FH: Under the Wolfhouse

[Jim Roberts]

[Feb 5 AM – The Waterworks]

> “If tall folks are QUITE finished?” the kobold asked scathingly. And
> then led the way, with Lomi and the wolf following closely, and the
> others behind. With both the Cat Priestess and the elven officer
> having to take Tail End Charlie.

It was not long at all before they had arrived at their destination. But
there was no sign of any sort of tunnel. Certainly not any trace of a
stout dwarven construction many had seen before, nor anything even
vaguely appearing anything like Captain Finfinfin’s magical Dimensional
Tunnels. Instead, in a small clearing there was nothing more imposing
than a simple doghouse… or more accurately, a wolfhouse.

The kobold looked around carefully, but there were no guards to be seen.
They were clearly far too occupied looking busy to be performing any
attentive guard duties. Which was just as well, as the kobold then
proceeded to lift the front end of the wolfhouse up on its end, helped
out by a cleverly engineered set of hinges and an apparent
counterweight… revealing a hole beneath with the top end of a ladder
leading away below.

“Quickly,” the kobold hissed.

Deciding that his role today was indeed bodyguard, Captain Finfinfin was
the first to step forward for the climb down below. However, Laquendi
held up a dissenting hand. “My wheelhouse, Captain,” the dusky elf
stated simply. “Not yours.” This, the elven officer could not deny. He
was by birth a “city kid”, brought up among humans by his wood elven
kin, refugees from a fallen elven nation. So his “wilderness” training
had all been second hand and focused on woods lore. Spelunking and
subterranean field craft was indeed beyond his direct experience, and he
was not ashamed to admit the lack.

Gingerly, Laquendi eased herself down the ladder, aware that this was a
choice moment for ambush as she vanished from view from those above.
Grimly, the silver haired elf was determined to let any ambushers pay
dearly for their effort. While up above, there was no sign or sound of
Fireballs… or, for that matter, anything else.

As soon as her feet touched the ground at the base of the ladder,
Laquendi flipped around to face away from the nearest wall, not wanting
to be caught standing right where an enemy would expect. Nor, however,
had she been willing to leap down from the ladder early; it would not
have been beyond belief for a cunning foe to have positioned the ladder
to end right at the top of an open pit trap designed to fatally catch
the unwary. Some might think that the dark elf was going overboard in
her paranoia; Laquendi would have simply countered, “paranoia is simply
situational awareness”.

But fortunately there was solid ground below her, as she stood silently,
a ball of Seaweth’s Patented Wax Coated Bat Guano in one hand, her long
dagger in the other. Just at the moment, she knew full well that she was
at a marked disadvantage, as it would take some time for her eyes to
adjust to the gloom. But she would not be totally defenceless.

Happily, it took less time than she’d feared for her eyes to adjust.
Likely because there was more light than just what could filter down
from above. At regular intervals spaced along the tunnel were an odd mix
of flickering and occasionally whining old dwarven “stonelights”, along
with the occasional and clearly magical flickering torch that gave off
no smoke.

Dimly, Laquendi had been expecting to find herself in a tunnel right out
of the old war stories about prisoner camps. Something as small as
possible, dug out of dirt by hand, and only indifferently shored up by
whatever scrap wood could be salvaged. The tunnel she was in now could
not have been more different.

Not only was she able to stand fully upright, but she had considerable
room to her either side. And rather than having been dug by hand and
lined out of dirt, she was standing in a stone walled, floored, and
roofed construction. Something that she was confident Sister Urka, the
dwarven Initiate who’d once been under her Command, would have joked
about being the “regulation” ten foot on a side.

But a stone tunnel suggested other threats, and as Laquendi’s eyes
continued to adjust to the dimmer light, she scanned around looking for
threats. Not just of kobold-kind, or other scaly monsters, but from
architecture or design. These types of finished tunnels were perfect for
concealing swinging floor traps, or deadly blades sweeping out from the
sides. They were, perhaps, less ideal than other designs for the classic
Rolling Rock Sphere of Doom, but they were also perfect breeding grounds
for gelatinous cubes, giving rise to the barely seen monster's classic
ten foot cubical shape.

None of these menaces were immediately apparent, though it would take
more time and equipment to be more certain about the mechanical traps.
But just now, nothing threatened her, allowing her to study the tunnel
in slightly more detail. One of the dwarven clans, like Sister Urka
could probably have been more certain, but Laquendi had the strongest
feeling that the tunnel she was in was OLD, and had been present for
considerably longer than at least the Foreman’s generation, and quite
probably many of his ancestors.

“Appears to be clear at this juncture,” the Drow called up before moving
forward cautiously as her eyes swept around from ceiling to floor
looking for obvious - and less obvious - triggers for traps to maim and
kill.

A moment later the other two elves in the Away Team, Captain Finfinfin
and Galdis Laurelin, clambered down the ladder, followed not long
afterwards by the rest of the expedition. Meanwhile, Laquendi continued
to probe ahead, continuing to look for mechanical sources of danger,
confident that those behind her would call out any sign of monstrous peril.

Finfin was certainly content to let the dusky elf take point. In his
estimation, the Keeryte Team’s Commander knew more about finding
underground traps than he did. The kobold who had been their rendezvous,
however, was not as content, and surged forward. “Big people just can’t
dance,” the kobold commented sourly, before complaining. “Not going to
wait while BIG people fuss around. Wanting ten foot poles next!”

“Eleven,” Laquendi murmured absently, not interrupting her careful study
of the tunnel ahead.

However, the kobold stomped ahead as well as a kobold could stomp… which
was not very. But it was clearly trying its best to demonstrate that
there was no sensitive trip wire or pressure pad trigger awaiting to
unleash untold destruction upon the unwary. Unless, of course, the
kobold’s efforts were a decoy, and it KNEW that its paltry weight would
not be enough to trigger anything. Whether the same could be said for
the elves… or especially the full sized human Abbot in his armour would
remain something yet to be seen.

However, they were here on a diplomatic mission, and the signs so far
had all indicated that they should trust the Foreman. And that meant
trusting his agents, like the kobold dispatched to meet them. So it was
a wary crew that followed along in the direction that the Abbot, Lomi,
and Laurelin could identify by dead reckoning led directly towards the
interior of the prison camp. Some may have expected the tunnel to lead
to another simple ladder leading up into the ramshackle barracks where
many had previously visited the Foreman.