It's a few hours after dark, which seems to fall early in this part of the world. You realize you're not really sure where you are, and couldn't find yourselves on a map, at the moment, having been blown a ways off course by the storm.
Gepetto, followed closely by Twix with the fire lizard on his shoulder, is on the roof, a dart of some kind deep in the crevice between two wall stones on the stairwell behind them. On the roof is a big rusty metal oven of some kind, as high as a tall man. From its top, the long smokestack reaches up into the sky, anchored by guy wires to opposite sides of the roof, its length silhouetted against a thick field of stars, since the moon is not yet up. There is a handle on the side connected to a flue that can open and close the smokestack.
Just as the sun is hotter here, the stars seem brighter and closer. Some of them are even different colors.
Next to the oven, or furnace, or whatever it is here on the roof, lie two huge piles of wood -- one is open to the elements, and looks fresh-cut, the other covered by a tarp and is bone dry. A box on the opposite side of the tower has a big clunky lock on it. Gepetto easily picks the lock and finds that it contains flint, steel, a leather-covered book of smoke signals explained in extremely simple Common Tongue that bears the same sigil as the banners in the tower, some poorly-drawn scrolls of cheap pornography, and several bottles of low-grade whiskey. There are a couple of simple wooden chairs up here, positioned to look out over the parapet towards the sea.
Twix pauses in his inspection of the tower roof. He has the feeling he is being stared at. He looks around, and sees the lizard crouching near him on the parapet, where he had flown as Twix started poking around. The lizard is looking at Twix intently. Twix gets the distinct feeling that he would like to be given a name.
Dane manages to fight off the large crabs on the beach, but his clothing is shredded and he's covered with small cuts. He and Heflam and Bombur drag what's left of the supplies, food for about a day, into the tower. The tide and the crabs have ruined the rest of the clothing. A few cheap metal cooking pots can be seen bobbing slowly out to sea in the starlight.
It's dawn. You fix a meager breakfast inside the tower, in a small fireplace on one side of the room. Gepetto happens to be on the roof when he spies a group of people coming out of the jungle and onto the beach, maybe a mile north. Gepetto has good eyes, and it looks like at least a few of them are armored and armed, based on how they glint in the sun. There are a few others in what might be Imperial-style merchant clothing. And lots of people not wearing much who are carrying burdens on their head. Maybe fifty people all told.
They are headed down the beach towards the tower. Gepetto is on the roof and the others of you inside. The party on the beach doesn't seem to have spotted him, and the minimal smoke from breakfast has long since dispersed. You have about half an hour before they get to the tower, based on their slow and burdened pace. There is a locked trapdoor below the main room of the tower which Gepetto has not yet tried to pick. You are all unarmed, and have about a half-day ration of food which you could easily carry. The lizard still wants a name, and gives Twix a harmless but noticeable nip to remind him.
