Elodia

[kevintheradioguy]

It was a shame neither Alson nor Uguay found any signs of life as they walked. Some idle observer might have found their duo to be hilariously looking: so unusual to see a bugbear and a gnome... and one not eating the other. Be it as it may, the smaller fellow, darting glances around, managed to notice old... no, ancient cobwebs covering the parts of the ceiling, and the unmistakable crunching of tiny bones and withered shells under the bugbear's boots, as he stepped on dried out carcasses of frogs and snails, making his already loud steps echo with shivering cracks, not unlike small thunders, accidentally hitting and setting rolling something that looked like an old metal torch holder, that emitted a disgusting scratching sound as it scratched the stone surface. It was odd - not the steps the large creature took, but the carcasses. Mummified, but not eaten. It looked like even flies and flesh worms fled the area, but for what reason? There was no answer to this thus far. Perhaps an abberation lived here, or a vampire roamed the underground halls, or dark magic pushed simple creatures out instinctevely?

The narrow passageway continued, and soon, water puddles became deeper and deeper, almost turning into a small stream under the two scouts' feet. Maybe a hundred feet ahead of the rest of the grouo, crossroads were found - or as close as you can get in a narrow, claustrophobic corridor. The left one was completely blocked by rocks and rubble, many strings of water snaking down from it, intertwining and crossing, forming a stream the two noticed. Stones looked cold and lifeless, silver speckles shining from reflecting light far behind the two. The right one led further away, peppered with smaller rocks, fallen cement, and old leathery rags. It was more or less straight, and turned corner just on the edge of their sight, hiding what was further on, while the sound of dripping water seemed to be the only thing in the rocky tunnels.

 

[russetrues]

The cobwebs Alston spotted looked... odd. The gnome's face scrunched as he spotted the mummified like carcasses. "What could've done this?" he murmured, tone wavering between awe and revulsion, struck by how the carcasses weren't eaten. It seemed almost respectful, in a twisted manner; the remains of dead creatures, preserved for viewers in a different lifetime. Of course, whatever or whomever mummified these critters might have very well been the same thing - or person - who killed them in the first place.

Squeezing past the bugbear, not glancing behind to see if the rest of the party was catching up or not as he was busy trying not to trip or step on the miniature bones, Alston made his way and stood in front of the left corridor, the one blocked by rubble. Narrowing his eyes, he knocked on the stone, studying the debris. Perhaps it'd be possible for us to try to move this? Maybe Sir Bearington would be strong enough, or we could come up with something else? he thought as he continued to examine the blocked passage. "I wonder..." he mumbled to himself, leaving the sentence hanging as he took a slight step backwards to better study the makeshift wall in front of him.

 

[kevintheradioguy]

The knock was dull, almost inaudible, as tiny fingers met with the cold stone. With enough force, of course, the rubble could've been moved, as any rubble indeed. It raised a few questions though. Were would it go in enclosed space? How far it does? Is there anything behind it? Would the ceiling hold from falling down? How much water it holds back?

 

[russetrues]

Taking a step closer, he pressed his palm onto a section of the rubble, in an gesture not unalike to a caress. His fingers traced the different lines of the wall, from deep grooves to sharp points jutting out, as his mind focused on trying to figure out whether it would be safe to try to destroy the wreckage. The mass of the rubble and the water rivulets in the stone ground showed a problem. First, how much water was behind on the other side - and would it come crashing onto them, a stampeding herd of droplets, or merely pass, splitting around their feet? The rubble in itself posed more questions, too. Should they try to push against the rubble, causing it to cave inwards, or somehow get it to spill on the side they were on? Would the risk be too high?

Alston looked at the ceiling, eyes narrowed, as if he could somehow get it to talk and answer whether or not it would hold its own weight. Shaking his head at that image, he focused again at the part where the ceiling and rubble met, trying to discern if the roof was stable enough or not. "Hmm."

 

[kevintheradioguy]

It took a while of looking and paying attention to his surroundings to understand anything specific about the rubble. It was old. Very old. So old that water even traced itself snaking trails in the stones. Not to mention, that without real knowledge in the matters of building or mining, there was no way anyone would be absolutely right in their assumptions. And Alston lacked the knowledge in those areas. However, what he managed to notice were two things. One, it was the ceiling that collapsed. Probably under the weight of the wet, mucky ground as the escape route started collapsing into the crater. Two, if they wanted to dig, they'd need supports for the rest of the ceiling: there was a big chance that behind the rocks and stones there was wet, loose earth easy to dig and create a mine, or a cave, or a passageway to... well, wherever it may lead.

 

[Grimsvald]

Khoury slowly marched forward in the tunnel with her gaze still fixated on the ground before her foot fall. Etherial lace cascades over her face and stretches until it pulls at her eyebrows. A wedding vale of disguting cob web. She hates spiders.

Spiders have always reminded her of Tommy, her first love. He was a chipper boy with chestnut hair, caramel skin and sticky fingers. One day he stole from the wrong merciless lord and traded his life for a diamond. He was nailed into a box and left to die in a forest. When that box was finally crowbarded open by his brother Cid, it was filled with woodland spiders. Khoury gets a lump in her throat as her memory catches up to the moment she saw an eight legged beast peel back her boyfriends blue lips and crawl out into the dim lit forest.

The barbarian stiffles back her vomit and hate. Her free hand quickly shot up to peel away the web, but not before rage started to boil up inside her. Her mind quilted together the image of what creature did this. Then a charm hanging from the trim of her hood caught her eye. A finger bone with a T cut into its knuckle. The lord may have taken Tommy's life, but Khoury took the lord's ring finger and that precious dimond. It funded her first step out of the slums.

Suddenly something crunches beneath her boot. The familiar crunch of bone under heel. There within the webs lay corpses and dehydrated critters. It is a naturally occuring grotesqury growing up from the tunnel floor as commonly as mushrooms. It turns out that figrative stink of death had a very phisical source. The aromatics were no longer romanisized in her mind. They had become logical, anchored in reality and threatening.

With the weight of reality dropped onto Khoury shoulders, she loses focus and miss places a step. The barbarian stumbles over a lump of web and bones to nearly fall. At the pit of this dipping pose she locks eyes with something beyond the webs. ~Rebecca~ her mind whispers. Khoury's memories spark again. Rebecca was a childhood friend that helped her survive on the streets, a charming youg girl prone to begging.

Khoury remembered the last day she talked to Rebecca. They sat toe to toe in an old wooden create like best friends having a sleep over. They clammered on about all the things they would do if only they had a few coins, it helped keep their minds off the aches and pains of life. Rebecca kept saying how hungry and exhuasted she was, but the sentances she muttered in between didn't make much sence. Here eyes stopped focusing and from time to time she would move around like a rat caught in a trap. Her last words were, " They need to know what it is like to be us..." She sucumbed to starvation with a rotten sandwich in her hands.

Khoury followed her bestfriends frozen stare through the cracks in the wooden create to see an opera pre madana exiting her stage coche. She was draped with layers of fur, warm as summer in the dead of winter. The swollen hand of her fat husband helped her down out of the coche and his dull voice adored her. This was the day Khoury desided to change her fates and crawl out of the gitters.

Khoury was the wealthy woman now. Layed in stinky furs, robes dripping in bone jewlery, firmly grasping the bone hand of her father 'death' who helps her to her feet like a dame. ~Jergal will feel pride swell up inside him as we watches me fill my scrolls with names. Becca and Tommy, you will see the great change I make in the world.~ She thinks to steady her resolve and continue on.

 

[Xanthos]

Morigan tailed behind Khoury, getting ahead of Red. "Aren't you coming?" She asked the foxy gentleman. While also keeping her eyes fixated on the strong woman in front of her, and keeping pace with the barbarian. The smell of rot had gotten worse the deeper into the sewers. "This feels more like a catacomb that a sewer..." she peeped from her voice. plop plop plop. Her footsteps echoed from the small peddled she marched threw. Some water dripped from the ceiling, and landed on her head which she shook off and kept moving until she caught up with her bugbear friend, and the gnome. She pulled out her chess set from her bag, and placed a white pawn on the ground. "We can use this to help us trail our way back, just in case we get lost."

She looked her head both ways at the cross roads, seeing one of the ways being blocked she stepped 10 feet ahead of her group and examined the narrow hall, trying to judge how far back it goes before turning, as well as what lies ahead. (Rolled a 16 for the Perception Check)

 

[wytchitoby]

Red nodded, picking up his pace just a little. He still wasn't in any rush, but it'd be bothersome to have to catch up quickly in the event of them being in danger. As he caught up, he noted two of them were checking different corridors. Maybe there's a passage above I could squeeze into...? He thought, looking up above rather than at what was eye-level.

 

[kevintheradioguy]

As the group continued to explore the area around them, and silence devoured their figures alongside with thick darkness around, the rare shuffling of their soles boomed in the ears, so contrasting to the lack of sounds in this place. Red started blankly at the tall ceiling. The glow of the moss messed with his amber eyes which couldn't understand if it was dark or light around to adjust the vision, so all he saw was the flowing greys and blacks, and the lack of focus, like a gnomish lens being adjusted. It felt dizzy, to the point of him wanting to look away, but not to the point of him feeling nausea.

On the other hand, Morigan had better luck exploring her part of the crossroads. The relatively clean branching of the straight corridor, like one of the hands on a cross, turned just on the edge of her sight somewhere to the left, parallel to the main trail they followed thus far. She was right on one account: this didn't feel like a sewer. Because it wasn't a sewer. Neither it was a catacomb, of course, for the lack of burial sights, but they have not reached any sewers yet, and from how little territory they had covered, it would take some time to find it... if they will find it at all. Its existence, after all, was purely speculative, and no one knew if parts of it stayed in the old soil, or if all of it fell victim to erosion and magic blast of the past.

 

[russetrues]

Alston hadn't really been paying attention to what the rest of his companions were doing, busy as he was frowning at the blocked off corridor. "Well, I don't think we can go on through this one. Even if we'd somehow manage to push the rocks out of our way, the ceiling wouldn't hold. Only way would be to dig our way under it..." he trailed off, uncertain. "It would be a major undertaking; we'd need supports along the way to keep the ceiling from crashing down, and even then, we don't know what's waiting on the other side."

Pivoting around, he glanced at Morigan, curiously watching as the paladin examined the other corridor. "Better luck?" he asked, hoping it would be so. He doubted they would decide, as a group, to take the blocked path, but perhaps Morigan might've seen something dangerous, and he would feel safer double checking, even if the paladin would have shared her findings with the group at her own pace.

 

[Grimsvald]

Khoury didn't understand why any of them bothered to look at the caved in pathway, especially when there was an open and available path to continue on from here. The destroyed tunnel would be less secure at best and less traveled by those that came before them, if anyone had come before them. While others examined the collapse the barbarian would follow the paladin and progress into the available tunnel. She didn't care to linger. She had no plans to strain her mind on things unless they had immediate and abundant importance at their surface. Like many barbarians she often ignored information and let her instincts take hold in the most urgent moments.

Khoury's mind wondered onto the idea of those that may have come before them. As a priestess of a death god she had seen many burial grounds. Usually the dead are given respect and put away in some fashion. To find a catacomb with corpse and cobweb carpet was a little odd. Of course these corpses could have been displaced by the way the building is crumbling. Just as likely, these corpses were displaced by something else or someone else. More frightening to think, these corpses did not belong to the tomb. This was more mental labor than the scholarly brute was willing to do. It was best to leave these investigations to the witty members of the party.

"Do these corpses call this tomb home?....." She points her ax to the closest body, "Or are these web covered bodies our predecessors? These floors we trample may hold more knowledge than that busted wall..."

 

[russetrues]

Alston looked at the barbarian whilst she spoke, but remained quiet and didn't answer her question. He didn't believe the mummified corpses of the small mammals held much information as to what happened here. Even if they did, they gave him the chills, so he turned his attention back to the open pathway with one last glance at the floor.

"If no one objects, I think we should continue our journey once again. We've spent quite some time at this junction and I personally would feel better the sooner we're out of this place, meaning, the sooner we find the locket and start the return trip, the better. Plus," he mused, "these walls have held long enough and they may remain standing for many more years, but I wouldn't want to tempt fate. Lest the place comes crashes down, or we somehow meet the same fate as the remains on the ground." He squared his shoulders, hoping that his companions would agree to continue and not choose to take a rest - indifferent of whether it'd be more on the side of a long rest, or a brief break.