9 Ch9 - Blighted village
Exiting the cave into a forest clearing, we climbed our way up the wall to see a well-walked path bare of movement. Except, there was one thing there, a white scruffy dog whining over a human corpse.
"Hey buddy are you okay?" I float over to the dog, crouching/floating down low to be on his level.
"Go away! I don't want to talk to anyone right now." The dog barked back, clearly distraught by the loss. He arched backwards, ready to lunge if needs be.
"Are you getting any of this?" I heard Shart mumble over to Lae'zel and Wyll.
"Tsk"
"Not a word" They both responded
"Look" I look at the collar, "Scratch, if you don't mind could you sniff my friends' hand? There's lots of goblins around and if you feel unsafe, follow my scent back to our camp." I knew I was never gonna persuade him to come with me here and now, he still thought the courier would stand back up.
Unsure for a moment Scratch pauses before sniffing Gale's hand, his cold wet nose tickling his knuckles as he does so. I give him a soft smile and get back to my regular height and walk away, leaving a bone for him.
"So Charles, I noticed a keen use of speak to animals there, what else do you know in the linguistics department?" Gale walked beside me as we walked up the path, clearly joining the dots as to how he was used to lure a dog back to camp.
"Languages? I know a good amount, enough to get me by in any country or realm. What about you?" I technically didn't lie, but I just missed out the fact that I can talk to anything.
"For me? Just common, I tried to learn Sylvan for a time, but it backfired when a pixie started swearing at me in the tongue."
"Pffft" I couldn't hold in a laugh, I can just imagine him trying to befriend the fey just for a pixie to call him a 'knuckle-dragging gobshite'.
We continued talking for a time, but we came upon a boar corpse. I was about to store it for dinner, but I couldn't help but notice it was drained completely dry of blood. Granted it saves me the job of draining it myself, but Astarion could've hidden it better. I turn to look at him.
The idiot turned his head a complete 90 degrees away from me. God he's dumb, but he's just funny. I chose to ignore him and store the corpse anyway, carrying on further we see a blood bath. A small force of goblins and humans dead on the floor, we all started looting what we could to restock on supplies and potions.
We could literally see goblins sat on top of buildings within the small town next to us, so I go over to Shart and say, "Aren't you in the trickster domain?"
She turns to me and says, "Uh yes why do you ask?"
"Do you think you could use disguise-self to pretend to be a drow? I reckon we could get safe passage through the village, if you do that." It was a tactic I always used in the game, and I can only hope it works now.
She thought it over for a moment and cast her spell, from it a 5'10 drow woman with long silvery hair appeared. Looks like she agreed to the plan. Despite what I said, I let her go first with everyone else, for a very special reason. They all knew I collected bodies, but to see me pick up 12 goblin corpses and 6 human corpses is a bit different.
Thankfully, my flight is not affected by my storage. But there is a very noticeable lump in my bag, actually I'm not sure how they even fit in my bag in the first place really. But I won't question it, I don't know how that stuff works and I have a lot on my plate already.
Floating in after them, I notice they've already rescued the man the myth the legend Barcus Wroot. Easily one of my favourite people in all of Faerun, he ticks all the boxes, funny, sad backstory and a fair bit vengeful.
We offer to help him for the night as we were going to set up camp in one of the abandoned houses, fortunately for us he accepted.
The short tinkerer is of great interest for me aside from my like of him. Tinkerer was not a class in baldur's gate the game, so the iron hand gnomes and Barcus are my only access to that class. Wulbren seems to be tightly knit in his group, so Barcus is my most likely choice.
-
Within a creaky house, we all sit around the campfire, weirdly joined by a few goblins as well, each telling stories once again.
"Oi I gots one! One time me and Fig went out to find one of them crash survivors, and we seen a weird looking brain, CRAWLING AROUND! I looked over to Fig and I says, 'Is that whys your so dumb? Because it did a runner?'. Cheeky bugger tried to stab me for that, I got to him first though di'n't I?" A goblin called Krug was telling us a story this time, I get they're supposed to be evil but they're just so funny to listen to.
That night I served up a large meal for everyone there, goblins included. Though Barcus appreciated his food, he understandably stayed away from the goblins.
Yet when the night drew close, I vanished once again. I think I have the largest workload to do this night than any other, finding a large rock nearby, I used my aberration form (AF) to slice the rock to a flat surface before switching back to a ghost. From their I begun going through each of my helpful goblin volunteers and dissecting them all, some had internal lumps and bulbs. Others had cysts and rashes, literally none of them were healthy.
When I started on the first human cadaver, I suddenly heard a snap sound from behind me. I turn quickly to see the pale elf stood awkwardly on a twig.
"Shit"
"Shit"
