Episode 1: Pradesh

Erden: The whispering is coming out of the metal grates. All these chambers and tunnels must be interconnected through these ventilation and drainage shafts. There's no telling where the owner of the voice is actually situated.

A peek down each tunnel by anyone with darkvision (Baracus, the turtles, or Erden through Timear's eyes) reveals that the south tunnel branches left and right. To the north, an archway entrance to a large, unlit chamber. 50 feet into the west tunnel, a similar archway appears to have been walled up. Don-Yi is there, tapping at the bricks and listening.

What do you do?

Try as he might, Baracus is unable to pick out the original voice. Everything he's hearing is an echo of an echo of an echo, bounced back and forth, around and through the innumerable pipes and shafts, many of them hidden, running through this place.

It's much the same with Rydler even with his finely tuned senses and focus. And yet he senses something, like a guiding force felt only in the core of his being, urging him to the south tunnel.

Just then Don-Yi calls out from the west tunnel. It looks like he's found a chink in the wall. "There's a room behind this wall, and the floor is high and dry. Look, these bricks are new! Help me knock them loose!" he begins smashing the butt of his spear into the bricks. True enough, it sounds hollow. If nothing else, the room beyond might provide a relatively safe place to rest and recover. Then again, it might house new threats.

What do you do?

As far as Baracus and Rydler can tell, Don-Yi is quite himself.

Breaking through the wall reveals a small, square room. Don-Yi was right, the floor and walls are dry. There are no gutters nor inlet pipes. It appears to have been mostly cleared out before being hastily walled up but you can tell it used to be some sort of laboratory. A few flasks and an alembic sit on a table strewn with vivisected rats and smashed laboratory equipment. On what must have been a shelf crammed with specimens now sits a lone jar containing what appears to be a live sewer slime, no bigger than a fist - but its black coloration is unfamiliar to the turtles. A more thorough search of the table drawers and the shelves lining the walls turns up a few intact, stoppered vials:Another vial contains a few crystals which Urban recognizes as a strong stimulant drug. Port Llif was once awash with a version of this drug. But while those crystals were white, these are pale blue. Urban is reminded of something he heard in the alley behind the Scum & Villainy about a new, blue drug circulating in Pradesh.

This former laboratory looks like a relatively safe place to rest. What do you do?

"What's this Heisenberg got to do with the cult? This IS a cult hideout." Lio says, gesturing at the symbols on the walls - the same symbols as the ones at the house. "We've been after this cult a long time, and we've never known them to involve apothecaries or alchemists."

"No apothecary made that." Rafiel growls, stabbing one of his knives in the direction of the black slime in the jar. "And now Sashvar says the cult is in league with a demon?"

Following Baracus' lead, the turtles spend this respite in quiet meditation. All except Rafiel who paces back and forth at the entrance.

By hour's end you realize the whispering has ceased.