Hampton and Goldfairy
Northgate Northern Sewers
84 Autumn, 217
Sav, Astarael, and Talith met to discuss the events of the recent past and reconcile difficult feelings and share new information. Talith shared many of the details of his past in Aelorean’s Crossing and Astarael reciprocated in kind.
The three spent some time discussing possible connections between The Suffering, Grammy’s Orphanage, and The Painted Swans, but though they were able to consider many theories, they understood more information was needed to know the truth.
The group decided to investigate rumors of townspeople gone missing in the Northern Slums of Dustown with the added insight from Sav that the bad portion of the sewers lay directly beneath that part of Northgate.
The group traveled the city, barely avoiding Painted Swan patrols, before finding a sewer entrance beneath an old stone bridge and descending into the archaic sewer system beneath the city.
There beneath, the group discovered that within a collapsed chamber were hiding a number of urchin children — Jem, Tenya, Rel, and Sam — living among the collapsed stones — and worse, the heard the sounds of something terrible also there within the sewers with them.
While most of the children were ill with fever, Jem offered the party her hospitality in the way of molded bread and a bit of old cheese and the warmth of a candle the children called Goldfairy. She told that the other children had fallen sick and that Wick, another child, had been haunted by strange dreams and had become sick in the mind, whispering and hurting himself — before he eventually wandered away from the shelter to seek out something that was calling to him.
The party promised to find Wick and bring him home and ventured deeper into the sewers. There in the deeper layers of the sewer system, a strange unease overcame them — a terrible presence there within the depths.
It seemed that Talith and Vivian would be overcome by the presence which lurked within that place, but just when it seemed they would succumb, Talith was protected by the strange necklace Danica Thorne had given him during the Winter Festival in Aelorean’s Crossing.
a The party discovered a chamber dense with merchants, beggars, and those unfortunate souls who had been drawn or taken down into the depths of the sewers, called by the same strange presence which had haunted Talith’s childhood — along with the shivering and fevered child Wick.
There stirred a great mound of flesh, limbs, and all the viscera that one might call meat. It shuddered and moved at their approach, and rising from the mound was an abominable creature that bore the eye-less rotting head of what had once been a familiar friend — Hampton — Garbon’s beloved pig.
It squealed and roared and attacked the party with terrible violence and astounding strength, while the self-flagellating beggars, wild eyed and mad, began to swarm toward them.
Talith was nearly killed in the battle, but Hampton was defeated, while the party was forced to slaughter the raving madmen that seemed bent on taking their lives. The three had survived, yet in the aftermath of the battle there was something that still remained — an invisible presence standing among the carnage, only seen by the blood clinging to its form — The Suffering.
This presence seemed to study its own hand, perhaps only partly aware of what was happening, before speaking Talith’s name and vanishing before Talith could reach it.
The three returned to the shelter with Wick and tended to their wounds and the illness of the children, before departing from the sewers with the promise of returning with more food and supplies.
Talith revealed to the others that he felt that whatever it was they had encountered he had seen before, and it is becoming stronger and somehow more… real.
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