Ricka puts together her best disguise (please describe it) and heads to the Wynn Gambling Hall.  This is not on her message route, being too close to her old stomping grounds.  When she was part of Vinefinger's gang it was not in his territory, but his territory expanded in the past year to include it, and now he operates openly from its offices.

She enters through the front door and immediately feels the excitement.  Intellectually she knows that much of it is artificial, just manufactured by the operators of the games, but she can feel it anyway.  "Jackpot!  Big winner!" she hears a dealer announce at one of the smaller tables that only seat 4 players.  Many people in the room applaud.

Making her way to the kitchen, she is quickly directed to Aresh Comocker.  The woman is tall, taller even than Bishop Seever, the architect of the prank that led to Ricka having an eagle for a pet.  Unlike the Bishop, who is thin as a rail, Aresh has plenty of heft on her bones, though it seems quite a bit firmer than Markos the Fat.

Ricka introduces herself (What's your cover name?), and says (as she had been instructed), "Alexander sent me.  He said you could give me a job."

The woman winks at Ricka and taps a pocket on her hip.  "Ahh, yes, Alexander.  I'll be putting ye to work righ' away, then.  Do ye have a place to stay, lass?  If ye dono', then you can sleep in the downstairs.  There are a few pallets down ther and a few of the kitchen help stay most nights, some alla time.  Can ye cook, lass?"

There elapses a moment in which "Zoë" contemplates giving her intuitive response, "I can learn to cook!"  But she catches herself before making that gaffe: if she said she wanted to learn to cook, then Aresh might be tempted to actually try to, you know, teach her to cook.  Which wouldn't be grotesquely horrible on its own merit, of course; cooking seemed like a fine skill for someone to have.  But the teaching of it would probably take up more time than would be convenient, for someone who was only here under totally false pretenses anyways.  And so she speaks against her normal intellectually inquisitive instinct: "I have no idea about cooking, sorry."

Her Zoë disguise comprises two major elements: her hair dyed medium-brown and short-cropped in a completely divergent style from how Ricka had kept her fiery shoulder-length auburn locks when Vinefinger knew her; and a pair of plain-looking brown leather commoner's boots, that actually conceal platforms adding almost four inches to her height.  Alarmingly, lately she seemed to be "growing up" in the same obvious ways and at the same rate as other fourteen-year-old girls, without managing to accomplish much actual growing "up": at an age when most girls were outracing the boys in height, Ricka had only put on maybe an inch or three in her years as a courier, leaving her at just barely five feet in altitude, with no sign that any further inches were impending.  Her fake-tall-girl boots in fact only elevated her to something resembling average height.  The boots and the hair, along with a routine wardrobe change to a scullery girl's expected clothes, should serve as adequate misdirection for the moment.

(I edited Whyneks' final advice to you in the other thread, because what I had before was terrible and totally out of character.)

Map of Wynn Gambling Hall

I found this map, which is just about the size and layout I was thinking of.  Of course, there are no cameras; about 1/3 of those are permanently stationed security people.

The office is split into two smaller offices.

The sports bar is just a bar where patrons can get food and drinks.

The area with two rows of what I assume are slot machines is instead a single row of poker tables.

The right door from the kitchen to the back hallway is not there, but instead there are stairs down to the basement.  The basement has 4 storage rooms, 2 dormitories (male and female), and 1 two-hole privy.  It reeks, in spite of the hole going down out of sight. 

"Ahh, no cooking then.  Jus' as well, I wouldna want to be countin' on ye when you suddenly 'get lazy' and have to 'disappear' for a bit.  Not that ye won't fit in jus' foin with the lazy bit."  She calls to a boy working at a basin at the west end of the kitchen, "Frooden, bring yer lazy butt o'er here.  This is Zoë.  You show her th' ropes."

Frooden is only a little taller than Ricka's adjusted height, with dark skin and a crooked smile.  As he speaks, Ricka realizes that he has a scar on the left side of his face, and the whole left side seems not to move on its own.  "Okay, then.  We might as well get some more water, you'll be doing plenty of that."  He dumps out his basin into a hole in the floor, then puts it back up on the block it sits on.  "That goes into the same hole as the privy downstairs.  Nobody knows how deep it is."

Frooden hands Ricka two buckets and takes two himself before leading her out the back of the kitchen and through the back hall to the exit in the northwest corner of the building.  A guard stands there and he introduces her.  The guard takes the bar off the door, unlatches it, and they go out into an alley smelling of rotten garbage, urine, dung, rats, and something even worse that Ricka can't identify.  Just a few paces away is a well, and the lad attaches each bucket to the hook and lowers it until it splashes.  They head back to the door, which opens after a few thumps.

After delivering the water, Frooden leads Ricka the length of the back hall, pointing out each room.  Then they go down to the basement where he identifies the two dormitories, the storerooms, and the privy.  "You might want to take a rest, now.  It'll get pretty busy in the evening, but you have at least three hours before anybody cares what you're up to.  Just stay away from the money rooms and the offices, and don't bother the security too much, and you'll get along fine."
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:33, Wed 18 Jan 2023.

Ricka is as polite to Aresh as she imagines a real scullery maid might be; which is to say, polite enough to seem genuinely thankful for the job, though maybe just a bit resentful that scullery maid is the best she can get.  She follows and observes Frooden, making diligent mental notes of all of his warnings and instructions.  "What hours am I expected to be on the job?"

She'll spend her three free hours quietly exploring the place on her own, not venturing into any of the forbidden rooms but certainly passing by the doors, glancing casually within if any of them should chance to be open when she passes by.  She'll make sure to give the basement its share of inspection too - she'd be shocked if there wasn't at least one secret passage out of this place, and the lower level would likely be the place to find it.

Frooden shrugs, "Depends when it gets busy, but you should have two hours, at least, and more likely three."  He leaves a candle with her and heads back up the stairs, clearly with some business of his own he wants to get to.

Ricka takes a moment to plan, then starts to head up after him.  She reaches the top of the stairs and has her hand on the door when she hears a voice that has haunted her nightmares.  Peeking through the smallest crack, she sees Vinefinger talking with Aresh, "At first dark, I want a quality meal for 6 -- the best we have.  We'll use the Master Room.  Make sure it's empty.  Make sure the bar is stocked.  Make sure Alenzo is behind the bar.  No mistakes, I need this to go right."  Her former boss looks shorter than she remembers, and his face looks more drawn.  He heads out of the kitchen into the main gambling area.

With Vinefinger on the move, Ricka decides that there's no need to risk testing her disguise so soon.  She returns to the basement to search that area first.  Immediately she notices a hallway to nowhere, just off the path to the privy.  It seems laughable that someone dug out a passage that goes to nothing, and she finds the obvious secret door at the end of it.  It might have been pretty well hidden if she hadn't known it was there.

Beyond the door the passage is narrow, barely two feet across, and low-ceilinged.  She can stand upright, but only barely.  Moving forward quietly, the passage opens into a small room, just 5x5, with a ladder heading up to a trap door above.  If she didn't get herself turned around, this must be close to the western edge of the building, or maybe even beyond it.  It's hard to tell.

Ricka decides that there is probably a better time to shove open a trap door, perhaps when she is more confident that there won't be someone above.  Turning to head back, she notices some scratches on the floor near the north wall of this little room making a tiny part of an arc.  Remembering the advice she got from Markos the Fat back at the beginning of her adventure, she gets down on her knees and tries to find some grip to tug on the bottom portion of wall.  She finds that a small panel pushes up and in, revealing a keyhole.

18:49, Today: Secret Roll: Zag, on behalf of Ricka Bellsmith, rolled 21 using 1d20+8.  Perception for secret doors.
18:48, Today: Secret Roll: Zag, on behalf of Ricka Bellsmith, rolled 26 using 1d20+8.  Perception for secret doors.
These were secret rolls because I wouldn't tell you about them if you failed.  You succeeded on *these* two.  :-)

How long is it until first dark tonight?

Pfff, keys.  Keys are for chumps.  Ricka slips her tools out of her sleeve and....   -almost- goes to work on the hidden lock, before deciding to give it a nice thorough inspection, making sure she's not about to trip any alarms or get her fingers sliced by some hidden blade or whatever.  -Then- she goes to work on the lock, keeping an ear out for anyone approaching.

19:34, Today: Ricka Bellsmith rolled 22 using 1d20+14.  Disable Device, pick the lock.
19:33, Today: Ricka Bellsmith rolled 22 using 1d20+11.  Perception, check the lock for traps.
19:33, Today: Ricka Bellsmith rolled 25 using 1d20+10.  Perception, listen for people.

As Ricka considers the lock, she notices two things.  First, there is a wire going up from the locking mechanism up out of sight.  It doesn't seem connected to a trap; there is no place from which a needle or blade could emerge.  There is no way to unlock the door without pulling on the wire, because it is attached to the actual bolt that slides back.

(I'm assuming you choose not to go ahead with picking the lock, but we'll save that roll for your first attempt at this lock when you do choose to do so.)

This revelation puts her on high alert, perhaps enhancing her other senses.  She realizes that she can hear the very faint murmur of a voice, maybe multiple voices, coming from above the trap door.  They are much too muffled to understand, only to tell that she hears a male voice, speaking normally.  While she had naturally blocked the candle light with her head as she peeked into the lock mechanism, she makes more of an effort to ensure the light can not directly reach the trap door.

Hmm.  Complications.  Of course there would have to be complications.

Ricka leaves the lock unmolested for the moment, walks the candle a few steps back down the narrow passageway and deposits it on the floor, letting it cast its flickers uselessly against the walls, then she'll move slowly back into the little room, letting her eyes adjust to the near-darkness, and climb softly up the ladder to listen curiously at the conversation proceeding above the trap door.  Not touching it, just listening.

It is still too muffled to make out any actual words.  There does seem to be two different voices, both male.  The one doing the bulk of the talking is speaking more loudly.  The other is softer, and only a few syllables, probably just "Yes, sir," or something similar.  In just a minute of listening, the voices stop.

Pondering back to the layout of the floor above her, does she suspect she might be listening in on the Master Room (#7) that Vinefinger is planning on entertaining some important guests in tonight?  Maybe one of the managerial offices (#8)?

In any case, with nothing left to (fail to) listen in on, and no immediate motive to press her luck with whatever the wire-sprung lock might open, she'll climb back down, reclaim her candle, and train her ears on the passageway outside the secret door before she emerges to resume her casual perusal of the basement level.

It's about 5 hours to dark.  In other words, the place starts getting busy about 2 hours before sunset.

Ricka doesn't really have a good idea of what she might be under.  Her mental map of the upstairs is still being formed, and it is hard to tell how far she travelled in the dark narrow passage.  It felt as though she should be well outside the walls of the building, but she knows that the distance is probably deceptive.  Mincing along in a dark passage is going to seem to be a lot further than traveling the same distance in a wide, well-lit hallway.

She looks into the other rooms in the basement.  Poking her head into the male dormitory, she hears at least two people snoring, and she is surprised by the reek of body odor and testosterone.  Have they not heard of soap?  The female dormitory is not a lot better, though it is less crowded with sleeping pallets and seems empty of people at the moment.  She wonders just how safe it is down here.  If a couple of the male employees were to attack her, what could she do?  She decides to avoid drawing attention to herself.

The store rooms have potatoes, onions, strings of garlic, dried fruit, jars of picked things:  All the sorts of items one would expect below a working kitchen.  She looks for but does not find any more secret doors.  One of the store rooms is locked.

00:47, Today: Zag, on behalf of Ricka Bellsmith, rolled 15 using 1d20+4.  survival underground
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:03, Sat 21 Jan 2023.

Is the store room locked with a nice lock, that would hint at sensitive or valuable things being inside?  Or just a routine sort of lock that, like, the guy in charge of the bar would use to keep the janitors out of the booze or whatever?

Ricka wants to try to get a clearer picture of where that trap door emerges up on the ground level: if she can spy in on Vinefinger's meeting tonight then her whole job here might be about to get a lot easier.  She'll take a good few minutes to familiarize herself with the secret passage, traveling its length a few times to try to ascertain a good estimate of its actual dimensions, not just how long it feels like it takes to traverse it in the cramped darkness.  Armed (hopefully) with a clearer understanding of the basement level's layout, she'll then proceed up to the main floor again, and try to retrace her path, or at least to visualize where it would lead: she won't actually venture into the restricted areas, but she'll glance through doorways as they're opened by other people passing though.

Also of course she's trying to not look like she's casing the joint for illicit purposes.  She'll put on an air of just casually browsing around the game room and bar area, looking for all the world like she's just familiarizing herself with her new place of employment before rush hour and her job duties call her away.  Which is...  almost half-true, actually, and in any case is what she'll claim to be doing if anyone asks.

The lock on the storeroom is only a little above average, and is almost certainly just where the booze is kept.  It is not formidable enough for significant valuables, DC17.  In general, I'm not going to roll lock-picking for you because of the prevalence of traps.  I need you to so say that you're going to pick a lock.  As you did before, if there a trap and you spot it, I'll assume you do not go ahead.  However, I don't want to do the roll for you, have you miss the trap, and spring it, all as part of your first knowledge that the lock was there.

The rooms in the basement stretch under the restaurant seating area and the roulette tables, but it's not like it was one straight hallway with nice 90 degree angles everywhere.  It's somewhat walled up, but somewhat dirt, and the passage turns around the storerooms, maybe at a right angle, maybe a little off.

The secret passage went off to the west.  The moderately successful survival roll in my previous note is what got you the realization that your initial estimate was probably way off because of the dark, narrow corridor, and already assumed that you walked the distance again, trying to compensate.  You'll have to try something significantly different to get more  information.  Your best guess puts the trap door maybe in the offices, maybe in room 7, and maybe beyond the walls perhaps in another building across the side alley.

Trying to pace it off accurately will definitely look like you are casing the joint.  Just casually walking around, you have to tell me where you are headed because you'll likely get interrupted.