"What is it?", Alasdair shouts as someone knocks on the door of his room. It wasn't that long until their planned descent into the strange chasm and he still needed to get some things done. The visit to the kobold had also not improved his mood.

The door opens and Alasdair is about to scold some servant for coming in uninvited, then notices it is Aodhan. "Ah, Aodhan. Something important? There's a lot on my mind right now, and we leave soon."

"I understand. I wouldn't have disturbed you, but it is about your planned descent into the spell scar."

Spell scar, that was the technical term for the chasm, Alasdair now remembered. It certainly looked a lot like a scar. One the size of a city. "What about it? Changed your mind and coming with us?"

"No. I think we're better served if I stay up here, continue to look for clues and make sure any ... unexpected visitors ... are handled appropriately."

Alasdair nods. "Yes, we discussed that. So what is it?"

Aodhan waves to someone waiting outside the door and his daughter, Phylis, enters the room. Still wearing her strange armour - it's splint mail, Alasdair instantly recognises, but it's been modified quite heavily - and her hood. She gives a courtsey - not too bad given the full armour - and then looks to her father, who simply nods encouragingly.

"My lord", she starts. "I wonder if you have given any thoughts to our method of descent. It's a steep chasm with sharp edges - unnaturally sharp - and if you don't mind me saying so, it seems some in the group are not the most practiced climbers."

Alasdair looks at her. "That's putting it nicely. No, I haven't given it much thought. Why?"

As if she had been waiting exactly for that question, Phylis draws a pile of papyri out of her coat and spreads it on the nearest free table.

"Sharp edges means ropes are not the safest means of securing ourselves unless they are kept some distance from the walls or magically reinforced. I can't do the latter on such short notice, and the former would require some setup. Presuming you and me are the best climbers in the team, ..."

"You don't look like much of an athlete."

"I made some modifications to the armor. I should be able to handle it."

"Should?"

"Shall. So, as setting up the route to keep the rope away from sharp edges will take some work, it would be much easier if we could somehow establish the route before we begin the descent. Do you have any scouting options on your team? Preferably some that work in the dark?"

=====

Alasdair strokes his beard. "Yes, scouting will be taken care of." And, after a short pause, he continues "I like your initiative, Little One. It seems rare these days that people not only use their head, but even come up with useful stuff while doing so." Phylis blushes slightly, but Alasdair stares at the map in front of him. "Let's get this started. [Silverwing], join me." Seemingly out of nowhere, a large raven appears behind Alasdair's back and climbs on his shoulder. The old man snaps his fingers once and points behind him. Silently, the large bird flies out of the window and disappears.

Then he grabs a piece of scrap paper and continues to mumble, "With the inclination of the Scar we probably need braces every fifty feet or so. Let's say five wooden beams, weighing 10 pounds each, and with the Scar depth of ...", his sentence drifts out to a mumble, "... and according to Oghma this will be about 800 pounds of wood." He pauses for a second. The silence in the room is deafening. He looks at Phylis, then at Aodhan, and then back at his calculations. "Ah, beans."

Phylis is about to raise her hand, hesitates, but finally brings herself to speak, "My Lord, we could use the Azhugh Eukate's tripod construction, reducing the material to four beams." A bit irritated, Alasdair looks up and responds, "Who do you think...! Ah. Wait. Hmm. Good idea. But that still leaves us with about 650 pounds of wood. We can't possibly carry that down the slope."

Aodhan chips in, "If we make the starting scaffolding more sturdy, we can rope the stack of wood down with us." But Alasdair shakes his head, "That takes too long. And it deprives us of mobility down there. No, I have to go to Canossrio, or however that's called, and talk to that kobold again, fix a mistake, and buy that bloody pouch."

Alasdair looks somewhat absent minded at a wall for a while, before speaking again. "The first intelligence is in. The first hundred feet or so are rather straight forward. There's only one obvious approach to descent. But then it branches out, here, and possibly here." Aodhan clenches his teeth as Alasdair starts to scribble and smudge on the rather precious map. "Down here," he points with an ink-stained finger, "it gets even weirder. The landscape seems to actually change constantly! And I don't just mean rocks breaking off. We will need to improvise. Uh! Someone's shooting arrows down there too. Lovely. Anyways, what do you think about this approach?"

=====

Phylis also looks at the now-smudged map with a raised eyebrow, but makes no further comment. "It'll be hell getting all this material on short notice, my lord, but it should improve our odds of successfully making the descent. We can likely lower the others down without too much difficulty once things are in place."

Alasdair nods, and Phylis continues.

"Good idea to bring a bag of holding for the first descent. It should make it much faster than coming back up for every single beam of wood while setting up the rappel. What do we do once we're all down? Leave everything in place? That would be pretty much an invite to come after us, or sabotage the setup. You seem to have sufficient enemies who would jump at the opportunity."

"Damn, you're right.", Alasdair curses. "We probably have to take down at least the upper part again, so no one can easily reach the rest of the setup, then rebuild it once we get back."

Phylis nods. "We could extend the beams here " - she carefully indicates a point on the map without further smudging the ink - " with a garanthian hook. A good climber should be able to reach this from the top and rappel down from there. The ledges above would hide it from view while you're still outside the scar. Hard to get to if you don't know it's there, so not as risky to leave it in place."

She rubs her chin a bit.

"Though for optimal hiding position we'd have to move the point a few degree clockwise. That would increase the horizontal strain on the beams further down by ... ", she pauses briefly "... about 20%. We might need to think of some way to reinforce their anchor."

She lowers her hand and looks at Alasdair. "Should be doable. I think it's good."

Then she clears her throat. "I volunteer to go down first, my lord, if you need someone. In case it's a death trap, at least your line won't be jeopardized." Aodhan starts to object, but remains silent after an angry look from Phylis.

=====

After a short while, Alasdair replies. "A generous offer indeed to be the first to climb down the throat of the dragon. And my former self would have jumped on it. But by now there are more factors to consider. First, you are family now and thus not disposable. My second point, in contrast, is that telling people what to do does not work anymore as well as it used to when I was back home. A lot of new situations to get used to, to be honest. But I digress. My point is, it is up to you. But you don't need to prove yourself to anyone. There will be plenty of opportunities for that in the future. I'm happy to go first, show the way and lead by example. But I'm not taking it from you either, if you insist. No need to decide now, we can assess the situation at the cliff first."

Phylis nods briefly.

The old man continues, "Good. With that out of the way, I have some last preparations to do. Dismissed."

Phylis and Aodhan briefly look at each other and then head for the door. Once close, Aodhan lets Phylis leave and then closes the door behind her. He turns to Alasdair and raises an eyebrow, "My Lord. You have... changed, since we left. Not entirely unpleasant, I must say. What happened?" "Hm", the brief reply, "Is that so?" He looks into Aodhan's eyes any realizes that he's not satisfied with the answer. "I...", Alasdair hesitates, "I told her what she needs to hear." He purses his lips. "That will be all then."

Aodhan smiles ever so slightly. "If you say so, my Lord. I will leave you to it. Good night and rest well." He turns around and opens the door behind him. It opens half-way, before stopping with a quiet 'bonk'. The elf swiftly slips through the gap and closes the door behind him, looking at Phylis, sitting on the floor, holding her head. He whispers, "Did you evesdr..." "No!", she quietly replies. Aodhan stares at her. "Maybe?" He looks at her sternly, "You know you shouldn't, right?" "Getting caught, you mean?", she answers. Aodhan just smiles. "Let's get some rest before tomorrow. We will need it. Let's go."