Tindertwig seems to be trying to chase those little not goblin sons of....Dirtbag has his leg.
Do you want to heal up some more and where do you want to go next?
"Tindertwig, let me get you bandaged up." Hilde pulls out her medical supplies.
Tindertwig stops trying to pursue those nasty hobbits to allow Hilde to patch him up.
Lyings Hobbitses! Nasty Hobbitses!
Hilde tsks as she treats the goblin. "Careful what you say. The Tolkien estate has ears everywhere, and they're swift to punish unauthorized use of their intellectual property."
"What is that, some big city talk?" Henry asked, confused. Regardless, he checked the status of his weapon and shield and nodded. "Well, whatever it is, y'all up for going after them? Probably set up an ambush, but we could at least see what we're up against and we got a retreat path. How are y'all feeling?"
"Let me see if I can secure the door they ran away through, and then we can check some of the other doors."
Tindertwig nods in gratitude to Hilde. The Ranger then prepares to jam the lock so that they can explore the other areas.
Tindertwig just shrugs.
Bees un stupids doors!
The doors are old and swollen with moisture. You manage to push it shut and jam it shut with a couple of wedges and also jam the lock in the hope that it will stop the morlocks. It is not guaranteed but it seems like the best you can do short of actually barricading the door.
Where else do you want to go?
Let's start with the doors closest to us, north and south sides of this corridor. One at a time, starting with the northwestermost.
The six doors in the corridor all lead to what must once have been small (10 feet square) bedrooms. They contain a bit of ruined furniture and nothing else of interest.
Then we'll work our way to the northwest and check out the two smaller doors near the rubble.
Henry looks in the rooms for anything that might be large and heavy, preferably metal but he won't be picky. He would try to set it up against the doorway not really as a barricade, but so that if the door opens the noise of the item hitting the ground might alert them of their foe's escape.
Then he'll rejoin the group and remain vigilant as they check room by room.
Hilde continues to check doors before anyone opens them, while keeping an ear out for the sound of the blocked door being forced open.
You find a suitably noisy beam and rig it against the door. The two doors near the rubble lead to similarly nondescript ruined bedrooms of the same size. The blocked door remains quiet for now.
Let's check the double doors across from them, then.
Hilde examines the double doors, listening and looking for traps.
Hilde pronounces the doors innocuous so you enter carefully. You find yourselves at the short end of a rather large rectangular room.
While it’s apparent that this large room was originally a kitchen, the furnishings have been rebuilt and repositioned to create an improvised shrine. The western end of the hall, where a large fireplace for cooking food once stood, now serves as an altar of sorts. Looming over a human corpse is a towering statue in a feminine shape made of bones, covered in sheets of moldering cloth and hanging moss. A bare spot on the room’s north wall has been decorated with mud and blood to depict the same feminine form as the statue.
There is one visible exit: a door to the right at the far end of the room.
Does Eddred recognize the image depicted?
Tindertwig and Dirtbag both seem a bit bummed that the kitchen is no longer a kitchen!
"Ugh, gross," Henry said, wincing as he looks at the corpse. "That's... really bad. The guy upstairs at least made it seem like there's no way he'd be able to get away with his plans but are these guys actually... eating? Sacrificing? Whatever it is, we gotta stop them."
Henry attempts to identify the corpse if possible.
Wees needs un stoves ta properly sauté dis meat! Dirtbags! Wheres dids wees puts da soy sauce!
Dirtbag begins rummaging through the goblin's pack....
Allowing for artistic incompetence, the figure looks a bit like the woman in the picture in the gallery on the island. You don't recognize her as any known goddess but she must have been important to whoever built this.
The body sports a bird tattoo on his right shoulder. You recognize the pattern from the carving in the boat you found.
There is also a bit of treasure strewn about the statue: a bloodstone, a sickly green gem and some kind of rune.
Eddred will detect magic. If anything (say, a sickly green gem) radiates magic, he will try to identify it.
"Why are so many of these subterranean humanoids so twisted?" he muses.
Dirtbag whistles innocently at Eddred's question....
The dwarf advances cautiously through the room to the other door, searching it for traps and listening at it if she doesn't find any.
The rune is a potency rune, the sickly green gem is a Fear Gem and the bloodstone is worth 10 gp.
While Eddred determines this, Hilde also finds a secret door on the north side of the room, east of the other door. That door is not trapped (to your knowledge) and you hear nothing listening at it.
Tindertwig watches Eddred shaking the gem.
Be it un magicks 8 ball?
The Ranger and the crocodile smile as they join Hilde.
Eddred smiles. "This is a potency rune. It will make one of our weapons strike with greater precision. I can scribe it on a weapon when we rest. And this is a fear gem. It's a temporary talisman, but with it on your weapon, you will be able to terrorize your foe. I suggest that Henry gets the rune and Tindertwig the gem."
"Oh, no, that's okay. I got a rune already, just gotta get it moved over to my sword. I think one of y'all should have it. I'll take the gem if you're sure, but I also don't mind not getting it. You know?"
The dwarf indicates the secret door. "Let's try that one next."
Eddred looks at Tindertwig and Hilde. "One of us, then. Who should it be?"
"This rapier already has some sort of rune on it. I don't know what kind, though."
"Oh? Let me take a look."
Eddred spends ten minutes looking over Hilde's rapier.
After identifying Hilde's rune, Eddred turns to Tindertwig. "I may use my bow frequently, but you use your... weapon... all the time. You should take this one and I'll take the next. I'll affix it when we next rest. Fair?"
The rapier also has a potency rune.
The secret door seems as safe and silent as the other door.
Tindertwig looks at his dogslicer.
Me weapon be un guud choice!
Dirtbag winks at Eddred.
"Let's try the secret door," says Eddred.
Henry will hold on to the Fear Gem as no one took him up on it.
With the all clear from Hilde, Henry raises his shield and opens the secret door.
The secret door creaks open and reveals a narrow hallway.
This five-foot-wide hallway features three alcoves along each side. Stone sarcophagi stand upright within each. It ends with a door which is of course the only visible exit.
The corridor is littered with dust and cobwebs and there are no morlock tracks.
Hilde shakes her head, looking down the narrow passage. "I don't know about this...I think we'd better clear out the morlocks before we go this way. There are too many secrets in this place."
Be monsters in dere....