[T: 1 Day 12 Hours]
The ornately decorated knights are no longer seen sneaking after the Obsidian Skeleton now. They have been replaced by naked skeletons that are not apparently of humanoid origins. These skeletons seem altered in some way. They do not seem as intelligent or discrete as the armored knights. They are also not as fast as the former.
It appears that the Obsidian Skeleton and the skeletons made of bones are not on the same side, as often when the normal skeletons get caught they are smashed to pieces. Afterward the smashed pieces get collected by the other naked skeletons that have escaped the attention of the Obsidian Skeleton.
[T: 2 Days 3 Hours]
Johannes and La Fonte finished telling the rest of the group about the odd structure within the cave, lit up by the odd blue flames. The group at first doesn’t believe them. Who would carve out a structure underground and build it in a cave so deep? Blue flames? They sort of scoff at the idea thinking it novel and interesting, but showing doubt.
Then doubt doesn’t matter as La Fonte and Johannes are adamant about the structure existing and that they could just march down there right now and they’d see the structure for themselves. The next thing people express is the thought of whether they were safe to be within its proximity. It’s obviously built by sentient beings, they said. Is there not a chance that they would want to harm those that come near it?
La Fonte and Johannes assure them that it is abandoned, describing the amount of dust within the rooms and that they came back in order to get a bigger search group, since it would not be optimal to search with the two of them, as well as having the responsibility of the children's safety.
Eventually Frank just stands up and says, “I’m going to see if I can salvage something we can use and see if we can find something better than this”, indicating the dirt and leaves. And that’s that.
A group of twenty is assembled, slightly less than half of the group. Regardless of how cautious the group was, they were ready to look for some good news. They were not used to traveling. Their calves ached from all the walking and they were starting to get tired of constantly being vigilant. If indeed the structure was abandoned, it would not hurt to see and settle there, until something better showed up.
A question rose up. What if we’re the only ones here? No settlements, no nothing? It’s not like they can construct homes out of nothing. They lacked the materials, lacked the knowledge, lacked everything. If so then maybe they can temporarily set up in the structure. Thoughts like this permeated throughout the group. With a lot of time in their hands, more than they were used to, they only had time to think.
Lucas was one of the volunteers following Frank and Timotheus stood up to join as well. When Lucas prevented Timotheus saying that it was unsafe, Frank just gruffly said, “He needs to get used to things around here. It’s not like he’s going into combat. He needs to at least get used to being active and alert”. Lucas was going to argue back, but his wife grabbed his sleeve and tugged on it. And again, that was that.
La Fonte and Johannes left the children with the others, took the twenty or so volunteers in exploring the structure and guided them to the doorway. After they absorbed the fact, that indeed the torches gave off blue flames and that someone had indeed built a stone block structure, they entered the structure. They went into the two rooms on the right side of the entrance hall. Then they came back out and stood in front of La Fonte and Johannes, who stood in front of the doorway at the end of the entrance hall where two other passageways lay.
La Fonte: Ok, so this, here, is where we stopped and came back. I only peeked to see if there were any inhabitants or guards. As far as I know there isn’t anyone here and it’s been that way for a long time. Now there are two passageways here. Left and right. (He went through the doorway, turned, faced the group once more and with the wall behind him indicated with one hand towards the left and then to the right) So I’m thinking we split into two groups and we look for anything we can use, or any indication that there are people around who might want to harm us. Look specifically for those two. Cuz either we get something good here, or we gotta get outta here. I’m not going to ask if anyone has questions, cuz there shouldn’t be any.
Johannes moved through the doorway and went towards the right side. La Fonte went a few steps to the left and waited for people to gather there and once everyone had gathered he took them down the passage. Johannes went down his passageway.
They went only around 45 ft. when they reached an archway with another opening to their right and another to their left. The opening to their left seems to lead to an old medieval kitchen, the opening to their right seems to lead to a long hallway and so they went to the opening in the right first. It turned out that it wasn’t a hall, it was just a really long room.
Frank: Hey look. (He pointed at the floor, what looked like skid marks)
Lucas: Looks like there was something just sitting there for a really long time that there’s a color difference on the floor.
Johannes: Yeah like furniture, maybe bookcases, or -
Lucas: A really long lunch table
Timotheus: Where’d the lunch table go then?
Frank: (takes a final look around) Doesn’t seem to have anything else here.
Johannes: (nods) Yeah let’s move on.
Two people are already in the kitchen looking through it and so Johannes leaves them to it and he himself goes deeper into the structure, Frank, Lucas and Timotheus following. Around 45 ft. they get to another intersection, Johannes without a word heads down to the right down a hall. Frank, Lucas and Timotheus split up from him and head down left.
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He sees something interesting at the far end of the hall, something different. Ignoring the other rooms for now and letting the others look through them he goes to the interesting room. It’s a sort of small room, two stone beds taking up the entirety of the left side of the room and on the right side of the room. There are two holes each in these two beds. Two on the left and two on the right. Johannes moves forward to look into it.
Whew. It stinks. It’s a toilet, urinal or waste disposal of some kind. Johannes leaves. “Well that’s a toilet”, he says.
Johannes enters the room immediately to his right. It appears to have once been a library. There are remnants of crumbled parchment and books everywhere. There are no signs of the shelves that may have housed them. There are only piles of books. Johannes opens one of them. Several broken pieces of parchment fall out, so dry that some of the material in the books cracked and snapped, disconnecting them from the rest of the book. Johannes looks at the writing. He can’t read it.
He exits the library, not exiting through the way he came in back to the hall where the toilet room was located, but to an archway that connected itself back into the main passageway. He looks to the left and acknowledges that that way is where he started from and goes to the right. Here the hall ends with only another two pathways going left and right. He chooses at random and goes to the right. He then turns a final corner to the left and enters a large room. He sees what he assumes are a bunch of old cloth sheets. He goes through them, noticing that the ground gave off the same marks indicating that furniture of some weight had been here. The marks are clearly void of the amount of dirt, dust and dirtiness as the rest of the floors. He sees what looks like a pillow and assumes this must be the living quarters.
Without anything else to see he exits the living quarters and makes his way towards the last room. He finds Frank, Lucas and Timotheus at the intersection.
Johannes: Find anything?
Frank: No. We found some holding cells, but all the bars had been forcibly removed. The stone blocks holding them in place were utterly destroyed.
Lucas: The guys in the kitchen found two ovens; one dome shaped made of dirt and clay, the other a rectangular stone block one.
Frank: Fairly speaking this place is looking better and better.
Johannes:Yeah I even found what looks like the living quarters. There’s like a bunch of blankets, but the beds are missing. (He indicates to the hall behind Frank) There’s only those two rooms left.
Frank: Then let’s go.
They all go head into the hall, this one not even taking a couple of steps to reach the two doorways. The one on the left appears to be a smaller room with a rotting wooden rack left in the corner. The room on the right appears to be much larger, at least twice the size of the room on the left, showing signs of previously being filled up with large furniture.
Frank went to the rotting rack as if he found something important, the pace not that of someone just looking around but of one who is intent on examining.
Frank: Look at that
Johannes: Yes, a rack that’s rotting.
Frank: But it's still here.
Johannes: And? Why is that important?
Frank: Because all the wood and metals have been stripped from this place. (He looks at the rotten rack) Except this.
Johannes: So this (indicating at the rotting rack) wasn’t taken because they had no use for it?
Frank: That’s my guess.
Johannes thinks about this, but it doesn’t seem to be important. It had nothing to do with them except the fact that they were deprived of convenient comfort.
Johannes: Ok, so what do we think about this place? There’s nothing to salvage here, but I’m going to say that this is a good place to be. I prefer this place over being out there.
Lucas: I say we move in for now.
Frank: (shrugs) I’m in favor of this place too.
Johannes: Ok. We’re in agreement. When La Fonte comes back we’ll tell him our decision.
[T: 1 Day 16 Hours]
As the Obsidian Skeleton goes deeper and deeper into the larger structures, it encounters less and less of the yellow rats and more of the normal skeletons made of bones. In fact there are large quantities of them roaming around, dragging dead bodies of the yellow rats here and there, taking them to an unknown location, leaving behind remnants of fighting everywhere. And each of these walking bones the Obsidian Skeleton finds it smashes, hammering at them and scattering their pieces across the floor.
[T: 2 Days 4 Hours]
La Fonte has returned with his group. He has no special news to tell. He explains that it's just a long passageway that eventually leads to a set of stairs, then it's just a long passage that slopes down and winds around. When Johannes and the others voice their opinion that they want to settle down in the structure for a while he is also in favor of it.
The entire group makes the trek back to the mouth of the cave to grab their belongings. Once they reach there they can tell that something isn’t right. Jose is sitting by the fire cooking up some meat, there is a monster next to him, where it looks like he’s harvesting the meat next to the fire. The vegetarians are all giving him the evil eye. The mood of the others is one of discomfort.
La Fonte: What’s up? What’s wrong?
Jose: Nothing. Nothing. Everything is fine.
La Fonte: Doesn’t look fine. They’re giving you the stink eye.
Jose: Yeah, I told them they needed to eat something and they were like, “We’re fine eating grass and leaves”, and I was like you can’t eat that. Come on and get some food. And then one of them shouted, “You’re a monster!”
La Fonte: Uh huh. (He looks over at the vegetarians and they stare back with defiant expressions) We’re packing up and relocating into the structure. It’s a good place to be at until we figure out what we’re going to do. Seems safe, secure and more comfortable than out here.
Jose: (shifts a little and looks up at La Fonte) Oh yeah? Alright then, let me cook some more of this then, before we leave.
La Fonte: Nah man, bring the meat inside, there’s a kitchen to cook it in.
Jose: (takes a pause) Alright. Then help me cut out a bunch of pieces so that we can carry it inside. Then let’s move the body deeper into the cave, just enough so that no one outside can see it.
La Fonte: Alright.
The two carve out large chunks of meat, larger than the pieces they cut out in order to cook, so that they can put the meat into the bags that they stored their meat in previously. They move the meat already cooked inside the bags as well. They then get two other men to help them drag the dead monster inside the cave.
It would be assumed that the bags they carried the meat in would be a bloody mess, dripping with blood, but surprisingly, blood does not seem to escape the thick layer of leaves they had placed at the bottom of the bags. It appears that Jose and La Fonte cut out large pieces of meat and somehow removed nearly all of the blood off the meat.