce that the only way anyone would have survived longer than a couple weeks is if they used themselves as a source of food and/or water.
When he is unable to pick the lock, Guruthos grumbles under his breath. He points to Hanzo, then to the lock, and holds up some picks.
Thomas deduced horrible things. He didn't say them out loud to spare Joriannika. "Finger nails mean humans, right?" He asked the group. He didn't know if it mattered, but he wanted to contribute.
Hanzo handed Guruthos the key instead. "Here you go. I thought it might be a good idea to hang onto it. ...Now I'm not so sure."
"We ought to see to it that a real priest says some words over them," Joriannika finally said, her own words of prayer ringing hollow to her. "Maybe they can be buried in the town's graveyard. That's the least they owe them." Gently, but firmly, she closed the door on the horrible sight.
"Finger nails mean humans, right?" He asked the group.
Hanzo shrugged. "Other things have fingernails. They looked pretty human, though, I guess."
Guruthos glares at Thomas through the eye-holes in his mask, slides the glove off his hand, and displays the backside of his hand to Thomas to demonstrate that humans are not the only ones with fingernails. Thomas sufficiently rebuffed, the elf looks down at the crumbling body, places his hand to his chest and makes a brief spiraling motion. He then takes the key from Hanzo and nods, moving on to the next cell.
Once again, he cautiously checks the door for traps. If none are found, he slides the view slat open, no longer caring about the noise (that time has long passed), and peers inside before using the key to open the door.
When Guruthos made his strangely silent gestures, Thomas immediately felt sorry for his choice of words. He studdered an answer: "Oh, uh, sorry, didn't want to offend you, Guru. Not what I meant." Then he collected himself. "Humanoid was what I wanted to say. You, my friend, have very pretty nails, of course! You do them yourself?" He winked at Guruthos.
The next cell is essentially as grim as the first. No traps, but rot, decay, death, silence and sadness.
A few seconds after Guruthos slides the viewing slat open, however, you all hear the slightest sound of movement a little further down the hall.
At the next door, which is slightly different with a larger barred square window for a viewing area with no means of covering it, a pale face appears. Dirty hands grip the iron bars. You all hear a desperate voice cry out:
"Oh, gods, kind faces! Aroden bless you, noble souls! I ain't seen the jailers in ages, I think they forgot about us! We ain't eaten in days and the water's all but gone-my cousins're both sick. I swear we'd give back the boar if we could, but we ate it, starvin' as we was. We didn't even know it was the baron's lands, didn't know we was poachin'! I beg you, we're all gonna die in here! Kindness, noble souls, we've suffered awful! Good Baron Sarvo wills it!"
Guruthos immediately tenses up. This cannot be possible! There should not be anyone alive down here! Did the Kobolds lock some poor soul down here to die? Wait... "Baron Sarvo?" He grasps his new dagger and motions to the others.
Baron Sarvo? Hm, if we knew who that was, it would tell us more about this man's fate. Who is, I guess, an illusion or a ghost or something... Thomas was unusually quiet for a few moments, while he was discussion this in his head. Reluctantly he turned to his dark inside. Bellmanok, what do you know about a Baron Sarvo?
Nothing, you piece of dirt!, was the answer he got.
Oh, shut up! You're useless as always, Thomas answered.
The masked elf turns to the others, unsure of what to do. These pitiful humans can't truly be real, can they? Might they be the souls of dead prisoners trapped here? What if my soul was kept here, preventing me from entering into the Lady's presence?
Feeling a wave of pity, and hoping he's not making a terrible mistake, the masked elf sets down his backpack, unhooks the waterskin from its loop, and retrieves a day's rations from the side pouch, then offers them to the... man(?) in the cell.
Guruthos was just a tad quicker than Joriannika, who had paused to exclaim in horror over the poor man's circumstances. If the man was undead of some kind, it clearly hadn't occurred to her.
"You poor thing! Don't you worry, we've got the key! We'll let you out. But who is Baron Sarvo? Is it the Baroness' brother?"
Hanzo was more suspicious. "Everyone else in here died long ago. Like, long enough to just be bones and rags. How exactly aren't you dead?" He stayed away from the door, wary of some kind of trap.
Reminded of the other bodies, Joriannika's brow furrowed as she paused in her outflow of sympathy to think more clearly. "That... that's true," she admitted, peering more closely at the man.
He watched and listened wide-eyed as people questioned him, but gave no response other than "Food! Water! Baron Sarvo wills it!"
When Guruthos extended his offering through the bars, the man responds to you gratefully and moves out of sight, presumably to consume the rations.
You can't seem him, and you no longer hear him. All is silent as before.
Guruthos cautiously peers in the cell for any inhabitants.
If the prior inhabitants are gone () he will check the door for traps. If none are found, he'll unlock the door, but pause for his companions to decide how they want to investigate.
From the limited field of vision you have, you can't see anyone in this larger cell. You'd have to open it up to know for sure.
You don't see or detect any traps.
You don't hear anyone eating or drinking.
"We should check it out. If you open the door, I'll be ready for whatever is behind it."
Thomas didn't trust whatever it was they saw. He positioned himself near the door his spear ready to defend against anything inside.
With a labored sigh, Guruthos inserts the key, which fits like it has all the others, and turns. With an amplified *tch-clak*, he unlocks the door. Then he waits to see if all concur with Thomas.
Hanzo was in agreement with Thomas. He held his knives ready, prepared for anything.
Joriannika regarded the men doubtfully. "I don't know what's in there, but whatever it is, it doesn't seem hostile. The man took Guruthos' food, and seemed grateful. Maybe we're ready for trouble where there is none."
When Guruthos opened the door, she peeked in, curious about what had become of the man.
Torch in one hand, key in the lock, Guruthos grasps the handle, and slowly pulls the door open.
Joriannika takes the lead looking in to see what had become of the man.
However, the man is not there. No one is there. The rations Guruthos graciously offered are sitting on the floor 10 or 15 feet to your right, uneaten, untouched, and as clean as they were when Guruthos handed took them out of his pack.
Guruthos cautiously collects the rations, examining them closely, before returning them to his pack. He has lived with the shadow of death for nearly a century, but this was something new. He places his fist to his chest and makes a spiraling motion, silently sending a prayer to Pharasma to guide these souls to their rightful resting place.
"look over there! A secret door!"