"The easy answer is they're recent. I already brought that up. I guess you could also say they were 'frozen it time', but that one seems a little out there."
"Good excuse to be ready.." He pulls the katana and holds it low, so he couldn't accidentally stick anybody.
"If we can find weapons or wounds we can tell how recent they really are." Conall scans the room for anything that isn't a corpse or a piece of furniture.
((Addressing group)) As well as being some sort of reception hall, with a barricaded door towards the back and a desk of sorts, there several open doors that lead elsewhere, seemingly broken open... The place is adorned with many beautiful, but equally strange paintings and statues... There are also what could be damaged screens of some sort. On one of the walls towards the back is the following picture: Except the fabric picture damaged and covered in... fluids... The bodies themselves are definitely recent enough... If you had to guess, maybe a month or so dead... The crawlspace only gets tighter, but you can see something glinting in the dark up ahead... Seems like it's widening out... It looks like a hatchery full of eggs! Wait, no... Those are eyes... Those are many eyes... Lining the walls... That which may have once belonged to many people... Definitely so... Many of them are too fresh to be old, and are too... Familiar looking... You recognize many eyes that were once in the sockets of hylotl, apex, humans, florans, avali, any sapient really... There's also several you don't recognize, being very large eyeballs compared to the others...
Lesc rushes over to inspect all the things...He freezes and smiles at the strange creature " Amazing! Utterly amazing! " " Ergh...I'm g-gonna be sec Lesc..." Lia stumbles over to him. All color out of her face...She seemingly doesn't like this...thing
It Schafer's head level, and the dripping raked fabric to nose level... Schafer wishes he hadn't... It's... Well, it smells kinda like blood, among other things, but almost has a different yet familiar scent to it... Uric acid...
"Not a warlord's hall... A tapestry like that isn't normal for gathering halls. Not the halls I know." He approaches the most intact corpse and turns it over, looking for wounds.
The thing you're poking at bears striking resemblance to... Uhh... Many things, but also absolutely nothing at all... Their throat has been slashed out by something, a hand bitten off, and a laser burn through one of the eyes... The tall one with the hook is standing near you, seemingly gazing mournfully at the thing...
Schäfer recoils back, letting out a sneeze to clear his nose. "Ugh, someone's marked this place as their territory." "Any idea who?" "I dunno, something foul?" "Just another thing to keep an eye out for, then." "I'm sure this is an entrance hall, not a 'gathering hall'. Besides, I've seen weirder things in some jackass's foyer."
"One of yours?" He frowns and mimics the gaze, "It took a lot to bring them down. Tech, tooth, and blade." He nods, "Too small to be a gathering hall."
Schäfer grins, letting out a hyena like chuckle. "Guess it's a good thing we also brought all that? Heh heh heh." "Didn't know there was a standard minimum size."
He brightens, "And more! I doubt they have The Anger of the North." "If it can't seat at least a hundred hungry men, it's too small. Some call it a mustering hall."
Roland eases his way through the corpses and furniture and looks for the first thing that catches his interest.
"Oh no, it's a name for Norse warriors. My axe is Morsii." "You wouldn't hold a feast in a mess hall. Merriment, heritage, and military all meet in a gathering hall."
"Heh, almost sounds cute." "I dunno, on the ship I worked on we always held meetings and the like in the crew mess. There wasn't really a better place to do it."
Calico takes in the scene with a disinterested gaze. She has, after all, seen and done much worse than this. ------------------- ((Uhh, Jareix?))