Day 7, Late Morning: The Smell of Piss and Other Things...
After some colorful banter, the party decides it is in everyone's (?) best interest if Ozborn should do some more scouting. While Ozborn takes a torch and proceeds and while Thurinor and the others make themselves more at home, Stonjuz tends to his turtle and notes that, indeed, even the turtle seems not to want to go further. When set down, it is as repulsed as anyone else by the smell emanating from somewhere further on in the cave, and it heads directly the other way, back toward the main tunnel, before Stonjuz gently lifts and re-straps the turtle to his helmet with a humph.
Ozborn, thief's roll: [1d100] = 48
For his part, Ozbornsteps out into the next corridor, keeping carefully to the sides of the tunnel and moving more or less quietly in order to minimize his exposure, though his torch lights some 40' ahead and would easily alert anything waiting in the shadows. On impulse, he takes the right-hand way first, moving roughly south, and then realizes he took this way because the smell is stronger back the other way. He finds that the passage goes on and then splits again some 30 feet from where he stops, but he sees nothing else of note beyond more of the same, twisting tunnel.
Retracing his steps, Ozborn takes the lefthand/northward passage and soon comes to another split. Another twisting and narrow passage leads off to the right, his torch not revealing its end, while the passage he is in narrows somewhat more as it continues roughly northward, where it ends abruptly. Curiously, he sees something like a large boulder there, and the stench is much stronger from this branch of tunnel, causing his eyes to water slightly and his arm to cover mouth and nose to limit, if possible, the stench from entering his poor abused nostrils. He looks again, and he almost swears the boulder has moved, though perhaps it is only a trick of the flickering torchlight. Still, the boulder is strange, somehow. He gets the impression of something cowering in the end of its hole, cornered, yet the more he stares, the less he is sure that it could have moved, so stone-like and motionless does it seem.
I put a question mark where Ozborn sees the boulder. I assume the rest of the party is gathered back at the tunnel crossing, and Ozborn may go back to report directly, stay where he is, or take a piss if nature calls...
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