With a moment's work, Elder Voran sees the woman's eyes flutter a bit, and then come fully open.  "Mandelin?  Is that you?" is what she manages to get out, still groggy and not quite aware of where she happens to be.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:34, Thu 24 May 2018.

Elboc begins humming ‘Mandolin Rain.’  Even though it makes no sense that he would be familiar with this song, and even though nobody else could recognize it.

Okay, he doesn’t hum ‘Mandolin Rain.’  But he does hum something.

Voran shakes his head. "No, but that is not important. Who has Timmy?"

"The raiders in the mushroom farms have Timmy!" she calls out, having come a bit more to her senses, "They came out of the fissures in the cavern walls and attacked us.  A couple of the men were hurt, and they took Timmy with them as they left!"  She seems to be in a panic, but also seems to have no idea what to do.

"Hrrrumph!"

At this point Albricht couldn't tell if Timmy was the figment or the Mushroom Raiders were the figment. These addle-brained sots were causing the old dwarf's teeth to itch.

"Is this Timmy your son? How far to the Mushroom place?" Albricht called from his seat across the room.

“Are we getting paid to rescue dear Timothy, or are we to do this out of the goodness of our hearts?”

Silverglade leaves his new "friends" and joins the group near the ranting woman. "Roughly how rich is Timmy?" he asks her.

Roak shoots Silverglade a look. "Or, more precisely, are they likely going to ask for a ransom for him? Either way, tell us which way they went."

The woman is even more confused, due to the rapid number of questions presented to her.  She grasps onto a request for direction, however, "The mushroom farm!  To the north!" and so saying, she rises and makes as if to bring people with her out the door of the building

"Bah!" Albricht snorted.

"Sunshine. This whole lot needs a good old-fashioned, skin-blistering, sunbath..."

Shrugging his weary shoulders, the dwarf called out to anyone coherent enough to answer, "Where's the store around here anyway?"

"Might as well get some provisions before we trudge off on this fool's errand!"

Voran looks grimly at Albricht. "We will do no such thing. There is a life at stake. Come, Albricht, I thought dwarves were always ready for an opportunity to save the day?"

"Not convinced. Maybe her slipper was named 'Timmy' and she lost that."

Albricht continued to lounge back in his seat, purposely staring in the opposite direction, though the Elder might note that his whiskers were twitching somewhat.

"Oh alright! Hrrrumph!" The oldster got to his feet, bones creaking more than his worn out gear. "Let's go find her slipper..."

There was quite a bit of indelicate grumbling to follow.

Roak tries not to laugh too loudly as he follows the recalcitrant dwarf out the door...

The woman leads the group, and no small number of others from the building, back out the way the party entered the city, stopping when the entrance to the pyramid is just in sight, and turning to the left (west).  A few hundred feet later, fields of fungi and lichens come into view, with a small number of masked people huddling together on one side, crouching down to avoid being see from within.

As they walk, Voran says, "I am known as Voran, Elder of Law. What was your name? And tell me more about what happened."

Vsaati grumbled as she finished her glass of wine in a hurry, then hustled after the rest to find out about this lost boy.  The walk through the streets, even though they'd come through the way before, still amazed her.  How could people live their whole lives with no sky above?  She couldn't imagine staying here forever.

She kept her eyes on the huddled group that shied away from them.  If it wasn't their own group of topsiders that was frightening them, she wanted to know from where the threat might be coming.

The woman cocks her masked face to the side, birdlike, as Elder Voran asks his question.  "I am Andrephina, and Timmy is my cousin's son," she begins.  "We were in the garden, preparing to enjoy some of the dream mushrooms that have crept in among the food varieties when we were suddenly being attacked.  The creatures that did the attacking were horrid and ugly and we fled, but not before some of us, including Timmy, were taken, and some of us were hurt.  One of this group ahead saw the creatures retreating into some fissures in the cavern wall, just to the north."
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:23, Fri 01 June 2018.

Roak looks at the mushroom field suspiciously and asks Andrephina, "So...are there any mushrooms we want to avoid? We don't want to become all dreamy as we go chase the beings that took Timmy."

Albricht patted the nearly empty quarrel pouch and sighed.

"Slipper's probably in there then," he gestured with a flared nostril and subsequent nose twitch in the direction of the fissure. "C'mon then lads, let's go have a look."

The dwarf shuffled toward the indicated spot with his crossbow cocked... just in case the slipper monster might decide to defend its prize.

Sherborne follows Albricht as extra cover to see what is what.

"The dream mushrooms are small and purple.  You should know this." comes the woman's reply.

Albricht moves forward through the tangle of fungi and lichens, soon seeing the marks of a scuffle, and the fairly obvious tracks of several large-ish beings.  The tracks come from the fissures in the north wall, then there is the scuffle, then something small is dragged, and the tracks continue back into the fissures.

Voran moves up behind Albricht. "Albricht! What do you see?" he says quietly.

“Let’s look on the bright side,” Elboc mutters.  “The sooner we rescue dear Timothy, the sooner we can roast him and eat him ourselves.”

As they moved through the undergrowth of lichens and fungi Vsaati let a dagger drop into one hand.  She was nervous although she couldn't say why, other than a vague uncertainty of what they were up against.  But she crept along nonetheless, wary eyes darting this way and that until she stood near Albright and Voran.  She stared into the fissure as she awaited the dwarf's response.

The old dwarf shuffled back a few paces to report. "Well..." Albricht scratched at his sun-bleached whiskers as he interpreted the situation and the evidence left behind. "I surmise this might be something more than a lost slipper after all..."

He gestured with his crossbow in the direction of the fissures. "There's a few of'em, and they might be fairly big. The question is, do we go in after'em or do we try to draw them out?"

After a bit more thought. "I'd say we go in after them. We'd best do it quietly though, and watch out for traps or sentries..."

OOC: Albricht will use his dwarvenly super powers to discern anything unusual about the fissures as they enter in...