Sorry, a detail I missed earlier. Kinzie is fluent in written Dwarven, Cleverleaf can make his way through it, and Teddy knows a bit (the sort of useful words one sees outside shops and dangerous places). That said, the writing on the door into the cellar was clearly written in a variant of Dwarven characters; but no one in the party understood any of it.

Had I known reloading was intended to be such an involved process, I would have written the post in such a way as to speak while reloading.

Ok, I'll rewrite it around that; but the end result will be the same. They don't want to talk to the folks downstairs.

For future reference, it takes Kinzie the better part of a minute to reload her pistol. This is actually pretty good; reloading a pistol out of a powder horn is tedious at best, and matchlocks have to have the match removed before the powder horn comes anywhere near it (and then reattached afterwards).

You didn't give any indication it took that long while we were in combat, so I assumed it didn't.

Cloverleaf considers the fact that his plan involves no heavy lifting on his part to just be his usual luck.

The combat round is actually a minute or two long in T and T. Some of the older editions called for it to take a full round to reload heavy crossbows and gunpowder weapons (they would shoot every other round), but I tend to opt for shoot every round. Behind the scenes I'm doing dex checks to see just how fast she does indeed reload; when I roll poorly she gets results like the round she would be shooting rather late.

You're right, I didn't spell it out. For combat purposes, it doesn't really matter; she shoots about as often as a longbowman, and at the same phase. But in this particular case she was up against someone doing a non-combat action that only took four or five seconds.

Quick question: is the dead man lying in the doorway being left in the basement or the tunnel?

Oh yeah, I was going to bring him as well.

I edited my post.

A question. The Oh-There-It-Is spell can be used to find hidden objects; but from Cloverleaf's perspective, anyone who's entered the general store's cellar since they left would be hidden behind the (closed) door. Can he use the Oh-There-It-Is to look for people standing around in the cellar with crossbows (without opening the door)?

Oh-There-It-Is is a line of sight spell in a very literal sense; what ever it affects starts to glow purple.

The term 'Underdark' is not current within the Empire; but all three characters have heard vague stories growing up which indicate that something of that ilk can be found far underground. How extensive? What lives there? Brother Forge just gave all three the most direct indication they've ever heard; normally the stories boil down to a lot of adjectives, synonyms for 'dark', and runaway imagination.

Would Cloverleaf know about any herbs that cause drowsiness when burnt?

Yes, but not usefully under these circumstances. Besides, Cloverleaf spent most of his time studying magic; making clouds of nasty smoke is really more of Kinzies line than Cloverleafs. At least until he becomes higher level.

Okay... there's still one possible plan that involves dropping things down the chimney, then, but it's probably better to just smash the doors in.

Cloverleaf is aware of some spells that could have gotten everyone out. A teleportation spell called Wink-Wing comes to mind; though it would not have moved all of them, or gotten them very far, unless cast by a fairly high level mage or rogue. A scroll of some kind wouldn't be out of the question, though this world isn't noted for large piles of magic scrolls littering the landscape.