DCC DotSK: Act 1-3

"Do you feel somehow… enhanced?" Anora asks of the footpad. The thing stank something terrible, but whoever had placed it here and clearly put some value on the thing! If not artistic, nor monetary, then surely it was some other value the thing held!

The question from the big-haired wizardess agitates the thief for some reason. Makes him a bit pissed off. Angry even. Yes. In fact, he quite enjoys picturing planting his fist right in her yapping face...

"Dufgal?" Anora asks a moment later again, when Dufgal doesn’t answer; instead looking at her with some new, bizarre expression on his face.

Unaware what has come over him, the answer to Anora’s question was a profound yes. Was he geared up for transformation? Was the change coming to be one that would help them all… or only himself? He wondered back to the conversation he had with himself about becoming great, about running the town by Anora’s side. Now he started contemplating what she really brought to the table and whether he may be better off taking control. He was often told by his father that arrogance would ruin him. Troubling though that his father always used that to justify beating him. He acted as though it was helpful to leave him bruised and bloody. One day, I’ll show him.

The thief kept his mouth tightly shut around the trap that was his tongue. And he confidently marched down the hallway that has stopped him in terror just minutes before.

Tyravasiel-Llir has been contemplating a return to the crawlspace-- to face the large, flame-avoidant snake that Dufgal surely saw there-- but the human's sudden departure piques his curiosity. He pricks up his cropped ears and watches as Dufgal strides past.

"The Mud Prince strikes out on his own!" Ty observes to Anora. "You may have some competition there, Headwoman."

Intrigued, the elf takes up his javelin, struggles to his feet, and ambles off to see what the burly thief's sudden self-assertion is all about.

"There’s scarcely a quicker way to make enemies than to ignore their words." Anora says, doubting the success of Dufgal’s rule if he couldn’t answer to his own name when called.

Would the townspeople’s cries also fall on deaf ears?…

Out of the circular room and up the shallow steps Dufgal goes, wearing that absurd bear cloak. Then down the passage he first dipped into, when he saw the blood in the passage leading from the bottom of the steps. Ty a least goes with him, but Dufgal realizes as he leaves the light of Anora's flickering torch that he cannot see in the deep gloom that wells in the tomb.

"Would you seek to walk around blind as well as both deaf and dumb, Dufgal?" Anora says, as she slinks up with her torch behind the duo!

To this he responds, "I’se thankful for the light, but mind yer gullet. It’s an awful blighter in ‘ere. Wouldn’t want you to toss your biscuits."
Dufgal says all this over his shoulder and keeps his eyes affixed on the shadows ahead.

"Some of us have faced the Jarl’s men head on, Dufgal, rather than springing on them from the shadows. Each of them stand taller and broader than you.

Try, if you like your chances…" Anora says, blade in hand and not one to let a man speak to her like that: Least of all a thief and murderer like Dufgal.

"What is this, a pissing contest?" Aldric asks as Dufgal and Anora spar with words. "By the gods, Dufgal just saved my life. His bravery is not up for question. Nor his intellect." he says to Anora. Then he turns to Dufgal, and says: "And Anora also fought bravely, with sword and spell, at our side."

To all, he says: "This tomb is horrible enough without the bickering between us. Have your words, yes, but not until we're warm with hearth fire and our hands clasp a full mug of ale."

Aldric’s words cut through the foul fog the thief had fallen under since donning the fetid furs. Dufgal remembers himself… and his affection for Anora. But pride clouds his thoughts now so he merely nods briefly at the cleric and bows his head slightly lower to the Lady Anora to whom he was contracted. He couldn’t possibly muster an apology even if warranted.

He turns forward again to contend with the bloody hallway.

In that lower hallway, Dufgal and the others see that the dried bloodstains the thief called out earlier are not just present, but plentiful. And in that blood there are tracks -- bootprints, leading to the steps they just descended. But by the time they reach the bottom of the stairs, the blood has thinned and the prints disappeared.

A quick peer into the doorway at the end of that narrow passageway reveals that it is the space below the bowl-like depression in the upper chamber, one of the first rooms the adventurers encountered. It is in fact the bottom of that pit-trap, and fully a score bronze spears are set into the ground, awaiting anyone falling from that chamber above. A circular hole is visible in the ceiling, big enough for two people to fall through at the same time... surely leading to that upper room.

Beneath the hammered spears, on the floor of this lower chamber is a lot of dried blood. More than a single body might contain. And in that nasty mess, a pair of daggers glint, resting in the middle of that forest of spears.

"If it were a pissing contest, we would both surely lose in the presence of Aldric of Pelagia."
Anora snaps, but relents. The day… days… had lay heavy on the lot of them. They were close to the end, she felt it…

"It should be easy enough to navigate, when we are free from the opportunity to be impaled!"

Dufgal, having held the replica Wolf Spear, peers closely to see if the real Wolf Spear is hidden amongst the stand of trap spears.

At least from the doorway, in the light of Anora’s torch, these bronze spears appear to be simple affairs, and bear little resemblance to the replica at the Wolf-Spear.

"Uh, I’se thinkin that it ain’t here, that magic spear we’se lookin for. Do we’se check that crawlspace agin’…. with extra torches?!"

Anora creeps amidst the spears, so that her light can brighten the chamber proper!

"Just a moment!" she says, tenderly than the last remark she had barbed at Dufgal!

Moving into that claustrophobic space, Anora does not like what she finds, or smells. No hidden levers or trap doors, no other way out... but it's clear from the staining on certain spears and the pooled, dried blood beneath her feet that someone, or more than one someone, fell from above. They lost a lot of blood, and then they... were dragged away? Got up and walked away?

Near the woman's feet are also scraps of blood cloth, and two daggers of middling quality.