Matilda comes in with her blades, but between the cook's wildly slashing cleaver and the chaotic circling vulture, she is unable to do much before she retreats again.

And then Horatio wades in. With three massive punches, he finally flattens her. She is down and out.

The vulture grabs the chunk of meat and flies back out the open window.

Combat is over! Everyone may act. What do you do next?

"I guess there's one less mean person in the world now," Titaani comments, moving past the redcap and over to the passageway to the left. "Hey, where do you guys suppose this leads?"

Horatio retrieves the cleaver from the cook, then looks to the others. "What are we doing with her?"

...It leads down a dark, moldy hallway to a closed door...

Ben:

Ben checks to see if the redcap is still alive, now that Horatio has wisely removed her weapon.  If she is, he ties her up.  If not, he props her up against a wall out of the way.  In either case, he searches her body for anything useful.

Medicine:  8

Perception:  13

Pud walks over to the redcap as Horatio and Ben fiddle around with the body. 

"Dang, Horatio! Where'd you learn to fight?" Pud ineptly and unimpressively shadow boxes trying to mimic his moves.

Presuming Horatio kept his blows nonlethal, the redcap chef is deeply unconscious, and now bound. Weaponless, she carries little of value – just a pocketful of worms and a jar of peppery-smelling spices.

As Horatio sees Ben checking the Redcap for breath he says, "I didn't aim for the killing spots, she should wake up sore as hell, maybe some breaks, but she'll wake up. I couldn't fault a cook for protecting their kitchen from thieves and urchins." 

To Puds comment, "I grew up on the streets. There are a lot of cruel people... a lot of gangs. You learn how to fight or bad things never stop happening to you." As he is talking, he wraps the clever in a dish cloth and places it in his bag. 

Titaani and Tiny make their way down the hallway. Titaani opens the door and curiously pokes her head inside. If the door is locked, she will attempt to pick the lock with her gloves. 

Sleight of hand: 9

Perception: 1

Pud watches as Titaani heads for the door down the hall. He follows and wakes up Rizzo, just in case. He whispers some instructions to her as Titaani checks the door.

"Rizz, keep an eye out for bad guys. You know the deal, scream if you see any threats." 

Matilda suspiciously checks inside all the pots and pans for evidence of cooked kids.....she also has a talk with her various weapons about doing their jobs properly and not embarrassing her in front of her friends and family.

Titaani opens the door at the end of the hallway, with Pud behind her. She finds it unlocked.

Within the next room, she sees a contraption made of entangled copper tubes connected to a pot-bellied boiler and a dozen cylindrical containers, which in turn sprout even more tubes that feed into buckets. Barrels are clustered in the corner closest to Titaani, and a worktable in one corner of the room has bits of copper and metalworking tools strewn across it. Light filters in through the green, diamond-shaped panes of glass set into the window.

Titaani remembers seeing this room once before, when she peeked in from the other side. The machine seems to be currently operating; a pungent smell fills the room, suggestive of mushrooms and alcohol.

Meanwhile, Matilda examines the dirty pots and dishes, of which there are many. There is plenty of evidence of cooking, most of which she finds rather unappetizing –  pig snouts, toads, small birds, pickled onions – but no evidence of humanoids on the menu.

Relatively relieved Matilda opens the door to her north.

Making her way over to the worktable, Titaani gestures to Pud to join her. "Hey, Pud! You like metal things, and tinkering and stuff. Did you want to take any of this?"

Matilda finds that the door to the north will not open.

Pud walks over to check out the tools. As he passes the machine, Pud wrinkles up his face as he catches a strong whiff shrooms and alcohol. “Ugh that’s strong. Looks like someone’s cooking up some moonshine up in here?”

He looks over the tools and such but he’s not all that impressed. “Some of these are copper. If we were back home we could prolly sell them for a nice bit of coin. 

Hey, Titaani, did you see anything with checking out when you snuck into this place?”

"Moonshine? Doesn't that come from the moon?" Titaani asks cluelessly. At Pud's question, she shakes her head. "I wasn't really looking, but I don't think this place is worth a second glance. Let's go and rejoin the others."

With that, the little gnome wanders back to the rest of the party. "Did you guys find anything interesting here?"

Ben:

”Not much,” replies Ben, adding, “We should check the other doors that lead out of this room.”

Matilda points to Titaani and then to the locked door.

"Oh. It's locked, huh?" Titaani moves over to the door. "I'll see what I can do."

Sleight of hand: 19