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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 3726181" data-attributes="member: 11760">"Low ceiling," Hazel comments as the group enters the bench room. "What do yo think they used this for? It's like a warming hut, but they ain't ice fishing in an abbey.""My father tells stories about his time in the baron's army," Tucker says. "I forget where he was, exactly. Down in the lowlands, I know that, in the west, maybe. Anyway, they met these elves, who would all gather in one tiny room and light a fire, and when they'd pass out or start seeing things from the heat, they took it as a sign from their gods. They picked leaders, dealt with problems; pretty much anything important in their society, they left up to hallucinations. It doesn't seem like a very nunly thing to do, though.""Back when my kin first came to Wit's End, Lord Rubik sent scouting parties out into Tulgey Wood, looking for evidence of the gnomes who used to live there before Gax moved in. We couldn't make sense of everything they found, but it sounds like they had a similar sort of ritual," Bufer says, sticking his head under one of the benches curiously. "But like the deputy says, that's probably got nothing to do with anything, and I'm just running off at the mouth again, as usual. Stop talking now? Sure, OK!""It could be a buttery, a pantry or even the circuitor's room," Emmerson says. "We've yet to see the punishment cells, the cellar or the guest's quarters. An abbey of this size must surely have expected the visit of high level church and lay visitors."Oktav clears his throat as he sits gingerly on a bench."Well, the abbey wasn't around terribly long. It could be that more construction was planned that was never completed, or that some of those buildings were outside the main structure and are now in ruins.""Short answer, 'no magic books in here.' Got it," Tucker says, as he opens the door on the far side of the room, revealing a long dark corridor.As Emmerson holds his lantern aloft, Hazel ducks to peer beneath his arm, looking for doors or passages leading off from the hallway. The light from the lantern disappears into the darkness. There might be a door on the west side of the hall, at the very limit of the light's range.Having learned the hard way that open doors in this place don't tend to stay that way, Bufer makes a point of leaning on the exit door with all his weight, attempting to keep their avenue of escape open. While this might seem a futile gesture, given that gnomes are barely the height of a human toddler, it should be noted Bufer never met a pie he didn't like, or a mug of ale that he didn't want to get to know much, much better. As he leans against the door, its hinges do not so much groan in protest as they cry out for mercy.Hazel smiles and shakes her head at Bufer. Bringing her lantern close to the exit door he leans upon, she studies the hinges and the thickness and quality of the wood for a long moment."With all the broke-down doors around here, don't suppose a few more would make much difference. If you hold the door open, I can cut notches out around the hinges and the muscle boys can pull it down. Maybe the inner door, too."Hazel gets to work on the doors with her hand axe. A few moments later, Emus, Tucker and Emmerson have removed the doors and theoretically prevented whatever haunts the abbey from locking them inside."Now, we'd best get to finding that book," Hazel says, picking up her lantern.Tucker moves down the hallway, trying to stay out of the path of Emmerson's lantern light. As the party advances forward, they discover a door on the west side of the hallway, and the passageway continues beyond that."We'll make our way to the end of this hallway, so we know the entire layout," Tucker says. "Shillelagh, stand guard by this door. Once we get the light out of your eyes, you'll be able to keep watch and give a shout if anything tries to come out it. Once we figure out where the far wall is in this place, we'll come back and open it, find out what's behind."Emus nods to Tucker and leans against the door frame, scratching Skeeter behind one ear."If the nuns were slaughtered in their sleep where are their corpses?" Emmerson asks quietly."Oh, I know the answer to that," Oktav says. "The abbey stopped communicating with the outside world, and after a week, the bishop sent a group to see if they had fallen prey to goblins or kobolds. They discovered what had happened. The nuns were brought back to Middleborough and given a proper burial there.""Maybe once this is over we can all go there and pay our respects," Tucker says, leading the way further down the passage.The lantern eventually reveals the passageway coming to a dead end about 10 feet beyond the door to the west. Where it ends, there's a door in the east wall."East or west, lads?" Hazel asks. "One's as good as the other, no?""I don't want to open the east door with the west one still unexplored behind us," Tucker says, returning to Emus' side at the door they passed on the way down the hall. "You ready to see what's behind door number one, Shillelagh?"Emus grunts in the affirmative.Hazel stands behind Emus and raises her lantern, spilling the light into the room as Tucker pushes the door open. He finds himself at the end of a 100-foot long room. At the far northern end, past all the benches and tables, he can see the light from the double doors the group left open previously.Tucker pulls the west door closed, and the group shuffles over to the east door to repeat the process. He and Emus exchange nods, Hazel and Emmerson raise their lanterns, and the clerics keep their aspergillums at the ready. The deputy opens the door.Tucker gets a glimpse of a bed, a bookshelf and other elements of a well furnished, if simply done, bedroom. And then there's a flash of light as something large and very heavy strikes him in the face.As he reels back, blood pouring down his broken nose, the statue of Lothian missing from the chapel's ankh-crucifix fills the bedroom doorway, staring at the group with its sightless painted-on eyes and raises its wooden hand to strike Tucker again.</blockquote>

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