The doors open directly to a short corridor, leading to another set of double doors. One of the doors is ajar, and beyond it carries the scent of the sea and the sound of growling dogs.
"Third verse, same as the first," Nicat says as he approaches the next set of doors and gives them a listen and a quick examination.
Eostre fishes a few pickles out and gives each goblin one before she follows the others.
"Uvidíme se vůls. Chovejte se slušně a budete pravděpodobně přežít."
Nicat peeks through the door, and into the courtyard beyond.
This large courtyard is open to the sky. Tenacious clumps of partially trampled grass grow fitfully here and there in the hard-packed earth, in places stained with blood or scratched with furrows. To the north, what appear to be two dead goblins lie slumped at the entrance to an outbuilding.
There are six goblin dogs currently in the courtyard--three of them are chewing on the dead goblins, one is sleeping in the shade offered by the outbuilding, and two are in the corner relieving themselves.
Nicat closes the door as quietly as he can, then whispers over his shoulder to Evelyn, "We don't want to go in there, not if we're trying to be sneaky."
Nicat holds a finger to his lips, then heads back the way they came, remembering a door they went past.
The door *CREAKS* as Nicat closes it.
...
...
...
...
...one of the goblin dogs' ears twitches, but it snorts and rolls over to go back to sleep.
The door Nicat peeks through appears to have been recently broken open--several nails lie strewn around it, and a pair of broken planks are stuck to the door. Beyond it is a storage room of sorts, packed with half-open crates and barrels of grain. One of the barrels has been broken into--a hole has been punched in the bottom of it, and around it is the stink of pickle brine & vinegar.
Ekan nods, wisely deciding not to talk if it's going to wake up the dogs.
Evelyn shakes her head and whispers, "No, we certainly don't."
She grins when she sees the storage room that obviously held the stolen pickles. Shaking her head again, this time from amusement, Evelyn heads back to the room where the party entered the building.
"Here next?" Evelyn asks softly as she walks up to another pair of doors and waits for the others to join her.
Once the others are with her, Evelyn carefully opens one of the doors just enough to see what's on the other side.
"Hang on, Evelyn, hang on!" Nicat whispers fiercely as he catches up to her. "You guys are always just charging into things, your lucky I'm here to bring a little calm, measured rationality into the picture."
With an indignant look, he puts his ear to the door and listens for a long moment, then scans the outside of the door for anything tricksy those goblins might have gotten up to.
"Seriously?!" Eostre mutters at Nicat's mention of "rationality."
"After a time, you just of let his words blow by and then resume what you were doing anyway..." Ekan advises with a gentle smile to take any edge off.
Evelyn lets Nicat do his thing, then does exactly what Ekan just described: she resumes what she was doing anyway.
Conner whispers to the others. "But seriously though, how about burning this place down?"
Nicat hears the sounds of a goblin barking what sounds like orders and laughing maniacally.
Peeking beyond them reveals a short corridor leading to an ornately carved pair of oaken doors, bearing carved images of dogs and horses being set on fire by laughing goblins. An orange glow is coming from under the doors.
Nicat closes the door, describing what he's seen to the others. "My first thought was that we should avoid this place," he says quietly, "and go check out the rest of the fortress. But we're going to run into trouble at some point, and this might be the boss man's room. If we can take him out, maybe the other goblins will run away. Maybe?"
He glances at each of the others, then adds, "And even if they don't, at least this way we're choosing when to fight, right?"
Conner whispers back, "Nicat's right we know where they are now, if we start a fight or get found somewhere else we can't catch them by surprise, and they have time to get ready to come drop a world of pain on us at their leisure. Come on, they're only goblins, I bet I could just lean against the door and they'd never force it open. Or, how about this. That broken pickle barrel. Get a couple pieces, and whittle them into wedges. We go in, shut the door, then just jam them in at the bottom. They'll hold the doors while we gang up on whatever's in there. Plus, I bet if we just toss their boss' head out the door at them, they'll run for it."
"Clever, I yield to the more tactically minded," Ekan says amiably
"It's a smarter idea than that dumb ballista."
"The ballista was brilliant, you just can't understand my genius!"
"I don't know about the ballista, but let's do this."
Evelyn heads back to the pickle barrel and tries to break off a piece.
"Hnnng!"
The piece of wood comes loose with a good tug from Evelyn.
"Yay!"
Evelyn wants to walk off, but stops in her tracks. "Uhm... Do we need more? How many?"
"Hey, guys, let's argue about the ballista plan later, when we've finished the job here, eh?" Nicat says, keeping his voice down and tipping his head toward the double doors to remind his companions of what they're about. "We could even head back to Sandpoint later and task the carpenters there to build us up a giant ballista, and see how they do. Maybe get a few bottles of beer and watch as they try to put it together, eh? But for now, there's gobbers."
Once Evelyn has gathered the necessary barrel staves and returned, Nicat joins the others in the hallway, letting Ekan and Conner take the lead. "I'm ready to see what's in there. Everyone else good to go?"
"We'll need as many as we can get, we don't know if there are other doors into that room."
"Ready when you are," Ekan says
"I'm running low on spells, but I'm ready," Eostre says, fingering her glaive protectively.
Evelyn nods. "Ready."
Nicat gives Conner a nudge, saying quietly, "Open the door!"
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The doors open easily to reveal what appears to be some sort of throne room beyond.
This large throne room is decorated with hanging furs along its walls, mostly black-and-red striped firepelt skins, various dog pelts, and in some cases, what look like horse hides. Four square timbers support the ceiling, their faces studded with dozens of iron spikes, with the lower reaches decorated with dozens of impaled and severed hands in various stages of decay. To the northeast, a wooden platform supports a throne heaped with dog pelts an d horse hides. Dog skulls adorn the armrests and a horse skull leers over the throne's back.
Sitting on the throne, with a large striped gecko on his left and a singing goblin on his right, is a goblin wearing what appears to be a cross between a bronze helmet and a crown. He's wearing a well-crafted and oiled, small-sized breastplate, and carrying a sharp-looking short sword. He's cackling with glee watching the antics of five goblin commandos, all of them fighting what look like garish caricatures of the party against a backdrop of a burning Sandpoint. The cartoony party is being stabbed and beaten up by the goblins.
The crown-wearing goblin looks up from the tableau and arches an eyebrow. "Ah! The longshanks themselves, then?"
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Eostre glares at the blatant mockery. She didn't know just what spell was at work here, but the fact that the illusion version of her had the wrong color hair and was far too skinny pissed her off.
"You must be Ripnugget."
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"A name I wear with pride." He chuckles and hops off his throne. "Gotta hand it to ya--not every day a bunch of longshanks can sneak their way into my--*ahem* our home. Gets one thinkin', ya know?"
Ekan frowns at the illusion, "Apparently your 'thoughts' involve enjoying cruelty."
"Eostre!" Nicat whispers very loudly. "Look! It's us fighting goblins! How can that be, if we're over here, not fighting goblins? What's going on here?"
He pauses and stares intently at the tableau before adding, "I think I'm taller than that."
"It's an illusion spell, dummy!" Eostre snaps.
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Ripnugget chuckles and waves to his warchanter, who stops singing. The tableau fades out of existence.
"So, what is it you want here, then? Can't be a social call--I imagine you'd have brought more fire and dogs to slaughter if you were."
"Hey! Where'd they go? I mean, where'd we go?" Nicat exclaims. He looks down and pats his chest, muttering, "Phew! I'm still here!"
He looks up to Ripnugget and says, "We're here for Tsuto! You going to hand him over?"
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"Oh. Him."
Ripnugget slouches back down on his throne with a frown on his face. "Why? What'd he do to you? Steal your woman? Kill your dog? Scrawl your names on the wall?"
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"No. No trades, no insults, no jibes or threats or posturing. We're going to kill you. And your friends there. And every single goblin in this place who doesn't give up and run. And I still might kill the ones I can catch up to. Your only chance, is to hand him over and leave."
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Conner's simple, to-the-point rebuttal actually causes Ripnugget's face to screw up in anger. "Fine. TO BUSINESS, THEN! SOUND THE ALARM!"
Unfortunately, it appears Ripnugget has underestimated just how flat-footed his goblins are.
"Well, I guess that's how we're doing it..." Nicat mutters. "Though I guess it's a good thing the other ones of us disappeared, that would have made for a tough fight...but I could have taken the other me, he was so short!"
Turning his attention back to the impending fight, Nicat calls out to his friends, "We got this you guys! You've seen how lucky we are, we've already snuck through most of this stupid fort without getting spotted. These cursed gobbers don't stand a chance!"
He takes a few steps into the room and makes ready to attack with his sling!
Evelyn quickly 5-foot steps over to the doors the party entered the tiny hallway through and closes both doors.
"Eostre! រហ័ស, ដាក់ឈើខាងក្រោមទ្វារទាំងនេះ! ពេលដែលបានមកដើម្បីជួយមិនអាចវាយប្រហារពួកយើងពីក្រោយ!"
"Let us put an end to them then!" Ekan races forward and if he can, delivers a flying kick to the nearest goblin
"នៅលើវា, Evelyn!"
Eostre grabs the wedges and begins shoving them under the doors to help bar them.
As Eostre & Evelyn get to work on barring the doors, Ekan runs into the room and kicks one of the commandos upside the head. The commandos rally and four of them converge on the audacious monk, screaming and swinging horsechoppers!
Three horsechoppers miss their marks, but one manages to slice across Ekan's chest and wound him!
The last commando in the room, in a rare display of intelligence, promptly runs out a side door in the southeast corner of the room. He starts bellowing in Goblin:
"Vstávejte vy idioti! Vetřelci!"
As Ekan's hit most of the damage is routed to Evelyn, who quickly swallows the blood that wells up in her mouth.