"The river came in the kitchen door. Not badly, just up to my ankles. But Olin -- Olin's missing."
Saul groans quietly. "...brand new carpet...," he can be heard to mutter.
Relieved in part that the Goblin is safe, Olin's absence instead casts pall. "When did the wave break ground? Was Olin with Ewart or elsewise?" extending grime covered hand for the reassuring feel of halfling contact... if Ethel can get past the aversion to Phillip's current aroma.
"Have you or the others seen Marce?"
"After dark. Before midnight. The rest of them were at the Watercress. It flooded as well, all that way upriver. I wasn't with them. I couldn't decide if it would be creepier sitting in the Goblin all night all by myself or coming back to it after dark all by myself; I ended up staying in case you came back. Olin was supposed to be meeting them there, after working late, but he never showed up. We don't know if he was still in the shipyard -- there's nothing left of the workshop -- or on his way up river or crossing the Velashu or where."
"Marce, yes, he showed up at the 'Cress to check on everyone. He knows about Olin, said he'd look for him. I don't know where."
Nodding at Ethel's words, Phil moves on to next steps "Well, at the first if you can see us to and into the Goblin?" noting that Ethel's the only one with keys at this minute "We've cargo in tow we'd see off the streets sharpish if we can" noting Saul's presence in their midst.
Lastly and after a heavy pause "Any sign of Bojasc since we parted?"
Nodding at Ethel's words, Phil moves on to next steps "Well, at the first if you can see us to and into the Goblin?" noting that Ethel's the only one with keys at this minute
"Oh!" She fumbles at her pockets. "I forgot." She brings out a ring of shiny new keys. "I brought them all with me. I didn't like leaving any of them behind."
"Any sign of Bojasc since we parted?"
"Ugh, no," she says with a shudder. "He's the reason I didn't feel safe in or out of the Goblin -- and the reason I wanted to keep all the keys with me. I wouldn't want to be alone in the building with him."
Tendal moved past and through the devastation like a ghost, touching nothing, seemingly untouched and unaffected, his eyes hard. Deep in some recess, locked away with cold intellect, a young man was crying at the death, the unbelievable despair of those around him. He said nothing, remarked on nothing as they progressed through the streets.
Nodding at Ethel's words, Phil moves on to next steps "Well, at the first if you can see us to and into the Goblin?" noting that Ethel's the only one with keys at this minute"Oh!" She fumbles at her pockets. "I forgot." She brings out a ring of shiny new keys. "I brought them all with me. I didn't like leaving any of them behind."
"Any sign of Bojasc since we parted?""Ugh, no," she says with a shudder. "He's the reason I didn't feel safe in or out of the Goblin -- and the reason I wanted to keep all the keys with me. I wouldn't want to be alone in the building with him."
"Ah finally, someone competent." Tendal says, his voice flat and uninflected. He turned his gaze to Saul, face wooden. "I would recommend you take notes. I have writing implements and paper, then you can file these under loyalty and initiative."
"If Larur was his friend", Gristav said toward Tendal, "He's had loss, too. But I find I can only speak in defense of Mercy, not of any other name." To Saul, Gristav then said, "We'll get you there, but I don't know I trust you there alone. Or much at all. Work out how to fix that. The scribe's room is open."
Smiling genuinely Phillip gives a small bow of his head "And well you did milady... we'll talk more on the travails just past... but for now lets safe away from the road." hastening the group towards the Goblin.
"Do you need me?" Ethel hesitates. "Maddy's pretending to have hysterics, and Almah's with her, so I'm supposed to be checking the wharf for Olin while Ewart's watching them drag the river."
Briefly shaking his head though allowing a tinge of sadness to flitter across his features Phillip replies "Not immediately no... but I would see you again before sun rises tomorrow... will you return to the Goblin or should I seek you elsewise?"
"If you think it's safe," she promises. "They'll stop dredging when it gets dark, or maybe we'll have found him before then. Me or Ewart or Marce. If I see Marce, do you want him for something? Should I send him by the Goblin?"
"As safe as anywhere in this town... and aye, if you could let Marce know I'd appreciate a word that would be grand."
Once to the Goblin, Gristav says to Saul, "Larur. Where?"
Ethel gives Phillip a quick kiss. "So glad you're safe, Phil" she breathes in his ear before pushing her way back through the crowd to where she has a view of the boats trawling the harbor.
The party leaves behind the makeshift morgue and turns northwest toward the Gold Goblin. The going is slower than usual, thanks to the wreckage of ships and buildings strewn across what were the roadways. As they approach from the south, debris studded in the ivy on the southern wall of the vault wing indicates how high the river rose, but the building itself appears to have weathered the wave without damage, at least on the outside.
The alley that leads to the kitchen door, however, is full of silt and scum; one of the delapidated warehouses between it and the river has collapsed entirely, its roof half-slidden off the toppled walls.
The shining new key fits the shining new lock on the door, and the party steps into the back entry into a skim of muddy water over the floorboards.
Once to the Goblin, Gristav says to Saul, "Larur. Where?"
Saul sighs heavily. "Downstairs, lad, though the basement's likely wetter than the ground floor."
Braddon draws his swords.
"We should look around first. Since it sounds like we're not surprising them, we don't want them surprising us."
He heads carefully towards the stairs up.
"Too true Braddon." Tendal says, surveying the mess and the water soaking the walls. "I will go with Gristav in his search for Larur. It is possible that creatures may have been swept into the underground either from above or below, and as you suggest, threats of the two legged variety are expected. A modicum of caution is warranted by all of us. I recommend we do not allow ourselves to be made into isolated singletons for the time being." Tendal says, a distasteful look crossing his face as he followed Gristav squelchingly across the ruined carpet.
"We should not split up. Seems Saul's the seed of this tree of woe. He should be brought along. Phillip, Mister Kane, as our resident skeptics, would you escort Saul, in escorting us?"
Gristav gives Tendal a warm smile, gesturing after Braddon, but going before Tendal, Gris now second, in that line.
Before the groups splinter, Phillip considers the roll of keys - splitting it into at least two piles... or more if it can be managed. All Phillip looks to keep for himself is a key to the kitchen door, passing the rest of the morass of keys to Braddon (for the elevated group) and Magnimar (for those who'll approach the cellar).
Matter of factly Phil nods and answers "Aye, I'll go below... though I've had my fill of wading naval deep in brack and salt today. If the water's above my knees I'll happily watch."
Braddon looks to the party back at the stairs heading down.
"Fine, we'll check down first," he pouts making his way back.
"I think there's more chance of an attack from behind, so I'll go last."
"Alright, let's move then."
Tendal accepted half the keys from Phillip with a slight nod, pocketing them before following Gristav.
This is a shambles...a disaster, he thought, feeling the weight of the keys in his pocket.
I am not certain I want to be responsible for this fetid mess, his feet squelched in the muddy, sodden carpet. Have I failed here? Failed to trust the right people? Liry's face rose unbidden from his memory. Failed to protect those I care about?
At least we are, in this moment, hale he glanced about at his companions. We have a glimmer of a plan and tasks to be about, but I need to consider that my time here in Riddleport may not end successfully...My only recourse may be to return to Magnimar...
"So, _down_, is decided? Thank you, all. I'll go in van." Heedless of the darkness, Gris descends.
The stairs leading down are slick with mud, and the air is heavy with the stink of the river, all the more pungent due to being enclosed. Tendal ignites an arcane light for the party to see by.
The wine cellar's floor holds a skim of filthy water which reflects the lighted group at the threshold when the door is opened. The dark surface shimmers irregularly as water insects and larvae dart about above and below it. Larur's room is similarly bedraggled, the neat and spartan furnishings grimy at the edges and a suffocated fish lying dead in the mud beneath the bed.
The steps leading down to the sub-basement are even muddier than the first stairway.
” Gristav, I just realized that the water may have displaced the remains.” Tendal said quietly.
"No one's ever told us where ever they _were_, the remains of a friend and partner. Saul? Where? Killed him before you, you said. And then what? Carried him off? Do you even _know_, where we might, start to look? You see, I need to be in a room with you, and hi-, his counsel, and set reason and my rage, the monster and my mercy, at table to debate, and find a course I can live with, and decide how many bodies I leave in that room."
"And before you protest innocence, shocked victimhood, helpless witness and worry for all our dearly beloveds, against his wroth, or hers, know that at the first word of that, I will rage in your face, and ask you, How safe are they, NOW?"
"Which way, Saul?"
"If he'd 'carried him off,'" Saul reminds Gristav quietly, "he'd have left me out of his sight so I could spill the beans. I know precisely where he put the body, because he took me with him -- though as the lad says, if the river came through...." He shrugs fatalistically. "Down the stairs ... all the way down."
"Hmh.", Gristav nodded as Saul was logically correct, if not factually innocent. "All the way? Then the water will still be there. Or if there's a drain, then we need to know that, too.", Gristav tried to logic, but it was no balm. "We failed him, you know? He was a better friend to us, than we ever were to him. Rough on the street, a role I reprised, just 'ere we met, a ruse then, but too true at first. The sun sets in Riddleport, and there's no food to be had. The vendor-carts and days-end bargains, he'd been at that before you. And saw me, too late, too hungry. And him too dwarven to speak. But, the longer your trail, the deeper your bag, and I produced the dregs of my stores, and having seen him, also too late, I offered to share. I think it was half, a half-dry apple and some Peckish bullet-breads. (No offense, Phillip.) Face of stone, you know Larur. But his brow quivered, and he took half of that. It's a natural philosophy of the road; All Burdens Are Less When Shared. Even, too little food."
"Hmh.", Gristav nodded as Saul was logically correct, if not factually innocent. "All the way? Then the water will still be there. Or if there's a drain, then we need to know that, too.", Gristav tried to logic, but it was no balm.
"All smugglers' tunnels lead to the sea eventually," Saul points out.
The party carefully descends the slippery steps. The floor of the corridor at the bottom is thick with a mixture of river silt and wet sand. As the corridor passes the kennel and turns toward the arena, sand predominates.
Entering the fighting pit, Saul nods toward the center of the arena. "There it is." Where the sand either floated away or was cleared, a trap door is exposed in the floor.
"That the sand was driven out of the arena suggests a lot of flow _out_ of that door. That it remains suggests only slow flow back. So, he might be closer than where he was left, washed nearer as the water surged up, opening the door, but not washed away as the water only seeped, through the closed door. Is my conjecture."
"Secrets and further secrets Mr. Vankaskerkin?" Tendal says, striding out onto the floor of the fighting pit, the light on the end of his cane illuminating the unseen trap door. "Gristav, another possibility could be that the muck that we walk on is not the sand from the arena but rather an admixture of silt and sand as a remnant from the tsunami. We will simply have to look. Larur could be close and held up, or washed some distance." he continued, walking forward, better illuminating the hole to see what lies beneath.
As they walk through the underhalls of the Goblin Phillip idly scans left and right to see if anything of note was dislodged or disbursed by the burst of waters.
Braddon heaves open the trap door to reveal a rough, twisting shaft bored through stone. Planks secured into the stone at uneven intervals make a sort of rough stairway that spirals down into darkness; on each of these makeshift treads a ledge of sand has accumulated, apparently washed through the cracks around the door when the sub-basement flooded.
"Down there," Saul adds unnecessarily, as the group stands staring down the dank shaft. "It opens out into a good-sized natural cavern. There's a tunnel slopes away toward the east. I followed it once when I first got in here and ran into seawater; high tide, I imagine. I expect it opens out in the cliffs on the coast east of town somewhere." He turns to Gristav. "Larur didn't go farther than the cavern, though. Wrapped in a rug in a niche on the left when you get to the bottom."
Braddon keeps looking back over his shoulder, blades out and alert.
"I'll go ahead. Wrapped and niched, washed from an Eastward tunnel when the river's to the West... I hope not to delay us long, here. I'm sorry, I just need to try." Gristav readies a rope, continuing, "If the water's weakened any of that wood, let's not learn it regretfully. I can do without the lights a while, if you'll just belay me here, against the failure of the flotsam'd stair?"
With a glance at Braddon, Gristav hopefully offers the rope's coils to Snake, beginning a bowline about his own middle.
Gristav begins cautiously to descend.
Gristav begins cautiously to descend.
** spoiler omitted **
You can see that you are standing near the edge of a large pond/puddle, some thirty feet across, which fills the center of the room. To the left are two niches, a wide one and a narrower one. There is a wet but walkable path where the floor slopes up to meet the wall by which they both can be accessed.
"Stairs seem solid enough", Gristav reports in person, ascending the stairs to speaking distance. "I'll sweep the grit off, to keep the last of us from kicking it onto the rest of us."
Gris returns to the bottom, taking the time with Prestidigitate's power to clear the sand away ahead of him.
"Which niche?", Gris asks of Saul, when they're all gathered again.
Phil remains back from the edge, near to Serpe... watching and not speaking in opposition... but similarly not seeking to engage.
Tendal follows Gristav down, carrying the light , and Saul follows nervously. Braddon gives Snake and Phil a nod before descending himself.
Gristav gives Saul a tired look, and asks, as he walks the narrow path to the niche, "It doesn't branch in that deepness? Flight of stairs, library catalogue? Bunk beds?"
At the edge-crest of the niche, before his eyes go around, Gristav tosses a copper forcefully into the niche, perhaps to stir anything lured by Larur's remains.
"Now is the time that I wish I could utilize both my sight for detection of magic, while maintaining our illumination." Tendal says ruefully, peering around into the gloom while holding the cane higher. As Gristav moves forward, Tendal follows, bringing the light and illuminating the niche.
"Was it dry down here before the tsunami?" Tendal asks, turning to cast the question at Saul.
"Again, Tendal, you step to the head of the class.", Gristav praises, encanting Detect Magic. His grey eyes flicker, and see in a third spectrum...
The copper piece rings with a metallic clang against a outcrop of rock, then lands with an almost silent plunk in a layer of mud.