When you are all ready, you descend down the stairs to the lower level of Thistletop which doubles back and opens up to a larger room.
Throughout the staircase there are hooded lanterns lit, casting flickering shadows against the walls. The ceiling is fairly short at 8ft, clearly constructed for shorter beings than yourselves.
A single lantern hangs from a hook on the wall next to where the stairs enter this room from the north. Several rickety doors open into this room, and a few discarded dog pelt rugs lie forgotten in the northeast corner.
Heading to the door to your left with no other signs on which way to head, you come across crates, barrels, and mounds of miscellaneous refuse heaped against the walls. To the north, the sound of crashing surf echoes.
The junk here seems to be worthless but collected intentionally.
Melody had a lovely night of cuddles (and other things), so had been all rosey cheeked grins all morning. Until they descended into the goblin's underlayer. She points up at the lantern "Goblins don't need that, right? So that other lady might be down here?"
"Maybe." Morgana replies. "Let's keep going this way. If it opens to the ocean then we can turn back in the knowledge that there's nothing important behind us."
Continuing further, the narrow corridor opens out into a wider echoing cavern.
The floor of this cavern seems strangely polished and smooth. To the east, a thick curtain of vines and nettles hangs down over a wide opening
overlooking the Varisian Gulf.
As Morgana wonders over to the edge of the opening as tentacle lashes out of the undergrowth, attempting to grab hold of her! Luckily for Morgana, it can't quite get a grip as it wraps around her thigh before falling back away again.
Morgana cuts down viciously at the tentacle before pulling back, hopefully out of range!
"did she trip? Oh she does not like that vine." Melody says quietly then decides to try and make the paladine feel better. "It's okay Morgana, we all... Watch Out! the vines are moving! oh, she knows that slready"
"I do have lots of tentacle stories. I went through a phase Queen Thumper more than BunBun has troubles with them."
Amethyst moves up to attack the tentacle monster!
Jenica draws her spectral blades and moves in to assist.
Vasia sends a medium-sized rock flinging towards the strange creature.
She turns to Swan and asks "What do you think?"
---
When the tentacles arrive, Sabriyya gives it the ole evil eye, trying to reduce its defensives against future hexes.
The mass of swirling tentacles is now evident amongst the undergrowth, attached to a wall, as two more tentacles lash out again, one with a stinger on the end pierces Morgana's shoulder as she feels a burning pain start spreading quickly.
In retaliation, Morgana slices off a tentacle as it flops to the floor uselessly and Amethyst and Vasia both manage to visibly hurt it, as it retreats a couple foot up the wall.
-17
Amethyst attacks again!
Morgana fights off the poison even though it burns rather badly. She steps fowards again and stabs upwards.
"Me again. The tentacles seem to like you?". as it is still morning somewhere the halfling has nothing clever to say (but the inspiration lingers from thoughts of queen Thumper and her love of thickish graspy thingd) as she runs up and taps the paladin with her wand.
Jenica's phantom form moves around the tentacles, bashing her ectoplasmic weapons against it where she can.
Bolstered by her success so far, Vasia tries it with an even bigger rock.
Sabriyya tries again, this time to lower the defenses of the tentacle.
The creature wilts under Sabriyya's eye and that weakens it enough that Amethyst, Morgana and Vasia can all lands blows. The creature slumps from the wall into a tentacled pile. Following the path around the cliff edge brings you to another cave. Dozens of strange dead bodies lie scattered about this room. Most are sea birds and ospreys, but there are six dead goblins here as well. Each body is literally skin and bones as if all of the interior organs and muscles have somehow been drained away, leaving behind skeletons draped with leathery, slowly rotting skin.
The only significant body still wears a suit of small +1 hide armor and a masterwork shortbow.
Finding nothing else of interest you turn left and through a door you find yourselves confronted with a three-way intersection. There's a double door directly ahead, a single door to the right and another to the left which probably leads back to roughly where you began.
"Well we love a big double door?" Morgana says with a grin, pointing forwards.
"Those are some ... uh ... big doors," Vasia says, eying the double portals with wariness. "Bunica? Would you take a look in there."
The phantom rolls her eyes and her image shifts, losing it physicality. She then drifts, incorporeally, through the large doors.
Delighted that Swan would admit to wanting her above others, Sabriyya perks up with a smile and nods "I'd like that." Patting the floor with her hand, she says "Now come over here and help me keep the chill out."[/spoiler]
Sabriyya does what she can to take a listen at the door as well.
Melody tugs at the ghost's skirt. "I'll check the door to make sure it is safe to open while you're gone... be safe... please." then the halfling will check for traps and disarm them if necessary.
Feeling the halfling's warm hand pass through her, Jenica turns and squats down slightly, looking Melody in the eye. "Absolutely, My Lovely," she says with a wink. "Besides, what's the worst that could happen." She leans in and presses cool, ephemeral lips against Melody's cheek and then turns and stands back up to pass through the large doors.
Stone fonts containing frothy dark water sit to the north and south of the eastern entrance to the room, and twin banks of stone pillars run the length of the long chamber. At the western end, shallow stairs rise to a platform about two feet off the ground. The walls surrounding this platform are lit by hanging braziers that emit glowing red smoke, giving the place an unnerving crimson lighting that throws the bas-relief carvings of countless monsters feasting on fleeing humans into lurid display. A black marble altar stone, its surface heaped with ashes and bone fragments, squats before a ten-foot-tall statue. The sculpture depicts a very pregnant but otherwise shapely naked woman who wields a kukri in each taloned hand and has a long reptilian tail, birdlike taloned feet, and the snarling head of a three-eyed jackal with a forked tongue. The left kukri flickers with fiery orange light while the right one glows with a cold blue radiance.
Jenica frowns at the obscene statue and the magical weapons before slipping back through the large doors. She describes what she finds and waits for their decision.
"Lamashtu." Morgana says with a frown once Jenica reports back. "Mother of Monsters. I can see why goblins and such would worship her, even if its only in their own strange ways. We'll have to go in, but be careful. If this is anything like that cavern under Sandpoint there may well be guardians."
She waits for everyone else to agree and then pulls on the door.
Vasia pales a bit when Jenica describes the room and Morgana explains the meaning. After a moment she nods and Jenica assumes a more physical form, her ghostly sabres at the ready.
As Morgana pushes through the doors, two creatures previously lurking in the shadows of the pillars rush towards you all.
These emaciated, hairless canines have a strange air of menace and cruelty about them and they unleash blood-curdling howls. Fortunately Morgana stands tall in the face of fear and her example inspires the rest of you to fight off the effects. The battle is nasty but thankfully short, finished off by Jenica thrusting her sabre deep into the mastiff's chest.
With the hounds dead, silence returns and you are able to investigate the chapel properly.
A doorway to the left of the altar leads to what appears to be a crude prison.
The southern wall of this room is a bank of cells with iron doors, six in all. The rest of the room is obviously a torture chamber; a rack sits against the far wall, an iron maiden stands to the north, and a fire pit smolders below a spiky cage dangling from a chain in the ceiling to the east.
A room off the side, , proves to be a dusty nest of rags, dog hides, and straw.With a long workbench cluttered with pliers, hooks, tongs, saws, and knives running along the wall. Amongst the various torture implements, you find rusted keys that look to be a similar age to the prison cells in the previous room.
"Let's check these doors first." Morgana suggests, pointing to the row of small doors.
"I... grew up watching goblins in the trash heaps, thought they were funny... not anymore. Not since that night... but Really not now." Melody will look over the doors first to make sure there are no traps before opening them with the keys.
Starting with the first door on your left, Melody opens it up with a key after trying a couple of others first.
The walls of this room are lined with small wooden cages. Inside each cage is a dirty mound of straw, the stench is overpowering. Two of the cages hold two baby goblins with oversized heads and floppy, almost comical ears, that when you walk in begin wailing at the top of their lungs.
"They are somehow simultaneously adorable and disgusting," Amethyst says as she peers at the baby goblins. "What do we do with them? We cannot simply murder them, nor can we leave them here to starve."
"The only other alternative is to take them to Sandpoint." Morgana replies, "And if we do that they will be killed upon arrival. Unless you wish to raise them Amethyst? Their fate is sealed, unless we take them upstairs when we leave and put them in what passes for the goblins larder."
Amethyst frowns. "Surely not all goblins are vicious monsters? Maybe we can try to find a more benevolent tribe that might raise them to do good rather than evil."
"We can ask Shalelu but her response will almost certainly be that we should kill them." Morgana replies. "Leave some food with them for now and we move on. When we're leaving we can think about what to do with them then."
"Oh!" Melody pokes her head around someone's knee, and then closer to the cage. She pulls out some trail rations and pushes it slowly into the cage telling the babies it is food in Goblin. "The trash heap goblins, the ones I was talking about before. They are cowardly but never attacked me, I learned how to speak goblin from them mostly. Maybe they would take them..."
Vasia looks at the young creatures in disgust. "I don't think it would be right to just kill them," she says. Jenica snorts. Vasia turns to the phantom. "I suppose that that's exactly what you suggest?" The spectral figure simply shrugs.
"Well then when we leave we'll take them down to the beach and hopefully they can find a new home there." Morgana says in an attempt to close the debate. "But now we need to move on."
"Why don't we just leave this little problem for later? There is no reason we need to distract ourselves for what we came here for. Should we not fall in the task ahead of us, we can later worry ourselves over the fate of little goblins."
Moving quietly further on as not to disturb the babies any further, you come across another hallway that twists sharply to the right with a series of doors.
The first room reveals a bedroom with a faint musty odour. The bed is covered with matted gray and black hair, and bloodstains mar the stone floor, while a morbid stack of birds’ feet lies heaped on the floor by the side of the bed.
The room on the right handside of the corridor reveals another bedroom. This one-person bedroom is inhabited! The bed itself is rumpled and unmade with a tall man lying in it half dressed and asleep and a half-eaten meal of bread and smoked salmon sits on the nightstand. A few articles of dirty clothing sit at the foot of the bed.
Clearly the sound of the latch opening on the door was enough to wake the man and he sits up gorggily. He mumbles in goblin;"Urgh. Get outta here." before rubbing his eyes and sitting up staring at you in shock. He quickly reaches to the side to grab his sword.
"Don't!" Morgana says, holding up a gauntlet'd fist. "There's one of you and five of us, you would last perhaps thirty seconds if you were very skilled, but this does not have to end with violence. We came to defend Sandpoint from the goblin tribe and other dangers here in Thistletop. If you will swear that you are not that danger then we can all continue on with our days without rancor. If you were willing to help us there may even be profit in it for you."
Jenica grins and glances at Vasia.
You can't fool your bunica. You get the tingles when she takes that commanding tone, don't you?
The dark haired girl's only response is a flush of her skin.
"It's a guy, just a normal guy? Does he have some horrible mutation or one big glaring eye?" too many legs and butts in her way to see the goblin mumbling man and she needs details to tell the story right later.
The man freezes just before he grabs his sword, his eyes still held fast on Morgana. His loose shirt hangs open revealing his toned chest.
"When you say 'other' dangers, I presume that you mean Nualia, she is the honcho around here. I might be able to help with that. She has been paying me to be her bodyguard, but if the price is right....." His gravelly voice trails off, letting the thought hang in the air.
"What is your name, sir? And what is your price?" Amethyst asks, pointedly not trying to look at his muscular chest.
"Orik Vancaskerkin at your service. My current employer pays five platinum a week." He goes to stand, warily eyeing everybody in case they make a move. "I'm happy if you can meet that. I do have a little information I can share to sweeten the deal" He suggests, his jawline is ruggedly handsome and he sets his strong browline as he tries to bargain.