It is late in the evening in the Kron compound, set high up in the western face of an unnamed peak in the Hellas Mountains which form the border between Thessaly and Macedonia.  The compound looks directly into the setting sun, initially blinding those who are trying to see the source of the sound coming up the southern road.

Urvon's father, after shielding his eyes and letting them adjust, mouths an epithet.  "The Purifiers," he says with resignation.  "We can't run again; we make a stand here.  Urvan, you need  to hide.  Downstairs, now."  The command in his voice is not to be resisted.  "There's a hidden door behind the casks.  You'll have to find it, because I've got to get ready.  Stay there, stay quiet.  Do not come out."

He pushes Urvan into the basement.  The boy suddenly finds himself in complete darkness.  Usually there's a torch on the wall of the stairway, but either it is missing or it has gone out.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:48, Fri 25 Feb 2022.

Urvan saw his home through the eyes of a child who had known nothing else. He never gave a thought to the fact that their nearest neighbors were a half days walk away, or that they were sometimes snowed in for weeks at a time in the darker months.

He took it for granted that the soil was thin and rocky, and that he was expected to pick cabbages and beets in the pre-dawn hours with frozen fingers before the worst of the weather set upon them in the fall.

For all of this he was very happy, happy in his freedom, in the little bitterly cold snowmelt creeks and the flowering meadows in the spring and the towering pines.

His parents, his father especially, often groused about safety and caution when it appeared to Urvan that there was very little to worry about at all aside from the wolves and the odd bear that could be sometimes seen at a distance, or who came sniffing around in the thin season.

What's more, to the boy his father seemed incredibly imposing with his hulking frame and steely gaze. He had moved the massive granite blocks for their home into place by himself with only the aid of an iron bar.

Even his mother was a formidable woman, not beautiful no, but the sort of woman who butchered with a steady hand and who never complained about her lot or match.

Who would bother them? Why?

This irresistible strength is employed now to shove young Urvan down, down the staircase and into the dark where it smelled of soil and pickled vegetables and damp wood.

Fear creeps into the boys mind, not of the dark or the basement, but of the unknown. What could worry his father so? Did they really have a hidden door? A door he had never seen in all of his exploring? Why? What had his father meant?

He lingers longer than he should, there on the landing as his eyes adjust to the dark, and then feels the wall as he makes his way down, navigating the cluttered space with its tools and shelves and preserves, he makes his way back, back to where the casks were stored.

Cooking oil, vinegar, honey in the small ones, ale and tart apple wine in the larger ones.  He gropes in the dark, cold rough stone, mortar, timbers.

As the minutes pass he begins to wonder if there was anything there at all, or if it had been some trick or diversion on the part of his father. But as he steps forward his toe collides with a stout beam lying horizontally at the base of the wall, and it moves, very slightly given the great weight of the damp wood, but it does move.

He tries pushing and it wiggles just a little, and with effort he inserts the tips of his fingers along the sides, deep enough to hurt a little before he manages to pull the beam out, revealing a small, very low space that could just barely accommodate a few adults if they were creeping along on their stomachs.

At first he is hesitant, breathing there in the dark, his heartbeat in his ears, but his obedience to his father proves stronger than his imagination, and he gets down, crawls inside with little flopping movements, and feels a wrought iron handle bolted into the beam from the inside as he sequesters himself in the nook. A handle that makes it easy enough to pull the great weight closed behind him.

The scent of soil is strong now and the cold radiants from the stone overhead, he lays his head down and he waits, imagining spiders and centipedes and worse as the minutes go by, wondering how long he will have to remain here.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:18, Sat 26 Feb 2022.

Urvon thought it was dark in the basement, where he could barely make out a slightly different level of darkness where the dark, fire-hardened oak casks were against the slightly less darkness of the wall.  However, after crawling into the space and pulling the door shut, he realizes a level of darkness that he had only before imagined.  The snick of the latch sounds like thunder in his ears, and he imagines he hears the crunching of centipedes -- the large ones that only live in complete blackness.

Feeling around for a good place to sit, the lad can feel a small chest or coffer.  It is perhaps two feet across by a foot and a half tall and deep.  After undoing the clasp and opening the lid, he reaches in to feel something cold and hard.  It is a metal statue surrounded by densely packed straw.  He tries to lift it out of the chest, but he can't stand up straight enough to get any leverage, and it is too heavy.

Make a perception roll of 12 and I'll tell you what it is.