Norbury At Night

[jimacol]

"Well Mr Hewitt, you've satisfied me. Thankyou for being more honest." says Rupert "It also seems that no-one here wishes to turn back now, so shall we proceed?" Rupert begins to head towards the stair.

[yockenthwaite]

"Yes, let's," says Florence, following Rupert.

[Laraqua]

Hewitt leads the way down the stairs, holding his gun in one hand and the flashlight in the other. The steps are narrow and quite steep although they are at least evenly spaced so they could be worse. There are a bit smooth along the middle, smoothed down by the passage of time and many feet, and that causes a bit of an easily tripped over tilt. In the darkness it is quite difficult to find their way down and so it's slow going for those that don't have a flashlight that they can direct down. Hewitt's flashlight sparks off the stone steps, casting shadows dancing gaily as he makes his slow way down, pausing ever so often to lift the light up to check what's in front of them but the stairs lead down to about a few feet of floor space before meeting one of the brick walls. They won't get a good look at the floor below until they round that brick corner.

[Mr. Handy]

Irene marks the wall again, with the arrow pointing back up the stairs. "Maybe that stuff is silk," she whispers, "but silk shouldn't be that sticky, even in spider webs. Maybe we should bring back a sample of it when we're done. It might be useful to the war effort."

[Laraqua]

"It felt pretty solid for silk," said Hewitt, who had lost his handkerchief to it.

Julia follows them tentatively down the stairs. "Did anyone who disappeared ... ever come back?"

Hewitt doesn't answer.

The room is much as the one above but without gaps into the floor below. There is, just as Hewitt described, a large brick archway with a series of sigils thickly engraved into the edges. Each sigil is at least as large as a person's head and look decidedly occult.

Show,feel free to roll occult to see if you happen to recognise it's style although you won't be able to decipher it unless you've put actual ranks into it.

[royya]

Being in the back, Doug comes into the room last with the light.
Probably the miners and masons who built the upper tunnels built this place to rest and storage things.
He remarks, trying to guess the purpose of their descent, the stairs and the this room.

Occult (1d100=6) - So close...

[yockenthwaite]

OOC,[url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3761336/]Rolling Occult (skill 5%) when looking at the sigils on wall as go down stairs below web chamber (1d100=68)[/url]

[aine]

John shakes his head. He's a practical man through and through; non-human menaces? The man is barmy. He follows the group down the stairs, shining his torch for the torchless where necessary. He looks at the sigils with little interest; he doesn't recognise them for anything.

[dormire]

William limps down the stairs behind Hewitt and enters the strange room. The symbols above the door are strange, but mean nothing to him. His stump is beginning to ache. All the climbing and shifting has begun to take its toll on his leg. He surreptitiously rubs his thigh muscles with the back of his gun hand and hopes no one notices his discomfort.

[Laraqua]

"Anyone need to rest?" asked Hewitt. "We may need to run later."

[yockenthwaite]

"Why run?" asks Florence, somewhat alarmed.

[jimacol]

Rupert also examines the markings, but they are like nothing he has seen before. He fumbles around the pockets of his jacket and produces as small paper bag. "Well, before we proceed through this mysterious archway, would anyone care for a toffee?" he announces, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

[Mr. Handy]

Irene examines the sigils, scratching her head. She turns when Rupert makes the offer and raises her gas mask. "Thank you, Reverend," she says with a smile. "Now there's something sticky I wouldn't mind handling."

[Laraqua]

Mr. Hewitt sputters in the back of his hand as though catching on to some innuendo there. He ignores the question.

"May I have one?" asks Julia.

[aine]

John sits his torch down on a high step so it illuminates the area and then takes a toffee with a nod. He sits on the stairs for a rest wondering how long they'd all been traipsing around down here. The toffee just makes him realise how hungry he is.

[Laraqua]

The rest break is short and peaceful but for the strangely menacing long corridor that stares them down with its inky wells of blackness that might obscure any kind of horror. A quick probe of the flashlight reveals wooden iron-strapped double doors about fifteen feet down the corridor. It looks like something pulled straight from the Middle Ages. To make matters worse, there's a row of sharp metal points protruding from the holes in the ceiling that looks eerily like a metal portcullis. There's at least two of them. One by this entrance and the other a few feet before the double doors.

[dormire]

William eyes the porticulli warily. "If those still work," he muses thoughtfully, "They could trap us within. Perhaps we should chock them fast with something, in case a bomb blast from above drops them suddenly." He begins to search through his pockets for something useful.

[Laraqua]

It's doubtful whether anyone would have something in their pockets that could chock it closed. Perhaps a handbag, first aid kit, or a gas mask could do the trick. The trouble was that the ceiling was nine feet high and therefore not easily accessible. It certainly is possible, however, for those with a decent implement and the right skill.

[Mr. Handy]

Irene puts her gas mask back on after finishing her toffee. "Or there could be an actual trap planted there to drop them once we're between them," she says. "Either way, we need to find something to wedge under them. Maybe there are wooden boards or something in the rubble we could use. If one of us gets up on someone's shoulders, we could reach up there."

[Laraqua]

Oddly enough, despite the missing chunks of flooring overhead there is no rubble on the floor in this room. If they returned to the sewer, they could use human bone.