Leaving the unpleasant smell of the pillow room behind, you check out the other door in the hallway.
The walls of this room are lined with small wooden cages. Inside each cage is a dirty mound of straw.
Reacting to the light of the door opening, three small goblins in the cages start growling and gnawing on the bars of their cage.
Dayo goes pale once again.
"Do... Do you think the women that we let leave... Do you think these are theirs?"
"We feed them, give them water, and let them out of these... cages."
Dayo steps forward and pulls out some elven grain bread, a jar of honey, and a waterskin.
"What sort of monsters lock children up in cages? They need to be reunited with their parents."
The moment Dayo starts waving food around, there is more growling and bar gnawing and general drooling.
"If you've been locked in a cage since birth, fifteen minutes won't cure you."
Dayo sighs, his eyes tearing up with pity. As Justin leaves, Dayo's shoulders slump. "But nobody at Sandpoint will likely take them in, either, after all the destruction that has been wrought."
He turns to Vitro and Snowflake. "Do you think we could track the women who fled from here? Maybe bring these infants to them?"
"I will not kill these...children...for I can not condone them for crimes they have yet to commit. But commit them they will. Unless we will decide to set Thistletop to the flame, I would say let them be. Let their mothers return, if it is in their nature. Maybe the goblins will take over this place yet once again. At least we know where they are"
Vy follows Justin
Dayo leaves a portion of honeyed bread on top of each cage.
"After we've checked the other rooms I'll move them outside for some fresh air."
Vitro keeps pretty silent while the rest is inspecting the goblin cages. He looks like he's doing that stoic I'm-an-elf-I-don't-care these-are-mayfly-monsters thing, although the act isn't entirely convincing somehow.
Little arms reach trough the bars of the cages and snatch the pieces of bread.
The bread is noisily devoured.
Opening the last door in the hallway, you go down a short corridor. Several doors are in the corridor, and you start with the first door at your right hand side.
This one-person bedroom shows many signs of having been lived in. The bed itself is rumpled and unmade, and a half-eaten meal of bread and
smoked salmon sits on the nightstand. A few articles of dirty clothing sit at the foot of the bed.
Unless dirty socks are the treasure you are after, there isnt anything of real value in this room.
Crossing the hall you open the left door.
This bedroom has a faint musty odor. The bed is covered with matted gray and black hair, and bloodstains mar the stone floor, while a morbid
stack of birds’ feet lies heaped on the floor by the side of the bed.
Judging by the smell and hair, this was the bugbears room.
With nothing of value found, you continue down the corridor. Trying the right door again.
This room is clean and well organized. A low dresser to the southwest has a stack of papers sitting atop it, weighted down by a large chunk of obsidian, while to the northwest sits a well-made bed.
The room has a slightly dusty smell. It clearly hasnt been used in a while. Going trough the papers, its clear why: This was Tsuto's room.
The notes on the nightstand are mostly rough drafts of Tsuto’s plans to blackmail his father and to use the Sandpoint Glassworks as a staging ground for the coming investigation of what he calls the Catacombs of Wrath.
Pressing on, you open the fourth door.
While this bedroom is clean and brightly lit by an everburning torch lying on the nightstand, its spartan decor makes it unclear whether it’s actually lived in.
Opening the last door, you see a large chamber that seems to serve a dual purpose. To the north is a fine bed with silk sheets, while to the south, a desk and chair under a hanging lantern make a comfortable-looking study.
Going trough the room, there is nothing off real value. But Snowflake is sure this used to be Nualia's room.
Snowflake looks around the room. If you didn't know better, this could be the room of a normal person. A sane one. Untainted.
He walks to the bed and grabs a pillow.
A place for her to rest her head on, when she's laid out on the funeral pire
Giving snowflake some space, you leave him for the moment in Nualia's bedroom.
Crossing the hallway you pass the chapel into a small room.
The lower four feet of the walls in this empty room are covered with crude drawings in mud, blood, and paint. Most of the drawings show goblins engaged in some sort of violence against humans, horses, or dogs. One picture on the north wall is at least three times the size and complexity of the other scrawlings. This image shows Thistletop from the side, the goblin stockade perched atop it like a crown. A cave has been drawn into the center of the image, and looming inside is what appears to be an immense, muscular goblin with snakelike eyes and a dogslicer in each taloned hand. If the scale compared to the rest of the drawing is to be believed, this goblin must be at least thirty feet tall.
"Do you think that was the bugbear? Or is this guy still hanging around here?"
Vitro seems a little worried about that, and makes sure he keeps track of where everyone is going. Vy needs some space, but Vitro won't let the rest of the group get split up.
Snowflake packs the pillow, and follows the rest, when he's eyes click towards the...painting. It makes him wonder...
Snowflake remembers that goblins dont worship the regular gods. They have some goblin hero gods. Shalelu mentioned that Thistletop is the most coveted territory in the goblin tribes. Perhaps it holds some religious significance for the goblins?
"I think I read about this during my first visit to Sandpoint's library."
Dayo has also heard that goblins worship heros instead of gods. Since goblins dont write, and all knowledge comes from goblin songs overheard by others or captured goblins, its hard to say how those hero gods exaclty look. It seems to vary from tribe to tribe. A representation of one of their gods would explain why this is depicting a 30ft tall goblin.
"Well. Do we do anything with it? We came here to stop a conspiracy against Sandpoint, not to stomp out goblin cultic centers. Is it going to make much of a difference if we leave this as it is?"
Vitro ushers the group to an inspection of the room(s) between the cells and the chapel.
Going back trough the cellblock, you check out the room where Shalelu found your gear after you got captured.
A dusty nest of rags, dog hides, and straw sits in the northeast corner of the room. To the south, a long workbench cluttered with pliers, hooks,
tongs, saws, and knives runs along the wall.
Vitro shuffles them back towards the unexplored northwest corner. Pressing forward, with marching order Dayo, Vitro, Vy, Justin.
A large table surrounded by chairs fills much of this room. 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 doubtless where the recent raid was planned.
An investigation of the slate and the notes written confirms this the attackplan for the raid on sandpoint during the swallowtail festival. One phrase that stands out is that once “the whispering beast is tamed,” the architects of the plan intend to mount a second raid on the town, one that incorporates not only additional goblin tribes culled from as far as the Fogscar Mountains to the north, but creatures referred to as “sinspawn” who will invade Sandpoint from below. No exact timetable is given for when this second raid is to happen, but close examination reveals that the final assault is scheduled for only a few weeks in the future.
[OSKAR]
"Skaven masterminds it is! I'll happily be escort'n ya to the city brig now..." Oskar says as he reaches for Justin with exaggerated movements.
[/OSKAR]
Winking at Oskar, Vitro sounds like he's supporting Justin's position.. "Really with all these nasty little evil monsters running around, we're better off getting them to fight each others, that way we don't have to do everything ourselves." but then he suddenly steps aside and grabs Justin by the shoulders, teasingly holding him out to Oskar.
Somehow, Snowflake looks whiter than normal, and his voice sounds squeaky, like a teenage boy.
"The Whispering Beast??? There is a monster living in Sandpoint??!?! Is..is the Sandpoint Devil real??????"
"Something is carrying off horses in the night. I was searching for that very creature when I first came here! Then Goblins jumped me. Now it makes sense... Maybe they've been in league the whole time!"
"Well, or trying to get in league. It looks like they were hoping to tame it, doesn't mean they succeeded. As far as I know, the Sandpoint Devil is a bit of a legend.. nobody's seen it up close. Might be that nobody survived to tell the tale though..." he says with a lugubrious voice, looming over Justin just a bit.
Going trough the next door, you see a large wooden worktable sitting in the middle of this room, its surface cluttered with scrolls, books, stone tablets covered with dense, spiky runes, and fragments of carvings that appear to have been chipped off of statues or bas-reliefs. To the
north, a floor-to-ceiling set of wooden shelves sags with picks, shovels, brushes, lanterns, and other equipment one might expect to see at an archaeological site.
The tablets contain fragments of Thassilonian writing.
Not interested in the archiological discoveries, Oskar casually leans against a wall....
And promplty falls trough as the hidden door in the wall falls open. A stairway leads further down...
[OSKAR]
[/OSKAR]
Its hard to make something sensible out of the thassilonian. First, its only fragments, second, most of the text seems to be devoted to praising the runelods might, which results in a whole lot of text, but not a lot of content.
Peering at the fragments for a while Vitro eventually shrugs. "We'll have to make sense of that later. What about the passage down there? Do we feel up to going down? Me, I'm tapped out of spells."
"Whoever, or whatever is down there, probably had contact with Nualia. Once they realize she's not coming back, they may try to see why."
"So do we try to block up this door and hope the downstairs has no other exits? It's got to lie below sea level, but maybe the monster below the stairs can swim. But I don't know if we have the oomph left to confront a beast they were counting on as a trump card..."
[OSKAR]
"Yeah? I'll bet. Probably a cousin of yours or somethin'."
[/OSKAR]
"Although I desperately wish this reign of terror to end, rushing in didn't work with the hounds earlier. We should have every reason to believe this could be just as bad."
