Time passes as the party heads down to Sandpoint's garrison and starts taking their pick of choice gear.
By the time the party emerges from the garrison, Sheriff Hemlock is waiting for them.
"Evelyn? I've called for a meeting in front of the cathedral. If you have anything to say to the citizens, now's the time." He beckons the white-haired girl to follow him.
Eostre rolls her eyes a bit at Sheriff Hemlock's offer.
"No offense, sirrah, but I'm a wizard. My spells provide me all the armor I need, and this glaive my aunt made for me's probably better than anything in your armory. I'll be fine with what we uncovered beneath the Old Light. We found some ancient scrolls that I can use to augment my repertoire of spells, and a wand that will allow me to give anyone who comes close a jolt!"
Ekan feels a bit guilty having used the town armory, but intends to use it well since it is done.
Evelyn blinks in surprise when Eostre talks.
Did she just say she'll give anyone who comes close a joint...?
She decides to ignore Eostre's words and replies to the sheriff. "Of course, I'll come with you."
Evelyn quickly gives herself a touch of guidance as she follows the sheriff.
"Dear people of Sandpoint," Evelyn says to the crowd that's gathered in front of the cathedral. "My name's Evelyn Grimley, oracle of the Tender of Dreams. I'm here to speak on behalf of the sheriff's deputies, about what's transpired at the Glassworks this day."
Evelyn takes out her holy symbol and kisses it before presenting it to the crowd. She puts it away before she starts her speech.
"This very morning the deputies discovered that miss Ameiko Kaijitsu was missing. They found a troubling letter, written by her brother, Tsuto Kaijitsu. In the letter Tsuto mentioned the goblin raid during the festival, and requested his sister, Ameiko, to come over to the Glassworks. Since nothing had been heard or seen from miss Kaitjutsu since the day before, the sheriff's deputies decided to investigate the matter. Thus the deputies entered the Glassworks, with me backing them up as healer. Inside the building we discovered something terrible: goblins had taken over the place and killed its owner, Lonjiku Kaijitsu."
There's a pause in Evelyn's speech, to give the crowd a moment to take in what she just told. She continues after a couple of seconds: "We encountered Tsuto after we drove off the goblins. He emerged from the basement, and told us Ameiko was wounded and inside the basement. To help Ameiko, the deputies and I went downstairs. It was then that Tsuto revealed his true face and locked us up, after which he ordered the goblins to set fire to the Glassworks. The deputies and I indeed found Ameiko in the basement, quickly healed her, but were now trapped. The Tender of Dreams must have intervened at that time, for we suddenly noticed a secret door that gave access to a tunnel. This tunnel led us to safety."
After another short pause to let her words sink in, Evelyn once more continues: "With the aid of miss Kaijitsu, the sheriff and his deputies were able to learn more about Tsuto Kaitjitsu's true motives. To prevent another goblin raid on this fair town, the deputies and I will depart on a mission to stop Tsuto and the goblins at the light of the new day. Meanwhile, if you spot Tsuto in or near Sandpoint, you should notify the sheriff immediately. The sheriff will now address any further questions you may have, as far as further information in the investigation can be shared. I thank you for your attention."
Evelyn gives a polite bow to the crowd, then steps back to allow the sheriff to move up.
Wow, she should be the boss of all the deputies...or maybe sheriff. Or maybe she should be mayor! When Evelyn finishes speaking, Nicat can't help himself. He moves next to her and says in an overly-loud whisper, "Great job, Evy! You gave 'em the whole story, clear as day, let 'em think on it a moment, told them what deputies do, and left out a few scary details they don't need to know about. Next time you could use a few more words like 'heroic' or 'brave,' maybe 'stalwart' and 'noble' - but that was pretty great."
"I have to agree with Nicat, that was well done indeed," The monk says, impressed.
The citizens of Sandpoint listen attentively to Evelyn's explanation, gasping at the right points and murmuring amongst themselves when Tsuto's involvement comes to light. They appear to be very reassured that things will work out for the better.
Sheriff Hemlock pats Evelyn on the shoulder when she steps down. "Well spoken, indeed."
He then takes the steps of the cathedral to speak to the crowd.
"Everything Miss Grimley has said is true--just because Tsuto has escaped does not mean he will not return. Upon further investigation, we have been able to learn of his plans for Sandpoint--he will lead another attack, this one with the intention of razing this town to the ground."
"Sandpoint has weathered many troubles in the past, and it will continue to do so today. We will rebuild, and we will be ever vigilant for dangers in the coming weeks. We do not know how long we have until the goblins attack again, so we must work quickly. Every able-bodied man & woman must do their part to help us, be it with repairing the damage done to our Glassworks or defending us."
"Those of you who wish to assist in the rebuilding effort, report in at the town hall tomorrow. Those of you who wish to take up arms with me, report in at the garrison tomorrow."
The crowd continues chattering as the sheriff steps down.
Evelyn smiles softly when praised by the others.
"It was nothing special," Evelyn whispers, a light blush appearing on her face, "but thank you."
The crowd begins to disperse as the night falls.
-------------------
The next morning, it's time to set out. The party rises from their rooms at the Rusty Dragon, their bellies filled with breakfast and their weapons sharpened. It's time to take the fight to Tsuto.
As the party reaches the entrance to Sandpoint, they find a small crowd has gathered around to see them off. The sheriff & mayor are standing there, along with Shayliss, her father Ven, Father Zantus, Brodert Quink, and Aldern Foxglove.
Conner manages to look mostly human that morning, with so many important things happening. He still looks like he got dressed in the dark and grooms himself with a dagger, but people didn't keep him around for his looks. At least, he didn't think so...
Evelyn seems a bit surprised by the gathering faces, which she didn't all recognize. She tries to mask her surprise by quickly giving a polite nod in their direction. "We'll be off then. Thank you for your support!"
As the party sets out, Evelyn waves at the people.
I came to see the Cathedral. Two days later I find myself going on a mission to rescue the town. Funny how things work out.
Nicat rises early and is thoughtfully wolfing down his breakfast, surprised at how eager he is to get on the road and be about this adventure. This adventuring life has been fun so far, even when it's dang scary! We've got a pretty good group to take this on, I think, if we can just...ooh, bacon!
He rises to join the others on the way out of the inn, and is pleased to see the crowd that has gathered to see them off. Noting his parents among those gathered, his dad scowling at him a bit less than usual, he swells with pride at setting off with the deputies to save the town. As it does to nearly everyone, however, his pride distorts his judgment, and he saunters over to Shayliss, in spite of her father standing nearby.
"Hey, Shay," he says, his tone cocky, "how about a kiss for the brave deputy?"
Eostre works late into the night, carefully tracing the diagrams and runes from the ancient scrolls into her spellbook, subtly and carefully charging the pages with magical power. When she finishes, the scrolls crumble into ash. The artifacts are gone, but Eostre smiles, as their power lives on in her own spellbook. Content with this, she takes to bed and sleeps. In the morning, she cleans herself up and prepares her spells for the attack on Thistletop.
She eats her breakfast as fiercely as Nicat. But her look isn't pleased, but determined.
"I'm ready. When we find Tsuto, I'm going to show him how it feels to burn alive. See how he likes what he did to his father when it happens to him," she says, glowering.
Ekan cleaned up, rested, and trained, much like his usual routine. He is nothing if not a creature of habit sometimes. He has much to think on but for now he joins the others for breakfast.
he gives the she dwarf a concerned look at her talk of burning others alive, "I think we should try to capture him if we can...and..."
that's when he realizes Nicat just asked Shayliss to kiss him in front of her father.
His eyes widen Oh dear gods of order, this could be a massacre.
"Hey, Shay," he says, his tone cocky, "how about a kiss for the brave deputy?"
Shayliss giggles at first, but is sharply cut off by a grunt of disapproval from her looming father. She stops and pales before nervously folding her hands.
Ven Vinder, in his heavy-set, sunburnt glory, stoops down to Nicat's eye level and stares the halfling down with dark brown eyes. "So, this is the boy you were running around with behind my back this time?" He says, his voice rumbling forth. His hands clench into meaty fists and relax as Shayliss meekly nods.
"Yes, Dad..."
"Hmph." Ven stands up and folds his arms. "Don't know WHAT you see in him--isn't he the boy who nearly killed himself wandering around Junker's Edge?"
"Three times, at least." Nicat's mother speaks up.
Shayliss looks like she's about to speak up, but Ven starts talking first. "And now he's been made a deputy. Guess the gods have weird senses of humour."
He nods at his daughter. "Well? You going to give him a kiss or what?"
Evelyn freezes momentarily when Nicat makes his bold request. She doesn't know Shayliss, but as a girl she knows how protective fathers can be of their little girl. Her eyes widen when the looming man approves of the kiss.
He's got daddy's approval! He'd better not mess up now, or bones will break!
Ekan hums a matrimonial tune to himself, in a rare fit of whimsy, just loud enough for Nicat to pick up
Eostre regards the conversation with some degree of confusion and amusement.
Shayliss purses her lips and gives her father a nervous look before kneeling down and kissing Nicat on the cheek.
Ven's face is emotionless as his daughter gets up and returns to his side.
"Well, now that THAT'S over and done with..." He turns his gaze back to Nicat. "...don't you get yourself killed out there now, boy. When--not if, when--you come back from this, you and me are going to have words. We clear?" He folds his arms.
"You realize you're dead if you ever leave her now, right?"
When Conner stops humming the matrimonial tune, Evelyn softly adds "Boom..."
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Nicat’s eyes go big as saucers as it dawns on him what he’s done, then somehow widen even further when Ven Vinder – Ven Vinder, of all people! – tells his daughter to kiss him! He presents his cheek proudly, a smug look on his face as he casts a glance at his friends.
As Shay stands up from the kiss, the scent of her still wafting nearby, Nicat turns to look more fully at his friends, and his smug look seems to…crack… a little. The looks on his companions’ faces are not at all what he’d expected, and when he catches Ekan’s quiet humming, Nicat’s expression changes from smug pride to barely stifled alarm! When Vinder speaks to him – says that they’re going to have words, words about Shay! – the usually voluble halfling can do little but nod and produce a smile so profound in its falsehood he looks like he’s having a large splinter pulled from between his toes, rather than smiling at anything pleasant.
What have I walked into now! All I wanted was a kiss from a sweet girl! As he hears his friends foretelling his future – Conner’s encouraging words are especially damning – Nicat catches sight of Shay, looking down and smiling uncertainly at him. She is a sweetheart, he can’t help but think, maybe this’ll be okay… He reaches up and gives her hand a quick squeeze, then turns and calls out, his voice full of more bravado than he feels, ”Right, let’s put a stop to these goblins, and put Tsuto in his place!” Hoping the others will follow along, he begins marching away, paying no direction at all to which direction he's going.
"That's the spirit Nicat, there's no big scary commitment out there waiting to get you, just here in town." He turns to Shayliss. "Miss, I apologize if our amusement over your relationship has offended you, but it's Nicat, we're obligated."
"I think you are heading to a closet, Nicat, but that's a good idea."
At Conner's kindly comment to Shayliss, he nods in silent apology as well.
Eostre rolls her eyes at Conner's comments.
"Not like having commitments killed anyone before."
She grumbles something about maturity and enunciation under her breath as they proceed.
As they're out of the farewell party's sight, Evelyn grabs Nicat's shoulder and turns him ninety degrees to his left.
"That way," Evelyn says with the gently voice of a concerned friend. With the party now heading the way they're supposed to go, Evelyn feels some guilt.
Poor Nicat, maybe we shouldn't have been so mean to him. Though maybe he needed the wake-up call, to make him realize how serious a matter commitment is.
"So, uh, could anyone fill me in with what exactly transpired in the Kaijutsu family?" Evelyn asks to distract Nicat and the others with a different subject.
Eostre sighs.
"The locals like Nicat and Ekan can probably tell you more, but from what little I learned in the past few days, the basics is that the late Lonjiku Kaijitsu was a stuffy and selfish a!@~#@%+, and while Ameiko and Tsuto are siblings, Lonjiku isn't Tsuto's father, obvious given he appears to be a half-elf and Ameiko and Lonjiku are fully human. Being a stuffy and selfish a~+!%@!*, Lonjiku resented Tsuto's bastard existence and made his life miserable. And, presumably because of Lonjiku's status here in Sandpoint as a local nobleman, no one but Ameiko ever really helped him or anything, so when he meets this Nualia person, who I presume has a grudge against the town as well, Tsuto finds the one person who gets him, and she helps him work up the courage to lash out and take revenge, hatching the scheme to attack Sandpoint and starting a series of events culminating in our current situation. This is all speculation on my part though, as I said, I'm not local, and my perspective on childhood's not the same since for me since I was considered one for about 40 years. Nicat? Ekan? Did either of you two know Tsuto as a kid?"
"Roughly said, but accurate I think," Ekan says of her comments, "And I didn't know Tsuto well. He always seemed stand offish to me. In retrospect, I suppose my study of what he may have seen as 'Tian arts' might have offended him on some level, as I suspect it offended his father. Ameiko was always more friendly to others in my opinion. Of course, I can be rather reserved myself so in that I may not be the best judge."
"Nah, I didn't really know him," Nicat tells Eostre, scarcely noting the fact that Evelyn has gently steered him in the right direction. "In fact, he wasn't around much. His dad pretty much disowned him - Ameiko didn't like to talk about it, so I don't know much about that story - and Tsuto kind of disappeared after that. When we saw him at the festival, it was the first time I'd seen him in a long time. I actually thought it might mean things were going better between him and his father, since he was back doing stuff with the glassworks. I guess not..."
"They're ones to complain about cultural appropriation considering that those "Tian arts" and indeed Irori's faith and the entire monastic tradition originated in Vudra," Eostre replies, rolling her eyes.
"They're ones to complain about cultural appropriation considering that those "Tian arts" and indeed Irori's faith and the entire monastic tradition originated in Vudra," Eostre replies, rolling her eyes.
"In truth, I suspect no one land, nor even one people can 'claim' anything, history is often like several clouds of fog passing through each other. Much is obscured, and one misty cloud may have taken and given to another as they touched but we may never know," Ekan considers.
"Not the case with Thassilon. They left their mark wherever they went. You can see their great stone structures all over Varisia. Then Earthfall came and crushed it all."
Nicat breathes a sigh of relief as any discussion of his future with Shay is now at least two conversations into the past. But he can't help but be a bit puzzled by where the current conversation has ended up - with all this thinking about past, present and future, it's a bit like crazy Ilya is still around. "So, wait," he asks, "history is clouds now? And how would clouds of fog pass through each other, don't fog clouds just move with the wind?" He scratches his head a bit, then muses on, "I guess there are some places down by the shore, where the wind blows in from the water and along the cliffs that it kind of blows in different directions at once. But it's not usually foggy there...because of the wind."
He turns to Eostre and Ekan and asks, "What are we talking about again? Why am I always the one who has to bring us back to reality, to focus on the important stuff?" Disregarding the raised eyebrows around him, he continues, "Shouldn't we be thinking about Kissletop - I mean Thistlestop - and how we're going to handle this marriage, er, mission?"
"Get your head out of the gutter, Nicat," Eostre replies.
"We rendezvous with Shalelu and she tells us what we'll face down there."
"It might help us non-locals to know what Thistletop actually is. The name suggests it's some kind of high ground, which presents certain tactical problems and opportunities, but goblins usually live in some manner of cave, so I'm imagining some kind of hill or bluff riddled with caves or tunnels, so unless someone tells me otherwise that's what I'm assuming we're headed to."
"Well, Conner, it is kind of high ground, but mostly because it's surrounded by water," Nicat explains. "It's an island right near the coast, on the road east of here a ways. And it sticks out of the water - you know, like an island? - and I guess it's got tunnels in it like you say, that the goblins live in."
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... Why am I always the one who has to bring us back to reality...
For a moment, Ekan's mind threatens to shut down at that comment, but he refocuses and erases it out self preservation for his sanity.
The party sets out from Sandpoint, having said their farewells (and in some cases, having more incentive to return alive than before). The Lost Coast Road beckons, its well-worn dirt hard and packed beneath their feet.
The morning sun shines down on them as they walk along the coast, and after a couple of hours, the tall, round island of Thistletop comes into view 60 feet off shore. The interior of the island is visibly populated by trees, and what appears to be a fort of some description can be seen as well. A single rope bridge connects the island to the tangled mess of trees and thickets known as Nettlewood.
Off in the distance, near the entrance to the wood, a plume of smoke can be seen. It appears to be from a campfire.
"That must be Shalelu, waiting for us."
"Yeah, and I'm glad she's meeting us," Nicat says. "That's the Nettlewood. You have to trek through its tangles to get to Thistletop - though I guess you could go by boat and avoid it. But the Nettlewood is big, and I hear it's surprisingly easy to get lost in -most trading caravans don't pass through it without a guide." With a shrug and a smile, he concludes, "But we have a guide, right? What could go wrong?"
He picks up his pace slightly, curious to see Shalelu again and learn a bit more about this strange place.
"I try not to be superstitious, but I really wish you wouldn't say 'What could go wrong?" Ekan admits as they close
By the time Thissletop comes into view there's smoke coming from more places than just the entrance to the wood. Evelyn has trouble keeping up with all the information she's been given during the journey and while her brains slowly crash, a thin line of smoke comes out of each of her ears. "So there's Tsuto, and... something about fog clouds at Thissletop...?"
Evelyn blinks. "But... what do the clouds have to do with it...? Are there fog clouds inside the Nettlewood too?"
"So we have to get through dense forest, that's easy for goblins to hide in, to get to the bridge to the island, that goblins can easily cut and send us into the drink, or we take a boat and paddle out there, where we're out in the open where goblins can shoot us full of arrows at their leisure. Well I don't know about you guys but I have a really good feeling about this plan. Who else is thinking going back to town, building some light ballistae, putting them in wagons and coming back so we can throw burning bolts on that island at our leisure, and putting a few men at that bridge to hold off the inevitable counterattack is sounding like a really, really good idea right now?"
Eostre turns back to the group, an "I'm surrounded by idiots" look clear on her face.
"Ballistae?! You're joking, right? Sandpoint's an idyllic little town, not a war-torn redoubt! Who in town would even know how to make something like that? Besides, we don't have time. Tsuto knows we're coming for him and likely that means he'll push up the time-table to strike at Sandpoint. By the time we had these hypothetical siege engines built we'd already be too late. We have to end this now. Besides, if the goblins cut that bridge down, they'd be stuck on the island, and then the attack wouldn't happen anyway. No matter what you think of goblin intelligence, they're far from stupid. That they were able to coordinate their attacks with Tsuto's help so effectively is proof of that. Now come on. Shalelu's probably waiting for us."
She spins on her heel and proceeds to the site of the campfire.
As the party approaches, the smell of something cooking wafts towards them. Sitting next to a campfire at the edge of the Nettlewood, eating a plate of venison, is Shalelu.
She looks up at the party as they approach. She waves to them, not saying anything.