Beginnings, Part 5

The day, if it can be called that, grinds on. Swing after swing, punctuated on occasion by breaks for water. Crockus does not return.

After some hours, a guard calls down the tunnels where you are working. "Ho! Break time." At her voice, the other guards move into action. The guard sergeant calls out instructions: "Tools down. Line up!" and the other slaves begin to move. The lash is applied readily to those who lag.

The owner of the female voice appears with a partner bearing a large trough. The two are followed by another pair of guards carrying similar. By the sour smell that wafts toward you, you recognize the same gruel you were fed earlier.

The quartet sets down the troughs in front of the first slave in line and empties four clay jugs into the water barrel. The nearby guards stand at the ready around the line; others remain overseeing the group of slaves still working. One at a time, you advance, eat, and drink--not enough to satiate, but enough to keep you alive. Those who take too long are lashed.

You return to your task, dismantling the rock around you and shoveling it into carts that are brought and removed by a pair of slaves driven by another guard. Time wears on.

After a time, water break is called and you each take your turn at the barrel. Then more labor, and as you tire, more lashes. Work continues. Muscles fatigue and cramp. The task of chipping at the stone becomes all--the percussion of iron on stone, the rhythmic work songs of the veteran slaves, the ache and twinge of muscled unused to such toil.

At last, the guard sergeant calls break and you are again lined up for gruel and marched back to the cell. On the way back, you notice that yours is one of quite a few cells in a single hallway, and that there appear to be other such halls nearby, down branching corridors.

As for Crockus and the invalid, they are left more or less alone during the day, save for interruptions for more water and food. The mystery man's raving doesn't diminish, but Crockus treats his wounds with a rough poultice and feeds him rice and helpful herbs, and keeps him as warm as he can. After a time, the man's face appears slightly less flushed, his breathing somewhat less ragged. [For the following day, Matt's Stamina + Resistance rolls for his character to resist/overcome his infection are at -3 instead of -4. Crockus can continue to make Intelligence + Medicine rolls to help deal with the infection.]

[While Crockus cares for the invalid, he has the time to explore his cell, converse with the guard, etc., if he likes.]

Later, food is brought--a hunk of hard bread and similar cheese, plus gruel, and a bowl of broth for the invalid, plus water in a wooden bucket with a ladle.

[If anyone would like to act or comment before the night and next day continue, now's the time. Wednesday deadline.]


[As always, if you wish to interrupt any of the above with comments or actions, please do so.]

Beginnings, part 4

After washing, treating, and bandaging the raving man's wound, Crockus fills his pouch with useful herbs and fills the skin of water that the guard offers. (The guard nods at Crockus' offer. "You'll have a place to treat him. And perhaps your skills will prove helpful with others, too. But one at a time.") Armed with these items and a pile of rags, he and his patient are taken back to what seems like the original cell block. The guard opens one of the row of doors, and gestures inward. Inside, a closet-like room beckons. Straw is scattered on the floor and a dismal pile of rags in the back serves as a bed. Once Crockus and the ill man are inside, the guard speaks again. "Wait." He closes the door, and light dribbles in through a small, barred porthole.

In a few minutes, he returns with a small lantern and another guard, whom he instructs to stand watch. The lantern he leaves in the room near the door. The guard remains in the corridor. To Crockus he says, "You can take care of him here. Don't try anything. Tell the guard if you need food, water, more herbs. When he can last better on his own, you'll go to work elsewhere, but keep checking on him." And with that, he leaves, locking the cell door behind him.

[In order to successfully treat the delirious stranger's wound, Crockus will have to roll daily Intelligence + Medicine at difficulty 2, meaning he needs 2 successes. In order to shake the infection, the stranger will have to roll Stamina + Resistance at -3 at first, reduced by -1 by each day beyond the first that Crockus succeeds at treatment.]

Meanwhile, Arana glimpses Mina moving towards one of the laxer guards. He also catches the burly guard staring at Number Seventeen Mouth, who seems unaware.

[Wednesday deadline.]

Beginnings, part 3

The armed guards hustle you (excluding Crockus and the sick man) and the other slaves out of the door in a line. Outside the cell door, a large hall hewn from solid rock. Shadows cast by the several torches flicker across the walls, and in the guttering light you can discern other iron doors set on both sides of the hall. You have little time for speculation, however, as one of the guards shouts a command, reinforced by the crack of a cat-o'-nine-tails, and you are marched along the corridor and away from your cell.

In the dim and shifting light, it is difficult to get an accurate sense for the space you travel through. The guards drive you along a curving corridor that intersects with a larger, straight one in which your footsteps echo slightly and crunch on chips of stone. In this space, you can make out the sounds of other people--grunts, cries, feet both bare and booted over gravel and rock--as well as, perhaps, the squeal of iron on iron.

You are marched further, across an array of trolley rails built into the floor, and down other corridors, some with rails and some without, all rough-hewn and strewn with stone chips. (Those of you wandering barefoot will likely scrape and cut your feet.)

Eventually, you are called to a halt at the intersection of several corridors. Several other guards loiter about, and lanterns are hung on pegs hammered into the stone walls. There is a wooden cart big enough to carry two or three people, resting on rusted rails near one guard. The one you know as Haran steps forward to speak with the cart guard.

"New recruits again."

The other guard chuckles. "Alright, you lot. C'mere and grab yer tools. And don't try anything or you'll end up like 'im." He tosses his head to his left somewhat. Behind him, in the space between two lanterns, a spear has been planted in a pile of small rocks. Impaled upon it, a man's tar-coated, open-mouthed visage leers at you. The guard laughs. "Right. First up!"

At his word, one of the other guards shoves the first of your line, a thin, dazed man, over to Haran, who grabs a pick-axe from the nearby trolley and shoves it into the slave's arms. The man holds the tool vacantly until Haran gives him another push in the direction of one of the corridors (where other guards wait) and growls "Over there. Use it on the wall at the end."

The guards repeat the procedure with roughly half of you, while the rest are told to fill the trolleys with what the pick-axes cull. Shortly [unless you wish to intervene in any of this somehow], you are shuffling down the corridor to do your work.

Meanwhile, the authoritative guard at the cell stands in the doorway, staring at Crockus expectantly.

Beginnings, part 2

Your impromptu conversation is interrupted by the sound of metal scraping at one end of your stone cell. There is a brief silence, and then a rusty squeal as something slides into or out of place and the iron door is shoved open. Torchlight blinds you. Around you, the other prisoners groan and stir. You hear the tromp of mailed feet on stone, and as your eyes adjust to new light, you discern the silhouettes of several guards, two of whom set a large, wooden trough on the floor. "Alright, eat," one says, and both step back. Almost before he has finished speaking, several of the emaciated bodies around you have risen and shuffled forward. The first plunges its hands into the trough and scoops up a mass of gray gruel. The rest follow suit and begin to gulp down the gobs of sticky substance.

Note
The cell around you is larger than you thought: perhaps four by five meters, crammed with near-naked, pale bodies. There are maybe fifteen other slaves in the space, including those with whom you've been speaking. The walls and ceiling are of hewn granite. There is but one entrance, the iron door through which the guards entered, and it is built into a short recess in the center of one of the narrower walls.

Beginnings, part 1

You wake to a stony darkness. It is difficult to remember, for a moment, where you are. But the reek of human sweat does for your memory what your sight cannot: you recall the days of travel, chained to splinter-ridden wagon boards, the tasteless gruel, the urine and feces of your fellow travelers. The lash of the caravan drivers. The lash of the slavers. A slow change of climate, your surroundings hidden from you by the sides of the cart you rode in. And, somewhere in this nebulous space of thought, the arrival: nighttime, dragged from the wagons and across hard gravel, shoved more than led into a rocky opening, down stony corridors by rough, mail-clad men. Thrown into a black room, an iron door heaved shut behind you. No more light.

And now, you are awake. And, it seems, not alone. Around you, muffled grunts and breathing, and perhaps someone stirring.