The familiar rush of air and slight feeling of disorientation and nausea fades quickly after Team Arda-Nuff suddenly appears at the foot of a mountain. They hear a few unintelligible words of a mournful song in a deep, bass voice that seems to come from the jumble of boulders on the mountain slope behind them, but the song stops abruptly as they arrive.

The team are initially all facing northward and looking across a narrow valley between mountains in a rocky mountain range. Directly behind them, when they turn around they will see a jumble of boulders piled up at the base of a mountain. They stand in front of an opening between boulders that seems to lead to some sort of narrow tunnel sloping downwards into the depths of the mountain.

OOC: Main game map updated. The tunnel slopes down underneath the boulders and is not obstructed by them. It is a moonlit night and everyone can see well enough to make out at least the basic outline of the surrounding terrain. Raven can see clearly outdoors in this light and everyone else can see clearly to the range of their darkvision and dimly see the skyline beyond that.

Minmorc will carefully stow his Greatspear and draw his Greataxe. If the rest of the party don't have any preparations the want to make he will move fifteen feet into the tunnel to have a look for whatever's wailing.

Bulldust sniffs, trying to detect the singer by smell.  "I don't fink its elfs."  He sounds as if he was hoping there would be elves. He stands aside to let Minmorc get crushed first.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:54, Tue 13 Feb 2018.

Arlein attemps to jump her way up to the top of the boulders.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:41, Wed 14 Feb 2018.

The singing had sounded like it was coming from somewhere in the middle of the jumbled boulders on the mountain slope above the tunnel. It didn't echo as though it was coming from within the tunnel.

No one spots any sign of life or movement among the boulders and Bully doesn't smell any trace of any creatures up there. Arlein can easily jump and climb all over that area of boulders although it does slow her to half normal speed. Everyone else will find it difficult terrain and move at half normal speed.

OOC: There would be about 20 five-foot squares on the map where the singing could have been coming from. A character can search one five-foot square per round, so it would take 2 minutes for one character to quickly search that whole area, 20 minutes if taking 10 on the search check or 40 minutes if taking 20 on the search check. However, no one has more than +5 on their search checks so you may not find the source of that mysterious singing if it is particularly well hidden and it doesn't want to be found.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:05, Wed 14 Feb 2018.

Oopses lets out his captive breath as Bully says it isn't elvs as neither Minmorc or Bulldust seems overly concerned about it. He looks around at the rocks trying to get a sense as to what kinda and why they were littered about and comes up blank. He grabs pulls his backpack close and puts his other hand on his scimitar hilt, nicking himself as he miss judges the distance to the hilt.

-1 Hp paper cut.

Minmorc seems to have already forgotten about the singing and will start making his way down into the tunnel. "ECHO! Eccc O Ecko oh oh... Hur Hur Hur er er errrr..."

"I'se heard about der singing rocks.  Is youse a singing rock?" Jurz asks the darkness, as he takes a few paces towards the left hand corner (as he looks at it) of the rock pile.

"Ise glad dey turned der rock off." Minmorc idly tosses his Adamantine Greataxe in the darkness. "I likes Heavy Metal an Death Metal betta."

Bulldust climbs up to the middle of the rocks above the tunnel to search for the singer.  He hums as deep as he can, trying to match the fragments of tune he heard.  Mmmmmmm....

 "Dat sure is purty singsongin! Iz wonder wherez it'z comin from?"

 She squawks in return trying to join in though her singing voice wasn't all that great. She notices the tunnel and readies her weapon just in case. She does try to see where the singing comes from before she follows the rest.

"Dey is singin' 'bout 'der canyon slowly growin' as der river rushes fru'," the little goblin notes as he holds up the Magic Stick wiv a Lump on der End (aka the Black Mace), nodding in satisfacion as it points towards the tunnel.

"Not der sort of fing ter make a rock 'appy ..."

Dregz is about to follow Minmorc but stops in his tracks as Bully leaps atop the pile of rocks, turning to watch the bugbear with some concern.

Jurz, Bully, Raven and Arlein explore the rocks for a while but no one finds any sign of any creatures larger than a few little lizards that scurry away as soon as anything comes close. Whoever the singer is, they apparently don't want to be found.

Meanwhile Minmorc starts to explore the tunnel. It heads roughly southwards into the heart of the mountain and slopes downwards at a gradient of about one in four, which is reasonably steep but not difficult to walk down. The tunnel is about 5 feet wide and 7 feet high, roughly hewn with the marks of pick and chisel clearly discernible on the walls, with wooden posts supporting the walls and ceiling where required. There is no light in the tunnel and no brackets for torches or hooks for lamps on the walls.

 "Sumbody gotz lightz? Itz pretty dark down der! Eben Iz got troublez seeing."

 She tried to see Minmorc down there but it's pretty hard to see him well.

Raven's magical rapier sheds 20ft radius light (40ft radius low light) when it is unsheathed, so Raven can see 40ft along the tunnel when she draws her rapier. Everyone else has 60ft darkvision, which is not affected by the light.

 She remembers suddenly her blade and draws it to use for vision, but tries to shield it in such a way not to mess up her friends dark vision.

 "Dey mus all haz dark vizion cauze no lightz or torches down der."

"Mays bees it was der singing rocks, an it was a sads song." Jurz muses as he joins Dregs.  "So what was it singing in den.  It wasn't Gobliny and it wasn't orcses, and it wasn't ...  " Jurz breaks off and looks around himself, almost fearfully.

Having shown no interest in the Rolling Stones or the Beetles or whatever was making noise at the entrance Minmorc will call "I'm gonna head in, I gives yer der signal if I finds anyfing." Minmorc won't bother moving silently, his huge strides carrying him quickly into the darkness.

Dregz shrugs in reply to Jurz' question.

"I knows a lot of languages," he tells the druid. "But I don' always know which one is is dat I am hearin'.  A lot of dem sound very much der same."

Minmorc's plan concerns the priest.

"'E will jus' shout an' hit fings wiv 'is spear, dat will be der signal !" he shakes his head.  "Wese should get after 'im !"

"Bully !  Wese going unnerground now !"

OOC: That's good, I was afraid folks wouldn't recognize the signal :)

The tunnel proves to be quite a long one and as Minmorc is able to walk quite a bit faster than anyone else in the team he is soon so far ahead that they can't hear him and he can't hear them anymore either.

Minmorc will use Ravens lit rapier as his yard stick, each time he finds a big loose rock or loose scree he shall root around in it until he sees a light approaching up the tunnel then will move on again.

Doing his best to take up station at the rear of the party¹, away from Raven's shining light, Dregz mutters a prayer to Bargrivyek as he walks along, keeping an eye out behind, in case those rocks roll after them. 


¹ I'm assuming there's a fair bit of jockeying for this most holy and auspicious of positions.  ;>

Moffdust is swept along with the crowd into the tunnel. She grumbles to herself as she hustlles along, scuffing the tunnel with her foot  If Dregzies sticks wants us ter finds its next bits den it should improves its delivery services, an not puts all dis walkies in de ways firsts." She shakes Cat out of her cloak so he can fly ahead.

Bulldust drops down off the rocks and lopes into the tunnel to catch up with the others, passing the hairy priest in the 'certain death' position of tail-end-Charlie and quickly placing himself in the relatively safe position at the head of the rearguard as they surge down the Orc-swept tunnel.  He notices the occasional rummaged rock piles but doesn't stop to sniff.  His mind wanders, wondering whether there could be elves down here.  That's a nice dream ... chasing squealing elves through tunnels.