While Nico and Alistair consider how best to deal with the remaining goblins, Lief covers the bottom half of his face with his shirt and turns away from the ‘latrine’. “Sorry, new guy,” he says to Bjorn, “but the one with the least seniority gets the sh!tty jobs… so, you’re going to have pull that chest out here.”
Once the chest is in the hallway, he inspects it for traps.
"Do not worry, wouldn't want any soft hands to get hurt yeah?" Bjorn says, stepping over the worse of the pile within the latrine. What was a bit of shit and piss compared to treasure, wealth, and glory? The burley man would hoist the chest up, taking measure of its weight, before carrying the chest out to the others. He drops it down and sniffs his palms, making a face for a moment before shrugging. He'd just have to wash his hands before he ate.
Diego does his best not to laugh as Bjorn wades through the goblin dung before he realizes that the entire group is going to have to endure the big guy's stench though the entire lower area. (I don't suppose he is likely to bathe before heading down.) He thinks to himself before joining the group at the front gate. (At least with this guy around, my manners will seem more tolerable.)
Once Nico is in place, Diego heads outside the gate, around the fort, and gets the attention of the goblins before running back to the gate.
Alistair stops Diego, "just let her start shooting them. Give her a whistle to start. They'll either hide, which she can tell us or they will run for the gate where we can cut them down."
"OK" Diego says in agreement and then takes up a spot at the gate.
"All set here."
Nico gets positioned in the watch tower and finds the cleanest shot she can take. There are a couple of dogs that are slightly closer, but they're not much of a problem without direction from someone more intelligent. She chooses a goblin, lines up the shot, and pulls the trigger.
Lief notes the chest will open with a key from the Chieftain's ring, but there's a trap placed upon it. Opening the chest will cause a filthy, rusty blade to slice outward.
Nico fires a shot at one of the goblins, missing, the arrow sticking into the ground nearby. They continue playing their game, not even noticing the failed attack.
”Be careful, there’s a trap set on this chest,” Lief warns everyone else, even as Nico and Diego start setting up to attack the unaware goblins.
"We'll work it out. Probably just bust it." Alistair says as he moves off to engage the goblins at the gate.
"The chest is mobile so we can simply bring it with us. I'm a bit reluctant to consider it a treasure seeing it's likely something the goblins covenant.
"Goblin blood? Good, need something to clean my damn hands with." Bjorn lamented, claws at the ready to cut down any goblin that engaged with him.
Lief studies the goblin that seems to be charging towards him. When it arrives, he stabs at it with his new magic sword.
Nico finally hits something.
Nico fires shot after shot, taking out three goblins as they run for the gates, a fourth one badly injured. The remaining goblin and one goblin dog round the corner...right into the meat grinder. Alistair stabs the first dog right through the skull. Diego, aiming for the same one, misses his strike as the body hits the floor. Bjorn sees the injured one and cuts it down, along with the dog following on its heels. Lief finishes a third goblin dog with a strike from his new weapon.
The remaining dog, seeing the carnage, has the self-preservation instincts to flee...
...and Nico puts two shots into its backside before it disappears across the bridge, into the brambles.
"Well, that went well." Diego says just before heading over and searching the goblins.
Once finished with the search, he heads back to the secured door that leads to the stairway down. "Is everyone ready to head down?"
Nico descends from the tower to help look around. She also looks for a source of water somewhere. She figures there must be some somewhere, even goblins must drink.
The goblins you just slew only had 8 gold between them. You all do one last once-over of this floor, including the two room you hadn't searched yet. The one off the courtyard does, in fact, contain some water barrels, as well as a large L-shaped enclosure fill of live rabbits -- food for the goblins dogs, and likely the goblins as well.
The room off of the throne room that you neglected to search at first seems to be the chief's personal chambers. Several rugs made from dog or horse hide lie strewn over the dirt floor of the room. Against the north
wall stands an impressive collection of horseshoes, each nailed to the wall. To the east sits a ragged padded chair next to a rickety desk that may have once been an expensive antique. In the northwest corner sits a canopied bed covered with silk sheets and sporting an elaborately carved headboard that features nymphs and satyrs cavorting in a forest. The bed's sheets are stained with dirt, while the headboard is bashed and battered.
There's a body in the corner, manacled to the wall -- the chief appeared to have enjoyed a bit of sport with the poor individual, who was unrecognizably maimed. Searching the body, you find they wore a pair of that Lief detects as magical, as well as some in their pouch that they unfortunately never got a chance to put to use.
"Well that's gruesome but typical. Do you guys want to go down the front staircase or the back? I'd think the back side is less likely to be guarded but I have no real dog in the fight." Alistair says as he ponders what next.
After considering Alistair's suggestion, Diego heads to the back stairway. "Let's try this one since the other door is secure."
After reaching the stairs, Diego begins heading down while carefully searching for goblin traps.
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Diego leads the way down the stairs, quietly, carefully. There's a door at the base of the steps and he pauses to listen, hearing nothing beyond it, seeing no sign of traps -- and Bjorn confirms the goblins are usually guard enough, and there were no booby traps rigged upon the entrance.
In the room beyond, a large table surrounded by chairs fills much of the space. A slate board to the north is covered with scribblings in chalk, but the map of Sandpoint that has been carefully inscribed on it leaves no doubt as to the purpose of this room -- this is where the recent raid on the town was planned, that led to Bjorn mutinying.
After descending down the stairs, Diego begins searching the area.
Descending down the staircase, Bjorn moves with the others and settles down at the base of the stairs. He looks over the area carefully, his face stuck in a frown as memories of his last moment here returned.
"This is the planning room. This is where we learned Nualia's goal of targeting Sandpoint. I had been hired on as a guard, not a conspirator to the murder of innocents." As he speaks, his voice lightly shakes with anger. Pointing towards the door across from him, Bjorn would nod. "That way leads to the storage room. There is a secret door that leads deeper down. I do not know what lays deeper that way."
"This way..." Bjorn said, pointing towards the door closest towards him. "...leads to many rooms, including what was my bedroom. A few doors down, there is a set of double doors that lead to some of shrine. Nualia and Lyrie would visit there frequently and I heard strange chanting from there from time to time."
"I know precious little, unfortunately, outside of that. We should secure the floor, kill the bugbear, and convince Orik that our cause is righteous."
"I would think going after the head of the snake would be preferable but I guess we don't want this bugbear and his cronies coming up behind us. Overall, I'm for going after Nualia now and clean up the others on our way out. Thoughts?" Alistair says in response to Bjorn suggestion.
Since her reaction time to any of the doors opening suddenly should be about the same, Nico keeps to the center of the room so she can keep an eye on all of them while others search.
"Depends on whether Nualia could raise an alarm I'd say. If we know we can get to her and finish her off without everyone or everything we bypassed descending on us, sure. If we can't we need to make sure there's no backup for her to call on when we get to her."
Diego carefully begins making his way through the doors and down the hall. In agreement with Nico, he avoids the double doors for the moment and makes a left at the bend where they are located. After inspecting that door, he opens it.
"Ooo, Nico. I'm not sure what bracer's of Falcon's Aim does, but it sounds like an archer thing. Lead on big guy." Alistair follows Diego through the halls prepared to spring past any combatants should they find any.
Nico takes the bracers and looks them over very carefully, with a small, skeptical frown.
"Magic huh? How sure can I be that they're safe?"
The floor of the cavern Diego sees beyond the door seems strangely polished and smooth. To the east, a thick curtain of vines and nettles hangs down over a wide opening overlooking the ocean surf below. The place smells of salt and death, and you see two tunnels leading away from the naturally-hewn chamber.
"Looks like a way out if things go sideways. Check the side tunnels?"
Diego moves in and leads the group through the tunnel to his left. After reaching the bend, he pears around it to see if he can determine what's around the corner.
Dozens of strange dead bodies lie scattered about his 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 killer isn't hard to guess, as it is looking at you from atop the chamber, where it's coiled among some stalactites. The monster looks something like a leathery, eyeless squid with a squat body the size of a rain barrel. Its lower body splits into a tangle of tentacles the creature uses to slowly move, while two longer tentacles, one thick and muscular and the other lithe and tipped with a bone stinger, emerge from either side.
Bjorn looks over the shoulders of his newfound companions to see that the room is littered with dead goblins and birds. Their drained bodies earn a look of worry before his eye flickers up to the creature clinging to the cave roof. Its multitude of eyes open up as the tentacles drop down in anticipation of another meal.
"Nope." Bjorn says, drawing a javelin from his back and hefting it with all his might at the hanging monstrosity.
The javelin goes wide and an embarrassed look comes to Bjorn's face as he looks back at the others. "Heh...muscle stiffness. Apologies."
Diego moves into the room, retrieves a dagger, and then throws it at the creature.
Both of the usually heavy-hitting men find the damn thing hard to aim at, up amidst the rock spires as it is. Fortunately, it obliges them by slithering down to the floor, uncoiling its tentacles to lower itself and then using them to slowly climb across the floor, towards Diego.
It launches its long stinging tentacle towards him, hoping to envenom its prey and make it more compliant, but The stinger cannot penetrate the man's armor. The appendages slides off, leaving a slimy trail.
Nico moves forward to see what the tussle is about, and when she sees she shoots.
"Ew! Nasty!"
Lief sighs at the sight of the strange squid sliding off the stalactites. He focuses for a moment on one of the dagger that Diego threw near the creature and it rises up off the floor and flies at the tentacled mass again.
Alistair, hearing the commotion up front rushes past his comrades to get within range. As he steps past Bjorn he exclaims, "Whoa!!" Before going into a diving roll to get past the things whipping tentacles. As he comes to his feat just behind the tentacled mass he lunges and drives his sword deep.
With the tentacled beast upon the ground, Bjorn would dash in with claws ready. He would reach for the monstrosity, ripping at it and hoping to avoid the tentacles that sought to try and and kill and protect itself.
Bjorn tries to get in close but the whipping tentacle continues to keep the bloodrager's vicious claws at bay.
Diego brings his blade into a downward swing and then leans back to recover from the its momentum.
Nico puts a crossbow bolt into the thing and it doesn't seem to notice. Lief attempts to correct the course of the thrown dagger and throw it into the monster's mass, but the wriggling tentacles are unpredictable and it sails by, the creature unharmed.
Alistair leaps over one appendage and ducks another, a tentacle stealing his hat. He stabs deeply into the thing's center of mass, snatching his hat back as the creature unleashes a primal screech of pain and rage, tentacles momentarily spasming.
Bjorn and Diego try carving the thing up with a dangerous close-quarters assault, but having eyes all over one's body, as well as a lack of bones, allows the creature to dodge the oncoming attacks.
The monster focuses its attention on Alistair after the wound he inflicted, attempting to grab and sting the daring man, but Alistair is too nimble, and both attempts miss.
The creature turned its attention away from Diego, which gave him the opening he had been waiting for. Baring down heavily on the creature, he brought his blade down into a side-long slash and then wheeled it back into position.
Nico reloads and shoots again. Since her first shot Nico has been able to figure out the things anatomy a little better and find its center mass.
Alistair dodges about and after a flourish of blade drives it home again.
The three of you have been together since this mess started, and you've come to know one another's styles as well as you know your own. Diego brings his blade down into the creature, pinning it in place for a moment while Nico sinks a bolt in deep through one eye. Alistair, opposite Diego, finishes the beast off with a calculated stab into what turned out to be its central nervous system, then snaps his blade to the side to clean the ichor from it.
The creature lies unmoving.
Lief magically picks up the dagger and hurls it against the cave-squid again, a little bit to make sure its dead but mostly to show he was helping. "Well, at least if we run out of rations before we finish clearing the place out we can make some calamari."
"I was about to say I'd never look at calamari quite the same again. If it turns to that I think I may go hungry for a couple of days. Shall we find a way out of here. And though it doesn't need to be said, keep an eye out for more of these things among other threats." Alistair says in response to Lief.
After retrieving his dagger, Diego searches the area and the Calamari Creature. After inspecting the room, he leads the group back through the tunnel and over to the area that branched off to the right.
Crates, barrels, and mounds of miscellaneous refuse lie heaped against the walls in this southern cavernous room. It looks familiar, in a way, and it occurs to you -- this is largely stuff they've salvaged from Junker's Edge, the beach where the trash is thrown, back in town.
Diego spots one possible prize amidst the junk -- some hide armor, in very good condition other than the fruit peels sitting atop it. Lief would detect the armor as magical.