"Great weather. Well, no time like the present."

Zeig helps pack up and readies himself to explore the village.

13:05, Today: DAI rolled 4 using 1d20+1. survival.
Meh, could be done untrained but I failed

DAI follows suit, ready to move onward and past the halflings.

16:23, Today: SILI rolled 11 using 1d20+3 with rolls of 8. Survival.

DAI and SILI inspect the clouds, and they definitely indicate some kind of precipitation.

Making your way onto the main avenue through town, you can see a line of buildings with signs hanging on either side. For all that you may have heard about the dark elves, their town appears fairly close in nature to any human settlement.

Due to the cloud cover and the awning and thick, brown plants growing over the street for most of the length of it, it's fairly hard to see. Some of the doors are open, and looking a bit closer and longer, you're pretty sure that they've simply been ripped off of their frames and thrown in the street.

You enter carefully, keeping your eyes peeled. SILI squints and reads off some of the signs to you as you walk by.

You find the equivelent to an alchemist's shop. There's a sign on the ground next to another building with a closed door that looks to be a black and red mage scroll scribe, and what might pass for a drow clinic. There's another few large buildings that have no signs but look to have been some kind of business.

Do you guys make any light sources?

DAI will use Illuminate, limited to 3 times if possible. Takes his time(20) searching the alchemist's shop or scroll scribe, unless ZEIG handles one.

It's not 7PM on Windsday anymore, I'm pretty sure. Isn't it early morning Iceday? I wouldn't make any light sources unless the clouds were really starting to darken things up.

GM Edit-
Thank you for reminding me. I updated the day in the party status thread but forgot to do it in the subject line here. Fixed.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:17, Thu 08 Mar 2012.

Most of the areas down the main avenue and in around 2/3 of the other streets and alleyways have dim illumination (you know, 20% miss chance and you are able to hide). The insides of all of the buildings are definitely completely unlit apart from what shines in through the door or possibly windows, though these buildings have few windows, and those are usually shuttered.

When(if) they search the houses, DAI will cast illuminate on something to aide in allowing them to see(as I stated earlier, not sure if you missed that).

"Well, if we're going to begin I say that's a good of a place as any to start. Maybe we'll find something useful, if not what we intended."

Zeig points over towards the supposed black/red magic shop.

After entering, Zeig will cast illuminate on his staff.

DAI follows, ready to fight, aid in search, or take a 20 searching himself.

Both DAI and ZEIG enter the scroll scribe and cast Illuminate on some of their equipment. ZEIG, his staff, and DAI, his hat. SILI brings up the rear.

The first impression you get of the shop is that nobody's set foot inside of it for at months, if not longer. The front door was left open, but the one, large window in the front of the structure is shut with a bar hung on large hooks attached to the wall behind it to lock it.

There is a large counter with what used to be glass display cases, much like you'd expect in this type of business. Glass shards lay all over the floor and inside the cases. No scrolls can be seen laying in them any longer. The three of you gingerly approach the counter and peer over it. There appears to be a pile of papers and cloth inside of a large, toppled-over armoire that something had used to make into a nest. While none of you are experts in such matters, you'd all guess it looks as if it's abandoned. Survival or Knowledge (nature) (penalized).

There are three metal safes behind the counter, two small ones underneath it and one larger one built into it. The smaller ones look as if they've had their locks simply drilled out and sit open and empty. The larger one has its lock bent and marred, beyond use, and remains closed.

There is a back room that is as large as the first that has the remnants of a bed, several writing desks, and a few open and empty footlockers. There is also a trap door on the floor which is closed that presumably leads into a basement of some kind. All in all the structure is roughly 40'x55' with each room taking up equal-sized rectangles of the floor plan. There is no floor above the first.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:59, Thu 08 Mar 2012.

Not wasting much time, ZEIG and DAI rummage through the old animal nest. They find plenty of hair and old droppings. It is clear that much of the paper material making the nest are parchments or scrolls. Judging by the volume, many of them were probably blank, but remnants of writing persists on some of the fragments. There are enough pieces there to sadden both mages.

The writing desks in the back have some old inkwells with hard ink dried to the bottoms of them. It looks as if they'd been sitting there, open, for at least a couple of months. It's odd to leave an inkwell sitting open to the air, especially since the inks used to scribe magical scrolls can be somewhat expensive.

You find a box set of some exquisitely-decorated ink-pens inlaid with mithril and silver tucked in a false back of a drawer. SILI and DAI converse about what they might be worth while ZEIG continues to look through the other desks. They wager each pen, of which there are five, is worth at least 50 gold. The set together might fetch more, especially back in Cornelia where drow craftsmanship is a very collectable thing.
22:49, Today: teslas, on behalf of DAI, rolled 13 using 1d20+4.
22:49, Today: teslas, on behalf of SILI, rolled 16 using 1d20+6. appraise.
The five pens and their carved wooden box weighs 3 lbs.

ZEIG's heart soars for a moment as he finds a scroll with a black ribbon tied around it. Opening it up, he finds instructions on how to properly tie a ribbon around a scroll.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:58, Thu 08 Mar 2012.

Sili eyes the safe, but realizes that there's no way for him to open it up.

"All right. What's in the basement?"
This message was last edited by the player at 05:22, Thu 08 Mar 2012.

"I'm right behind you, definitely worth a look. I wonder where they all ran off to."

Zeig heads over to check out the basement with Sili after placing the pens in his handy haversack.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:35, Thu 08 Mar 2012.

SILI reaches down and pulls on the trap door. It rises about three inches before the party hears a *TWANKG* and a snapping noise from down below, then the sound of metal plinking off of stone.

Standing motionless and breathless, nothing happens for a few moments. Pulling on the trap door again reveals that something's keeping it closed. It sounds like a chain is rattling. There is, of course, no light coming from the basement that you can see while the door is open for the few inches it will.

Sili carefully searches for a switch, or key, around the trapdoor.

Taking 10 if possible, 17 for each 5 by 5 square. Otherwise will roll.

You can take a 10, and it's pretty easy to tell that the handle on the bottom of the trap door is chained to something. If you lay your head on the ground and stare in you can see the chain and the handle it's attached to.

Zeig looks around for something metal he can use to pry the door with, hoping to break the chain or splinter the wood around the hinges.

"Maybe we can pry it up with something?"

Sili looks to the other 2. "Can you break the chain with magic?"

"Not me, I make stuff better. What about you, Dai? Wanna take a shot at it?"

The three large hinges of the trap door are solid iron with several bolts placed into the wooden floor. If you had some time and the correct tools, it would be little issue to remove them.

There's the writing desk legs that you could probably break off comparatively easy to anything else, though they don't seem as thick and sturdy as the trap door and its frame, and surely not the chain itself.

The door is only wood, albeit sturdy as hell. Like all barriers in D&D, you can just muscle through it (discounting things that require a Disintegrate or Dispel Magic >_>). Sadly, the party is short on the muscly types at the moment. DAI could probably aim and hit the chain with one of his spells without issue through the small gap.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:04, Thu 08 Mar 2012.

DAI takes a full round to line up his shot, then fires a magical stone at the chain, the first blast does little more then scuff it, but the second larger chunk makes quick work of the spot he had been aiming at.

23:17, Today: DAI rolled 24 using 2d10+8. fuck you rpol.
23:17, Today: DAI rolled 12 using 2d10+8. Stone damage vs Chain.
23:18, Today: DAI rolled 5,18 using d20,d20. only a 1 could miss.

DAI's spells rattle the chain around intensely. After they settle, he can see that he's managed to bend one of the links a bit.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:05, Thu 08 Mar 2012.

Sili looks at the bent link. "I don't think this is going to work."

"Yea, I suppose not. What about that house that had the door ripped off? Just looking for clues now, we could always head towards the keep after finishing here."