[X] - Join the House formation

[X] - Proceed to the gathering hall

[ ] Explore, Equip, Entrench

Kazeks voice was hushed, with a slight reverence to his tone as he spoke. “I think this is our landing chamber. Lokralda, Jozoic, Korfook; get us some light. Everyone search the room and mark any doorways you find.”

We all split up as he ordered, and a few blobs of glowing goo of various colors were spat out onto the stone floor. This first chamber was rather small and centered on a pillar that contained the stairway we had exited from. Maybe fifteen feet wide and twice as long, the room was cramped around the pillar on the narrow axis, with four different open doorways leading off in the cardinal directions. The walls were made up of huge carved slabs, each the size of a refrigerator and fused together with precise weld lines.

The glowing mix of colors gave a soft and unnerving lighting to the room by the time we had all of the entrances marked with more chemical blobs. After we had cleared the area we turned inward, looking around at each other in indecision over which way we should take.

Sallis sniffed the stale and somewhat musty air before she spoke up. “There's a cross breeze from here to there.” She pointed at one doorway and then to another.

“We could send scouts, have them cover a few hundred head and report?” Jozoic added.

“No reporting. No messages or using the system at all.” Kazek barked out, giving him a disapproving look.

Jozoic grunted and pushed back. “We use the best tools at hand. The system is a tool, and we are not at home on Anazoudak, brother.”

“That is not the way it has been done, Joz. This is our trial, we should act as if we were.” Replied our squad leader. He planted his feet and glared at Jozoic, while the rest of us swiveled our heads back and forth between the two as the argument grew.

“The way is forward, not backward, Kazek. Seizing a new tool is more important. The system be not forbidden in the rules, and the elders have not ordered them forsaken.” I could not help but notice that his translator still had some work to be as clear as some of the others.

Kazek held his gaze, but did not try to dispute him immediately. Instead, he glanced around the room to the rest of us who had been listening in on the conversation from our scattered positions before speaking.

“We put it to a moot. I say nay.” He then spat a glowing blue blob on the ground, and everyone started to converge on the spot. All of them adding their own loogie to the pile.

I followed the group but did not really know what to do. I had heard of this voting process they used, but had yet to see it in action. Throughout our training, Chane, Kazzad, or some other instructor or higher ranking person would be present to settle disagreements.

Now that we were on our own as a squad without supervision, it put a slightly sour taste in my mouth that Jozoic’s first move was to question our Row leader's order. Yet, at the same time, I totally agreed with the point he was making, leaving me with a new layer of mixed emotions over the already stressful situation.

I watched the growing lump of colorful swirling goo, and noticed it looked quite different from most of the other glow-lights. This one swirled with a mix of orange and blue, blobs of distinct color pushing and dragging against each other but not mixing. When the rest had all given their additions, some of them returning to the edges of the room to watch the doors, the majority of the dwarves all turned and looked to me.

Kazek nodded to me, “And you, Kaninak. I understand you cannot add your feelings to the moot. You may choose a proxy in trust, or let your opinion be heard. If you had 10 votes to cast, how many to each side?”

I gulped, not enjoying being dragged into this argument and chafing at the unfairness that I would be the only third party to the argument to have to voice my opinion. I’d never voted for anything in my life, unless you counted the internal politics of my old apartment.

I briefly considered taking a proxy, especially if the ‘in trust’ part meant our conversation could be private, but decided against it. I wasn’t sure who to pick, to be honest.

“I think we stand the best chance to succeed if we use the system. I’m sure the higher-ups have taken it into account, otherwise they would have added a rule, right? This is the fourth trial, I’m sure we’re not the first to think of it. So… 8 to Jozoic’s stance.”

I neglected to add the reasoning for me not giving all of my votes to his side, and no one asked for them. Kazek only returned his gaze back to Jozoic, who nodded in assent, before the team leader spat a final blob into the mix.

The watermelon sized pile of light quivered, and the warring colors pulsed against each other, the larger globs breaking down and finally mixing and reacting. After only a few seconds, the whole blob shifted over and turned to a bright vivid orange, which I took to mean Jozoic’s call to use the system had won out.

Kazek grimaced, but nodded. “It is decided. Sallis, Korfook, Lokralda, and Jozoic; pick a partner and take a tunnel. Scout up to the next chamber or intersection and report back what you find. Do not engage if you find anything crawling around out there, just retreat back to the group. We need to find resources, vents, and mark any dangerous nests in the area. The rest of you, get a taste for the stone and see if you can pick up anything on the wind.”

The four chosen dwarves each looked around to choose a second. To my surprise, Sallis pointed at me and waved for me to follow as she moved over to the western tunnel. “C’mon, Nick, we’ll take the downwind tunnel.”

I nodded and rushed to follow after her into the dark opening, somewhat nervous to be breaking off from the group, but also appreciative of being picked by someone.

“Feels good to not be the last kid waiting against the wall to be picked for the kickball team, eh? I have an idea that would really help you out down here too, but it could be a little risky if you use it. Ya never know who’s watching and paying attention, or if the sniffers will go through the logs later on, but I can see pretty much the whole map. The Link preloads the whole area into your entanglement, even if you can't see it yet. That’s how I led you to those gems back in the day.”

I scoffed at his use of ‘back in the day’ for events that took place only a month or so ago, and thought over his offer. Having him populate my whole minimap would be super useful, I would be able to navigate for the group and locate all of the useful resources immediately. Yet the risk of being called out for knowing too much outweighed the advantages. Maybe I could use him just to help see, as long as we had some light, it would still be plausible that I might have above average dark-vision or especially acute hearing.

“Got it, hoss, you want me to limit your vision to something like two or three times what the light should actually let you see?”

I internally agreed, and my vision vibrated for a moment before a blue-lined overlay snapped into place. Bright outlines appeared around the edges of everything, including Sallis as she double marched ahead of me. She had spat out a blob of the glowing snot into her hand and was using it to light the way ahead as she led, and the blue grid-lines of my new overlay spread out from her for about 30 feet before dissipating into blackness.

The corridor ran straight for about 80 meters, then started to snake back and forth like a lazy river before it took a sharp turn and spilled out into a natural looking cavern. The floor was rough and coated in dust and fallen debris from the rather unstable looking ceiling, and the blue outlines of my vision overlay highlighted a patch of large fallen boulders that dominated a quarter of the space.

Sallis stopped and looked around, giving me a grin as I walked up next to her. “Smells like bismuth n’ nickel. Let's take a look around before we report back.”

I started to agree, but Max broke in with another comment. “Go check the fallen stones. The nickel and some cobalt is up above and leads to a dangerous but sizable deposit. There is quite a lot of water locked above it.”

I grunted in appreciation as a response to Max’s tip and relayed my intent to Sallis. “I’ll check out the stope, can you light the place up a bit and see if there are any exits?”

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“Aye, I can do that, just don’t go twistin’ yer ankle or knocking rocks from the ceiling.” She replied, before we parted ways. She flicked little specks of the glow-juice she carried onto the walls and floor as she went and spat a few more blobs of it around the room to partially illuminate the area.

I approached the pile of rocks and carefully climbed to the top of it, and grinned to myself when I saw that Max was also highlighting the shapes of blocky crystalline structures within some of the boulders on the floor. I made a show of looking up at the ceiling and picking through the pile of rocks for a few moments before I pulled one of the iridescent and geometric square bismuth crystals from the tangle of stones.

I used my gauntlets to scan the mineral content of a few of the boulders, logging the readout in my thread of messages to myself. When I rose a moment later and looked around the room from the high-point I stood upon, I saw that Sallis had marked out two exits from the room with green smears of light.

“You were right!” I called across to her, holding up the crystal. “Bismuth, and cobalt-heavy nickel sulfide ore. It’s definitely unstable up above though. How often do these chambers collapse?”

Sallis laughed from across the room where she was examining another streak of something outlined in blue running through one of the walls. “No clue! The older dwarves are forbidden ta tell us anything about them until after we pass, so we’re all in the dark. The real-world trials er’ known ta be rather dangerous though, with something like a 80 percent survival rate. I’d take respawning as a failure to try again next year any day.”

I climbed down from the pile and joined her near the streak of different colored stone in the wall. “One in five just die? That's hardcore.” I reached up and touched the streak with my gauntlet and got a readout indicating poor grade magnetite.

“They say it keeps us strong. You wanna send the report or should I?” She replied with a sardonic grin.

I shook my head and wandered over to one of the marked exits. “No, no. You can send it.” I answered as I looked down the natural looking tunnel that led off into the darkness.

We stuck fairly close together and combed over the floor and walls some more while we waited for a reply from Kazek. The eventual order that came back was to collect some of the bismuth crystals and load some of the nickel ore into our inventories before returning to the group. I made quick work of cracking the stones and peeling the beautiful bismuth crystals from their hidden homes, and we both loaded about 50 kilos of the most promising looking chunks of nickel ore into our inventories.

“Did Kazek really expect us to not use our inventories? How would we even move all this stuff around?” I questioned as we prepared to return back to the group.

“Of course he did. He’s a traditionalist. Some of the elders might’a even approved too, they watch what we do down here n’ evaluate each’a us when the thing is said and done. We’ll be fine though, not much is truly carved in stone when it comes ta rules, making it out ta’ other side is most important.”

I thought that over while we backtracked to the rest of the group. If we were being watched by the rest of the Clan, I really should be careful about how much I leveraged Max’s help. I resolved to keep that in mind as we went through the rest of the trials, and hoped that I wouldn’t be cornered into a situation where I was forced to lean on his support too much.

When we returned to the group, we found that the party that had stayed in the initial room with the staircase had started to cut a map into the floor. We joined the others and carved our own section down into the western portion of the map, and we broke off tiny samples of the ores and stones we had found in our section and laid them down in the rough positions they had been taken from on the map.

Kazek and Bomilik stood on each end of the map, surveying the additions and tasting the samples of each returning party.

“We still need fluoride, copper, and water. Plus a hot chamber. We can’t get much going until we find a vent chamber.” Bomilik, our group's expert miner, said flatly without a trace of accent. “We should take the whole team and sweep the south western portion, we can use the granite from this chamber for improvised tools until we get something harder melted down. If we have to, we can spit forge a couple of things, but I think we should save our chems for when we can get a crude fabrication pool going.”

I looked around at the group and decided to speak up. “We found water in our chamber, it’s above the nickel though.”

There was a chorus of hmm’s and grunts before Bomilik answered. “We only use that if we have to, it’s a huge risk without knowing how much is up there.”

I shrugged and drifted back to the peripheral of the conversation while the rest of the group strategized and made the meager preparations we were capable of. After about 20 minutes of hemming and hawing over who should be in which team and what areas we should explore, we divided into groups made up of smaller teams.

There were 15 of us in total, making three teams of four and one team of three that would hold the map room. I was assigned to sweep back through the original cavern Sallis and I had discovered and to take the path that led further to the west. This time we planned to explore even further and rely on the messaging system to report back to the map room.

With an exchange of goodlucks and parting slaps on the shoulders, we split up and started to retrace our steps to the bismuth cave. The lights had started to fade by this time, but still provided a little bit of illumination that marked our first exploratory expedition. Our larger group of 8 reached the cavern after a few minutes of jogging and we broke into two groups of four.

Jozoic took three others and split off into the southern tunnel, while Sallis, Lokralda, Lurbolg, and myself headed westward. Sallis once again took the lead and I was placed into the middle of the group with Lokralda. We kept up a faster pace, feeling more comfortable in a larger party and with some semblance of a plan.

After only a few minutes of travel through more worked-stone tunnel we came to an intersection that split off in two other directions, one headed South-West and another that angled back in a North-Easterly direction.

Sallis sniffed the air again and made a frustrated sound. “I can’t smell anything, the wind moves to the north though.”

“We’re supposed to scout the southern quadrant.” Lokralda added, unhelpfully.

“I know, I know. So we shall. Still, wind has to mean vents, doesn't it? Nick, report it back to the map room. It was what… another 80 head from the bismuth room to here?”

Everyone bobbed their heads in agreement and I sent a message back to Korfook describing our path. He had been given the duty of waiting in the ad-hoc command center, his whole job simply to relay the scouting reports to Kazek and Bomilik. While the group leader and his second presided over the map, filling out details and coordinating our efforts.

The route to the south curved along and quickly became narrow enough to force us to turn sideways and drag ourselves through in places, and the huge slabs of worked stone gave way to a natural look. The rough stone walls closed in tighter and forced us to crawl up a narrow vertical crevice that looked and felt to be eroded out by water. I climbed after Lurbolg in near pitch darkness, the only light being the occasional flickers of dull glow from the glowing lump Sallis carried at the front, or fading smears on the walls from where she had touched.

A foot came down from above and landed on my shoulder, causing me to look up by reflex. I could still see sort of okay thanks to the topographic outlines Max was providing for me, but it left out details and only showed the shape of things. Lurbolg tapped his foot against my shoulder twice, a sign I took to mean to hold still for a moment. There was a muffled shout from above and he tapped again twice, rapid fire, and began to quickly scramble up the tunnel.

I couldn’t make out what Sallis was yelping about at the front of the line, but she was in some kind of obvious distress and sending little pebbles and dust down the chute as she flailed her way up the rest of the climb. I stayed right on Lurbolg’s heels as we followed her up for another 10 feet or so, the last section smeared recklessly with slick glowing blue goo from where Sallis had given up holding the light source carefully. I slipped a number of times but managed to scramble up the last few meters and followed them into a large dark room, the ceiling and walls too distant to make out even with my pseudo darkvision.

Sallis was rolling around and wrestling with something, while Lurbolg was scrambling around her looking for a way to help as I pulled myself up. By the time I made it to their side and looked to join in the scuffle, Lurbolg stood up straight and stepped back, breaking into laughter.

“A squam! We’ve found a copper slug, hahaha.”

I looked down and saw what Sallis was struggling with, a huge shiny cross between a snail and a slug had latched onto Sallis' front, from hip to shoulder across her chest, and seemed to be attempting to chew at her robe and hair. It was as long as my leg and about a foot and a half wide in the middle, with dark shiny segmented plates covering its glow-goo smeared back.

“Git dis damned thing off me!” She screeched as she pushed it away with one hand and scrambled for purchase with the other to keep it away from her face.

“They’re practically harmless, and lucky! You’ve been blessed, hahahah.” Lurbolg replied as he watched from the sideline.

I stepped forward and joined the fray to help peel the slimy thing off of Sallis anyway. I stood back up a moment later with it held up in my gauntlets as it writhed back and forth in an attempt to latch into something. It was strong and had beady little eyes that bulged from the top of two short stalks near one end, but I could see no mouth or claws and it moved well… sluggishly. It did not feel all that dangerous as it slowly thrashed around in my grip.

“Gah rah, fuck that thing and fuck you too, Lurbolg! Can’t help out yer damn teammate in distress. Absolute disgrace.” Sallis jabbed a finger at the dwarf in question as she stood up, scraping the mix of slime and glowing goo off of herself and slopping it onto the ground.

Lurbolg continued to laugh, but started to lose momentum when I too gave him a disapproving look. I then turned away and showed the beast to Lokralda as she followed us out of the hole in the ground we had entered from.

I was about to say something cheerful about the alleged luck of the find, when I noticed two points of reflected light in the darkness on the far side of the room behind her. Two more appeared, then another six. Hundreds of ominous little pairs of lights flickered to life and started to move in from the darkness, all converging on the tiny puddle of blue light surrounding us in the fathomless cavern.