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Ballar Uh, fighter/assassin

Ballar Uh drops into the bigger room as well - finally he can straighten his spine. He silently pulls his sword.

There is something utterly disturbing about this place... All these pipes and cogs, they should serve a distinct purpose. What can be more banal, than a sewer system? Garbage in, garbage out. But it's just a decoy. Behind the veil of utilitarian aspirations hide their true, vicious meanings. These tunnels were built for something else...

Zacharias Rat smells the fingers. Is the figure alive or dead? Does it smell of the same mud as from earlier? Is it sick or healthy? Has it fed recently?

Sister Krystyn is hasty to emerge from the pipe."I knew we'd be going underground, but I didn't sign up to be sniffing each other's behinds the whole way to the Urchin Queen's Court," the gruff paladin mutters. "These tunnels were clearly made for midgets--aren't there any human-sized sewers around?" She pauses when she hears Acolyte Gachard suddenly gasp.

Gachard presses a hand to his mouth. "Oh…wow…is that…dead?" he asks, pointing to the covered heap. He rests his hand on one of the central cogs as Zachariah investigates.

Zachariah
Your rodent senses take in the full picture of this poor body's state. Dead, but not long--unwashed, barely clothed, quite likely unfed. It doesn't smell of mud--it smells of smoke, stone and the dirt of the Vornheim streets. There is no scent of blood.

You crawl up to peek under the shroud--his dead staring face. Older, disheveled and unkempt. Why, the beggar almost looks like you!

Poe shuffles up next to you and pecks at the corpse's fingers.

Gul Marach
From the left pipe, you see a faint glow--your spell has alerted you to some unwelcoming device down that path. Down the other tunnel, the pattering of voices continues.

Ballar Uh, fighter/assassin

Mister-Kent wrote:In the center, dabbed with verdigris, sit a clustered trio of copper cogs. Each cog has its own handle, and each can be cranked without disturbing the others. Sitting atop one cog is a fist-sized lantern, casting the glow you all saw from the junction.

Ballar Uh steps up to the cogs in the middle of the room. He examines the lantern first: what fuels it? How long has it been burning? Did it belong to the figure by the wall, possible dead for some time?

He then examines the cogs. Ballar Uh has next to zero experience with complex machinery, but these cogs and the whole sewer system fascinates him. He doesn't understand why, but it's as if this man-made thing resonated on the same wave-length as he himself.

Zacharias Rat turns to face the rest of the party and attempts an elaborate murine shrug—the best he can do in his present condition to communicate what he has learned about the body. Then he dives under the rags to inspect the rest of the body, looking for cause of death or any telling artifacts.

Ballard Uh
The cogs--this entire system--seem precisely crafted. However, the faded runes and dust along the walls suggest it has seen little use recently.

Made with love, and ultimately abandoned. It would almost be sad, if not for the evidence of very recent visitors. For example, whomever lit this lantern, burning with almost a full candle. There are notches along the bottom edges of the lamp's square base, as though it interlocks with another apparatus.

Zachariah Tar
You find the beggar's throat ringed with bruises on either side of the neck--handprints with thick fingers, small enough that they never touch or overlap.

Gul-Marach points out the left-hand tunnel to Ballar-Uh. "That tunnel is trapped; perhaps the cogs contain the logic to render it safe. Either way, is it something you could inspect?"

He turns to peruse the scene, the rat, then to Gachard."It would seem it is dead... the voices down that way and the lantern left here likely involved." He comments to Tobias and Krystin, "We must deal with those voices first. The rat can sniff ahead, I'd think. It is unlikely I can swing my sword in the tunnel if it comes to trouble... come good or ill, we will want to draw them back to treat with them here. Tobias, what do you recommend?"

Mister-Kent wrote:Also, etched into the wall you see some dwarven runes, quite old and faded.

"Biblo... what do you make of those?"

Ballar Uh, fighter/assassin

Marullus wrote:Gul-Marach points out the left-hand tunnel to Ballar-Uh. "That tunnel is trapped; perhaps the cogs contain the logic to render it safe. Either way, is it something you could inspect?"

Ballar Uh tries really hard to envision these cogs not as abstract pieces of workmanship (workdwarfship?), but as parts of a bigger whole, a trap mechanism.

Traps roll (23%) - [1d100] = 94

Maybe a more skilled Thief should give it a try?..

Mister-Kent wrote:... faded runes and dust along the walls

Having seen many languages as a scribe, Biblo attempts to read the old runes.

He looks to see if the runes are the same as on the pick.

Int. check (18) [1d20] = 2, or [3d6] = 7, or [4d6] = 11

Zacharias Rat sniffs around, but does not yet enter, the passage with the voices. He turns and watches the others, waiting for a sign that they are ready for him to proceed.

Tobias Gifford, Fighter/MU

Tobias places the shaft end of his halberd on the floor while he holds it upright ,"Well this thing isn't best used in tight spaces either so I concur on trying to make the fight here, the easiest way to do that would be for one of us to act as bait and lead whoever is down there in here. I'll volunteer if nobody has any objections I have an invisibility spell prepared if things get out of control so I should be fine...Of course we should wait until Zachariah has scouted whatever is down that way.

Ballard Uh
It serves to reason that the three cogs correspond to the three tunnels, but beyond that you fail to see how the mechanisms are rigged, and what they can do--without actually turning the wheels of course.

Biblo Phyle
You've seen these letters in your many travels and easily recognize them as dwarven. You cannot read dwarven, but you know some verbal phrases in the tongue.

You have a faint childhood memory of the language. When you were a small child in the Shae Isles, dwarven nursemaids used to sing old mountain songs to get you to sleep. They'd previously tried bedtime stories, but those only kept you awake with rapt attention!

Biblo, former scribe

Marullus wrote:"Biblo... what do you make of those?"

"They are definitely dwarf, but unfortunately that is one tongue I am not conversant with," answers Biblo unhelpfully.

"The cogs probably won't help us find this urchin queen. Perhaps follow the voices?"

The tunnel towards the voices takes a sharp right turn, then opens into another circular room of comfortable ceiling height. The center of the room bears a single cog with a crank.

The room has two occupants, breathing hard and staring daggers at each other. Both are barely half as high as the room.

The one is a dwarf in peasant clothes, quite small and fat but with rather skinny legs. His tiny facial features embedded in a great black beard resembles pale mushrooms jutting out of peat moss.

The other is a uniformed goblin in a helmet of some kind--there are notches on the front of the brim, as if missing an emblem or device. His smile is wide and mean, and he hisses through tiny needle teeth.

"Leave this place, defiler! And take your obscene brethren with you!" the dwarf huffs.

Zacharias Rat inspects the dialogists and scampers back to report, such as he can, to the others. He attempts to pantomime that they should proceed quietly. Then he scuttle back, to listen in on the conversation some more.

Zachariah Rat
You scurry back to the others, and the delegation of Vorn spots you. Poe flutters to the nearest cog, looking down upon you with cold black eyes, his beak dabbed in blood from pecking at the corpse. He opens its beak widely but makes no sound, then snaps his mouth shut, almost as if it wishes to speak to you, but your tongues are incompatible.

On your return trip to the conversationalists, you encounter two muscular brown rats emerging from a crevice in a joint in the pipe works. They pause and sniff the air around you.

"Oi--who's you?" the biggest of the two asks in the Language of Rodents.

Gul-Marach
"Your magical rat friend's trying to say...something?" young Acolyte Gachard says. "Are we to follow him on ahead?"

Biblo
From his perch upon the cog, Poe turns back to look up at you, his wings spread wide. In the amber glow of the lamp, he casts a flickering shadow on the Bwall. Moment to moment it never remains the same. Between fickers you catch the faintest glimpse of a different un-birdlike shadow rising against the wall, before your familiar folds his wings and patiently awaits your direction.

Biblo, illusionist

"Let us help the dwarf, he may be able to assist us," comments Biblo.

Zachariah Rat, ratconteur

"Hail brothers, and may your tails grow ever longer. I am a stranger, newly arrived in these parts and more accustomed to wharf and deck and bilgewater. I am Zacharias, and I keep company with men and gulls and with the deep Abyss."

Looking behind him and sniffing the air, he adds, "Speaking of men, a passel of humans—more or less—will be passing through here in a moment."

Tobias Gifford

"Right let's help him out if a goblin has isdue with him, he might not be all that bad, should I take point?."

Gul-Marach nods to Tobias, quietly ushering the other priests into the middle of the pack.