Abigail looks at the inside of the door to their prison, hoping for a way to bolt or bar it from the inside. She isn’t surprised to find no such mechanism.

I don't believe we can think of this room as any sort of refuge. If we're going to escape we better get started finding a way out of this place, whatever or wherever it is.

You say there’s a room with machinery, Lauren? Well, if there’s machines there are probably tools and I need some tools to get out of these leg irons, so let’s go. Will you pray with me first? Not waiting for a reply, she bows her head. Oh, Jesus, our Redeemer, we ask you to help us escape this vile place and find our way safely home. Amen.

She picks up the iron manacles that had bound her wrists, swinging them to judge their potential as a weapon. She also gathers the rope that had bound Lauren’s hands and ties it around her waist.

How long is that rope and how thick?

The rope is thin, aged hemp, crudely shorn at one end and beginning to unwind. It's just under six feet long and about an eighth of an inch in diameter.

The manacles are poorly balanced, allowing you to brawl with them but offering no bonuses.

In reply to Twist (msg # 23):

Abigail knots the fraying end to stop it unraveling further.

"I don't think I'd like to go where the muddy footprints go. There's a room with some furniture across the hallway. That's where I'm going. Watch on the right side and tell me if anything seems wrong !". She leaves the room as quietly as possible, looking anxiously left and right.

Yua couldn't really join Abigail in her prayer. Religious fervor isn't something she really was a fan off, or the historic contexts of conflicts motivated by it. "Nice find Abigail, let's make sure Lauren doesn't get caught" Yua closed the door behind Lauren just enough, so the hallway ahead is visible. Staring down the hallway, Yua was laser focused on any sound or sight of an arrival.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:30, Tue 05 July 2022.

"No," says Abigail, "We all need to get out of here before we get trapped. Let's go with her." She grabs the handle and opens the door to follow after Lauren, shuffling along as quickly as she can.

Even though she didn't agree that three of them should all venture into the unknown, staying behind in a still unknown room seemed even scarier. "Ok, I am right behind you,"

On her way out, Yua closed the door as quietly as possible and positioned herself right at the doorway of the new one so she could observe what is happening in the hallway.

Other than the faint jingling of Abigail's chains, you cross the hall soundlessly and slide through the open doorway.

A dark room spreads before you, roughly similar in size to the one you just left. Its unclear if the room has always been a storeroom or if it once had a different purpose: regardless, you find it full to bursting with heavy wooden furniture. Dozens of tables and chairs are stacked across each other, in a variety of sizes. They are all surprisingly crude constructions, however. All lack sanding; many lean precariously, and often some of the woodwork is split. They don't give off an aristocratic aura at all.

Lauren immediately recognizes that the legs could be removed effortlessly from some of the worst-made chairs, able to serve as adequate, if small, clubs. The jumble of legs also create shadowy tunnels through the room--it would not be hard to hide here.

The room is lit by two large windows, which are flung open. They reveal a square inner courtyard, with the ground three stories below you. A peaked slate roof, perforated with turrets, runs along the top; you are on the highest floor. There are dozens of windows, though most are dark and closed. The rooms beyond are typically impossible to see; though in a room across the courtyard light burns behind a set of purple curtains. A very narrow ledge runs along the outside of the windows, only a few inches wide: it would be nearly impossible unaided, but in theory, someone could work their way along the ledge to any other windows on the floor.

Somewhere in the distance, a gong or bell rings out suddenly. It echoes off the mountainside, but is not repeated.

At the door, Yua hears something from down the hall, in the direction of the well-lit room. Heavy footsteps, growing louder.

"Someone is coming, hide girls." Yua whispers loud enough so everyone in the room hears her before hurriedly hiding underneath the furniture mess that has overtaken the room. Once it seems safe outside, she will come back out on her duties.

Lauren whispers to her companions, "The window, girls! If we help each other, we could hide on the parapet and get to the other rooms without those bastards noticing. I'm afraid if they find our cells empty they'll search the room we're in now. But maybe we should just hide under the tables right here? What do you think? We need to make a decision quickly!"

Abigail looks at the narrow ledge and the long drop. She shrugs.

"At least we'll be doing something. Go for it.

"Can I be second? I'm gonna need a hand to get up there."

She figures the chain won't hamper her much taking small side steps. She thrusts one end of the manacle through the rope around her waist.

"Back to the wall, right?"

“I will be right behind you Abigail.”, Yua agreed with the girls, waiting for her turn to climb out. “We need to hurry up though, those steps are louder and louder”

Climbing onto the narrow ledge is delicate, stressful work; and yet working together you're able to steadily position yourselves along the outside of the window.

The stone ledge is little more than a decorative cornice, and you can barely fit your entire foot across it. Backs pressed against the stone, however, you feel relatively stable. You glance down only for a moment; an overgrown courtyard yawns below. A bent tree occupies much of the center, though its highest branches are below you.

It's Lauren who first notices motion above you. Across the courtyard, the moonlight falls on a large, lumpy shape that you're sure wasn't there when you first looked out the window. You squint, trying to make out details, but it's not until a trunkline finger moves that you realize it looks like nothing less than a massive human hand, easily the size of a horse. An overwhelming sense of disgust flows through you as it gently pulls itself forwards along the slate tiles of the roof. There's no urgency to its motion, but it definitely, insanely, appears to be alive.

 Still struggling to safely position themselves on the ledge, the other girls don't seem to have yet noticed the...thing.

Lauren takes 4 sanity damage.

As Lauren pulls on her hand, Abigail gets to a standing position facing out of the window. With Yua gently holding her hips, she steps down onto the cornice and sidles to the side until she is cleap of the opening. Standing on the ledge between Lauren and Yua, pressing her back against the wall, she closes her eyes for a moment, taking several deep breaths. Triumphant to have made it yet terrified at the same time.

Once she had steadied herself against the castle wall next to the window she just escaped from, Yua tried to focus on the interior she left behind. Depending on the intensity of the noice of the footsteps and where she placed them in her mind, Yua will make her decision on what her next move will be. Those clubs could come in handy.

Lauren is stunned by her sight. But she must not show it to others. She can't. Not now. She tries to keep her voice confident: "Let's not hang around here, girls. Is everything okay with you?". Maybe a tremolo gives her away. Anyway, she slowly but surely continues to move towards the other window.

Lauren watches as the...hand(?) slowly drags itself out of sight, behind the apex of the roof. An uncontrollable tremor runs through her, but she manages to continue making progress. A mild but palpable wave of relief floods through her when she arrives at the open window and can wrap her fingers around the security of the windowsill.

The room inside is very dark, but appears to be some kind of workshop. Planks and nails are stacked on broad tables, and you can see the glint of metal from the various tools hanging on the wall. A number of half-finished chairs and tables of amateur quality are scattered about. An enormous black cabinet dominates one wall, and a single door leads out of the room.

If you continued along the wall, you could come to the lit window, instead.

Behind her, Yua tracks the heavy footsteps, though they are somewhat difficult to follow from outside. They grow louder and louder, and then cease entirely. You can't quite figure where, but it could very possibly be at the door to your former prison.

Try as you might, you can't hear the footsteps again.

"I think that we can proceed. From what I have heard the footsteps stopped abruptly, possibly in front of the room we were held in" Yua replied to Lauren, inching carefully towards her along the ledge , following her lead.

After a discreet look around the dark room, and if the coast is clear, Lauren will try to push open the window to enter. She turns to her new friends of misfortune, and while trying to smile: "Wish me luck..."

Hearing the tremor in Lauren’s voice, Abigail is glad she’s not alone in her nervousness—alright, fear— of the perilous passage along the narrow ledge above the courtyard far below.


God guide you and guard you, Lauren, she replies.

Lauren slides into the room, her dancer's grace coming in good handy. You enter a carpenter's workshop; initially, it appears precisely as it first appeared before. Only as your eyes adjust to the darkness do you start to notice the lumps and shapes that you hadn't before.

This workshop had once been a bedroom; indeed, one of the main worktables is little more than a flat panel of wood placed over a once-majestic mattress; the four posts of the canopy having been sawn off to create table legs. This room must be the source of the crude furniture from the room before; as there is much of it and it remains distinctly poor quality.

However, your eyes settle happily on a wide array of woodworking tools. Files, hammers, saws, rolls of sandpaper...there are no significant blades or cutting edges other than the woodsaws, but there is a wealth of ratchets and screws. You could fit your head into the vise on a nearby table; it looks powerful enough to crush metal.

There is only silence from the doorway, and no sign of life or motion within the room or without.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:53, Fri 15 July 2022.

Lauren sticks her head out the window, "Abigail, I think I found something to free you. Let me help you down." If Abigail agrees, she will then remove her denim jacket and place it over the chains to muffle the noise while she tries to break them.

Abigail gratefully goes in the window with Lauren's help and looks over the various tools.

Before we start bashing and raising a racket, let's just try breaking the lock. These things aren't really all that durable. I've watched my brothers do it when they lost the key.

Is there a vise? If not, a couple of sturdy screwdrivers or files can be inserted through the clasp and levered to pop the lock open. Failing that, we could try filing the chain though that will probably take a while..

Yua will follow the lead of the two girls, and once she sees Abigail look through the tools to open the padlock which restricted her, Yua handed her the hairpin she used earlier. "Maybe you will have more luck than me". Whether Abigail accepts or not the offering is completely up to her, once the conversation comes to an end, Yua would grab a hammer to use as a weapon in case  the need arises.

Abigail takes the proffered hairpin from Yua.

I've never tried to pick a lock before but I'll give it a try. Thank you.

Inserting the implement into the lock, she tries manipulating it, not sure at all what she's doing.

Abigail rolled 79 using 1d100,  picking lock. Please apply this properly, GM.