3B - One flew over the cuckoo hut

"So why don't we just keep opening and shutting the same door to see how many different rooms appears?"

When Wujen opens and shuts the door rapidly, he finds that it gets stuck. After a short delay it opens freely. This appears to be the case every time he tries to open the door. While the destination usually changes, this is not always the case and there does not appear to be a regular order to which room it accesses. He ends up accessing 5 different rooms (most of which Sam has already found): the wine cellar, the bathroom, the forming dining hall, as well as a a room filled with hundreds of chairs and another filthy room filled with cages, some of which are occupied.

"Well at this rate this is going to take forever"

(ooc: at no point does the room revert back to the foyer?)

"Well, it seems we can reliably get to a room full of cages. Our missing persons might be in there. Snot, I am planning on finding my friends and leaving. So long as you don't try to keep us here or betray us to Baba Yaga you, and anyone else we find in this place are welcome to come with me. Any advice you may have would be very helpful, especially for navigating this place. I hope to get out without confronting Baba Yaga, she has been around for a very long time and I'm not foolish. I know it's possible as at least one person has made it out before, after finding a map and an emerald. Know anything about that?"

As WuJen talks with Snot he moves to another door and begins the same process of opening, noting the room beyond and shutting to see if both doors appear to behave the same or if new rooms present themselves.

((yep, it never goes back to the foyer.))

Snot says, "Only Baba Yaga can freely leave this place unless you have two things. First is a map and second is special necklace. Looks like chain with an emerald skull on it. A girl stole the necklace, so that means unless she comes back to give it to you, you are stuck in here until Baba Yaga decides you can go. Map can at least help you get around, but Baba Yaga keeps those."

"Well this complicates things!"

"Don't worry. There is a way, we just have to find it. If nothing else we can start doing damage to the structure until it let's us out. It's a semi-living creature, I'll bet it can get a tummy ache. It didn't like when Sun scratched the door."

"There is more here, so far this door hasn't shown us anything like a library, workrooms, a lodge, or where that flying pestle stays when it's not in use. That bathroom looks too nice for prisoners, it might be a good place to start looking for rooms leading to more personal areas."

Snot frantically says, "Oh don't do that! You make the hut angry and you make Baba Yaga angry. You don't want to see Baba Yaga angry. Snot's predecessor accidentally spilled some boiling food and upset the hut. She boiled him alive one limb at a time and made him eat himself!"

Sam opens and closes a door until he gets to the room with the cages.

"That may be Snot, but I don't intend to stay in this hut for very long regardless.  I came to get some people out, and I know it's possible.  That emerald necklace you talk about is currently on the other side of the world in the hands of the person who escaped here, and while she is now a banshee it tells me that there *is* a way, and since Baba Yaga never bothered to retrieve the necklace from her I'm betting my life that there is either more of those necklaces or some other path out of here.  There is no such thing as a perfect lock---it may be difficult but there *is* a way to open this one."

WuJen examines the door for hinges.  "Maybe we can take the doors off the wall?  It shouldn't be needed, there's got to be a trick to navigating this place, but I'll settle for fixing the rooms in place if we can't figure out how to get the ones we want when we open a door."

Snot stares at Wujen as if he is completely insane and decides it's best for his continued health not to continue this conversation.

Meanwhile Sam manages to get a door opened to the cage room. The smell of sweat and filth assault the senses the second he peeks his head inside. Hundreds of cages hang from chains throughout this room. The chains appear to be attached to some kind of rail system in the ceiling that allows the cages to be moved about the room freely. Each has both an entry door on the side and a trap door on the bottom, as well as some sort of pulley looking thing on the top that seems to be used to raise or lower the cage, though there is no immediately obvious means of using it to do so.

While the majority of the cages are empty at the moment, a handful of cages still have occupants. A half unconscious elven male lays in one of the cages, near some strange device full of vials and tubes. An ogre is snoring in another, near two other cages which have a human male and female human in them. The humans are awake and chatting with each other. A ghoul in another cage eyes the humans hungrily. In one corner of the room is a meat grinder and butcher's knife, obviously sized for use on the cages' various inhabitants.

"Are any of you Grant or Krista?" Sam asks the room.

The two caged humans stop chatting with each other and look up at Sam. They stand in their cages and the male says, "That's us. Why do you ask?"

"Well did we a picture of them or something?"

The humans glance at each other and then back at Valacan before the man says, "What?"

"It's not like it matters, anyone that wants out can come with us. I'm not about to leave people in here to be tortured and eaten on an old witch's whim. She can eat beef, pork, poultry and whatnot like the rest of us. At the very least she doesn't have to torture people if she were to turn out to be infected. Let's find a way to get these cages open."

Sam enters the room and inspects it, looking for a way to open the cages.

Sun holds the door while looking for a way to lock it in place, so it stays open while having his hands free.

Are there any other doors leading from the cage room, or is it too large to tell without taking some time to explore?

"Do you have your wits?" WuJen asks of the ghoul.  "I cannot promise to feed you, especially not in the short term unless there's some laying around here, which admittedly seems likely.  I don't intend to leave any person to Baba Yaga's whims, however, though I won't endanger others.  If you aren't feral you can come with us, and once we are out of the hut we are each free to go our own way.  I might could put you in touch with people that can help you get food, though I cannot vouch for freshness."

He looks at the sleeping Ogre. (ooc: What does WuJen know about Ogres?  These the oriental style magic wielding ones, Troll Metavariant, both?, big dumb brute?)

"Oh sorry I didn't mean we were going to leave oeople behind, i just want to know if we knew what they look like us all"

Sam takes a look at the doors to the cages. They have old-fashioned padlocks on them that look like something from ages ago. There is a ring of keys hanging from a hook on a nearby wall though.

Sun doesn't immediately find anything that could prop open the door. It does appear to be the only exit to the room though.

The ogre here does not appear to be a Desian oni. It is a big, dumb-looking humanoid. He definitely doesn't look like someone you want to tangle with though. The ghoul holds his hand up to his ear and says, "What was that? I couldn't hear you. Can you get a bit closer? My ears don't work the way they used to." Much like the skull outside, he does not appear to be speaking Desian common, but you all seem to understand him all the same.

"Awesome, not Feral and full of jokes."

WuJen looks back into the kitchen "Snot, we got any flesh laying around from things that can talk?"


WuJen looks around at the various containers laying around to find the ghoul some food while talking to it some more, "You'll have to forgive my mistrust.  I know starvation can make a monster of any man, and your lot isn't easy.  Let me see what's handy before we do something permanent and regrettable.  While I do that, tell me what you know of this place.  I can barely open myself to the astral in here, but I'm guessing you both don't have much choice and have been here long enough to get acclimated."

Sam gets the ring of keys off the hook and starts trying keys to unlock Grant and Krista's cage

The ghoul continues to hold its hand to its ear, apparently straining to hear. Grant says, "His senses are fried. He said it was something to do with all the magic here. I still wouldn't get anywhere near him though."

Snot says to Wujen, "All the meat is in the holding room for freshness," gesturing to the room with all the cages.

Meanwhile Sam tries the keys on the cages and manages to get Grant and Krista's cages open.