"I would not want to see this behir mutated as that bear was. Consider the results. And, despite her power, she is still an infant. I will not leave her here to be - eventually - captured by goblins. If I can coax her out of here and back to her cage, I will do so. If she attacks, I will try to knock her out."
The behir, upon hearing Shaggar, raises its scaled face and seems to sniff the air for a few seconds before moving over to the gnoll and accepting his offer of a snack. Its jaws crunch on the remains of the goblin's arm, and seems to not have any malice towards the party.
After a bit it finishes the arm, swallowing the remnants of it before looking up to Shaggar and the group with curious eyes.
Sasha watches the scene, keeping a firm hand on Pheliks' scruff and remembering their first meeting. With a nod she confirms her increased comfort with the young monster as Shagger's gamble appears to pay off...
Encouraged by the behir's response, Shaggar says, "One of you should head upstairs before us to find her cage. I don't wish to roam the village with her, particularly when I run out of goblin meat."
Shaggar coos to the behir until one (or more) of his teammates precedes him. Then, with an armload of goblin chunks, the gnoll offers the behir another juicy arm as he starts heading upstairs. "Good girl. Come with me. I have some delicious legs and entrails for you. Come'on pretty girl."
"I'll go," Kiley offers before rushing back to the temple to warn them about the behir and to see if they have a cage that can hold it.
Unsure if Shaggar's success persuading the young behir to eat the dead goblin's arm rather than his own was due to the gnoll's reading of the situation or Tymora smiling upon him, Ari shakes her head. It's certainly not what she would have done but for now at least, the fine line between bravery and foolishness has tilted towards the former. She's not putting any faith in this necessarily lasting so keeps a knife drawn just in case. "Let's move then," she says to Sasha and Lisyil. "Best to keep a safe distance ahead so as not to spook it but be ready in case things turn quickly."
Sasha nods, gently but firmly prodding Pheliks ahead and jogging steadily to get ahead of the strange and gruesome scene...
The behir is actually surprisingly tame once full of goblin meat, and is led to its cage (which you find inside the room it exploded from) relatively easily.
The room it was stored in also held three goblin corpses nearly cleansed of all flesh and muscle, which is a gruesome sight in and of itself. Lucky for you, it seems these foolish goblins let it out of the cage in a misguided attempt to domesticate it themselves. Scattered around the room are their possessions, which are mostly strange fetishes and dried body parts but does also include 25 gold pieces and a well made (masterwork) dagger sized for medium creatures.
That leaves only the barricaded door left to explore, the one the goblins couldn't get open. Seems as if the goblin threat under the temple has been quelled, for now.
Lisyil exhales and begins to breathe again once the behir is caged.
Ari's eyebrows rise in surprise at how relatively docile the behir is, though she reflects Who isn't in a better mood with a full stomach? As an added bonus, her plan of setting it on the goblins proves to be unnecessary as that job has already been done with predictably brutal results.
"Are we done here?" she asks.
Sasha shakes her head. "No, I think we need to at least try to see what's through the door the goblins couldn't open," she answers as she leads Pheliks in that direction and takes a close look at the door. "I'm no expert in locks or traps, but if someone else is then we might have more luck than those vile, murderous cretins..."
"Me neither," Ari replies, "though I can take a look at it anyway." The tiefling sighs inwardly - she isn't an expert but she supposes she is pretty good. It's more that she finds it tedious and there seems to be an expectation that she should be good at this sort of thing. "Ari, you're nice and flexible, you should do this." "You've got lovely long fingers, Ari - perfect for lockpicking." Just for once it would be nice if someone else took this on. Ah well. A girl can but dream."
She steps over to the door and gives it a once over before pulling out a set of tools and starting to poke at the lock.
Shaggar watches Ari work the door, finding the process interesting. If she can't pick the lock, he assesses the door, with an eye to determining if he'd be able to tear it off its hinges.
Ari doesn't manage to unlock it because it isn't locked. Seems as if it has been barricaded from the other side, and would require the application of force.
Shaggar takes the turn of events in stride. He listens at the door trying to determine if someone is hiding behind it. Then the gnoll knocks lightly, just in case it was barricaded recently. "Please open the door, the goblins are gone."
He waits for a long moment for any response. If he receives none, he punches the center of the door with a meaty fist.
Kiley helps smash the door down. She gets a running start and shoulder checks the door.
Lisyil kinda stands around waiting for others to fix the problem. For the first time she really notices Ari's fingers, which she finds lovely and long.
The door opens surprisingly easily, leading you to believe that maybe goblins are just weak creatures.
There aren't any holed up defenders as the door cracks against the wall under Shaggar and Kiley's combined force. No one speaks out or greets you, but do see a pile of what looks like abandoned crates of food and other supplies. It's hard to see from here, but it looks as if no one has moved around behind the door for a while now.
Kiley blinks as she sees how easy it is to get the door open. She looks around for any clues as to what may have been going on here, and checks to see how old the food looks.
"Is that it, then?" asks Sasha as she looks inside to find an empty and largely abandoned storeroom. "...Or is there a hidden tunnel or something?"
The gnoll lets out a neutral chuff at the crates.
He moves past the crates and down to a neighboring door where he listens for sounds of occupancy.
The crates all have the same icon of the chain through the spiral, yes. It seems as if whatever group it represents was active here as well. The food and mundane supplies appear as if they've been left alone for a few weeks, probably around the same time as the guy in the foyer was killed. He was likely part of the the group.
Shaggar walks over to the western door and finds that it pushes open easily. The blockade at the first door was apparently their only defense, and luckily the goblins weren't able to get past it.
The room Shaggar finds beyond the door is immediately of more interest, as it appears to be a hastily abandoned office of operation for whoever was using this place as storage. Cleaning supplies line the eastern wall, while the desk on the west side is covered in papers that look half-burnt, as if someone was trying to destroy evidence but was rushed out in the middle.
As Shaggar looks over the office, Kiley examines the other door, wondering what was going on here before the goblins came. Seeing how everything here had been abandoned for a few weeks, she is less cautious than her friend.
Lisyil goes to help look through the papers and see what's there.
Looking at the logos and considering the boxes here along with their two run-ins with goblins, Shaggar reaches a tentative conclusion. "This smells of a conspiracy that the goblins accidentally exposed."
"It certainly looks that way," Ari agrees, "though - thanks be to Leira - appearances can be deceptive. Would they be capable of making it look like this or is that assuming too much?" Her mind is trying to sort through the problem but is she just adding layers to a more straightforward issue? "Or maybe they were allies that turned on each other? Things round here seem, well, just a bit lax if two separate groups managed to get in, don't you think?"
"Do the papers say anything useful?" she asks Lisyil as she begins to look through them. "Perhaps an indication of who our mysterious mark belongs to." She gestures towards the crates, with the hilt of her dagger, the blade tucked back towards her forearm. Although they seem to be the only ones down here at this point, she's not ready to relinquish it and is enjoying it both for its feel of familiarity and for keeping her hands occupied.
"I do not know enough to guess. The bodies and the documents may reveal the truth."
Sasha eyes the icon on the crates with a hostile expression, keeping Pheliks (and herself) on the watch for sudden threats. She follows Kiley over to the other door, keeping about 5-10 feet back so as not to disturb the other as she inspects the exit.
"It seems either too unlikely-to-be-coincidental or divinely fortuitous that we have run into evidence of the same organization in two very different circumstances," she says as she thinks through what it all might mean. "Either this organization has bad intentions for this area, perhaps the Inn itself, or has its influence spread throughout the area..."
The papers and logs seem to be mostly of shipments made to Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep, with no hint or mention as to what's on the manifests. Lisyil digs through the stack of papers under the desk and finds the mostly burnt remains of what looks to be a letter sent from someone outside the group to whoever was in charge of this hideout.
"...shipment from Silvermoon Glade encountered...route through... failed to detect...in advance, leading to...ady Moonshad...I was unable to salvage the entire...await further instructions...". It cuts off there, the rest being burnt away.
The other door opens onto what looks like an ancient kitchen probably dating back to the temple days, but is now full of broken crates and smashed boxes. A quick search reveals a ton of spoiled foodstuffs, but one of the crates towards the back of the room reveals a couple of vials of the silver substance you've encountered before.
"And neither option bodes well, does it?" Ari answers Sasha.
She sidles over to Lisyil and rises up on tiptoes to peer over her shoulder at the documents. Logs and shipping documents are something she instantly recognises from numerous journeys traversing the waterways of the Western Heartlands but they tend to be informative rather than interesting.
Leaving the half-elf to continue leafing through the papers, Ari heads through to a very old room that has been used as some kind of pantry or food preparation area. Digging through the storage, she holds her nose at the unpleasant smell of rotting foodstuffs and tries not to get her clothes too dirty. "This blouse is finest Calishite silk, darling," she mutters to nobody in particular. Still, she keeps on going until she discovers something much more interesting in one of the storage boxes. Carefully using a strip of material to pick up a vial of the strange silvery stuff so as to avoid touching it, she shows it to the others. "I'm guessing this isn't stage make-up" she says drily.
While he considers the import of the burned document, Shaggar moves on to investigate the ladder up.
"Mostly just a bunch of vague shipping documents and a letter with very little left of it" Lisyil says with disappointment.
"Unless I use my imagination. If I do, I'd say that it's a bit weird that no contents or specific items are listed as shipped, and the letter sounds like it's about the shipments, or one of them, if you squint just right."
"Maybe shipments of things that aren't allowed where there going? Illegal or banned stuff?"
"Oh, that's not good," Kiley says as she realizes they'd found where the goblins got the silver stuff from. realizing that leaving these here is probably a bad idea, she begins trying to carefully undo one of the scarves around her waist to pick up and protect the vials with.
Is that a tail?
After carefully gathering up the vials and wrapping them in her scarf to protect them, she stuffs the package into one of her keffiyah's pockets and joins Shaggar at the ladder.
Kiley manages to wrap up the vials left behind safely, and her and Shaggar investigate the ladder. It leads up to a small tunnel dug out in the ceiling small enough for a medium creature to squeeze into. It's a long tunnel that leads back to the hallway outside the hideout, but you can tell that it wasn't constructed very long ago. Most likely an escape route addition by the smugglers to the older Bhaal temple.
And with that, the entirety of the temple has been explored.
"Something like this perhaps?" Ari suggests to Lisyil. "We don't know what it is but we've seen that it's potentially very dangerous so I certainly wouldn't be drawing attention to it if it were me." She shrugs her slim shoulders.
Ari briefly has an urge to toss the vial she is holding to Kiley to wrap up with the others. She's confident the other woman would catch it up but it's a stupid risk so she delicately hands it over instead. "Here's one more for your collection. Is there somewhere safe we can put it? I don't much like leaving it out of sight but I don't really like carrying it around with us any better."
Shaggar heads to the first office they saw, to look for evidence and examine the corpse while he debates their next steps.
Do we try to seal up the goblin passage? Or do we counter-attack through their own tunnel?
"I think we should head back to the temple and tell Lysandra about what we found," Kiley says after taking the vial from Ari and helping Shaggar explore the escape tunnel. "There was something about Slivermoon Glade in that letter they tried to burn, right?"
"Yes, it could be the shipment came from Silvermoon Glade and something happened to it, part of it was lost or something. A person is mentioned, might be 'Lady Moonshade'..."
”That’s good enough for me,” Ari says. ”Let’s get out of here and go and see if we can find someone who can confirm or deny the theory. Lysandra seems like a good choice to start with.”
"Mmmr, Why did we have to run into halfway competent bad guys? Would have been so much easier if they were too dumb to no burn the evidence at all," Kiley complains. "And now I really do need a bath. Goblin's don't smell any better on the inside than they do on the outside."
"Often that which is hidden is done so for a reason," Ari replies sagely. "And better half an answer than none at all. I'll second the vote for a bath." She's already thinking about the opportunity for a long soak, something much more pleasurable than trekking around after stray goblins.
"Yeah, but I can still complain about it," Kiley grouses. "After we tell Lysandra about what we found, we're probably going to have to make sure the goblins aren't going to be a threat. We might not be getting that bath tonight."
Sasha sighs at the mixed evidence found - some in good quality, other evidence largely ruined. "If this stuff is coming from Silvermoon Glade, are we sure that everyone there is one the up-and-up? Should we be worried about who we show this stuff, in case they're secretly enemies?" she asks as she and Pheliks go with the others to finish inspecting the details of the hidden temple to Bhaal.
Sasha's question stops Kiley dead cold in her tracks.
"I-- I really don't want to think about that," she says, her tone clearly worried. "But that doesn't mean that you don't have a point. How can we even tell if someone's in on this or not, though?"
"Now that's a good question," Ari nods approvingly at Sasha. "I like your thinking. There could be layers here - deceptions, lies, misdirections. Trying to walk the path and figure out what's true, who to trust and who to believe, is no easy game." She grins. "But it's a fun one." In keeping with her beliefs, Ari really does enjoy the intrigue, peering behind veils to find secrets and meanings.
"Straight up, you can't really," she says to Kiley. "Unless they're a terrible liar. Which is useful - and lots of people are bad at it - if a bit boring." She starts ticking off items on her fingers. "You should consider motive. You should consider means. You should consider opportunity. If someone's involved then they probably have all of these things covered, at least if they're in charge. If they don't, then they might be a minor player or simply not involved at all." She tosses her hair. "That's the theory. Of course the reality is harder than this makes it sound but it gives you a starting point."
"As for who to trust? Well, start with nobody unless you have good reason to, or you're able to rule them out. And in spite of what I've said, it can often a good idea to go with your gut, trust your instincts. It feels a little lonely that way." Ari shrugs. "It's not an easy business and not without risk."
She's in her element now and getting warmed up. "Let's assume someone at the Glade is less than honest - hard to believe, I know - and is in on this, as you suggest, Sasha. What do they gain? Gold? Magic? Power? Influence? Revenge? And from those concepts, who might have need of them? That's assuming that they're acting of their own volition, anyway. It could be that somebody is blackmailing them into doing it. You get the idea?" she asks. "If truth is an arrow, flying straight on target, deception and intrigue is a whip, subtly changing shape, straightening out and then shifting once more." The tiefling wrinkles her nose in disgruntlement. "Hmm, you know I think that metaphor needs work," she mutters to herself.
"Right now, the key question is do we trust Lysandra? Is there any reason not to? Do we know anything that suggests what she's told us is untrue? You get the idea."
Kiley groans as she clutches her head. It's not that she's not intelligent. She's rather smart, in fact, but this twisty logic is why she'd never be cut out for skullduggery. Hers is a much more straightforward and honest soul, which might explain why she got along fairly well with the Bedine and Shaggar in particular.
"How do spies and assassins not lose their bloody minds," she asks no one in particular.
Shaggar heads to the first office they saw, to look for evidence and examine the corpse while he debates their next steps.
Shaggar isn't quite sure how long the corpse has been dead, but is pretty confident the arrow through its ribcage has something to do with how they died.