O.o now would be a good time to focus.
But since that's probably not possible yet, read the note then check if you can break out through the windows.

You retrieve the bloody piece of paper from your pocket and read it - it is just about legible through the red smears:


In the margin you see a note next to the archaeological goods. It says "Interesting... this should be enough"
A telephone number is given for Panamerican's local office, as well as an address in San Fernando.

You're not quite sure what to make of the manifest, but this archaeological theme seems to have popped up a few times already. First Steve, then the map and now this.

You climb onto the bed and look out of the window. The view looks out over some kind of yard full of crates. You can see two military-style trucks with covered tops parked in the yard and a couple of men dressed in khaki are loading boxes into the back of one of them. The yard is surrounded by a whitewashed stone wall about 3m high, on the far side of which is a sturdy-looking gate. To the left of the window you can see what looks like a fire escape.

Turning your attention from the view to your current predicament, you open the window to see if you can get out that way. No luck - the window is fitted with restrictors to prevent people from jumping out. Besides, it doesn't look like you could reach the fire escape from your window and the fall into the yard below would almost certainly be fatal. Maybe you could reach the fire escape from the next room's window, but you still need to get out of this room first.

Of course, you could just go to sleep like Sean suggested, but you feel like you're not ready yet.

Focus: 3/8

Eat the bread, then try to prop open the window with the wrench but only to see if that works. Failing that, try to open the door with the wrench.

You look at the bread and see the greenish-black stains from where your dirty hand examined it earlier. You don't feel quite hungry enough to eat such a horrible-looking item, so you put it back in your inventory.

You ponder the window for a while - the problem doesn't seem to be that the window will not stay open, but that it will only open so far before the restrictors prevent it from moving further. Thinking that perhaps you can force the window open with the wrench, you wedge it into the gap between one of the restrictors and the window frame, and use your body weight to provide force for the lever. Try as you might, you can't get it to budge. You could probably remove the small screws holding the restrictors in place with an appropriately-sized screwdriver, but you don't have one and the ones you saw in the toolbox earlier were too big.

You examine the door to see if there are any obvious weak spots you could apply your wrench to. It doesn't look like a typical door - as you noticed earlier it has no handle. There doesn't seem to be a keyhole and you suspect that the lock mechanism is on the other side of the door. The surface is hardwood and completely flat, flush with the door-frame, and you don't see any exposed hinges. This door was definitely not built to allow people to get out. You suppose it would be possible to batter your way through the door given several days of repeated hammering, but you don't have that long. Dinner is at 7pm and it is now 4:30pm.

There has to be something in this room which might be useful.

Focus: 4/8

Investigate every corner of the room for anything useful.

And then the rest of the room.

Also evaluate if you could break the glass of the window with the wrench.

I meant it figuratively, not literally.

Investigating the room takes some time. You ransack the drawer of the bedside table, finding a complimentary pouch of Valerian bath salts, a blank notepad with a page torn out, and a pencil.

You throw open the doors of the wardrobe to reveal a change of clothes: underwear, a pair of khaki shorts, a shirt, a wide-brimmed hat and a pair of boots in your size. You also find a jacket, presumably for the cold nights, and a couple of wire clothes hangers.

You investigate the sink and find nothing of interest. The mirror seems loose. You notice that the floor is scraped quite badly around the wardrobe.

It is now 5pm.

Focus: 5/8

Change into the clothes available except the jacket for now so you 'blend in' with everyone else. Then investigate the torn page, loose mirror, and scraped floor.

You change into the new set of clothes. Surprisingly, they fit you perfectly. You deposit your grimy, dusty clothes in the wardrobe and then investigate the scraped floor around it.

It looks like the wardrobe has been moved frequently in the past, which accounts for the scrape-marks around it. Curious, you grab hold of the wardrobe and drag it towards the middle of the room, revealing a recessed floor tile with a large metal ring attached to it. It looks likely that this is a trapdoor leading to a lower floor.

Next you look at the notebook - yep, a page has definitely been torn out of it but you don't see it anywhere.
You lift the mirror off its hook, hoping to see a safe hidden behind it, but sadly you only see a bare wall. As you go to replace the mirror you see a scrap of paper tucked into the back of the frame. You take it and put the mirror back on the wall.

The piece of paper looks like it was torn from the notebook you looked at earlier - the torn edges match up and a barely coherent note is scribbled in pencil on it:


Focus: 6/8

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 26 2011, 3:52 pm by CaptainWill.

ewww... not good.
Check out where the trap door leads to. But carefully, avoiding noise so you aren't noticed. If you encounter people try to hide and listen in on them.

You grab the metal ring and pull. With difficulty you are able to lift the trapdoor and rest it against the wall. The amount of physical exertion required means that you were unable to avoid making any noise - the rasping of stone on stone seems to have been unavoidable. You wait several seconds for any sounds and hear nothing, so you investigate the dark hole in front of you.

It is difficult to make out anything past the first few feet, but you can see a ladder which leads down, and a hole large enough for a man to crawl through leads off at a right angle from the shaft, possibly in the direction of the room next door to yours. An unpleasant smell rises out of the shaft.

You wonder if it is wise to descend into the unknown. You could see where the vertical shaft leads, or climb into the horizontal one. Alternatively you could leave things as you found them and sleep until dinner. It is 5:30pm.

Focus: 7/8

Try to follow the shaft until you reach the adjacent room or until you believe it won't lead there.

You carefully climb down the ladder and, bracing your feet against the rungs, you reach across to the horizontal shaft. Luckily there are two notches in the bottom which seem to be designed to allow a person to pull themself into the shaft, so you use them to do just that. There is enough room to crawl forwards comfortably, but not to turn around. If you want to come back this way you'll have to back up.

It is pitch black in the shaft but you feel your way forwards. The further on you go, the stronger the unpleasant smell becomes, reaching a peak below what seems to be an extension of the shaft upwards, probably leading to a trapdoor in the room next to yours. A rectangular outline of light above you appears to back up this theory. The shaft continues and you follow it further to make you don't miss anything. Abruptly you come up against cold metal - you've reached the end. The shaft extends upwards and you see another, much fainter, rectangular outline. It seems likely that all these rooms are built in the same way.

You can try to gain access to either of the trapdoors or you can return to the main shaft or do any other plausible action.

Focus: Available

Focus because I have no idea what else to do. GUT FEELING SAYS NO.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 26 2011, 6:19 pm by lil-Inferno.

Your gut tells you that you ought to save that focus for a bit later. You have a feeling that a dreadful situation is not far off.

Try to gain access to the first trap door.

As you are currently below the last trapdoor in the shaft, you decide to try to gain entry to it. You are able to squat on the floor of the shaft, put your hands against the door and push off with your feet. There is a grating sound as the door begins to move, then a thud as it contacts something solid - another wardrobe perhaps? Guess you're not getting through here. You let the door down gently and prepare to crawl back and try the other trapdoor.

Suddenly, you hear feet moving about above you and the scraping of furniture. Your attempt to open that trapdoor has apparently not gone unnoticed by whoever is occupying the third room in the corridor. You scramble backwards as quietly as you can and try the same procedure with the other trapdoor. This one is not obstructed and lifts easily.

The stench is overpowering.

To be continued.

Just a side note until you finished the next story part:
You didn't really expect us to skip the adventure and sleep, right?

Well you never know - sleeping and "going to dinner" might have had interesting consequences. You still have 5 luck points, right?

------------------------------
...the stench is overpowering.

As you lift the trapdoor a cloud of flies erupts from nearby and buzzes angrily about the room. This room has a slightly different layout to yours. There is no wardrobe and the bed is in the centre of the room rather than next to the window. What immediately draws your eye however is what you can see on the bed. The partially clothed corpse of a man lying on his back is chained by its ankles and wrists to the bedposts. Apparently he has been dead for some time, if the bloated abdomen, the smell and the flies are anything to go by. There is a lot of blood soaked into the bed and small dried-up pools of it are scattered on the floor along with spatters on the wall behind the bed. The corpse appears to have a chest wound but from your position in the corner of the room you can't see clearly.

As you stand in the room the combination of the smell of putrefaction, the sound of buzzing flies and the sight of the bloated corpse starts to have an effect on your mind. This is your first encounter with an experience like this and you begin to feel dizzy. You lean against the wall to steady yourself but you feel the weakness in your limbs increasing and your vision begins to turn brown at the edges.

You feel like you have to do something fast.

Focus: Available

WARNING:
You have encountered your first mentally disturbing scene. Your actions will determine the medium-long term effects of this encounter on Tom's character. You may come out with an altered personality which will affect the "default" actions Tom will take in later situations.