The Undying Dragons - Campaign Thread

((Marrin's AO on Festan:

 Attack: 26 Damage: 10))

She looks at the remaining hob goblin and asks,

"Really? I'm very much done with today. Ava, a hand please."

She then stabs him.

Attack: 16 Damage: 10

((Assuming that means Festan has hit 0HP, in which case Jan will shift her hex to the remaining hob.))

Jan mutters a curse and flings a hand at the remaining hobgoblin.

Attack: 20 Damage: 14 (force/necrotic/bludgeoning)

Ethel turns from the zombie corpses and approaches the limp form of Festan.  She doesn't come within 5', instead standing further back and looking to see if he is breathing.

She brings a clawed hand up to her face, ready.  [Readied action: chill touch, to be cast only if Festan gets up and moves threateningly towards her or Adelysia.  Attack: 18 Damage: 4 ]

Whether it's Marrin's blade or Jan's bolt of energy, the remaining hobgoblin keels over and collapses again on the platform.

The crowd cheers. Anyone looking into the viewing area can see coins changing hands, and despite the lack of supportive acting on your part, it appears Harry Dodds may be collecting more than he's paying out.

Godrick Hargrove merely watches the lot of you carefully before his eyes scan the bodies of the hobgoblins strewn about the arena.

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Out of combat - just the flag to claim or ignore or whatever else might come to mind before Godrick decides on anything.

"Avaria, just grab the flag please. I'm not feeling well enough for climbing. Let me play you some jaunty climbing music though."

Marrin stabs the short sword into the platform and pulls the lute out for some accompaniment, a nice sailors song given the audience.

Performance: 19

Avaria jumps off onto the platform with the snakes after sliding back down.  She looks through the hole below her, seeing that all the hobs were taken care of and that Marrin wasn't doing too well.  She wasn't feeling the best herself.

But the music Marrin starts playing makes her smile and she picks up one of the snake carcasses and uses it to wipe off the greasy pole.  Once satisfied, she goes to climb up again, hoping this time she won't slide again.

Athletics  24

Avaria manages to get enough of the grease off the pole to make it up to the top platform. From there she has a better view of the audience and viewing area, with her head being almost at the same height, albeit still about 50' away. In the corners, above the seating, she can just make out the archers with their bows, arrows trained on her and those below.

When she grabs the flag from the small platform it sits on the crowd cheers and applauds.

Godrick, his face still cold and emotionless watches Avaria for a moment and then raises a hand.

"You can not get this entertainment on the mainland," Godrick says. "Now I hear my sister has concocted something enticing for you in the Amorous Octopus."

The crowd begins leaving fairly quickly, Harry Dodds near the rear who gives a quick secretive nod to Avaria.

When all of you reconvene down on the sandy arena floor and start making your way to the portcullis gate you came through, you find it is still closed.

"Your work is not finished," Godrick's voice calls down from above. "The hobgoblin bodies need to be taken care of."

Godrick then disappears from view. For a moment there's quiet, but then the creaking of chains can be heard. At first you glance over to the entry to the refuse heap where you had to take the dead axe beaks. But nothing is opening there. Quickly it's clear the portcullis on the far side of the arena is rising. Five heavily armed and armored hobgoblin guards enters. Once they're inside the arena, the portcullis closes behind them.

One of the hobgoblins move to the north side of the arena, where there is no portcullis. He taps on one part of the wall and a concealed door opens.

He turns and looks back at the group.

"Bring them in here," he says, gesturing at the fallen hobgoblins. 

Jan mutters to the others as she grabs a hobgoblin arm and begins pulling.

"Stay alert, wouldn't put it past Godrick to give the guards some extra orders after our show."

Marrin looks disappointed she didn't get more of a cheer for her music but adds it to her list of slights since ending up here.

She grabs another arm and drags. She takes some time to look at the guards faces as she struggles forward.

"Cats down here too?"

The hobgoblin guard shakes his head when Marrin indicates the big black cats. "Garbage" he says then nods at the goblin zombies "garbage too."

As you all manage to push, pull, and drag the hobgoblin contingent through the open doorway on the far side of the arena, you find yourselves in a torch lit tunnel. 

Ula notices that this stonework is more recent than what you've seen elsewhere in the tunnels and chambers of this island town.

Approximately twenty feet along, the tunnel opens up into a large room, also torch lit. Along the walls are work benches covered in books, flasks, and tools of different sorts. In the center of the room is a blood stained, and very sturdy table.

The hobgoblins direct you to leave the dead hobs along the near wall and to move out and back down the chamber.

As they do so, a door opens on the far side of the room and two more hobgoblin guards enter. After them comes Godrick Hargrove. He looks from the dead hobgoblins to the party.

"Why are they still here?" Godrick asks.

He waves his hand dismissively as if he was shooing away a fly.

The hobgoblins all become agitated and start shouting at you to leave the room and go back down the tunnel.

Ethel tries to commit to memory where that trigger was located on the arena wall for the secret door.  She puts in a junior share of effort hauling the dead goblins.  Instead, she prods Adelysia to put her back into it, considering she wasn't able to contribute in the arena.

Inside the laboratory she is taken aback.  She isn't sure what she was expecting, but this surpasses it by leaps and bounds.  Does she recognize anything here?  Arcana 13

When Godrick orders them out, she tries to pull away from the first hobgoblin to reach for her.  "What is all this, Godrick?"  The tone betrays desperate curiosity, not just accusation.

For the most part, what Ethel sees is a mix of alchemy supplies and arcane texts whose titles are difficult to read in this light.

Flasks and pipes form a complicated alchemical setup. Near some of the pipes, what at first look like other white pipes, on closer inspection appear to be hollow bones. Foul odours emanate from a wooden barrel in one corner. If you had to put a finger on that smell, it's rotting meat. Glass jars, each stoppered, filled with various sludgy liquids; some black, some red-tinged brown and some green clutter one end of the long work bench. 

A glass laboratory flask hangs over a brass bowl, the inside coated in black ash the outsides of the flask are covered in dried red encrustations.

At one end of the central table, a glass lancet, tubing and a glass jar appear connected and covered in dark red stains.

Godrick looks over at Ethel.

"Depending on how your stay goes on the island, you may very well find out, intimately," Godrick says. Then he pauses when he sees its curiosity driving her. "It is not the facility I would wish, but all that my father will allow. For now."

He pauses and then gestures back to the arena.

"You saw the crude early results," Godrick says then he looks to the guards and gestures again. "I hope you will see something far better soon."

The guards adjust their shields, hold their swords at the ready and then gesture to the tunnel back to the arena.

Marrin also narrows her eyes at what Godrick is doing, especially after he admits he has been building zombies.

Arcana: 16

Marrin shakes her head and turns to leave, demonstrating no hostility.

She will ask the hob guards once they are up,

"Are you guys okay with that necromancy? Seems like you, and really anyone, is one slip away from being on Godrick's table."

She'll try to get a read on how they feel as she asks.

Insight: 3

She is too busy puking a little in her mouth from a wave of nausea from the venom to get a good read on anything.

Jan bites her tongue, recognizing that snide comments about Daddy not approving of 'Ricky's perversions won't serve them in this moment. Better to get back to the caverns and see how the shift in factions shakes out in terms of a united front.

Avaria tries to take in the gruesome scene, but also her mind blocks a lot of it out.  She almost escaped the connection until Godrick said they saw the earlier results.  She never saw them "alive", but noticed the grotesque creatures on the ground as they were dragging the hobgoblins into this area.  

"What do you plan on doing with these?" motioning to the bodies they just brought in and not sure if she wants to hear the answer.

But as they usher them back into the arena, she is more than happy to leave the area and try to forget it.

Speechless, for once, at all of this, Ethel takes one last, longing look at the books and scrolls before returning to the arena.

As a group you're ushered out quickly and the door closes tightly behind you.

One hobgoblin guard looks over at Marrin and shakes his head. "If Drusus says it's okay, it's okay."

But you sense the guards are happy to have that door closed between them and Godrick Hargrove.

When you're back in the arena, you see a contingent of goblins dragging the large cats through the tunnel to the refuse heap.

The party is ushered quickly back through the tunnels, stairs, guard post, and back into your 'home' cavern. No noticeable difference can be seen in how the guards open and close the doors.

Marrin waits for the door to close and gives the entry room a quick look, especially towards the goblin tunnel for Jisthelek, before heading over to the orc cave, saying as she approaches,

"Haguur?"

Avaria looks around at the others that they sit with while 'enjoying' their time here.  She asks Xanthe, "Everything alright?  Anything happen while we were gone?  Also... I don't think we'll be seeing the hobgoblins again."  she then swallows hard thinking about that room, "At least not in the same state they left this cave."

She then walks over with Marrin, hoping Haguur was still in a genial mood and wondering about that spider cave.