Moonday, Rova 23

Rigel carefully (dare I say skillfully?) broke a window into the glassworks, let herself in, and opened the door from the inside for the rest of us.

A hasty inspection of the immediate area led us to believe that our presence was undetected, and that the goblins were revelling behind a set of double doors ahead of us. Olithar proceeded to bless the party while Rigel laid down some caltrops at an alternate door in case they tried to make a break. It seems that Rigel also had a convenient thunder egg (where does she get those marvelous toys?) so Nolin tossed it in to thunderous success before we entered.

We found 13 goblins inside, in various states of awareness. The thunder egg had left some of them stunned and others just surprised. All of them, however, foolishly decided to fight.

Olithar was embarrassed to find his bless spell had already worn off; apparently it has a pretty short duration. But Avia went in swinging, and I was flinging magic missiles, and even some of the others got involved making goblin mincemeat. Olithar did some flaming hands that singed quite a few before simply beating at them like the rest of us.

Goblins are a bit like bees, I think. One or two might sting you and it’s annoying but it won’t kill you. You’ll still squish them. Get a dozen or two to gang up on you, though, and without some help, you might find yourself incapacitated. I’d never fought goblins before arriving at this town, but I find that besting them doesn’t fill one with a feeling of accomplishment. If anything, it just makes one want to take a bath.

Anyway, eventually all the goblins were dispatched, although a few people did take some nasty cuts. It was clear that the goblins had been here some time, as there were … parts … of the employees laying about the room. It appears the goblins may have been not just desecrating their bodies but also, well, feeding upon them.

I’m not a religous man but that just seemed sacriligious. And it made me feel .. vengeful. For a moment, I might have felt what a paladin feels — a sense that a greater power demands that action be taken and rights be wronged. That there are certain things and actions that need no explanation or justification to require a visceral reaction. That it’s not just right; it’s a moral imperative.

For a moment, anyway. Don’t worry Dad; I won’t be running off to a church anytime soon.

However, my eyes soon fell upon a most unusual sight. There was an older man encased in a half-inch thick tomb of colored glass. The goblins had amused themselves by pouring molten glass over his lifeless body. (I could tell it was lifeless when it was glassed over because the expression on his face did not at all resemble the expression one might make upon suddenly being made the victim of third degree burns over one’s entire body.)

This, we suspected, was the elder Kaijitsu. But there was no sign of Ameiko (I’ve been calling her Meko because nobody was pronouncing her name clearly until now!) nor her brother, who was most likely perpetrator, not victim. While there was much shattered glass around there was little else. Rigel quickly went over the goblins’ bodies looking for goodies but hey, c’mon. These were goblins.

Olithar was at least as disgusted as me by this abuse of corpse, and smashed the glass to remove it from the elder man’s body. It appeared he was stabbed and beaten and that’s probably what killed him. He possessed an elaborate scabbard for what we presume was an ornate dagger. The symbol on the scabbard was that of the Kaijitsu family. Sedgwick confirmed that this was the patriarch of the family.

Having used spells most of the time I myself wasn’t at the front line this time, so I was uninjured. So it was that Rigel, Sedgwick and I set off to explore one portion of the building while Nolin, Avia, Kyras, Sabin, and Olithar explored another.

They eventually found an office with an open and empty safe. We eventually found two slumbering goblins. They made a note to come back with Rigel as she’s particularly skilled at finding things. We attempted to slit the goblins’ throats but there was so much broken junk in the room we awoke them. Not before they were within range of our weapons, though. One of the bastards had time to nick me but the flow was quickly staunched. And they were quickly adding to the debris on the floor.

Eventually our explorations met again. They seemed a bit surprised that I, Rigel, and Sedgwick killed two more goblins. I guess we don’t look very lethal.

Rigel returned to the office with the others, and did in fact unlock a locked drawer that Avia had found. Unfortunately, she forgot to see if it had any traps and she found a poisoned needle the hard way. But the drawer contained a small box, also locked. More carefully this time, she forced the lock on this as well, bypassing yet another trap. Documents inside seemed to be written in the unusual script of the Kaijitsu family. Sedgwick stared at them for a bit, used a bit of a spell and a bit of knowledge, I guess, and looked a little pale. The documents apparently outlined some shady deals with the Scarnetti family that neither family would really want made public. Assassins. Money laundering. It would appear that while being much more subtle about it than the Scarnettis, the Kaijitsu family wasn’t exactly squeaky clean either.

This left the only unexplored area to be downstairs. Inexplicably, there was a lit torch in the wall down there, which suggested somebody had been there recently … or was still there. The goblins would not have had need of such niceties. It made us all a little more wary.

We found some items in the hallway and a few rooms. Barrels and boxes appeared to simply hold ingredients for glass. One room held finished product suitable for sale.

But another room … another room was locked. Rigel did her thing with locks and opened it. It was another storeroom, but there was a woman tied and apparently unconscious on the floor. Rigel gave her a potion of healing and she —

What? She had a potion of healing? What else is she holding out on with us?

Anyway, the healing brought Ameiko around, and we got to hear the story we’d suspected we would. Tsuto, her brother, had enlisted the aid of the goblins to take over the factory. They attacked her, and she presumes her father, as Tsuto continues to dishonor their family. We glanced uneasily at each other and decided perhaps this wasn’t the best time to tell her about her glassy eyed father.

Tsuto hates this town and wants to see it burn. He also has been hanging out with Nualia! who still lives and apparently is making some dark deal with dark gods. That might explain the raiding of Tobyn’s tomb.

While some of us debriefed and revived Ameiko, others were still exploring. And lo and behold, who did we find but Tsuto, passed out in a drunken stupor behind a desk in another room. Nolin held a sword to Tsuto and threatened him, but Tsuto is unimpressed and struggles. Nolin smacked him with the flat of his blade, knocked Tsuto to his butt and advised him to stop struggling.

Unfortunately, not knowing of the conversation we were having with Ameiko who was describing her complete disgust and hatred of her brother, the other thought it might be useful to reunite brother and sister. In a flash, Ameiko, who was being supported but not restrained, snatched a shortsword from one of our party and advanced on Tsuto. With some effort, we were able to restrain Ameiko. I, Kyras, and Nolin swore to her on our honor that Tsuto would die at our hands as soon as we found him no longer useful. Tsuto is unimpressed.

Sabin, Olithar, and Kyras drag Tsuto to one of the storerooms and try to make him believe they were sent by Nualia to clean up his mess, and that she intends to make an example of him. He does not believe this at all, and mocks them. Apparently they smacked him around to hear them tell it, but he did not change his mind. He made some comment about his going to be with her that very night.

Meanwhile, Ameiko was expressing concern for her father and wanted to go upstairs to check on him. We finally had to tell her of his condition and her eyes narrowed as she said, “Had you told me that earlier I would not have let him live.”

“I know,” I replied. “But you do have our word of honor that he will die when his usefulness is at an end.”

Unsuccessful at fooling him, Sabin, Olithar, and Kyras brought him back after a while and acknowledged his usefulness was at an end. We gave Ameiko the option of executing him herself. She accepted. He was brought back to consciousness, and then dispatched. As the death blow fell, he said something in their family language. Ameiko says he said that death didn’t matter, since Nualia would just revive him.

All that meant is that we’d feed his corpse into the flames of the kiln upstairs. As reconstituted, undead ashes, he could make people cough occasionally but that’s all.

The story to the outside, we all agreed, was that goblins had broken in and killed her father and kidnapped Ameiko.

In the storeroom where we’d found Tsuto, we’d found a number of items, including a potion in a vial (90), a short bow (91), a ring (92), thieves tools (93), a pretty flute (94), silver earrings (95), a journal (96), six pouches filled with glittery powder (97), eight pouches filled with a different glittery powder (98), and 10 platinum pieces.

The powders were claimed by Ameiko as belonging to the family — they were gold and/or silver powders used in the glass making (but very expensive). Nolin claimed the short bow, which apparently required great strength to operate.

We and Ameiko then inspected the journal, which also was inscribed in Kaijitsu symbols. It showed beyond a doubt that he was behind the goblin attack, because the method eventually used was described there and circled. There were many drawing of Nualia, which became increasingly grotesque as she apparently was trying to “remove the taint of the church” from herself. The last drawing seemed to show her as some sort of demon.

Based on the journal and Tsuto’s last words, attack tonight seemed likely. Ameiko left to mobilize some “friends” to help defend the city. I myself went to the garrison and told them what we knew, deftly leaving out the parts we didn’t wish to make public. Some went to Zantus for both healing and to inform him of the imminent danger as well.

Having prepared the town as best we could, we took on the tunnels here in the basement, as it was the most likely manner to bring goblins or worse into the middle of the city.

The tunnels smelled of goblin, even to my untrained nose. This made it obvious when we took the “wrong” branch, but we weren’t expecting branches either. We decided to follow the branch for a while. Eventually we came across some misshapen creature with giant claws that had a vaguely human … no, make that simply bipedal look about it. It had a vicious attack, but fortunately as a group we were able to deal with it.

At this point, our magic users were pretty depleted on their spells, including me. We’d had no chance to ‘recharge’ before having to dive into the tunnels. The group wanted to eradicate the raid before it came to us rather than simply wait in the basement for it to arrive.

After killing this creature, we found a passage that seemed to lead to the basement (perhaps) of another building. We also found a room with a statue of a beautiful woman but with an angry expression on her face. Left hand holds an ivory book, and the right hand holds an actual ranseur. No magic was found in the room, but it was unsettling. Judging roughly from the direction we’d taken off in we may have gone under the ocean and come up on an island, or we might be underneath one of the buildings built near the sea.

We decided to defer exploring this section further, as we were clearly away from the goblin threat and that, after all, was our primary effort.

We went back to the main goblin trail and continued.

After a time, we seemed to reach a deadend, but Olithar searched more carefully and found a secret door. It led to a chamber, which was obviously very near the sea, that appeared to be a goblin barracks. No goblins, though.

At this point, a little concerned, we returned to the glassworks factory to see if goblins had already gone past us and were running amuck. No goblins here either.

We returned and went down another path that led to what is best described as a shrine room. There was a black marble altar filled with filthy water. The room looked clean, but the alter emanated evil. Double doors led to another room, and I cracked the door a bit to find a strong blue light inside. There was no time, with my quick, imperceptible glance to learn more about the room beyond. But Avia detected evil in it …

We decided to take it on.

It appeared to be an immense, underground cathedral. There was a great glowing blue pool with an inner ring of spikes upon which sat (apparently) human skulls. Up on a 3′-5′ platform at the far end of the room was another pool, flush with the floor, bubbling furiously. And of course, this scene wouldn’t be complete without an angry demon.

But a tiny demon. Seriously, this was smaller than a goblin. But when it flew, we got worried. When it slit its own wrist, we got worried. And when the drops of blood hit the blue pool and started turning into creatures, we worried some more. On the plus side, the blue glow dimmed somewhat when it did that, and that seemed to worry it. Hurray.

I had no more spells. I tried hitting it with my sling but I may as well have been trying to kill a fly with a battle axe. It was quick, and small and flying. Olithar had a good idea and created water above its head at one point. Doused, it fell to the ground. Aha! And then turned invisible. Uh. Meanwhile the monsters were climbing out of the pool and that was causing some problems for other members of our party.

As a last resort, it seemed it might be time to reveal my secret. My dagger is pitiful, and my quarterstaff is strong but I’m slow to hit with it. Many in the party were bleeding from both the creatures and the demon.

I grew my claws. I don’t know how many in the party may have seen it, but my claws are both fast and vicious so I thought it would give me the best chance at damaging the demon. Quite shortly thereafter, however, Avia was able to dispatch it with help from her god and a blow from her sword.

I quickly returned my hands to normal but I’m sure Avia, at least, saw the transformation. We’ll see what kind of reaction it gets. Father warned me that the more people who saw it, the less likely they might be to want to associate with me, and he spoke from experience. It’s a trait that’s been in our family for several generations. Sigh. I’d hoped to talk to folks before just doing it.