Ano zips past the group and plunges her rapier into the nearby goblin rat with insane accuracy.
Juriya and Ano quickly move in and promptly kill the dogs. The other two dogs converge on Ano.
However, being scared to see her move with such deadliness makes their bites clumsy and they miss their attacks entirely.
Arrian moves forward slightly and strikes at one of the goblin dogs!
Arrian slices the dog in half.
Donimah pushes past Zeldrith to get a clear shot at the "dog."
Juriya shoots at the remaining dog, aiming to take it down quickly.
Zeldrith strides up beside Ano, slicing at the remaining goblin dog in the hopes of killing it before it can turn on them. "And here I thought goblins smelled bad! Watch those teeth - this one's ornery!"
Juriya and Zeldrith bring the last dog down together.
There are three other doors in this courtyard. One leads back to the entrance hall. A small outbuilding has a door that's been nailed shut and several additional boards have been nailed over the nails. The door itself is cracked and splintered in places. Two dead goblins, their heads crushed in by something heavy, lie in the dirt by the door, their ripening bodies covered with flies.
Inside, you think you hear breathing and something heavy stepping on the ground, as though impatient.
The other door north leads to a corridor that goes up to another door to the right. That one leads to another corridor that has two doors in it. The door to the right (south) is empty except for a table and a few chairs. The door to the left leads to another corridor with two doors. The first is a small, foul-smelling room and features little more than a reeking hole in the ground, its rim stained with refuse and waste. The second leads to a stairway that goes down.
Arrian gestures the party away from the nailed shut door and then says, "Inside I think I hear breathing and something heavy stepping on the ground, as though impatient. The first door we bypassed in this section of the fort was also nailed shut; perhaps for a similar reason? In any case whatever large creature is in there might be violent towards goblins."
Arrian gestures to the two dead goblins, "But it doesn't mean it won't try the same on us."
“I’ll check the stairs real quick,” Ano whispered, carefully going down the stairs to take a quick peek.
"We should check the breathing... someone might be trapped."
"We should check the breathing... someone might be trapped."
"I think the breathing someone is the large someone that crushed the goblins."
"proceed with caution if that's the case, then."
Ano sees a room with a table, a few chairs and a chalkboard. After analyzing it for a moment, she realizes this is probably where the raids to Sandpoint are planned.
A well known fact about goblins is that they're particularly afraid of horses. Horses are known to be large creatures.
Donimah grips her whaling spear all the more tightly as she waits for Ano to finish scouting.
"goblins are scared of horses, just for the record."
Ano creeps back up the stairs to the rest of the party. “I think I found the room where they planned the raid. Lots of maps and stuff.”
Ano creeps back up the stairs to the rest of the party. “I think I found the room where they planned the raid. Lots of maps and stuff.”
"Let's grab what we can and then move on."
Arrian proceeds down the stairs and grabs as much loose paper (or whatever they were writing on) and puts it in his backpack.
Arrian finds many loose pieces of paper on the table and crudely stuffs them in his backpack. Before leaving back upstairs, he notices two doors that lead out of this room.
Arrian checks the doors for traps and locks:
He relays the information to the others, "Maybe one of them leads to more important areas? What do you guys think?"
Arrian sees that the doors are not locked nor trapped. The left-most one, however, has been used very frequently.
Arrian sees that the doors are not locked nor trapped. The left-most one, however, has been used very frequently.
Arrian includes that information in his report.
"I say check the right-most first, then. Less-used means less-patrolled, means more easy to isolate and take down anything we find there without them raising an alarm."
The group opens the door which leads to a short corridor that ends up in another door. Opening it reveals a square room with a door on the southern end. Opening it reveals a corridor that leads to a small crossroad. Two large stone doors sit in the western wall here, their faces carved with images of horrific, deformed monsters clawing their way out of pregnant women of all races.
There are two other corridors, leading south and east.
You can hear two sets of breathing from inside this room. They are definitely not humanoid. It's unclear whether they are an outsider or a dog... Or both.
There seems to be a cave beyond these doors and from the sound of it... There's something lurking within. The sound of muscles moving lazily can be heard.
The room here appears empty.
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"I hear absolutely nothing!" Juriya whisper-shouts.
Wincing at Juriya's exclamation, Arrian gestures that he does indeed hear something behind the eastern door.
Ano can’t pick up anything from behind the double doors. She tells the others that the room behind the southern doors sound empty. However she freezes when she hears something from the eastern doors.
“Sounds like there’s a cave behind the eastern doors. And something’s moving in there. Very slowly…”
Donimah's assessment is about the same as the others.
"Check the empty room first or ambush the eastern one?" she hisses to the others.
Arrian nods to the eastern door and hefts his falchion.
Donimah nods back to Arrian and heads down the hall to the east door, then looks back to the others, jerking her head towards the door to tell them to get into position.
Arrian follows Donimah and takes his place to stand in the way of anything trying to leave the room once Donimah opens the door.
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.
The cavern splits once to the north and once to the south.
On the ceiling, a dark blue creature and a conical body covered in angry red eyes and numerous tentacles, two of which are longer than the rest, turns to the group hungrily.
You have once read of this and it used to give you nightmares when you was a pup. It's called a Tentamort. Usually they are ambushing predators, but this one, for some reason is not hiding, as if it didn't need to stalk its preys.
It uses its tentacles to secure its victim while it stings it with another tentacle. Its poison is vicious, liquefying the victim's internal organs which the tentamort then drinks.
"... Oh sweet f---, a Tentamort. No instinct as an ambush predator... is this a pet?!? Tentacles which secure, and another one which stings, and the poison literally liquefies internal organs for sustenance... maybe I should stop reading copious amounts of bestiaries. "
Juriya dreads even getting close to this thing.
"Fight or leave?"
Donimah regards the tentamort with an unusually calm expression. A curious creature, she feels almost a strange...kinship with it?
Zeldrith shrugs, gazing up at the tentamort with a critical eye. "It doesn't seem terribly mobile. And there is a door there. We might have to go through this thing later, but if it's so deadly, maybe we check the other doors, see if we can find a way around?"
"I -- for one -- am all for keeping the f*+! away from that!"
"I -- for one -- am all for keeping the f&!$ away from that!"
Arrian nods at Juriya and Zeldrith, "If we don't need to fight it now, let's wait."
Ano’s eyes focused on the tentamort with a mixture of disgust, confusion and fear, and didn’t say a single word. Her fur was bristle and her ears flattened as she couldn’t quite comprehend what she was looking at. As the group leaves she keeps her eyes on the…thing. Once they’re clear from it, she lets go of the breath she had no idea she was holding.
"Agreed, let's not antagonize everything that doesn't immediately attack on sight," Donimah says with a shrug, closing the door behind her.