The Kennel

As Engelhart gets to the bottom of the stairs, turning the corner, he'll find a room built rather large.  The appearance of the room is something like a large kennel ... with little in it.  There's a pile of rubble and broken wood at the far end, piled about eight feet high, and pieces of wood around.  There's two masticated bodies of froglings to Engelhart's left (not shown).  Asleep, about 20 hexes away (indicated by the large grey mound), is a large humanoid with a dog's head (lord knows I could not find an image on line for it).  You would guess this thing to be about ten to twelve feet tall.

There's a fair bit of blood in the room.  The humanoid has the ends of two spears (broken off) still stuck in its back.  It's breathing is fairly labored; it has quite clearly been seriously wounded in whatever fight it had in the kitchen (for that is the logical conclusion).

Moving the Goods Out of the Lair

You bring your first load of goods up to the storeroom where you entered this part of the frogling lair.  Where do you want to store your goods while you go get a second load?

Willa is rattled from her near fall; if it had not been for Embla's hand, catching her, she'd have died.  Willa's morale drops a point in favor of anything Embla will tell her to do now, but she will volunteer right now to stay and guard the stoneware and metal goods.

"Is that all right?" she asks.

Who else is going back in.  You've done two passes over the bridge, and the third pass will be roll free.  You'll be +3 wisdom as you bring back a second load.

Instructions?

An Unexpected Sight

As you look through the entranceway across the bridge, you can see a short passage, again about ten feet long, sloping 40 degrees downwards, about four feet wide.  The top of the passage is black with what might be soot, except that it is hard and does not come off on your fingers.  At the bottom of the passage you can see what might be a kitchen.  There's the edge of a table with a visible cooking pot, and a knife next to it, and some ripped cloths next to that.

On the floor, you can see what might be a frogling's arm, judging by the clawed hand on the end of it.  The arm is not moving.  There are splatters of purple next to the arm, which you recognize as frogling blood, having seen it several times now.

The Bridge

You find yourself at one end of a bridge, sure enough. The chamber the bridge crosses is about 80 feet long and about 45 feet wide.  The bottom is covered with water, far, far down, about 90 to 120 feet.  Once in the chamber, hanging your head over the side, you can hear the water moving, but not rushing.

The ceiling is only ten feet above you - and the stone seems to be cracked, along the length of the bridge.  The crack is only a few millimeters to half a centimeter wide, or less than a quarter of an inch; this doesn't let in much light, but it does let in enough to fill the chamber.  You can see a shaft of light in the far left corner of the room, from your perspective (sorry, forgot to add this to the map, I'll update it next time), from a hole about three feet wide, in hex 1403.

There are no rails along the bridge and it is only a meter wide, plus, or 3 to 4 feet.  The height is dizzying.  It isn't a matter of dancing across this thing.

You can hear a faint chittering sound, like a small, rattling mill wheel (that's as close as you can get to a description).  It might be coming from anywhere.

You can't tell what it looks like under the bridge; if it is natural or made, as you can't really get into a position to look over the side and under, without risking death.

Drain

Embla pulls on the stone and the chain begins to ride out of the hole above her, clanking as it comes.  The other stone rises, until it reaches a point about five feet above the floor.  The one that was higher stops at a foot above the floor.

All around is an enormous grating, clanging sound.  Then a deep, hollow bang, loud enough to hurt your ears, seems to shake the air.  This comes from below, from under the water.  And then ...

The water begins to pour out of the pool, flooding out of unseen shafts in the floor of the cavern.  The level falls quickly enough that anyone in the pool would be caught and pulled down, probably to their death.  You see the giant frog's body sluice away with the water, sucked like a wet sponge, disappearing.

Then, the water is gone.  A steady streaming of water follows, quickly diminishing, and then there is just the sound of dripping water.  This, compared to the sound that came before, seems almost deafeningly quiet.

The pool is empty.

Picking up the Game Again

Collecting our thoughts.

The image is from the previous post.

Let's pick up what everyone was doing with the last post.

Lothar was going to look into using the boards that were blocking the tunnel entrance to the pool chamber.  Unfortunately, these are not thick enough to support weight or reach from stone to stone.  Each board was only an inch or so in width.  You'll see on this post that they were drawn very small.

Embla has fetched her spear and determined that the bottom of the pool seems to be about three to four feet deep, at least as far as her spear can reach.

Engelhart [ooc: who has gone to bed by this time] was about to scout around the bend.  He was asking for a lantern, but he's about 35 feet from the rest of the party, across many rocks.  He jumps over to the tunnel (0414), finding that it is very solid.

Without a light source, there's not much he can see ~ just what is showing, dimly, in the reflection of the nearest light off the wet surface of the cavern interior.

So, Engelhart notwithstanding, someone needs to move a light source forward before the tunnel beyond can be explored.