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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1269605" data-attributes="member: 15470">Issue #2: The Tower. Episode 7Chuck ties up the prisoners, very skillfully. Paks performs first aid on the woman, who stops bleeding but remains unconscious. Chuck puts manacles and a gag on the woman, and one of the uninjured swordsmen, securing the other two with his rope.We take the woman and the prisoners out to the ladder up the cliff. Chuck rifles the corpse, and the rest of us search our four captives. The woman has a gold chain with the symbol of Enkili on it, which Paks takes. She also has a key, which Miriel pockets. Paks counts their money, finding ten pieces of gold, and eleven of silver. Stone checks out their boots, but none fit. We also disarm the criminals, taking their four swords and four cheap daggers. Miriel takes the sorceress’ dagger, which seems to be of much better quality. Chuck runs up the ladder and waves the torch to summon Goldpetal and Fergus, but those two do not leave their post. Chuck and Stone begin to drag the bound outlaws up the cliff face. The captives complain, especially when they scrape against the rock, but they are securely bound and have no choice in the matter. Paks stays on watch, standing in the torch light at the mouth of the passageway. She pitches one of the two torches down the corridor. It lands about eighty feet down, illuminating a passage approximately a hundred feet in length. The corridor is very old, of rough-hewn stone. She sees nothing in the hallway, but there are doors along the right side. The torch lies at the end of the corridor. Miriel waits with her, and the two friends watch the passage while they wait for the rest of the party. Chuck and Stone take the prisoners up to the tower. Saraya follows them back up to the tower, as she is wounded. When they reach the tower, they tell Fergus and Goldpetal what they have found. Fergus and Goldpetal begin debating what course of action to undertake.  Stone heads back down the cliff to rejoin Paks and Miriel; when Fergus and Goldpetal do not follow, Stone goes back up and calls out for them, and they give up their argument and join the group below. Chuck and Saraya stand guard in the tower.The five of us below head down the corridor, dimly lit by the flickering torch lying at the end, and the torch outside at the beach. Three doors line the right hand wall at fairly regular intervals, and there is a fourth door at the end of the corridor. They stop at the first door, keeping as silent as possible in case there are any bandits remaining who were not alerted by the previous fight. Paks and Fergus have their swords drawn and ready.Stone listens at the door, but hears nothing. He shakes his head. Paks and Fergus take position on either side of the door, and Stone pushes it. It resists, until he puts a shoulder into it. The door opens to reveal a smallish room with barrels and foodstuffs and such, about twenty feet square. Paks suggests searching the room, which we do, but see just dry foods, fresh water, and cured meats; enough supplies for a couple of weeks. We move on to the next door. Stone listens again, hears nothing again, and opens it. Behind it, we find another twenty foot square room, containing a cot, a little desk, a cheap threadbare rug, and a small chest. While Paks and Miriel move into this room, Stone continues along the corridor to listen at the next door. Fergus remains in the doorway, standing guard over us. Paks and Miriel look at the chest, while Goldpetal searches the rest of the room.Paks tries to pry the chest open with her short sword, but can’t open it. She picks it up and hears glass rattling around in it, so she sets it down again. “Hey!” Miriel says, with a sudden inspiration. “What about the key that sorceress was carrying?” She pulls it out of her pouch and uses it on the chest. The key turns, but she gasps in sudden surprise, pulling her hand back. “Ow!”“What is it?” asks Paks, looking at her in concern.“There was a trap. A needle. It stuck me in the finger,” Miriel says. “Poison?” asks Paks, and Miriel holds out her hand. They both inspect it. There doesn’t appear to be any swelling.“Luckily, if that’s what it was, it doesn’t seem to be having an effect,” Miriel says. There doesn’t seem to be any other way to help, so Paks returns to the chest. The chest swings open easily, now. Inside, the two women find a ledger book, two sheets of parchment, a bag of coins, a silver ring with a rat motif, a carved rat skull, and a great number of vials. Paks checks the chest for a false bottom but doesn’t find one. Miriel counts the bottles. There are forty-two, in all: twelve vials of glowing emerald liquid; fifteen vials of black gas; eight vials of viscous amber fluid; five vials of green liquid; and two milky white ones. Neither of them recognizes anything in the vials, and when they show them to Goldpetal, he can’t make anything of them either. “We’d need an apothecary, to identify them,” he says, shaking his head.We move on to the next room. Stone hasn’t heard anything through the door, so we open it, finding a larger room, almost thirty feet square. It has eight cots. A brief search turns up nothing of value, and we return to the corridor.We move on to the final door, at the end of the corridor. Stone listens once more and again hears nothing. He opens the door, and we find that it’s the room under the trapdoor in the tower. We have come through the wooden door on the eastern wall. Against the southern wall is propped the large rock slab, over nine feet tall and perhaps five feet wide. A bunch of large rocks are piled against it, holding it upright against the wall. Stone gives the signal, a code of knocks, at the trap door.</blockquote>

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