Vetan looks shocked at the others reactions. "Not monsters!!??" he gives in a high pitched wail. "Then why did they attack us?" He looks down at his wardrobe-to-be. "Alright, so they are a bit yucky....and possibly a bit smelly, but I want something to remember these so called brain eaters by. If I can't have a vest, maybe an ear or a finger will do? I finger will be best, I could make a necklace from the finger bone. That wouldn't hurt would it?"

He lops off a finger and stuffs it in his pouch for later then runs over to the doors. He squints at the locks and scratches his chin. "I could get these open in a jiffy if you want. Perhaps there's rooms full of treasure on the other side? Would be a shame to head back to town with out exploring them first!"

"Well come on then boy, get them open then! Right after you put that finger BACK!"

Vestan has a good look at the locks and is convinced he can pick the locks.

[Private to Vestan Pance: You are sure the locks are relatively new, much newer than the doors and have been oiled recently.]

While Vestan works the locks, Adia-Ny will play rear-guard and keep an eye on the passage south.  He is standing at the entrance to the passage, where the southern wall ends.

"Ronalt, give Adia-Ny a hand there will ya?"
"Peter, you and I should stand near the boy in case o' trouble."
Arek was a little concerned at Adia not having a staff to replace his broken one, but that was his problem. For all any of them knew, the man could fight with two broken ale mugs - it's not like Arek himself hadn't had to do something similar once or twice...

Ronalt follows Arek's suggestion and joins Adia-Ny as rear guard.

Felicia takes her place between the ones wearing armour, listening intently, holding the light source so the rest of the humans could see.

The hobbit works on the left most door, checking it for traps before setting to work on the lock.  Almost immediately there is a click and the lock turns over.  The door slowly opens inwards making no noise. The room beyond is quite small but in the flickering light of the torch you can see the gleam of metal reflecting back.

Looking closer you can see the room is stacked with supplies of all sorts in good condition. Mostly shields it looks like, but also suits of leather armour and some barrels.

------------------------------
     ================
     =              =
     /8   o  S  o   ===/==
 ====88     S            =
 =   =8                  =
 =   /                   =
 ===================== o =
                     =   =
                     =   =
                         =
-------------------------------
= : wall     S : stairs up
/ : door     o : pillar
8 : rubble
-------------------------------

"Have a go at the other door Vestan. We'll take some of that stuff back to town when we go. It looks too well preserved to have been here when the place was destroyed don't you think Felicia?"

Vestan quickly opens the other door which too opens very easily for its age.  Inside there are more supplies, the most obvious being numberous spears and a few battle axes.  Three crates also occupy this room.  The metal tips of the spears and the blades of the axes show no sign of corrosion.

------------------------------
 ====================
 =   =              =
 =   /8   o  S  o   ===/==
 ====88     S            =
 =   =8                  =
 =   /                   =
 ===================== o =
                     =   =
                     =   =
                         =
-------------------------------
= : wall     S : stairs up
/ : door     o : pillar
8 : rubble
-------------------------------

"Well, they made be purloined from merchants passing by or part of a build up for some kind of army,"Felicia reasoned.  "Perhaps we should check the crates too?"she looked to the halfling whom, up to now, needed no encouragement to get into whatever struck his fancy.

"Yea. git on wit' it boy. There's fish to be caught."
"Adia-Ny, you use any o' this?"

Hearing Arek's question, Adia-Ny leaves his post by the hallway and comes to see what lies beyond the now-open doors.  He cracks a smile as he sees the cache beyond.  "Technically, no,"  he responds to the dwarf's query.  "But in practice..."  He selects a spear, sticks it's point between two of the boxes, and pushes.... sideways.  With a sharp crack, the wood breaks just where it joins the metal tip.  Twirling his improvised quarterstaff experimentally, he nods to the dwarf.  "I'm good to go."

"Looks like someone is trying to outfit an army" says Ronalt looking over everyones shoulders. "We should destroy these or better still get them all back to Hommlet to help them build up their strength. To much for us to carry though we would need a wagon."

Vestan checks the crates over then prises them open.  There are three of them in all. The first contains arrows, roughly one hundred and the second even more crossbow bolts. Why this would be, when there are no bows or crossbows amoungst the weapons is not clear. The third crate contains clothes or to be exact black capes. As Vestan check these for no booby traps an insignia can be seen on the back of them. A yellow eye is embroidered on each. There seems to be dozens of them.

"These look like something the town's leaders might be interested in, a kind of uniform,"Felicia reasoned, drawing out the capes.  She unfolded one and looked it's front and back.  "We should take a few with us back to Hommlet to let someone know what we've found."

Adia-Ny looks at the clothes thoughtfully.  "Maybe we could use these to aid in our exploration of these dungeons:  stop the cultists from attacking us on sight."  He looks around at the others, as he experimentally slips one of the capes on.

"A clever ruse, if there is a cult here.  Why do you think that the bandits belong to some cult?"Felicia asked at him quizickly.

Vestan looks through the capes to see if there were any his size. "A yellow eye. Whatcha reckon their Cult is about? Perhaps they worship one of them cycollopse things, eh?" He looks at all the gear assembled in the room. " I don't reckon we can get all this to town, not by ourselves. We'd be best to be pushing on, now we got our disgises!"

"No boy, can't ya see Ronalt needs more 'elp than I can give 'im? We load up what we can and come back for more in a day o' two. Might even bring a cart."
Arek searched quickly through the assembled supplies and picked out the best he could find.

"I definately need some aid. But I would also like to here more of this cult from Adia-Ny, what do you know of it?" asked the ranger, the wounds on his face looking even worse.

[Private to Adia-Ny: A good question....  Lycaon deleted all his stuff when he left so can you let me what you agreed about background? (The rest of the party know nothing of any cult.) ]

Adia-Ny shrugs apologetically as he looks around at the others.  He holds up the cloak so that they all can see the symbol embroidered upon it.  "I'm sorry," he begins, "I didn't realize that it wasn't common knowledge.  The bugbears who captured me mentioned 'the boss' a few times, and also said something about his plans to have the 'cultists' spread the message into Hommlet.  When I saw all this stuff stockpiled here, and since this is where those bugbears had brought me so that they could deliver me to this 'boss', I just figured that they were the ones who had stored this here."  He pauses, looking around the two chambers.

"I say we all take what we want now, and then, since we're heading back into town to get a wagon, we'll try and leave everything as if we'd never seen it.  Master Vestan, can you re-lock the doors?"

"Now there's somebody who knows what's what!" he said as he stuffed one last item into his pack.

"Even more reason to go back, we need to alert the town that the danger here is more than just bandits.' said Ronalt. He too began packing gear.

Felicia rolled up one of the capes and placed it into her pack before rebuckling it.  Hefting it, she readied herself to depart.