Anarenn: Rise of the ancient blood

The curious dragon cautiously skulks into the interior of the tower to get a closer look at the trapdoor and odd crystal. Having spotted the footprints, the canny wyrmling is concerned that the crystal might have been positioned as a lure for some type of trap. It seems odd that such an unusual stone would have been left behind in plain sight. The dragon snakes its saurian head around the interior, cautiously searching for anything concealed as it tastes the air with its tongue (Search +8, taking 20).

OOC: If it finds nothing hidden in the interior, including signs of a concealed trap, then the dragon will give its best effort at opening the trapdoor (Strength 7). Failing that, it'll try to find some other means of reaching the subterranean chamber below.

ooc: the crystal was hidden, not in plain sight

Alarmed by his discoveries, you search again the entire room. After half an hour, you feel certain that there is nothing important that you missed.

While looking at the trapdoor, you realize that once it could be easily open by a human with normal strenght. However, the passage of time has eroded the wooden handle and not the only hold on the trapdoor are two small iron pieces that once held the handle. Even for a strong human, it would be difficult to hold them well and exercize the appropriate strenght.

You loor around for some sort of a secred lever, but find nothing like that. The fact that even here there is no sign of the previous inhabitants of the towers: no cloth or chair, either means that someone carried them away, or that a very long time has passed since they abandoned this place.

Angered by the seemingly barred way, you head out of the tower, hoping to find some secret tunnel nearby. However, you don't spot anything, and besides, it would be difficult to search properly the entire area. There's a small river, no more than 2 feet wide, going out of the mountain side nearby, and a little lake. You notice a brown bear that has probably just came out of its long winter slumber. It is drinking fresh water now, and then it will go hunting, probably.

The diminutive dragon rises to perch atop the tower's ruins with a few quick wing-beats; simply to get out of the meandering bear's reach. Watching the large mammal drink at the pool, the curious wyrmling cocks its head to the side and wonders from where the beast had come. The dragon hadn't spotted the bear in the area when it had first arrived. It seemed likely that it had just emerged from a sheltered den.

The patient wyrmling waits for the bear to wander away in its search of sustenance before gliding over to a tree next to the pond. Tasting the air with its forked tongue, the dragon snakes its long sinuous neck around as it searches the ground for signs of the bear's trail.

OOC: The dragon would like to backtrack along the bear's trail to locate its den in hopes that it might prove to be an access point into the subterranean realm below.

Backtracking the bear's trail is easy enough. It's lair is not really close to the ruins: it seems that the bear got nearby in the 20-30 minutes you needed to search properly the ruins. However, it is easy enough to follow the trail that the animal left in the soft soil. You follow them west, near the northern edge of the valley, and after 500mt they go up. Before climbing the entire ridge, however, you stop and identifly the home of the massive animal: it is a dark cavern with small entrance, barely enought to let the massive creature to get in and out.

As you approach it, the stench assaoults you: bears have a particular and nasty smell. You begin to question the wisdom of entering the cavern of such a nasty and easily angered creature. However, after hiding for 10 minutes you think that either the cave is empty, or the other bear/s are sleeping. Still, you think that it could easily identify you with its nose, once you enter in its domain.

The diminutive dragon's scaled hide slowly darkens to black as it begins skulking towards the cave entrance. Making use of its superior predator's senses, the wyrmling opens its eyes wide so as to pierce the cavern's dark interior before approaching.

OOC: The dragon will head inside the cave to explore if it sees no other creatures through the entrance with its darkvision.

You slowly head into the cavern and after a minute you realize that there is no danger here: there are no other bears, and even if the lonely giant that you saw returned, you would have no problem in escaping.

You start looking around in the smelly cave, and soon find out that it is bigger than you thought: it goes deep into the mountainside for a lot of feets, and then it breaks into mutiple descending passages. Although you are pretty far from the tower, you suspect that if this was a tale like one of those in your books, you will most certainly find a secret passage that leads you into the tower interior (of course, it would have been easier if you had some human friend to lift tat trapdoor, by anyway).

However, it seems that all of the passages are dead ends, even if one of them leads for at least 120mt in a twisted, descending spiral. You being to fear getting lost, but you quickly adapt yourself and roam around freely thanks to your senses.

As you are starting to feel defeat, you stop on your tracks, when a strange new odour comes to your nose...you don't recognize it, but it certainly feels different from those you were used to feel here. It comes from a hole in the cavern floor, a hole you previously thought was a dead end. This time, you fly down, and realize that after 14mt it steers right and becomes a twisted little horizontal passage. A human would have to crawl here.

You follow it for quite some time, and you realize that you have completely lost track of space and time since you entered the bear lair. At the end of the passage, it becomes even tighter...and abruptly stops. The end however is not filled with rock...it seems to be some sort of sack or rought cloth blocking the small passage. A smell of rotten mean comes from the other side. Touching it, you feel that is indeed a sack, filled with something.

However you try it, there is no way to find a gap or push the sack: it is just too heavy. At the end, resigned, you start clawing an chewing through. The sack breaks easily, and you find out that it is filled with a rotten mass of wheat or something like that. You start clawing your way through the sacks, but come to a nasty surprise: apparently, it is not just one sack: there are many of them in a pile. You can feel their weight. With great patience, you start clawing a tunnel, putting the rotten material in the tunnel behind you. But after an hour, you realize that you are probably at the bottom of a huge amount of sacks. You will have to scratch your way up, but that would require many hours, judging by the weight. And you are not certain if that means three hours of twelve hours.

With little choice but to continue its labor or abandon its quest, the diminutive dragon continues its industrious efforts to clear a path through the pile of old grain sacks.

OOC: The dragon will aim to dig upwards rather than through the sacks so that it doesn't risk getting crushed by their weight. It'll simply dig up, tear a small hole through the next sack up and then scurry back to allow its contents to sift down into the cavern slowly while it shifts the grain piles back along the tunnel and out of the way. Repeat till done. If it gets too tired after a while the wyrmling will simply backtrack a ways, find a small secure crevice or nook to hole up in, and sleep.

After a quick escape to the open ground, in order to hunt for some food, you return to the underground cave and get some sleep, in a crevice near your discovery. The next day, you stir up and resume your work. After long hours of frustrating and irritating work, and at least 7-8 mt in vertical ascension, you suddenly pop up into an open chamber....face to face with a little and weak-looking bipedal reptilian creature, the size of a human child that looks at you with utter fear. After a low squirm, it reaches for you, trying to catch you.

ooc: had my final exam of this session yesterday.