"Right, that's what I was getting at. By 'camp' I meant 'place to hide the vehicles so they're safe.' I had no intention of staying by the river or leaving any of the portable equipment behind."

"Alright, while you guys get the gear sorted out, I'll make sure were alone."

She unslings her rifle and quietly walks into the woods. It being the middle of the day she keeps her vision on normal, and her ears perked.

No fraggin breeders going to take me by surprise this time.

Seeing Raven heading off... again... Bel sighs inwardly then calls over his manitou friend. "I'd be eternally grateful if you could make sure my friend here remains hidden and out of harm's way. If you see anything unusual on the astral, let her know at once."

Hellcow stands up from his pack, draging out a large swatch of camo netting. He tosses it over by the van and looks over at Raven.

"I'll go along as well. Just in case something comes up."

Hellcow hefts his Alpha, and walks over to Raven.

"By the way, who had the spare radios?"

"I do," she takes a quick detour to her bag and unpacks the four hand helds, and sets them each to 137.5.

"I'm on one-thirty-seven point five if you need me. Come on 'Cow, let's check things out."

"I won't be needing that netting," Thor says as he takes it back off the van. "It will only get in the way of my sensor and the turret. That is what I have photovoltaic paint for." So saying, he adjusts the van's color to match it's surroundings much better than some flimsy netting ever could. "Now, we can't just leave the van and boat unguarded. I might as well stay with the van, since I can control my drones from a good distance."

"You have drones at your disposal," Bel replies while pulling out his notepad and then scribbling in a foot note. "I must have missed that at the meeting. Got any that can give us a quiet birds-eye view of the area? I can arrange for a bit of added stealth on two fronts if so."

Raven performs a quick recon with some cover from other members of the team. The area is quiet as can be, though she did spot a couple of squirrels in a most improper situation.

Sedryk takes the camo netting from Cow and drapes it over the boat. Over hearing the radio frequency, he adjusts his earpiece transciever.

Entering Thor's van, Sedryk looks over at the dwarf. "I know you'll probably be busy with you drone group or whatever you call it, but could you keep an eye on the boat?"

Walking over to Belfast, "Listen I wanted to apologise about back there with the bear. I'm guessing you're some kind of non-hermetric. But for the record, I was gonna take a reminder then bury the thing anyway. Hows that old song go 'Bury your dead, but don't leave a trace..."

Thor nods. "I have four drones. The first is a miniature blimp with a rifle. It can stay in the air for hours, and its solar cells allow it to stay up for days at a time if the weather is good. It is also very hard to detect, and has great sensors. My second drone is a Strato-9 rotodrone, like Lone Star uses. It is the heavy firepower of the group. I will set it up here, ready to turn on and take off on short notice to defend you. The third is a microskimmer hover drone that can also go under water. It is small enough for you to carry with you, or it can stay here and patrol the river. The last is a tiny arachnoid, which will come in very handy in the mine. You can carry it in your pocket."

Paris assembles his gear until it's all in the rucksack. "Test, one two" he subvocalizes into his radio. Then, to those still at the camp, he speaks without radio aid. "I'm going to do a little overwatch until we're ready to go. I'll be ready to move out whenever you folks need, so just say something into the radio to the effect of 'it's time to go' and I'll follow you. I don't have encryption though, so be careful what you say."

With that, he tosses his now empty duffle bag in the van, keeps his assault rifle out, and heads up into the woods, looking for a good sniping position.

"Well," Raven says as she passes Paris on his way out. "There's a whole lotta woods out there, and not much else. Well some squirrels but that is it."

The team looked ready to move out to her eye. She quickly packed what she needed on her pilfered bike. She secured her nearly empty duffle the handle bars.

"Well, I am ready to go."

When Sedryk offers his apology, Bel's face clearly softens as he finishes up negotiating with a few of the local fey.

"No worries, man. It wasn't so much the death of the bear that upset me, I completely understand what likely happened there, it was seeing your friend mutilating its corpse in the fashion he was when I got here. I wouldn't care if it was the corpse of a bear or the corpse of a megacorporate CEO who deserved it that was being treated in that fashion. One should always respect the dead.

"But that's behind us now. Apology accepted and I hope you will consider taking mine as well. But either way, we really need to get cracking, though, so..." Bel turns to address the others as he plugs his earplug microphone into his ear "...is everyone ready? And Thor, go ahead and send that blimp of yours up. As soon as you get it out I'll throw a little invisibility number over it to try and aid its mission. If you spot anything unusual... anything at all... let us know pronto, savvy?"

Paris, subvocalizing into his radio, murmers a simple "Ready" before turning the microphone off. As he does so from his position near the camp, he moniters the area for possible intruders.

Thor brings his four drones out of the van and assembles them. "Does the boat have rigger or remote control adaptation?" he asks.

After a little more planning, Thor hunkers down in his van to guard the camp site while the rest of the group walks off toward the mine, fully ladden with gear. The mining equipment is fairly heavy, though spread out over the team it is not as bad as it could be.

The trip up the island toward the mines is uphill most of the way over some of the most broken woodlands possible. However, the walking proves remarkably easy, and it begins to dawn on everyone that Belfast's faeries might have a lot to do with that.

Any doubt about whether there is magic involved is quickly removed as, not more than an hour and a half after the team leaves the base camp, the rusting tops of mining equipment becomes visible over the treetops. There is still some sunlight left, amazingly enough, for a hike which should have stretched well past dark.

It is 4:45 pm.

“Damn, a five hour trip in an hour and a half. No wonder Shamans aren’t allowed in the Olympics. Thanks Bel,” Raven tosses casually over her shoulder, and on the comms. She ditched her mining equipment when the top of the shaft became visible over the tops of the trees.

“Paris, why don’t you take ‘Cow and go around right, Evans and I can scout to the left. Swift Eagle can go up the middle. Once we have a better idea of what’s here the rest of you come up and join us.”

Evans places down his load for a bit and stretches, wiping the sweat off his face. "I need to get into shape again..." He mutters. "Sounds good to me, Raven, but do all of the teams have radios or similar? I suppose we could just shout, but still. Getting seperated without comms is something I'd rather not risk."

"Paris and Cow do, if you need one," she rummages around in her bag for a minute and pulls out a hand held unit, "you can use this."

"Ah. Thanks, Miss." Evans drops it into an inner pocket of his overcoat, which he was almost beginning to regret wearing in this climate. At least it wasn't insulated.

Skeeter sets down his load along with the load Hellcow talked him into carrying.

Thor is controlling the Condor mini-blimp directly from the command seat of his van. He keeps it more or less directly above the party, at an altitude of one hundred meters, confident that it is safe with the invisibility spell on it.

Thor's drone feeds him images of the site which tell him that this is the right place. There are four structures in immediate view, and a large limestone dump. The place is quiet on the EM and most other imaging systems.

Raven creeps up on the mine area and finds a seen of utter neglect. According to the data that the group originally recieved, shaft 4 had not been in operation very long before it was closed, which made it the most likely candidate for survey. Whatever was being looked for was obviously closer to the surface here than at the older shafts.

The area is surrounded by a 8ft chain link fence with three strands of barbed wire, though it proves little barrier since it has seen no maintenance in decades. There are many holes through the fence, and in places it has been taken over by vegitation.

Three buildings are immediately obvious. The first, closest to Raven as she creeps forward, is a squat metal-sided structure, now streaked red from the rain and its effects. Though they are currently closed, the entire back side of the building is given over to slats through which air would flow. Most likely, this was the building where the fans and pumps were housed that kept the miners below ground supplied with breathable air.

The other two buildings are situated inside a cracked ring of asphault. The one on the right is the structure that the team saw from below. A side ring of the asphault circle seemed to be set up to allow vehicles to load here, and a network of conveyors contained inside iron housings leads to the third and smallest building.

The third building is smaller than the others, and looks to house the elevator equipment which would allow miners to descend to the shaft itself.

The whole place appears deserted.

As Raven does a careful circuit of the place, only one oddity strikes her, and even that is not very odd. A little down the slope from the mine itself, a jumble of very large (2m square, 1m thick) stones has been piled. The stones themselves are covered in moss, and appear to have been tossed haphazardly from the road above and allowed to fall to where they now rest. They have been in their current positions for quite some time, from the looks of them.

Someone appears to have scraped the moss free from a few of the larger stones, but there is no indication of how long ago that might have happened. The area is devoid of tracks.

As Belfast and the others approach the mining site, the manitou's obligation to his master has come to an end and the two bid farewell to one another. When Raven refers to him as a shaman, he wrinkles his nose a bit but doesn't correct her. Instead, as the young elf steps up and splits the team into various recon cells, an almost relieved smile finds its way onto his face as he finds a nice boulder to sit on.

With a wave of the hand through the air, three small anthropomorphic mice wearing sunglasses and weilding walking sticks manifest in front of the Irishman. "All right boys," he says to his watcher spirits, "here's what we're gonna do. I want you three to split up and explore the mine. Hickory, you take the entrance over there, Dickory, you take the one over there, and Dock, you'll accompany me. Once inside, take note of anything unusual you find and then report back to me in one hour. Think you boys can handle that?"

While waiting for the answer, Bel sends a telepathic message out to his familiar. "Red Tom, quit playing around with the nymphs and get o'er here. I need you to get ready to watch over my body as I take a look around this joint."

"Fiddleflam!," the leprechaun caterwauled, "always trying t'cock block me, yae is! You go and summon a pair of nymphs, twins even, then expect me to just sit around watching your empty husk? Why, if I..."

"Blah blah blah, quit your fookin' bitchin' and get o'er here before I shove my boot up your ectoplasmic arse."

"Bah! Always bossin' me around, yae is..." A disgruntled sigh proceeded the materialization of the leprechaun sitting on a branch in a nearby tree. His face is clearly sour, but it doesn't seem to stop him from pulling out a pipe and lighting it up for a smoke.

With that, the mage switches over to the commlink. "Bel here. I'm going to check this place out on the astral and see if anything strange is afoot. If you need me, just let Red Tom know and he'll let me know. He's sitting in a tree near the rendevouz point."

Paris reactivates his mic. "I'm gonna find a nice area over here to sit down and watch you folks work. Lemme know if you need me to do something useful." He then deactivates his mic and, hoping the others figured out what he meant, finds a nice overwatch position on higher ground, makes a small hiding place, and pulls out his sniper rifle, assembling it from his position. He then starts scanning the area for possible threats, or items of interest.

Swift Eagle heads through the trees above the rest of the group, going down the middle from branch to branch with bow at the ready and a barbed arrow nocked. He has Thor's microskimmer and spider drones in his backpack. Upon reaching the end of the forest, he climbs as high as he can and scans the area with his magically augmented senses. His Rapid Transit outfit makes him nearly invisible up in the boughs of the great tree.

Thor switches back to his van and looks over its passive sensor feeds, watching for any sign of the rednecks.

Sedrky hunkers down next the Red Tom and the comatose Belfast. Seeing Tom's pipe, he pulls a smoke of his own. "Any idea how long til the mice come back?"

Hellcow will creep forward, behind Raven, just to keep an eye on him as he scouts. Passing the pumphouse Hellcow looks inside a window, trying to gague how delapitated the machinery is.

Good thing I brought that respirator.

Covering the retreating form of Raven, the elf subvocalizes into his radio. "Who's got the Knowsoft? Will we need anything in these buildings?"

Hellcow circles around the right to get a look at the dump sight.

"Have we decided on a team to go down and team to secure the site? I'm good in either role."

On the astral, two things quickly became apparent. The first was that the entire area had a light background count which seemed to cover everything equally. The second was tha the area was devoid of intelligent life and magic. Further astral scouting showed that the mine shaft went down a considerable distance before leveling out. It looks to still be stable, since there are no caveins apparent, but the details of the mundane are hard to grasp from the other plane.

The rest of the team arrays themselves around the mine. Paris finds himself with two obvious choices for a sniper/lookout nest. One is the top of the mining building and the other is the rise which goes along with the road away from the site. There is a small building situated at the fenceline which looks to have guarded the entrance in times past. It is currently abandoned.

Swift Eagle strings up his hammock southeast of the guard shack, just on the other side of the intersection. He takes up position above it and continues scanning the area with his enhanced senses. Activating his encrypted radio, he says "Thor, can you give us a quick sensor sweep of the area?"

"Sure thing," Thor responds. He activates the active sensors on both the van and the blimp, and orders the blimp to do a quick circle of the plateau while he controls the van's sensors himself. "Make sure the spider goes down the mine with the exploratory team, and leave the skimmer with the aboveground team."

Paris, in his small nest in a rise along the side of the road, scans the area through the scope of his sniper rifle. His rangefinder has been mounted on the underbarrel mount of the weapon, an both he and his gun are hidden under camoflague netting. His position just off the side of the road gives a decent view of the road itself and the surrounding area, and he searches for anything dangerous.

Skeeter investigates the guard shack.

Raven crouched down at the ridge. Her black coat swept the ground behind her as she scanned back and forth. She pulled a hair band out of her pocket. The last one was getting a little warn. She cocked her head to the side and redid her hair. Something caught her eye as she did so.

“Hey, I am going to take a look at those blocks down there, be back in a minute.”

Picking her path carefully, and holding her arms out to her side, the elf made her way down the cliff to the carved blocks.

Raven half climbs, half slides down the slope to look at the jumble of stones. On closer inspection, it looks like they were thrown down the slope from the area above or fell down it somehow, though it was done long enough ago that there is little physical evidence of this, aside from a bit of a landslide surrounding the stones.

The rocks themselves looked shaped, though the lines are dulled enough that it was either done a very long time ago or with primitive tools.

Raven triggers the radio on her belt, "Hey Sedryk, you near Belfast or Red Tom, can you send them my way? There is something hinky about these stones, and I am damned if I know what."

As Belfast penetrates the mine shaft further, he stops suddenly as he realizes that several spirits seem to have congregated in one section of the mine. As one, they seem to become aware of his presence and turn.

Arrayed in the group, are elementals of earth, gnomes, and mountain spirits all appear to be in the group. Their sizes range from small to quite large. They also don't appear to be friendly.

Hellcow wanders towards the strange blocks, since he was kinda headed that way anyhow.

Wow, real rocks! Just like on those nature tri-dees!

Hunching down, the elf inspects the stones.

Belfast comes to a stuttering stop as he encounter the sundry of spirits. Decked out in an ectoplasmic suit remenescent of the days of the potato famine back in the Motherland, he offers a smile as he tips his derby politely.

"I... guess you guys aren't in the mood for a chat are ya?" he asks tentatively, ready to burst into full speed at the drop of his hat...

Belfast shifts his aura as best he can to empathize with elemental earth. The spirits do not rush at him, but they also do not appear to soften.

One of the gnomes, along the larger spirits, eyes him. "You are not welcome in this place. What is here is ours."

Still ready to burst out at a moments notice, Bel decides to continue talking with the spirits to see what he can divine from them.

"In that case I apologize most humbly for the intrusion, my friends. I had no way of knowing these mines were already spoken for, and I only came in to have a look around to see if there was anything interesting inside. I'm sure you know how that goes...." He hoped that they were able to read the truth of these words in his aura, and subtly manipulated his masking subconsciously to emphasize it.

"If I may be so bold as to ask, what is it you are protecting and is there anything I can do to assist you in making sure it stays protected? I don't know if you've heard of me, but the name's Belfast. I have a bit of a reputation in a few places for helping the Children of the Earth out whenever I can..."

"We guard what is ours. Leave."

The gnome rumbles this, and it looks like the other spirits are more restless than even it is. It is pretty clear that the command is a direct threat.

"As you wish, friends. As you wish. I wish you well in your task." Bel bows humbly while flipping his ethereal derby down one arm, catching it with a a roll of his fingers, then reversing it back to his head. Just before turning to depart, he offers one last offer to the spirits. "If you change your mind, all you have to do is ask my help and it's yours, lads."

With that, the druid returns to the meat puppet he left behind...

Evans slides down after Raven, wondering what caught her eye. Cow reaches the spot just as Evans reaches the pile of rocks.

"What is it, fellas?"

"I'm not sure, but these blocks don't look at all natural. And one," she points at the one with scraping on it, "looks like someones bin messing with it. Any ideas?"

Red Tom takes a long puff from his pipe. The smoke filters past his lips in an oddly alluring way as he whispers most ominously, "He's baaaaack..."

With that, and less than fifteen minutes after his departure, Belfast's body begins to stir with life. There's an almost startled look on his face as he sees Sedryk sitting nearby, but it doesn't last long as its quickly replaced with a simple smile of gratitude. But that smile quickly fades as he reaches up and touches the earpiece to activate the commlink.

"Bel here. I just got back from a little exploratory run inside the mine and it looks like we're going to have a bit more trouble than we expected. It seems that something in there is pretty valuable to the mine's resident spirits. I wouldn't be quite as concerned, though, if it wasn't for the fact that this entire site seems to be almost... polluted... with some kind of strange astral energies. There's something not right about it, but I can't quite put my finger on it just yet.

"In any case, have any of you found anything? If not, I'll see if I can cajole one of the local fey into revealing what's going on down there. Whatever any of you do, don't head inside until we learn more."

Raven swore under her breath. "Something is very hinky about this place. I've been feeling it since we got here."

She kicked one of the rock as she triggered her radio. "Bel, can you come down here and take a look at these rocks. I think it might be important."

"Sure," Bel replied. There was a pause. "Where would 'down here' be?"