DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

---

---

Anora stoops to fetch up the daggers, checking if they have any special carvings or design to them!

"The crawlspace is the last stone to be unturned," Aldric says, simply, but he is filled with dread of entering it. "Let us be quick about it! Better to get the dread thing over with than live in the fear of it."

Carefully plucking the daggers from the floor, from the midst of that recently bloody small forest of spears, Anora inspects them and sees that they are of serviceable workmanship, and not too old. As well, she spies the same marker's mark on both -- a bar and crescent.

Quietly but quickly, the four weary adventurers make their way back to the antechamber in the north -- the room with the dried snakeskins on the floor, the heavy doors in the door that appear to not open, and the skinny passageway above the south doorway that Dufgal already partly investigated...

As they survey the climb required to access the tight space by Anora's dancing torchlight, the woman realizes where she has seen the maker's marks on the blades before -- on other tools and weapons in Hirot. The daggers had to have been made there, and are indeed no ancient things.

Dufgal recalls the recoil from climbing deeper into the crawlspace. He had never experienced darkness that dark. It made his hackles rise then and now, just thinking of it. However, he knew the mission and accepted his responsibility. He took off his pack and leaned his pole and the warhammer against the wall. He double checked his dagger and garrote were in reach.

Handing his unlit torch to Aldric, Dufgal asks him to light it and hand it up once he is up. And then he climbs up.

Standing somewhat behind the others-- it took him longer to arrive, limping along on his makeshift cane and injured foot-- Ty watches Dufgal scramble up into the crawlspace. He doesn't relish making the same journey, especially in his state, but what help is there for it? It seems that the hound does not make its lair here, but beyond such reconnaissance, they've come for a relic spear. And that spear eludes them yet.

The elf accepts Anora's torch so that she can follow Dufgal into the tunnel. He'll wait until Aldric has ascended, hand up the torch, and then follow himself, dragging his javelin up after him.

"'Ware the serpent!" Ty calls merrily to Dufgal as he goes. "If it threatens you, give it good torch-brandishing."

His words are only half in jest. While Ty feels fairly certain that the burly human did not face down a giant snake in the passage above, the skins that litter the floor around them make clear enough that such a beast does exist-- or did, at any rate-- somewhere in this tomb.

As before, Dufgal finds that the cramped crawlway -- a mere two feet in height and perhaps double that in width -- is stone-paver lined on the bottom, but roofed with packed earth, which is matted with branches and roots.

Torches are passed, packs unshouldered as the others carefully ascend with one another's help. It takes time for Anora, Aldric, and Ty to move into that terrifying tunnel while Dufgal wiggles forward, arm over arm as he crawls. It is not easy to breathe in this awful space, and there are stinks aplenty. Of must and rot, of vole and rat shit and mold.

Burning brand in hand, Dufgal leads the way -- around the corner he peered around last time, and down the long tunnel that turns again to the right some thirty feet away. And at that corner, there is that strange patch on the ceiling he saw before. A circular discoloration that sets it off from the rest of the tunnel roof.

Determined this time, and now with his three fellows in tow, the slope-shouldered man presses on, down to the corner, to the next turn where the ceiling looks damper, or once disturbed. A peek around that corner with his torch shows Dufgal that the tunnel keeps going, north now, but only fifteen or twenty feet further before it looks to empty into some dark chamber. Scattered everywhere in front of him are the tiny bones of what must have been dozens of snakes. Vertebrae, skulls, fangs, ribs.

Moreover, the smell is powerful now. Rot and decay of... fish? Eel? And while the rancor increases, a squint into the dark at the edge of his torchlight reveals something to Dufgal. In that chamber, ahead, there is something in the center of the room. Something large. A column or pillar, covered in carvings or etchings...

Scooching along as swiftly as he deems it safe, Dufgal feels the dual pressures of time and fear. He sees the fancy markings on the column and gets excited, and whispers "Oh Lady, you’se gonna like this."

"You’ve returned to yourself." Anora says, with some effort as she scoots forward.

"What do you suppose it is?" Anora asks, yearning to be free of the cramped space.

Still whispering, assuming caution over carelessness, Dufgal whispers back, some of them writings, them magic kind that you’se read

Aldric climbs up with his oar in one hand, but the passage is too small for him to effectively wield his shield. He slings the inscribed over his back and leaves a hand, and climbs into the crawlspace behind Anora. From back here, he can't see too much other than Anora's hindquarters, but he takes no pleasure in this sight, given the stench around him and claustrophobic stranglehold. He hears Dufgal's whispers of magical writings. Although he is anxious to move forward, he waits for Dufgal to dictate the pace.

"Mind the roof above," Ty murmurs as he struggles along behind the others. He's pushing his pack ahead of him and crawling with his javelin in one hand beside him. "We must be under the stream here. That's why the earth seems darker."

Pulses racing, the four crawl on, with Ty having a torch in the rear, and Dufgal in the front. The thief, and then Anora behind him, both move through the litter of old snake bones and spill down into the high vaulted chamber the former gong farmer’s been describing. Though not a large room, the interior resembles that of some ancient great hall. It has seen better days; a few stones in the ceiling, thirty feet over head, appear to have shifted, and some have fallen and rest, dust-covered, in front of the pair of explorers.

But the main attraction is the wide column in the center of the room. It rises to the ceiling, supporting it, and is decorated with dozens of stylized carvings depicting the deaths of wolves at the hands of men. The column itself seems to be made of alternating sections of stone and rotting wood. Hung from it, like trophies some twenty feet above the floor, are a long wolf-spear, and a bronze shield.

Back in the passage, Aldric and Ty make their way forward. The priest is faced with the serpent bones, but can see Anora and Dufgal ahead, in a more comfortable-looking space. When Ty passes the corner he notes, like the others, the increase in the loathsome smell that’s been assaulting his nose for some time. The ceiling in the corner seems more a woven mat of branches than packed earth, but exclamations from those ahead draw him onward.