Game Date: Sunday 11 Sept 4711
[We picked up immediately following the events of Session 7]
After sending Tsuto off with the guards, the group decided to find out where the two goblins had fled, and proceeded downstairs to the Glassworks cellar. The cellar appeared to comprise of a single 10-foot wide corridor with two right-angle turns, as if it were three sides of a rectangle. There were storerooms on the outside wall, all of which were empty save for the one farthest from the staircase-- in it they found a bound and badly-beaten Ameiko lying on the stone floor. She was alive, but semiconscious. They untied her, and Declan cast a curing spell, and she seemed to improve greatly.
Ameiko said, "Thank Desna that you came! I don't know what my brother would have done with me-- I think he's gone completely insane! He's working with the goblins, and I think it's pretty clear that he had something to do with the attack during the Swallowtail Festival last week!
"Anyway, he called me here to tell me that Father is a crook-- that he'd been working with Sczarni smugglers for years to buy and sell contraband using the Glassworks as a front: mostly poisons and drugs, things you put in bottles. Apparently, there's some kind of smuggling tunnel here in the cellar somewhere. Tsuto used that tunnel to bring in some of the goblins during the raid, and he brought the goblins in that way last night.
"He also said that the first goblin raid was just the beginning, and that I was the only thing in Sandpoint that he thought was worth saving. He gave me the opportunity to join him and his little group of cutthroats. I slapped him for even contemplating committing such a heinous crime. At that, he sucker-punched me, then set his goblins on me. While they were beating me, he said that Nualia is their leader-- and his girlfriend. I managed to say that she had died along with her father Curate Tobyn, but he chuckled and said that she had set the fire, killed her father, and faked her own death, and was glad she'd done it! I cursed him. At that, he back-handed me across the face, and I must have passed out.
"We've got to alert the Sheriff and the Mayor, and also tell Father what's going on here. Let's go!" Charrone broke the news of Lonjiku's death, and Ameiko became quiet and solemn. "In that case, I think I just want to go home and be alone for a while." Ted and MacGreggor saw her upstairs to the guardsmen, and Jubal brought her home.
While Ameiko was telling her story, Larissa and Halfred began looking for the smuggling tunnels that Ameiko mentioned. Larissa found a secret door which opened to a corridor linking the north and south passages. She found two rooms off of this corridor-- one was an office which contined a desk and a bunch of filing cabinets. The cabinets contained records of Lonjiku's dealings with the smugglers and other illegal activity. Also on the desk was a small leatherbound journal, with Tsuto's name on the inside cover.
The journal had about two dozen pages of vellum. About half of the pages contained charcoal-ink-and-chalk drawings of the same beautiful woman, most often nude, in various erotic poses. The woman's hair was always colored with white chalk. Interspersed with the erotic drawings were several maps of Sandpoint, each of which detailed a different attack plan with about 50 goblins. Four of these plans were crossed out, and a fifth was circled. The party recognized this plan as the actual plan used by the goblins for the attack at the Swallowtail Festival. After more erotic drawings were a second set of attack plans, these using about 300 goblins and included siege engines. A few of these plans were scratched out, and none were circled.
After the circled attack plan was written:
The raid went about as planned. Few Thistletop goblins perished, and we were able to secure Tobyn's casket with ease while the stupid rubes were distracted by the diversion. I can't wait until the real raid. This town deserves another good burning, and this time it won't just be the north end!
After the second batch of attack plans:
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. Have her send up her freaks from below via the smuggling tunnel in Father's factory, 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 is just being contrary to annoy me. My love is too distracted with the lower chambers to make a decision. She says that once Malfeshnekor has been released and is under her command, we won't have to worry about subtlety in our attack. I hope she's right.
The second-to-last erotic drawing of the woman depicts her with a bestial right hand with three talons. The final drawing in the journal shows her with two such clawed hands, elongated canine teeth, horns, bat wings, cloven feet, and a forked tail. On the page between these drawings is the following passage:
My love seems hell-bent on going through with it–nothing I can say will convince 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 cannot say that her new hand is pleasing to me. Hopefully, when she offers all of Sandpoint as a burnt offering to Lamashtu, her new body won't be as hideous as that talon. Maybe I'll still luck out. A succubus is a kind of demon, right?
Larissa compared the handwriting of the journal with the letter to Ameiko, and thought that they matched.
[To be continued...]
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