We took the stairs down from the courtyard where Shadowmist was resting.  Once down in the lower level, we sent Geo to investigate.  He returned a few moments later telling us that he had located a woman doing some kind of research.  My Tropersense tingled.  This sounded like a mad scientist to me.  At the very least, I suspected that letting her live would come back to haunt us.  “Thanoptis was believed responsible for planting a makeshift device that detonated at a research center, killing five visiting asari military officers along with four civilians. The attack seriously wounded a dozen more and caused significant damage to the facility.”  That kind of thing.

I immediately voted that we sneak in and kill her.  Geo suggested that she might not be involved or be involved against her will, suggesting we subdue her.  Lenn agreed with Geo, as did Aurora.  Paulie immediately agreed with my assessment that we should kill her and be done with it.  With a three to two vote we set out to subdue her.

I’m not saying this is going to bite us in the ass later, but it’s going to bite us in the ass later.  Okay, I guess that’s exactly what I’m saying.

Geo rushed up behind her and grabbed at her.  It happened quickly and was a bit of a blur, but when it was over, her cat, which I suspected was her familiar since she tried casting a spell, was bleeding out and she was tied up.  Then we began questioning her. 

She wasn’t cooperative at first, so I decided to go with a threat.  “Listen, whoever you are, I was outvoted on our action here.  I wanted to kill you before you could raise the alarm.  So here’s what’s going to happen.  You’re going to make it worth our while to keep you alive by telling us everything you can about this facility and the research you’re doing.  You’re also going to keep me distracted from thinking about how much better it would be for us to just kill you by telling me where your spellbook is.  And if you make too loud of a noise doing any of this, the big guy is going to chop you in half.”

She remained mostly uncooperative, but told me that her spellbook was in the pile of books she was researching.  So I started sifting through them to find it.  Meanwhile, my companions probed her for information about the facility, which she gave reluctantly.  I don’t recall most of what they asked her, being more interested in finding that spellbook, but I do recall one thing. 

“What brings you here?” I heard Geo ask.

“What brings you here?” the woman, whose name was Lyrie Akenja, asked in return.

You know, that’s a damn good question.  Why exactly were we here?  I mean, I know why Aurora was there.  She wants to help people.  Despite her wrathful streak, Aurora is generally a good person.  That one I understand.  The town was in danger and the knight in shining armor wanted to rush to their aid.

Lenn and Geo, I similarly understand.  They were in their village’s militia.  Protecting their home was their job until Lenn got kicked out of the village for bar fights and such.  Hell, Lenn’s brain injury happened while defending his people.  Even if I can’t see him being that type of person now, some part of him has to still want to protect people.

Paulie, as always, remains a mystery to me.  I wish I had some kind of insight into the thoughts and motivations that drive this strange cat-man, but I understand him about as well as I understand your average Goth.  Not the East Germanic people who played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire, the kids who dress in black and talk about how the “whole world is darkness” or something equally asinine.  The other kind of Goth was the topic of my tenth grade English research paper.  Fifteen pages at one-and-a-half line spacing with a cool graphic on the front cover.  Boo-yah.  Anyway, I’m getting off subject.

That just leaves me.  What the hell am I doing here?  Why am I risking my life to take out a threat to a town I’ve barely been in a few weeks?  Why am I not insisting that it’s the local lords’ job to provide the soldiers they need to protect them?  I guess the most logical reason is that I need the town as a safe base of operations while I study the local ruins, but that’s only enough for me to use what little clout I have to make the local nobles listen to me.

I guess it could be simply because Aurora wants to.  I’ve done stupider things for girls.  Well, maybe not for girls who have already shot me down, but you know what I mean.  But even then, I can’t quite buy that this is the whole reason.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve matured.  Perhaps I’ve simply taken to heart John Donne’s famous poem.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Before you start thinking I’m cultured, I only looked it up after it was referenced on the Walking Dead game.  And just about everywhere else, really.  Mostly the game, though.  But anyway, I’m not sure that’s my motivation either.  I mean, after all, as the song says, “I’m not inclined to resign to maturity.”

Perhaps my motivation is much simpler.  Heroes get laid.  I can buy that.  Yeah, let’s go with that but pretend it’s really one of the others.

Embrace the deception.  Learn how to bend. 

Your worst inhibition’s gonna psych you out in the end. 

Err…maybe not the best reference.  Kinda ominous, really.

Once we had all the info we were going to get out of her, Geo put Lyrie in a sleeper hold with his tentacle – eww, by the way – and we set about taking her things.  Hey, I never said we were very good at being heroes.  Back home, we have a term for adventurers.  “Roving bands of murder-hobos.”  And here I am bitching that we haven’t quite lived up to the “murder” part of that name.

We even stripped her of her fancy blue silk gown.  That felt a little weird to me, but it looked valuable and again I was outvoted.  This time Aurora was the one to vote with me.  Outvoted or no, Aurora insisted we leave the room while she took care of it, for modesty’s sake.  She then put some travel clothes on the woman.

She called us back in and we bound and gagged the woman once again, this time using one of my spare ropes since Paulie had some kind of strange sentimental attachment to his, and continued on.  Ragtag bunch of misfits doesn’t begin to describe the strangeness that is our party.

Geo scouted ahead again and returned with information that he had found some ornate doors leading to some kind of chapel or something, more than likely, as well as several hallways.  We opted to head down one of the hallways.  Geo once again scouted ahead.  He returned a few moments later and said it was too dark to see within.  Since Paulie had better night vision, he went along with Geo to investigate.  I also gave him a light-enchanted coin in case he needed it.

My companions had found a lair of some kind, with a bunch of dead goblins.  Their skin was like leather and their insides looked to have been liquefied and sucked out.  Yeah, this wasn’t going to be fun.  Still, whatever lived there was not at home, so we looted the goblin corpses.  Yep, murder-hobos.

Geo looked further down the tunnel and found the creature from the lair.  From the description, Aurora suspected it was a tentamort, an ambush predator with a nasty poison.  We opted to verify it by using the wand of illusion taken from the goblin warchanter.  Sure enough, it struck at the goblin and we began attacking it.  A sundered prey grabbing tentacle and several arrows later, the creature lay dead at our feet.  Geo harvested the stinger and venom sac in case we found a use for it later.

We continued exploring, and Geo located what looked like a goblin harem.  Inside was a bugbear, who we suspected was the goblin hero Bruthazmus.  Luckily, he wasn’t wearing his armor and didn’t spot Geo peeking through the door, nor did any of the goblin females.  I got a good description of the room and we prepared an ambush. 

Lenn and Geo waited on either side of the door, and I used the wand to conjure the image of one of the Birdcruncher goblins I had seen earlier in the thicket.  Geo pushed open the door and the illusion I controlled strutted into the harem grinning ear to ear like he owned the place.  After a moment, I had him turn in the direction where Geo said Bruthazmus was, then his expression became one of horror, which was followed by bolting.

Bruthazmus, flail in hand, gave chase.  He seemed a little startled to find Lenn and Geo waiting for him, but seemed excited by the idea of combat as he figured it out.  We made quick work of him and the fleeing goblin females  –  hey, they might have raised the alarm – and then once again looted his corpse.  We took his necklace of elf ears and, remembering that he and the elven ranger Shalelu had a history of animosity, took his head to give to her as a trophy. 

I figure she might give us a reward, but if not, I’ll play up Geo’s heroism in taking down her hated foe.  Why not play up my own role, you ask?  Well, she looks like the kind who is only into serious relationships, and I’m not really up for that at the moment, at least not with someone new.  If I can help a friend hook up with a hot elven chick I’m not interested in, I take it as my sacred duty as a man to do so.  Wingman code, yo.

<Scribbled in the margins you see words in a different handwriting.  “Sometimes I worry about you.”>

<A reply is written in the author’s handwriting.  “Then maybe you should change your mind about dating me and use hot, kinky sex to convince me to be a better person.”>

<”Pig.”>

<”Bootylicious.”>

<The conversation in the margins degenerates from there.>

Near the harem, Geo located a goblin nursery.  Yeah, there were babies in there.  And yeah, we had just killed their mothers.  Aurora looked stricken.  Geo looked uncomfortable.  Lenn looked like he was thinking about hookers.  Paulie looked like he was about to say “I’m Batman.”  Or maybe it’s “Catman”.  I dunno.

We took a vote.  It was two to two between killing the little monsters and taking them to safety.  I abstained, wracked with moral guilt.  “Do we put the Joker in Arkham ‘revolving door’ Asylum or do we knife the clown and keep him from hurting anyone else?” I asked, not realizing I’d said it out loud until someone asked what I was talking about.  I told them not to worry about it.

I mean, these were babies.  Logically, I knew that goblins desensitized their children to violence by caging them and subjecting them to horrible torture from a young age, so they were probably already feral little monsters, but they were still sentient beings.  Could I really kill children, even goblin children, and still look my family in the face when I got home?

As the tiebreaking vote, I made a decision.  “We leave them in the cages for now.  If during our search we find another goblin, we take him prisoner and bully him into taking the babies to the relative safety of a nearby goblin tribe.  If we don’t find one, we take them to a nearby tribe ourselves.  While there, we’ll threaten them with annihilation if they harm anyone from Sandpoint ever again.”

“You do realize the goblins will likely just eat the babies, right?” someone asked me.

“That’s a possibility, but it was a possibility here as well.  We can’t worry if goblin children die in the normal course of goblin society.  However, I can’t be a party to us taking their lives.  Now let’s continue on.”

For the record, in a perfect world, the clown gets knifed the second time he escapes from Arkham. 

Geo scouted down another hallway, returning a few moments later to let us know that there were a number of bedrooms ahead and that someone was in one of them.  He described a man that sounded like some kind of warrior.  Ambush had worked for us thus far, so we prepared another. 

Aurora waited in the room across the hallway while Lenn and Geo flanked either side of the door.  Paulie waited at the far end of the hall, in case the man got past us, while I was a bit behind Lenn.  Geo knocked at the door and I called out in Goblin.  “Bugbear want see you!”

“Go away!” the man shouted.

“Bugbear say it urgent.”

He didn’t make a sound, so Geo kept knocking.  Over and over and over, until at last the man inside could take it no longer.  “FINE!  I’m coming!” he shouted.  He walked out into the hallway, sword in hand, and was surprised to find himself surrounded by humans rather than goblins.  “Son of a – !” he shouted, as my companions struck at him.  I just smiled at him and said hello in the most sincere manner I could.

He was impressive, to take such an onslaught from my three companions.  After a moment, he shouted out his unconditional surrender.  Aurora commanded him to drop his weapon, which he did, immediately, all the while bitching that he wasn’t getting paid enough for this.

Now, as much as I didn’t trust that Lyrie was an innocent here, this man seemed to be exactly what he appeared.  He was a mercenary.  He was there for the coin, not the ideals.  I saw no reason to kill him.  We offered him his life in exchange for any information he could give us about Nualia, her goals and this dungeon.

Unlike Lyrie, he was immediately forthcoming.  He told us everything he could.  The information he gave us prepared us for what lay before us.  Since he had been true to his word, we were true to ours.  I mean, we still restrained him with the promise that we would return for him later since we couldn’t risk him coming after us while we were engaged with another foe, but I felt that once we were finished here, we would certainly honor our word and free him.  Geo knocked him out for good measure and it still gives me the creeps when he grabs someone with that tentacle.

Wanting to do well by the mercenary since one never knows when one may need a good mercenary, I asked that we refrain from robbing him.  We took his weapon and put it out of his reach in another room and left even the coins in his purse.  All we took was a healing potion, since that might come in handy later. 

Speaking of Lyrie, it seems that our mercenary, Orik, has a thing for her.  Perhaps keeping her alive at least meant we could safely spare him.  I dunno. 

We gave the all clear signal to Paulie and he arrived a few moments later.  “Bad news,” he told us.  “One of the goblin women wasn’t as dead as we thought.  While I was busy watching for the escape of our friend here, she snuck past me and killed all the caged children.  By the time I had realized what was going on, it was too late.  I did manage to finish her off before she could sound an alarm, though.”

Yeah, it sounded kinda suspicious, but I could detect no deception in Paulie’s words.  Well, at least that solves one problem, albeit in a horrific kind of way.

We went into the prison Orik had told us about.  The cages were empty, but I did not much care for the implications of some of the torture devices lying around.  Further search found a room with even more horrors within.

The prison connects to the main chapel, so we continued heading that way.  Orik had warned us that some of Nualia’s hounds were within, cautioning us to be careful, so we had Geo see if he could tell anything about them.

Naturally, they spotted him trying to look at them. 

It was only quick reflexes that allowed Geo to get the door closed.  He was able to warn us that two hounds lay inside, but before he could say much else, a terrifying howl reverberated through the dungeon.  I could feel unmitigated dread within my chest, but I managed to swallow my fear.  I saw Lenn, Geo and Paulie do the same.

Aurora, however, bolted.  Before I could react, she was gone.  Vamoosed.  Skedaddled.  Hit the old dusty trail.

I didn’t have time to follow her as the hounds quickly tore through the closed door and we had a fight on our hands.  It really didn’t take long to down them, but it was a fair bit more difficult than it should have been thanks to Aurora’s flight from the room.

As soon as the second hound had been vanquished, I went looking for Aurora.  You know, it was kind of nice to be going to her rescue for a change.  It’s usually the other way around, and that has a serious effect on a man’s pride.

I found her coming from the hallway where the bedrooms lay.  She had apparently fled to a defensible location.  That’s actually pretty impressive.  I probably would have made it all the way to Shadowmist before the fear had worn off.

Her face was stricken.  “I’m sorry.  My shame knows no bounds.”

I looked at her and kept my face completely devoid of expression.  “Yeah.  You suck.”  She gave me a look of horror and I couldn’t maintain my composure any longer.  A grin filled my face.  “So I guess that makes it ‘Kyle One, Aurora Seven’.”  She seemed confused by that.  “It was beyond your control.  There was a supernatural element to the fear.  There’s nothing to be ashamed of.  Besides, it gives me an excuse to add a sketch of your cute ass as you were running away to my journal.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“It will be the finest drawing of a cute ass you’ve ever seen.  More loving attention put into it than even Bayonetta.  A thousand artists could spend a thousand years and none would come close to matching the glory that will be this drawing of your ass.”

“You better not,” she said, smiling in spite of herself.  My goal had been achieved.  I’m still gonna draw it, though.

<The rest of the page appears to have been left blank intentionally, though someone else has written in the space.  “Don’t you dare!”>

<”That’s okay, I don’t think this half page was going to do it justice anyway.”>

<”Good.”>

<”I think I’m going to buy a full sized canvas and render it as an oil painting.  One day when I get home, I’ll hang it between my Witch Hunter Robin and Cecily Campbell wall scrolls.”>

<”I’m going to have to hurt you.”>

<A large inkblot obscures the rest of the page.  It appears to have been made intentionally..>

We searched the cathedral for valuables because murder-hobos, that’s why.  By the altar was a statue of Lamashtu holding a pair of glowing kukris.  We smashed the altar and took the kukris.  Unfortunately, they weren’t magically enchanted to do anything but glow, severely limiting their usefulness.  To say I was disappointed would be an understatement.  It was like the old days when I used to spam Trade Chat selling Minor Beastslayer to noobs on the steps of the Stormwind bank, except now I was stuck on the non-profitable end of the equation.

Once we had finished looting the chapel, we headed back to the room where we had left Lyrie.  She was still unconscious and sitting in that corner we had propped her up in, so we headed down the stairs to the lower level.  Just past the stairs was a doorway, and beyond that was a hall with another of those hounds at the end.  We opted to shoot at it and try bringing it towards us.  Lenn got bored with that plan, however, and rushed at the beast after our second volley of arrows.

He hit a pressure plate in the hallway, setting off a trap.  He narrowly avoided being trapped between some portcullises(portculli?) and killed the dog in a single blow.  He then turned back to see the trap.  Geo called out to him.  “Hey, can you smash the portcullis?”

I swear to God that I’m not making up Lenn’s response here.  “Is that part of the neck?”

The look on Geo’s face was priceless.  I wish I’d had my cell phone camera with me at the time.  “Um…no.  The iron bars.  Smash the iron bars.”

“Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”  Lenn began making quite a ruckus as he struck the bars.  Meanwhile, Geo began work on disabling the trap from our end.  A few moments later, it was Geo’s efforts that paid off first, and the trap reset.  Geo then disabled the floor plate. 

Lenn, annoyed by the trap, started stomping on the broken floor plate.  Apparently he stomped too hard, since the floor gave way and he fell into a pit.  He quickly climbed out, then we reset the trapdoor and made our way down the hall.

Exploring the door to the north, we found Nualia waiting.  I’m still not sure how it happened, but we managed to end up with her holding us in a hallway with no way for us to reach her, aside from Aurora who spearheaded our effort.  It took a few tries, but we managed to work together to push Nualia back in the chamber she had come from.  From there, we surrounded her, I blinded her with some magic that looked straight out of Twilight, and we brought down our foe. 

Strewn about the room were her notes and journals.  I gathered them up while my companions took her gear.  Skimming through them, I realized that she was trying to free some kind of creature within, so we decided to press further on and try slaying this beast.  First, however, I took time to melt her corpse with acid.  We didn’t want that thing going all ghoul on us at a critical moment.

Continuing further, we found an art piece that appeared to have been made of coins set into the wall.  It was pretty enough, but we weren’t able to pry out any of the coins.  We did, however, locate some coin slots.  Having practically lived on vended food for a while, I knew what those meant.

We grabbed a couple coins, opting for gold like the ones the piece was made of, and pushed them into the slots.  It was probably too much to hope it would dispense some Code Red, so I was happy enough that it revealed a secret passage.

Within were three rooms.  The first contained some kind of apocalyptic log, a scene that played out over and over. A man was sitting upon a throne giving orders to scurrying workers.  I wasn’t able to make out much, but the word Alaznist stuck out to me.  I had heard that word before, but for the life of me couldn’t recall what it meant. 

The next room seemed like an operating room or something of the sort.  Geo took a number of surgeon’s tools and what appeared to be the key to the third door, which we had already inspected but couldn’t open.

Using the key, Geo quietly opened the door to find a Barghest.  Knowing a bit about them, I knew that magic weapons would bypass their tough skin.  I pulled out my wand of temporary weapon enchantment that I carried in case of ghosts and enchanted my companions weapons, with Aurora opting to use Nualia’s bastard sword since it was already enchanted. Then they rushed in and began fighting the creature.

The details of the fight are a bit of a blur. Here’s what I remember.  Aurora took a mighty blow early on, then fell back to drink a few healing potions. Lenn took a hit, then I used magic to enlarge him to fight the beast on even playing field.  The beast cast a spell I couldn’t see since I wasn’t in the room and everyone had trouble hitting him. 

Then things kinda went tits up on us.  Lenn took a might blow and crumpled.  I rushed in and tried stunning the creature with a blinding blast of scintillating color, only to find that standing in fire doesn’t much help one concentrate well enough to cast.  Paulie healed Lenn and we began trying to retreat, only to have Lenn knocked down again, this time at death’s door.   Aurora blocked the way long enough for me to enlarge Geo and Geo to pull Lenn from the room.  Then she took another hit and was forced to fall back.  Paulie closed the door and we locked it behind us.

We healed up and decided we had to fight the beast on our terms, not his.  We set up an ambush in the hallway and I refreshed everyone’s enchantments, then we flung open the door again.  The beast was nowhere to be seen.  Suspecting invisibility, I used a scroll we had taken off of Lyrie to reveal him to me.  He seemed to be hiding in the corner.  I struck him with an open sack of powdered chalk and Paulie shot at him.  We both bolted back down the hall.

Strangely, he didn’t come after us.  Cautiously, I got closer and used Lyrie’s wand to fire a bolt of force at him.  He didn’t move. I fired another and he teleported away.  Since I knew the spell he used wouldn’t let him travel far, I looked around the room and spotted him in the other corner.  I fired bolt after bolt and within moments he was dead. All in all, pretty anticlimactic.  We put some arrows in his corpse to be sure and began inspecting the room to figure out why he hadn’t given chase.

Turns out some kind of magical forcefield attuned to him only was preventing him from leaving.  I probably would have noticed that if I had taken more time to inspect the door before we charged in.  D’oh!

We searched the room and found a nifty magical ring that projected a sihedron wall of force like a shield, which we told Geo to take. Then we took all the magical, everburning candles and took off.

While we had looted the room, Lenn had spent his time cleaving up the corpse to work out frustrations.  It wasn’t a pretty sight, so we closed the doors behind us.

Exploring further, we found a room with numerous sarcophagi in it.  After our near death encounter with the beast, we were cautious in our searching, taking our time to be sure that nothing was going to attack us.  Naturally, something did.  But that didn’t happen for several moments.  In the meantime, a couple sarcophagi were pried open and their inhabitants shattered so they couldn’t rise to attack us. 

In one of the coffins we opened, it appeared that the occupant had tried to claw his way out.  While standing before that one, Geo told us that he felt a breeze.  Remembering playing Illusion of Gaia on my dorm mate’s SNES, I called out, “Sweet!  Secret passage!”  I don’t think anyone else knew why I said it, but at least no one looked at me funny.

Meanwhile, Lenn began attacking the statue in the center of the room.  It depicted the same man we had seen in the repeating image.  He managed to break off the statue’s arm in quick order, proving that this one wasn’t going to rise up and attack us.  Or at least it would be disarmed.  Yeah, you can groan now.

During their searches, I began deciphering the ancient Thassilonian runes on the walls.  I didn’t get very far before the Shadows attacked.  Who knows what fear lurks in the hearts of men?  Me.  Goddammit I don’t like ghosts.

They sapped a fair amount of strength from Aurora and Lenn before we downed them, but we were victorious.  I finished deciphering the runes, revealing that his building had actually been a giant statue and the occupants of the crypt were the architects that had built it.  They had been buried alive, ostensibly willingly, though the scratches on the inside of that coffin proved at least one had a change of heart a bit too late.

The statue had been dedicated to Karzoug, the Runelord whose images we kept seeing everywhere around here. 

The secret passage led to a treasure room.  The wall had collapsed a bit, opening a passage to the sea.  At the bottom of the churning pool, we spotted a large helmet.  By large I mean it was about five feet wide.  Well, there was some evidence of giants to keep Lenn and Geo interested.   And it was made of gold, which interested all of us.

Worried about the possibility of another attack by shadows while we tried retrieving the helm, we went back and opened the other sarcophagi. Sure enough, the shadows had only come from the ones where the occupants had tried to escape.

While Lenn and Geo looked into that, I studied a relief on a wall near the water.  It depicted something I had once read about, the lost city of Xin’Shalast, though I didn’t quite realize that until I returned back to town to read my notes. 

After studying the relief, I began trying to devise a way to close off the tunnel to the water so we could have a much less dangerous pool to swim in and get the helmet out.  Of course, looking down in the water, I was really surprised to see the helmet move.  It turned to face us and suddenly I saw why. 

“We’ve encountered some kind of cave demon.  Crab.  Battle!”  I cried out.  “Oliolioliooooo!”  Then I fired a bolt of force with the wand I had decided I wasn’t giving back to Lyrie when we were done.  The crab scuttled over towards us and we began perhaps the most epic fight of the day. The damn thing hit me, completely destroying the energy shield I had created around myself with the Sihedron Medallion I had taken off of Nualia.  We struggled mightily with the beast and eventually emerged victorious.  But at what cost?

The crab had torn my coat.  *sniff*

We rested for a bit, then used broken pieces of sarcophagi lids to clog the hole to the sea.  We then fished out the helmet and a fair amount of money at the bottom of the pool before eating some extra-large crab legs for dinner.

I probably don’t need to tell you that a giant helmet made of gold is heavy as all get out.  With Lenn and Aurora’s strength sapped, we worked together to get it all the way up to the courtyard where Shadowmist was.  After releasing the mercenary and the wizard, both of whom were grateful we had kept our word to let them go, we took a number of precautions aimed at security, then we set up camp in that courtyard and rested for the night. 

The next several days saw us scavenging things from the goblin stronghold to make a cart.  If it had been a bit better constructed, it would have been a piece of crap.  Still it got our treasure back to Sandpoint.  All in all, with construction and constantly needing to stop for repairs, we managed to get there after about six days.  During the trip, I used magic to mend my coat.  I really like this coat.

Interestingly enough, as we constructed the cart, we saw dawn’s rays on the island.  Turns out the whole island is the head of the statue.  It was kinda cool, really.

Back in town, we were greeted with looks of shock and surprise.  Apparently they didn’t think we’d make it back.  Geo presented Bruthazmus’ head to Shalelu, much to her surprise.  I immediately began telling her the story of how Geo had heroically slain the beast.  Geo almost ruined it by telling her that it had been Lenn who had actually killed the bugbear, but Paulie seemed to catch on to what I was doing, mostly thanks to the look I shot him, and filled in that while Lenn had dealt the killing blow, it was Geo’s amazing skills at anatomy that had taken our foe down with a slice to its Achilles Tendon.  Well, he used a more descriptive phrase for the tendon, not knowing who Achilles was, but you get the idea.

On the trip home, I had taken the time to read through Nualia’s journals.  Reading them, I thought my heart would break.  Because of her otherworldly beauty due to her aasimar heritage, other children had tormented her.  She had dealt with adults constantly assaulting her to take hair, which they thought could cure rashes and other minor ailments.  Through it all her adopted father, the “saint”, had been aloof.  To him, she was an obligation to be fulfilled, not a child to be loved and nurtured.  And that’s before things took a turn for the worse and she was abandoned by her lover and birthed a fiend.  No wonder she had turned evil.  I can only think of one person who grew up so alone and didn’t come out of it a monster.

In front of the crowd, I desperately wanted to tell everyone off for their treatment of her.  But I held my tongue.  I knew Belor Hemlock wanted to keep the true scope of this a secret to prevent a panic.  So instead, I asked him to gather together the town’s leadership so I could deliver a secret report to them on the true cause of the recent incident.  I told him to include anyone he was comfortable with knowing of Nualia’s involvement.

So it was that I found myself waiting in the lobby of the mayor’s office while Sherriff Hemlock briefed Ameiko Kaijutsu, Mayor Kendra Deverin, Shalelu and a representative for the ill Ethram Valdemar on everything he already knew.  The other noble in town, Titus Scarnetti, had been conspicuously not invited.  I chose not to worry about it, since I knew he and Mayor Deverin didn’t much care for each other.

In the lobby, I got a bit of the pre-speech jitters.  I had given my clothing a temporary magical dye job to red, since it was the color of dominance and I would be heard today.  But I felt anything but dominant.  I sat on a chair with my head between my knees repeating over and over, “I’m a big brave dog.  I’m a big brave dog.”  Aurora tried to comfort me, unaware of what exactly I had planned.

I had left Geo, Lenn and Paulie out of this, not wanting to have them involved if there were repercussions, but I needed Aurora with me if they got really bad.

After a few minutes, the clerk told me to go in.  Composing myself, I smiled at the clerk and Aurora, reassuring them that everything would be alright.  Then I grabbed Nualia’s journals and marched into the office, doing my best to project confidence as I strode in like I owned the place.

I started out my speech softly, building to a crescendo as I spoke.  “I hold in my hands the collected journals of Nualia Tobyn.  When I started reading them, I was expecting to find the ravings of a madwoman bent on slaughter.  And it’s true, the latter parts of the journals do indeed read that way.  But what I wasn’t expecting was what else I found in these pages.

“You see, Nualia was once a normal girl.  An aasimar child raised by a local priest.  Everything about that beginning should have led to the conclusion of a young woman, perhaps a pillar of the community, beloved by all.  Yet somewhere between there and here, something went wrong.  Somehow, something changed the foregone conclusion. 

“Perhaps it was the Runewell of Wrath we found beneath the streets of this town?  Certainly, I believe that it played a part.  It would be naïve to think otherwise.  Yet it would likewise be naïve to think that this was the only factor.  Surely a full half the town would be under similar effect if it were that strong.  No, that can’t be it alone.

“Some of you surely know of the fiend that was birthed from her womb.  For those that do not, I suspect you are surely thinking that corruption came about because she had chosen to worship Lamashtu.  No.  That came later.  I suspect it was proximity to an altar of Lamashtu we found near the runewell.  She certainly seems to have been unaware of the child’s mutation until after the birth.

“So, what is it that was the catalyst for Nualia’s descent into madness?  The journals give a clue.  The earliest journals are the heartbreaking words of a child, desperate for acceptance.  It seems that her celestial beauty set her apart from others.  I’ve seen it in many societies.  Where one is different, they are shunned by the people around them.  It doesn’t matter that her differences were positive.  They were differences, and that was enough.  Hell, the fact that they were positive may have made it worse!  There are pages where you can still see the tear stains in the ink where she writes about yet another person tormenting her because of her beauty.  The girl had to have been no more than ten years old at the time of writing those words.

“Even her adopted father seemed to treat her as more of an obligation, rather than giving her the love and nurturing she deserved.  That’s ludicrous.  It’s a rare child who, growing up all alone like that, chooses to rise above it all and do better by the world than the world has done by her.  Nualia lacked that strength.” Aurora seemed to catch the reference to her life, my expression of admiration for the fact that she had been dealt a similarly messed up childhood and had instead come out the stronger for it.  I saw a small smile on her face out of the corner of my eye.

“So yes, Nualia Tobyn was a monster.  But the people of this town made her that way.  You can’t treat a child like a monster and be surprised when she becomes one.” My voice had reached the peak of its booming baritone, almost seeming to reverberate off the walls.  I lowered my voice to finish the speech.

“You’ve been given a second chance.  Whether by the grace of a god or goddess or even by sheer blind luck, we were able to foil her plot to cast down a society that had wronged her.  You can do right by her by making sure every child in this town feels accepted and loved.  It is up to you to embrace that chance.

“The Divine help those that help themselves.  Don’t waste this opportunity to do better.

“They may not give you another one.”

The room was filled with stunned silence.  All eyes were on me.  Even the clerk had returned, drawn in by my booming voice.  I glared at each and every one of them.  Then I dropped the journals onto the mayor’s desk, spun on my heel and marched right out of the office, Aurora following close behind.

After leaving, Aurora thanked me for saying all of that and I asked her to give me some time to brood for a bit.  She nodded and left, then I went down to visit an apothecary who I had heard might have a supply of bachelor’s snuff, a type of contraceptive, because dammit I needed to get laid.

You know, I never did resolve what song would end up being my theme music.  I have a feeling I’ll have time.  This feels like it’s going to be an epic trilogy, the story of my companions and Sandpoint.  So I’ll have time.  For now, since this feels like the end of the first book, let me instead leave you with the end credits theme for this part of the story.  Please bear with me, since I’m composing it on the spot and it’s not likely to be very good.  And if you’re not from earth and don’t know the tune, don’t worry.  I’ll enclose a copy of some sheet music in the back of the journal.  So for now, goodnight and Godspeed.

Magic Roads(To the tune of Country Roads, Take Me Home)

I came to Golarion, by way of deep space.

Travelling on the back of, a cowardly Shantak.

Now I’m a wizard. Cast more than Gandalf.

With great companions, save towns and kittens.

One man’s a giant, as big as Hagrid.

His best friend mixes potions and has a tentacle.

There’s also a cat guy, I think he might be crazy.

And a lady knight with her noble steed.

Magic Roads, take me home

To the place I belove.

Arizona, my desert home, yeah.

Take me home, magic roads.

Haven’t seen my family.  Been at least ten years.

No Doritos tacos.  No Colonel’s chicken.

Make things taste like cola with a bit of magic

Though it’s still not quite the same.

Magic Roads, take me home

To the place I belong.

Arizona, my desert home, yeah.

Take me home, magic roads.

I search for meaning in the early hours as I lay awake.

The thought of family brings teardrops to my eyes.

Searching through these ruins looking for a way home.

When I get there I hope I can make you proud of me.  So proud of me.

Magic Roads, take me home

To the place I belong.

Arizona, my desert home, yeah.

Take me home, magic roads.

Arizona, my desert home, yeah.

Take me home, magic roads.

Take me home, magic roads.

Take me home… magic roads.

0 Comments

Leave a Reply