Tim is prepped.  He's going first through the portal, everything looks clear, so he's only a little bit amped.  He hups through the portal and sweeps his surroundings, eyes darting around for signs of monsters, hostages, or regular dungeon trouble.  His 5.56mm pistol is at the ready in one hand, while his wristbreaker is holstered.  If there's anything really scary, a gun probably won't be enough anyway.  He's seen the boss fights.

What does Tim see? 

The first thing that becomes obvious when properly walking into the dungeon is that it is quiet — hushed. The space looks at first glance like it should be echoing harshly, with large flat walls and nothing else in the room, but instead it is uncannily silent; footsteps vanish even when they are made by combat boots. There might be some whispers of sound — human voices, even — coming from the hallways.

Barely visible (to non-esper eyes) in the spillover from the twinkling spotlights overhead are matte black walls and dark burgundy carpeting — the ultra-short-pile kind you use for heavy traffic and washability. The room is a half-circle with the portal on the flat side, and five equally dimly lit hallways extend away radially, with faint lines of lighting low along their black-paneled walls.

The posters remain unintelligible.

Okay.  Make sure the cam gets a good look at the posters, they might reveal some kind of Dungeon Psychology insight.  Flip the shoulder flashlight's red cover, then turn it on.  Preserve the option of nightvision, while still getting some light.  Electronics still work, right? 

...it's deathly quiet.  Not a good sign.

Back into a nearby corner or a wall for a second and close your eyes.  Take a breath in.  Stop breathing.

Listen.

Electronics still work, but there are, as usual, no signals from outside the dungeon.

Is he really sure he wants to close his eyes and deprive himself of sight? Is he sure this is a wise choice?

The whispers from the halls are extremely muffled. Perhaps this is sobbing? Perhaps this is screaming? Perhaps this is pounding on the walls? (Would the walls sound like that, if pounded on?) Perhaps this is someone reciting poetry? It’s really hard to say.

Tim's been hiking and hunting through the woods since he was eight, maybe nine.  Closing his eyes in the middle of the night when he's dozens of miles from the nearest human, and significantly closer to the nearest bear is normal for him.  If there's a tingle of fear down his spine and in his hands, it's because he's afraid of screwing up.  Of failing.  Or so he tells himself.  No time for woolgathering.  He pops back through the portal, squinting to preserve his night vision for when he pops back.

Tim clears his throat and addresses the DRT team.  "It's clear for now.  Dark kinda hallway, five , red caps on.  Let's get a perimeter cordoned off."

When he pops back, he's followed by a small squad of DRT.

Showtime.  Let's get it done.  "Same plan as before.  I'll scout, send any victims back to you.  Check comms, we should be green to go but it's on the checklist."  He'll walk a few feet away and check his throat mike.  "Comms check, how copy?"

If the dungeon has any interior radio-damping effect, it is not detectable at this range.

The room remains very quiet and dark. For now. You are unlikely to be eaten by a grue, because this is not the Zork dungeon.

Various DRT squad members set up shop.  They prep floodlights which carefully are not pointed directly down the hallways, and therefore will not blind any humans going from a low-light environment to 20,000 lumens directly to the MK1 eyeball.

"Good luck, sir.  We'll start the lights in two minutes.  You've got comms.  If you need help, holler right away."

Tim nods.  In his right hand is a pistol, in his left, a can of spray paint.  SOP suggests marking every ten feet with an arrow facing the direction of the exit, and every ten feet there's a whissst, whissst of aerosol paint marking up the walls.  Chest-height, so he can see it at a glance later.

Every thirty feet, he listens for the sound of the screaming or - is that a recital?  Of a poem??

The wall displays no unusual reaction to being painted.

After his second arrow, he comes to an intersection; there are two side passages of just a few feet, ending in shut double doors. On the wall beside each door, there is a small frame that looks like it could hold a small version of the big posters in the entrance hall, but both frames are empty. The distant sounds seem to come through the doors just as much as from further down the hall.

Hmm.  Creepy unidirectional sound.  Bullshit magic, or bullshit telepathy?  I could plug my hears, if I wanted to disarm myself.  Tim will give it three seconds thought, and choose to holster his sidearm and plug his ears, head kept FIRMLY on a swivel.  If I keep hearing it with my ears plugged, it's some bullshit telepathy.

It appears to be bullshit acoustics, not bullshit telepathy.

Nothing invisible but audible accosts him. So far as he can tell.

Thumb to his neckband.  "Aumento here.  I hear...something.  Screaming, maybe?  Sounds like it's from everywhere all at once, but it goes away when I plug my ears.  Probably not a psychic dungeon.  Over."

"Copy that.  Don't let your guard down, over."

Okay.  Let's get a periscope under here.  Tim pulls out his fiberscope, plugs it into his phone, and feeds it in under the door.  Could be anything in there get your shit together, Tim.  Lives are counting on you.

What does Tim see?

The edges of the door have seals that greatly resist this intrusion. With enough force, he can get a slightly scratched picture showing that, instead of just black solid walls, there are black curtains too! The curtains make a corridor that turns to the right, and there isn’t enough light to see under them.

Hmmmmm.  This is why Timothy had a trusty chisel.  And a palm that can, for a brief second, become hard as steel and forceful as a pneumatic hammer.

But maybe try a hand first, and if that fails, Timothy can try Hand plus Chisel. 

The door is unlocked!

Opening it reveals that the space on the other side is loud. Well, in comparison. Ahead of him, the sounds of the door latch and hinges echo almost a normal amount, compared to not at all behind him. There is a faint susurration coming from further in the room.

With a softly murmured "Acoustic bullshit confirmed.  Over.", Timothy strides in.  He will carefully approach the sussuration, gun in hand, red-lensed light up.  Some ancient instinct to be as quiet as possible kicks in.  If he's scared, Timothy isn't going to admit it to anyone.  Being quiet in a dungeon is just common sense.  You can sneak in combat boots, if you try hard enough and believe in yourself, and Timothy will do his absolute best to be silent.

The corridor goes a right, up three steps, left, and onstage. Stage right, in fact. The stage is completely empty and fairly plain — it wouldn’t be out of place in a school that offers theater, if it weren’t for the fact that the floor is completely free of marks and dust. The curtain is up; the house lights are low, but as he approaches, he can just make out a corner of the seating and see that it is filled with human-sized wooden mannequins, featureless except for highly realistic eyeballs and a variation in height. They are all looking toward the stage.

His footsteps are not quiet any more. The mannequins do not seem to notice, and remain seated and attentive.

Okay.  Those mannequins are obviously monsters.  Those are some creepy eyes, too...what are they looking at?  Tim glances back and forth at the stage, puzzling over what the obvious traps mannequins are looking at.  Feels like one of those backrooms horror games, where the mannequins fall out of the closet and jumpscare you, then come to life ten minutes later and hunt you down.  I guess Carol wins the bet, they're not nearly so creepy as they would have been last month.  Horror games as training.  What a world.

But, there's nothing on stage.  Tim will carefully clop-clop-clop his way onto the stage.  Jeez, I must be out of practice at sneaking, I sound like a buffalo in tap shoes.

As he walks out on the stage, the stage lights shift to a spotlight tracking him. The audience’s eyes, too, track him.

The acoustics are glorious. Tim’s tap-dance timbre is tip-top. As much as sound was muted before, now it is magnified to fill the theater. Has Tim thought about the quality of the rhythm created by every piece of gear that’s the least bit free to rattle, and his elbows brushing against his plate carrier? This would be an excellent opportunity.

Tim has, in fact, noticed that he can rattle.  Tim has never allocated this level of introspection to it.  Tim is not, in fact, an introspective kind of person. Whether he should be is beyond the scope of this narrative.  What Tim does have is curiosity and access to the NIOSH SLM App.  He'll snap his fingers and verbally relay the decibel level to the Beachhead team, then step off-stage to compare fingersnap decibel level when on-stage versus off-stage.

The sound level and reverberation time drops significantly as he moves away from center stage, and even more as he re-enters the curtained area; there, sound is only slightly more prominent than in an ordinary room. The stage lights switch back to even lighting.

Okay.  It's an obvious trap.  Is there a second door off stage left, or a door in the rear of the room?  Tim isn't here to kill monsters, he's here to rescue people.  Sure, he could fight a platoon of angry mannequins that probably have death poison claw attacks or something horrible like that, but that is not, in fact, the goal.  The goal is to save people and find the core, in approximately that order.  I really checked the charges, right?  I feel like I can hear them rustling in the package.  Maybe it wouldn't hurt to double-check. You have a checklist, Timothy.  You can't fuck it up as long as you follow the list, and you followed the list, so you didn't fuck it up.

Stage left is the mirror image of stage right.

By pushing aside some curtains, he can go backstage. There is no lighting here. At the center of the back wall is a single door that looks more utilitarian than the double doors he took from the corridor; the frame and the crash-bar have luminescent markings making it more visible than everything else. The backstage area is cluttered with cabinets, stacks of paint cans (clean of paint drips), things that might be taken as parts of old sets if they weren’t unpainted wood (cut and carved into abstract vaguely architectural shapes like the posters in the entrance hall), and a few tables, chairs and ladders stacked to the sides.