Now that she was finished with patching everyone up, Tera turns to the bugbear and murmurs an arcane chant, her eyes glowing gold as she looks over the corpse for anything of interest.
After rifling through the dead brute's pockets, she turns to the others.
"Well, let's see if we can figure out where to go from here," she says before moving to the northern door.
Kaede looks slightly annoyed at her lack of skill. "When we have bad luck.... we all have bad luck, it seems," she grumbles as Tera looks over the bugbear.
Most of the bugbear's gear is unextraordinary: a simple suit of studded leather, a quiver of arrows, the heavy flail. There are a few exceptions though: the longbow seems very well made, and more robust than any the heroes have seen before ; there are 4 arrows that are far more finely crafted than the others, 4 platinum pieces, and a small glass flask.
Tera shivers as she realizes what the arrows are for.
"We should ask Shalelu or the church what to do with these," she quietly tells the others as she bundles the arrows and wraps them in a piece of cloth, "the vial contains a healing potion, a moderately powerful one. Any takers?"
"I would like to hold onto it if no one minds" Marcus says, worried that Orik may speak up.
Tera hands the potion to Marcus before checking the door to the north.
Grimly, Kaelaah nods at Orik in response to the compliment - the mercenary had kept his side of the bargain and hadn't sided with the bugbear... that was something. Yet the shoanti would remain vigilant whilst this sellsword was amongst them... despite the last few minutes, this was a man whose morals were cowed by simple coin.
Orik sheathes his sword and watches as Tera examines the bugbear’s belongings then claims the arrows and passes off the potion. When nobody else moves to take anything he slowly crouches and removes the 4 platinum pieces from its pouch. With the coins still in hand, he rises equally slowly and looks around to see if anyone is going to protest.
Orik nods. "The pull's too heavy for me even," he agrees, "but it'd get you prolly four-hundred gold just sellin' it t'a merchant for him t'sell."
Apparently satisfied with the tacit agreement that he could claim the coin and leave the gear for everyone else, the mercenary pockets the platinum pieces and moves into the hall that Tera has headed down.
Tera, with a newly restocked quiver, does her best to quietly open the door.
Kaede shrugs and shoulders the bow. She has no issue with Orik claiming the coins, but she'll have to remember to claim other coins next time. she then turns to Tera, both hands gripping her glaive, as she continues the group's foray into danger.
Marcus has no claim to the coins, and no real grasp of their value anyway.
He joins the others at the next door.
Kaelaah too, notices the mercenary's pocketing of coin - he debates whether to say something, even though he has no use for the coin himself, but seeing the way that this fellow marked have accepted his actions, says nothing... quietly, and still watchful of their latest companion, he follows the group to the next door.
Tera swings open the door at the north end of the hallway to reveal a ten foot wide by fifteen foot deep empty room. The lower four feet of the walls 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.
There is a single door exiting the chamber, in the middle of the western wall. It sits partially ajar, revealing a ten foot long hallway that ends at another door.
Tera moves through to the next door after giving the room a brief look. She does her best to remain silent, though a bobbing of her shoulders in quiet laughter after Sal's comment shows that it was proving a little harder than normal.
As he follows along behind, Marcus considers his remaining resources and quietly reties his net to his belt, gripping his spear with his right hand.
Kaelaah whispers to whoever is closest, "So... we are assuming that the artist was prone to exaggeration? If there truly is a thirty foot goblin down there then we may be ill-prepared". As if to question the veracity of this painting's claim, Kaelaah raises a quizzical eyebrow towards Orik...
Orik shrugs. "If there was a thirty foot goblin anywhere I doubt it'd be hidin' out in some cave..."
Tera swings open the next door to reveal a fifteen foot by twenty foot room crowded with a large table and a number of chairs. A slate board on the north wall 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. A stairway heads upward to the east, almost certainly the same northern staircase the adventurers discovered above. One other door sits on the western wall.
Marcus mutters a quiet incantation and looks around the room a bit, as long as it seems the others are willing to wait.
Kaede stops in the 'gallery' room, and squats to look over the artwork, mostly skimming over the work, but studying the complex one. "At least someone learned some skill in the tribe....probably got killed for it too...." she muses, while following 'brush marks' with one hand.
"Say, what if it's not a goblin, but a some creature that used an illusion or such when it talked to the goblins?" she suggests after a while. "Goblins aren't the most creative things, so showing a powerful monster as a big goblin makes a certain amount of sense."
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Seeing that Sal and Marcus are searching the room, Tera moves to the next door and checks it before seeing what lay beyond. As she tries to move quietly, she trips and falls flat on her face with a noticeable smack.
"Oooow. By boor dose," she groans, her voice muffled by the stone floor. She picks herself off the floor and gingerly prods the bridge of her nose to make sure it wasn't broken, all while her cheeks burn red with humiliation. She hated being clumsy, it made her feel like others saw her as nothing more than a clumsy child.
Satisfied that her nose wasn't broken, or bleeding, she dusts herself off and moves more carefully to check the door.
Things had seemed quiet, maybe a little too quiet, since the bugbear had fallen... was Thistletop truly so empty that nothing, hearing its dying screams, had come to its aid - Kaelaah's experience, such as it was, of goblins was that where there was one... there were many. Maybe the raid on Sandpoint had left the tribe diminished... or were there still others here?
Tera nods at Sal and fishes out the forked-tip wand from the catacombs.
"Get Ready," she mouths before turning back to the door and silently counting to three. Then, with a heave, she throws the door open and tries to find the supposed mage so she can zap them before they can react or finish their spell.
Suddenly Tera fling open the next door revealing a ten foot by fifteen foot chamber. A large wooden worktable sits in the middle of the 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. There does not appear to be anyone in the room...
Startled by the abrupt opening, Zache, Sal, Marcus, and Tera are the first to respond...
Oh man, I hope this works!
"I think they turned invisible. Can any of you see magic auras," Tera asks before muttering a spell of her own and closing her eyes. She doesn't move into the room, though she does lean in far enough to get a look at the northeast corner as she opens her now golden glowing eyes.
Seeing the room empty, Marcus and his spear enter in. Moving to the back corner of the room, to have a better look around.
Tera, Sal, and Marcus all hear the faint sound of a disembodied voice, but none of them can pinpoint where in the study it's coming from... it sounds like it could be another spell, and just as Tera is piecing together what spell it might be, she abruptly learns what spell it was... from right behind her and Sal a slick, oily substance bubbles up from the ground and quickly spreads to cover most of the southern part of the room.
Tera slips a little, but manages to keep her feet. That is until she tries to move. She scrambles for a moment before falling.
"I hate it when that happens."
Managing to stay on his feet, Kaelaah looks around for the source of the oily slick...
You do detect the presence of magic... of course, if Marcus still has one of those potions, or if the most recent spell originated in the area, it is possible the disembodied voice could now be outside the area...
Suspecting an invisible assailant, Marcus begins to move through the room, sweeping his spear in an arc, looking for resistance.
Tera sees Sal step over he and mutters, "Careful, the mage's still there."
Zache launches himself into the room, perching on top of the table with his knives drawn in a dramatic sweep. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" he calls in a singsong voice.
Before he notices Zache's approach, Orik offers, "Y'know, if we just wait all that magic'll end eventually..." He raises an eyebrow as the bard flashes by and effortlessly glides over the slick spot. "Ah, hells," he exclaims as he tries to prepare himself to attempt to move the grease as well. Before he actually makes a move, Kaede charges by following in the bard's footsteps, albeit much slower...
"Damm," the mercenary mutters under his breath as the Shelynite also makes it across with relative ease. With a deep breath and a shake of his head, Orik tries to follow them...
Unfortunately, things go about as well for him as he seemed to expect: one step onto the grease and his feet go out from under him and he crashes to the ground.
Suddenly a section of wall in the room's southwest corner clicks and swings open, revealing a hidden staircase downward behind it.
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"Unless they decide to be a cheaty-pants," Tera grumbles as she sees the secret door open up.