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Leaping up from his seat, Zeldrith rushes after Ano, redirecting her down a side street so that she doesn't pass near the Clovermark house with all the subtlety the other members of the group have come to expect of him. "Hey-Ano-I-think-I-heard-that-High-Street-will-be-closed-how-about-we-try-R aven?" He clears his throat as he catches up with his catfolk friend. "You know, Ano, since I'm new here in town, I was thinking I might try and see some of the sights down this street here at this specific moment for some reason. It's on the way to the Cathedral, too, so there's that."
Steering her down the side street and away from another violent confrontation with her mother, Zeldrith casts about frantically for something to justify his intervention in Ano's affairs. "There, aren't you glad we came down this way? Now we can see... um... that alchemist's shop that-" Narrowing his eyes, the tiefling sniffs the air experimentally. "-smells like cheese for some reason. You know, I don't think I even want to know..." He laughs nervously. "Well, Ano, how many people can see they've set foot inside of a Thassilonian ruin and lived to tell the tale? And then there was that freaky little imp - it's definitely something to remember for the future. Hey, did you feel anything weird when you stood near that flame pool down in those catacombs? I thought I felt a little tingling in my hand here, and I was wondering..." He trails off, looking hopefully at Ano to see if his babble is helping to distract her from her recent confrontation with her mother or the prospect of having to kill her old friend.
Arrian, trying to eat a heaping handful of turkey, adds, "Shell the shtuff, get shtuff!"
[ooc[ Now I have to figure out what chemicals smell like cheese :p [/ooc]
"... That sounds like something I'll have to ask about later. Cheese isn't a usual scent in alchemy," Juriya says as she rushes to catch up. She... vaguely remembers them trying to extract reagents out of rancid butter recently? Just thinking about it made her nose burn. Blegh.
She then realizes what Zeldrith is trying to do. Oh. And now she's at a loss for words.
At first, Ano’s fur bristles when Zeldrith takes her around the long way. Though she does realize he’s just making sure she’s not going to get mangled.
When the tiefling asked about the well, she says, “I don’t think so? Other than the pregnancy vision, all I saw…well, heard and smell…was weird. I heard moans, and I smelled something…like…”
Once the thought popped up she looked physically sick. “Oh Gods…Father Zantus better have the answers I need…”
"I don't think so? Other than the pregnancy vision, all I saw…well, heard and smell…was weird. I heard moans, and I smelled something…like… Oh Gods…Father Zantus better have the answers I need…"
Zeldrith grimaces almost imperceptibly, interjecting quickly to distract his friend from the nauseating thoughts. "Well, maybe... maybe it's not your friend's fault, then, yeah? I mean, after all, I think us two were the only ones to have visions down there - proper visions, I mean - so maybe your friend's head got blasted full of all those evil thoughts, like ours were but worse? None of this would really be her fault then - all this would be on those crazy old wizards." Glancing behind him, he sends a death glare at Donimah, daring her to interrupt with another tangent about how great the Thassilonians were.
The ex-mercenary puts an arm around Ano to console her as he quickens his pace to match hers, the sound of his hooves on the hard-packed dirt of the road drowning out the softer sound of her footsteps. "Look at it this way, if your friend can't be held responsible for her actions, we'd be doing her a favor by killing her, right? Stopping the thing that's taken her face before it can taint her memory? We can talk with Father Zantus, but I think he'll say the same thing. And the longer we delay here instead of taking Thistletop, the more likely it is that someone's going to put two and two together, same as we did."
Donimah glowers as the group suddenly gets up and starts leaving and looks over at Ameiko and Shalelu.
"We can continue this conversation later, perhaps," she says as she gathers up her scrip bag and grabs her whaling spear and races to catch up with them, robes fluttering about her bony legs.'
When she finally catches up with the group, she sees Zeldrith glaring at her and gets a confused look on her own face.
"What?!" she asks. "What did I do this time?!"
Ano sighed, “I just have a question or two for Father Zantus, then we prepare immediately.” She turned to look at Arrian, “Hopefully whatever gold we get we can get me a chain shirt…maybe make my rapier a masterwork quality.”
"If we split it evenly," Juriya says, "we'll probably end up getting the same gear," she says with a chuckle. "At the very least, a better rapier wouldn't be a bad idea. I uh. Might not be strong enough for the chain shirt!"
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Father Zantus is found in the cathedral praying silently to Desna in her shrine inside. There are a few people in the cathedral.
You recognize almost all people in the cathedral are the families of the few people who actually got killed in the goblin attack.
Ano pauses when she realizes that the people in the cathedral are the ones who lost someone due to the goblins. It reminded her of when she lost her father those years ago…
She then clears her throat, and walks up towards Father Zantus. “Father? I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a couple questions. Of a private nature.”
Ano hears a fluttering sound. When she turns to look at it she sees a swallowtail butterfly flying close to cathedral ceiling. After a while, it flies down close to Father Zantus, almost at her hand's reach. She understand this is a sign of approval.
Father Zantus seems completely unbothered to be interrupted in his prayer. Being the sole caretaker of the magnificent building that is the cathedral, as well as the spiritual well-being of Sandpoint, certainly doesn't warrant him time to have a moment of silence.
He wears a smile and says "Yes, Ano, of course. Shall we retreat to my office? I've also requested special access to the roof during construction. I said it was to help clean it, but in truth I like the view from there."
The catfolk stared at the swallowtail. She almost wondered if that was…
She shook the thought out of her head and wiped the tears before clearing her throat, “I think your office will be better. Somewhere where no one can hear us. It’s…well to say important would be an understatement.”
Father Zantus leads Ano through a boring door, through a small corridor, then his office. It is small in comparison to the cathedral, but large enough for comfort. He lights a fire and puts a kettle on, as he waits silently for Ano to start talking.
Arrian feels extremely self conscious as he's in the cathedral with his 'to go' dinner. He tries to find a spot at the back where he attempts to eat quietly...
“I have a couple questions to ask about…Nualia,” Ano started, “More specifically…did something happen to her in the month before the Cathedral burned down? I remember her going somewhere, her not wanting me to follow her, and we had a fight and she shoved me. I sent letters to her but she never responded and…I need to know.”
Meanwhile, Juriya realizes she left her food at the inn... and sighs a little inside. It's unimportant, she needs to figure out what is causing her back such massive issues.
What even is Ano talking about, anyways? I... ow. I'll check all three forms just... just in case it's something related to my tail. Not... not here though.
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Father Zantus sits looking at the wall. For a moment, Ano thinks there is a window there that she just isn't seeing, before she realizes the cleric is in deep thought. When he finally speaks, he says "I wonder why you are thinking about Nualia right now. I remember... I was training under Ezakien and..."
Suddenly, he finds the kettle he is heating up is very interesting and goes to it. As he verifies that the water is still not hot, he sighs and says "At some point, he and Nualia started arguing a lot. I do remember I used to put my ear on the wall to listen to what they were talking about." He turns back to Ano and says "This is their private matter. I should never have listened to their conversation, and I should not repeat it to you or anyone else." He turns back to the heating water, as if trying to conjure a spell to make it heat up faster.
Meanwhile, some of the people in the cathedral start looking at Arrian and Juriya. They look a bit annoyed.
Arrian stops eating and tries his best to hide the plate he carried with him.
Juriya makes her best effort to distance herself from the person eating in a church. She realizes that that's probably against social norms to do so... granted if she was still hungry, she would not have thought to not bring the food. That's thinking too highly of Juriya's common sense.
Did I do something wrong, she thinks to herself, ready to turn and leave on a dime if being an annoyance continues. Probably to figure out this back pain.
Father Zantus sits looking at the wall. For a moment, Ano thinks there is a window there that she just isn't seeing, before she realizes the cleric is in deep thought. When he finally speaks, he says "I wonder why you are thinking about Nualia right now. I remember... I was training under Ezakien and..."
Suddenly, he finds the kettle he is heating up is very interesting and goes to it. As he verifies that the water is still not hot, he sighs and says "At some point, he and Nualia started arguing a lot. I do remember I used to put my ear on the wall to listen to what they were talking about." He turns back to Ano and says "This is their private matter. I should never have listened to their conversation, and I should not repeat it to you or anyone else." He turns back to the heating water, as if trying to conjure a spell to make it heat up faster.
Meanwhile, some of the people in the cathedral start looking at Arrian and Juriya. They look a bit annoyed.
“I need to know. The townsfolk didn’t treat her right, and I should’ve done something about it. And…and…”
She took a deep breath, and said seriously as Zantus heated the kettle.
“Do not repeat this to anyone. Perhaps only the Mayor, but nobody else. We know who is responsible for the goblin raids. There were more in the Glassworks, they killed Lonjiku and the workers. Tsuto was down there but…he’s not the leader. Nualia…she is.”
Ano paused and took another deep breath. She was shaking as she continued. “Nualia’s alive. She didn’t die in the fire. There’s some Thassilonian ruins under the Glassworks, with a shrine of Lama-ahem, the Mother of Monsters-and…I saw visions. I heard a woman moaning down there…and I had a vision that I was some half fiend child inside a woman’s womb. My friends suspect I had visions of what happened to Nualia.
“Please, Father Zantus, if there’s anyone in this town who would even have the slightest idea of what happened to Nualia, it’s you. I need to know because…we’re going to stop her. And I have-I’m going-to save her. Something happened with her and I need to make things right.”
Meanwhile, Donimah catches up with Arrian and Juriya at the Cathedral.
"What's happening, where's Ano?" she asks.
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As Ano heads into Father Zantus's office, Zeldrith stays behind in the main area of the Sandpoint Cathedral, glancing around idly as he waits for Ano to finish. Seeing that Father Zantus was interrupted in the middle of sweeping the vast cathedral's floor, he picks up the broom resting against the wall and continues the old priest's work, quickly falling into a rhythm as his mind strays back to when he would do the same task as a child in his family's store. As Donimah enter with her query, he glances briefly up from his task before nodding to the exceptionally boring door Ano and the Father had retreated through. "Meeting about the troubles. The assault on Thistletop won't be easy - you want to make peace with your gods beforehand, then there's altars around here."
Returning to his sweeping, he continues for several more minutes before addressing Arrian. "To be frank, I'm more than a little worried about how that kid ended up - the one from Ano's vision, I mean. My family's had generations to get used to having a strange child every once in a while, but... you hear stories about what people generally do to monster children. Midwives drowning them, mothers going nuts - I'll be honest, that kid's future wasn't exactly promising. No matter how much of a freak they look, little babies haven't exactly had time to do anything worthy of death, right?" He shrugs, shifting position to sweep the area around where his hooves were. "I mean, who's the real monster in that situation? The baby or the parents? Makes you think."
"And that worry will be added to the list. First we have to get to Thistletop to stop the gathering and I agree with you that it won't be easy. That's why I want to trade what we have for something we can use."
Juriya just nods in agreement. She's heard stories from her parents of what people might do to non-human children of a seemingly human pairing, let alone something like a tiefling or one with deformities. If one looks at her, she seems to be either lost in thought, or lost in prayer... in reality it's merely lost in thought though.
Aren't midwives normally Pharasmin? Could that be some systemic issue with the church due to its tenets? That... cannnot be right, at least in the case of tieflings. Dhampirs, on the other hand...
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The people continue shooting gazes at Arrian, Zeldrith and Juriya, but also Donimah when she arrives. Most leave as though annoyed.
As Ano speaks, the water begins to boil. The kettle starts whistling slowly. As she speaks the word "Nualia", the kettle hisses strongly, blowing steam into the priest's cheek, which starts to sweat. He cannot bring himself to look at Ano, but stares at the floor.
After she stops speaking, he turns to her, his eyes in near panic. He says "What? How could that be? She died..." He clearly has trouble focusing, as a million thoughts run through his head.
Eventually, he sees he must reply to Ano, straightens his posture and attends the boiling water. He pours it on a couple cups and dips a tea bag in each. Afterwards, he methodically opens a drawer and pulls out a small glass cup with a yellowish thick liquid inside. As he pours some of it in each cup of tea, Ano can see that this is the famed spiced honey that Father Zantus is rumoured to have, which he has always denied having. Without asking Ano if she wants some, he also pours some milk in both cups.
After offering Ano the tea, he sits at his table and start churning his. He says "It seems you are in a better position to help Sandpoint than I am, Ano. I am happy to share some of this responsibility, along with the sheriff and the mayor."
He sighs and says "I overheard Nualia talking to my mentor. As his protegé, he felt she should follow in his footsteps, to answer Desna's call. Luckily, I could also abosrb some of his teaching desires, but he was always pressing her to pray more. One day, she told him... Well, she became pregnant." Father Zantus sips his tea and burns himself, maybe on purpose to hide his feelings of sadness.
He continues "They argued so much. Ezakien scolded her so much. He wanted her to spend more time in front of the altar and become more pious. From their discussions... It seemed she became pregnant in a smuggler's tunnel...", finishing his sentence with much apparent pain "under the Glassworks." He strokes Desna's holy symbol on his vest and continues "It seems that being so close to such an unholy temple may have caused the unborn child to grow monstruous? Maybe?"
After making some effort to remember some things, he continues "In any case, I think she likely had a miscariage, given she never showed any visible sign of pregnancy. After that, the fire happened. Could it be? No, it couldn't be... From what you tell me, now that I think about it, she might have had something to do with the fire itself." He speaks in a low voice, which is a sad one.
Ano’s blood ran cold and she sat in silence hearing what Father Zantus had to say. She gingerly sipped her tea, and then said with a sigh, “I don’t know why Nualia would do something like that…I…I wish she came to me. I would’ve helped her and supported her. But…I’ll help now. My friends think Nualia has been taken over by a demon…I don’t think so. I think she’s just hurt…she thinks nobody in this town cared for her. I’m going to show her that one person has always cared. Thank you, Father Zantus. For the information and the tea.”
Once she left his office, she met with her friends and motioned them to go outside with her, to not bother the people still inside. The catfolk then starts to relay what she knows.
“Nualia did have a lover, in the tunnels. She ended up pregnant and confronted Father Tobyn about it. Father Zantus says she didn’t look pregnant, so she must have had a miscarriage shortly afterwards. He…suspects she caused the fire herself.” After a long pause, and with shaky breath, she continues, “Let’s sell what we collected and get what we need. I think it would be best for us to head to Thistletop first thing tomorrow morning, if not tonight. Will that work for you all?”
Donimah looks up at the shrines of the various gods in the Cathedral with an aggressively neutral look on her face. She'd be lying if she called herself pious. Some of them; Desna, Sarenrae, Gozreh, were gods the Shoanti worshipped...in practice, her people had many, many gods, in everyone and everything, and what city folk called gods were just some of the biggest, strongest and wisest, but even that wisdom wasn't something she'd grown up with. Gods, big or small, were distant and silent things, and you could spend a lifetime praying to them and never know if they did anything, or if they heard you. Magic was different...it was power you could understand, could command, could use to make your life better. But she'd also be lying if she just dismissed Zeldrith's suggestion to make peace with the gods as mere sentiment. After all, gods granted magic of their own. Cayden Cailean granted it to Arrian, and Cayden himself had once been just a man who was brave and more than a little lucky and found himself becoming an equal to those distant and silent figures. And perhaps...that made mortals and gods and spirits more alike than some priests proclaimed.
She's still thinking about it when Ano returns and shares what she's learned. She listens and her expression softens.
"That's...honestly what I imagined the situation was, from the descriptions of your...visions and what we learned from what she left behind. It...sounds like she had a lot of anger towards Father Tobyn if one of her goals with the raid was to steal his bones out of his grave when she may have been the one who killed him in the first place," she says in a low, quiet voice.
She doesn't say outright that Nualia killed her father, for Ano's sake, but she seems to feel that even she's coming around to the notion that Nualia would have been capable of such a deed.
"He was more than just "Father" Tobyn to her, right? He was her actual father too?"
Juriya... admittedly never came to the cathedral often. Her family, as craftspeople and kitsune, have a shrine to Daikitsu in their home; so, no need to really worship here... maybe that's why everyone was annoyed with her?
"I... remember being here for... all this. I... I wasn't really... as connected in all of it as Ano was, but... what you're saying makes sense from what I remember, Donimah. But... I agree with that plan, Ano."
She then walks out of the cathedral, once conversation is finished. The amount of not-so-welcome stares is putting her on edge. Was it because she was only here at the behest of Ano? Was it because of Fosyo?!
Arrian tries his best to conceal the plate of food and waits until the group leaves the Cathedral before resuming his now-cold meal. It was better than nothing.
Nodding at Juriya he adds, "Same for me; I was still more of an outsider at that point. While it would be nice to discover who Nualia's lover was back then I'm not sure who would know besides her. As for when to leave I can see in the dark but so can the goblins. I'm torn between resting and regaining my spells or just starting out tonight."
"He was more than just "Father" Tobyn to her, right? He was her actual father too?"
“That’s correct,” Ano replied, “Nobody knows who Nualia’s real parents are. Father Tobyn found her and took her in. Though…” The catfolk started to trail off a bit.
"'Though' what?" Donimah replies.
“Well,” Ano started, “Some of the townsfolk didn’t treat Nualia right. Some were horrible to her-thinking she could do good things for them. One time, I was with Nualia and some old woman came up and cut a big chunk of her hair off. Said aasimar hair makes a nice luck charm. I yelled at the woman, and she smacked me with her walking stick. My dad and mom saw, and my dad was ready to tear that woman apart, if it weren’t for my mom calming him down. From what I heard, Father Tobyn never really did anything about the townsfolk doing stuff like that…so it wouldn’t surprise me if Nualia resents this town…”
Arrian sighs, "Yeah I'm familiar with how the locals can treat 'outsiders'..."
“Well,” Ano started, “Some of the townsfolk didn’t treat Nualia right. Some were horrible to her-thinking she could do good things for them. One time, I was with Nualia and some old woman came up and cut a big chunk of her hair off. Said aasimar hair makes a nice luck charm. I yelled at the woman, and she smacked me with her walking stick. My dad and mom saw, and my dad was ready to tear that woman apart, if it weren’t for my mom calming him down. From what I heard, Father Tobyn never really did anything about the townsfolk doing stuff like that…so it wouldn’t surprise me if Nualia resents this town…”
Donimah's eyes widen and she scratches her own shaved scalp a bit.
"'Resents' would be an understatement!" she exclaims. "What the f***?!"
Juriya just shudders at the vague memory of how people treated Nualia. "I... I can see why she might be. How she is and targetting Sandpoint. It's not like she's taking on protean features even though they'd be down for someone destroying their home-village... her nature as an Aasimar might be something she resents and is going the uh... opposite way of intentionally."
“If it helps,” Ano replied to Donimah, “The town really changed after the Late Unpleasantness. I don’t know if it’s because some of the nastier folk were part of the murders, or if the murders and fire scared everyone into opening their eyes, but the town’s been more of a community since then. All those townsfolk giving me encouraging words after my mo-Fosyo-did this to my ear? That didn’t happen when the old lady smacked me, nor did it happen when Nualia was treated badly.”
"I think it's..." Juriya says, a slight wince as she stretches out her back. "I genuinely think it's both. People change their tunes when a big event like that happens... and there were bound to be some closed-minded whackjobs only concerned with themselves to the point they'd treat her only as a good luck charm."
As the group leaves the Cathedral and continues their discussion of Nualia's circumstances, Zeldrith follows behind, seemingly not interested in their conversation but still unwilling to leave his friends behind. At Juriya's words, he scowls, speaking up. "Look, why she's trying to kill us isn't important. I'm sure that back in the wars, you could have written whole books about the hobgoblins we fought, why they decided to bother organizing the tribes into a unified force, all that. A soldier on the front doesn't care about all that - the key point here is that they're trying to kill us, and that we know where they are massing so we can kill them first."
His mismatched eyes flick back and forth, searching for enemies, and his hand strays close to the hilt of his sword as he shifts his stance to put the comforting mass of the Cathedral's stone walls at his back. "If we're bound for Thistletop, let's go already. Those little psychos are quiet when they want to be - the more time we stand around jawing about it, the more time they have to sink their grubby little claws into Sandpoint's underbelly."
"I'm discussing the motives of one person. One person people KNEW," Juriya says, a bit of venom present in her voice. She sighs, then continues, "Either way. We should probably sell off what we found, and equip ourselves better if we head to Thistletop. Cold iron weapons are going to be important for dealing with anything demon," Juriya adds, "And we could all use better armor. I didn't expect to get in a fight so a belly-warmer is all I have right now."