"Heard of some up north," Erista offers.  "Although I think they've got a King or something in them.  This is cozy, though.  Could do with a woman's touch, though," she agrees with Eileen..

Perhaps it's with that in mind that she starts checking around the mattresses.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:17, Wed 27 Mar 2019.

Once down the rabbit hole, Ozzy takes a moment to let his eyes adjust as he scans the little hide-out under the roots. It reminded him of a play fort he and his friends had made as children. " Well, they certainly aren't living the good life down here now, are they?" he comments. Seeing Erista move toward the mattresses, he warns, " Careful you don't touch anything sticky." while scanning the underground chamber with interest...

Spot check: 19

"Mos' like a place ter lay low when they's close ter the village." Colwyn opines, "If'n they needs ter keep their 'eads down, jus' fer a bit.  Not their normal camp."

In the dim, flickering light, Eilieen  inspects the walls of the chamber and finds only roots, dirt, and the myriad small crawling things which live in such places. 

Erista, meanwhile, searches around the makeshift beds.  Carefully lifting one of the mattresses she finds what appears to be Eilieen's cloak folded, somewhat carelessly, underneath it.

Ozzy catches sight of something that interests him amidst the tangle of roots and beetles in the dark. Moving to one side of the chamber, he looks down at the floor, prodding it with his toe. " Anyone have a shovel?" he asks, outlining a small patch of dirt with the same toe, making a small circle on the floor. " Dirt isn't packed down like the rest of it, somebody was digging here." he adds, kneeling down and pawing into the dirt like a puppy.

"Ugh, ugh, ugh."  Unable to restrain herself any longer, Eilieen frantically shakes her hands, dislodging dirt and, unfortunately, a small silverfish that hits the floor on its back, legs waving feebly.  "Oh dear."  Reaching down, the priestess gently flips the creature over with her fingertip.  "Apologies," she whispers.  "It was the dirt, not you."

The silverfish, uncaring, squirms into a crack in the wall.

"Blast and bother," she grouses, straightening and stretching, then yanking her fingers back from the protruding, dirty roots in the 'ceiling'.  "I'm utterly useless here...a shovel?"  Hurrying over, she bends down and examines Oswald's find.  "Loose?  Amazing that you can see that, Oswald.  Sadly, I lack digging tools -"

What.  A.  Surprise.

"- but in a pinch, and for an important reason..."  Crouching down, the priestess sticks her hands in the dirt with a sad sigh, and begins scooping it out of the way.  "Goodness!  It is a touch looser."

A couple of inches below the surface, Ozzy and Eilieen strike paydirt (as opposed to the sort of dirt they've been digging through).  There is something hard buried here.  Quickly they sweep away some of the dirt to reveal the gleam of steel.  Ozzy's fingers probe at the earth, scraping a groove which outlines a rectangular object, some nine inches by six.

Colwyn joins them, holding the torch so that it gives them a little more light as they work.  Within moments the bard and the priestess are lifting a dirty steel box out of the hole.  The box is only a couple of inches deep, but there is definitely something inside it.

It has a hinged lid, which is locked...

Ozzy pulls the box free of its grave, frowning as he sees the lock. " Looks like we should have hired Lannet I guess." he says resignedly,
" Anyone here know how to bypass a lock?" he sets the box in the middle of the chamber, looking up to his friends for help.

"For all we know, Lannet has the key," Erista points out.  "I don't know how to pick a lock, but just to open one...hammers work, don't they?  Or kind of big rocks?  Fergus could have that thing right off, I bet."

She pauses a moment, considering.  "Well, unless he thinks it's wrong to break open someone else's box, which he might," she allows.  "Aarnr, then.  We can tell him the last one to open their box gets a bath."

"Sadly, I skipped the lecture on 'Defeating the Chastity Belt'," Eilieen admits, "so this is quite beyond me."  She prodes the box with the tip of her spear.  "Poor Aarnr.  Always getting the short end of the stick with the compliments.  He's a good man, you know, beneath all that bombast."

She ponders the problem of the lock.  "I suppose we could try levering it open, but if the contents are fragile..."  Brightening, Eilieen turns a speculative eye on Colwyn.  "Fortunately, we happen to have the most wanted man in Tsar with us!"  Reaching out, she lays her hand on his forearm.  "Colwyn, be a dear and open that lock.  Please?"

Still holding the torch, Colwyn holds out his free hand to accept the box.  He peers at the lock, muttering to himself as he does so.  "No problems." he finally announces.

Then he kneels, jamming the end of the torch into the disturbed earth where the box had lain.  He places the box itself on the floor in front of him before opening a leather pouch at his belt and pulling out a roll of cloth considerably shorter than the canvas one which had contained the torches.  He spreads the cloth out to one side of him, close to the torch, revealing that it contains a series of small pockets, each of which has one or more gleaming metal instruments jutting out of it.

Colwyn takes a moment to crack his knuckles, then selects two of the tools.

A few minutes (and five changes of tools) later he leans back on his heels and looks up at the ceiling, "Nadgers!  I needs more light.  Can't do nuthin' workin' like this.  On me knees an' bent over in the dark like some sort of... "  He glances at Eilieen and bites off the rest of the sentence.

"Bat," Erista offers.  "Their knees bend backwards, did you know?  Of course, then you'd also be upside-down."  She looks thoughtfully up at the ceiling.  "Do you suppose that would help?  I had an uncle who swore by it - said he thought better standing on his hands.  If there was a hard choice to make, he'd flip right over 'til his face turned red, and then sure enough, he'd have his answer!"  She pauses a moment, and then acknowledges, "He wasn't always right, but he always had an answer."

Ozzy watches Colwyn with interest, stepping back when his frustration rears up. Doubting very much that standing on his head will make it any better, Ozzy turns to his own small pack and pulls out a bullseye lantern and flint. Two sparks later and the lantern is beaming nice 60' cone of light. He turns it to focus on the small box and says, " There ya go. I used ta hold the light for my da when I was a boy!" he adds proudly.

"Bent over in the dark?"  Then she sighs.  The dry humor leaves Eilieen's voice and she pats Colwyn on the shoulder.  "It's a bit too shadowy in here for such delicate work, Colwyn."  About to suggest they could take the box outside, she is pre-empted by Oswald and the brilliance of his bullseye lantern.  "Well!  There we go!"  Another shoulder-pat follows, this one more enthusiastic.

"You could always try Erista's upside-down idea," she says, a doubtful tone creeping in her voice, "but I suspect it could be a touch counter-productive."

Turning away to give him some space, she surveys the rest of the room to make sure that nobody is creeping up on them through some undiscovered concealed spider-hole.  Or the entrance, of course.

With a quiet, "Thanks." to Ozzy, Colwyn shifts position, so that he is sitting upright with his legs folded before him.  He returns the tools to their correct pockets in the cloth roll, then lifts the box so that it's cradled in his lap with the lock pointing upwards.

"'angin' up by me feet, like a flitmouse might is a fine plan," he explains as he pulls his dagger from its sheath, "but, I reckons I's goin' ter save that one, in case this'un doesn't work."

Placing the tip of the blade in the keyhole he waits a few heartbeats, then brings the palm of his other hand down, hard, on the pommel.

"Bugger!" he snaps, as the lock doesn't.

Eilieen blinks as the brute-force application fails in the face of the lock's sturdy construction.  "Well," she begins uncertainly, "I suppose we could go with the flitmouse."

A shrug follows.  "Hold onto the box, we shall examine it at our leisure.  Is there aught else here that might give us a hint to our missing indentured servants?"  Another quick look around the chamber follows, but no new exits have materialized since...and frankly, she's not expecting such.  This looks like a bolt-hole, not a warren.

Backpost:

After Ozzy's call about the loose dirt, Aramil stands and watches as the others remove the box from its hiding place. Too many cooks spoils the broth, as his mother says. Not really in the mood for this dirty work, the half-elf wishes for nothing more than a good feed, a fair drink and somewhere warm to sleep. But since that seems not to be the case, he scowls as the box as the others investigate the lock. Shrugging at the question of who can open it, Aramil leaves the job to another better suited to the task.

New post:

The scowl gets darker as Colwyn's attempts fail and it seems curiosity is left unsatisfied. "Since there seems to be little here of any importance, I'd suggest moving on away from this hole and towards somewhere better." he comments. The thought of staying here to long is starting to grate on the half-elf's nerves. The lack of a second entrance/exit is causing Aramil some issues, whether its in town or out in the wilderness, the half-elf always prefers a second escape route.

"Agreed.  It seems there is little, if anything, more of interest here." Corian says, and the look he gives the only exit is filled with obvious longing.  He notices a large beetle on his sleeve, and brushes it off with a scowl of disgust.

"We should find Aarnr and Fergus before it becomes too dark to locate them, and we have no firm idea of their location, or of the time it will take us to walk there."

Colwyn stands, still clutching the box under one arm.  He shakes his head angrily, retrieves his belongings, and makes his way to the tunnel.  "Sounds like a bloody good plan ter me." he grumbles as he passes Corian.  "Might be as Aarnr can open this, with that two-'anded lockpick of 'is."

A quick look around soon determines the direction to the road that leads back to the Tradeway, so the group set off towards it.  Colwyn carries the box, grumbling about the need to do so from time to time - not so much about the weight, but the fact that had he been able to open the thing, that weight, slight though it is, might have been more evenly distributed among the party.

They reach the road after a reasonably short time, trudging along the rutted muddy surface.  The rain, at least, seems to have eased off for a while.

After some time they reach a track which branches off from the dirt road, heading off towards the west.  It looks like the one Fergus and Aarnr had taken, and nobody remembers passing another one on their way in to the village (although, frankly, without Fergus to guide them, the track the two men had taken with the ox cart would have been easy to miss).  The track is similar to the road - consisting mostly of mud and ruts, with the occasional puddle thrown in for variety.

At one point, though, Colwyn looks back and stops, "We're climbing." he points out.  The road lays about two miles behind them, and perhaps a hundred feet below.

And still they move on, through a landscape which is mostly composed of low ridges covered with gorse and heather, save for scattered scrubby bushes, some of which bear blackberries, though only a few of the fruit are ripe as yet.  Overhead the sky is darkening, partly because of the weather, and partly because the sun stands but an hour from setting.  Still some way ahead of them a cluster of ruins can be seen on a hilltop, and there is the orange flickering of firelight shining  on one of the walls, though the fire itself is concealed below the brow of the hill.

Eilieen bugs Colwyn at least once to allow her to carry the box, but quickly realizes that his pride is hurting more than his back.  She leaves him to his albatross, then, offering bright smiles and cheerful converse in reply to his grumblings.  Privately, she feels very badly for him.  It's a terrible thing to carry, failure, especially when one has a group of friends depending on oneself.

Finally, the road.  And there, ahead, the flickering of a fire.  "One might hope that would be Fergus and Aarnr," Eilieen grouses, glaring balefully at the clouds as she puts up her hood.  Her good, traveller's cloak's hood, though it needs a fumigation (hopefully not a bath to rid itself of pests, mind).

A flicker of movement, and the Priestess raises both eyebrows.  Well.  That's a first.  She actually -

"- saw something."  It's a quiet murmur for the group rather than the jubilant cry for the world she almost let out.  How exciting to actually be of use this way!  "Ahead, on the left.  Someone...or something...stuck its head out of those bushes next to the briars."

Ozzy is quick to duck to the left, off the trail and into the nearest patch of shadow.
He moves quietly ahead, slower than the rest of the group, but hopefully quiet enough to get behind anything waiting in ambush...

Hide: 26 / Move Silent: 18

While other members of the group warily try to act as if nothing has happened, Ozzy throws himself into the shade of a boulder.  From there he crosses to a patch of bushes, then into a shallow gully where he moves bent almost double, and finally creeps into position behind a pile of broken rocks. 

The rest of the party slow their walk along the track, as Corian points to the nearby hilltop with its signs of fire, and says in a loud voice, "I suspect that all of our allies are camped up there, though it is hard to see how so many men could be so well concealed!"

Even to his ears, it sounds a little hollow...

"Yep," Erista agrees, brightly.  "It's good to know they're up there, though, and that we're already in good view of their sentries!"  She gives Corian a big wink, and, thus bolstered, picks up her pace a bit, moving to the front, giving, oddly enough, what appears to be a gesture suggesting the others stay back a bit.

As the group move to follow the path that Fergus and Aarnr took, the half-elf looks longingly in the direction of Fairhill, or the direction he thinks its in. Sighing again with the loss of some recognisable food, something to drink and a better bed than the dirt they have been sleeping on, Aramil heads along with the others. Strangely though, as his feet takes him away from the comfort of the town, Aramil's mood lightens. It seems to improve with the light shining ahead, only faltering slightly when Eileen hints that the light might not be their companions. Maybe the half-elf is starting to get a heart of an adventurer after all.

Looking around the half-elf notices that Ozzy is missing, but assumes the little man knows what he is doing. Walking with the rest he listens to their comments and then goes to form some words of his own. "Well if its not Fergus and Aarnr, then it hopefully will be someone who knows where they are. I can't imagine the great bear of a man like Aarnr would hide out hoping to hide from danger. In fact I'd say he lit the fire to attract the attention of any foes in the area." he says with a smile on his lips imagining what the big man would be doing about now. The smile falters slightly watching the little halfling move ahead without the others to keep her safe.

As the group draws closer from down the road, Ozzy realizes he needs to act fast. He hastily grabs a javelin from his pack, flinging the slender pointed rod at the closest of the creatures just as he shouts out, " Five! Five goblins!!" and his excitement launches the javelin out into the road.

INIT: 15, ATTK: 8

Ozzy's voice comes somewhere behind the bushes, yelling about goblins and, as if to confirm his words, a javelin arcs out into the track, narrowly missing Colwyn, who quickly puts down the box and reaches for his bow.

Already preparing, Erista reaches out and projects a swirling blast of coloured light at the undergrowth.  There are several groans and the sounds of several creatures, likely goblins, collapsing.

One, though, does not fall.

A large goblin, almost as tall as a dwarf, stands up among the bushes only twenty feet from the track, and screams out words in its own tongue, "Tjak kodzhok!"  Two more promptly show themselves nearby.

Further off, perhaps 25 yards from the trail several more rise from their places of hiding, and start to hurry forward, though two of them seem distracted and set off in the wrong direction...


OOC: Initiative and stuff everybody...