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Galiena surveyed the uninviting cage, feeling slightly claustrophobic just looking at it. "How do we signal that we're ready to come back up?" she asked, not liking the idea that she would be completely dependent on other people to get her back out of the mine. But there seemed to be no help for it.

((Assuming there IS some signaling mechanism, she'd be ready to descend when the others are.))

"There's a bell" explains the driver, "ring once if you want the cage to descend, and three times if you're in the cage and want it to ascend."
With some trepidation, the party enters the cage. The ponies strain at the winch, and slowly you descend, into the blackness of the shaft. Only Adan seems unperturbed. Eventually the cage completes its journey, and from the light of Adan's lamp you can see sets of rails, and mine carts. There are five carts full of a fine gravel, lined up against the cage, as though ready to go to the surface. There is one cart, full of coal, pushed into a siding. There are two more empty trucks. Two lines of track lead way from the shaft, to the left and to the right. The hall is also propped with wooden props. A footpath leads away to what you think of as the south, although the exact direction escapes you.
Adan unlatches the cage door. "We're here" he says, "this is Colston colliery. What do you want to do now?"

"Any theories?" Galiena asked Scott on the way down, trying to calm her own nerves a bit.

When they reached the bottom, she tried to get her bearings and picture the map. She'd been half-hoping that there would be a group of angry dwarves waiting for them when they'd reached the bottom, then at least they'd have their answer quickly, but she saw only the carts and the tracks.

She gave a quick look to the canary, making sure it appeared alert.

"Where are the living quarters?" she asked Adan. "They should be right near here, right?"

Scott was rather surprised to hear Galiena ask if he had any theories so he decided to humor her with an honest response, "Not really, although I personally doubt the dwarves have Fr Michael. I don't believe the McCain dwarves would be stupid enough to do something reckless and pointless, but we'll find out soon enough." He said on the way down.

Arriving at the bottom Scott took a moment to take in his surrounings, finding nothing of immediate interest or significane he looked around deciding how to proceed. "And if you don't know where the living quarters are I suggest we go.... That way," Scott said pointing at the footpath that lead south. There was no real reasoning behind his choice as he had picked at random.

"The two railways will go to the coalface" says Adan, "the coal is like a layer of cream in a cake, so you dig two tunnels and then cut between them. Understand? But I think we should load this truck up and haul it to the surface - there's a shortage of coal above ground, and here it's stood doing nothing".
"What a ridiculous suggestion" says Malfey, "not at all what we're here for."

The canary seems hale and healthy, if a little bit disturbed by the unfamiliar environment.

"Those five carts" says Adan, "they contain diamondiferous rocks. They've crushed them to gravel to get the small diamonds out. They've obviously been doing a lot of diamond mining and hardly any coal." Adam takes a feather shed by the canary from the canary's cage, and drops it in the air. It moves.
"They're still fanning air through." he says,"Must be someone still alive in this mine. That or a fire burning, but then you'd smell burning and I don't smell any. Come on, anyway, what shall we do?"

"When we're ready to go back up, then sure," Galiena said, anxious as well to accomplish their main objective first before worrying about the full cartload of coal. "But let's leave it clear for now in case we need to leave in a hurry." Despite the small bit of air flow, she was still nervous about the blackdamp. And the fact that there were no dwarves here to meet them only served to heighten that suspicion.

The cleric took a few steps into the marshaling yard, peering into the dark beyond the lantern. "Can we check the living quarters first?" she tried again. If she remembered the map correctly, they should be close enough that they would have heard the dwarves if that's where they were, but perhaps they'd be able to tell if anyone had been there recently.

The path to what you think of as the south leads through the marshalling yard, and to a small tunnel. Except for Adan, you have to stoop slightly to go through. It ends in a door, with a grille at the top. It is shut.

"That'll be the living quarters" says Adan, "shall we knock?"

Galiena ducked to avoid hitting her head on the low tunnel. "Yes, let's." Since Adan's hands were full with the lantern and the canary cage, the cleric reached out and gave the door three hard raps with her knuckle then listened for any sound of movement beyond the door.

Knock, knock, knock! The knocks ring out down the silent mine. There is no answer. Malfey tries the door, and it is unlocked.
"It's rude to just barge in, but given the circumstances, I see no other option" says Adan.
"Quiet, dwarf" says Malfey, "I'm a good listener. " she takes down her cowl, and you can see that she has the ear of an elf. She listens at the door.
"Nothing there"

Galiena nods at Malfey to show she heard her, then glanced at Scott and Adan. "Well, let's see if there's any clues to be found..." she said and opened the door.

The cleric takes a deep breath, nervous about the potential of finding a bunch of dead dwarves on the other side.

The door swings open on well-oiled hinges. It leads directly into an underground hall, maybe twenty feet high at the apex. There are long tables with benches, maybe enough for thirty dwarves, though it is hard to tell exactly. The tables are stocky, but carefully crafted, with spiral decorations on their legs and scroll work at the rim. There is a high table on a dias as one end, above it are the McCain coat of arms - a green shield with three golden fishes. The walls are cut from the living rock, and there is a seam of coal, carved and polished, at chest height. There are several doors leading off, all slightly too small for a human. The hall is deserted, the tables are cleared and empty. The floor is strewn with rushes, that obviously haven't been changed for a while, as they are limp and wilted. There are oil lamps round the walls, again carefully carfted, but they are unlit.
"What a naive aesthetic" says Malfey.
"No-one in" says Adan, " where can they all have gone to?"

The cleric let out a small sigh of relief that no dead bodies were waiting for them, but it only deepened the mystery.

"Could they have left?" she wondered aloud as she ducked through the door and entered the hall, glad to be able to stand up at her full height once inside. "Up to the surface, I mean. Perhaps with the aid of the driver? Is he a McCain?" she was really just thinking out loud, but hadn't considered that possibility until now and looked at Adan and Malfey to see if the idea could have any merit.

Meanwhile, she'd go to each of the several doors and try them, just intending to poke her head inside. Unless there was something particularly interesting to the case at hand, she wouldn't go snooping through personal belongings.

The pony driver was a human. The McCains were the underground workers. As far as you know, there is no other exit from the mine except for the main shaft.
The other rooms are a dormitory, which consists of cots, with the mattresses stripped, a kitchen, which has all the store cupboards standing open and bare, a laundry, which still seems intact, and a store room which contains pickaxes and hammers and helmets and other mining equipment - it's hard to say whether it has been rifled through or not. Then there is one locked door .
"Typical dwarves, to leave the place such a mess" says Malfey, "but where have they gone to?"
"The locked door looks like the chief's room" says Adan, "That's Grimley McCain. Can anyone open it, or do we have to smash the door in?"

Scott let out a sigh of dissapointment upon seeing that the underground hall was empty. He had hoped to get straight to the heart of the problem, preferably through conflict, but instead they had to solve a mystery.

"Leaving is unlikely, considering they couldn't have expected nobody to come check up on them. I'm more inclined to believe that to believe they're in the mines mining more diamonds. Even then it's unlikely they all went." Scott said taking a step into the hall. Galiena had checking to rooms covered so Scott decided to search the main hall for clues.

"Looks like they took the linens and just about all the kitchen stock..." Galiena reported back to the others. "But why?"

She nodded to Scott's assessment. "Perhaps you're right, but wouldn't they still come back here every night?"

To Adan she shook her head, "I've got no way to open it. Would Lord Percival, or anyone else in Colstan have the keys to it?"

Scott searches the main hall for clues. It was the primary living space of the dwarves when they were not working, and the tables are quite well used, with beer tankard stains upon the surfaces. There's nothing really of note in the main space of the hall. However the chief's chair is interesting. It has been recently broken. An arm is smashed, maybe by a pickaxe. And looking under it, Scott finds bloodstains - mopped up, but still visible. It's not easy to search for clues by the dim light of the lantern, and you can't tell how old the blood is - it's obviously not fresh, but that's all you can say.

Adan has a sip of his whisky. "All the beer has gone" he says, "Dwarf halls always have plentiful supplies of beer, and the whole lot must have been rolled out."

"Looks like I found a clue over here," Scott said to get the attention of the rest of the group, "By the looks of it a fight may have occurred, the chief's chair is broken and theirs some blood. Nothing else seems out of place so it was probably a short fight, the others may have tuned on the chief as he was unable to resolve the situation."

She was already uneasy and Scott's find certainly didn't help erase her concerns. "Stranger and stranger," she commented. But perhaps murder should not have been surprising. The situation had to be stressful for the McCains. This was their livelihood, after all, tensions were bound to be running high.

Galiena used her foot to push away some of the rushes surrounding the chair, looking for evidence that a body had been dragged away.

Galiena removes the rushes from the floor. It's hard to be precise in the lantern light, but there is a trail of blood leading from the broken chair.
"This doesn't tell us very much" says Malfey, "dwarves are always brawling."
Adan has finally had enough. "You just insult the dwarves" he says, "no-one would attack a dwarf chief. No-one. Such a thing is unheard of."
The blood trail peters out about ten feet from the chair, as far as you can tell.

"No-one would attack a dwarf chief? Well colour me impressed dwarves sure are a loyal bunch," Scott said acknowledging Adan's remark before turning back to the crine scene. "About these brawls, does the chief usually participate? And are weapons used? And do they usually end up bloody? As this the chief's chairs arm was clearly smashed by a pickaxe." Scott asked Malfey as he didn't believe this to simple be a brawl, yet didn't know enough about dwarves to be sure.