Like big globs of cloudy webs.. No, that wasn't it...

Like being smothered in layers upon layers of furs, face pushed deep into the suffocating cushions. Still not right...

Surfacing from deep underwater now, blackness receding, but eyelids too heavy to lift. Better to sleep, sink back down into the...cold? Not furs then, something metallic and cold against naked flesh, a light breeze awakening the skin with goosebumps and doing more to shift the foggy haze than the voice... What voice?

"You must wake. Swiftly now, to your feet."

Insistent...why won't it stop? A humongous effort but a slit of light admitted between iron-like lids. A silhouette of a figure, hovering over, arms moving down, gripping tightly and shaking...

"Quick now... Awaken!"

An unfamiliar face comes into focus as the slits widen. Male, human, older...sagging jowls, wisps of hair by the ears and nowhere else. Head framed by a dim, pale blue light from somewhere behind him. A homely face, especially with those intense eyes...he's wearing no clothes...why?

Nicer to close the eyes and slip down, but now there is a shudder. This man is not the only one devoid of clothing...hands go down to touch a chill metal surface underneath bare buttocks. A sharpening of the senses now. This..,whatever this is, whoever this is, wherever this is....it's all...wrong...

A returning awareness of the limbs now...fingers flex, eyes open, lips move in approximation of speaking...

"Nnnaahgh?"

Even this voice, the voice of the self, sounds strangely alien.

"What?"

The old one turns his head sharply away to look at something unseen. Is that a stone wall behind him? His face reappears, very close now...

"You must help wake the others! Now!"

The middle-aged one with the jowls doesn't seem to hear Corinne. He seems strangely...unconscious of the naked woman before him. He is crouched beside her, all sense of humility about his own condition vacant. His eyes shift to the sides. Corinne groggily follows his look to reveal more naked forms, most uncoiling from a fetal position, all laying, like Corinne herself, on a singular circular disc of some sort of metal on a cavernous floor.

Corinne...

That, at least, seems familiar, but is it really her own name? The word seems familiar...even comforting...and that is the only thing that has been so far.

Her eyes are still cloudy. She can't make out anything beyond the stirring figures around her. An encircling wall around them at an indeterminate distance, maybe forty or fifty yards? Some sort of blueish light on three sides, a more natural orange flicker from another side.

"The others now...quickly!" His voice rasps with whispered urgency.

"Yes, of course..." The man seems confused, more than a little alarmed. His eyes flick over to the glow of Merroda's hand. "You need to get them on, quickly n...!"

His words are interrupted by an explosion of tissue and blood from the front of his throat. Something shatters into pieces against the metallic disc.

"Crannoc subter!" cries a deep voice from one of the walls.

The nude middle-aged man collapses across Corrine's legs. He is heavy and before Corrine can help herself she shudders and rolls him off.

Maulim

The half elf groans as he starts to roll over, "Too many free drinks?, No that wasn't it I don't think... ow.

He groans as he looks around and sees the situation around him. "Why is it I can never remember the good nights and only know how awesome they must have been from how I feel when I wake up?"

He still seems groggy as he starts to look around him and realize that this seems to be something more than the aftereffect of a night's boozing. He tries to look around the area.

Does anyone know what is going on here or where here is?

Perception Check

Ming-Na immediately leaps to her feet at the sound of flesh tearing open. Her body falls into a coiled stance she does not remember but feels natural. She quickly glances around and takes in the gruesome sight of the throatless man and the other unclothed folk. "What is happening?"

Corinne shakes her head and tries to focus.

The situation takes shapes slowly despite the danger. It's like looking through smoky quartz, listening with a cork wedged in the ears. But all too slowly, the surroundings begin to take shape.

It's quite dark, presumably night. The group is struggling to wakefulness in a courtyard of some sort, but the ground is stone, not dirt. The disc everyone is waking upon is ten feet in diameter, enough for everyone that woke up to lie closely side by side. Ming-Na recognizes countless spiraling dwarves runes etched in gold upon silver beneath them, and, with some surprise to herself, recognizes the cry, "Look down there!" that was shouted from a corner at one of the walls.

The disc occupies the middle of a square courtyard fenced in on three sides by stone walls that are about ten feet in height, and sixty feet in length. At the vertex of these three walls is a rounded tower with crenellations at the top facing outward to whatever lies beyond. 5 foot tall doorways to each open into the courtyard. The middle wall has a set of solid double doors, barred from this side. Four helmed and stout fellows stand atop the walls, two flanking this gate and one each at the corner towers. One is swiftly reloading a heavy crossbow; from this side of the wall, the figures have no cover of battlements to hide behind. His booted foot. Has already slid into the crossbows stirrup, and he is trying to affix some sort of crank to the crossbow. Merroda's accusation still seems to echo with the subsequent questions adding a background chorus of their own.

The fourth side is fronted by a larger face of stone, like a cliff, carved with a pair of twenty-foot tall dwarves sentinels flanking another set of double doors. These doors, however, are sculpted gold as tall as the statues with no apparent handles or rings to pull upon. The sculptures on the doors, at a moment's glance, seem to depict a bearded god looking at scenes of creation and destruction below him.

[OOC: Corrine has a PM coming and may take an action in this surprise round (as well as anyone else with a perception of 20 or more). Everyone can throw down an initiative roll in the OOC thread]

Corinne makes it into the archway. The dwarf who was reloading vainly aims it down to stop her, but this crossbow bolt ricochets off the stone walls of the tower base. Inside, Corinne sees that she's in a small rounded room with a simple wooden ringed ladder leading up to a closed trap door...leading up to another dwarf. There are two heavy Crossbows here with quarrels of bolts hanging from spikes pounded into the walls. There are also some spears bundled together against one wall, a brazier glowing with coal embers and some fur cloaks laying on the floor like they were cast off in a hurry.

Outside the remaining dwarves aim their crossbows down and, whether deliberately or by coincidence focus fire on one of the other awakeners... A human male with blond hair. Having made it to his knees, he collapses again to the disc, truncated memory shortened forever perhaps.

Maulim rolls to his feet and glances around. Rather than following the others, he dashes into the tower on the other side since he figured that otherwise they might have a bottleneck at the top of the tower.

Corinne picks up a spear - the weight feels strangely familiar in her grasp - and throws on a cloak to preserve her modesty. She nods at her strange companions as they file through the doorway behind her.

"We're under attack," she whispers urgently, "though I don't know why. Are you hurt? Do you know how to defend yourselves?"

The tower Maulim runs into is much like the other, except the brazier's coals are ashen white and cold and there are no furs here. Also there is a pole with a U-shaped piece attached to it. Without knowing why he knows this, Maulim surmises this would be used to lift the bar sealing the gates on this side.

OOC: Just need a race, gender, and rough appearance from Bounty Hunter. His PC is slow to get to his/her feet, but I have an idea for him/her this round to storyboard his character out.

Merroda can't help but chuckle slightly at this. "Oh how very noble. If I say no? Will you leap forth and protect me?" She shakes her head and laughs again, a hint of nervousness in his voice. Keeping her eyes on the others she moves slowly forward and snatches up one of the fur cloaks. "I can kill if that is what you mean - dwarf or human it makes no difference to me. Just stay out of my way."

From atop Maulim's tower, a loud, deep horn sounds. The sound echoes deep off the walls and the cliff side. For a painfully long second, there is no other sound, but then there is a responding clang of something metallic striking stone from the other side of the golden doors across the courtyard.

Everyone has a very, very bad feeling about what might happen next...

OOC: dwarves are either delaying, holding actions, or have taken actions, but you can't see what they're up to from your positions.