"We can share some more of our rations with you. And, we promise to continue fighting the cultists and to clear the Citadel of their presence. In return, can we spend an hour or two resting in this room and tending to our wounds? A few of us could use some healing."
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”The Mwangi expanse? Are those new lands to conquer?”
Netkin freezes guiltily. "Erm, no. I don't think so. This is where the cultists are from, and, er... I don't think it's conquerable, no. Especially not in your state."
There's more clinking as he rummages through the scraps. He shows particular interest in the studs and the chainmail links, which he shoves into his backpack.
""We can share some more of our rations with you. And, we promise to continue fighting the cultists and to clear the Citadel of their presence. In return, can we spend an hour or two resting in this room and tending to our wounds? A few of us could use some healing."
"Mm? Oh, yes! We can also tend to your wounded, if need be."
Resa is not exactly good at what everything is happening. She was not used to dealing with people, let alone other creatures who are foreign to her. She keeps quiet so she does not insult anyone, but she tries to scout out anything that could cause danger to the group. She does whisper to them " Should we tell them we are going to clear the cultist and perhaps something they could do to help with it? Like a reward?"
Ellaeaanda focuses on the new tidbits of information and tries to glean more from the kobolds. “Where is this broken wall and closed gate of which you speak? And are there any other dangers down here besides the frogs and monkeys?”
Ardoinel retrieves some rations from his back and breaks them up into two equal portions, offering them to Pib and Zarf with a warm smile.
“Gracious you are to share your realm,” Ellaeaanda thanks the kobolds. With the area being deemed safe, she settles down for a leisurely hour, tending to the injuries of Cerrus and Netkin while musing over the nature of the slime next door. "How did you choose this citadel for your realm?" she idly inquires of the kobolds.
“What type of noises did you hear from the southern wing? Voices?” Ellaeaanda asks the kobolds as she finishes bandaging her wards. With the wounded tended to, she rises and announces “Decide the safety of this slime we shall.” The elf exits the mitey dragons’ den and listens carefully at the door to the slimy thing before cautiously opening it.
With Ellaeaanda's deft touch with gauze, Cerrus is back in fighting form. "Thank you, Ellaeannda. With a quick rest and your help, I'm feeling ready to proceed. How is everyone else's recovery? It seems like we are welcome enough to fully recover in this room, and relatively safe to do so."
Ellaeaanda peers at the slime from a safe distance, then returns to the kobolds’ room to rest and relax with the others. “What fate have you here?” she idly asks Cerrus in her faraway voice. “Breachill is no stranger to you, but strange you are to them.”
Ardoinel takes a seat as the others tend to him.
"Walking sticks...but not the doll that haunted this room?" he asks.
Resa stays quiet here as well, just listening to her companions talk in comfortable silent rest. She could add nothing really because she knew little of what they spoke of. But she could learn of their lives outside of here.
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Cerrus thinks on Ellaeaanda's question. "I honestly don't know. You are correct that I am a stranger to most of Breachill, despite my familial connection to the city's founding." He pauses for a long moment, wondering how much to share. "I traveled the Inner Sea far and wide, sometimes with barely enough to subsist - but always enough to collect trinkets and baubles. I take after my grandfather in that way. I found his diary when I returned to town. It seems he had some questions about Breachill that he was never able to answer. I intend to answer them. Hopefully, we learn something in this citadel that shines some light on those questions."
Cerrus moves to the center of the room and speaks to the group. "After Ellaeaanda's healing, I am ready to continue. Does anyone else need healing? Or, is anyone in need of recovery beyond what gauze and bandages can provide?"
“What questions concerned your grandfather?” Ellaeaanda asks Cerrus. “What insight would a hellknight bastion reveal about Breachill?” The elf avoids the disgusting slime for now and instead tries the last door, the one that leads southwest from the room containing the doll and dead boggards.
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"My grandfather's diary indicates that he believed that the town's founding didn't go as the townspeople have been led to believe. With how beloved Mr. Breachton is by the villagers, I imagine my grandfather kept his thought quiet. He either never shared this with me while he was still alive, or I was too young to remember."
Cerrus looks around his current surroundings and laughs slightly. "You are correct to doubt that we'll find a connection here in the citadel. But, maybe we'll find something."
“What tale is told of the founding father?” Ellaeaanda inquires softly. “Newly arrived am I to this area.” Her gaze slowly passes over the various paintings as she enters the room, then shifts towards the eastern door .
“What tale is told of the founding father?” Ellaeaanda inquires softly. “Newly arrived am I to this area.” Her gaze slowly passes over the various paintings as she enters the room, then shifts towards the eastern door .
Ardoinel nods.
"I'd like to know more as well...virtually all I know of Breachill I learned in dreams...ones more focused on its possible future destruction than how it is now or how it was in the past."
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Netkin, in the midst of mixing his reagents, visibly shifts nervously when Cerrus details his grandfather's findings. "Oh. Well, that's funny, because..." He pauses suddenly, as if afraid to go on, before adding in a rushed, somewhat lower voice: "I don't think Breachton was all that the inhabitants thought him to be, either. They made him to be a heroic figure," he explains to Ellaeaanda. "A powerful wizard, who saved a hundred, amnesiac people from starvation and using his considerable fortune to house them in a city he built. But... The stories never tell why these humans lost their memories in the first place, o-or even why such a prominent spellcaster would be, I don't know, strolling by at that precise moment and decide to invest thousands of crowns into helping them out for no reason?!"
"My family's been there for three generations, you see. In halflings years, that's quite a lot. Grandma came to this place back when Breachhill was still a bunch of tents surrounding a building site, if I recall correctly. And..." His voice drops even more significantly, and he leans in conspiratorially. "I think she might have known Lamond herself, back in the days."
He straightens. "Not that she ever wanted to tell me about it," he admits regretfully. "Cerrus, may I... See your diary? Actually, wait a bit, hands busy!" He carefully fills up the last of his vials with what appears to be a corrosive liquid, taking great care not to let a single drop spill. He then screws it tightly shut.
Resa having little idea about the area, and hearing all these things offer a small comment. "Maybe he was just a good person? You know, you didn't have to take me with you, but you did. Maybe he was walking along and saw someone needing help, and helped. I..
I...I think we need more people like that. I may not be a good person like that, but we need people like that."
Ardoinel blinks in surprise at Netkin's version of the story.
"How long ago was the town founded, Netkin?"
At Resa's self-deprication, he scoffs a bit, though it's with a smile.
"Resa, you're easily the most compassionate member of this group. Give yourself some credit!" he says warmly.
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Netkin counts on his fingers. "Oh, you're right! I forgot - well, it's a bit... I told the story badly, didn't I?" he sighs. "All that running around, and... Let me begin again."
"Grandma was never the most... Well, she's not the most talkative person about her family, really. Things also get... Fuzzy, at times, I think. She's got a good memory, but..." He shakes his head softly. "She was already very, very old when I was born."
"I've had a really tough time trying to get some answers about... My mom, you know," he pauses, choking up on emotion. "She was like a daughter to her, I think. I never could learn anything my granddad. I'm not even sure he lived there - in Breachhill, I mean. In the records, it's only my grandma, and presumably her parents. And then my mom, a bit, when she gave birth, and um... When she died. And then me. And nothing in between." He swallows. "And Grandma won't talk to me."
"I'm sure that she exaggerates a bit when she says the town was barely standing when she arrived - although, presumably, it has changed quite a lot since then! But from I could gather, she's been here a really long time. Really. Longer than anyone else, maybe, I think. I think the town was younger than I was when she was born in it. And she didn't see Lammond with her own eyes, but... Maybe her parents did. Or they at least knew the early settlers - the hundred humans that he rescued."
"And I don't know what they saw, and it's sooo frustrating at times, but - come on! The guy did all of that, built a town, and lived there for what, a year, and then, what, disappeared all of a sudden, and everyone is still talking about him and not finding a little bit weird?"
"I know that altruism is a wonderful thing, but this is just... shady!"
"Netkin's tale matches what I learned in my grandfather's writings. Mostly just some doubt that a powerful wizard would help the town out of the goodness of his heart - with zero explanation for the memory loss across the whole town. No evidence of wrongdoing. No theories to validate."
"I wasn't here when he died and this diary is the only thing I found among his things that was worth keeping. So, I feel I owe it to him to find an answer. Or, find evidence that his hunch was wrong."
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" I know little of people being nice for the sake of being nice, but it seems... I mean we don't know there is anything strange about it. If creating a town to some powerful wizard is really easy, then maybe it didn't take much work in the first place. I say we be.. openminded about everything. And think of it like that bear we did not remove yet. It needs to be gone, but how do we remove it safely?" Resa blushes a bit as others said she may be a good person, but she felt a darker call inside her sometimes that she struggled with. She just was never brave enough to act on it.
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"The memory loss is what intrigues me the most," Netkin nods. "It sounds like it could be a type of spell, and, well... Who would want to erase the memories of a hundred random people at the same time, right? It doesn't make any sense..."
"uuuuh, shiny crystals."
"May we have them for the hoard?"
Netkin blinks at them. "Um... No? We really need these ones. Sorry. I'm sure you'll be able to find even more beautiful ones outside of this room!" He adds encouragingly.
“Not random,” Ellaeaanda interjects in a soft, floaty voice. “Bound by space and time, they were … not so far from the aiudara we seek. Perhaps a thread connected to the absence of memory?” She nods slowly at the halfling. “By its very nature, amnesia is the greatest mystery. Unravel that thread, and motive shall follow.” She looks questioningly at Netkin. “Were any elves among the first of Breachill? Humans and halflings forget like flies, but trees and elves remember.”
When Cerrus produces and introduces a conversation about crystals, the elf turns to Ardoinel. “Have you Yuelral’s tools?” she asks, displaying her own softly glowing fluorite crystal. “Adhere to my bow should be its fate.”
"So then we can help lure it out with food like we thought, and ensure it to peacefully wander away. I prefer that to harming the poor beast. We have killed enough things so far this day."
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Ellaeaanda nods in agreement with Resa while borrowing Cerrus’s tools to affix a crystal to her longbow. “A trail of food to freedom outside. Rations have I to spare. Shall we construct this path to liberty?”
" The repellent may be useful if it tries to chance us, maybe after the door is opened, we use it so it doesn't follow us through the doors, just the easier meal out? Maybe even somehow figure out a way to close everything behind the bear as well, let him wander outside away."
Ellaeaanda nods at Netkin’s suggestion, agreeing with Resa’s assessment. “Repel the bear away from the path it should follow.”
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"Will do! I only need juuuust a couple of minutes... I've already given this some thought during the night!"
Netkin goes to sit in a corner with his vials. You can hear him muttering to himself as he tinkers with Gods-know-what. It looks complicated. There are bubbles. At some point, he makes himself cough. A few seconds later, a cork plugs the vial with a 'pop', and the halfling returns with an apologetic smile.
"Sodium hypochlorite. Not very hard to do if you happen to have salt, and water, and - well, electricity, I guess. Not much harm to our noses, but to a bear..." He shivers. "Oooh, boy. He won't like that."
"There's only a bit. We don't want to turn him aggressive anyways."
"Sounds like a reasonable plan to me. I will wait in that room to help Ellaeaanda close the door. Maybe everyone room should wait in the nearby room and come running if there is trouble."
“Gifted you are,” Ellaeaanda compliments the halfling, then nods in agreement with Cerrus. With the bear repellant ready, the elf sets to work, laying out a bit of her rations every twenty feet or so, leading from the door imprisoning the bear , to the main corridor , to the tunnel leading up to the surface, and for a hundred feet beyond. She suggests that Netkin place a bit of repellent in strategic places—a splash near the eastern end of the main corridor , and dabs in all of the branching corridors, save the one the bear must pass through, to herd the creature in the right direction. Whatever repellent is left over she splashes over herself.
When everyone is ready, she releases the bear and quickly runs away to where Cerrus can help shut the door behind her.
”Oww, but they are so shiny.””Oh, bring us those shinier things if you find them.”
"That pile in the other room is your hoard, is it not?" Ardoinel asks. "I left some gold there for you, when it appeared you were not home."
He shakes his head sadly at Ellaeeanda's request."I unfortunately am currently between tools...I learned and practiced using my father's and had yet to purchase my own."
When they discuss the plan, he nods gravely.
"Be ready in case it gets too impatient and decides we're an easier meal than the trail we're leaving for it," he warns. He takes up position with Cerrus, sword and shield drawn, just in case.
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"It worked?!" Netkin beams at his teammates. "Well done, everyone! Didn't know the repellent would work so well... mmmh... must keep the formula for later..."
"Should we have a look into the room, now that it's empty?" He peeks inside. The bear made quite a mess. Definitely not an animal for indoor environments, he thinks absent-mindedly. Probably why it was never kept as a pet. Well, that and the appetite, of course.
Ardoinel releases a breath he didn't realize he was holding as he and Cerrus shut the door behind Ellaeaanda.
"May that noble beast enjoy a long life feasting on berries, grubs and salmon," he says reverently. Then he turns to the group. "Good work, everyone! Resa for coming up with the plan, Netkin for brewing the repellent and Ellaeeanda for artfully setting the whole thing in motion once it was set up."
Then he nods at Netkin, joining in looking about the bear's former prison.
"Yes, even among the bear's frustrated destruction, we might find something we can use."