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The party crawls through the collapsed area to the south, past the obstruction caused by the fallen rocks. It is hard going, and your clothes and ripped and blackened with coal dust. The humans cannot see, and have to try to follow Pint, whose boots are in front of them as he crawls.
Eventually you get through. You are back at the coal face, and it is deserted. The coal face is rough and full of pick marks, where dwarves have hacked away at the seam. Then there are large tubs into which the coal is shovelled, some of them contain remnants of coal. Going further west, here is a cart half full of coal where the coal face joins the westernmost access passage, which has rails running down it.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the committee wasn't there to meet them... then coughed a few times as some of the coal dust had made its way down her throat. It really was very unpleasant.

But at least moving forward, the going should be easier.... relatively, she'd still have to crouch and duck until they got back to the larger chamber near the bottom of the shaft, but at least she wouldn't have to crawl anymore, thankfully. "I think we can follow the rails out now... but if we're going to run into Kanyin and the others, it will likely be here..." she whispered.

Ulesh, watch over your children tonight, so that we may yet bring this conflict to a peaceful end, she prayed silently.

"Better to fight 'em 'ere and upright than back there with our faces to the ground." Muttered Pint who at this time had forgone the pretense of being stealthy. He discarded his unused mining pack and pulled out his Urgrosh. This close to the surface it would be obvious they were making a run for it and he didn't want to waste time drawing his weapon.

"Alright folks, let's get outta here. Double time."

The party abandons stealth, and marches down the western access tunnel. The two humans have to bow their heads to avoid banging on the tunnel ceiling, or more likely on one of the horizontal beams which prop up the tunnel. After a short walk, you come to the entrance to the machine room. There's a set of points, and a stub railway track leads off into the machine room. There is light in the room from oil lamps, and you can hear the clicking and whirring of the fan being pedalled. Apart from that, everything seems quiet. The machines are silent.

((Malcolm, I apologize, cause I know you've described it a few times, but I must still have the layout wonky in my head ... I thought the whole point of crawling was to avoid the machine room. Any chance you could draw us a rough map... this 'Juls' player must be a little dense. Also, what's a "set of points"?))

"Oh no," the words were barely whispered as the cleric realized where they had come out. Galiena briefly closed her eyes in frustration with herself for losing her bearings in this wretched mine and took a deep breath. "How do we get past the fan pedaller without him raising the alarm?"

((Technical glitches producing the map. Bear with me.))

The party halt, wondering how they have lost their bearings. It's not surprising, since Pint, to whom the layout is unfamiliar, is the only member who can see. Galiena's light is carefully hidden in her clerical robes. Points are railway junctions (you have to set the points to right or left to direct the carts). A set of points leads leftwards to the machine room, or rightwards to the track out of the mine. A soft light of oil lamps comes out of the machine room. There's the clicking of the fan as it is pedalled, apart from that, silence.

((Ah! So we don't actually have to go through the machine room... great!))


"That should take us back to the shaft..." Galiena whispered, pointing toward the tracks on the right. But she hesitated, listening to only the sound of the fan being pedaled coming from the large room to their left. If that was where all, or at least most, of the dwarves were sleeping, shouldn't they hear... something? "Shouldn't they be snoring or something?" she asked, suddenly concerned they might be walking straight into a trap.

It's quiet... too quiet.

Pint stops abruptly and his eyes widen. Galiena is right, having slept a lot in the barracks, Pint personally knows that fellow dwarves snore up a storm. If there is no noise like this then they must heading straight into an ambush.

He already has his Urgrosh out and ready to fight, but if he can help it he'd rather not let them get the drop on him and his companions.

"Galiena, make a light so ye and Fr Michael can see." He says, if they're already spotted then might as well let the humans have a fighting chance. They'll be useless trying to fight in the dark.

Pint considers carefully, and decides that no dwarves, or at most one or two, can be sleeping in the machine room. They must have left. Which can only mean one thing.
As you wait, the pedalling stops, and you hear the dwarf dismounting the machine.

Ursa must have woken while they'd navigated the mine...

Her heart rate quickened, but she drew out the lighted holy symbol from beneath her armor at Pint's prompting, half expecting to see the committee there watching them. She grasped the hammer in her right hand.

The dwarf descends the mechanical fan.
"Ey up, Balin" he says, "there's something down that passageway. I swear I just saw a light".
"Run for it" says the other.
You hear the patter of dwarven feet going away from you.

Hearing the two dwarves talking to each other before running away from them made Pint pause.

No.. they wouldn't dare would they?

"Stand back." Pint ordered getting a very bad feeling.

He picked up a rock and threw it towards the entrance, half expecting to trigger some kind of trap that'd block the exit to the mines.

Pint throws a rock into the machine room. It clatters against a piece of mining machinery, then comes to rest on the floor. The two dwarves are running away to the east, as fast as their legs will carry them, going out of the machine room and towards the place Fr Michael was held captive. The fan isn't turning any longer, and the slight breeze has gone.

Nothing??

Pint hesitates but then recalls ancient dwarven wisdom.

When the only way left is to go forward you must advance.

Thus Pint begins moving towards the exit with his Urgrosh still drawn and eyes on full alert.

The behavior of the two dwarves was puzzling. Why didn't they either challenge them or sound the alarm? Perhaps they were running off to get help.

Pint was starting forward again, so Galiena ducked and headed after him, with Fr Michael in tow. If only they could make it through this last stretch of tunnel, they might see the light of day again...

Pint and the two humans run south, to the exit shaft at the end of the rail tracks. You hear a commotion from deep inside the mine, probably from the rooms to the east of the machine room - you don't know exactly where.
"The passage to the shaft will be guarded," says Fr Michael, "If we're not careful we'll find ourselves trapped."
The tunnel is a bit too low for for the humans to run comfortably, so Pint, despite being slower, can make the faster progress. To the left (east) there is a collapsed are where the coal has been taken out, which Pint knows is termed the "gob" - it is similar to the area you crawled around earlier near the coal face.
"I've got a Thaumaturgy cantrip" says Fr Michael to Galiena, "when we encounter the McCains might be time to use it".

So, there was no trap after all, but if there was a commission at the back it meant the dwarves were already keen that something was not right. Perhaps Ursa had woken up, Pint assumed-- now he was really regretting not tying the sucker up.

Hearing Fr Michael's warning that there will likely be guards up ahead, Pint slowed down a bit and began trying to stealth once again. "Alright, let's see if we can take a peek at how many are guarding the entrance. If it ain't that many I might be able to lock em up in a melee while ye two make a run fer it."

"We might," she whispers to Fr Michael just before they start hurrying after Pint. "I've none left."

When Pint slows and begins taking quieter steps, she partially obscures her light under a thin cloth, leaving just barely enough dim glow for her and Fr Michael to avoid knocking their heads on the low ceiling of the tunnel.

"Let's hope they've got the ponies ready," she says quietly with a nod to Pint's plan.

Pint sneaks down the tunnel. His dwarven darkvision shows the temperature variations in various shades of red - cold for the tunnel walls, slightly warmer for the air, very cold for the rail tracks. Then he sees the unmistakeable glow of a body of dwarves, about five or six of them. He presses himself against the wall to hide, and tries to work out what weapons, if any, they are carrying. His foot catches against a railway sleeper and he comes crashing down with a big thunk. Galiena and Fr Michael hear him fall. Then there is the sound of dwarves running up the tunnel, "There he is" they cry, "the Bloodhorn dwarf".

"Oof!" Pint grunts as he plants face first into the ground. Fortunately he had his weapon drawn already, so as he hears the McCain dwarves shouting and running after him, he pushes himself back up to his feet and immediately gets into a fighting stance. Spear end of his Urgrosh pointing towards them, the dwarf gives them a vicious grin. "Bah, that's alright. I felt like fighting ye lot anyway. Let's see wot ye got, laddies!!"