|
With both style and grace, Uesugi dances over towards the dog pens and lines up a slice at the hound's sternum. The scene looks as if it's in slow motion as he begins to insert the blade and Gallix hops around the other side, punching the beast's head in with a powerful fist. The creature tumbles back on all fours, gravely bruised from the onslaught and yelping in pain.
That's one dead goblin dog!
All is quiet in the goblin camp as one goblin remains unconscious from Mr. Pepper's color spray and all of the others are dispatched. But where did Leeza go?!
The answer becomes clear as D feels a sharp blade enter his side and the warty goblin materializes next to him.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Mr Peppers rocks back on his heels a bit, holding his stomach, his eyes getting a bit glassy from the pain as he sees everyone rush to his aid, putting that rabid looking beast down. He pulls out a vial they found earlier and pulls the cork with teeth drinking it down, face wincing at either the taste or the muscular workings of swallowing. The blood stops seeping through his fingers but the wound is still great.
"Thank you all, now help D and don't ignore that blinded goblin for long!" He sputters before turning to little Miss glasses waiting for the pain numbing tap of the wand.
|
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
"As you wish, Mister Peppers. I will aid you shortly." Sirettis steps up to the blinded goblin, her hair crawling all over it, searching for the weakest point on the body.
You heard them. Kill this goblin quickly. Kill anyone who gets in your way.
Sirettis shakes her head, shaking off foreign thoughts blowing through her mind. With one swift motion, her hair comes down on the goblin's neck with pin point precision.
|
|
Sirettis crushes another goblin to death with her nest of hair, leaving only Leeza to fight on.
Leeza ducks down, avoiding D's blast. "You not leave here alive, longshank. You make tasty offer for chieftain. We cook you in bile!" She smiles sweetly, maggots dripping from her filthy, bile-encrusted mouth.
__
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Cup snaps her whip, attempting to trip the would be goblin culinary genius.
"Cook in bile? No thanks. See, this is the problem with goblin culture today. No sense of taste. Just bile, bile, bile and more bile. Really, those voices you're hearing in your head? They have all the wrong recipes."
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Nobody hurts my PEPPERS!!!
Gallix nods his thanks to Uesugi as the samurai helps him dispatch the goblin dog. He is about to turn to check on Mr. Peppers, when he hears a sharp intake of breath from behind him. He whirls around to see D clutching a wound in his side. He hears the exchange between the D and a goblin that seems to be standing around the corner of the building, then springs into motion. He runs along the side of the building, as Cup's whip snaps and appears to pull taut around something. The sound of a thudding goblin sends shivers of joy down his spine as he rounds the corner of the building and looks down to see a yellow-toothed goblin lying flat on her back. "Hello, Ugly! Meet my foot! Gallix raises his foot, then slams his heel down toward the goblin's throat.
|
|
Uesugi turns hearing the shrieking voice of the goblin as her blade is slightly turned away by the invisible barrier that surrounds D.
As D backs up and sends one of his deadly pebbles her way Uesugi watches as the goblin is able duck below.
'This one is faster than the rest of her kind.'
His katana still dripping with some of the dead dog's bloodUesugi hastens forward watching while the barbarian catches the goblin in the center of her chest pushing her a little back towards Uesugi. Looking upward the goblin stares at Uesugi his blade held high in the air. SZTTTTT is the only sound the creature hears as Uesugi's blade cuts down at her.
|
|
"Hehe, you can't hit Leeza, weak longshank," the warty goblin says as she hops away from Uesugi's blade, but she's not laughing when Cup's whip wraps around her legs and pulls her to the ground. Gallix gives her the ol' boot to the throat, and Leeza coughs and chokes up blood, but fights on!
And what does she do first? She's not going to fight while prone, so she stands up.
|
|
Looking around to be sure there aren't any more threats, Mr Peppers moves to his left a bit, near Sirettis, left hand still holding his stomach wound, and with his right he twirls his finger in the air then pulls out a puff of lint off his cloak and flicks it at Leeza, speaking some Elven words of magic.
Then he pulls out his large wooden spoon (wand).
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Sirettis feels pulled by a mysterious wind. Bring this Leeza to you. Snap her neck like a twig.
Sirettis feels an impulse, not her own in nature. She deflects it carefully and ties Leeza's fate to Gallix's. Go, Goblin. Waste your time. Hurt my friends no more.
The little dragon flies in to help Uesugi!
"Get her, noble steed!"
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Mr Peppers closes his eyes as the weird and creepy hair makes its way into his wounds and uses its own strands to stitch the bite marks somewhat shut. He lets out a sigh of relief as he opens his eyes to inspect the Sirettis's handywork. "I must admit, your methods are a bit unorthodox to me, but I can't complain with the results, thanks very much. And thanks to the rest of you for coming to my aid so swiftly!" He then puts his own wooden spoon to his stomach to finish healing up the bruising and rest of the tears
After the first flash of healing energy does some work, but not enough for Mr Pepper's liking, he tries again and again and finally the wand starts to smoke and quits working altogether. "Ah crap, I've overheated it! Sirettis would you straighten this out for me?" He hands her the wand and it works flawlessly on him
He reholsters the stupid looking halfling wand and sighs "I've got some work to do still on mastering divine spells and their commands. Life would be so much easier if everyone followed the same rules!"
After some more spells to clean off the large amounts of Elven and canine blood, as well as bile remnants, Mr Peppers finally appears back to normal, which is evident when he casts detect magic for his next aura fix on the corpses of the fallen. "Must be something exciting on these things!"
|
|
Mr. Peppers detects little in the way of magical auras around the camp. The goblins have a total of 180gp when combined, and Leeza was carrying a masterwork short sword along with two vials of alchemist's fire.
The shrine to Lamashtu in the center of the camp has a recessed floor about a foot deep and filled with viscous purplish ooze that's easily recognizable as Demon's Bile. Each of the carving's eyes is set with a fancy looking faceted peridot, likely to be of some value to the right vendor.
D doesn't notice anyone or anything threatening from where he's currently standing.
|
|
After purging the pool of any bile, you make your way to the northeastern end of the eerily quiet goblin camp.
The building at the top right appears to be a sort of storehouse, chock fill of filthy supplies. D finds a silver earring set with a pearl in one of the sacks.
The next building is a small, filthy bunkhouse, filled with piles of rags and straw.
The third building appears to be a workshop. Crudely fashioned tools hang from hooks along the eastern wall. Drawings of questionable skill cover the remaining walls, depicting humans being crushed, dismembered, or otherwise mutilated by elaborate and impractical traps. The set of tools on the wall looks like it could be useful for those who create traps.
The fourth and fifth buildings are additional goblin lodgings. The smell is just awful.
The final building next to the pens looks a little cleaner. The wooden shack is built more soundly than the others. It contains a large bed stained purplish-black with sludge, and a short wooden table piled high with maps and papers.
The papers on the table include maps of Isger, particularly of the areas surrounding Saringallow, all of which are annotated with invasion plans. The remaining papers on the table appear to constitute a journal of someone's increasingly disjointed thoughts.
Finally, the pens where the hound was chained are next. The place is filled with stinking excrement and the broken chain that the angry creature escaped.
|
|
Mr Peppers distributes the alchemist fires and puts the gold in the group loot pile, as well as the high end short sword . "Quite a nice weapon for a goblin don't you think? Usually their swords are just sharp pieces of scrap metal."
Mr Peppers will take a bit more care in his investigations in the camp, he does his best to move quietly and offers up insights when they come to him. "It looks like Lamashtu is a big fan of this bile. I've got to expect we'll run across more demons here, they've got to be the source of this stuff. Once we've got this place secured I'll go back through and make thorough notes, and we can glean anything of value at the same time." As he gestures towards the glinting peridot.
As we move from building to building Mr Peppers leads off of course with a scan for magical goodies, and is equally disappointed each time when there are none to be had. He brings up some relevant points at each location:
Bunk Houses: "If we count the sleeping quarters we can get some semblance hopefully of their numbers, but that may be a bit unreliable."
Workshop: "All these trap making tools... we should keep a good eye out for traps, there's likely more waiting for us to stumble into."
Nice House: "I wonder if this was Leeza's or ? We should collect these maps and notes for evidence, I'll give them a thorough cleaning before we touch them.. or at least before I'll touch them."
Dog Pen: "Its too bad that chain wasn't stronger" He says rubbing his stomach wound.
"I wonder how long this place has been here? Is this a remnant of the older goblin wars are a newer settlement?"
|
|
Cup speaks goblin, and as a result learned something about their culture. She doesn't need to pull out her chronicles to know that this cannot be Leeza's house.
"Goblins are terrified of the written word. I am sure that there are secret readers and writers amongst them... but look at this place. Look at these journals."
"Leeza may have stayed here, but I am pretty sure someone else did too." She pulls herself up to study the maps and shakes her head. "I am pretty sure that they had a non-goblin accomplice. These are not written in goblin."
She studies the documents for speech patterns, codes and clues.
|
|
Mr Peppers nods along with Miss Cup "You've got a good point there with this journal. Goblins don't like writing, but it is possible one of higher stature was keeping it hidden from the others. A closer look at the journal is quite important in figuring things out."
Mr Peppers will help the librarian in her analysis of the journal for clues
|
|
Gallix's eyes practically pop out of his skull as he sees the glistening gems set into the depiction of Lamashtu, but his excitement is quelled when Mr. Peppers mentions coming back for them later. The rest of the camp is of little interest to him, aside from the pearl earring they find. In his current state, his mind is constantly turning back toward the cave, where he thinks he might find more goblins to beat to a pulp, especially since Uesugi managed to cut down Leeza before he could deliver his finishing blows.
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
You flip through the journal entries, which are all written in common, and based on the yellowing of the paper and the fading of the ink, you're able to piece together the following from oldest to newest:
Today, we traveled to another camp underneath Isger. Mama told me more about the Wars. She says the goblins, overwhelmed by the Isgerian forces, were forced to retreat. Hundreds were killed. It's been months of traveling from camp to camp and I just want to sleep. Mama keeps saying not to worry, Mezodarath, we'll be safe soon.
__
I killed my first human today. She was frail girl who wandered into our camp. I hesitated at first, but mama said they're the reason for all of our troubles. I clawed her right across the neck as she begged me not to. She likely would've told the patrols, mama said, so I should kill any other stragglers I might see.
__
I hate humans. The filthy, hairless, tall creatures... I found mother today, dead with a barbarian standing over her, a sword deep in her chest. I pray to Lamashtu to show me the way. The second uprising is upon us!
__
Lamashtu calls to me. I can hear her. She asks me to lead the goblins, to destroy all humans in our path. I found a tribe of goblins during my travels east towards the walled city today. After killing their puny chieftain, they hailed me as their leader. Better yet, they have experience killing humans. This is surely a sign.
__
A strange creature approached some of our scouts today. He looked like a lurching, bloated human, but his war cries were Lamasthan in sound and nature. He says his name is Wormgnash, and he brought us purple ooze and told us Lamashtu wishes for us to bathe in it and share it. He tells us to attack Saringallow and force feed this stuff to anyone we don't kill.
__
The bile.. The power.. I have it all!!! The human girl will spill everything we need to know about Saringallow's defenses. We will prevail!
|
|
As the team is searching through the camp, Gallix suddenly doubles over, caught in a coughing fit. He brings his hand to his mouth, and when the coughing stops, his body has returned to its normal musculature. He looks down at his hand and frowns for a moment, like he coughed up a particularly large loogie, then wipes his palm on his pant leg and continues to follow along.
|
|
"Gallix man, you sound terrible, and coughing up blood? Maybe you should have Sirettis take a look at you, those smokes must be bad for you."
"Nixa's time may be short, if it isn't already over, unless she's quite crafty. Lets hope she is. I'm ready whenever you all are to head into the caves. Lets just be sure to have our best set of eyes being wary for goblin traps, that mold on the stairs is no joke!"
|
|
Gallix waves off Peppers and D's questions. "Please, that's nothing. I have been looking into new reagents, though, to make the effects last longer and maybe add some side benefits. Who knows, maybe it'll be a bit gentler on my system too." He shrugs, "But for now, it gets the job done, and that's what we really need. I'm only sorry I don't have much time to prepare a new dose for when we find the bastards who took Nixa and got our asses dragged out into the woods."
|
|
Mr Peppers listens intently to Gallix when he talks about preparing and reagents Perhaps I should learn of this alchemy... it seems interesting. "While I don't know how long your process takes, it likely would be best if we didn't take too much extra time before continuing. Its been an hour already at least, hopefully no one escaped to warn those in the caverns." He pokes at his chest and fails to contact the invisible chain shirt within.
|
|
With the rest of the goblin camp thoroughly inspected, you walk towards the cave. You're able to see inside as you near it, and you can make out that the walls and ceiling are covered with innumerable crude paintings, all depicting goblinoid figures engaged in violent acts.
Inside, you watch on as a large, bile-covered creature rips the door off a cage and pulls out a human victim.
"The camp's been emptied and the bile's all gone. THIS IS ALL YOUR DOING!" He holds the captive up by the throat as if he's about to chokeslam her. The girl coughs violently and winces in pain.
"Sir, longshanks here!!"
As the creature turns to look at you, she manages a swift punch at his arm, and he drops her to the ground.
"You there... Help me defeat this foul beast!" She scrambles away from him, and grabs a sword and shield next to the cage. Evidently bugbears aren't smart enough to properly disarm their captives...
"AHAHAHA.. I don't care if there's one human or a thousand, I'll tear you all limb from limb and feed you to the dogs. For Lamashtu!"
__
__