After breakfast, Fiona heads out to make rounds of the town, keeping an eye on things and looking for clues to the mysterious leak.
After a night's sleep, the party decides the best course of action is to keep up the appearances of looking for something -- and, as such, begin to run long patrols, making sure they're seen -- by the area's farmers, at least.
The first day passes uneventfully - and riding around the countryside is mostly pleasant, except maybe when the midday sun warms both the party and their waterskins. Fortunately, a light breeze starts in the early afternoon -- though, it keeps growing stronger as the day passes, becoming a strong enough wind to blow in some grey clouds before sunset.
The next day is less pleasant - the sort of grey and dismal day with a cross between a drizzle and a mist that makes most people wish it would just rain and get it over with -- though it never does. Still, despite the occasional grumbling from the mage (despite his ability to prestidigitate himself dry, the ride isn't too harsh... until Eloen and Sandy note some fresh tracks from a trio - two large men or orcs on foot, and one mounted on what seems to be some sort of large rhino-like beast (probably an Arsinoitherium). The party follows the tracks, but never catches up with the group - going on a merry chase (that's never merry) quite around farmsteads -- looking, clearly, like a group that was scouting them - maybe for a later attack, or looking for something specific. The party just catches sight of the group off in the distance before sunset -- seeing them heading back into Orcish territory. They debate following, but between the weather, the upcoming darkness on an overcast night, and the fact that their companions are arriving this evening, they choose instead to return to Rustknoll.
They arrive a few hours after sunset, and find Norfin even less plesant than usual - maybe due to the fresh burns on his hands and face, or maybe because, sitting at a table filled with food are Sahar and Costin who had the good sense to insist they be given dinner for everyone while there was still food to be had.
Fiona enjoys the patrols, even with the warm sun, and she's mostly quiet during the long rides. Partway through the ride on the second day, she stirrups her weapon and begins rummaging around in her saddlebag (alarming her horse a bit, but keeping her seat nonetheless). She produces bits of fabric in various colors, some of which appear to have been cut from orcish garb, and begins cutting and sewing them together with a soldier's crude-but-effective stitches (all while trying [mostly successfully] to stay her saddle).
In the evening she heads to her room a bit early, and the next morning her eyes are a bit red, and she seems tired yet... unusually thoughtful. Before the group sets out on patrol, she heads over to the schoolhouse to find Hamish and Shala.
She frowns momentarily, then nods once to herself. "And its right front claw... I want it to be a human hand instead." Because I'm still here, and I will avenge them, even if I'm the only one left.
At dinner with the others that night, she gives Costin a solemn nod of camaraderie and waits for Sahar to set her secrecy spell before discussing the situation, catching the others up on the group's discoveries. "So that's about it," she concludes, "Tomorrow we'd better go back to the mine entrance and figure out a way in, even if it means destroying the dwarfwork. Maybe Hamish would have an idea on the lock?"
"Sounds right. Something in there is important enough to get these orcs all riled up and we have to find out before they do... while not letting them get to it."
When Merlan joins the group for an actual dinner, he seems unusually perky. Even for him. When pressed about it, he looks around and grins cheerfully. He mentions only vauge hints about something he discovered in the captured spellbook that will be 'very useful'.
”Hmm. You’ve been busy!” Costin says with a grin. ”So no one here picks locks? My purse feels safer already.”
Eloen puts away the intricate trap trigger that she was fiddling with.
Fiona shakes her head in response to Costin's question. "Seems not. I thought you might have some... er, skill in that area..." She makes the last bit a question that can be ignored if desired, then shrugs. "Guess we're back to hoping Hamish knows something about dwarf locks then, unless someone has a better idea?"
"If and when we go back, I can always take another crack at it."
"Unless several of us get suddenly very good, or very lucky, with ancient locks, we're going to need more than skill. What we NEED is a KEY." Merlan says offhandedly as he feeds Squeaks a bit of food from his plate.
The precocious pterodactyl takes the morsel, then suddenly lunges it's snake-long neck forward to grab a much choicer, and larger, bite from Merlan's plate. The wizard blinks, shrugs, and pops another bite of buttered bread into his own mouth.
Sandy sighs softly; "I apprenticed at a locksmiths after the borstal, but I haven't the skill of our stout cousins." He responds with a nod to Merlan; "That's an interesting idea, the orcs either hope they can find one - or they are in the same situation as us."
"Well, we're not going to find a key — or figure out the locks — sitting around here," remarks Fiona finally. "Let's head out early tomorrow, take another crack at the locks, and failing that, go hunt some more orcs. We should at least keep them aware that they don't get to waltz all over this area without penalty."
"Sounds like a reasonable plan. Plus the more we interact with the orc groups, the more we can learn about what's really going on, and whether that bard was telling the truth or just spinning us a convenient yarn," says Eloen.
"It was a pretty convincing tale." Merlan interjects cheerfully.
The halfling ponders for a moment.
"But, I guess that's what Bards do best, isn't it? Put JUST enough of the truth into a tale to turn it from totally unbelievable to completely believable."
He feeds Squeaks another tidbit of food.
"I hope he wasn't lying. I kind of liked him." The wizard confesses to his familiar.
Squeaks seems ambivalent on the issue.
"Let's go talk to Hamish tonight, before we head out tomorrow. See if he knows anything about Dwarven locksmithing that might at least help us get past the door."
"I mean, I don't actually expect him to HAVE a key to an ancient Dwarven stronghold in his pocket. But it never hurts to ASK. Right?!?" The Halfling says with almost-believable, wide-eyed innocence.
Fiona nods in agreement. Wouldn't it be just perfect if he turns out to actually have the key we need? She chuckles softly at her own thoughts, then looks to the group. "Shall we, then?"
Hamish nods, "I'm sure that one of the kids can work that out for you, though I'll leave it with one of the older ones to ensure that it looks like an actual griffon, as opposed to a blob with wings. It'll give them a reason to open a book or two, too. That said, throwing a few coin at them for their work would be appreciated, I'm sure."
You knock on the door and the older child who talked about the pirate flag -- Marcan, was it? -- answers. He looks at you with a bit of surprise and excitement, calling over his shoulder, "Sir, the adventurers are here!"
You hear a few grumbled orders given before Hamish emerges, "Thanks, lad, now get back to your work, if you would," he says quickly, tamping down much of the excitement in the boy's face. "Yes, sir," he says quietly, then heads back into the classroom while Hamish holds out a hand and leads you toward the library.
"Should I be getting Rickan? Did we learn something new? New information from Firrine?"
At the dwarf's question, Merlan begins bouncing up and down like a kid in a candy store.
Then he stops, looking guilty.
"Um,... Yes. And, sort of?" Merlan says WAY too casually.
"Soooo how much do you know about dwarven locks?" says Eloen casually.
Hamish cocks his head at the question, then shrugs, "Not much. Imagine they're generally like the locks made by other races, but probably a little better made, reflecting the decades or centuries of experience of the crafter."
He shrugs again, "But I'm thinking you're asking about something a little more specific?"
Eloen looks meaningfully to Merlan, since he tends to be a bit more garrulous than her.
Merlan coughs discretely, and looks around.
"Just a moment. First, I just need to say,.... Revelio"
Merlan's eyes briefly glean with a bright azure light, then fade back to normal.
The halfling turns to glance around the room, with a happy little grin on his face.
Merlan scans the area with his magical senses, and notes nothing out of place.
Merlan nods, seemingly satisfied.
"Well, that's good at least."
The halfling turns back to Hamish, the blue glow still visible in his eyes.
"Soooo,... This ancient dwarven mine that everyone is looking for? We found it." He grins.
"BUT, the true door is not only hidden, it's protected by a complex combination of locks. I suspect that even if they were easy to pick, Which they are NOT, we would have to successfully pick all of them at once to open the door. Unless one happens to have a key, I presume."
Merlan looks up to Hamish with a wide eyed, innocent smile.
"YOU wouldn't happen to have any ancient, or at least fairly old, Dwarven keys laying around, would you?"
Hamish blinks at the first declaration, then his expression turns pensive, before finally shaking his head, "No, I don't have a key to a mine that I didn't know existed until earlier this week. Unless the key is some sort of weird mundane item I came across back in my adventuring days, which I suppose is possible, but I don't have anything key-shaped."
He pauses, then chuckles, "Or, rather, nothing key-shaped that I don't know what it's meant to unlock."
Merlan shrugs,
"Meh, No harm in asking, right?" He grins.
Hamish shrugs, "No, I suppose not. I assume from the description that the locks are mechanically linked, such that they all need to be opened quickly or they reset?"
He sighs, "I've seen triple and quadruples like that, and heard that there was a six-key lock at one of the Sky Fortresses.... I seem to recall that after months of trying, the Orcs just tunnelled through the floor to get in."
"Indeed, it does require all tumblers to be thrown in tandem," says Eloen. "I'd expect for something like a six-key lock there might be... other defenses as well. This one, maybe not so much, but I don't know if we have enough time to set up a mining operation and try to excavate our way around it. Especially considering that the dwarves who made it in the first place are probably better miners than someone like myself."
"This does raise the notion that the locking mechanism itself is giving us some information about the importance of the site. Three locks for something fairly important, six locks for something legendary. And again, unless we need something from inside of that vault, it might be easier just to trap it or sabotage it in a way that guarantees that the orcs can't get in, either."
Merlan taps his chin thoughtfully.
"That's good thinkin' there Eloen. And tempting. Buuuuut,... even if we decide that we don't want or need what's inside, the ORCS seem to want it pretty badly. We cannot just assume they will give up because they can't open the door easily. And some of them might be better miners than ourselves. Certain company excluded, of course." Merlan adds with a swift grin to Hamish.
"That leaves researching and finding a key, if it even exists. Or tunneling around it or blasting it to smithereens ourselves. OR,... doing what the orcs usually do, follow others, wait for THEM to get through it, and then take them out."
Merlan glances around at the looks most of the others are probably giving him.
"What? You can't ALWAYS win by playing fair, or nice. And like it or not, it IS a viable tactic. Not one I'm proud of, but there are many ways to hunt. Facing a charging, wild Dire Boar head on is NOT always the best course of action."
”Clever, Merlan,” Costin says sincerely. ”If the orcs have a way in, staking the place out could give an opportunity to ambush them as they prepare to enter and take the keys for ourselves. And count me among those interested in seeing what is inside. If whatever is in there is so important to them, it ought to be important to us, too. And I confess a certain level of curiosity as well."
Merlan nods solemnly.
"As long as we recall the lesson, 'Curiosity killed the Feline'." the tiny wizard says sagely.
Then he adds with his usual, child-like grin,
"But it's just so much FUN!"
Hamish pauses a moment, clearly thinking, then shakes his head, "I was going to suggest you could lead the orcs to it, but this lot is too... oraganized... regimented, almost. I mean, they're still orcs and not hobgoblins, but there's just enough structure that you kind of need to split the difference when you think about their reactions." He stops himself with a chuckle, "Your halfling is rubbing off on me, clearly."
He shakes his head again, "Sorry, what I was going to say is that, normally, a group of orcs would rush forward to claim the loot and glory... but these ones, well, they'll do that too, but they'd probably send a report back that they found it first... and while you can push back one, maybe two, warbands.... " His voice trails off, the implication clear.
"Obviously, we need to stop any such reports from making their way back to... wherever their central organized location is."
Merlan nods, solemn once more.
"I'd rather play the part of awesome adventurer, plumbing the depths of an ancient dwarven mine, racing ahead of marauding orcs to liberate the treasures they would claim and use to wreak havoc and ruin. THIS is starting to sound like A long, drawn out battle with an organized and well-supplied enemy. Otherwise known as my worst nightmare."
The halfling sighs wistfully.
"My Uncle used to say, 'If your going into a fair fight,... you're doing it wrong'. Of course he used to say a LOT of things, like 'That which does not kill me, has made a grave tactical error.' But he was crazy."
"Nevermind. The point is, this group IS organized, and well-equipped, and has spellcasters and fleshwarpers and alchemists, and Pelor knows what else. They have clearly thought of humanoids' usual response to such an incursion, and planned accordingly. Until we managed to find the mine first, they have certainly been a step ahead of us this entire time. The only way to beat someone, something, like this,... is to do something they can't possibly plan for. Something that that they could never forsee."
Merlan's tight-lipped smile is more than slightly unnerving. Even Squeaks cranes his neck to give his master a 'WHAT are you thinking of?!?' look.
"We might just have to be a little crazy ourselves."
Unmoving, Squeaks blinks once, slowly. As if to say "Are you sure your a Halfling and not a Gnome?"
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"A musical number that ends with an elf-orc romance?" says Eloen flatly, with only the slightest twitching of her ears giving away the joke.
Merlan nods, slowly.
"I wasn't thinking QUITE that extreme. But yeah, something that they cannot anticipate, and throws them off balance." He agrees, seriously. (?!?)
"Or keep a low profile while we research a way in..." Costin considers.
Merlan points a finger at Costin and nods in agreement.
"ALSO an option. I'm only concerned about time. Eventually the orcs WILL find secret entrance, probably using the same methods we did."
"We're getting hung up," says Eloen. "We have some ideas. Why doesn't each person say what they think is our best idea at the moment, and the worst idea, and maybe we can narrow down our course of action?" says Eloen.
"I think the problem with the orcs and the mine is time-sensitive. We don't have a way to get in, and since we found alchemical materials indicating that the orcs were going to blow it up, I think they probably don't have any keys, either—or they'd be using them. If we can get even one key, we can use that while picking the other two tumblers at the same time, and then we're in. So... where do we find the keys—and are there multiple copies of them? That's the question. If you had an old dwarf-key but your mine turned into a ghost town, where would the key wind up? Obviously not inside. Where did the dwarves go when this place was overrun? Where would their keys have wound up? That's the question I wanna answer."
"I think wasting time with wandering around aimlessly and hoping we stumble across something is our worst course of action. We have a clear problem, we just don't know how to resolve it yet, so we need to work on gaining access to the mines while keeping the orcs out, and hopefully along the way we can learn more about the orcs' motivations and how to prevent a massacre at some point."
Costin thinks carefully. "Do we know any powerful wizards or seers?" He does not appear hopeful on this count.
He sighs. "You are right, Eloen. If they are prepared to blast their way in, they presumably do not have the keys either. Does anyone have access to historical records of those dwarves and where they went?"
Fiona frowns, rubbing her jaw thoughtfully as she listens to the various suggestions. "I don't like the idea of risking their getting to it first, even if that means us destroying the entrance ourselves. But I'm remembering something..." she trails off for a moment, staring off into the distance, then turns back to Hamish and continues in a somewhat dubious tone, "I looked at some maps of this area before we came out, and there was a... spot, marked on an old map, I think it was called 'Orc-Death Cave' or something like that. Maybe the dwarves went there? I'm not even sure I'm remembering it right. Hamish, do you know anything about that? I think I could find it on our map again... might be worth a visit. I'm not sure why I didn't think of it before."
So saying, she rummages around in her pack and produces the map, comparing her memory of the marked spot with where the group found the mine entrance.
At Costin's question, Merlan raises his hand with a happy grin, then at Fiona's 'look' slowly lowers it again.
"Agreed, running around in circles is a bad idea. We should thoroughly examine any clues or evidence we can find HERE. Our hosts can probably provide more historical than you might think. About some things at least." Merlan nods to Hamish respectfully.
"But in the end, time is of the essence, and the more we spend following wandering orc groups and hoping a solution presents itself, the more likely THEY will find and enter the mine first. We should decide on a single course of action and pursue it. Even if it not the ideal choice, following a plan is always better than making up one as you go. Although THAT can be fun too!"
"Now,... What about this 'Orc-Death Cave' place?!?" Merlan asks Fiona, eyes wide with the excitement of discovering something new.
Hamish shakes his head, "There is a place that the Orcs call Orc-death Cave -- and they speak of it the way children speak of the Gooblebok or Infernal Wretch. It's a nightmare legend -- but way more modern than these mines. The legend's older than these kids, but maybe not by much -- no more than I could count on my fingers."
He shrugs, "Rickan might know more, since he's the one who's dealt directly with the orcs, but from what he's told me, orcs generally avoid it... and, every few seasons, a group of younger orcs decide to go there to prove themselves... and that there's been no 'brave new' orc leader as yet, and the cave's reputation as a bad place hasn't diminished."
He chuckles, "Now, a Clan of dwarves could probably manage to do that, as long as the orcs didn't come in numbers -- and it's possible, despite the timing being off, that the orcs just didn't run afoul of the place until fairly recently. But, if it was a Clan, I don't see them hiding in a cave like that. They'd be trying to trade their wares, I'd think... unless they're quarantining, I suppose."
Merlan's slightly pointed ears perk up at Hamish's words.
"Now, WHY would a clan of dwarves need to quarantine for? And for so long? Was there some kind of a dwarven epidemic that I missed the memo on?" He asks curiously.
"And if they're hiding their wares... Well surely that could include an ancient key, no?"
"Assuming there are living dwarves there at all, perhaps they have some reason why the mine was abandoned. If not... we might still find useful clues. This is the best lead we've heard so far," says Eloen.