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Davben grumbles as he's spattered with icky gobbo dog blood. "Ugh, Nicea, kill it don't spray it, these things are gross enough on the outside."
The monk looks at his hands when it's suggested he should give them a name "Hmm after Red Mist, I think any name I come up with fill fall short." He decides to throw some out and see if any feel right lifting one fist then the other in turn with each name "Trust and Betrayal? Dusk and Dawn? Justice and Revenge?" Furrowing his brow he adds "... Randal and Suzy?"
After the naming attempts he comes over to assist with the goblin disposal. When Nicea marvels at the distance he smirks "Oh it's a competition now." He gets a good grip on one of the short green bodies and heaves it out as far as he can off the cliff considering he's fairly well versed in throwing odd sized objects he should get some pretty good distance.
The tossing competition is pretty close, but the seagull on the string gives a wing up towards Davben who was the favorite with his special skill in such activity from the beginning.
As Zara washes up, her diaphanous veils mold themselves to her body leaving her shapely form fairly well accentuated while somehow still being "clothed." Something about it still seems sinful. The seagull flies around her making romantic eyes and gull calls down towards her.
Samara finds:
- Four short swords (Small)
- Four leather armors (Small)
- Four light wooden shields (Small)
- Four short bows (Small)
- Approximately 75 arrows
- 4d10 silver
- 10d10 copper
Sin/Virtue:
- Damieka gains 1 Wrath
- Nicea gains 1 Wrath
- Silva gains 1 Wrath
- Davben gains 1 Pride
- Samara gains 1 Greed
- Zara gains 1 Charity
- Seagull gains 10 Lust
Silva had not meant to start a competition, but he is more than pleased with the results. He is a good sport, after all.
"I should suggest something like this for the next Swallowtail Festival," he remarks, after witnessing Davben's impressive throw. He then glances again at the watchtower with a slight frown. "Hm. Well, let's invite ourselves in. We've got some more work to do."
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Samara piles the swords, shields and short bows, then takes the arrows, the and and says, "If anyone needs arrows, arrows are a thing that I have." She leaves the armor, as stripping goblins and bowling them off a cliff seems somehow indecent.
At Silva's suggestion, she nods once and starts westward. She first peers through the open gate before entering.
At Silva's suggestion, she nods once and starts westward. She first peers through the open gate before entering.
Inside Thistletop's main gate:
The floor of this room is hard-packed soil, as if the builders either ran out of lumber after building the walls and roof, or as if they simply never thought about building a floor. A number of poorly preserved horse and dog heads are mounted along the eastern wall, while along the southern wall hangs a pair of large black-feathered wings tacked to the wall with daggers.
Samara sees a set of double doors leading north, a single door leading north just to the left of the double doors, and another set of double doors leading west. There is also a hallway like opening heading east.
Silva follows after Samara, stroking the stubble on his chin as he assesses their surroundings.
"These goblins should fire their interior decorator," he remarks, gesturing at the grisly trophies.
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Samara glances about and then shrugs at Silva, deciding to neither agree nor disagree with the sorcerer. "If I were a goblin interior decorator I would not try hard."
She waits for the other party members to enter before checking the western door, trying to keep quiet so not to alert anything or anyone who may be inside.
Fortunately for the stealthy Samara, no evidence of life is behind Door #1, a fact greatly appreciated due to the ever so unstealthy arrival of Nicea. The double doors lead to an empty hallway with one door to the north and more double doors leading west.
Back in the main foyer doubling as a trophy hall, Silva is able to see another door leading north, but still quite see the end of the hallway to the east.
Damieka follows behind Nicea and looks around the room.
She shivers in disgust at the displays. "Is there any doubt why I can't stand these creatures?"
To emphasize this, she spits onto the dirt floor.
Silva regards each individual trophy with a different expression of mock disgust, but quickly grows bored of this. With a sigh he sulks over to the doors to the north, before raising a hand to mime a knocking gesture.
"Well, we're in. Are we still doing this quietly, or are we gonna start howling goblin murder at the top of our lungs?"
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Davben enters in with the others, thankful that no enemies appear to be around. "Well if we intend to do this quietly it's going to have to be a lot more quietly, with Nicea's booming voice I'm pretty sure we would alert less goblins if we provided written notice of our arrival, might as well howl and expect them to come."
The sharp eyed monk quickly notices the out of place dagger, and he makes his way over to examine it. "What's this? It doesn't look like the typical rusty scrap metal that a goblin would call a dagger."
Sidling into the trophy room and looking at the walls with a shake of her head.
"Maybe it's best we let Red Mist do the howling, for there's a whole tribe of goblins here, that's alot to bring down on us at once. Let alone for Nualia and whomever else."
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The dagger definitely seems out of place to Davben, it clearly sticks out in contrast to the other junk laying around. It seems a little too tempting, but Samara uses daggers, this could be useful to her if it is special. The monk decides to make sure it's not trapped, or won't cause some kind of alarm, if not then he'll pull out the dagger.
Davben feels pretty confident it's not trapped.
The monk decides to make sure it's not trapped, or won't cause some kind of alarm, if not then he'll pull out the dagger.
Davben pulls the dagger out of the wall. The black wing shifts slightly, but otherwise nothing happens.
If she finds nothing, she checks at the northern door.
Samara discovers the northern door has been crudely nailed shut! Someone really doesn't seem to want anyone going inside...
"Do we try a different route? Or try to pry the nails up now... we could do it later when it's safer. However if someone is hurt in there?" Zara vascillates, before firstly tapping the door to make sure there's no woodworm (or worse) and then putting her ear to it to listen.
Zara hears what may be the squeaking of a mouse, but nothing else that seems like life.
Fortunately not hearing Samara's disturbing utterances, Zara backs away from the door and watches the elf get on with her work.
The door opens with a slight creak, but it is not over loud or unusual for the wooden structure.
An open flight of wooden stairs winds up to a trap door in the ceiling, thirty feet above.
Samara is pretty sure this leads to the western side watchtower. And there are yet another set of doors to the north.
"Yeah, their collection of dirty rags and seagull bones will be worth a fortune!"
Nicea listens at the unexamined northern door.
Nicea is pretty confident it is made of wood. She doesn't seem to notice anything else special about it, and she hears no sounds coming from the other side.
However, from this vantage, Nicea is able to see even more doors. One immediately adjacent her own location, and the other slightly ajar at the eastern end of the hallway she stands in.
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Davben makes his way over to where Samara is examining the western door. "If there are scouts, there's likely only a few, you don't leave a whole regiment on watch. Stealth may be a better option, it would be best if we can take them by surprise and keep them from sounding an alarm."[b] Nodding to Samara the monk continues [b]"Perhaps the two of us should slip up there to scout the scouts, we should be quiet enough not to be noticed, and if we feel there are more than we can handle we can just come get the others."
"Oh" He says as if he'd forgotten something "This dagger, it appears to be higher quality than the typical goblin junk, maybe you can make use of it?" He holds out the pearl handled dagger offering it to the young elf.
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Samara takes the dagger offered to her by Davben, nodding once as she examines it. "I will have to try it. That is a thing I will do." She draws her rapier to hold in her right hand, holding the dagger in her left, so that she can more effectively strike from the shadows.
She starts up the stairs to scout it out, taking light steps up to see if she finds anything.
- Samara: Samara is barely able to discern some kind of tearing sound on the other side of the trap door. Someone is cutting wood, possibly?
- Nicea: A small bucket covered with a rag is outside the second northern door immediately adjacent to the one Nicea checked earlier. Turning from her observation of that room so quickly that she doesn't notice it. As her booted foot makes contact, the bucket tips over and the rag slips releasing offal all over the dirt. The smell is terrifying.
From the other side of the door, something is said in a language that sounds harsh and angry just from the pronunciation. Nicea realizes it's probably Goblin since she's heard the creatures yelling at each other before.
Nicea doesn't hear anything coming from the open door down the hall, but from this position, she can see inside.
An open flight of wooden stairs winds up to a trap door in the ceiling, thirty feet above.
Zara turns around at the slight noise behind her, but guesses that Nicea will soon staunch the sound - or call for help. Loosening her bladed scarf, she wraps it softly over her arm - in case Samara needs help with the carpenter(?) goblin.
Davben joins Samara on the stairs leading up to the probable watchtower. Davben sees Samara listening at a wooden trapdoor in the ceiling.
After a few moments of picking at his ear, Silva saunters over to join Nicea, making no attempts to be stealthy about it. He figured that he couldn't possibly be noisier than she was being. As he closes in on her, his nose wrinkles up, picking up on an awful smell. He almost makes a colorful joke, but decides that he has done enough to annoy the crazy lady with the scythe.
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Samara gestures towards the trap door above her and then starts to mime to the monk silently.
First, she points to her ears, and then makes a tearing motion and points up to the trap door above her. She shrugs and shakes her head.
Then she gestures again to the trap door, and makes a miming gesture as if opening something above her (probably the aforementioned trap door). She points towards her ears and gives a surprised expression.
She then gestures down the stairs and puts on an angry expression and pretends to swing an oversized weapon. The elf reverts to a neutral expression and then waves the place she gestured to before on over. She pauses the miming for a moment to furrow her brow in thought and then she mouths the word, 'Or'.
Samara again makes the motion of opening the trap door, goes through the same sequence of miming the people on the other side hearing it and looking over. She then gestures to herself, jabs a couple of times with a pretend rapier, then to Davben, and she makes a couple of punches in the air and throws in a fake headlock for good measure.
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Davben watches Samara's miming curiously, it was quite a display and curiously one of the longest and most expressive talks he's had with her despite not a word being spoken. He doesn't really get the tearing part, but more or less gets the gist of it.
He makes the same attacking with an oversized weapon mime that Samara did and shakes his head, he points to the trap door and cups a hand by his ear as if it were listening. He points to Samara then to himself, and makes a motion of opening the door then the surprised expression, and a few fake headlock punches just in case. After all the charades he gets ready to jump up when Samara opens the trap door.
Samara, Davben, and Zara
Samara lifts the trapdoor so she can see.
Fortunately, the trapdoor's hinges aren't noisy so through the crack she creates, Samara witnesses two goblins lazily drowsing when clearly they are supposed to be on watch duty in their guard tower. The whole area smells like pickles, and there is a barrel open with a few of the pungent former cucumbers spilled onto the watchtower floorboards next to it.
Nicea, Silva, and Finwa
Finwa wanders closer to Silva peering down the hallway Nicea is investigating. She makes a disgusted face once she gets a whiff of the bucket's contents.
Nicea and Silva both hear someone speaking Goblin behind the closed northern door. The speaker seems less irritated and much more insistent in tone.
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Samara lifts the door to enter the room cautiously. If the goblins are sleeping, it will be easy to get rid of them quietly. She gestures for Davben to follow her.
She readies her rapier over the goblin target, waiting for Davben to be in position before very carefully aiming to insert the point into the little monster's heart.
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Davben quietly and carefully follows after Samara, and eases himself over in position by the other snoozing goblin. With a nod to Samara to indicate he's ready he crouches down grabbing the goblinoid by the chin and back of the head giving a sudden twisting jerk in an attempt to break the thing's neck.
The pair of sneaks painlessly end the lives of the two pickled goblins. Whatever blissful pickle-filled dreams they have are the last thing they see before receiving their final judgement much to their own surprise.
Samara and Davben find the same kind of weapons and armor as the other goblins, but this pair doesn't have anything worthwhile beyond a near empty barrel of pickles.
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Nicea looks back and realizes only Silva and Dameika have followed her. After a flash of irritation - How can I exhibit leadership if nobody follows? - she realizes the others must be with sneaky, silent, slippery Samara. Her brain practically glows with pride. Leading one side of the pincer. She's got serious command potential. I chose my Lieutenant well. The fact that there is in no way any sort of a pincer movement going on does not occur to her. Even if it did, she wouldn't be bothered by facts.
Nicea beckons to Dameika and whispers, "Go be sure the front gates are closed and locked. There were gobbos in the bushes outside. We don't need them taking us from the rear. Then cover the other doors in the entry with your bow. Silva and I will take care of these." She gestures to the noisy door and waves Dameika off, then readies Red Mist for another session of grinding, blending, and pureeing.
Zara awaits at the bottom of the watchtower, for the sneaky pair to return from whatever scouting expedition that they've been doing. She silent chides herself, that she should've given the Goddesses guidance to then - whilst glancing towards where the others are.
Damieka smiles slyly and winks at Nicea, her eyes immediately returning to the corridor Davben vanished down before she then moves back to the front door.
As Nicea settles into position, standing almost directly into the foul goblin waste recently spilled, the door opens with a jerk, and a sleepy eyed goblin with an irritated expression (well, what one would probably assume is an irritated expression; it could, after all, just be its face) now stands before the the woman and her scythe.
Its eyes go wide with shock, but before it can do anything as it is temporarily stunned...