"Oh," Gwyn mutters softly, taking a moment for the words to sink in before her cheeks burn scarlet. "Oh! I see. Sorry! I wasn't trying to pry."
Maybe I should just go back to bed.
She eats quietly for a moment, and ignores Fluff as she laughs so hard she has a hard time breathing.
"You don't want to see if there's a bounty for ghouls," she asks after finishing most of her plate off, "fire's darn useful for frying undead, and I still have that wand."
Over breakfast at the Rusty Dragon, the Sandpoint Heroes take some time to look over the various magical items recovered from their most recent foray into Thistletop...
Bruthazmus' necklace made of dismembered elf ears is a magical item that increases the wearer's hearing sensitivity.
Bruthazmus also had three arrows enchanted to be particularly deadly against elves.
Tsuto had a pair of arm guards that deflected blows.
He also had a pair of boots that grant the wearer extra speed and agility.
He also had a dozen enchanted arrows.
Nualia's breastplate is magically enhanced, as is her bastard sword.
The paperweight with an embedded eagle claw is a single-use item that can create an immobile anchor point.
And finally, Nualia wore an ancient-looking silver disk on a simple leather cord. The disk is etched with that same weird seven-pointed star. It can grant the wearer several abilities, including a temporary boot to life-energy.
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Cerin strides in the front door, still a bit damp from his early morning prayers down by the sea. "Good morning!" he calls out a bit too loud and cheery. "Did everyone have a good rest? Don't tell me Helena is still in bed, we should be out celebrating!" he continues as he hops up on a chair and starts loading up his plate with sausage, biscuits, cheese and fruit.
"Did i just hear someone mention the ghouls? Surely we can take at least one day off, have some fun, recover from our wounds and recharge before embarking on a new adventure!" he states before stuffing his mouth with food, looking back and forth between his companions while chewing noisily.
"Absolutely, but I didn't want Orik to go traipsing off on his own," Gwyn says with grin.
Fluff just resignedly shakes her head.
Still stretching, Helena pads downstairs, mostly-dressed but for her bare feet, and carrying her mantle in one hand. After taking a few glances around the room and tilting her head to listen, she makes her way to the table and sits down, draping the mantle over Gwyn's bare shoulders. "That was the best sleep I've had in weeks," she sighs. "It's so refreshing to sleep where you can actually see your own walls, I overslept and haven't earthed yet." She wiggles her bare toes against the wooden floor.
"So, ghouls?" she asks.
Gwyn smiles and mutters a word of thanks to Helena for looking out for her.
"Yeah, I was thinking we'd get ready and rest up today. See if there's a bounty for undead. If not, we might at least get some drinks out of it," she answers before Fluff flits to nestle in Helena's hair.
"Fluff, can't you wait before messing up her hair," Gwyn sighs as she pinches the bridge of her nose.
"I dunno, can you get dressed before coming down the stairs," the feisty little thrush shoots back before giving Gwyn a smug look.
Gwyn's eyes widen as her eyes meet with the thrush.
"No. No! You are not going to bring that up, you pint-sized vulture," Gwyn says, her voice rising in pitch as the color drains from her face.
Laughing a little, Kyrian looks between Gwyn and Helena. "That sounds like a good story. A little spare side cash could probably be useful though. Gods know I'm gonna need it. Plus, it'd give me a few extra days to try and get something going again." he finishes saying with a slight trail.
While the friends are having breakfast, your former adventuring companion Krissina comes over to the table. "I heard you caught the mastermind behind the raid! Great job, guys. Even if I'm not cut out for the life of an adventurer, I sure am glad that you are! 'Meiko says that breakfast is on the house today." Behind the bar, the owner of the Rusty Dragon raises a pint of ale in your direction.
Gwyn returns the salute with her own mug before turning back to Krissina and the others.
"Tell Ameiko thanks for the food and the rooms," Gwyn tells Krissina, "and that if she wants, I can tell her the story of how it all happened."
The elf smiles before polishing off her drink.
"Well, should we spend the day getting ready for a ghoul-hunt and tonight celebrating our victory?"
"Now that sounds like a plan I can get behind," Orik says, waving Bethana over to their table. "Small ale and some of that smoked salmon I've been smelling. I'm not going to be able to save s**t on an empty stomach."
Helena sighs as Fluff begins making a nest out of her wispy white hair, but picks a crumb off her bread and passes it up to the portly thrush."I can agree with that," she nods. "But first: what do we all know about ghouls?"
"They're undead, and that's about it," Gwyn says, giving the others a look of apology. "I wanted to look into that before we left."
"That's the limit of my knowledge," Orik replies. "Do you need silver to kill 'em? I think I heard that once."
Helena suddenly remembers a scholarly text about undead that she'd read sometime in the past...
Ghouls are undead creatures that retain the intelligence and memories of the person they had been in life. Despite their intelligence, their existence revolves around a single objective: to feed. While, as undead, they have no true need to eat, a ghoul's unlife revolves around a singular compulsion: To feed upon the living. Ghouls prefer the flesh of people, and find members of the race they had been in life particularly delicious. Most ghouls prefer the taste and aroma of flesh that is days old and rotting.
They rend with razor-sharp black talons, and their mouths are filled with canine teeth. The touch of a ghoul is painfully cold, and can cause the living to freeze in place. But the bite of ghoul is worse, as their saliva carries with it a terrible wasting disease called "ghoul fever." This disease is contagious and often fatal within a week or two. Anyone who dies of ghoul fever rises at midnight the next day as a ghoul.
Regarding silver weapons: Helena is fairly sure that Orik is thinking about werewolves. The book she'd read didn't mention anything about needing a silver weapon to kill a ghoul.
"Not silver." Helena shakes her head. "You're thinking of werewolves. You should be able to strike them with anything you have on hand." Glancing at Gwyn, she adds, "I read about them once. My mother knew how to treat the symptoms of the disease they carry, ghoul fever. If any of us are infected, we may not have long." She stares at the wood grain in the table. "I have an antiplague that may help fortify the body against the fever, but we may do well to carry more.
"They attack without weapons, using their own teeth and claws to rend and devour the living. I've heard... their claws can paralyze you, so you're still conscious, but can't defend yourself once they start to feed."
"Oh, right, werewolves," Orik says shaking his head with a wince. "Though it sounds like ghouls can turn you into a ghoul if they bite you, just like a werewolf, so I have no idea why you need silver to kill one and good hard steel to kill the other."
He does grimace a bit when Helena describes the way that ghouls kill their victims. "Well, that's f**king morbid. Don't let that happen to any of you."
"My master used to say, 'Because it's magic,' and left it at that. He always did like being the showman," Gwyn answers with a grin. "Anyway, I'm going to put on something that's not a nightgown. Don't let Fluff eat too many sweets."
As Gwyn hustles up the stairs, Fluff turns big, brown eyes on Orik.
"Pwease mistah, may I haff some crumbs from your sweetwoll," she begs.
Orik watches Gwyn disappear up the stairs before tearing a bit of his sweetroll off for Fluff. "If she asks, I gave you nothing, squab," he says, tossing it to the precocious bird.
"Thank you!"
Fluff gives Orik a grin before nibbling at the morsel.
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Cerin pops the last bit of fruit into his mouth and chews as he looks at each of those gathered around the table in turn. When he finishes, he is grinning from ear to ear.
I have missed this! The camaraderie, the good-natured banter around the table, being with a group that cared for each other. Some friends had gone and others had just arrived, but he had a good feeling about this group.
He surreptitiously wipes some moisture from the corner of his eye and clears his throat. "So, what's first? Shopping, bar-hopping, hitting the beach, something else..?"
"Bar hopping last if you want Gwyn along," Fluff says before continuing to nibble her morsel of sweetroll.
"Now that the Thistletops are dead and scattered, I should check on the other goblin tribes. I'm reasonably sure that they'll start squabbling among themselves to fight over the power vaccuum. Of course, once word gets out that Thistletop is abandoned, one of the other tribes is going to move in quickly—The tribes all agreed that the Thistletops had the best lair. If you want to finish exploring the dungeons there before that rock is crawling with goblins again, you should probably do so in the next few days."
Shalelu finishes her breakfast and heads over to the bar to have a private conversation with Ameiko. After a few minutes, she stops back at the table to say good-bye.
"I should be back in a few days. Good luck to you all!"
Helena jabs Fluff's belly with a fingertip, picking a raisin out of reach of the gluttonous bird's beak. "You're lucky I don't tell her what you've been up to!" she chides, digging through the pack tucked under her chair.
"I'm going to need to resupply," she says, "but Shalelu raised a good point. If we want to dig through the dungeons, we should do so soon. Perhaps as soon as we deal with the ghouls?"
"What's this about a dungeon?"
Gwyn comes back down the stairs, properly dressed and looking more like a dashing rogue than a scholar of the arcane.
Fluff, meanwhile, does her best to appear as innocent as possible while trying to hide the crumbs that remain.
"We're talking about going back to that gods-forsaken rock off the Nettlewood coastline," Orik says sullenly. "You know, the place where we all almost died multiple times. I guess we haven't gotten enough of the f**king place."
Kyrian puts a hand to his chin for a moment. "Well I'm gonna be stuck here for a few more days anyways. Ghouls wouldn't be a bad way to make some quick coin. I suppose clearing that place out though wouldn't be a bad idea to find some easy coin as well..."
"Well, is there a reason for us to risk life and limb going back? It's possible there might be treasure there, but I'm not really possessed of any desire to go back just on a 'maybe.' The ghouls, on the other hand, I know how to handle, I think. Holy water tends to do bad things to undead, right?"
"Holy water, and holy magic," Helena agrees. "The power I use to heal, may also be used to harm them... I think," she adds, blushing slightly. "I've never actually [i]tried[i] it."
"Only thing I know of down there is whatever demon the crazy b*tch was trying to free," Orik says with a shrug. "No idea if it's there or not, but she definitely believed it was. 'Course, she's nuttier than a sack full of goblin scrotes, so take that for what it's worth."
"Well that's just great. If there's nothing, then fine, we let it be, but if there's a demon down there, then we'll have to make sure the goblins can't let it out by accident," Gwyn says as she rubs her temples.
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I'm fairly sure there is a demon. I just don't know how close Nualia was to freeing it. Normally I would not think that goblins would have much chance to undo a complex demonic binding, but if it has been weakened..." Cerin shakes his head. "I am going to have to vote to investigate the demon at Thistletop, though we should prepare first!"
Cerin: From reading Tsuto's journl, Nualia's journal, and some of the other notes you recovered from Nualia's workshop, you know that Nualia had been trying to free some sort of fiend whose name is Malfeshnakor. You have not encountered that name before. That said, you can make mental leap and speculate... Goblins frequently worship Lamashtu herself. They also frequently worship Lamashtu's minions, the Four Goblin Hero Gods... whose own minions are often the wolf-like fiends called barghests. Of course, that's speculation. The sub-level in Thistletop had been a Thassilonian ruin, and not much is really known about that ancient culture.
Gwyn groans and buries her head in her hands.
"I can't believe we're going back to that goblin-infested hole!"
Kyrian finishes off the last of his drink, setting the mug on the table. "You make that sound so very appealing Cerin, how could we possibly refuse?" as he gives a light chuckle.
"So, fiend-killing," Orik says. "Never done it before. Is that what we need silver for, not ghouls?"
"If it's a demon we'll need cold iron," Gwyn remarks.
"It all sounds so easy until they suck your brains out through your ears," Helena mutters into an apple.
Kyrian shudders at that thought. "That doesn't sound like a good way to go. Hells, that doesn't even sound like a good thought period, especially after breakfast. In any rate, we should probably stop at a few places. We've got some stuff to unload, and I'm sure you guys found more yesterday. Plus I wanna talk with Savah about a few things. If I'm gonna be here a few more days, might as well take advantage of them. I'll meet you guys back down here shortly." And with that, he heads back to his room.
Gwyn goes out and buys a quiver of Cold Iron arrows.
Too busy talking to Fluff as she walks into Savah's Armory to notice Kyrian until it is almost too late, Gwyn gives a yelp and tries to dance around the half-elf. She almost manages to stay on her feet, but her toe catches and she starts to fall. Her hand snaps out like a striking viper to catch herself on Kyrian's arm.
His pack over his shoulder, Kyrian heads out into the town in search of Savah's place. Walking through the town on his way, he continues to glance over at different spots, watching everyone's interactions. 'And to think, just over a week ago this place was being ransacked by goblins led by demon crazed, revenge fueled nut case of a woman. I'll tell you one thing though, that's gonna make for one hell of a story. Mila's gonna find it interesting for sure. This is something that would've been right up her alley. I think I just need to get back to Magnimar at this point. Maybe I can figure something out there and piece out what she was looking for. That note didn't give too many clues..." Getting lost in his thoughts, he finally walks into Savah's place, noticing the all familiar sight of weapons and armor. "Hey Savah, how ya doin in here? I was hoping that I could wor-" he starts to talk as he gets interrupted by a force pulling on his arm. Without even being able to realize what was going on, Kyrian went from standing to on the ground in mere moments. Quickly trying to figure out what happened, he takes a quick look from side to side to see what happened. 'What the... Wait... Legs on this side... obviously a woman's chest on this side... wait a moment...' "I know people want me, but who the hell decided they wanted so bad that they had to pull me into their lap?" he exclaims with confusion loaded in his voice.
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Cerin lets out an exaggerated sigh. "Gwyn, I expected you to have better sense - or at least better taste! - than this." A sly grin spreads across his face as he tries to keep himself from bursting out laughing.
Hopping around them, he strolls over to Savah and greets her warmly. "So good to see you again! Oh, never mind them, kids these days! Anything interesting come in while we were away?"