Cover your mouth and nose with something D:

You look through your inventory for something you can use to cover your mouth and nose with, but there are no obvious candidates for this role. You take off the hat you put on earlier and use it as a makeshift gas mask. Unfortunately the smell continues to seep through quite strongly and your vision swims and fades at the edges, but you have bought yourself enough time to take another action.

Focus: Available

Search the room while keeping your eyes off the mentally disturbing scene. Think happy thoughts such as rainbows, unicorns, and candy. Think of your first love in the summer under the bleachers with a cheerleader. Think of the happy times you spent with Boy Scouts in the same tent as your scoutmaster.

Remembering your teenage years reading Harry Potter, and how he fought off Dementors, you try to think of happy thoughts while you search the room. You try not to look at the mutilated corpse on the bed but you realise it is the only real point of interest in the room. The door is the same as in yours - the sink is stained with blood but seems unremarkable... You stop. Your nose burns from the smell and your head hurts - you can't concentrate and you fall to one knee. Without warning, the body begins thrashing about against its chains, moving so forcefully that the bed shifts and starts to slide across the floor. As you watch, its jaw opens and a cloud of flies buzzes out of its mouth into the room, and its right arm is pulled out of its socket with a wet, fleshy sound as it struggles against the chains.

It's too much for your mind to take and the encroaching darkness in your vision overcomes you. You pass out and collapse.

You come to about 5 minutes later. It seems like you've been hallucinating - the bed is back in its original position and there is no sign that the corpse was ever moving. The room is silent. Unable to take the stench any more, you crawl to the window and push it open until it hits the restrictors. Fresh air fills your lungs and you manage to regain your senses. You stand up hold on to the window ledge for a moment while you recover.

Focus: Available

Trait Gained:
Traumatised - Tom was unable to mitigate unpleasant stimuli and has suffered mental disturbances as a result. How long these will last or what practical effects they might have are unknown, but expect to encounter some unexpected behaviour when involved in stressful situations.

Listen intently for any noise.

You listen but you can't hear anything over the buzzing of the flies.

Focus: Available

Use Focus - shit isn't getting us anywhere beyond more traumatized.

I just wanna say that I have the utmost respect for you Will. Your story is interesting and the storytelling is well written.
Especially comparing to the other RPG fails

I just hope you don't fall prey to another burn-out again. Just take your time so we don't have to wait another few months to continue.

There's always a chance of another burnout if I get too busy (likely in the next couple of weeks because I'm behind on essays) or if I get writer's block, but I'll warn if I have to stop writing for a while. Hopefully it won't be for several months either.
------------------------------

You focus, telling yourself that you're not doing yourself any favours by passing out in this disgusting room, especially when you've alerted someone in the next room to your presence. The combination of fresh air coming through the window and your renewed concentration makes you feel stronger. Dispassionately, you approach the bed and examine the corpse. You're no forensic expert and the state of decomposition is quite advanced, but it looks like the man was in his 40s with dark hair. Large amounts of dried blood around the manacles shackling the body to the bed posts suggests that he was struggling violently at some point before he died, and it is difficult to tell, but marks on his face make it look like he was beaten quite badly. You take a look at the chest wound - the mottled skin around it is pulsating with the maggots crawling underneath, but you manage to avoid another freak-out. The wound is on the left side of the chest, a little larger than the size of a fist, and very deep. You can see two ribs have been snapped, apparently so that the heart could be accessed. The heart is missing. You really hope that the man was dead before he underwent this butchery.

The corpse is wearing trousers/pants and you decide to look through the pockets for clues as to the identity of the dead man. Having to get so close to the body is not pleasant, but you find a leather wallet. Inside is a British driving licence, $80, bank cards and a shopping list. The licence and cards belong to Dr. Sean Harcourt and you can just about see that the photograph on the licence matches up with the dead man's face. So this is Sean Harcourt. You notice something - the handwriting on the shopping list, which is otherwise uninteresting, matches the handwriting on the blood-smeared shipping manifest. You keep the $80 and the licence, then take out your camera and photograph the scene from various angles as evidence.

As an afterthought, you look under the bed. You find a pair of handcuffs, which you take.

Inventory: Camera, bread, sunglasses, $275, manifest, licence, phrasebook, handcuffs
Focus: 1/8

I'm pretty sure Evil-Sean is going to figure out we're down here...perhaps we should go clean up and feign a heavy nap should anyone ask.

PS: told you lil


I'm hurt. Tony was eaten by a Grue...it isn't his fault. I could write an RP of content but now I don't want to compete with this thread.

You do your best to leave everything where it was in the corpse room, climb back down the trapdoor and shut it behind you. You are back in the dark, facing towards the main shaft leading down from your room.

You hear the sound of someone crawling along the shaft behind you. You freeze. They are very close.

Focus: 2/8

It's obviously a hallucination from just being traumatized.

Continue up the shaft nonchalantly, if the thing follows you up to your room, where you have the ability to see what's going on, threaten him with the wrench.

Tell the person to stop and go back to his room, and that you will be right there. When you manage to turn around go to his room and find out who he is. Once you are convinced hes not one of your captors explain to him what you found out.

You shake your head, quite sure that you're hearing things. You crawl back up the shaft towards your room and reach across for the ladder in the vertical shaft so you can go back to your room. As you pull yourself out of the horizontal shaft you feel a hand grab your ankle. The shock is enough to make you lose your grip on the ladder and, because your body weight is now over the open hole, you start to fall. Instinctively you reach out with your arm and catch hold of a lower rung, arresting your fall but almost dislocating your shoulder in the process. You rest your feet on even lower rungs to make sure you don't fall again.

"Are you okay?" You hear a female voice from above you and see a head silhouetted against the light coming down through the trapdoor in your room.
"Yeah I'm fine", you say through gritted teeth.

You lose a Luck Point.

LP: 4
Focus: 3/8

You are about to tell the woman to go back to her room and follow her when you realise that your arm is probably too weak right now to pull your body back up into the horizontal shaft. You will need a few turns to let it heal.

Instead, you tell her to go up into your room. She does so, and you follow her up. While you sit on the bed and she sits on the floor, you ask her about how she came to be here. Her name is Sandra and she too joined the MOA summer volunteering scheme. She was met at the airport along with three other volunteers: Ryan, George and Jess, by the same man who drove you here. When they arrived they had a lunch of olives, cold meats and wine in a room just off the reception area and were told that their luggage would be taken up to their sleeping quarters. Towards the end of lunch Ryan was complaining about a headache and Sean suggested that everyone go to their room and rest until dinner.

"I don't think that man is Sean Harcourt", you interrupt.
"Why? He seems just like I expected. He's nice."
"I found this driving licence on a dead man in the room next door to mine. He was, well... he'd been there for some time I think."

You show Sandra the licence.

"How do I know you're not lying? I don't know you."
"Come on - think about it. You've been locked in a room for hours with no means of communicating with anyone. Isn't that kind of suspicious? Couldn't you smell that stench in the shaft? I'm Tom Hunter by the way - I was meant to be at the airport with you guys but I got delayed."
"I want to see the body."

You have a sudden flashback of the corpse thrashing around on the bed.

"You okay?"
"Yeah, sorry. I'm fine. Look, I don't think it's a good idea for you to see the body. It's not nice - there are maggots and flies and..."

You sit up straight on the bed. You hear the definite sound of footsteps outside. It is 7pm, when Sean said he would be waking you up for dinner.

Focus: 4/8

You'll have to show her after dinner if at all, this wouldn't be a good time to go back down - due to your current mental state, your arm, and well Nega-Sean coming up the hall. Quick! Act not suspicious!

You think of what happened to the poor guy in the room next to you and know that things will have to look as non-suspicious as possible if you want to maximise your chances of survival.

You whisper to Sandra:
"Quick! You need to get back to your room, before they know you've gone."
"I'm still not convinc.."
"Don't talk - go go go"

You feel panic rising in you as you see Sandra is safely down the trapdoor before you lower it as gently as possible and begin dragging the wardrobe over it.
There is a knock at the door.
"Tom? Are you awake?" It's Sean, or fake-Sean.
...
"Yes, just a minute!"
"Why can't I come in, Tom?"
"I'm getting changed. Just a sec!"

You finish moving the wardrobe.
"Ok - I'm dressed."

There is a faint click and the door opens. "Sean" stands in the doorway and takes in the scene: your anxious face and your new set of clothes which are nonetheless dirty from crawling about in the shafts.
"You all right, Tom? You've got red on you."
You look down. Shit. there's blood on your sleeve from where you passed out in the other room.
"Oh yeah, I'm fine. I er... cut myself on the edge of the mirror."
"That's a shame - I'll take a look at it later. Get a proper bandage on it. Are you ready to join the others for dinner? I'm sure they can't wait to meet you."

You nod and go to follow Sean out of the room, but he doesn't move out of the doorway. He sniffs loudly.

"Do you need the toilet, Tom? It smells like a sewer in here."
You're taken aback by the directness of his remark, but you laugh weakly and say you don't know where the smell is coming from, but it's definitely not you.

You follow Sean out of the room and along the corridor. You can't help glancing uneasily at the room next to yours. When you reach the reception, Sean shows you to the door next to the clothes hooks. Inside the room is a dining table with seats for eight people, however there are only two people sitting down to eat. You sit opposite them. A large window faces the street. The curtains are drawn as it is now dusk outside.

"This is George and Jess", says Sean. "I'm sure you'll all get along just great." You notice there is no sign of Ryan.

On the table in front of you is a selection of meats and cheeses, bread, wine, water, olives and dipping oil.
George and Jess don't seem keen to open conversation. Sean sits down and tears off a piece of bread before dipping it into the oil and eating it.

Focus: 5/8

Keep up appearances and eat and drink only what Sean goes for. I have a feeling some things are drugged...(then again it could all be drugged with arsenic and Sean has built an immunity)