There’s a big barrel in front of you that’s quite obviously filed with thickpitch up to the brim.
A pile of fairly tangled straw.
You can’t find anything particularly noteworthy here.
You come across 11[N]Silver Crowns under the straw.
As far as cleanliness is concerned, the Orcs appear to have plenty of room forimprovement. [NAME] is quite filthy.
Softly, you creep up the stairs…
There are various weapons belonging to the Orcish guards in this stand.
Do you
Take the weapons?
Destroy the weapons?
You demolish the Orcish weapons. Unfortunately, you’re anything but quiet whendoing it!
Full alert!
There is food for several dozens Orcs stored here: meat, sausages, cheese, breadand much more besides…
A fine chance to top up your rations on the cheap.
Howabout it?
There are a number of large barrels set between the shelves and the wall thatquite obviously contain beer.
Do you want to take some?
There are various barrels and casks, as well as bottles from all over Arkania,stored here, all of them full of wine and high-powered brandy.
Do you take whatyou can get?
A low ramp leads to the outside here. The valley opening up before you is filledwith [NAME]. It certainly looks like you did it…
moonlight
daylight
There is a dented, but obviously still serviceable, pot helmet lying here.
Doyou want to take it?
An almost two-and-a-half paces high stone statue of the Orcish war god Brazoragh,decorated with various pieces of jewelry made from copper and brass. It is carryingwhat looks like a genuine arbach in its right hand.
Do you
Pillage the statue?
Destroy the statue?
Make a sacrifice?
Ignore the statue completely?
There’s nothing left to pillage.
You take the Orcish jewelry, and that’s about it.
Well, that’s what you’ve left of the statue of Brazoragh.
With a few determined blows, you smash the craven idol.
How many Ducats do you want to tithe then?
There appears to be some mechanical device covered by a heavy tarpaulin here.When you lift the tarp, you recognize two catapults and two crates full of heavybolts. The Gods only know how the blackpelts ever got hold of these war machines.
Doyou
Take the catapults with you?
Destroy the catapults?
Brilliant idea. Unfortunately, the catapults are too heavy for you!
With a few well-placed cuts, you sever the strings of the two giant crossbowsand jam their ammunition feeds. Once the weapons have been made inoperable, youpull the tarp back over them.
The floor in here seems to have been constucted in a way that lets it be foldedaside in one piece, probably to uncover a heinous pit trap.
Suddenly, the floor beneath your feet opens up into a pit trap with sharp-edgedearthen shards covering the ground. Due to your abominably low experience instanding on thin air, you drop in, resulting in a number of ugly cuts and bruises.Still, after a certain - considerable - time, you do manage to climb back outof the pit.
“Watch out!” [NAME] warns. “There’s a pit trap ahead. Do you see the seams?”
[NAME]guides your eyes along the telltale lines denoting the borders of the pit andyou all manage to pass it by without harm.
You carefully avoid the pit trap. But as it is very large, and you’re hard pressedto find a place to step beside it, you have to be very careful. So, you makequite slow progress.
An avalanche of stones comes tumbling down from the ceiling!
Beneath a pile of debris that apparently fell down from the ceiling, you canmake out the pale remains of a skeleton.
Do you want to examine it closer?
You move away the stone debris… After quite some time, you manage to uncoverthe sad pile of bones. To all appearances, you are looking at the skeleton ofsome Dwarven adventurer who was caught unawares by a cave in. You can still recognizethe remains of a chainmail shirt, a few rotten leather belts, a busted lantern,the head of an axe and several coins.
Do you want to take along everything thatremains usable?
You take some money and an old axe.
Suddenly, [NAME] starts shivering all over. With wide open eyes, [NAME] stares at theDwarf’s bleached bones and clenches [NAME] fists until the knuckles go white.
[NAME] tries to make [NAME] relax again, but that doesn’t seem to be any use at all.In the end, you have no other recourse than to snap [NAME] out of it through a well-aimedslap in the face.
[NAME] tries to make [NAME] relax, soothingly talking the fright out of [NAME]. [NAME] does actuallymanage to help [NAME] over the sight of those bare bones.
You find 1[N]Gold Ducat and 8[N]Silver Crowns.
Under the straw bed, you discover a well preserved arbach.
You come across some Orcish jewelry.
There seems to be a small crevice in the rock above the fireplace for the smoketo escape through - however, it is much too narrow for any of you to pass through.The roast skewered on the spit above the fire looks uncomfortably like a memberof the sort of species you belong to yourselves. The gnawed bones beside thefire tend to support that impression…
There’s a blank lying in the fire of the forge. Presumably, it’s waiting to beturned into a sword. You can see a smoke vent above the forge, but it’s so smallthat only a rat could conceivably escape through there.
Praise the Gods! You have come across a flask with a healing potion.
This barrel of water is obviously intended to quench hot metal.
This is a water basin that can be filled using a pump.
Do you want to drink someand fill your water skins?
You feel wonderfully refreshed.
In this corner, iron blanks and coals are stored in big wooden crates.
Do youwant to investigate the crates a bit closer?
Try as you might, you find nothing of interest.
There are a lot of spear heads, some daggers without handles, a pick axe andone ready-to-use sabre stored here.
Do you want to take along any of it?
This shrine appears to be dedicated to Gravesh, the Orcish god of smithery. Thereis an excellently manufactured dagger lying in an alcove.
Do you want to takeit?
You pocket the dagger.
I’d say this shrine is dedicated to Gravesh, the Orcish god of smiths.
You have hardly stepped into the room, when several dogs start barking and growlingfuriously in the distance.
Inside this cage of massive wood bars, Orcish war dogs are being kept. Despitethe bars of their cage, they are furiously snapping at you.
Do you
Open the cage?
Stab the dogs to death through the bars?
The cage is empty.
Inside this cage lie the bodies of the slain Orcish war dogs.
[NAME] lets [NAME] guard down for an instant and is bitten in the forearm by one of thewar dogs.
Your bloody work takes several minutes. It has gone eerily quiet all of a sudden.
There is a pile of dog food of doubtful aroma and even far more doubtful proveniencehere.
Do you want to examine this pile any closer?
You soon come to the conclusion that there is nothing worthwhile to be foundhere.
There is a bunch of leather harnesses here made to fit those war dogs.
Suddenly, [NAME] screams when [NAME] hands touch something soft and mushy which, ona second look, turn out to be the remains of an Oger meal - eeeyucch…
You find a sabre in reasonably acceptable condition. Looks like the Ogres usedit as a sort of table knife.
Do you want to take it with you?
“Fairly disgusting, that thing, but a weapon’s a weapon,” [NAME] mouths off whenyou put the sabre away.
Here, the Ogres have stored their “heavy equipment”: monstrous war hammers andgigantic clubs, outsized axes and giant war flails. All of these weapons arefar too heavy for you to take with you, much less use.
Do you want to destroythem instead?
It takes some time, but finally all the Ogres’ heavy weapons are just one giganticpile of useless wood and metal debris.
“Oops!” says [NAME] and points at a thin tripwire spanned just a few fingers’ breadthabove the floor.
“We almost went through that and tripped an alarm!”
This looks like a long water trough with a convenient pump to fill it.
Do youwant to take a drink of water here and fill up your water skins as well?
There’s a coarse horse box here. Funny, though. I can’t see any horses around.
Apparently, this barrel is used to store grain for horsefeed. Also, you can seeseveral large bales of hay beside the barrel.
Do you want to
Set fire to the hay?
Set fire?
Leave the hay untouched?
Far be it from me to dampen your enthusiasm, but you don’t have anything to setfire with.
It doesn’t take long for the hay to go up in flames. The stinging smoke forcesyou to leave the room.
There was a fire here not too long ago.
The barrel and the hay are still aflame and giving off an infernal amount ofstinging smoke.
This would have to be the latrines, as is made evident by the holes in the floorand especially the unbearable stench.
There’s a dead Orc on the ground in front of you now.
Do you want to throw him down the shaft?
So?
You pull the Orc over to a wide shaft in the southern wall and dump his bodyin there. After a few seconds, you hear it hit the floor with a dull thud.
There is a big, dark hole gaping in the wall here with a shaft leading straightdown into the darkness behind it. The stink from this hole is so abominable,it’s unbearable.
There are a lot of weapons stored here.
Do you want to take your pick?
You enter a great hall lit by several fires and a number of torches.
How about that! There’s an almost full barrel of stout here.
Do you want to takea drink?
Man alive! You’ve polished off the entire barrel! Talk about your combat boozers!What a capacity!
“Wow! That’s some stuff!” [NAME] grins, wiping [NAME] mouth.
“Has a real nice taste toit!”
When [NAME] bends over the barrel to take another sip, [NAME] pauses.
“Wait a minute,there’s something down there…” [NAME] says and tries to reach down to the bottomof the barrel. But alas… [NAME] arms are too short!
“I have to know what that is…”
Now, [NAME] tries to climb head first into the beerbarrel, and suddenly starts kicking up a storm with both legs as if doing a polka.The barrel starts swaying, tips over and breaks apart when it hits the floor.The beer spills out all over the floor and makes a gigantic puddle.
Now you can all see just what was hidden down in the depth of the barrel, beneathall that beer.
A dead rat.
There’s some sort of stew simmering in this cauldron.
Do you want to
Examine the fireplace?
Eat the stew?
The stew looks harmless enough, although I can’t imagine that it’ll be all thattasty. You can see a small smoke vent above the fireplace. Not that that is unusual.
The stew makes for a satisfying meal.
No thanks, I’m not hungry!
In this cauldron, some big hunks of meat are swimming in a sauce that gives theimpression of being infernally hot even from a distance.
Do you want to
That goulash seems to have been made from some sort of Hylailian Fire - and thosehunks of meat might very well have been cut out of a dragon. You can see a smallsmoke vent above the cooking place. Fairly normal, that.
Not bad. Not bad at all, but quite definitely hot!
There is a small well here.
Do you want to take this opportunity to get a drinkand fill up your water skins?
There are various cooking utensils and some spices on the table, but nothingof real interest to you.
No, no. You better stay away from that stuff! Trust me.
“By Phex!” [NAME] curses and screws up [NAME] face. “That stuff tastes like Ogre crap!Yucch! It may look like beer, stout even, but I’d bet my boots it is actuallynothing of the sort!”
The altar appears to have been hewn from a single block of stone. You noticea shallow bowl on the upper surface that is caked with some dried blood.
On the wall, you can see about a dozen slits for crossbow bolts or some suchless than friendly purposes arranged in a seemingly haphazard manner. You donot find any release mechanism, though.
You have hardly turned your attention away when you are hit by some crossbowbolts.
[NAME] notices a fairly well disguised pit trap ahead of you.
You are walking along the corridor when, suddenly, the floor gives way underyour feet, and you fall about three paces deep into a pit trap. You have hardlyhit bottom when you recognize the familiar rattle of Giant Stagga mandibles.And yes, that very moment, you see them approach. Two Giant Staggas, and thesetwo specimens really deserve the term giant…
A pit about three paces deep opens up before you, but you have no problem passingit by.
[NAME] takes one look at the wall and suddenly says: “That’s a keyhole! Right there!”
Withone finger, [NAME] points at a small opening in between two stones.
What a pity you’re not carrying a key that fits the keyhole.
After a bit of searching, [NAME] has found the key to fit the lock. [NAME] has hardlyput the key in and turned it, when the wall in front of you simply dissipatesas if by magic.
There is a multitude of crates and bundles stored on the shelves. Apparently,they contain coats of armor or something.
Do you want to take a look?
Just a moment! Additionally you find %d[N]Ducats.
You take back the %d[N]Ducats you tithed before.