The Wanderers

[Combined]

"Right, thank you both greatly. Now, if you don't mind, let's get down to business."

He gave everyone a torch and dropped one end of the rope down, holding the other one firmly in his hands. The end seemed to just reach the bottom.

"Alright, then. You there. Noble fellow who always keeps calling me mister. Get in there. Everyone else follows in whatever order you wish, but one by one. Just be careful. We wouldn't want to lose you."

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

"Very well, Mister Smith, I shall take the lead. I will not let you down!" Rufus exclaimed excitedly, Before edging towards the hole and grabbing a handful of rope. "I'll keep an eye out for anything interesting when I reach the bottom, ok?"

He slowly lowered himself so that he was level with the opening, before shifting his whole weight onto the rope, happy that it could take the strain. "Well, here I go!" Von Bernkastel started climbing down, a bit too shaky on the rope. He reached the quarter distance mark. Half way. Three quarters. His hand missed he rope, and he fell to the ground, landing on his posterior with a resounding "Oof!" echoing around the large room.

"Mister Smith!" He called upwards, towards the source of sunlight, "I've made it down, it should be safe to follow now!" He rubbed his sore backside. "And the floor is certainly solid enough!"

 

[Fraught]

"Hrrmph. I'll go next, Smith, sir," Anselm said very surely. He didn't know why he wanted to so much, but he was eager to get down there.

After getting approval from Smith, he went down the hole much in the same way Rufus did, the light slowly getting fainter and fainter, as he turned his eyes to the rest of the house. He couldn't see much in the darkness, but his eyes were extremely good, and his irises darted around, in search of treasure.

As he finally got some solid ground under him, he took the rope off him.
"Hmph, nice place," he commented silently, though he noticed that Rufus heard him. "I think I saw something here, right about...there," he said, as he pointed his index finger at a distant corner that he thought was to the east.

 

[Jedoro]

Nodding at Smith, Conner mounted the rope next and placed the rope between his feet, lowering himself with his arms. Seeing that he was approaching the ground, he slid the rest of the way and put his feet on the ground.

"You said you saw something?" he asked Anselm, pulling out the revolver on his right thigh. "Did it move, or was it just something interesting?"

 

[Sparrow]

"Yeah, I'll be up here. In the safety. Away from the dark space with the lurking creepies."

Emerson shrugged.

"Look, you got me. I don't like the dark, okay?"

 

[SamuelT]

Spoiler: As I change, so does my character.

I got glasses today! I wanted to let Sjors represent me, so here's him with glasses.

"I do. I'll go next." Sjors said. He pulled out some fingerless gloves and grabbed the rope. He nodded them all goodbye and jumped into the hole. All the way down he squeezed the rope all the time. When he hit the ground he released the rope and waved his arms around, trying to cool them from the friction.

Hothothothothothothot... He breathed. When he saw how dark it was he pulled a pair of untinted glasses out of an inner pocket.

"Still dark." He whispered.

 

[Sparrow]

"Great, I'll be down when you break out some lamps!"

Emerson scratched his head.

"Some very big lamps."

 

[Fraught]

Well, did it move? Anselm thought to himself, immediately summoning what he saw before before his eyes.

"Nope. At least, I don't think so. If it's something that can move, maybe it was stationary to avoid attention from us. Or maybe, since I was moving on the rope at that moment myself, I just didn't notice it moving. Either way, we should be careful," he said, looking up, eager for everyone else to come down.

As he heard one of the travellers, called Emerson, talking about lamps, he took his backpack off his back, dropped it on the ground, and pulled out a lantern, which he immediately lit.

"Will that do?" he yelled as loud as he could, so Emerson'd hear him.

 

[Sparrow]

"Eh, sure. Just don't turn it off or I may scream, all high pitched-like."

Emerson grabbed the rope, and slowly made his way down before silently hitting the bottom.

"Onward?"

 

[Captainguy42]

Gio came down shortly after Emerson, lowering himself hand over hand to prevent getting a friction burn. When he got to the bottom he was out of breath, he hunched over with his hands on his knee's breathing heavily, coughing several times due to the dust that had gathered in the air. Finally he composed himself.

"So you said this was a temple, what religion?"

Spoiler: OOC

Gio's question mimics one I have, what is the status of religion in this world. Is Christianity still as prevelent as it was back then or has the religous landscape changed?

 

[Combined]

As the last of his companions climbed down into the ruined building, Henry attached the rope to a part of the temple's stone. He followed quickly, sliding down the rope and entering the building.

He wiped away the dust and looked around. It was an incredibly large space. So large, in fact, that the light was slowly drained away before it reached the edges. He carefully studied the environment and approached one of the sides of the room, which was, unfortunately, not illuminated.

"Well, here's the altar..." he placed his hands on the small, almost unnoticeable altar. "So, this may be a Christian church."

He cleared his throat and lit his only torch. The altar and wall was lit by the faint glow, and finally they could see clearly.

The altar was covered in dried blood, as was the wall. Various traces of fingers and feet, at some points even faces could be seen in the dark, red substance. Upon the wall hung a large cross, but instead of the usual sight of the supposed son of God, it was some sort of twisted being, sculpted finely into an abomination - pipes running from his stomach into various locations of his wooden body, cogs and gears or even more unusual mechanic items covering his entire form.

"Well, I can definitely say that this was a Christian temple. Now it's one of the godless heathen's worship places."

Spoiler: Religion, etc.

As it is, Christians, both catholic and protestant, remain the largest part of the Nation, with the only other surviving organised religion - Islam - in the eastern cities. There may be a few who believe in the other organised religions of the time, but certainly most of them are extinct.

However, instead of the old religions, many cults have formed, such as the Mechanic Cult that worships machines; the cult of Sand, which worships the desert God Khartoum; the cult of Solarii, where people worship the sun; and many other cults, of course. Technically, it's quite impossible to count just how many cults there are, but I hope that at least answers your question.

 

[Fraught]

"Hmph. Nasty sight," Anselm said, almost grinning, and looking around, curious of what kind of impressions his fellow travellers had.

"I've never understood these maniacs. How can they worship something like that, in a creepy place like this?"

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

"A cult to the machine? How utterly fascinating! I never imagined something like this to exist." Rufus walked up to the altar and wiped away some of the dried blood upon its surface "Still, I don't think much of their decorations. Not very solid, and comes off a bit easily"

Von Bernkastel walked around the altar to get a closer look at the defiled effigy of Christ, before prying off one of its cogs, examining it, and placing it into one of his pockets as a souvenir.

 

[Sparrow]

"Well, I suppose these guys gotta' worship something to keep the hope alive. I doubt Christianity served them well after that whole destruction of the world thing happened."

Emerson dusted off a cog attached to the wall, trying to make sense of it.

"But, of all the things, why machines? Atleast those Solarii guys have something going with the sun, eh?"

 

[Captainguy42]

Gio looked at the cogs without interest, true they were a horrid sight, but to him they were not a foreign one.

" Thy worship machines for several reasons, possible to give them divine inspiration for inventions, or so their machines might run smoother with the blood of men in it's oil tank. A few followers believe that machines have spirits, and they posses us, giving the urge and skill to make things, the stronger the spirit, the more intricate, complex, and amazing the invention will be, then the spirit lives in the device," Gio chuckled. " If only inventing was that easy, of course those are only some rumors I heard as an apprentice machinist."

 

[Fraught]

"Machines? Spirits? Fascinating, though I've no faith in it myself," Anselm said, as he raised his lantern, and walked to the corner where he saw something before, walking on his toes and not trying to attract attention from the others.

When the corner came into the light his lantern threw all over the ground, he was welcomed by a horrific sight. He found a corpse, a human corpse, or atleast that was what he thought. It didn't have any hair on it, and only small patches of skin were still laying on the corpse, scattered around. As much as he could judge, the corpse seemed new.

An immediate dread filled his heart, as he started walking back.

What should I do? I should probably warn them, but at the same time I don't feel like telling them right now is such a good idea.
He had been an adventurer for some time, and always thought he was brave. He did bring a weapon with him, but no matter what, he couldn't shake the fear away.

"Oh god, oh god," he said, as he walked towards the rest of the group. Anselm extinguished the lantern, and put it in his backpack, just to have better chances of fighting, or running, when the time comes.

"I think we should move on, and find if we can find something here. No need to stay here for long," he said, trying to smile.

 

[Combined]

Henry was carefully examining the blood and the altar. He found a few gold coins amongst the remains of what seemed to be organs and bloody skin scattered on the top of the altar. He quickly put them into his pouch, trying not to alert the others. He'd pay them later. If they survive, of course.

As Anselm reminded him what they're here for, he quickly snapped to attention and spoke in his usual, calm manner. "I think Anselm is correct. We must make haste. Draw your weapons, keep them close. There are probably no cultists there, if there are any here at all. They should all be in their chamber, which should be...", he carefully walked along the wall until he came upon one of the three exits from the room. This one was closed, a heavy door. "...here. Right. Bloody hell, I have no idea how we're going to get through it."

He traced the surface of the door. There were many grooves, clearly for cogs to spin and move. It probably meant that upon arranging some cogs in a particular manner, you could enter.
Or, you could always just break through. Blood covered the entire wall in various messages that seemed to have been written in a different language.

He motioned to Anselm and Emerson. "You two, come here and help me make sense of this twisted puzzle. The rest of you, search the rooms, get as much valuable items as you can and, meanwhile, we'll see how to get us into the main room."

 

[Fraught]

"Me? Okay, I'll do my best, sir!"
Anselm walked, calmly, towards Smith, and looked at the puzzle.
"Buh? What is this supposed to be? Cogs?" he said, as he looked at the door, puzzled. He scratched his head, and said: "How are we going to do it? Try to crack it somehow, or maybe break the door down, if we can?"

 

[Sparrow]

"Stand back a bit, try and get a wider view of it."

Emerson held his torch up to the cogs, trying to make sense of it.

"I can't see any form of pattern. We could always try seeing if moving certain cogs causes anything to happen, but it could be booby-trapped. Things like this usually are."

 

[Fingerprint]

Beau drew his rifle. He'd been very careful to keep it in good nick, especially with the harsh desert weather. He checked the breach to make sure that it was clean; the last thing he wanted was for the gun to jam in the middle of a potential firefight.

The Martini-Henry rifle wasn't light but Beau was strong - he'd been the son of a farmer and through hard work day in day out and then with the army training he was able to hold the rifle in one hand, his accuracy suffered a little for this as he had to shoot from the hip but in this dark light and with the torch in his left hand he had no choice.

As H.W., Anselm and Emerson puzzled the lock mechanism Beau went cautiously into one of the side rooms. It was a small room but the torch light didn't quite reach the corners. The room was plain enough, it had no windows, some wall mounts for torches and a pillar in the middle. Making full use of the wall mounts, Beau placed his torch in the holder - this lit up one side of the room well, including the pillar, though it left the other side in relative obscurity. At least I can half see he though to himself.

Drawing the rifle to shoulder height, but angled down a little, he went to investigate the pillar.