Entry 6 - Magical Findings Under The Glassworks

[For my previous journal entry, go here. To see where my journey began, go here.]

We made it to the Glassworks and encountered a locked door on the north side of the building. I quickly made it an unlocked door.

We stepped inside and found broken glass on some of the shelves and papers strewn about. They mostly looked like contracts that had been torn up.

The wolf, after sniffing at the air, said, "I smell goblins."

"Uhh... the wolf can talk?" I asked.

Dante said, "Clearly, you're hearing things."

"Cairn, you can't tell me you didn't hear the wolf talk."

Cairn looked at the wolf, then back at me and shrugged. "Ask the wolf." Then he turned to the door on the west side of the room.

"So he can talk?"

Cairn shrugged again.

The druid pressed an ear against the door on the west side of the room, then tried to open it. It was locked. I made that door unlocked as well.

More papers, not torn, and a footlocker. A metal plate crushed my lockpick when I tried to open it.

"So... seriously, is no one going to acknowledge the wolf talked?" I asked as I removed the lockpick and straightened it back out. I got no response.

We moved up a short hallway going south, then west and found some storage rooms, and a door I couldn't pick the lock on. "Hmm... they spent good money on these locks."

We backtracked a little and came upon some double doors that swung both ways, leading into the furnace room. Dante pushed the door open slightly. We saw ten goblins, and he slowly closed the door.

We discussed our best option with that many enemies, and the bard suggested using his cantrip to "befriend" one goblin at a time and lure them to us and execute them. After a moment, we all agreed.

Dante opened the door slightly, cast his spell, and the first goblin came walking to us willingly. The axe-wielding druid sliced it in half once it was through the door.. He seemed to be pretty good at that particular method of goblin killing.

On the second attempt, the goblin shouted something in its own language and they all started moving toward the door. At least we got one good use out of that plan.

We readied ourselves, but no goblins came through the door. Dante peeked inside again and said a few were missing from the far side of the room, and the rest were approaching slowly.

After waiting a little longer, I suddenly smelled wood smoke, and saw something being shoved under the door.

"I think they're lighting the door on fire."

One of the goblins pushed the door open and threw a clay pot into the room. Dante managed to throw a dagger and break the pot, and molten glass spilled out onto the floor. Snowpaw and Dante got splashed by some of it. I managed to dodge every bit of it while a good amount splashed onto the goblin who threw it. I stepped up and skewered it with my rapier while it was screaming in pain.

Hamlin shot a crossbow bolt through another goblin's eye, while Cairn pushed through the door and chopped down the last goblin standing there.

Snowpaw burst through the door and charged halfway across the long room, but slipped on some of the broken glass on the floor and tripped, sliding into the goblin he was charging toward.

The goblin on the far side of the room tried to throw a piece of glass at the wolf, easily 40 feet away. He missed.

Dante charged to defend the wolf, kukri in hand, and slashed one of the goblins that had moved up next to him, and I followed with my rapier, the goblin on the verge of death.

I sensed a crossbow bolt fly by, but it didn't hit anything. Cairn ran into a table. I think he was trying to jump over it to charge at a goblin.

The severely wounded goblin got a small cut on me, then the bard moved past me to line up his next move, sharp objects flying out of his lute as he strummed a chord on it, and two goblins fell over dead. I nodded in approval.

Another handful of goblins came pouring in from the door we came through and attacked Hamlin who was still over there. Hamlin ran over next to Dante, Snowpaw, and myself. Cairn quickly followed, charging at the remaining goblin by us, somehow managing to squish it with the blade of his axe.

"How... how did you crush it instead of cutting it?" I asked. Cairn shrugged.

Dante ran toward the goblins, sliding across the ground on his knees the last few feet while playing his lute and singing, "Shards of glass in your faaaaace!" Four goblins fell to the ground dead. Another charged up to him and in a blur of motion the goblin was bloodied.

I quickly drew my bow and fired an arrow past Dante's shoulder, killing the goblin he had wounded. Cairn charged again and finished off the last goblin in the room.

Finally being able to take in our surroundings, I noticed a glass statue of a man right by us. Snowpaw said aloud, "I think there is actually a man inside this glass."

"I told you the wolf could talk!" I said.

"Yes, yes, I can talk," Snowpaw responded.

I took a closer look at the glass "statue" and realized it was Ameiko's father. He certainly wasn't the nicest man in the world, but I could tell by looking at him in the glass that he had been tortured before being encased in the glass while still alive. No one deserved that.

There was a keyring on his side and Snowpaw took it by the teeth as we searched the rest of the building.

A room we found at the southern end of the building held a broken display case within, glass scattered about. What looked like a janitor's closet was nearby. The hallways were starting to head back north, and we came upon a room filled with barrels, one labeled "pickles" with goblin feet sticking out the top, and munching sounds coming from inside.

Dante muttered quietly, "Where's the lid?"

I reached down next to the barrel and handed the lid to the bard. He put it on top of the barrel, securing it in place.

"Hey!" we heard the goblin say, the munching noises resuming almost immediately after.

Dante wandered off to search the building while we talked to the goblin.

"Where's the elf lady?" Hamlin asked.

"There's no elf lady. There's an elf guy." More chewing sounds.

"Where is he?"

"He's downstairs." The goblin seemed very happy. Shalalu wasn't wrong when she said they really like to eat.

Dante returned and we headed over to the door near where we entered the building that I couldn't unlock with my picks. The keys Snowpaw had been carrying were able to open it.

There was another key that opened the footlocker we found earlier, and we found about seventy-five gold worth of diamond dust in it. We locked it up again, then went through the door we unlocked, and down the stairs beyond.

The basement was mostly empty, but we found a half-elf man sitting in one of the rooms.

He asked why the goblins didn't come to get him, and I replied because they're all dead. He suddenly looked very angry.

Dante shut the door from the side, but the man kicked it open and punched Cairn who was standing in the doorway.

Cairn stepped to the side of the door and I moved up, but we both missed with our first attacks. The man pummeled Cairn, and the big half-orc fell to the ground. Dante fed him a potion right after he fell and the half-orc stood back up, summoning a giant centipede in the room behind the man.

I often forgot he was a druid.

Hamlin stepped into the hallway and fired a crossbow bolt into the guy's thigh.

The man tried to pull a move like I've done before, but I managed to block his attempt to leap past me. I quickly jabbed him with my rapier and Snowpaw took a big bite out of him. His attempt to tumble past us thwarted, he punched me while taking another bite from the wolf.

After seeing Cairn fall and feeling one of his punches myself, I could tell this guy had trained to make his fists into weapons.

Cairn stepped up and cut him down.

I searched his body and found a book with a lot of drawings. Most of them were of women in... compromising positions. I flipped past those pages quickly, and the last three turned out to hold the most interesting and important information. I could tell the handwriting matched the Tian writing on the note we found earlier in the Rusty Dragon.

"I think we just killed Ameiko's brother..." I muttered as I read through those last three pages.

The raid went about as planned. Few Thistletop goblins perished, and we were able to secure Tobyn's casket with ease while the rubes were distracted by the rest. I can't wait until the real raid. This town deserves a burning, that's for sure. [This page had a map of Sandpoint with arrows that matched the path of the attack that occurred a few days before.]

Ripnugget seems to favor the overwhelming land approach, but I don't think it's the best plan. We should get the quasit's aid. Send her freaks up from below via the smuggling tunnel in my father's Glassworks, and then invade from the river and from the Glassworks in smaller but more focused strikes. The rest except Bruthazmus agree, and I'm pretty sure the bugbear's just being contrary to annoy me. My love's too distracted with the lower chambers to make a decision. Says that once Malfeshnekor's released and under her command, we won't need to worry about being subtle. I hope she's right. [There was a drawing of a woman's head and shoulders amidst the writings on this page.]

My love seems bent on going through with it - nothing I can say convinces her of her beauty. She remains obsessed with removing what she calls her "celestial taint" and replacing it with her Mother's grace. Burning her father's remains at the Thistletop shrine seems to have started the transformation, but I can't say her new hand is pleasing to me. Hopefully when she offers Sandpoint to Lamashtu's fires, her new body won't be as hideous. Maybe I'll luck out. Succubi are demons too, aren't they? [Another drawing, apparently of the same woman, but with small horns on her head, and she had demonic wings.]

He had a ring and some coins on him, along with some silver dust worth a small amount of gold.

Hamlin suddenly called out that he found Ameiko. She was beaten near to death. Dante fed her a healing potion and she woke with a start, ready to fight, before realizing she was surrounded by friends.

Tsuto wanted Ameiko to join some group worshiping the "mother of demons" or something. She said she turned him down and called him an idiot, and then was surrounded by goblins and woke up here.

We showed Ameiko the journal and after reading the last few pages, she stated, "She should be dead. There's a tombstone in the cemetery behind the cathedral." When we asked who, she said Nualia, Tobyn's adopted daughter.

I showed her the other belongings, and she took the silver dust since it was likely something he took from her father's workshop, but said we could keep the rest of his stuff.

When we searched the rest of the basement, we found a tunnel that went to the north and possibly outside of the town. The wall around the tunnel appeared to have been collapsed inward on the basement floor.

We decided to inform the mayor of what happened in the morning since it was still late at night, and helped Ameiko get to the Rusty Dragon after rolling the pickle barrel goblin to the jail. We told the town guard to put some people at the Glassworks to watch the tunnel as well, and two of them geared up and headed out right away.

I stayed up for a little while that night looking at the ring we'd taken off of Tsuto's body. Something had been bothering me since I first picked it up. It seemed somehow familiar to me, but I couldn't think of why. I pulled out a notebook from my days at The Bartered Coin. I'd jotted things down over the years, notes about particularly interesting items that had come through the shop.

The Boss had a wizard on hand to make sure he wasn't getting ripped off in case someone brought something in claiming it was magical, and he'd taught me a few things I could look for on minor magic items so he wouldn't have to be bothered as much.

Looking through the notes I'd taken, some of the telltale signs stood out to me on the ring. The craftsmanship was definitely beyond a mundane piece of jewelry, on par with what a minor noble would wear, minus a gem or two.

I tried to compress the ring slightly between my fingers, and it didn't seem to have any flex to it like a regular ring. And it showed no signs of wear. No matter how well someone takes care of a normal ring, it will have some sort of markings showing it's been worn or used to some degree. Its properties were exactly like one of the rings I'd written about in my notes, with some ornamental differences, of course. This one had a small groove running all the way around that made it look almost like two small rings stuck together.

I slipped it on one of my fingers, then pulled out a dagger from the sheath in one of my boots sitting next to my bed. I pressed it against my thumbnail gently, slowly increasing the pressure, and it didn't cut. I pressed just a little harder and a small nick was made on the nail. I stopped before it cut any further.

I was right, and the notes and test I just did confirmed it. The ring was magical, and it provided a very slight protection from damage. A "ring of protection" was what the Boss's wizard called them. It had been a while since I'd seen one. More powerful ones were usually made of finer materials and would sometimes have gems ornamenting them, though more as a mark of vanity of the owner than the power of the magic, and based on my little experiment as well I could tell this one had only a minor enchantment. Still rather useful.

I let the others know in the morning before we met with the mayor, and we came to the consensus to let me keep the ring since I was usually more on the front line, and thus got attacked more.

We met with the mayor after breakfast, and she seemed shocked at the possibility Tobyn's daughter was still alive.

Hamlin asked if the girl was violent or seemed angry at all when she was living here. The mayor said no, but she didn't leave the cathedral during the year prior to the fire.

She offered to have guards watch the Glassworks to make sure no one entered or exited while we explored the tunnel to see where it led. I let her know some guards had already been placed there after we exited for just that reason.

We entered the tunnels shortly after, but without Snowpaw, him having wandered out of town sometime during the night (he did seem like the very definition of a lone wolf), and decided to follow each branch we ran into. Down the first path, we came upon some creepy humanoid creatures with split jaws, wielding wicked-looking, barbed spears. Ranseurs, if I remember correctly.

Cairn stepped up to attack and I leapt over one and delivered a strong blow, but then it bit me. I suddenly felt sick, my mind flooded with guilt over everything I'd ever done wrong. Dante started singing and I felt slightly better, but I could tell this feeling wouldn't go away very quickly.

Cairn finished off the first one.

A kukri flew past, then a crossbow bolt, neither hitting the mark, then Cairn smacked the other enemy before it skewered me with its spear. My vision started going dark when Dante suddenly ran forward and pushed the thing backward. Hamlin stepped over to line up a shot and killed the creature with his crossbow.

Cairn cast a healing spell on me and I drank a potion as well and felt near peak health again, once that sickening feeling wore off.

Dante said those things were called sin eaters. When I asked how he knew that, he just replied with a shrug, "Bardic knowledge."

"So bards just know things?"

"Pretty much." He shrugged again.

"Whatever." I shook my head.

We came upon a red statue of a woman holding a ranseur, but this one was encrusted with pearls and rubies. Dante used one of the ranseurs he took off the sin eaters to work it free and started carrying it with him as well.

As we moved around some more, we found a room with crumbling skeletons, and three more of those sin eater things. Cairn and I damaged two of them while Hamlin and I took hits, Hamlin coming away a bit more injured than me. Dante did his face melting thing and Hamlin finished one off with a dagger blow before tumbling past the bard to get out of harm's way. He was looking pretty beat up.

Cairn finished off another with his axe, then we surrounded the last one and took it out.

We searched the room and found a nice amulet, two very finely crafted hand crossbows, and a vial of some dark liquid, all just laying about the place.

Being the only ones who used bows of any kind, Hamlin and I each took a crossbow. Looking mine over, I asked to see Hamlin's.

"Yep, magical just like the ring," I said confidently.

"How can you be so sure?" Hamlin asked, clutching at his side.

"Look at where we found the stuff." I gestured into the room we had faced the last batch of sin eaters in. Cells lined the walls, old bones scattered within and without them. "We're literally in a dungeon. These things don't have a speck of rust or wood rot, let alone a single scuff on them."

"Mhmm," Dante said, I think staring intently at the weapons. The mask made it rather difficult to tell. "Definitely magic. The amulet too."

"More of that 'bardic knowledge'?" I asked.

"No. I have a spell that lets me see if things have a magic aura about them. The amulet seems similar to your ring."

Hamlin moved to hang his new hand crossbow from his belt, but winced at the pain. He really did look worse for wear.

"Here, let's go talk to the priests so we don't have to use up all our potions or Cairn's healing after just starting in here. We already used some on me, after all." I paused, looking up and down the corridor we were in. "There's definitely a lot more to explore down here."

"Let's give the amulet to the big guy so he gets a little defensive boost like you, and you two keep exploring while I walk Hamlin to the priests. We'll catch up with you." Dante offered.

It wasn't very far to the entrance from the Glassworks, so we agreed (though it took some convincing for me to come around), and Cairn and I prepared to head deeper into the tunnel network.

We would have to figure out what was in that vial later, but my guess was it was some sort of poison.

And here is where we split the party.