Immersive Ink

"Surely our friends have passed this way, leaving their calling card, as it were," Leudigar mutters quietly as he steps over the goblin corpse and enters the elongated chamber, looking for signs of danger and exits (in that order).

Dopey, unaware that the ranger might be better suited to the task and that dungeons often have an uncanny way of cleaning themselves, keeps his head down and tries to find a trail of blood, mud, or footprints that might indicate where the other half of the party has headed.

Leudigar and Dopey lead the way into a deep chamber...

There are two torches guttering low, just inside the archway-entrance, illuminating a cramped array of dismal bunks, hacked three high into the walls. The chamber runs back farther than the eye can clearly see into darkness, with bunks in all the wall-space beyond counting like so many vertical graves. They are apparently unoccupied right now, but how many Goblins could bunk here?

The floor space between the walls is littered by a shambles of crude furniture; filthy armchairs, rough benches, a dis-array of wooden stools knocked about, and a crude wardrobe or foot locker here or there along the room.

There's not enough dust on the rock floor, or the grubby rugs and skins strewn haphazardly across it to find any foot prints, but the furniture is knocked over as though a herd of cattle stampeded right down the length of the place...

Turn 11

First move: entering this room, surveying it, and searching for tracks...
Second move?

Freid says dryly, "Looks like our folks came through here."

Leudigar takes a moment to sift through the contents of the footlockers. Is there anything of value in them? Does it look like they've already been sorted through by someone else?

If nothing is turned up, he continues on, hoping to find an exit at the end of the room.

"How far did those daft fools go? Hopefully they've left a trail like this for us to follow..."

Dopey starts counting bunks, then slowly goes wide eyed and as the potential number of goblins begins to sink in.

"L-let's g-go f-f-find the others" he manages to squeak out, at a higher, move wavering, pitch than he had intended.

Zem follows along Axe and Shield ready.... "These halls stink of goblins be ready friends".

The long barrack proves to be some 100ft or so deep. Leudigar checks a couple of lockers and wardrobes for valuables, but there are scant items to be found; they've been thoroughly stripped of virtually all content bar an occasional shirt or boot or hose which would only be fit for a goblin to wear.

The bunks continue all the way to the end of the hall, where there are three exits; ahead, left, or right. There is no sign that particularly recommends one exit over another...

What now?

Leudigar shrugs, "Forward seems as good a path as any."

He trudges on straight, hoping to spot some sign of his companions' passage soon.

Dopey produces a small wad of cloth from the pouch at his belt, and unwraps it to reveal a lump of chalk. He ponders for a moment who might understand the obscure art of inscription, then approaches Faengol and Kianna (the elfs would surely know how to write, decided Dopey).

The hobbet inquires "Would you be willing to write something for me? In the event that our lost companions have chosen to proceed down a different corridor, I would like to offer them a means of discerning our whereabouts, should they retrace their steps to this chamber. I do not simply mark a large X over the passage we chose, as this would reveal our whereabouts to pursuant goblins. Therefore, I have decided that the simplest way of telling them which way we went is to write 'Dopey went this way" over the central passage, 'Mopey went this way" over the left passage, and 'Pokey went this way' over the right branch. I would do this myself, except that I...... am not very tall and would not want the larger men to overlook the message should they pass by." (he lied, slightly embarrassed to admit he could not read or write. Although he knew that not many people could, Dopey had long thought that a hobbet of his respectable birth should have acquired the skill, yet it had never much mattered back in Wichtboden to warrant the expenditure of effort, when he could instead be eating brunch with the neighbors or tending his vineyard and garden).

Yikes, that turned out to be a much larger post than I had expected.