Log:Explorer's Guild: More than Jelucan

Explorer's Guild: More than Jelucan

OOC Date: January 14, 2021
Location: Jelucan
Participants: Explorer's Guild: Aryn Cole, Nerys Greystorm, Netep Muri, and Corr Waldin; with Special Guest Star Chani Tahn and also featuring Merek

JELUCAN

A mountainous, rocky world, covered in rough terrain and a bare few settlements, the wilderness of Jelucan stretches out before the Explorers. Astride their mounts, the docile muunyak that resemble banthas in all the ways that matter on a smaller scale, the crew can see slightly further than if they stood on their own feet.

Shifting in his howdah-saddle just above the muunyak's anterior shoulders, Corr squints into the distance, then down at the jumble of machinery in his hands. A bulky device made of plastoid and metal, exposed circuitry, and protruding wires, the thing bears a small monochromatic screen on the top. "This uh," he rubs a thumb over the sticker on the side, smoothing the back half out again, "'Spectro-cator 5400' is tuned into the spectro-signature of black fogstone, or at least that's how I've been made to understand it," he explains with a shrug. Guiding his muunyak with his knees over to Nerys, he drops it in her lap, a shorthand for the space on the muunyak's back directly in front of her saddle. "You can work it. I'm not much for computers."

Nudging the creature on, down the slope into the valley, he explains further. "The Jelucani lowlanders, the Valley Kindred, they don't got much money between 'em and these lands were all about stripped bare of the fogstone back in the old days." To the west, the desecration of the valley for mining seems testament to that, a stripmine looking like an open sore on the earth laid bare to the air. "According to legend, a tribe settled in this valley a few hundred years ago and dug out some /black/ fogstone. The other kindred, they think mining that was what brought the second wave of settlers in, like a cosmic karma. They're worried it's still out there in the lost settlement, jinxing the whole planet. But none of them will go near it, on account of the curse."

"The curse?" If there's any hint of worry in her voice, it's likely connected to the look of concentration on her face, because Chani's gaze is not trained on the horizon, but on the animal she's riding. Wearing a utilitarian jumpsuit beneath protective armor plates, Chani looks militaristic in armament and attire, but her small stature casts skepticism on the whole aura. Fingers seized tight around the reins and knees tucked in close against the bulk of the creature, Chani makes minute adjustments to its pathway for the hundredth time. Her mount hasn't cut a straight path in line with the others since they left on them. To say she's struggling would be an understatement. She forces her gaze up to absorb the yawning crater carved into the planet by miners.

Merek follows along with the people, and nods a bit to Waldin, "Wasn't that like a device you used while talking to the ghosts," the man mentions. The man wears a dark and white void armor which is adjusted about him, in addition to the scarf which he wears. There's a rifle on a strap which he wears though not wielding. He takes macrobinoculars which he uses to take a look at the place.

"I daresay the second wavers were not the issue," Comments the scholarly Alderaanian of the group. The blonde is wrapped in a warm tunic, with a fur-collared cape to ward away the chill from this world. "Though a noble people, if not fickle," Aryn's clever and tactful play on their integrity, "I would venture to say it was the Imperial regime who scarred this world and left it so. Their enthusiasm for big weapons and big.. things.. saw the mining of many worlds. Even this world could not escape their zeal."

Nerys, who managed the ride as well as one would expect, seemed thankful that the beats that carried them were as docile as they were, and that she could devote as much of her attention to the surrounding areas she did. She looked away from her perusal to Corr, as he made his slow and steady way over, and reached out a hand to catch the machinery lest it fall to its death off of the creature's back, "I'll see what I can do." She left the beast to mostly guide itself, as she diverted her attention from the terrain to trying to make heads or tails of the machinery. Give her a minute.

"Don't worry about the curse," Corr answers Chani, standing momentarily in the saddle to pull his canteen from his belt and relaxing as he unscrews the lid. "It's just supposed to steal your soul or bring misfortune on you for the rest of your life if you look at it. Stones can't do that whether they're black or not. Probably."

"They blame the black fogstone for that too," he replies to Aryn, after taking a sip. "It all started with the second wave, and then the Imperials. From not-good to very bad, I reckon." A glance is spared to Nerys as she struggles with the Spectro-cator, but given that they're all on muunyaks and the undulating rhythm of their plodding walk is probably not something any of them are particularly used to, he doesn't comment on it.

"That's the Audiotizer 3000," Corr corr-ects Merek, but the two devices do look similar and that's because he got them at the same shop on Nar Shaddaa. As the beasts continue to move steadily along, the terrain continues downwards, sloping down into a progressively steeper valley that almost begins to resemble a fjord from the angle of the rock. Trees are not absent, however; quiet the opposite, they seem to be more plentiful the deeper the Explorers go, though they are gnarled and hardy things without much in the way of foliage. Before long, the sky is viewed only through a dense thicket of twisted limbs, most bare.

"I don't believe in curses," Chani clarifies. "I was just curious what the locals believe." There's a moment in the conversation when the stars align and some combination of knee pressure and rein management get her animal on the right of the path. Chani stiffens in the saddle, not wanting to disturb the status quo from that point forward. "These are nothing like odupiendos." The remark is distant, dredged up as it is from memory and functioning as nothing more than idle filler while the majority of her focus remains on the scar bored deep into the crust in the pursuit of riches and, if local mythology has the right of it, cursed minerals. Abandoning the view of the cracked ground, Chani instead searches out Aryn. "Do you know much about Jelucan?"

Merek looks to the machine and begins to think about it, "Well, if that's anything like the one he bought before, you will want to adjust that first," he notes to a few things upon the device, then he begins to shift while he doesn't manage the animal well. He does keep the seat upon the muunyak. "Ah, well anyway. What do you plan to do with the stone?" he asks. There's a nod along to Aryn, "It's nice to see you about."

"That.. is the problem.. with.. civili...ZING..," Aryn comments, fighting the sudden rambunctious behavior of her beast. She is not successful in accomplishing anything to the effort of calming it down. Off the path, on the path, a jump, a grunt, a spin, and Aryn is eventually back with the group, red cheeked and embarrassed. "My word.." She scoffs, her posh accent toned with a bit of nervousness. Whatever her train of thought had been moments before the outburst, it seemed left in their wake. Chani is given a brief moment where Aryn stares blankly at her, then the memory is drawn back up. "I know a bit. The memorial on Hosnian Prime, and those of New Alderaan, were forged of fogstone. It was said that a statue of the late Prince Bail Organa stood among the tallest there in the New Republic senate plaza." Aryn intones, unable to hide the melancholy in her voice.

"HALE... Merek." Aryn says, her animal acting out again. Aryn seems dexterous enough to manage it somehow.

"You just be steady now," Nerys encouraged her mount, reaching out a hand, which was already full of the reins she was managing, for some version of manage, to pat its back, most of her attention still on the piece of equipment she was poking and prodding. She was a curious sort, and everything gave up its secrets eventually. "You know," she offered as she worked, "A device that could sense the presence of ghosts would make my life so much easier." But that was a topic for another day. As Merek offered his insight, Nerys nodded, "Thank you. It's not always easy to learn to use new equipment on the fly." Between them, the managed, and the monochrome screen came to life, illuminating their path, badly, "Oh, this is helpful. A bit like a compass." Which might be no help at all. Time would tell. And then, "Straight ahead and angling to the right."

Ah, muunyak...more easily mounted than a bantha but as obstinant as a druyza. Fortunately, so is Netep Muri.

The more stubborn of the two wills has won out and Muri can be seen trailing as a small distance. The sweeper. And in case nobody'd been looking back in awhile, the sound of her laughter does carry forward while Aryn's mount takes her for a hell of a good ride.

"Y'need to give the nerf a go in the Blue Light, min larel..." she purrs and offers the little blonde a wink, should she turn 'round.

"I mean, it's /supposed/ to sense the presence of ghosts," Corr clarifies cagily, managing the muunyak fairly easily himself. Nobody knows too much about the old boy's background but he doesn't seem amiss astride the thing in the slightest, despite the rocky terrain, the slope, and the increasing thickness of the trees, which have only gotten thicker as they come to the bottom of the valley. The cover is surprisingly even, here, given the sparse foliage, but the sheer mass of naked branches still manage to cut the intensity of the sunlight substantially. "We never had too much luck with it."

The tang on the breeze has faded here in the shade of the trees, replaced by a clattering that varies in volume as the wind jostles those branches together overhead. Following Nerys' direction, the group eventually ride up on a collection of small, weathered structures, built from the native rock and still held together by crumbling mortar powdered with the native stone. The short, squat buildings could almost pass for cairns or simple bolders from a distance, but as they approach, the gaps and lines become apparent, the marks of construction weathered but still extant.

"Guess this is the village," Corr states, swinging a leg over the saddle and dropping to the ground. "Nerys, see if you got a clearer reading on that thing. Everyone else, spread out and start looking around for clues, but be careful you don't get yourselves hexed."

"Are you alright?" Aryn's spectacle in dealing with her mount leads the young naboo woman with more concern for her friend than for herself, and Chani expresses that with a question searching to make sure Aryn remains safe at the moment. She absorbs the brief lesson imparted nonetheless, though the information is filed away and probably doomed to be forgotten in the face of everything else they're dealing with right now. She's already tucked it into the back of her mind once she hears Corr mention the device he's using is to search for the presence of ghosts. "Wait, we're looking for ghosts, too?" She searches out their expedition's leader with slightly hiked brows and another look of concern. "The locals believe the place is haunted as well as cursed?"

Merek dismounts from the muunyak, while he nods a little bit to everyone. He begins picking up samples from the place to examine, though he doesn't note anything at the moment. He then packs that away, while he takes a look to the party, "Ya, except that time we did find a ghost because we were in some kind of ancient Dark Side ritual area," he notes.

"Quite alright, yes.." Aryn intones to Chani before her animal gallops a bit further unprovoked. "Mooother... save me..."

When it finally stops, Aryn affords a tired look to Muri, sighing out a bit of frustration but laughing nonetheless. "I should like to try this.. nerf, if it means preparing me for future instances with this..." Aryn has a noble moment, sounding posh when she enunciates the next word slowly, "..thing."

Now comes the time to dismount, and instead of committing herself to their search before she can safely disembark this beast, she devotes, instead, to honing on her descent. Only once both booted feet hit the ground does she begin to sweep away some of her concern. A dust of her gloved hands and, "Well that is --omph!" The Muunyak bumped into her knocking her off balance.

"...that." Glare.

Oh good. No more riding around on beasts of burden. Once Nerys had worked her way out of the saddle, she took advantage of the creature's sheer size, using it as a desk of sorts to rest the machine on as she worked the machine, seeming to get the hang of it the more she fiddled. And the compass, to its credit did seem to be doing a bit more pointing and a little less wobbling, "The machine appears to be pointing is due east, now." She lifted a hand, indicating the way right.

"The Audiotizer worked /plenty/ fine, by my recollection!" Muri calls out in defense of that janky heap of paranormal-detecting scrap. She neatly guides the muunyak through the copse of trees, laying forward on the smelly thing to avoid losing all her beads and most of her hair to the scraggly twigs. The order to fan out is given and she does precisely that. The beast snorts a blast of fermented breath when ordered to halt alongside a crumbling hut and she sliiiides on off. Just a little adjustment of pants needed, then she loops the muunyak's reins to what might've been a well, once upon a time.

"Not sure I ever shook the last hex, truth be told..." Muri mutters, plucking a small tac light from her belt and giving it a knock-two-three against her thigh to jar the connections back in order. The beam penetrates shallowly into the shaded corner of the collapsed hut and she ducks beneath a surviving archway to poke about inside. Kick, shuffle, sweep sweep...Muri scuffs her way back out, only to then see it --- HOW did she miss it? A shard of something /not/ fogstone juts up from the ground near her shaggy mount.

A gasp of delight and she's scrambling down to hands and knees to retrieve it!

• CRUNCH*

The muunyak's chonky foot finds it first. Perhaps it was an innocent shifting of weight is all, completely coincidental. Perhaps...

Muri's left holding just precious crumbles in hand, glowering up at the watery eye watching her keenly from around that wooly clod. She frowns. FROWNS.

"The /Audiotizer 3000/ was supposed to detect ghosts," Corr clarifies even more cagily, and it was actually the Audiotizer 3400 but Corr isn't a nerd, he can't keep track of these things. "There are no ghosts here and that wasn't a real ghost at Sluis Van either, I don't think. Just a curse, which is totally different."

"MAAAAAaaaah," interjects one of the muunyaks.

Threading his thumbs under the straps of his backpack, Corr sets out in the direction that Nerys indicated. "We can come back to the settlement after we find the black fogstone and deliver it to the Kindred shaman to lift the curse." The rocky ground is worn with the erosion of the years as much as the acidic rain from the nearby strip mine, giving the surface a strange complexion of ripples and flows in the rock here and segments where the earth itself appears to be pinpricked by a million individual droplets, their imprints weirdly precise.

The Spectro-cator 5400 directs the merry band towards an area where the rock juts upward again, a similar steep slope, but here at the base, a cleft in the rock appears central to the monochromatic line displayed atop their homing device. A single braid of dryrotted leather hangs beside the crack, the end torn and disintegrating.

"I'm lost.." Chani mutters. She's one of the last to dismount the muunyak and eases herself to the ground with a modicum of grace indicative of one who has at least ridden once or twice in her life. Settled on the ground, Chani closes the distance to Aryn, gaze venturing between the noble woman and their surroundings. She watches her step as she does, concerned with the unnatural effects wrought by a combination of the mining and the weather. "I've heard of long-term mining causing landscape changes. Do you think that's what caused it?" Her lower tone of voice leaves it a question between herself and the Alderaanian woman. As a matter of consequence, her downward gaze carries her eyes elsewhere. It's at the junction of ground and slope that her gaze turns up.

The fissure in the rockface is not what she would call inviting. What catches her attention, though, is the braid of leather beside it. Enough of a curiosity against the stark backdrop of rock that Chani ventures a little closer to cast a more discerning gaze over the woven strips. She thinks they're woven, anyway. If rock could be woven. "This looks like.. woven rock." The note of disbelief in her voice, which has risen the few decibels necessary to carry to the group as a whole rather than just a private conversation, shares her confusion.

Merek begins working along into the place, which isn't easy. He does succeed eventually, though it tears the skin away from a few of the cybernetic pieces. The man will then stand up while he tries to patch that up with a nod along to anyone else that came in the place.

Aryn occupies the spot beside Chani post muunyak encounter, and seems relieved to be away from the animal. Her focus goes to the terrain, like Chani, though her attention is on the chatter going back and forth until Chani asks about the landscape. Aryn is educated in geography and nature, though the specifics of geology still elude her. Without an informative answer, Aryn regards the native Naboo woman and says, "I am not certain. I must admit, my own experience surveying the worlds of excess mining is limited. We Alderaanians have strict laws over such practice. Before Alderaan's destruction, one had to have seventeen permits and the blessing of a Lord before they could break ground and build. Mining was absolutely forbidden."

Not that anyone asked for a history lesson about Alderaan. Aryn takes interest in the formation ahead though, and leaves Chani's side to investigate. Aryn peeks through a small crevice crack and squints.."I believe.. there to be light within this. Curious... has anyone achieved a better look from within?" Aryn stands on her tip-toes to look toward the others, or where she thought they might have ..explored.

Rather than proceeding immediately ahead, Nerys allowed the others to do as they would, and gave herself time to cast about the area to see what there was to be seen. Somethinf of value perhaps, some clue? Another entry that did not require one to flatten themselves into something two-dimensional? One could only hope. Nerys' keen eyes caught a mound of dirt just beside the entry to the whatever it was, cave, mine, void of doom, and she took a knee, pulling her backpack around to retrieve a small scoop and brush. Just the sort of thing one had in a backpack that was full of all manner of useful adventuring tools. She worked quickly but carefully, until a bone was revealed. It appeared to be whatever had once been attached to that bit of leather, "An old charm or talsiman of some sort." She tugged, gently, "But I cannot remove it from the stone." Aryn's words caught her attention, and she rose from this artifact that she could not...procure, to make her way over towards the pale-haired doctor.

"What?" Netep wrinkles a brow of kindred disbelief to the young woman staring at the leather braid. WHich might not be leather? Naturally, she has to touch it. "That's right barvy, that is," she murmurs, both brows gone aloft. Her left thumb comes up, wipes at the dust on her lower lip that's just begun to migrate its way inside. Probably put there when she dropped face into palms and pottery crumbles to release that angry growl at the animal. A light spit to the side clears the chalky taste off her tongue. "I uh..." she sizes up the crack. "Yeah I think I can--"

Merek takes point, slithering his way into the space she wasn't even sure would admit /her/ little frame. "Fit." Nodding to self, Muri starts ditching excessive attire - her shawl, her jacket, the outer tunic - to lose a little girth. Also, potential snags. The gear belt is kept though, because you just never know. A long, final swig of canteen (doesn't smell like water) and she tosses the item to Corr. "You're good at holdin onto these, right?" Wink.

And in she goes. It's a sideways shimmy that calls for a weird squat and crabwalk and rolling of the hips now and again to clear protrusions in the crevice wall. It's times like these that Muri's grateful for a poorly endowed figure. Scoot-scoot-scoot-sc--OW!! "IT'S GOT M---" What's got her? Nothing. Rocks. Her boot's slipped between some less stable rubble and now she's stuck. That fat tread. Many curses in four different languages serenade her struggle to get--her--foot--FREE!

Netep's foot pops loose of its entrapment, sans boot. Her sock's gonna be so dirty. "Hey!" A call ahead to wherever Merek went stirs up some chalky dust on the wall in front of her face as she resumes her scooting and elicits a sneeze. "Hey, I'm coming!"

The machine says the black fogstone is inside this crack, that's where Corr is going. He considers the craggy crack for a moment and slips off his backpack, tucking it against the rock face near that petrified braid of woven rock Chani identified and moving back in front of the opening to square up with it, accepting Muri's canteen. "You bet I am. Here goes nothing," he announces, turns himself sideways, and begins to sidle in.

Immediately, the air drops a few degrees within the cold embrace of the stone. Though dry to the touch, its surface seems to leech heat away, and touching is required to make any real progress. He keeps moving deeper in, carefully maneuvering his feet around the irregular protrusions on the floor, flattening his back against one wall and dragging himself further along.

Then, for a horrible moment, something catches. "Oh no," Corr breathes, feeling something on his person snag and hold. "Not good." He wiggles. He twists. He attempts to take another step. Something streeeeetches and then SNAPS, and a metallic clang heralds the fall of whatever that was. When he emerges abruptly on the other side with Muri and Merek, he pats himself down, eyes widening with horror. "/My/ canteen!" His best friend! Lost in a cave! Glumly, he slides Muri's, still in his hand, into a cargo pocket.

The devastation is interrupted by the view ahead. The opening widens into an uphill tunnel, and strangely enough, there is light here, coming from above where a thin vein of glittering stone, clear and lively as diamond, pipes daylight down from somewhere high overhead. Corr looks up with wonder, reaching upward to try to touch it, but he's not that tall and can't quite reach. "That is one of the more beautiful things I've ever seen," he murmurs softly, turning his eyes downward finally to consider the tunnel ahead. Primeval fronded plants cling here and there to the rock where dribbles of water filter through cracks, and the light of the fogstone vein illuminates the way ahead.

While she surveys what appears to be strands of rock woven to form a braid, others begin to file in through the fissure and into whatever lies beyond. She angles back away from it once a woman she's not familiar with reaches out to touch it, and then Chani's left watching her slip into the crevice, too. Others go through, and then it's just herself, Aryn, and Nerys left on the outside. Appraising the entrance, then Aryn, then the entrance, and then Aryn, Chani's lips purse for a moment. "I guess.. I'll go." Chani starts to squeeze in and wiggle through the narrow passage. At some point, the ambient light cast from the sky can no longer keep her illuminated. The durable material of the jumpsuit and the protective covering against her knees keeps her from suffering any kind of abrasions, but the deeper aches that'll turn into contusions are numerous by the time she wiggles through to the other side. "That was awful."

Merek looks around while within the place, then he nods a bit when people come by. "I am going to take a few samples," the man notes, beginning to pick up a few things, placing them into a pack. He does repair the pieces of cybernetics while he begins to take from the belt along his waist vials to keep anything liquid in, and a few nice cases to place mineral in.

"I am right behind you, Chani. Worry not, my friend." Aryn sweeps her cape and tucks it into her belt at her lower back to prevent it from snagging. She follows Chani in, side stepping, ducking, and getting stuck. A brief moment of fear manifests as Aryn snags herself, and she experiences that moment of claustrophobia. It passes a moment later when, in her moments of terror, finds there's still some give. She emerges after Chani and moves off to a side, out of the way, to catch her breath and calm down. A hard swallow and look toward their point of origin has her wishing she had never experienced that, but then the view that greeted them began to overshadow the journey and she looked on with wide blue eyes. "Quite so, yes," Aryn remarks to Chani, though the lack of conviction was due to her distraction of the view. Humoring, at least.

Perhaps, on second through, it would be better to see what was to be seen from the inside. And once that decision was made, Nerys charged ahead. As she was want to do. Hey, they had a doctor literally on the call. Shed be fine. They'd all be fine. Get your medpack ready, Aryn! In she went, Nerys needing to work out the logistics of slimming not only herself, but her backpack down and them make like an otter and shimmy slide through the stone. Look, I know it's a mixed metaphor, work with me here. The net result was armor that made her far too stout, and padding that scraped up the skin it was supposed to be protecting (traitor!) at knees, hands, and even jarring her elbows for good measure. And the end of the journey was even less pretty, as the crevice spit Nerys out, and she rolled to get clear as the sudden lack of pressure on either side send her tumbling. BUT she and the backpack into which she had stuffed the machine that had brought them here, had made it. Result! "Priority one," she gasped out, "Find an exit bigger than the entrance."

"Well I'll---WALDIN, was that my canteen??" Netep's head jerks around at the sound, only to be met with the relieving revelation that no, it was /his/ canteen. She exhales a note of calm and resumes staring upward at the beautiful, mineralized veil. "I have no idea what that is," said with a gentle smile of awe. The moment of serene admiration lasts for about four more seconds then she's on the move, exploring the perimeter while wandering on toward that uphill slope of tunnel. "Everybody okay?" When the sounds of malcontent herald more bodies crawling through to join the party. Feely fingers and keen eyes find multiple curiosities.

"More o'those braids..." she crouches down, parting the leaves of a fern sprouting near the base of the wall. "And....some charms to match. Bone, maybe?"

With the whole crew on the other side, Corr takes a quick headcount and forges on! The path leads upward, and with no side-caverns to distract them, the journey now feels straightforward even though the cave meanders and winds slightly on its higher byway, the rocks underfoot jumbled and jagged, smooth and slippery by degrees depending on the cracks in the walls and ceiling. "Reckon they're to do with the curse?" he questions as Muri points out more of the charms, or whatever they are, scrambling ahead with determination if not grace. "If we do get cursed, I'll pay the Lash kids to un-hex you, don't worry." Reassuring! Unless you know the Lash kids.

The passage abruptly veers right, and as the group round the corner, a platform juts from the rock ahead, a natural elevated spit of rock with a few smaller chunks of stone arranged as to form stepping stones up to it. There, on a perch, glittering in the refracted light from the thin, spidery vein of shimmery stone shot through the ceiling, lies the black fogstone.

Its surface is smooth and polished, shaped in the amorphous figure of what might be a human, but made completely of hard lines, each facet cut with a sharp, shearing quality to it. The stone is not opaque, but a murky translucent color, with its outermost edges the same diamond-bright as the vein in the ceiling, but spreading out from the core is a deep black stain that swallows up the fire that flashes inside typical fogstone.

"Well, if any rock was ever cursed," Corr decides, clambering up onto the platform to look down at the figurine, the whole thing about the size of a human head.

Conversation with Aryn aside, Chani takes a few moments to attempt to dust sediment and dust from the sides of her arms, the stomach of the jumpsuit, and along the thighs. A few pats aren't enough to fix the issue, leading her to abandon the endeavor with a slight cough to punctuate it. Her mouth is dry and gritty, but unlike their valiant leader, she has not lost her source of hydration on the trip. Pulled from a molded pouch that surrounds it, a mouthful is pulled form the durable bottle before spattering against the floor after moments of swishing the fluid around. It rushes to fill the formed grooves and seep down slope, discoloring the floor where it touches. She sips after, and stows away the water before beginning to follow Corr up the incline.

"Maybe I'm crazy, but this seems like a path rather than some natural formation, right?" The cramped confines of their path doesn't mean they need to suffer in silence, and Chani tries to make conversation to take away from the vivid awareness that she's in a small space under more than enough weight to crush her if something were to shift or otherwise change with the ground. Edging out onto the platform itself, Chani refrains from going all the way to the figurine itself. "That's creepy. I can see why they think it's cursed."

Merek looks to the stone, and he seems to think about it. Smart decisions are made when he takes a hand to wrap about the fogstone and pull it from its place. "Yes well, you know. We'll see," he notes. "Do you want it?" he wiggles that to Corr. "What do you think?" he asks Aryn, "Anyth

As Merek lifts the figurine, the perch it's sat on rises perceptibly and an ominous, distant rumble answers his question of 'Anything?'

"Perhaps a pilgrimage path," Aryn remarks following Chani's observation. "Were I to hazard a guess.. this could be a shrine of sorts. Such markings and use of talisman is indicative of ancient idolatry. Symbolism in its purest form." Aryn walks around this larger area, where the fogstone lay in wait. "To the layman, this rock carries quite the significance. Mr. Waldin, are you certain we must claim /this/ stone? There could be more within; mayhaps with less significance than this one.." She gestures toward the stone now held in Merek's grasp. To his question, Aryn looks to the source of the rumbling. "I daresay that is your answer, sir. Are there other ways out of this place?" Aryn's voice is a pitch higher, perhaps annoying when tuned with worry. Wide eyes go from the stone to the others. A sudden, cold feeling crawled up her spine and Aryn pivoted toward the direction from whence they came and pointed. "We need to leave. Now!" What innate sense guided this? The Force, of course! RUN!

The first rule of Tomb Raiding was you don't talk about Tomb -- no, no, that was the second rule. The //first// rule, was you never took the pretty statue without first making certain that said pretty statue was not a trap. Not set up a trap, and certainly not designed to trigger a trap. And so, Nerys advanced only slowly, slinging her backpack back up onto her shoulder as she scanned the wall, the steps, the plinth of a sort that the statue was set upon. Her eyes narrowed, zeroing in on the figurine itself, a crease of thought forming between her eyes, "That's odd. The stone the figure is standing on is inset into the rock, placed into a channel in the rock--" Kriff it! As she saw Merek pluck the stone without even a by your leave from the //actual//, you know, trained professionals in the group, her expression turned livid, "We're leaving //him// behind." And then she was heading back to the entrance, standing sentinel to allow the others a chance to make their escape first.

"Curses, like superstitions, keep people in line," Muri catches up after knifing one of the ferns free to tuck into a pouch on her belt. "But doesn't mean there isn't some element of truth. Even if fabricated by very worldly beings." She pauses for only a moment below the platform, looking up with a bit more interest in the vines growing behind the platform than its centerpiece. "This uh...Just feels a bit too easy, hey?"

She's up there, groping some vines ever so gently because there's an interesting epiphyte-on-epiphyte happening here and she wants it for the Hermi and ---

Netep sees it just a heartbeat too late to warn the man. The enormous boulder, balanced precariously in an alcove behind the viney growth, is surely not a coincidental formation of nature. "DON'T TO----" he did "JUMP!" And she's doing just that, seconding Aryn's suggestion by hurling herself off the platform like a friggin bird, possibly with similar sentiment as Nerys. NO TIME FOR STAIRS! LAST ONE TO THE CRACK IS BOULDER FODDER!

"/Of course/ I want it," Corr replies tersely to Merek. "That's why we /came here/ to begin with, but if I thought it was a /good idea-/" RUMBLE "to just /grab it/ then I would have /done that!/" His voice raises in pitch and volume throughout, and he turns to point back down the way they came. "Now RUN!"

Corr's command is punctuated by an almighty CRACK as the boulder jolts free of its perch and begins to roll towards the group. It's downhill all the way back to the entrance, and as the giant stone crunches over the perch that the figure had been resting on, its clear that A) it will rapidly pick up speed and B) it will do the same thing to their bones.

She doesn't need to be told twice. Chani doesn't need to be told at all, actually. Before the sentence has fully left Aryn's mouth, the Naboo woman is turning back towards the way they came and not moving at just a quick walk, but a run. As much as one can run on the ground that they've traversed over to get where they are, at least. She doesn't hesitate when she makes it back to the beginning, but instead goes straight into the crevice and wiggles and worms her way towards getting out on the other side. It's not possible, though. The closeness of the fissure walls and the various outcroppings make it difficult for her to maintain any kind of speed through it, and in the end, she doesn't even get out at all. She's just too slow.

Merek looks to the fogstone while he nods a bit, then he places that into a pocket, "I am sure there was a mechanism to do it, at the moment though, we succeed." With that, he begins going into that wall with Chani, managing to slide up into it. He notices that the woman is quite slow, so he takes up both hands while beginning to push the woman until she's been freed, beginning to stand from the wall, then he offers a hand to assist anyone else.

Aryn is right behind Chani, witnessing the young lady getting back inside the rock crevice, only then to follow her. Perhaps it's the terror or urgency of the situation, or that Aryn is breathing much more heavily now, that the rocks of this pass seem /tighter/ and more constricting. "Oh no, it is much more difficult to move! Mother save us! Keep trying to move.." She says in an effort of encouragement, but it only translated to urgency, nervousness, and fear. They could die! Aryn tries to find her center then, to draw upon the Force, but moments like these her mind is just working too fast. It required her to be somewhere that she could focus, and on the cusp of death was not ideal. Her faith shifted to the Mother above, and Aryn prayed.

Netep's logic was sound, her execution terrible. There's a definitive crunch when she hits the ground and it's not just the gritty tunnel floor skidding under her one boot. The sock-footed foot is now a source of throbbing misery and doesn't bode well for a hasty exit. But dammit, she'd going to try! A for effort?

Nerys's hand suddenly interlocking with her own for a tug-along puts an extra hop in her gimp and maybe there's some shred of hope for exiting this place alive. "Ol'val, min larel, was nice knowin' ya! S'not any worse than Aurea though, right? Yeah!"

The squeeze point, alas, is single file only and she seems to have greater difficulty than before in worming her way through. If she can at least get far enough in to make room for those behind....

"Not today, Netep Muri. It won't have us today." Once Netep's hand was in hers, Nerys did as she had said she would, putting herself between the last of the expedition and the oncoming boulder, making sure, even as it rumbled down behind her, that Netep made it fully inside the revise before Nerys followed her on, pushing, prodding, half carrying, whatever she had to do to make certain Netep made it out. And like a true adventurer, she jammed the backpack in first, before she jammed in herself. It was a tight squeeze, worse, this time, because there was more urgency behind it, and the walls themselves were shaking with the rumbling of oncoming doom. But she was bound and determined to make it out. She had business on the other side.

If there's one thing that Corr is good at, it's losing canteens. If there's another thing he's alright at, it's running. He takes off, not standing on ceremony or worrying about who goes first and who goes last. That's not his way; his way is to crowd everyone along as he's going. Everyone in his way gets pushed ahead, shoving them into motion if they're not already, and then he keeps going. "RUN!" he yells again, because it seems important.

When he reaches the crack, he stops, glancing over his shoulder to see Muri and Nerys bringing up the year, helping each other or dragging each other down, it's not clear which. "RUN!" he yells at them, and when they reach the crack, he shoves himself in behind them as the boulder comes hurtling down the pathway.

Just as he squeezes in, the rock hits the wall with a resounding BOOM that shakes the stone, splinters and cracks forming in the sedimentary walls, and against all odds, actually loosening up the pathway enough that the adventurers are able to twist free and tumble gasping into the light of day. Wordlessly, Corr lies on the ground, covered in rockdust, and pulls out Muri's canteen.

"MAAAAaaaah," one of the muunyaks grumbles.

When he finally gets up, he tosses the container at his longtime compatriot and dusts himself off. "Alright. Merek, give me that kriffing rock before anything else can go wrong. I'll risk the curse, thank you. Everyone else in one piece? You all made a shaman very happy." The job was a success! Mostly.