The Wanderers

[SamuelT]

Sjors started when he heard the shouting. He'd been occupied wandering around a seemingly plain room. But he knew that 'seeminly plain' meant that there was something hidden. He rose from is crouched position and marched out of the room, a small piece of wood no bigger than the ordinary match held in front of him.

He ducked when a pistol appeared just in front of him. He heard..Connor? talk to Rufus after that.

"I wouldn't know. I wasn't here." He said with a flat voice, putting out the small fire. He heard the whispers again, accompanied by the metal tapping on stone. He slowly drew one of his short swords.

 

[Captainguy42]

"They did something with the gears." Gio said moving towards the door, then fumbling around with the gears. " Shit, something has happened, the gears won't budge." Gio moved his hands along the door more until he found a small arm sized hole. "Here, it's might be a secondary release." He reached into the hole, having push his arm through to the elbow. At the end he felt a small bar that he grasped and prepared to turn, suddenly his eyes widened and he pulled his arm out of the hole quickly with a frightened look.

"What is it?" Connor asked.

" At the end of the hole there is a switch that will probably release the door, but Machine Cultist's are known for their sick sense of humor, it will probably, also activate a trap that will cut you arm off, or inject you with poison. There has to be another way." Gio said scanning the room frantically for something of use.

 

[Jedoro]

"Well if it's just a switch, shouldn't be a problem for two pieces of metal," Conner chuckled, pulling out his sword. "Just need to find something else, unless we can just wedge it in and turn the damn thing." Pushing the blade into the hole, Conner twisted it to have a bladed end pushing against the outer rim while the tip went against the top of the handle. Pushing back on the hilt, he slowly worked the sword until the handle had turned completely, stopping when he felt something hit the sword.

"The hell..." he trailed off, peering into the hole. He moved his torch to light it up, and saw a second blade had hit his sword. "Good call on that trap, Gio. You think that got the door open?"

 

[Combined]

Smith was not in a good mood. Machine heathens were really the last thing he wanted to see today. "Bloody heck." He muttered to himself, quickly surveying the situation, noting the position of the spiders.

One of them was approaching him. Smith laughed a strange, almost bitter laugh and pointed the revolver at it. Steel legs were about to grasp him, but the final length of distance brought the spiders mechanical rider face-to-barrel with Henry's gun.

The barrel spun once.

Climbing over the corpse, he continued to fire, carefully picking his targets, making sure that at least one would fall every few shots. However, using the gun seemed to be having an effect on him. With every shot, his hand drew back farther and he'd have to breathe for a few more seconds.

"I'm too old for this." He muttered, firing another shot, bringing down a rider that was about to pounce on him.

 

[Fingerprint]

Beau turned the corner to be greeted with the sound of gun shots, cursing and some steam driven spiders. He started backing off, he knew a rifle was not the weapon to have in this situation and he didn't fancy getting too close to them. He fired. He fired again. Two down, both releasing a hiss of steam as the rounds crashed into their thin metal armour. "Jesus Christ!" He yelled, "where'd they come from?!" The last part of the question was drowned out by another rifle shot and a third incapacitated spider.

 

[Combined]

You couldn't really refer to this amount of cultists simply as a "bunch" or a "pack". The only word Henry could conjure up at this moment was swarm. They were coming from everywhere. The ceiling, the walls, everywhere where the torch didn't shine some light.

Henry fired his last bullet into the body of a spider rider, which collapsed on top of him, the front leg of his spider piercing through H.W's hand. The old man could barely barely manage a gasp as the weight knocked him over, pinning him to the stairs.

The doors opened, with no apparent reason, apparently giving the team a last chance to get out. Henry tried to get the large contraption off him, the cultist bleeding a dark, inky liquid on him.

"Oh, bugger. Could anyone please help me? I'm in a bit of a ...sticky situation." He managed, before trying once more to get out from under his captor. The spiders seemed fewer now. Perhaps, they had retreated. For now.

Spoiler: Apology

Sorry for the slightly long update times. I'm still getting used to my new job, so don't mind me if I'm a bit late now and then.

 

[Sparrow]

Emerson kicked the corpse off of Henry, and broke the spider's leg from it's body. Wrenching it out of his hand was too risky, and he didn't have to the time to properly attend to him.

"C'mon.", he said, grabbing Henry's good hand and pulling him from the ground, "We gotta' get going old timer! We're practically surrounded!"

After getting Henry to his feet, Emerson sliced the head of the nearest spider-rider. Several bullets flew past him, killing the targets infront of the door.

"Onward!"

 

[Fraught]

Thanks for me leaving me behind, guys, Anselm sarcastically thought.
As soon as Emerson rushed to Smith's aid, Anselm turned around, and tried to shoot as many of the spiders as he could, mainly shooting the ones on the roof, with many of them falling down.
Man, this never gets old.

As soon as Emerson and Smith started running, Anselm immediately followed them, screaming: "Hey guys! Wait up!"
Reaching them, he stayed right behind them, trying to shoot the spiders while he was running. They seemed fewer now, so he didn't have that high a chance of hitting any of them - especially while running - which he didn't.

 

[Combined]

"Oh, bugger." was the only thing Henry managed, before he and Emerson managed to force their way through the door at the bottom of the stairs. The last spiders retreated from the light, eventually skittering away into the darkness. Finally, all went silent.

They were in a rather large cave, surprisingly well lit, decorated with thousands of small, carefully constructed runic pillars, which glowed, almost like a fire. There were a lot of mechanical bits scattered around the platform they were on, far above the actual living area, carved into the stone itself at the bottom of the cave, where a make-shift town was.

In the center was a rather large statue of what appeared to be steel and copper. It wasn't particularly interesting, but at it's feet were hundreds of bits of gold, along with a strange, shiny chalice.

Blood covered most of the floor around it, small trails of dry, red liquid leading towards the statues exposed mechanical guts. Bodies lay strewn about in piles around the main square of the heathen village, their rotting carcasses filling the entire cave with a stench of decay and death.

The cave was also completely devoid of life, surprisingly. Not a bug was moving, not a person was around, it was just... empty, as if everyone had been suddenly evacuated.

"Well, this is unusual", Henry said, studying the room with just the slightest hint of awe.

 

[Fingerprint]

"I don't like this. It's too quiet." Beau said looking around the room. He reloaded his rifle. Not many rounds left, I hope the shit don't hit the fan. He thought as he realised there was only a handful of bullets left in his stiff leather amunition pouch after the magazine was full.

He turned to face the rest of the expedition members, "I think we ought'a be careful 'bout looting this place... It just don't feel good down here."

 

[Combined]

Spoiler: Bump.

...

 

[Captainguy42]

As H.W. and the others began filling back into the main room Gio saw what they were fighting. They looked like something straight out of a horror story, twisted jokes of nature, flesh merged with steel, it was almost too much for Gio. He backpedaled, until his back hit a pillar, finally he remembered his gun. He aimed down the sights and took a shot, blowing the skull off of one of the abominations.

" I guess their just humans enough." Gio muttered as he loaded another cartridge.

 

[Fraught]

As the group continued forward, to arrive in a cave full of runic pillars, Anselm took off his backpack, and quietly - looking around to see that no one was looking - took out ammunition for his gun from the bag, which he inserted into the gun, or put into a small pouch he had on the left side of his hips.

That corpse, I can't stop thinking about it. It didn't look like it was attacked by those spiders. It looked more like he, or she, was eaten. Eaten by some sort of...monsters. Do those spiders really eat people? And if they do, that corpse looked very fresh. Did they really retreat just before we arrived, waiting for us to come?

Anselm didn't really pay any attention to what anyone said. When he finally stopped his line of thought, he looked around for a few seconds, and said: "I don't like it, this place's too quiet."
He looked around, and met with the face of Beau, with one brow raised.
"What?" he said, continuing to look around, as he saw thanks to the light of one runic pillar in a corner, the shadow of a humanoid. As soon as he did, though, the figure disappeared from sight, crouching.
"How did he know I was looking?" Anselm asked himself, in his mind trying to figure out where the creature could've stood.
"And I couldn't hear a single voice. Is that thing really still there?" he continued thinking out loud, whispering to himself.

As he pulled up his pants in reassurance, and grabbed his gun firmly, he looked at Smith with a very worried face, hoping the man would look at him, and start asking him what's wrong, if he understood.

 

[Combined]

The team had gathered now, together, in this large room. The den of the beast. There were no enemies, of course. At least, not yet. The machine-heathens had left them, but probably were observing the travellers, carefully waiting for a single mistake.

Henry took a few steps forward and approached the stone railing at the edge of the platform. A thin trail of blood from his wounded hand followed him. Upon close inspection, one could find something ...wrong with the blood. It wasn't bright red, but instead a dark, filthy colour, similar to dirt.

He tore off a part of his shirt and tied it around his wounded hand. He placed his hands upon the stone and remained still for a moment. He turned around and motioned for Anselm and Emerson to approach him.

When they did, he spoke slowly and quietly. "I need your opinion. Do we go outside now and do not further agitate the heathens, or do we stay here and..." - his bloody hand extended towards the treasure below them - "...take that for ourselves."

Spoiler: Recap

They are all now in the main room. They are all standing on a platform with stairs on either side of it leading down to the bottom. There are no enemies there, for now. There is treasure in the main room. Henry is wounded, everyone else is not.

 

[Sparrow]

"I say we stay.", Emerson whispered, slightly crouched down, "We managed to take them out there when they caught us off guard. I reckon if we turn the tables on them, we'll clear them out befre they're even a threat."

Emerson then turned to Anselm.

"Of course, that's just my opinion. I'm not seasoned commander or anything."

 

[Fraught]

"Me? A seasoned commander now?" Anselm asked, smiling widely, and patting Emerson on the back.
"Well. What you say may be true. Then again, there may be something far more terrifying waiting for us down there, or above us, for that matter," he continued, pointing with his gun to the ceiling, and everywhere around him, saying "Or from there, or from there" over and over again.
"And not just more terrifying. There may be more of the spiders we just fought. I'm certainly worried, from an objective point of view, but the adventurer in me is telling me that we should go and," he said, putting his left hand on his chest, now talking louder than. "Take that treasure!"

"Of course, your opinion is the one that counts, Smith."

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

"I must say that I agree with Mister Anselm. There is no point in leaving something that we just had to fight our way through to get to" Rufus looked at the others in the group. Not that I actually had to fight anything in that mess back there. Too confusing, and there are people better suited to doing the fighting that one such as I.

"The only problem I can see with taking the treasure is how to take it along with us, unless we can procure some form of transport to carry it with. Of course, I would leave the final decision up to Mister Smith, he no doubt realises how difficult things could get, especially if we are lugging around a mountain of treasure at such an early stage of our journey." Von Bernkastel again put his turret pistol in hand, and span the barrels, somewhat to reassure himself that he would be prepared next time fighting broke out, just in case.

 

[Combined]

Smith stood there for the briefest of moments, before he opened his pack and removed all of the useless items he had there, leaving only the most necessary.

"Well, then. I've decided that we're going to take that treasure come hell or high water. And, if we have to, we're going to leave a trail of heathen bodies behind us. Now, since I'm fairly useless in combat with a wounded hand and being over fifty years old, I'm going to take the treasure, since I probably have enough packs to take most of it."

He took a step towards the stairs, the dull runic light making his skull mask seem eerie and almost frightening. "And you, are going to help me stay alive, if something happens. Is that understood?"

He unsheathed and handed Emerson his revolver, then proceeded to slowly descend the stairs, until he reached the very bottom, stepping onto the blood drenched cave floor, followed by the rest of his companions.

"Well, here it begins..."

He approached the statue carefully and began stuffing his packs with golden coins, gears and other valuable bits. Shadows danced around the top of the cave, showing the silhouettes of monsters possibly more frightening than spiders. They didn't seem hostile just yet...

 

[Fingerprint]

Beau dropped to one knew and raised the rifle up to his shoulder. He was unhappy that Smith was looting the chamber as he was still worried by what maybe hiding in the chamber. He looked around the room. The ceiling seemed to be a mass of black shadows that could not just be the flickering light. He was a good shot and made sure that the gun was aimed at the area around the famed explorer - he didn't want the expedtition to be over before it began.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

Rufus took up a position not far from the expedition leader, keeping his turret pistol aimed at the floor, but ready enough to swing upwards and empty at a target, not really bothered if any of the shots would hit. He looked toward the statue standing in the center of the treasures, the flames casting strange shapes across the dented copper and steel face. He quickly turned away, feeling uneasy.

"All seems to be quite so far, Mister Smith." Von Bernkastel said, trying to make some kind of conversation for once, trying to find something to distract himself from the uneasiness he felt at the pit of his stomach. A glimmer of light near his feet caught his attention, and he stooped to retrieve the object. It was a golden cog, much like the one he took from the effigy behind the altar ealier. He slid it into his pocket as another souvenir, before turning back to watch the side he was positioned on.