Krumar confused by this place raises an eyebrow "Did you say skeletons playing dice?! Maybe they will just let us go if one of us plays a game with them"

"Now I am oficially freaked out and confused... " says Jaylan. "No way to join the game and obtain some information about this place right?"

Raevyn - With your Eyes of the Grave you sense five undead.  Four of them are thirty to forty feet straight north of where you are, they are forming a rough circle and indeed seem to be rolling dice in some kind of game.  Bones rolling the bones, as it were.  You also sense a fifth undead slightly further away and a more east of the others...

Syl - If/When Raevyn mentions the fifth you scootch over for another peek and yes indeed there it is hanging on the wall.  Perhaps you overlooked it because it looks like just a dead guy's skeleton chained to hang from a wall.  Perhaps you were distracted by the skeletons playing craps.  Hard to tell.

Nefire - Sauntering by could be tried...?  But you would be sauntering by within melee range most likely.  But you could turn back the way you came...

Jaylan and Krumar - I mean, you could try joining the game?  They seem to be going through all the motions of a typical back alley dice game... Except the lack of sounds from anything but the dice and their own bones.  

Dabbert - You are probably really starting to wonder why you got into this in the first place!  :)

     Each square is roughly 5 ft.  This connects to previous map and spot you were, I just did by hand to make the squares work better and all.  Any inconsistencies are merely my lack of skills.  Your exact positions are kind of fluid at the moment - I kind of assume you're all mostly bunched up by the opening trying to peek into the room without being seen.  If you move now you can all basically move as if you were in Raevyn's position. Solid black lines are stone wall, the fill in/random hashes just meant to also indicate that. With the torchlight and lantern light, presumably, being kept away from the opening for now you cannot see the northern end of the room where the crying seems to be coming from.  The crying is perhaps carrying further than it should but... Empty chambers and all... Voices carry?  

     The room ahead is as everything else you have seen so far - Made of stone and with little to no adornment.  Barring the body of bone hanging on the eastern wall up that way.  They seem, from your current vantage, to have their wrists chained or cuffed above their head and to be dangling.  That one isn't moving much currently.  The four playing dice are all dressed in scraps of old rotted armor, each seeming to perhaps have the vestiges of leather armor about them and each with a bit of weapons nearby.  They are currently paying you no mind.  Either they do not notice you or do not care.  Time will tell?

Action on anyone who cares to do anything...

     But if you are entering the room or doing anything likely to draw their notice, we may enter into initiative so don't get too far ahead of yourselves!

[To be timed for when Jaylan enters to approach the gaming skeletons...]

Syl belly crawls over until he can see the skeleton hanging on the wall.

DM:

"Ok, here we go" whispers Jaylan to the others and after taking a deep breath he casually walks into the room, walking directly towards the palhyhing skeletons and looking at the last roll. 

"That's good luck my man" he says "Do you mind if I try mine too?" he says, trying to smile and act as if everything was normal, and he wasn't talking to a bunch of skeletons. 

As Jaylan enters the room we all enter initiative order, just in case...  I'm counting Jaylan's movement and talk as a surprise round which Syl also acts in.

Initiative Order: Jaylan - Raevyn - Skeleton A & C - Nefire - Syl - Skeleton B & D - Hanging Skeleton - Dabbert - Krumar

     Jaylan does his best to approach the circle of skeletons with calm and ease.  As he gets closer he is able to see to the far end of the room where he sees the source of the muffled crying - what appears to be a young girl sitting on the floor in front of a door.  The girl is all balled up with her arms hugging her knees and her head buried as she softly sobs.  The skeletons pay little head to Jaylan as he approaches.  Once he is upon them he looks down at the dice just as one player is about to pick them up.  They are old and yellowed but seem like typical six sided dice of the time.  There are three of them and as Jaylan looks he sees there two sixes and a one.  

     The roller reaches into the small pile of coins besides him and tosses one coin to each of the three who were watching.  They each snatch the coin and the one they had in front of them and rake it back into their own little pile.  The dice are passed to the left.  There seem to be five or six total dice.  The new roller seems to pluck out two and start shaking them in it's boney palm.

     "That's good luck my man," Jaylan says.  "Do you mind if I try mine too?"

     A silence falls over the room except for the continual sobs and, after a moment, the scratch of bone upon bone as all heads turn to Jaylen.  *gulp*

     Meanwhile, Sylrieth has moved to the eastern wall and is crawling along it's edge trying to go unnoticed and stay within the shadows.  Once within range Syl reaches out mentally to the chained skeleton and attempts to send a message asking if they need help and want to be cut down.  This looks suspiciously like Syl doing nothing in particular for a moment to the rest of the group...  Though the hanging skeleton slowly moves their head to look at Syl and then nods up and down, a imaginary grin upon their skull... 'cause you kind of need skin and muscles and such to grin or frown or express at all visually, ya know?

     After a slow breath, which the skeletons don't actually take, the two closest to Jaylan shuffle a bit to opposite sides to make a bit of a gap between them.  They all remain looking at the newcomer wordlessly.

Actions?

Jaylan - Please describe your next action or two.  Try not to go too far yet as things are on edge and could go a lot of ways but I can always say you only get to a certain point before being interrupted.

Sylrieth - The skeleton is chained, not tied.  Now what?

Everyone else - Just watching or...?

Krumar turns to Dabbert "Oh, apologies, I am in your way" Without waiting for Dabbert to say anything Krumar walks past him and pushes him to the front (Kruamr switches places with Dabbert lol)

Not wanting Jaylan to have all the fun, though dice isn't really her game, Nefire decides this waiting around and watching is definitely not her game.  So she walks up behind Jaylan, keeping back a bit, and peers around his elbow to see what is going on.

His mission to help this skeleton gamble affirmed, Syl continues to crawl toward where he is chained.

Stealth?  9

Dabbert stumbles forward as Krumar graciously gives him the advantage of superior position.  

"Oh uh...yeah.  Thanks..." 

While not particularly trying to be stealthy, Raevyn strides into the room not long after Nefire and the others, taking advantage of movements and shadows. However, instead of peering at the game, or the chained skeleton, her attention is drawn to the crying child like one in the corner. Truthfully she was more suspicious than concerned, but either way she’d try to see if she could discern something from a closer distance.

Insight: 19 

• Jaylan joins the game!

     As the two skeletons edge over to make room, Jaylan smiles.  Nods.  Gulps.  And finally takes a seat wondering what he got himself into.  All sightless, empty eye sockets turn to the new player in the game and wait expectantly.  Now what?  Jaylan draws upon his vast experience as a dice player and... Finds he has no experience as a dice player.  He doesn't know the rules of the game or how to play!  Why didn't someone with proficiency in Dice do this???  (Deliberately NOT looking at Syl here...)

     Jaylan looks around, trying not to look frantic as he does so.  He notes that each skeleton has a little pile of coins besides them (there own personal stash, he presumes) and three have a single gold coin placed out towards the middle (the wager he guesses) while the one with the dice had three coins out front but put fourth one out when Jaylan sat.  Ok, that makes sense.  Jaylan digs through their pouch and pulls out a gold and sets it in the middle...

     The skeletons relax, as far as one can tell about a bunch of bones.  The shooter shakes the dice up in their hand, which would be quieter if they had flesh to cushion it, and then throws the two dice into the middle...  They land showing a 3 and a 2.  The shooter then moves another gold from their personal pile to join their coin in the center and then turns to Jaylan.  Jaylan waits... But senses quickly the others are waiting on him.  He's unsure and looks around but gets no help.  With a guess he pulls out a second gold and puts it in front of him.  The next skeleton does the same, then one pushes their coin more fully into the middle and sits back, almost visibly no longer part of things.  The last skeleton adds a second coin.  The shooter grabs a third die and rolls that as well.  He rolls a 3...  Shooter shrugs and adds a third coin.  Jaylan does as well as do the other two skeletons still apparently in the game.  A fourth die is grabbed and rolled.  It is a 1.  The shooter stays motionless for a long moment then waves a hand over his three coins before looking to Jaylan.  Unsure, Jaylan mimics the motion.  As do the two remaining skeletons.  A fifth die is picked up, rattled, and cast...  It is another 3!

     The shooter pumps his boney first in the air.  The two skeletons in the roll imaginary eyes and do their best to show chagrin.  The skeleton that bowed out early just sits there all smug and cocky.  Jaylan... watches.  Unsure.  What just happened?  Did the shooter win?  Why?  The shooter has no such doubts, they lean in and rake all the coins to themself and push them into their own personal pile.  They take out one, put it back in front of them, then pass the dice to Jaylan...

Syl gets friendly with a hanging skelly.

     While Jaylan is getting a crash course in rolling the bones with piles of bones, Sylrieth is getting up close and personal with the skeleton which hangs from the wall.  Their scraps of clothing reveal nothing.  They are too old and tattered and decayed to provide any clue as to who they were or why they are being treated such.  There is no weapons upon this skeleton.  A quick inspection shows the manacles they are locked into are bolted right into the wall.  The locks aren't keyed though, just basically pins put through holes.  Secure enough since the prisoner can't reach them but anyone could get up on tip-toe and undo them.  Well...  Maybe not Nefire.

     Syl tries to be all stealthy and sly about his approach and inspection.  And maybe he was.  Probably not as much as he hoped though.  But the hanging Skel is well aware of him and the others seem more or less enraptured with their game and the new player.  Probably cheating him out of coin, Syl figures.  Most die games are rigged...  If you're playing them right, rigged in your favor.  But back to topic on hand... It looks easy enough to release the prisoner is Syl so chooses.  His mental questions and the skeleton's reactions make it seem pretty clear it would like to be released but Syl is getting no actual communication back besides the head nod.  

     ((Honestly I was a bit like "Can one even speak telepathically to a skeleton??" seeing as they have no brains and all.  But Animate Dead says you can mentally command them so they must be able to receive telepathic messages?  But Monster Manual says "They can’t read, speak, emote, or communicate in any way except to nod, shake their heads, or point." so I am splitting the baby and saying they can receive but can't give anything back / there's nothing to read...  Feel free to argue otherwise on Discord or in PMs if you wish?))

• Raevyn goes exploring.

     Raevyn uses all this distracting behavior to move into the room and seek out the source of the sobbing.  It doesn't take her very long, once she is more of less between the skeleton dice players and the one hanging on the wall, Raevyn is able to make out a young girl at the very end of the room where the shadows are darkest.  She is small, petite, young... Perhaps in the 8 to 12 range but it is hard to tell from this distance.  The first thought is that the girl looks pale.  Sickly.  Raevyn is not getting a great look at her as the girl is bunched up into a ball sobbing into her arms which are wrapped around her knees...  But as Raevyn gets closer she decides that no, the girl is not sick.  This girl gave up being sick long ago.  The girl is dead now.  Dead but still sad.  Still sobbing...

     The girl is no skeleton though if Raevyn gets close and really examines her she will see bone sticking through decayed or missing flesh at points.  But mostly she just looks like a sad, lonely girl with no hope for happiness.  It would be heartbreaking if the girl still had a beating heart...  Or maybe it is despite that fact?

• Dabbert and Krumar go to White Castle.  Wait... what?

     The knuckleheads of the group so far are not doing much of anything here.  Some pushing and shoving, some jockeying for position and some witty repartee... Or at least the medieval locker room equivalent of such.  They have perhaps dared move over a bit to get a better looksee at what is going on but they haven't actively done anything constructive yet :)

• Nefire... waits.

     Nefire is a halfling who likes to cut the world down to her size... And then smash it to pieces.  So far there is no call for her unique brand of diplomacy just yet so she too has settled on the wait and see approach...

So... We're obviously not in a strict Initiative Roll order here or anything and in truth all of your positions are very much fluid.  If you want to be elsewhere than where I have you just specify.  The round of dice probably took at least 4 or 5 turns so you all had time to position yourselves or do things if you wanted/ still want.  We're basically very loosey-goosey on things until the shit gets real, yes?  If / when someone takes an offensive act then we'll go strictly in order but for now it is kind of free form.

     Does anyone volunteer to step in for Jaylan at the dice game?  I botted him through a round but I know the rules I made up for the game... And part of the fun should be that he doesn't!  lol...And since this is one of 3 potentialities for turning this whole scene into a potentially Initiative Order event...  It should probably be run by someone not me?

1.      Syl - You freeing your skelly or?
2.      Raevyn - Approaching closer to (probable) zombie girl or?
3.      Nef, Dab or Kru - Anything?

Seeing that Jaylan was alright with the table of dice rolling skeletons, Nefire takes a better look around the room.  

She finds it interesting that the old man looks at the chained up skeleton, and if she didn't know better, that he might actually unchain him?  She walks over to Syl and says under her breath to him, "You know, that one is probably chained up for a reason."

That's when she sees Raevyn over in the corner... is that with a girl?  Oh!  that's where the crying sound was coming from.  She heads over to see if she can assist seeing there is nothing she can smash.  She gives her axe a good swing as she walks over and just as she finishes, she stops dead.  Is that some sort of zombie girl?!  Nefire looks from the creepy girl to Raevyn, "What do you think is going on here?"

Everyone scatters to the winds and starts doing...well.  Whatever the hell they think they're doing.  Dabbert watches and analyzes the situation for a moment, and when he sees that the skeletons seem to be content in their game, and that they're not put off by Jaylan once he sits down his gold piece, he moves their direction.  He positions himself against the wall so that he can see past the skeletons to what Syl and Nefire are doing, then sits down with his halberd across his lap and sets a gold piece of his own down.  

"I uh...I'm pretty good at throwing bones."  He says as he leans forward, looking at the skeletons.  He realizes what he said and grins.  "Apologies.  Old slang term.  So tell me, what are you four fine fellows doing here?"  

He looks the four skeletons over, then looks at Jaylan.  

"I uh...I guess you're all fellows.  Can't really tell without...you know...uh...meat and all that."  

He takes up the dice, gives them a shake....and rolls 'em...and hopes that the skeletons attention stays on him and not the rest of the room.

As the old saying goes, the cheese stands alone, Krumar thinks to himself...Undecided on what he should do next, he figures he should do what he is best at and begins playing a jaunty tune for the game being had. His music is so lively that he inspires Dabbert (Bardic Inspiration) to overcome the odds. 

Seeing everyone just walking around like the own the place, Syl stands up.

"Nah," he says to Nefire.  "The old boy just wants to get in on the dice game.  I'll bet he just lost too much and they chained him up here.  Everyone knows, the only way out of a bad run is to double down and keep raising the stakes.  If you keep doubling your bet, you can't lose."  He reaches up high to get at the pins.  "They just don't want to give him the chance to turn his luck around.  Now get back in there and win big, buddy.  And remember... never listen to anyone who tries to tell you you've got a problem.  You'll never get out of the hole unless you keep digging."

Besides the fact that it’s a young undead and the only one with remnants of flesh… “All I can determine with certainty is that she’s very sad.” Raevyn responds to Nefire with a tilt of her head. “I sense no suspicion or current threat. Just deep melancholy. Loneliness.”

Then with a few gliding steps the doctor would approach the zombie girl to address her. “Hello.” Instead of making assumptions, Raevyn asks. “May I ask why you’re upset?”

(Positions, as best as I can determine... If you want to be elsewhere let me know.)

((Initiative Order: Jaylan - Raevyn - Skeleton A & C - Nefire - Syl - Skeleton B & D - Hanging Skeleton - Dabbert - Krumar  -- Mostly so I don't lose it if needed.))

Scene 1 - The Game

     Dabbert decides Jaylan could use some support and heads over to the dice game.  The skeletons pay him little mind until he stretches out and takes the dice from Jaylan and decides to take over being the shooter.  One skeleton elbows another and nods toward Dabbert as if to ask "What's up with that?" One tilts it's head towards the skeleton that was skipped over.  The skeleton between Dabbert and Jaylan just shrugs and looks over to Dabbert.

     Dabbert shakes the two dice and as he is shaking them he feels a warm inspirational tingle fall over him thanks to Krumar...

Scene 2 - The Prisoner

     Nefire wanders up to Syl and questions his actions. Syl answers with a bit of a rambling diatribe about his own personal gambling strategies which assure one is always a winner.  It sounds fool proof... Or foolish.  Nefire doesn't worry much about which, just kind of shakes her head and wanders further into the room towards Raevyn.

     For his part Syl stretches up on tip toe and does his best to release the prisoner.  Futzing around with the manacle on the skeleton's left wrist Syl is eventually able to grasp the pin he needs to pull but it's a bit stuck.  Perhaps a bit rusted in place.  But after a couple of tried and slightly hurt fingers Syl is able to release the manacle.  As the wrist is released the skeleton half tumbles, half swings to the ground - One arm still holding it half hanging on the wall but the other arm now loose allow the thing as a whole to kind of fall and swing, dangling from the right arm.  

For Syl:

     Syl's hand are already on the right manacle and feeling around for the pin to fully release his new friend... If he so chooses.

Scene 3 - Zombie Girl

     Raevyn and Nefire have a brief exchange about what they are seeing in front of them - A sad little zombie girl hugging her knees and sobbing in front of the door.  What sense does this all make?  Any?  Is it supposed to?  All they know for sure is the 'girl' seems sad...

     The two edge closer to the girl slowly, not wanting to startle her but likely also not wanting to get too close just yet.   “May I ask why you’re upset?” Raevyn asks and in response she heads a couple of sharp sniffs as the girl is perhaps trying to get herself together.  After a moment she looks up and at Raevyn... and then at Nefire...

     "B...  Bella..." The girl says softly.  "... and Nala... and Willow...  and Mittens..."  She wipes one dirty, dusty and slightly decaying sleeves across her nose and take a sharp sniffle to try to suck up the dripping snot.  "Smokey... and Shadow... and Tiger...  they're gone... All gone..."

1. Syl - Pulling the second pin and fully releasing the prisoner?

2. Dabbert - Roll two d6 (here or on Discord.  Your roll here shows as a d20+2.  For the Inspiration I will allow you to REROLL ONE of the d6's if you choose OR I'll give you SOME help on the rules of the game if you want.)

3. Nefire and Raevyn - More talky or...?

4. Dabbert - Still hanging back?

5. Jaylan, for now, will just be doing his best to do what is expected in the dice game...

Dabbert's eyes flick back and forth along the room as he watches what's happening around him.  He looks down at his dice and smiles.  

"Oh uh...guess I wasn't paying attention.  Apologies.  I'm pretty excited.  Don't get to play dice very often, you uh...know?  Anyway, let's see..."  

He watches as Nefire and Raevyn approach the girl, and listens to what she's saying, though he doesn't hear it clearly.  He does, however, hear the music, and grins before winking at Krumar.  

"Let me try again."  

He picks up the dice and rolls 'em...

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