One part open-air farmer’s market, one part log-cabin trading post, the Otari Market is a gathering place for locals and a one-stop shop for all manner of general goods. As Zin and Wan wander the stalls to sell the goods they acquired from the dungeon, the market's owner, a dour man named Keleeno Lathenar, points them out to the dwarf. "They're the ones what stopped the undead that came spilling out of the graveyard the other day! You'd best go introduce yourself if you wanna join their party."
Zin lurches a bit as the dwarf approaches. It seemed off to him. "What sort of visions?" He was more curious of the vision aspect itself as this is what Zin also sees. Perhaps this dwarf could answer the questions he seeks. "Do you also hear voices with these visions? Like several overlapping at once. Hard to understand?"
"'Visions of danger?'" Mazul looks the dwarf up and down with a raised eyebrow. "Sweetheart, we don't need to have visions of danger. Our regular eyes have been seeing plenty as it is." She pauses. Something seems off about what she just said. Oh right...
"Sorry about the pet name, I swear I don't normally call strangers sweetheart. I've just been hanging around him too much lately." She jerks a thumb towards Wan. "But yes. We're clearing out the Gauntlight which is turning out to be full of all sorts of dangers. I'm Mazul, by the way."
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The armored dwarf says "I've been having dreams which I interpret were sent by Iomedae. I think I might be able to help. I can fight, and I can channel some power from my goddess. And don't you worry, I have travelled for some time and been called many things. Sweetheart is not among the worst of them. If you point me to where I'm needed, I'll lend my sword and shield to the fight. Aaand grab a beer in the downtime, hehehe." His attempt at humor is somewhat awkward.
Zin looks at Mazul. "We can certainly use more hands." He seemed mildly disappointed that these were not the same visions Zin was having, but perhaps they are related. Zin needed to keep this dwarf nearby. "You can join us at the Gauntlight at dusk if you wish. It is a maze down there. Walk with us so we can get to know you a little better and get you caught up to speed. I am Zin."
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"Gauntlight it is... At dusk...", the dwarf says somewhat awkwardly. He completes with "I think I'll keep my armor on until then. Makes me comfortable." He seems to want to eat something, as he keeps looking at a nearby apples stand. He offers "Can I buy you some apples? It's bound to be a better partnership if it starts with some food."
"You're in luck, if you consider getting roped in exploring an ancient dungeon full of monsters trying to kill you 'lucky.' One of our party just had to leave due to...personal issues? Clan issues? Not sure which is more appropriate, but anyway he had to leave and we could use someone good at hitting things very hard with sharp pointy objects. You also mentioned channeling power from your goddess? I hope that's the healing sort of power, because we could definitely use some more of that too. I've been knocked out and seen other people knocked out more in the past few days than in my whole life previously, and I used to work as a bouncer in Absalom." Mazul looks decidedly intrigued by this newcomer.
"Want to head to Crow’s Casks? We can get acquainted over a roast and a beer or two, which seems like a much better start to a partnership than a few apples." Among the many things Mazul has inherited from her orcish ancestry is a taste for meat and mild disdain for fruits and vegetables, which she considers 'elvish food.' In the interests of being a good potential new partner, she even offers, "I can buy the first round."
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Wan rejoins the crew, proudly displaying a gaudy red velvet top hat and matching gloves.
"Look, lovie-kins!" the tengu crows. "They were a bargain, and they bring out the fire in my eyes! That smart cane has two new play-mates with which to...." Wan tails off as he realises the armoured dwarf listens attentively to his ecstatic shopper's delight.
"Dwarf," Wan pronounces simply. An electrically-charged moment passes.
"If that beard were any more attractive, I think I'd want to wear you 'round my neck," Wan gleefully flirts. "Tell me that you have a name that I can whisper to myself in the wee hours of the morning to make me feel safe and secure, you beefy vision."
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Orgun accepts the half-orc's invitation and says "Well, I can channel some healing power from Iomedae, although it is not as powerful as a fully realized cleric. I have used it mostly for myself, but I can use it on others as well. You see, I tend to call the attention of enemies during a fight. But if we are indeed fighting to free this town of an evil presence, then I'll gladly put myself in danger's way."
The dwarf turns to Wan and says "You confuse me bird-man. A beard is a dwarf's pride, you'll have to cut it off my dead body to get it. And even then risk my clan's wrath coming to my beard's honor's defense." He clearly missed the joke, but his reply is not aggressive, only timidly informative.
”I’m sure we can get you your own beard,” Akkaboo informs Wan. ”You don’t have to steal his. Can’t you grow one yourself?” Carefully the goblin tucks a large coloring book under one arm and extends the other hand to the stranger. ”You can call me Akkaboo,” she informs him. ”Oh, and this is Mister Legs!” She holds up her hat to reveal a blue-and-pink blob stuck to her head that doesn’t quite wriggle in time with her movements.
"I wasn't insinuating at all separating your beard from your handsome face, mysterious stranger. I think I'll call you Beardylicious, unless you'd like to suggest to me your name, and then I'll only use that moniker when I want your attention."
"Hello, Orgun," Wan states plainly. "I am Tu Clang Wan. You will meet my friend Proto in due time." The tengu cocks his head with a sudden shift in conversation. "Did I hear that Crow's Casks had their mutton stew on tonight?"
You make your way to Crow's Casks. A sign over the door to this two-story stone building depicts a group of drunk crows perched on a leaky cask. Crow’s Casks is more than just a popular tavern and brewery—it’s a shrine to Cayden Cailean. Its proprietor, a tengu alchemist named Magiloy, gives the establishment its name.
If Magiloy’s misspent youth aboard a half dozen pirate ships in the Shackles gave her anything, it was a fondness for unusual alcohol. Now well into her twilight years, Magiloy likes tending bar and inventing new drinks for locals and visitors to enjoy. The two most popular drinks currently are a spiced pumpkin rum and a sour blackberry ale. Of last month’s somewhat disastrous attempt to brew a goblinpepper stout, Magiloy prefers never to speak.
"Wan!" Magiloy caws when she sees her fellow tengu. "Come in, come in. Have a seat with your friends. I trust your work goes well?"
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"Maggi, you old pecker!" Wan crows in fond return. "You know how it is - never enough shiny bits to do the real work, and always eager mouths looking for a fat worm. Is the mutton on the menu tonight?"
The tengu approaches the bar with something similar to a strut, his herky-jerky movements somehow more herky and jerky than ever before. He performs a sequence of movements akin to an ataxic dance as he replies to Magiloy, the cadence of his words not affected in the least by the odd display.
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Magiloy bobs her head in time with Wan, ruffling the feathers around her neck. "You got it! Nothin' but mutton for my favorite flocker!"
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Orgun enters the tavern feeling actually a bit hungry. He loosens his armor after finding a vacant table, leaning his shield against the table. It should be awkward to sit down with so heavy armor, but the dwarf seems comfortable in it. He says loudly "I'll have the mutton as well!" He wants to order the best ale in the house, but he doesn't want to overextend Mazul's offer to buy the first round.
After they are settled, he says to the group "So what is happening in the graveyard? You said there were undead coming?"
Having never seen Wan and Magiloy interact before, Mazul is amused by the strange approach. "Think it's a mating dance?" she stage-whispers to the others, sending a wink Magiloy's way at the same time.
"Mutton for me too, and I've promised to buy the first round." Mazul grins. "You can surprise me with mine; I'm feeling adventurous today. For everyone else I highly recommend the blackberry ale, but order whatever you want."
She settles into a chair while awaiting her order. "Long story short, our friend Wrin was seeing strange blue lights over at the Gauntlight and asked us to investigate. We were in the middle of doing that when the light turned into a beam, struck the Otari graveyard, animated a bunch of undead, and dropped some sort of spider monster on top of our heads. We don't know how, and we don't know if it could happen again. So our investigations are continuing until we figure it out. Right now we're on the...minus first floor? That doesn't sound right..." Her brow furrows in confusion, then smooths as she figures out a much better way to put it. "One floor below ground level. There's at least one more below that; we stumbled into it while following a green light that claimed to be Otari. Not to be confused with the aforementioned blue lights."
"The first basement," Akkaboo suggests. "And the green light came from the same room where Otari went, so it could have been him. At least he was a nice ghost and didn't try to attack us - though he was not very nice to lead us right to that tendril monster in the fog." She pulls out another coloring book and pokes Mister Legs to get some color on her finger. "So if he went this way..." She draws a few lines on the paper, ignoring the idyllic scene of butterflies in a meadow printed on the page. "...and he came from here..." She adds a few more, then turns the page around. "Hmm..."
"That looks like a bird, Akkie, dove," Wan suggests, admiring Akkaboo's sketch. "Of course, I think most every drawing looks like a bird. Once you see one bird..." Wan leads into a common tengu adage with a raised voice, inclining his body towards Magiloy in order to get her to pick up the refrain.
"Yes, this is definitely some sort of mating ritual." Zin takes a drink of his pumpkin ale. "That about covers it. there is a little bit of everything down there. Hard to prepare for what we can expect truthfully."
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Orgun looks incredulously at Mazul and Akkaboo. "You mean, one of Otari's founders is living restlessly in that keep?" Up until now, Otari was the name of the town, not of a person.
He says "I'll gladly help you survive anything that comes your way in there, but if there is a ghost there, it probably means that someone was terribly wronged in life and now also in death. If you... I mean, we mean to help cleanse that place, we might need to understand what happened during that person's lifetime. I imagine it was during the town's founding."
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"That looks like a bird, Akkie, dove," Wan suggests, admiring Akkaboo's sketch. "Of course, I think most every drawing looks like a bird. Once you see one bird..." Wan leads into a common tengu adage with a raised voice, inclining his body towards Magiloy in order to get her to pick up the refrain.
”...you’ll forever have feathers on the brain,” Magiloy finishes. She clinks her own mug against Wan’s. ”Bottoms up! In Cayden’s name!” The tengu drains her drink.
Wan drains his mug.
"You know who might know more about this mystery?" Wan spontaneously surmises. "Wrin! And I'll bet she's aching for visitors. Come on, Beardylicious - let's introduce you!"
Wan checks his haste with a raised feathered hand.
"I mean, after the mutton stew, of course. I'm not a SAVAGE."
"Introducing you to Wrin is a good idea." Mazul agrees. "I'm personally not convinced that light was Otari; Vandy suggested it might be something more akin to a will-o'-the-wisp given how it led us straight into danger...twice. But Akkaboo's right that it could have been him. We just don't know."
After finishing at Crow's Cask, you head up to Wrin's Wonders. Wrin is happy to see you, and extends a hand to shake Ogrun's. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Sir Stoneheart. I trust you will be a stalwart addition to the group."
The tiefling spends quite some time studying the stars and consulting her charts. "Hmm... 'The green spirit will not lead you astray. Brave the dangers to reap your reward.' It seems like it is a good idea to find the light that claimed to be Otari, though you will likely have to fight your way past more monsters until you can finally track it down. As always, be cautious in your exporations!"
"Reading's never turned me into a frog." Akkaboo's brow furrows in thought. "Or at least I don't remember ever turning into a frog. But I've read lots of stuff, so there should have been lots of opportunities for froggage."
Zin smiles as he was right on following the light. "Alright, then lets meet back up at dusk. Get some rest in the meantime."
When you are ready, you return to Gauntlight Keep and descend to the first dungeon level to continue exploring.
A long wooden table sits in the center of this room, surrounded by several wooden chairs. Only the chair to the north seems particularly comfortable, although its cracked leather padding is mostly decayed. It doesn’t seem like anybody has been in this room for a long time. There is nothing of value here.
Wan, comfortably ensconced in the bulky suit of mail that he refers to as Proto, peers about the room with Proto's helmet popped back so as to not obscure his view. You get the sense that Wan does this in the same manner that someone would peer over the top of their spectacles.
"Interesting signs of evolved living," Wan murmurs, heading straight for the leathery remnant of a chair. Before he touches it, he looks carefully at the thing. "This looks like some sort of macabre dining scene."
"I am convinced that this room holds the secrets to the Gauntlight!" Wan melodramatically announces, holding his hands suspended over the leather chair.
"NAW!" he chortles, smacking the disintegrating leather chair. "There's nothing here worth our bloods, sweat, and tears."
Mazul looks around curiously. "So this room was designed so that all the peons would sit around the table, shifting uncomfortably on chairs that reflect their lack of status, while the important person presided at the head." She nods, satisfied. "Definitely a conference room."
"There's a room near where we found the prisoners that we haven't opened yet. Give that one a look next?"
The air in the room Mazul indicates is cool and moist. A low stone well sits to the east. Armor, weapons, and tools lie in heaps in the north.
The heap of gear consists of three suits of studded leather armor, two rapiers, one broken rapier, three sets of thieves’ tools, a lesser healing potion, and 13 gp.
This well drops 40 feet down to a large pool of water in a natural reservoir. Anyone who leans over the well can hear a strange sound drifting up from below—splashing combined with what sounds like a small crowd chattering. The rope and bucket once used to draw water up from below are long gone, but the metal bracket in the ceiling is sufficiently strong to anchor a rope if you want to try to climb down.
Wan glances briefly at the loot, and then the well.
"Did someone decide to take an impromptu dip in the bird bath?" Wan asks under his breath.
Wan cannot make any sense of the voices, as they all seem to be talking over each other and muttering unintelligibly.
Zin pulls some sort of dust from one of his pouches. He sprinkles it down into the well where they congeal onto each other and begin to glow like small bits of stars hanging into the air. "Let's see what we are dealing with." The voices talking over each other make Zin's skin crawl as it is all too familiar "Are you what has been calling me here?"
As the dancing lights move about and illuminate the chamber below, you can make out something moving within the water. The shape comes closer to investigate the light, and the voices grow louder. You can see a hideous amorphous blob of yammering mouths and oozing, fleshy sludge. Its innumerable mouths constantly jabber and babble in a stream of sound that disrupts your thoughts!
”Eeeeek!” Akkaboo shrieks, her hands clapped to her ears. ”Nononogoawaymakeitstop!” Lashing out instinctively, the goblin punches Mazul with a flaming fist before kicking wilding in her general direction.
Mazul can't quite understand what's happening. There are voices whispering and yelling and screaming...
In a panic, she starts striking madly at the first person she sees.
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As they reach the keep, Orgun promptly draws his sword and moves first, trusting his shield arm. In the conference room, he looks at it trying to imagine what sort of discussions took place in there.
After reaching the well, he keeps trying to defend against enemies from outside the well, not inside. But then the group finds interesting things in the well, so he pays attention to it. Which is when the confusing babbling start.
After getting a grip on his mind, he sees that others around him are not so fortunate. He sheathes his sword and moves to intercede, trying to keep people form hitting each other.
He says "Stop it! The babbling is getting in your heads!"
Wan keeps his wits about himself at the strange yammering noises. Fortunately, spending any time near a tengu rookery replicates the odd noise quite nicely, so Wan finds it to be nothing more than mildly irritating and reminiscent of his adolescent years. He considers the source.
As he watches his colleagues trade confused blows with one another, the tengu withdraws from the scene.
"Fellow heroes of legend, your stories are being tarnished. Get a grip!"
Wan recognizes the creature as a gibbering mouther. Gibbering mouthers are among the strangest creatures found either aboveground or below. Perpetually ravenous, these aberrations are always seeking their next meals, ever eating but never sated. Scholars have wasted countless hours in attempts to make sense of gibbering mouthers’ noises—studies that put researchers into danger and give results that are contradictory and confusing at best.
Mazul barely puts a scratch on Zin as the half-orc's blade slices across his arm. , though in his own mind he doesn't hear Orgun and instead draws his curved blade and attacks Akkaboo.
His mind suddenly clears and Zin quickly pulls back his small stars of light. "Shut the door quickly or drop all the fire you have down that well."
AC 17 (18 w/ shield); Curse Stage: None (-0 AC)
HP 21/22 | Resistance Physical 3; Harm 5
Hero Points 1/3
Focus Points 2/3
Spells (1) 0/3 |
Wand of Heal (1st) 0/1
Curse Benefit: Resistance: All Physical 3
Minor - (Enfeebled 1; -2 to saves, Grapple, Shoved and Forced Movement)
Moderate - (Enfeebled 2; -3 to saves, Grapple, Shoved and Forced Movement)
Once Zin and the others seem more in control of themselves, and before Zin pulls his light away. Wan approaches the well.
"A moment there, Zin. I've got an idea." He turns to his companions as he pulls both of the remaining fireball beads from his necklace. "Everyone, prepare to run if this doesn't go as planned, ok?"
Without hesitation, he drops both beads down the well.
Wan tosses the featureless hemp necklace leftover down the well as well.
The creature dodges the worst of the fireballs, but is still burnt by them. It dives back under the water and swims out of sight.