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"I don't, but maybe I can empty it. Ernir, would your spell to clean and dry your robes work too?" Itka casts Mage hand, forming the greasy-black spectral hand into a cupped shape and tries to scoop water out of the boat. As she scowls in concentration, her brows and the corners of her lips dive deeply.
Ernir, you realize that the clubs the thugs has could be fashioned into short paddles with a bit of work. It wouldn't be fit for open water, but for this it should do. The only other place that might have materials would be the initial playhouse basement. There wasn't anything you saw that immediately seems useful, but there was a lot of debris.
Itka and Highwire manage to get all the water out of the boat while Ernir is fashioning some makeshift paddles. Once they're done you launch the boat and paddle to the other side of the large pond. The boat remains afloat and you land on a rocky beach covered in bits of assorted refuse meets that the water to the southeast.
To the northwest, what once must have been a natural cavern wall partially collapsed some time ago by the settling ground on the water side, revealing an area beyond of worked stone. The chamber within is large and constructed of a pale green stone. Multiple rounded passages worm their way to the northeast and southwest, while a grand staircase rises to the northwest. A feeling of distant
foreboding is noticeable throughout the area.
Ernir and Itka notice that the water from the pond seems to have eroded away a wall that was separating the sewers from wherever you are now. The wall probably collapsed only a few weeks ago.
None of you can find any tracks in the area. You do notice, however, waterlines on the stones. It appears that this entire area floods with the rise of the tide, and even when the waters recede to their lowest levels there are large puddles and slick, wet floors everywhere. Either nothing has passed here in a while or any tracks have been washed away. Right now the water varies from an inch to a foot deep, but you know in a few hours, most of this could be underwater.
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"Oo, me knows this tunnels. Me hear stories... Walky-dead things lurk here." Zug whispers, growing terror in his voice. "Zombies, and bonies and smellies and whatnots. We best be very very careful."
The goblin gazes where Highwire is pointing, nods to approve and starts very quietly moving towards the west exit.
As he walks, Zug starts quietly humming and singing, mostly for his own reassurance.
"Everybody knows,"
goblins taste foul.
Not passing for a meal,
even for a ghoul."
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As he walks, Zug starts quietly humming and singing, mostly for his own reassurance.
"Everybody knows,"
goblins taste foul.
Not passing for a meal,
even for a ghoul."
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Taking a moment to grab a handful of pebbles, Itka dumps them into her pocket, eliciting a series of angry squeaks from its current occupant. Her expression darkening suddenly, she places a hand over the pocket and growls softly: "Hush, you!" Once her pocket is acting like a normal pocket again, she follows after Highwire and Zug, trying to keep her eyes peeled as she does so.
Highwire and Zug lead the group to the west. You explore several corridors, stepping in small puddles and sloshing through deeper water. The walls are made of stone and the ceilings are about 8 feet high. Darkness pervades over the entire area, but between your light sources and several of you with darkvision, you manage. The sense of foreboding itches at you.
As you are walking through the corridors, you notice a hole broken in one of the walls. A prominent hole has been opened in the western wall of the passage here from the opposite side. Some of the bricks have crumbled and fallen, or perhaps been knocked loose, creating a small opening into a room beyond. The walls of this inner room show signs of being scratched or clawed.
When Erryn looks into the hole for something that was trapped, she recoils as she finds the thing still inside. An undead creature sits inside, shrouded in darkness and resting back on its haunches. It's skin is taut over spare flesh, and the ends of his fingers are worn to the bone.
It calls out as it sees Erryn's face with a raspy, gulping voice. "Free me... Free me! I...the city, take me to the city!" Despite it's calls though, it stays crouched and huddled.
Erryn realizes this is a ghoul, an deadly undead creature that can paralyze victims and then has the hunger to eat their flesh. Its bite also carries a disease, the aptly named 'ghoul fever', that if allowed to progress will outright kill a victim and then they will rise as a ghoul themselves.
Ghouls are quite intelligent and, more so than almost any other undead, prone to forming societies and cultures (if vile and repugnant ones centered around flesh eating and acts of depravity) in tangled warrens below boneyards.
Erryn thinks the fact this one is speaking to you isn't all that remarkable, though it is odd that it wants to go to the city rather than simply eat your face. Though, there are a lot of people in the city...
The ghoul hears you talking and begins to plead. His harsh voice like stone scraping on stone. "No! I must get to the city! You will take me! They must knooow!!!"
It hisses at Ernir's anger, but answers, "The city up above. It still is there, yes? My...my secret must be told. I have kept it for soooo long..."
Ernir's darkvision catches a glimpse of scratchings on the inside of the room holding the ghoul. It seems to read, "Candren's wish" over and over.
The ghoul's eyes dart around nervously at Highwire's suggestion, trying to see out of the hole from its vantage point. "My secret, that is…to keep…it burns in my mind, a secret to bargain with. I know much. And greatly does a family in Absalom fear my secret. Prithee, I beg you to free me. Guide me to the surface and I will share my secret. Perhaps then I will know peace…"
Ernir recognizes one instance of the name: Goodman Hugen of House Candren, a member of the Grand Council of Absalom and First Harbormaster.
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Itka just barely prevents her venomous retort from crossing her lips: We're not *stupid*! [smaller]Bringing a ghoul up into a city of the living. The nerve! He'd prob'ly attack us as soon as our guard was down.
She decides she's listened to its wheedling long enough. Growling menacingly, she addresses the hole without bothering to poke her head toward it. "Look. We're not letting a ghoul up into the city. And we can see that you'll get through on your own soon enough. So you have two options. Tell us and then die, or don't tell us and die anyway. Choose quickly, because if you don't, we will."
The creature seems not to even notice the heat in Itka's words. It retorts back in a hissing and spitting speech. "Canst thou…imagine…the rage I feel? My heart beats not, yet it burns for vengeance…To speak the truth is my deepest desire…Know thee this: my jailers were not men of law but base criminals. No just sentence do I serve!"
"’Tis true that…I hunger. I control that…hunger…for now. Discipline I have learned…yes, discipline. Hunger is as nothing unto me now. Its claws have lost their grip…This I swear: no harm to the bodies of the living will I bring…So long as I see justice done. Then…peace. Forever."
Itka notices that his speech is of the sort used 500 years ago. Furthermore, if the creature is telling the truth, it's likely that telling his secret to the city would release his soul and allow him to pass on to the Boneyard.
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Itka's jaw works as she considers what she's observed and compares it wo what she's learned since joining the Pathfinder Society. "Hmp. We could report his location to the authorities. They could take his deposition from here, or come prepared to transport him properly to the surface. If we tell them he'll be able to break through in less than a week, they'll make sure to send a group down soon enough. Hmp. Unless one of you honey-tongued folks can convince him to spill the beans now. But we're running out of time before the tide comes in."
The ghoul snarls and shakes his head. "How do I know you will honor it? No, take me to the city! They must hear it from me that Candren's fortunes are not their own. Filthy cheats sentenced me to death! My heart burns for vengeance!" He spits and growls. "Bind me, shackle me, do what you will. But take me to the city!"
Itka realizes that the undead’s information could be quite damaging to one person in particular: Goodman Hugen of House Candren, a member of the Grand Council of Absalom and First Harbormaster. She has also heard whispers of Hugen’s secret sympathies for equality and ties to Andoran and understands the story of his ancestors might undermine his relationships with others who are fighting for equality and freedom.
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Zug peers down the hole, feeling slight disgust at the sight of the undead creature.
"Absalom not very tolerant for goblins either, before. But people get used to." the goblins thinks aloud. "Maybe they learn accept ghouls, too."
"Maybe in 500 more years..." he adds a bit later, giving the idea a bit more though.
"Me say we look around first, then decide what do with ghoul."
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Birgid finally speaks up, after thinking through the strange request and some of the ramifications.
"You do not trust our word to take up your cause if it be just--and I for one do not trust your word to restrain your hunger. We would be fools to free you on the basis of an unknown secret, and whatever wrongs were done to you before, the current Lord Candren is a good soul who fights for just causes. I would not see him harmed without very good cause." She places a hand on the stone next to the ghoul's peek-hole, tone sympathetic. "Your existence is a miserable one, and I would see you freed from it. But you must extend trust to receive it, stranger."
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"Ten seconds. Then we gotta go. The tide waits for no one." Itka says this more to the group than to the ghoul. She really doesn't want to drown down here. The image of black rats feasting on her own corpse pulses through her mind, causing a violent shudder. An expression of contempt consumes her features as her hand hovers threateningly near the pocket holding her rat familiar. After a few seconds, she forces her hand down and her expression switches to stern determination. "Hmp."
The ghoul snarls and you hear its heavy breathing as you walk away. You also hear scratching start up as it continues to try and work its way out of the prison.
You leave the ghoul behind as it continues to try to scrape against the stones and continue to explore.
This wide gallery is lined with a colorful mural depicting a figure performing some sort of magical ritual over an expanse of ocean. His arms raised, he beckons to something beneath the waves, and is answered by a frothing, foaming section of the water that hints at a massive shape rising.
To the northwest, stairs rise to another large room. An elegantly carved figure towers over the room, combining the body of an eel with the visage of a horrifying deep-sea fish and four grasping tentacles.
Suddenly coming down the stairs you spot several animated corpses. They shamble towards your sensing your life. Two shamble towards Highwire and Ernir. They swing at them both.
Round 1
Red
Blue
Erryn
Zug
Ernir (11/19)
Itka
Purple
Birgid
Highwire (8/19)