Bonus Content: The Atlas Mines Episode 3

Help me. I will, but I need more help to do so. And I start to back out of the tunnel. You've got a horrible… dung-like taste in your mouth. And you emerge, reversing through the tunnel. Catherine, have you maintained your position at the top of the mineshaft? I did for a minute or two, but then I thought my mind is obviously still thinking about the new padlock and the damn chain. So I've gone along to the nearest of the side tunnels. And I've started having a little poke about in one of those to see if I can find any bigger rocks, more, you know, tools, anything that I might be able to use to attack that chain and see if I can shatter it the same way as the lock went. Well, sure enough, you find what is presumably the carapace of a motor or pulley system with levers, although it's been gutted. And in this little chamber, there's also some cigarette stubs, some empty bottles. You think this little nook could probably house comfortably somewhere between 5 or 6 people? Do these bottles and cigarettes start to look fairly recent? Well, they've not rotted away, you guess. But neither are they particularly dry, picking them up. They do rapidly liquidise between your finger and your thumb. So they could have been here anywhere, maybe three years or older. Right, okay. I'll have a poke about in the machinery carefully and see if any of the levers are loose, thinking about perhaps levering the gate off its hinges so that it sort of falls against the side with the padlock on it and lets us out at the opposite side. You don't need to roll for this. Everything here is so rusted as to just fall apart and it was contained within a sort of iron and wooden box. And so pulling one of the levers, you pull it out. It's got a hefty metal tip which you've gripped and a flat metal length to it. So a bit like a poker. Right, okay. I shall take that with me and go back to the edge of the precipice and lean over and see what Roger's up to. I'll call down to him. Roger is close enough so that shining your light down, you are able to see him backing out of this crack and trying to hook his arm back around to this rope, which he does. Roger, are you all right? What's going on down there? I'll tell you in a minute, I'm coming up. Oh right, okay. I found a sort of lever thing that broke off a bit of machinery in one of these side tunnels here. I thought we could perhaps use it to try and either shatter this new chain or lift the gate off its hinges so we can get out. Yeah, it's a good plan. We need to go and get more help. How many people are there down there? I don't know. Did they not tell you who you're talking to? They said they were miners. What? I'm coming up. All right, how can they be miners though? I don't know. As Roger climbs over the edge, you can see him clearly at this point. He is thick with this dust. He looks like he has just, well, I can't even think of an adequate comparison so I won't go that way. He is just covered with a thick coating of reds, browns and purples. My God, Roger, what the hell is down there? Look at the state of you. What is that stuff? It's off the plant life that's growing on the floor of the tunnel. Plant life? Fungi, mushrooms. Could Roger make a sole challenge and in fact one for Catherine as well. Catherine, your difficulty is only three. For Roger, it's a seven. Catherine rolls a four. Very nice. I'll take a point of soul to add to this. I know there's only one weird point left in the pool, isn't there? I've rolled a two. Roger, as you stand up on your feet for the first time since getting up here, it's like you are rocking. You're on a seesaw. You teeter and you totter. You take a step back. You are about to fall without even realizing it. It's just suddenly the density of this fungal powder, this spore that's coating your skin has just soaked in and you are just out of your mind, dizzy. Could you make, in fact I'll ask for both of you because I assume Catherine is going to try and grab you as you clearly just shake your head and start tottering back. Roger, we'll go for a body challenge in your case. Makes sense for that to be essentially threats or pursuit, I guess. And in the case of Catherine, probably the same thing. Body pursuit to grab out quickly. Difficulty. Difficulty on this is I'm going to be fairly kind and say it's a five for both of you. So you've both got a chance. I only have two points of body, so I can't really add too much to it. I'll add one point to it. Okay. Okay. I rolled a five. Very nicely done. And how about Catherine? I have rolled a two. Luckily, Roger, you are able to gather yourself. Isn't that you stay standing? It's more that you are able to fall forward and grab the ground with your hands. It's like a terrible drunkenness has overcome you and the floor is spinning. Unfortunately, Catherine's natural clumsiness coupled with the fact that she's got a dirty great iron bar in her hand meant that she wasn't quite sure which way to go. And so she she sort of flapped about rather than doing anything proactive and helpful. Sorry. At least you didn't hit me with the bar. Well, I could have done, couldn't I? Look on the right side, dear. Roger, it takes some minutes until you're able to get yourself clear almost subconsciously. You are rubbing the stuff off of you onto your sleeves with your handkerchief now, which is just completely ruined, whether you're cravat, I should say. And eventually your face is clear of it. This is not what you were expecting to find down in this mine. It should be easy enough to say. What is this stuff, Roger? I've never seen anything like this in my life. I have no idea. Kind of fungus, you say. Well, what did it appear to be? Kind of mushroom or toadstool. Incredibly strange. I have not come across anything like that anywhere before. We need to get out of here to get help for whoever's down there and Sara. Is there any sign of her? I haven't heard a thing. Both of you can make weird rolls at this point. None of my four dice were a six. Catherine rolls a four and a two. Very well. And did any of Roger's come up four or higher? I got a five. Okay. You both here at this time. You both here again on the breeze that help me. Though it sounds different to the first time you heard it, Roger. It sounds more a moat, more feminine. It sounds like it could be Sara. It could be. And both of you here. It's not enough to force your feet, you know, to make you go down there, but it's enough to make you hear it. Was that Sara? It was somebody. I can't tell anymore. We need to get out so that we can get help. Right. Shall we go back to the entrance and have a look and see if we can... My only way of thinking is that we either find something to shatter the chain that this stupid old man has put back on, or we see if there's any way of lifting the door of its hinges on the other side. That's why I've got this. I thought I might be able to prize it up what's like a sort of lever. Yes, let's give it a try. All I could think of. Cut my damn hand as well. You're right. Well, I tried to shatter the chain with a rock that I found nearby, and of course it was too soft and didn't work, did it? That's all slate. That's not going to go well. I wasn't thinking, Roger. You make your way back to the gate and it's starting to drizzle all of a sudden out there. You don't remember where those clouds were on the horizon, but they're overhead now in one of the few dry places in the local area. You can use this lever to attempt to lever the gate open. So what are you going to do? Are you going to try and lever it open, or are you going to try and use it to break the chain? Get it underneath the chain. Well, the chain is around in a figure of eight with the padlock on the outside, although we can actually put our hands out and reach the padlock. So if we can get it under between the chain and the grill. Well, I was thinking if we actually, if the chain is rusty, if we could put the edge of the lever into, I don't know if the links of the chain are big enough to allow this, but thinking if it's rusty, we put the lever into one of the links, we might be able to manipulate it in such a way that it shatters. We can then remove that link. That's what I was thinking, or in behind, between the chain and the grill and break the chain that way, put it in a link. Possibly, but then if you're doing it that way, you've got to break through two thicknesses of chain. Yes, put it in a link. Let's try that. All right. It will fit in a link. So could I get a difficulty six body roll? And this is less predicated on both of you doing it and more on just the pure, the force of one piece of metal against the other. But still, you have to apply some pressure. So body from whichever one of you is the most physically capable. Well, I only have one point left in body. I have four. And there is one weird point left. So you can add some before you roll and then add the weird point if you need to. Yeah, I should say that escaping through the main entrance at this point is by no means going to prematurely end the scenario. So if you want to use the points to do that, then you go right ahead. I will use a point of soul, I think. To add to this. Okay. So you're going to take a single point from the scene's weird pool. So that's yours now. So that means you can apply soul to this role. Okay. So I will add that to my weird. So I now have three. I rolled a three. Plus one is four is four. That's not going to do it. No, no, the difficulty was six, I'm afraid. And the weird pool is empty. The lever. Well, the lever feels like it's working. The chain makes a slight squeaking sound and then ping the old lever just shatters. Damn it. You are left with the hefty iron handle, but you no longer have the length. You're not really sure what you could do with that. The good news is, you are aware that there are other ways, there are other ways into and out of this mine, presumably. That's what that's what Sarah said, though some have been collapsed. The other good news is there's quite possibly tools to be found deeper in the mine that could easily get through a chain like this, but it does require going down. Going to have to go down and have a look and see what we can find. I think we go right down to the bottom, right? We will explore. There's a there's a shaft down at the bottom that still has cart rails. So it's possible that those rails might not have been for bringing stuff back up the shaft necessarily, they might have been for taking things out to the outside without having to raise them up. So that shaft might come out at sea level or at lower ground level and there could be a way out that way. Sarah did say that they attempted to dig into the mine from sea level, so it is possible. Yes, I think what choice have we? I think it's the most promising route at this stage. Yes, I think it's as good a starting place as any, isn't it? All right, let's go down. Okay, just a point as we go down. Be careful, halfway down, try and avoid that opening that you see as you go down, where I got caught up, sucked in, whatever it was that happened the first time. Oh, the place with the vines? Yes, if it was vines, but yes, there. Oh, all right. Just when you see a larger opening on the way down, try and go round it, not past the opening. How do I do that? I'm going to be hanging off the end of a rope. Kind of bounce out to one side a bit. Good Lord. All right, good to go. Descending is easy enough. Bouncing around a crack in the wall is a little bit harder. Could I ask for body rolls on a difficulty of four for both of you please? Oh dear, Catherine gets a two. I got a five. You are on a new scene, so if you want to extract points from the weird pool immediately to succeed at this, Catherine, you can take two. Yeah, go on. And you are both able to get down to the bottom of the shaft where everything feels very enclosed now. Now that you know there's no one up top waiting for you, in Roger's case earlier, that was Catherine. It's even for you, Roger, you've been down these places many, many times, knowing that you can't necessarily get out that way is perturbing to put it mildly. Roger is slightly concerned, but tries to not let that show for the sake of getting Catherine through the next bit. Catherine is a little bit shaken. The sort of strangeness of the floor takes her a little by surprise, and she's kind of poking her toe at these bizarre plants that she wasn't expecting to see down here. Yes, it is very unusual. Makes for an interesting colour, that's for sure. I'd like to ask for trivial, challenge writing three, mind rolls from both of your characters, please. I got a six. I got a two. Oh dear, poor Catherine, she's not having a good time. You've got one point left in the weird pool if you want to take it, but you don't have to. No, I think I'd better leave that one just for now. Just in case. I've taken most of them already. You notice that the hard hat is gone. That's odd. What's the matter? Well, there was a hard hat down here earlier. What, Sarah's hard hat? Well, I took it to be. Oh my lord. Because who else would it have been? Well, quite. And now it's... Well, surely if it was Sarah's, which I suppose stands to reason, does that mean she's all right? Maybe. And she's picked it up and has wandered off. Perhaps she's got a head injury or something. She's not sure what she's doing. I look around for signs that anybody has been here and taken that hat recently. Footprints in the lichen sort of thing. Interesting. Good choice. Let's go for a difficulty four, mind roll please, for you. Got a four. Excellent. Yeah, there are parts where the lichen is more depressed than others. There's no trail of blood or anything so ostentatious, but it's heads in the direction you were planning on going in anyway, toward the rail. Do these look like shoe prints from somebody of Sarah's stature? No, they're just depressions. It's not clear enough and the ground isn't so, I guess, molecular as to leave a clear indentation. Okay, I point them out to Catherine anyway and note that it looks like something or somebody has gone off in that direction. I suppose all we can do is do the same thing. I think it's our best choice at this stage. Let's go down there and see what we can find. Can I just ask very quickly, this is fungus stuff that we're standing on, these little plants and things. Are they damp? Yes, they are. So if somebody had been walking about on it and then moved off into the tunnel, is the tunnel dry or is the tunnel also damp? Would there be wet footprints or the start of them? The tunnel down here is pretty damp, all told. So it's difficult to determine if at all possible, even whether someone has walked this way. Okay, that's fine. So you go on down the tunnel into a new scene. As you are about to enter the new scene, I should say, you go down the tunnel and could I ask for a new stage rule, walls closing in, a new soul roll for each of you. Difficulty is now five. I'll add a point of my soul to this roll. Okay. Oh, I rolled a six. Not with one of those dice I kept rolling twos on. I rolled a two. Oh, your turn. Plus my one makes three. What was the difficulty? Five. There's a new three points of weird available to draw from if I want to pass this roll. It leaves weirdness then, doesn't it? No, it would leave one point of weird still in the pool. Yep. I'll take them. Okay. We didn't get this weird the first time we played. How weird are you now? I feel for the benefit of the Kickstarter that we should be as weird as possible, just to demonstrate how this can go. My weird, my personal weird pool is now six. Right. We're actually with fairly even minus five. I thought yours was higher than that. Considering how square, how chiseled, how wide this tunnel is as you are making your way into it and following the railway, the feeling of claustrophobia is fairly intense. You are both able to withstand it. You don't lose yourselves to it. But again, it feels like you're boxed in quite literally. It feels like you're entombed because it's pitch black behind you now and it's pitch black ahead. All you can see is what your lamps illuminate. The thought that runs through your minds right now as the claustrophobia is present is how much battery power do these lamps have? Probably not worth dwelling on. You can see after you've made about 40 feet in the edge of what used to be a large arched tunnel. But you can only see its edge because this tunnel has collapsed. It is utterly filled in with big rocks and small rocks. The rail goes on further, but at one point it also branched in here. Well, I guess this leaves us one route to carry on going down this tunnel. We won't take the side path. We haven't even seen anything useful that we could use to attack the gate with either. Keep going? Might as well. As you continue your trudge deeper and deeper into the earth, occasionally you're able to hear a low roar, a constant which can only be either a very tight ventilation shaft or water. It's quite difficult to tell down here because the sounds bounce around so much. Do you think that's the sea? Very difficult to tell. Could be. Could be heading in the right direction then. Still no sign of Sara. You keep on going. And what you find at the end of the rail is a large almost dome-like cave. Roger, despite everything that's happened, despite all the help means, despite the spore-like hallucinations that you've endured, despite Sara's disappearance, this is exciting. Because this dome-like cave was clearly a main hub for digging at some point. And from all appearances, there is still plenty of tin left to be extracted. It's visible. It's on the surface. There's plenty of this fungus as well creeping in through the cracks, but never mind that. There are rich veins of tin that you can see snaking across the ceiling and up the walls. You can see where this place, almost like it's been preserved in amber for the last 40 years, is, it's like the miners just stopped work one day. And some of their tools are laying here. There's some rubble. There is even a cart with some ore in it. Well, this looks more promising, at least. It's almost as they literally just abandoned everything, isn't it, without clearing up after themselves. There's a bit of a Mary Celeste of mine. What tools are there lying around? Is there anything that we can use? I look for either like a hand pick or a hammer and chisel. You find both. There's also a hefty, there's a hefty pickaxe, two-hander. Yes, that would work if we can get it up the shaft. Yes, we should be able to. Well, look, can you take those smaller tools and I'll take this one? Yes, because I can put them in my bag and I can just loop that over my shoulder like I did when I climbed down. Yes, yes, that would work. So we should go back and go back up to the top and try and get this grate off with these. I've just worried about Sara. Where on earth has she gone? It's interesting you should ask that because there's many tunnels running out off from this dome-like cave and as you heft that two-handed pickaxe in your hand, Roger, and you secrete those tools away in your bag, Catherine, you hear "Help me! Help me! Help me!" bouncing around the dome. Sara? Yes, yes, Catherine! Where are you? I'm, I'm, I'm somewhere deep in the mind. I don't have my, my, my torch. It must have come off. What on earth happened to you, dear? Are you alright? Are you hurt? I, I don't know. I think my feet touched the ground and then it was just black. Oh, there's, I think there's something. I'm feeling my way around down here and there's the, the walls are soft. Yes, try not to touch them too much. We think it's some sort of strange fungus and we're not sure what effect it has. Um, keep talking and we'll try to make our way to you. Okay, okay, okay. I can't feel like I'm standing up. It doesn't feel like anything's broken. I can't feel any blood on me. I think I'm, I think I'm okay. Not in pain anywhere. No, no. Goodness for that. Just, I just can't see anything. I can't see my hand in front of my face. Right, well I think maybe keep still and we will keep talking and we will try and come to you. Yes, Roger? Yes. That'd be the most sensible thing. Yes. Okay, you've got many potential tunnels you could take from here and you only have two torches between you on your helmets. Should we split up to try and find her? I think we need, we need to go to each tunnel in turn, don't we, and talk to her and see which one her voice appears to be coming from rather than just a sort of scattergun approach and running up them willy-nilly. Yes, let's start with that one over there on the far left and work our way round. Right. You head on down the leftmost tunnel and to be honest, it is your best bet. The sound of her voice bouncing around really does make it impossible to place exactly her direction. So do you, I guess, pound your way down? Are you approaching each tunnel tentatively? I think caution would be better because with the weird acoustics of the mine, you know, we need to pinpoint where she's, where she actually is and where her voice is coming from. So the quieter we are, the less echo we're putting into the, into the mix to muddy the waters. Caution is good at this stage, I feel. Okay. You make your way down the leftmost tunnel. It's pretty unremarkable. Again, there's some rich veins following you down this way, along with a surface of this fungus growing quite prolifically around here. And you can see why. Because as you make your way down and this tunnel suddenly slopes sharply, it's not completely sheer, but it's pretty damn steep and slippy. And this is the first time you've seen it underground. Mist, fog, it's not smoke, but your light is bouncing off of it and illuminating it and showing these small clouds of vapor moving. Well, that's very strange. You could still hear that roar nearby. Maybe this is sea mist, if that is the sea, but that would mean that there must be a way out for the mist to get in, which is promising. Can we feel any drafts against our faces or is there just draft everywhere and it's impossible to tell which direction it might be coming from? No, the draft is coming up towards you quite sharply here. Again, not geological experts by any means. Well, that's not true in the case of Catherine. Not at the experts in things like convection currents. There we go. But this shaft probably dropped straight into the water, you would assume. Now, interesting to you, Catherine, is this is the first time you've seen this mist, this fog, this supposed lure that exists around this place, placed by the fabled witch you'd almost forgotten and all the excitement. You could see how if this fog was slightly higher, by about five feet, it would have completely concealed this drop. Now, look at this. Look at that precipice. We would have fallen right into that. Now, where that story has probably come from, some sort of natural phenomenon. And somebody's obviously had a tragic accident here, and I expect that's probably where it's arisen from. That's really interesting. Well, these sorts of stories do normally come up to try and give people a warning to not go somewhere dangerous, don't they? Precisely, yes. I'm just thinking it's so dark down here, and I think the flash will probably bounce off the fog rather than anything else. So I'm going to try and take a photograph, see if I can record this. You take a photograph, and as you do so, once again, you are struck with an image of a almost bleached white face with yellow eyes, searing black pupils in the mist. It's just there as you blink it away, Catherine. I think this time I'm going to mention it to Roger. That's odd. What? Well, do you remember when we first got into the mine, and I started taking some photographs? Well, as the flash lit the wall, there was this very bizarre face, you know, white domed head, yellow eyes. I saw it literally just for a moment, and then gone. Well, that's probably graffiti, wasn't it? The same thing I've just seen down here. Where? Well, when I just took the photograph, as the flash lit it up, down here, right in the middle of the photograph. In the mist? Just sort of towards the bottom of it, yes. Possibly pareidolia? Might have been, I suppose. I mean, your mind can easily play tricks on you, and there's all that fungus. I don't know what that does. It wasn't quite the same as last time, though. The eyes were a little bit more defined, and there were pupils this time, whereas before there weren't. I mean, you could be right, I could just be seeing things. Are you two still down here, yeah? Sarah? Yes, yeah, I couldn't hear you. We're coming, we think. We've just come across a little bit of a... Did you find a sort of crevasse in the rock? A steep drop? No, I'm guessing I've only been awake for the last ten minutes. I've found my way from one cave down a corridor, well, down a tunnel, into another cave by the shape of it, and that's about it. I've not wanted to go too far in case there's any shaft. Well, yes, that's kind of where we are at the moment. There's one right in front of us, so just I think maybe stay still just in case you do fall into something. That's what that's my plan. Please get here quickly. Doing our best. We're doing our best. Right, what do we do now? Well, there's plenty of other tunnels to explore off that dome. Right, we need to be methodical. We'll just try the next one along and see. Right, so you keep it together for a while. Let's do a new stage rule of the walls closing in, another foreboding challenge, that sole difficulty is now six. The effect will not be immediate. I have successfully failed. I rolled a four. As we've got a new stage rule, that means we do have a new weird pool. As you make your way down the next tunnel and you can hear Sarah's voice bouncing around the fear, the confusion that's coming with it, that's clear in her voice, that's clear for you as you're not sure whether it's actually happening or whether it is all in your head, but it feels like the lights, your lamps are growing dimmer. And the walls are tighter. You get to the end of the tunnel. There is a collapsed shaft in front of you. There is a smaller tunnel within it that looks like someone has dug out of the rocks. It is probably just large enough to crawl into. There isn't, you don't have much of an appetite to get down on your stomach to crawl into a tiny hole. And yet right now everything feels very oppressive. Your breath is getting very short. I don't think, she didn't say anything about having to crawl. So I don't, I think we just ignore that one altogether. I know she won't be up there. I don't think I can face going in there. Let's just move on to the next one, shall we? Yes. Yes. Next one. As you're leaving there, Roger, you find yourself looking over your shoulder back of that tunnel if there's just vivid memories of not that long ago when you were crawling into that other crack and those what felt like hands snaking out and grabbing your legs. Yes, I shudder and would rather not go through that again. You're back in the dome again. It feels like it's safe. It feels familiar, although again, the lights on your headlamps seem dimmer. You've got so many more tunnels to explore. You're not sure how long these lamps are going to hold out and once they go out, you're not sure that you're going to make your way back to the main shaft. You're going to be able to to climb up ropes in pitch black. What are you going to do? I'm going to turn my lamp off. Yes. And then we can conserve some of the battery life that way. Good idea. So that means I'm going to have to stay with you. We can't split up and search for Sara individually. No, no, I think that's possibly not wise. Do you think she's not hurt? We've got tools now. Yes. Should we go back up, get out, go and get help, new batteries, more equipment, come back. I can hear you. Please don't leave me down here. Let's just take a moment and see if we can work out exactly where she's coming from. Sara, keep talking, keep talking. Okay. My name is Sara Fox. I'm a land surveyor for Solemn Vale and for Devonshire County and she goes on. So we're listening. Can we actually tell if she's, because we've moved on from the tunnel with the sort of crawl, small crawly tunnel leading off it. And we've moved away from that one and on to the next one. Can we hear her strongly here or is it a roundabout the same, just echoing? Let's go for a weird roll as we've not had one for a while for both of you. And let's see whether what you hear is accurate or allure into something far worse. I rolled four sixes. Oh my god. I rolled one six. That's enough. You are pretty certain that this this tunnel, it's on the right of the dome as well when contrasted to where you came in, in relation to where you came in, it's got a bit of a wreath of these fungi around it. It's one of the least shorn from human hands looking, it still has a certain natural crevasse to it and looks like some people have chipped away at it, but it's by no means as sturdy. There's no support beams. But what you would assume is the voice is coming from there. In fact, you are almost certain Roger, you would put money on it. I think that one. Yes. Yes. Let's hurry. Let's get to her as soon as we can. Let's get out of this place. Do you know where I am now? We think so Sarah. We're trying another tunnel. Just hold on. Thank you. Thank you. We head down that tunnel. The tunnel takes some twists and turns. You find yourself going and cutting through and passing other tunnels that snake off from this. The deep you go in here, the again decreasingly manmade that it appears. This is very much a natural rock formation. You're no longer in mines. You think you're in a natural cave complex beneath beneath the mine. Every now and then you're passing through patches of mist. Sarah. Yes. Was the tunnel you walked down quite twisty or was it straight? There was a bend to it. There was a definite bend to it. You're not sure that her voice is close to you anymore. Doesn't sound it. No. I think we've come down the wrong one. I could have sworn it was this one. It did sound like it, didn't it? Yes, definitely. You hear a scraping down one of the tunnels ahead of you. What was that? Sarah. Yes. Are you scraping the wall or something? I'm sat still. Crap. You hear scraping again. Is it getting nearer? Difficult to say. Sounds like metal on stone. This is not the right tunnel. No, I think we should go back to the central shaft and try another one. Definitely not this one. Okay. You back up. Soul roll please for boating. The walls are definitely closing in now. Difficulty seven. I've got it. I've got to add. If I add both my soul points that will scratch it out. Yeah. So I'll add one. Well, I've rolled a four plus that one is five. I'm going to add two of my soul points, which leaves me two. Oh God. I've rolled a two. Oh no. Well, one of you could use the weird pool as it's refreshed. I can draw two from the weird pool and pass. So I'll do that. Roger, you have a certain presence of thought that is one part got to get the hell out of here and another part I remember. I remember which way we came. I remember seeing these tunnels. I remember just need to reverse the way we went last time and you head off. You've got that clarity of thought. Catherine, you lack that clarity of thought. You just need to get the hell away. I'm basically trailing Roger behind him clutching onto his coat. My obviously my lamp has turned off so I can only see the light a bit over his shoulder as I'm following behind him. So yeah, I'm not feeling particularly special right now. No, I need both of you to make some, I think we're going to go for some body rolls. The difficulty isn't going to be high, terribly high. It's going to be four. This is to ensure that Roger doesn't just charge off without Catherine. And equally if Catherine lets go that Roger will notice. I rolled a six and I rolled a four. Then in that case you stick together like the team you are. You are back in the dome. You can't hear the scraping. It sounds like Sarah's crying now. Listen, I am really, I'm getting very freaked out down here now. I thought you would have found me by now. So did we. I'm sorry. We're doing our best. I promise you. We're going to try a different tunnel now. Can you remember when you came out of the central shaft? Was the tunnel you said at the tunnel had a bend in it? Was it otherwise? I came down. I came down the central shaft. Everything blacked out. I woke up in a dark cave. I went down a bend in a tunnel and I'm in another cave. I couldn't tell you how far I am. All I know is that you can hear my voice. So I can't be that far away. No, exactly. We'll keep trying. We'll go through every tunnel in turn and see what we can find. Next tunnel along. I still think we need a rescue party, really. We can't leave her down here, the poor girl. Please don't leave. Whatever took me down here could still be down here. Exactly. This is why I don't want to leave her. Don't worry, Sarah. Right, let's try the next tunnel and see what we can find. She can't be that far away. Her voice is relatively clear. If this is teenagers from town playing some prank, I will fucking end you. Right, try the next one. Right. All right then. You make your way down the next tunnel. There's a sense of despair setting in. How many tunnels exist in this place? How much of it has been mined? How much of it is natural cave? It's difficult to say. Very, very difficult. You can both make weird rolls. So, shame this isn't a different game. I've got a two, three, four, five, and six. Yeah, I've got a couple of sixes, unsurprisingly, in my pool. You draw the attention of something, the denizen. What that means is you think you're approaching Sarah's voice now. The voice sounds louder, clearer. And you find yourself entering another cave. The battery on your headlamp, you're not sure whether some of the dust might have got into it because it's just flickering slightly now. Or maybe it's the moisture from these caves. But this cave resembles the dome that you've exited. It's smaller, a little more egg-shaped than dome-shaped, but in the sense that it has tunnels snaking off from it. But in the middle of it, there's a torch. It's hanging from a beam that has at some point been put across. It looks like this is an old part of the mine that at some point has been hollowed out. And you can see, Roger, as you're looking around, that this part of the tin mine has been stripped pretty bare. This chamber is probably dug out to its fullness before the dome that you've just been through. I take it the torch is on. Yes. It looks like it's Sarah's headlamp that is just hanging from the beam. And in the shadow surrounding, because your beam isn't bright enough now to illuminate the entire cave, and the torch is just projecting a spotlight down, you can see a silhouette on the other side of the cave just standing there and then not being swallowed by shadow. Then somewhere else in the cave, you're fairly certain you can see it as well. It's like a bald man, maybe? Could be a woman. Very pale. Not saying anything. You can both see it. What is that? Sarah? Yes. You can hear the voice from not that far away now. We're getting closer. Good. I'm feeling, as I said, I feel pretty freaked out. You and me both, my dear. Don't worry. We're not too far away now. I can hear you much more clearly. I think I might recommend to my client that this mine doesn't get reopened. God, no. Right, let's carry on. Let's take that other torch. Oh no. Oh no. The pale figure in the shadows lurches forward. Catherine screams. He's pale from the waist up, wearing ragged trousers, bald on top, emaciated, a wide dome on top of his head. Oh no. No, no. Opening this mine up again. No, no. So, I'm sorry. Who are you? I can't see you. I can smell you. I can hear you. I heard you're scrabbling around down here. You more of those hollow ways come down here. No, no. Hollow ways? We're not local. Oh, that one makes things easier then. We're just trying to get out, but we're trying to find our friend who is something has happened to her and we can't actually track where she is. Who are you? Your friend's already spoken for. Spoken for? What does that mean? You've led the way I see it and I don't see much. The figure just keeps shifting in and out of shadow. You've got two options. You can run or you can join her. Right now it's just me and I'm not a fast runner. But the longer you wait here, there'll be more. More like me. And when there's more like me, you ain't gonna be able to run. Let's run. I think that perhaps my original idea of getting back up to the top for a bigger party is good. Yes, we are absolutely doing that now. Catherine turns her, Catherine turns her torch back on and turns tail and belts along the way they've just come. Roger is straight after. For the split second that you have your torch on facing this figure, you're able to see him clearly. Quite grotesque in his, in his emaciation and in his subterranean appearance. You're really not sure what's happened to this man, but he looks maybe mutated, maybe tortured, clearly physically tormented. And by no means the kind of person you want to engage with. So you run. You both run. Now I'm going to ask, are you hanging on sweet child and knowing that doing so is going to slow you down? I think Catherine was so frightened that she literally just turned and went to be, to be honest. She turned the torch on and that was it gone. All right then. So first things first, I'm going to ask from Catherine with the brightest light who is able to see she is up front to do a body roll to sprint. Challenge isn't going to be terribly hard at this point. It's a four. I rolled a two. I think it's important at this stage that we get out. So yes, I'll take two from the weird pool, which takes me up to seven. So that will give me a four. You unerringly make your way back to the dome that was streaked with skeins of tin. Roger. Now over to you. You quickly start losing track of Catherine who makes a beeline somewhere. You've passed through so many twisting and turning tunnels at this point that you do not want to lose her with your increasingly dim headlamp. However, to make your own way back, I'm going to give you a choice. You can make a roll using your mind or your body. The difficulty is five. Okay, I'm going to make a mind roll because I still have four points in that ability. And I'm going to add three of them to this roll. I rolled a six. You catch up to Catherine in the tin dome. You can hear Sarah screaming now, distantly. Keep going. All right. I feel so bad leaving her. Just keep going. We can always send help back. What was he doing down here? I don't know. I don't know, but we can't deal with this on our own. More people could. Let's just get out and get back to the grill and just try and break it down as quickly as we can. Okay, you know the way back to the main shaft because it's just a case of following the rail track. Therefore, you pound your way there. I'm still going to ask for rolls based on body. Difficulty is only a three because you know the way. It's just going to be a case of whether you trip up. Roger trips up. I've got new dice now. I still rolled a two. There's one point left in the weird pool. Yeah, I will take the last weird point. In that case, Catherine, you make your way to the lift shaft. Roger does not. Crump to the ground. Catherine, you have a choice at this point. The rope is right there in front of you. The beam on your headlamp is strong. You can start climbing or you can wait or you can go back for Roger. I will start climbing and when I get to the top, I'm going to throw him down my torch. We'll see how wise that is. Roger, you're not going to take damage from tripping up. You are, however, breaking your headlamp. You are suddenly in darkness. There is a little bit of flickering light up ahead, but it is rapidly disappearing. Catherine. Keep going. Keep going. What's the matter? You can hear scraping metal on stone behind you, Roger. Catherine, I broke my headlamp in the fall. Keep following me. Where are you? Don't climb too far up the rope or I'll lose sight of your light. That's fine. I will throw it down to you when I get to the top. Just keep going. Roger, can you make a body roll, please? The difficulty is a five. This isn't to move fast. This is to basically sense and then dodge out of the way of whatever is being swung at you. Enjoy my one. How many points do you have left in body? One. So you roll one, you have one left in body, or you don't have one left in body anymore. A pickaxe swings into you from behind or from the side. You're not entirely sure. It swings into your side, puncturing organs and viscera. And you're conscious enough to realize that whoever has swung this into you isn't going to pull it out and start just bludgeoning you to death with it. Now that it's hooked in you, you're being pulled back as you are then slipping into unconsciousness. Catherine, you get to the top of the lift shaft. Roger. Roger? There is no sound. I kneel at the edge of the drop and just listen for a minute because I'm aware that he had the pickaxe, which is the heavy tool, and I only have the hammer and chisel in my bag. So I can't hear anything. So I think, right, okay, all I can do is try to get out and get some help. So I'm going to run as fast as I can down to the grill and just start attacking it with this hammer and chisel to the best of my ability. Well, now it's going to be the role of the game, isn't it? Based on your body, we are going to be going as you have better tools. We're going to be aiming for a difficulty of four. You have every reason to make this, but you have no weird left to add to this. But I do have four body points as it happens. Ah, well, in that case, there should be no reason for you to fail. Well, you say that. Right, okay, I will add all four of those points. And I rolled a four. You break through that padlock like your life depended on it. Which let's face it, it probably did. Yeah, the gate swings open. You are out in the summertime drizzle. Your hair, your clothes get wet. You run to the car. Of course, you don't have the key, it was Sara's. You're stuck between a mine and solemn veil. As the sky is darken, could you make a weird roll please? Collection of ones, twos, threes, a couple of fours and a six. Well, you got a six. And Roger, while it may seem like you were perhaps expired, could you make a weird roll, please? Now's the time. I did not roll a single six. Well, so there's good news and there's bad news. The good news for Roger is he just dies. Whatever it is that's down in the Atlas mines is content to have him dead. Or whatever it is, doesn't have the power over him to make him live down there. So if there's any peace to be found for Roger, it's that his adventure ends here. However, in the case of Catherine, as I say, Catherine is caught between the Atlas mines and solemn veil. The sky is dark, she has no car, she could start the long walk back. She is infected with the weird. She is now a part of solemn veil. But that doesn't mean she is just drawn back to the mine and what is undoubtedly a grisly fate. What that means is, well, up to you, Tracy. What do you think happens with Catherine that is suitably awful? As she is making the walk back to solemn veil to try to raise some help, her grip on reality is somewhat skewed now. And I think as the rain beats down on her, she sees that face over and over and over. And the closer she gets to solemn veil, the more frequently it appears in front of her. And she loses her footing. She hasn't actually got as far along as she thought. She thought she was heading towards the town, but the mist suddenly lifts a little. And she sees that she's actually still walking sort of almost along the edge of the cliff somehow. She's not sure how that happened. So she's trying to work out exactly where she is when suddenly the face appears right next to her. And she staggers and slips. And being so close to the edge of the cliff, she goes over. It's a long way down. The end to a grim tale. Thank you very much, both of you, for playing in this session of solemn veil. The Atlas Mines. It just goes to show how much horror you can instill in but a handful of rooms, if the players are fantastic and you two were. Thank you very much. It was our pleasure. And as indeed it was last time, only this time, we didn't quite see the end of it last time. And thank you so much to the listeners for joining in. I hope you enjoyed this. If this is your kind of thing, if you like this kind of horror, please do consider backing solemn veil on Kickstarter. It has lots of lovely features with it, not just the game, it also has miniatures. It also has scenario books. It has all kinds of wonderful things and the art for it is fantastic and really on point for the era. So do check it out. We would really appreciate it. And yeah, I'm sure this isn't the end of the folklore podcast collaboration with Red Moon role playing and solemn veil. We will meet again. And next time, maybe I'll be a player. You never know. Oh, that would be that would be fine retribution indeed. You yeah, you gain eight weird in the first session. Well, first 10 minutes. Yeah. Frankly, I'm amazed that Roger was able to, well, he didn't survive, but somehow he didn't get the six on his weird dice at the end. No, that was too late. Ironically, the best role of the whole session. Yeah. But we're going to stop recording now. So again, thank you very much for listening and take care, everybody. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. This has been episode three of solemn veil hosted by myself, Matthew Dawkins for Dirty Vortex Publishing with players Tracy Norman and Mark Norman of folklore podcast. Solemn veil is currently on Kickstarter funding and we would love to see you there. Please pop over and leave your feedback on this actual play and on the game itself. We would love to have your support. Thank you. Finally, to Red Moon role playing for allowing us to host our game on your channel. We love you and thank you very much for listening.