Post by Ossular on May 16, 2019 22:32:38 GMT
"Quit yer yappin', blasted mutt!" a half-orc burst from the next room over, eyes and face scarred for past disobedience accompanied by a chuckle as he ended his sentence- a strained wheeze from a sickness in childhood that never quite recovered right. He was dressed in leather armor loosely fit around his figure, torn and in general disrepair aside from a new cloth sash that held an axe to his side. The blasted mutt in question was an older bloodhound that would howl and growl at the slightest bit of movement that happened outside, and it was commonplace that someone would be yelling at the dog at all hours of the night.
The dog, it's drooping, wet jowls and large, floppy ears- also wet- turned half-way to the half-orc with the ashy green skin before turning back to the door, grumbling again in a half-heated bark. "I'm warnin' ya, Bloo," another wheezing chuckle. "You make me come back in 'ere and I'm gonna piss on yer dinner!" The dog would huff, laying back down and melting into the floor, still grumbling but at least quiet. The half-orc would watch the dog angrily before he moved over, looking over at the door.
He'd move, opening the door and leaning out of it, looking up and down the dark road on the docks before grumbling himself, exhaling a chuckle and then lean back, pulling the heavy door with all of his weight, slamming it shut. The dog would bark again, he'd swear, laugh, and then yell out once more.
"Dammi- hey! Fishguts!" the orc would laugh out, raising his voice as he moved over and re-locked the open door. "One o' yer kids left th' door open again! Probably that Luskan nit-wit!" He'd move back across the room, kicking at the dog. Bloo would recoil and lunge, though a chain would hold him just out of biting range as the half-orc laughed. "Stupid piece o'-"
"What're you yelling about up here for, Chuckles?" the door opened and a spiky-haired gnome in a kept but worn studded leather vest strapped with a set of kukri across the chest. He seemed more serious in demeanor, only because he hadn't grown up with an infection for most of his life. He hated how loud the half-orc could be, rubbing the tired from his eyes. It wasn't his shift for guard duty, after all.
"One o' yer little Lambs left th' door open. Can't just be lettin' that happen." Another chuckle, this one apparently bad as his whole upper body moved.
"Well... let's go ask him, then?" the gnome would say, sadistically, before moving back into the hallway he had come from. To the right was another door- one that the smaller of the duo would kick open with a trained amount of force. "Alright, children! Which one of yo-" Fishguts would stop, though, and his eyes would widen. Across the edges of the room sat a long chain with rope woven throughout. The rope had been cut. The children that were here? Were no longer here. The only exit from the room was another door that the gnome quickly scurried to, following it into a little room with a locked door that led outside. That padlock had been unlocked as well, sitting on the ground.
"Lamm isn't gonna like that," the larger man would chuckle, and the smaller would turn and jab him below the belt, causing him to lurch over, exclaim in pain and laugh through his struggles. The gnome would move back, slamming the door behind him with the lock. "Let's go get the dog!" Fishguts would move, back through the children's room and out into the main entrance of the old fishery on the docks and stop at the dog, eyes widening. "Bloo?" He'd reach out as the half-orc stumbled into the room, still recovering from the sudden hit to the groin. The gnome would retrieve a dart from the dog's neck, a thin, sharp piece of metal.
"I think someone's here, Chuckles," the gnome would turn in time to see Chuckles stand up straight, taking a sharp exhale as his features went slack. He stepped forward, then fell to the side, with the gnome's eyes widening. Standing in the doorway, ducking under the frame and unfurling was a dragonborn wrapped in dark cloth, it's feet wrapped, it's hands covered and it's eyes sharp. The gnome would reach for a kukri, fumbling, and the dragonborn would be upon him before he knew it. The gnome would feel gravity leave him as if he was weightless for a moment before being thrown down, a large clawwed hand pinning him into the top of the old but heavy mahogany desk that sat in the room, unmoved from their takeover of the abandoned fishery weeks ago.
The dragonborn would lean forward with a snarl. "The blonde man wound up in the chum bucket. The children are gone. The dog is dead. Where is Lamm?" his voice would snarl as the gnome laughed, catching his breath. The dragonborn's head would tilt before he let go of the gnome, stepping to the side. The laugh turned into a scream as a hammer came down from behind the dragonborn form, crashing into the face of the gnome with a sickening impact. He had forgotten how resilient half-orcs were; the natural ferocity of the lot of them was annoying, but that fact that come to him jsut in time.
Chuckles laughed as he brought the warhammer back up. "Yer a dead man, dragonb-oof!" another impact would knock him across the room, stumbling back against the wall before the dragonborn got a running start. As he slid against the wall, the large knee came up just under his neck, sending his head backwards through the wall. The half-orc's body actually went slack, the dust of old plaster spilling out across Chuckles as he took his last breaths filled with stagnant air. The dragonborn would exhale, dusting himself off as he looked around. Not a single living guard. No sign of Lamm on this floor. There must have been a basement somewhere.
A small hatch would open before the dragonborn landed on the wooden planks that were the floor, creaking and cracking with the sudden impact of the massive scaled intruder. Eyes crossed the pit in the middle of the room, some five feet away from where he had landed, to a jaundiced and bent corpse of a man with spotted skin and patchy hair. A toothy smile curved into an annoyed flat at the dragonborn's appearance, his covered form curved with age. His hands brought up a set of hand crossbows.
"Who in the hell are you?" he'd croak, coughing a little bit afterward as he moved toward a small handrail- the only one around the pit.
"I am Goromitali," the would dragonborn would speak, stepping to the side, keeping his eyes on the old man. "I assume you are Lamm?"
"Yeah, though I'm afraid I didn't get any tea ready. Wasn't expectin' company this late at night. You got a purpose here, lizardman?" Lamm would antagonize the dragonborn, who took another step closer along the ledge.
"I have heard another name for you," Goromitali would muse, eyes still on the old man across the room with the open pit. It led to water. Something was down there. Something big, by the sounds of it. "Little Bo Peep."
The man would chuckle sadistically at the name. "And where did you hear that from?" His thumb fiddled with the hand crossbow as he moved with a limp away from the dragonborn.
"...I do not know. But I know what you have done."
There would be a little bit of a scoff. "So what? You here to take me to the guards? Have them slap me on the wrist before I just get back to what I was doing beforehand?"
"Actually, no," Goromitali would roll his shoulders. "I am here to make sure no more parents lose their children- make sure that no one succumbs to addiction. You do not get to leave here. I have come to end you."
"I'm gonna have to disagree with you there, lizardman-"
"Dragonborn."
"-deadman." With that, the hand crossbows would move, but only one would level at Goromitali. The other would aim down. He would pull both triggers at the same time. The dragonborn would lean out of the way of the bolt as it hit the wall behind him, next to his head. The second bolt, though, embedded itself into the back of a large, bloated oval-shaped body on three legs that supported the creature shaped like fleshy tree trunks. A roar escaped it's fang-filled mouth, bellowing into the air as a pair of long tentacles unfurled, with a third, smaller tentacle lurching out in each direction. Where there used to be eyes were stitched closings that blinded the creature as it spun.
Lamm would smile as he pulled out a small candle, whispering into it before his voice was heard from next to Goromitali. "You gonna get me this time, you worthless trash heap?" The creature bellowed as the dragonborn looked down, and the creature moved. Pointed tentacles flailed in his direction, with one crashing through the wood and the other barely missing the monk with a wild swipe.
Goromitali would, instead of running around, move up and away from the pit. Skittering across the planks on the roof, the monk crawled across the roof before dropping down next to the old man. He tackled into the lurching figure as he was reloading, and both crashed through the walkway and into the ground below.
Lamm would shove off Goromitali before leveling a hand crossbow at him and hitting the monk- or so he thought. The monk would catch the bolt, spin and throw it at the large raging creature some twenty feet away. It would groan and start to spin as the dragonborn would take a step away from Lamm. Sparks of energy flickered through his throat as, instead of Goromitali's voice, it was Lamm's voice.
"You gonna get me this time, you worthless trash heap?" Lamm's eyes would widen as the same sparks of energy filtered into Goromitali's legs. As the otyugh started to charge, Lamm would reach out.
"No, wait- we can make a deal!" But it was too late. The monk jumped with the supernatural energy funneling through his legs, grabbing onto the edge of the pit that he had pummeled Lamm through before pulling himself up. He would turn in time to see the otyugh swing, the spiked appendage digging into Little Bo Peep's leg as he screamed out. There was no more pleas. A crossbow bolt sunk into the large creature, but it didn't do anything. Goromitali would watch as the aberration thrashed Lamm around. He slammed into the rock wall with crunch. A second impact would break the body through the walkway above some fifteen feet away from Goromitali. Then? The tentacle would drag Lamm's almost lifeless body into it's murky, foul maw.
Like so many children before him, he died in the maw of his beloved pet. Unlike Lamm, though, Goromitali didn't take enjoyment in what he was observing. This wasn't revenge or an outlash against one of the people that had wronged him, though it was, in some way, a start. A test. Other than that, though? This was vengeance- punishment inflicted and exacted for a wrong. Lamm, known as Little Bo Peep, abducted children before moving to a completely different setting. He would follow local laws and enforcements, find properties that had fallen into disrepair, stay in them until his business was done, and then move to the next city. Lamm would travel, teach the abducted children to pickpocket, steal and mug and bring him back the rewards so he could count it here, scrap what was worthwhile, get rid of the rest, abduct new children to replace his numbers and then move on to the next city.
Goromitali would simply watch Lamm be thrashed about by his pet otyugh, thinking. He didn't know how he had known all of this. It came to him, this information, like a dream, or at the very least, like someone else's memory. He experienced the memory of watching Chuckles, the half-orc, hook a kid by the ankles to a set of manacles on the end of a chain. Lamm would ask questions- complex questions that children could never know, and take enjoyment in ordering them to be lowered closer and closer to their eventual death. No, through it all, Goromitali was sure that this Lamm person deserved so much more, but in the very least, he was in the Nine Hells where he belonged. No- devils at least followed laws. Goromitali decided the Abyss was more appropriate for a monster like Lamm. It made sending him and his associates there that much more satisfying. Chuckles got thrills in being a sadist to those smaller than him. Fishguts enjoyed disguising himself as a child, infiltrating an orphange to find kids to kidnap. Even Taylor, the illusionist he had drowned in the vat of rotten fish paste, liked experimenting with new spells on the defenseless children. Made them choose to willingly walk down to the basement level where they would be fed to whatever pet Lamm kept at the time.
It was concerning, though. The nightmare he had experienced was real? The Little Bo Peep connection, though- the thing that had initially attracted his attention- was true. In a lock-box, under Lamm's bed was an old locket with a stopwatch on a gold chain and the insignia of a cyclops skull devouring fire. Goromitali would know this as the Grimm League, and all he knew was that the insignia on the pocket watch matched the insignia on his wife's back- an organization she had been a part of within an organization known as the Zhentarim. They shifted directions, though, so she left. Years later, for some reason, they came back and killed her and her unborn hatchling- Goromitali's wife and child.
The pocket watch was all he found, though, and Goromitali didn't keep it, stuffing it back in the box, then putting it back under the bed. From there, Goromitali would make his way through the old fishery several more times. Once to make sure the children were all safe and outside. Once to make sure no one was alive, beast or otherwise. Once to oil the main parts of the old building. Once more to not double guess anything and oil some more just to make sure this would work. Every time Goromitali made his way through the fishery, he would take a different body down and throw it to the otyugh. No questioning the dead. Nothing to tie this to Goromitali.
He would step outside, light a torch, and toss it into the first room with the mahogany desk. The fire would catch quickly, dancing and running through the old building. By the time a noticeable fire caught and spread, Goromitali was long gone. He didn't make the mistake of staying and watching. The guards had been on their way fast enough to not let the fire spread to the other buildings, and the building being on the docks helped control the blaze that consumed what remained of Little Bo Peep.
This passing of an old member of the Grimm League wouldn't go noticed, though. A man with the eyes of the eagle, lodged within the City Guard, would make sure he was alone, just long enough to send a message through a Sending Stone- "We don't know who it was but Bo Peep is dead. Will keep ears out for more details."
The dog, it's drooping, wet jowls and large, floppy ears- also wet- turned half-way to the half-orc with the ashy green skin before turning back to the door, grumbling again in a half-heated bark. "I'm warnin' ya, Bloo," another wheezing chuckle. "You make me come back in 'ere and I'm gonna piss on yer dinner!" The dog would huff, laying back down and melting into the floor, still grumbling but at least quiet. The half-orc would watch the dog angrily before he moved over, looking over at the door.
He'd move, opening the door and leaning out of it, looking up and down the dark road on the docks before grumbling himself, exhaling a chuckle and then lean back, pulling the heavy door with all of his weight, slamming it shut. The dog would bark again, he'd swear, laugh, and then yell out once more.
"Dammi- hey! Fishguts!" the orc would laugh out, raising his voice as he moved over and re-locked the open door. "One o' yer kids left th' door open again! Probably that Luskan nit-wit!" He'd move back across the room, kicking at the dog. Bloo would recoil and lunge, though a chain would hold him just out of biting range as the half-orc laughed. "Stupid piece o'-"
"What're you yelling about up here for, Chuckles?" the door opened and a spiky-haired gnome in a kept but worn studded leather vest strapped with a set of kukri across the chest. He seemed more serious in demeanor, only because he hadn't grown up with an infection for most of his life. He hated how loud the half-orc could be, rubbing the tired from his eyes. It wasn't his shift for guard duty, after all.
"One o' yer little Lambs left th' door open. Can't just be lettin' that happen." Another chuckle, this one apparently bad as his whole upper body moved.
"Well... let's go ask him, then?" the gnome would say, sadistically, before moving back into the hallway he had come from. To the right was another door- one that the smaller of the duo would kick open with a trained amount of force. "Alright, children! Which one of yo-" Fishguts would stop, though, and his eyes would widen. Across the edges of the room sat a long chain with rope woven throughout. The rope had been cut. The children that were here? Were no longer here. The only exit from the room was another door that the gnome quickly scurried to, following it into a little room with a locked door that led outside. That padlock had been unlocked as well, sitting on the ground.
"Lamm isn't gonna like that," the larger man would chuckle, and the smaller would turn and jab him below the belt, causing him to lurch over, exclaim in pain and laugh through his struggles. The gnome would move back, slamming the door behind him with the lock. "Let's go get the dog!" Fishguts would move, back through the children's room and out into the main entrance of the old fishery on the docks and stop at the dog, eyes widening. "Bloo?" He'd reach out as the half-orc stumbled into the room, still recovering from the sudden hit to the groin. The gnome would retrieve a dart from the dog's neck, a thin, sharp piece of metal.
"I think someone's here, Chuckles," the gnome would turn in time to see Chuckles stand up straight, taking a sharp exhale as his features went slack. He stepped forward, then fell to the side, with the gnome's eyes widening. Standing in the doorway, ducking under the frame and unfurling was a dragonborn wrapped in dark cloth, it's feet wrapped, it's hands covered and it's eyes sharp. The gnome would reach for a kukri, fumbling, and the dragonborn would be upon him before he knew it. The gnome would feel gravity leave him as if he was weightless for a moment before being thrown down, a large clawwed hand pinning him into the top of the old but heavy mahogany desk that sat in the room, unmoved from their takeover of the abandoned fishery weeks ago.
The dragonborn would lean forward with a snarl. "The blonde man wound up in the chum bucket. The children are gone. The dog is dead. Where is Lamm?" his voice would snarl as the gnome laughed, catching his breath. The dragonborn's head would tilt before he let go of the gnome, stepping to the side. The laugh turned into a scream as a hammer came down from behind the dragonborn form, crashing into the face of the gnome with a sickening impact. He had forgotten how resilient half-orcs were; the natural ferocity of the lot of them was annoying, but that fact that come to him jsut in time.
Chuckles laughed as he brought the warhammer back up. "Yer a dead man, dragonb-oof!" another impact would knock him across the room, stumbling back against the wall before the dragonborn got a running start. As he slid against the wall, the large knee came up just under his neck, sending his head backwards through the wall. The half-orc's body actually went slack, the dust of old plaster spilling out across Chuckles as he took his last breaths filled with stagnant air. The dragonborn would exhale, dusting himself off as he looked around. Not a single living guard. No sign of Lamm on this floor. There must have been a basement somewhere.
A small hatch would open before the dragonborn landed on the wooden planks that were the floor, creaking and cracking with the sudden impact of the massive scaled intruder. Eyes crossed the pit in the middle of the room, some five feet away from where he had landed, to a jaundiced and bent corpse of a man with spotted skin and patchy hair. A toothy smile curved into an annoyed flat at the dragonborn's appearance, his covered form curved with age. His hands brought up a set of hand crossbows.
"Who in the hell are you?" he'd croak, coughing a little bit afterward as he moved toward a small handrail- the only one around the pit.
"I am Goromitali," the would dragonborn would speak, stepping to the side, keeping his eyes on the old man. "I assume you are Lamm?"
"Yeah, though I'm afraid I didn't get any tea ready. Wasn't expectin' company this late at night. You got a purpose here, lizardman?" Lamm would antagonize the dragonborn, who took another step closer along the ledge.
"I have heard another name for you," Goromitali would muse, eyes still on the old man across the room with the open pit. It led to water. Something was down there. Something big, by the sounds of it. "Little Bo Peep."
The man would chuckle sadistically at the name. "And where did you hear that from?" His thumb fiddled with the hand crossbow as he moved with a limp away from the dragonborn.
"...I do not know. But I know what you have done."
There would be a little bit of a scoff. "So what? You here to take me to the guards? Have them slap me on the wrist before I just get back to what I was doing beforehand?"
"Actually, no," Goromitali would roll his shoulders. "I am here to make sure no more parents lose their children- make sure that no one succumbs to addiction. You do not get to leave here. I have come to end you."
"I'm gonna have to disagree with you there, lizardman-"
"Dragonborn."
"-deadman." With that, the hand crossbows would move, but only one would level at Goromitali. The other would aim down. He would pull both triggers at the same time. The dragonborn would lean out of the way of the bolt as it hit the wall behind him, next to his head. The second bolt, though, embedded itself into the back of a large, bloated oval-shaped body on three legs that supported the creature shaped like fleshy tree trunks. A roar escaped it's fang-filled mouth, bellowing into the air as a pair of long tentacles unfurled, with a third, smaller tentacle lurching out in each direction. Where there used to be eyes were stitched closings that blinded the creature as it spun.
Lamm would smile as he pulled out a small candle, whispering into it before his voice was heard from next to Goromitali. "You gonna get me this time, you worthless trash heap?" The creature bellowed as the dragonborn looked down, and the creature moved. Pointed tentacles flailed in his direction, with one crashing through the wood and the other barely missing the monk with a wild swipe.
Goromitali would, instead of running around, move up and away from the pit. Skittering across the planks on the roof, the monk crawled across the roof before dropping down next to the old man. He tackled into the lurching figure as he was reloading, and both crashed through the walkway and into the ground below.
Lamm would shove off Goromitali before leveling a hand crossbow at him and hitting the monk- or so he thought. The monk would catch the bolt, spin and throw it at the large raging creature some twenty feet away. It would groan and start to spin as the dragonborn would take a step away from Lamm. Sparks of energy flickered through his throat as, instead of Goromitali's voice, it was Lamm's voice.
"You gonna get me this time, you worthless trash heap?" Lamm's eyes would widen as the same sparks of energy filtered into Goromitali's legs. As the otyugh started to charge, Lamm would reach out.
"No, wait- we can make a deal!" But it was too late. The monk jumped with the supernatural energy funneling through his legs, grabbing onto the edge of the pit that he had pummeled Lamm through before pulling himself up. He would turn in time to see the otyugh swing, the spiked appendage digging into Little Bo Peep's leg as he screamed out. There was no more pleas. A crossbow bolt sunk into the large creature, but it didn't do anything. Goromitali would watch as the aberration thrashed Lamm around. He slammed into the rock wall with crunch. A second impact would break the body through the walkway above some fifteen feet away from Goromitali. Then? The tentacle would drag Lamm's almost lifeless body into it's murky, foul maw.
Like so many children before him, he died in the maw of his beloved pet. Unlike Lamm, though, Goromitali didn't take enjoyment in what he was observing. This wasn't revenge or an outlash against one of the people that had wronged him, though it was, in some way, a start. A test. Other than that, though? This was vengeance- punishment inflicted and exacted for a wrong. Lamm, known as Little Bo Peep, abducted children before moving to a completely different setting. He would follow local laws and enforcements, find properties that had fallen into disrepair, stay in them until his business was done, and then move to the next city. Lamm would travel, teach the abducted children to pickpocket, steal and mug and bring him back the rewards so he could count it here, scrap what was worthwhile, get rid of the rest, abduct new children to replace his numbers and then move on to the next city.
Goromitali would simply watch Lamm be thrashed about by his pet otyugh, thinking. He didn't know how he had known all of this. It came to him, this information, like a dream, or at the very least, like someone else's memory. He experienced the memory of watching Chuckles, the half-orc, hook a kid by the ankles to a set of manacles on the end of a chain. Lamm would ask questions- complex questions that children could never know, and take enjoyment in ordering them to be lowered closer and closer to their eventual death. No, through it all, Goromitali was sure that this Lamm person deserved so much more, but in the very least, he was in the Nine Hells where he belonged. No- devils at least followed laws. Goromitali decided the Abyss was more appropriate for a monster like Lamm. It made sending him and his associates there that much more satisfying. Chuckles got thrills in being a sadist to those smaller than him. Fishguts enjoyed disguising himself as a child, infiltrating an orphange to find kids to kidnap. Even Taylor, the illusionist he had drowned in the vat of rotten fish paste, liked experimenting with new spells on the defenseless children. Made them choose to willingly walk down to the basement level where they would be fed to whatever pet Lamm kept at the time.
It was concerning, though. The nightmare he had experienced was real? The Little Bo Peep connection, though- the thing that had initially attracted his attention- was true. In a lock-box, under Lamm's bed was an old locket with a stopwatch on a gold chain and the insignia of a cyclops skull devouring fire. Goromitali would know this as the Grimm League, and all he knew was that the insignia on the pocket watch matched the insignia on his wife's back- an organization she had been a part of within an organization known as the Zhentarim. They shifted directions, though, so she left. Years later, for some reason, they came back and killed her and her unborn hatchling- Goromitali's wife and child.
The pocket watch was all he found, though, and Goromitali didn't keep it, stuffing it back in the box, then putting it back under the bed. From there, Goromitali would make his way through the old fishery several more times. Once to make sure the children were all safe and outside. Once to make sure no one was alive, beast or otherwise. Once to oil the main parts of the old building. Once more to not double guess anything and oil some more just to make sure this would work. Every time Goromitali made his way through the fishery, he would take a different body down and throw it to the otyugh. No questioning the dead. Nothing to tie this to Goromitali.
He would step outside, light a torch, and toss it into the first room with the mahogany desk. The fire would catch quickly, dancing and running through the old building. By the time a noticeable fire caught and spread, Goromitali was long gone. He didn't make the mistake of staying and watching. The guards had been on their way fast enough to not let the fire spread to the other buildings, and the building being on the docks helped control the blaze that consumed what remained of Little Bo Peep.
This passing of an old member of the Grimm League wouldn't go noticed, though. A man with the eyes of the eagle, lodged within the City Guard, would make sure he was alone, just long enough to send a message through a Sending Stone- "We don't know who it was but Bo Peep is dead. Will keep ears out for more details."
