Immersive Ink

wish for a speedy recovery

Dame Simonetta leads the way southwest. The zig-zag corridor opens into a medium-sized rectangular room with a 20' ceiling. There is a "fishy" smell in the air, and the sound of screams from the south!

There are two exits from this room: to the north and south. The northern corridor turns 90 degrees (out of sight-line) and the southern tunnel is blocked by a large boulder. The muffled, incoherent screaming is coming from behind this boulder.

The room is clean (no spider webs) and sparsely furnished. The furniture is human-sized, too big for a hobbet. There is a bed, a cupboard, and a table with one chair. On the table is a basket full of dead cave-fish (the source of the smell).

It looks like somebody lives here! What do you do?

Noh whispers to Carc to take a quick looksee around the cavern and the north passage. But just a peek around the corner, not actually fly out of sight.

Carc gives a double "caw caw" (caution) and refuses to leave his master's shoulder. Is it Noh's imagination or does a tiny breeze ruffle the bird's feathers, just for a moment, like a ripple in the air?

The chair is pushed back rudely from the table. The pale fish are so freshly-caught they are still gasping for breath. It's like someone was just here!

The loud screams from the south add to the overall sense of tension. It would be hard to hear anyone sneaking up on you over the wordless shouts of "AAAAHHHH! AAAHHHH!! AAAAAHHHH!!!"

Kiplyn moves a little north with his back to the eastern wall. "Something is very wrong here". He looks closely at the room and the walls and ceiling trying to spot any traps or other things.

Kiplyn doesn't see any traps, secret doors, lurking spiders, etc.

One thing that's notable in its absence is any sign of lanterns, torches, candles, etc.. Whoever lives here must have doused their light source when they heard the party approaching. (Either that or they can see in the dark.)

If Kiplyn had to guess, he would say there is an angry caveman holding a fish filleting knife, just around the corner to the north.

"Hmm..." says Robur. "We hear horrible screaming off that way, and the north a hiding bear man waiting. Why not sneak up with all our hobbit guile, and attack the thing before it carves us?"

Dame Simonetta moves into the room and heads south to investigate the boulder (whether or not it looks moveable or has space around the edges to see through). She's confident that if a mad caveman with a knife charges out of the northern corridor, her fellow hobbits have got her back!

Dame Simonetta sees the boulder is too large for a hobbet to move. She thinks only a large, athletic human could have put it there. (18 str, man-size or larger) The best she could hope for, if she really put her back into it (bend bars check) would be to shift the boulder a few inches, enough for one of the party Burglars to slide through for a look-see.

One interesting detail is a thin, taut cord. The near end of this cord is attached to a spike in the wall. The other end passes through the gap between the wall and the boulder, into the unseen area behind the boulder. Dame Simonetta doesn't recognize the material, but the cord is thin and strong, like fishing line.

As to the shrieking noises themselves: There are multiple, overlapping voices. Dame Simonetta estimates a half-dozen screamers. There are no words, just raw cries of emotion. If the voices are coming from hobbets or other sentient creatures, then something is very wrong with them: perhaps they have been tortured senseless. "AAAAAHHHHH!!! AAAAAHHHHH!!! AAAAHHHH!!!!!!"

Dame Simonetta's imagination runs wild, what could be making these shrill, unnerving sounds? Her mind briefly flashes to a nest of baby dragons, calling for their mother to feed them. Whoever or whatever is screaming, the cries are welling up from a source of raw, exposed id.

bilfur can give a hand to move the boulder