Having seen the war camp of these strange skeletal creations, the Professor and his allies decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and spent the next day or so returning to where they had originally found the multiple branching tunnels.
There, they spent some time in contemplation of the aspects of these portals, measuring one feature after another, and in the end, concluding which they were to enter. Much like the version they had just utilized, the passageway seemed long and straight, burrowed artificially out of the earth by the needs of some underground species.
This time, though, when the space opened up, the ground fell away beneath them, the passageway coming out near the top of a cavern, with constructed stairs winding down the stone wall beneath them. Narrow, from here they could send Tarvon forward to peer down, and see a similar, albeit slightly smaller, version of what they had encountered before – the preparations of an encampment by those same strange skeletal automata, directed by the multiple forms of living creatures. If some of them were indeed living and not mere pale imitations of life.
A quick and subtle count of the numbers showed “troop” counts, if such they were, north of a hundred, with perhaps ten officers of various sorts directing traffic, although the number was inexact due to arrivals and departures from passageways at the rear of the cavern during the time that Tarvon was observing matters. Supplies seemed to be comprised chiefly of a number of narrow wagons, loaded down with barrels sealed tight.
As a final matter of curiosity, the Chanwyr was able to confirm that the pale-faced humanoids, at least, did occasionally stop to eat and drink, having seen two of them imbibing a repast sitting atop a tipped over barrel, a strangely normal thing to do given their otherwise totally alien nature.
