Chilling Adventures in the North

"If I'm remembering well, there was not a way in through the bunker," Shad says. "Is that right? Should we double check?" He takes a coin out of his coin bag. "Qinfaren might be able to make the climb up the ice inside, but if we decide on that, we ought to give him all the guidance and blessings we can. We also ought to be sure to meet him at the front gate." Shad rolls the coin between his hairy fingers. "The front gate is almost certainly being watched, right?"

Qinfaren nods along as Shad speaks.

"I think the bunker was the way they watched the gate," Qinfaren says. "If you and I stand guard there and make sure no one shoots at the others, they can crack those doors open for us."

He then looks around at the winter landscape, nodding his head along.

"Did we even check to see if the door was locked?" he finally says.

"Uh, I forget if we tried it," Arogna says sheepishly. "He went into a trapdoor or somethin' like that in the bunker, but I dunno if we could use that an' all. I bet they are watchin' - stay close under the walls like. D'you want me to go an' shove it?"

It was a pretty obvious thing, but Qinfaren makes Bjorn realize that they may have overlooked it. He too gets the same sheepish look on his face as Arogna's, "I guess there is no harm? You should give it a try Arogna."

Arogna makes her way up to the front doors, puts a broad shoulder to them, and gives a shove. "Someone give me a hand," she whispers.

Strength assuming someone assists, 15

And then I forgot the adv: 11

Muharg walks by Arogna and helps pushing the door. “Hmmpf!”

(OOC: what’s with our rolls??!)

"Sure," Shad says. "Let's try the gate. And Qinfaren, I like you plan. Let's creep up on the bunker." He stops for a moment, rubbing his chin. "I should have thought of this earlier. Maybe. It is another option, I suppose." He will clear his throat. "The Cat Lord could bless me to disguise myself. Would that help, do you think, finding out if these folk are the reason goods are missing from the town?"

Argona and Murharg try pushing the doors but realising that they don't seem to open inwards, they begin pulling the doors. Slowly but surely, the doors slowly open. Once the doors open enough, you all can see inside.

Just past the two large doors, you can see large pit. The pit appears to be thirty foot deep and twenty foot square. At the other side of pit, a wooden drawbridge has been raised. This must be the way that the inhabitant of the fortress enter and leave. To the left hand side of the pit, you can a duergar woman standing by a pull-chain which must be the mechanism used to raise and lower the bridge.

To the right hand side, you can see a glimpse of the well that Qinfaren had seen from beneath.

Seeing you open the double doors, the duegar begins shouting in Undercommon before turning invisible.

"Hullo! The doors was open!" Arogna shouts back cheerfully. "Luskar Deliverers. We wants a word."

She turns to Shad, "Guess they seen us all now. If they don't wanta talk, I guess we gotta leave or fight."

Qinfaren waves at the duegars as they pop out of sight.

"We heard you might be having some trouble out here," Qinfaren says in common. "Anyone want to stay around and talk?"

Shad tries keep track of the woman who disappeared: Perception with disadvantage 8. "Can all these folks just disappear?" he says to Arogna. "i'm in favor of leaving, if so. They don't seem to want to talk. How do we fight the invisible?" He thinks for a second. "This just make it more likely that they are the thieves, to me," he says.

(OOC: I assumed Perception with disadvantage, but if you like something different TheBritGeek, please let me know.)

"Hmpf! I doubt these are the supposed dwellers of the fortress. It doesn't look like duergar architecture to me. I'm afraid they overtook it to its righteous owners, but I might be wrong. So I think we're facing two possible scenarios here. One, these people live here and are scared of something roaming these lands. Two, they are intruders and they must be kicked out. Either way, it seems clear that they stole the goats, so we need to intervene."

 Shad tries to follow the movement of the invisible duerger, but without any snow footprints, he is unsuccessful.

Qinfaren looks down into the pit and across to where the duergar sentry disappeared. 

"Whatever we do, if we're going in, we need to cross that pit," Qinfaren says.

He looks around on the other side of the pit to see if there's any more movement and to see if he can see any sort of mechanism or lever that is held in place that is holding the drawbridge up.

Shad is persuaded by Muharg and Qinfaren.

"Hmm," he says. He will look down into the bottom of the pit. "I wonder if we could climb down, walk across the bottom fo the pit, and climb up the other side," he says, trying to see what is on pit floor. "Of course, somewhere on the other side is an alarmed invisible dwarf . . . 'Let's talk,'" he says in Common and Goblin, the two languages he speaks.

"Err...well I'm not sure what they are saying but they don't seem to be liking us here," Bjorn thinks for a moment before putting away his bow and saying, "Let me try. Just be ready to back me up if everything goes south."

Bjorn then walks forward with his hands up showing that that he means no harm and shouts in Common, Draconic, Dwarvish, Giant and Sylvan, "We come in peace! Can we talk?"

Just at that moment, two duergars arrive in the room from the south and another arrives from the east carrying a heavy crossbow.

"We don't want to talk," says the one female duergar in Dwarvish as he reappears before you.

"Well we got them to say something even if we they don't want to talk," Bjorn turns back to whisper to the others before clearing his throat and addressing the Duegar again in dwarvish, "Look we don't want any trouble. We are the Luskan Delivers and usually we are delivering stuff. But today we are doing a friend a favour and looking for something. We were wondering if perhaps you've seen it?

"No," replies the female duergar.

"Now go away" adds the duegar carrying the crossbow bolt. "I've already warned you warned the dwarf, don't make me warn you to." He then begins to raise his crossbow aiming it at Bjorn.