Nathan smiles at Mishann.  Pyrus keeps his perch.  Mits leads the way.

"Shayliss is the girl who asked a private audience with Joe.  Aeren is the one with the monster in the closet."

Alergast and Amele Barett are a typical Sandpoint family, with
two children (little Aeren and baby Verah) and a loyal family
dog named Petal. They were present at the Swallowtail Festival,
where Aeren saw a goblin light a cat on fire and then caper
around the burning remains—the poor boy really hasn’t been
the same since. Every night, his howls of terror send Petal into
a barking fit, and when his parents investigate, Aeren claims
a goblin came out of his closet. Alergast checked the closet
dutifully but found nothing, and ever since the kid’s complaints
about the “closet goblin” have grown more and more tiresome
to his parents. Yesterday, Alergast threatened to make Aeren
sleep in the woodshed if he couldn’t learn to “be a man”
and sleep through an entire night without crying and
telling stories.

All of this is told to the PCs by a tearful
Amele Barett 2d4 evenings after the goblin raid; she approaches the PCs in a panic,
clutching baby Verah to her chest with one
hand and clinging to the back of Aeren’s shirt
with the other. She goes on to say that, last
night, Alergast didn’t go to soothe Aeren when
he had his night terrors. But then, a few
moments later, they heard poor Petal cry
out in pain and Aeren’s screams turn shrill.
This time Aeren wasn’t just having nightmares. Amele pauses, takes a breath, and
then shows the PCs Aeren’s arms. They’re
covered with fresh goblin bites.

When Alergast burst into the room,
he found a goblin crouched on his son’s
chest. Petal was dead, a knife deep in
his ear, and the goblin was frantically
trying to chew off Aeren’s arm. Alergast
attacked the goblin and chased it back into
the closet, where it clambered into a hole
it had cleverly hidden under an old fur.
Alergast flew into a rage, and as he started
tearing apart the closet in an attempt to
get at the goblin, Amele panicked and fled
the house with her children to seek out the
PCs for aid.

"Sandpoint Heroes to the rescue!" Mittens proclaims, running to the lady's house!

Mishann wonders if every single problem in sandpoint is going to make her blood boil. She rushes off to the house also. "Yes I KNOW who Shalyss is, Mittens! I suggested her because like the boy's dad, I thought it was just an imagined problem! UGH! I hate me right now!"

  "Well, hate the things biting children and stabbing dogs more thank yourself, Mishann."

  Joe would like to assume angry dad could take one goblin on his own, but suspects there will be more drama for this family before there is less of it.

  "Get your Aeren some medical attention while we rush off to your house."

Creature: The goblin in the Barett
house is a commando named Gresgurt
who snuck into the building after the
raid turned sour. He found a loose floorboard in the closet, frantically hacked
an opening large enough for him to fit
into the enclosed crawlspace under the
house, and pulled a fur over the hole to
hide. He only intended to stay there for
a few hours until things died down outside, then planned on
sneaking out of town, but the exhaustion of the raid caught
up with him and he fell asleep. When he woke the next night
and tried to sneak out, he woke Petal and Aeren. As frightened
by the dog as the kid was of him, Gresgurt fled back into the
crawlspace, visions of the hateful and frightening dog filling
his little goblin mind. It seemed like every time Gresgurt peeked
out, that dog was there, ready to bark. Unable to escape for fear of
the dog, Gresgurt subsisted on spiders and worms plucked from
the dirt floor of the small crawlspace for days, and over those
days, his fear turned to anger. His driving desire shifted from
escape to a burning need to kill the dog. And yet, he had no
real weapons; he’d broken his horsechopper in his efforts to get
into the crawlspace below the house. All he had left were
fragments of the blade, one of which he used to build a crude
knife. Tonight, he emerged, killed Petal, and in his nearly
starved state tried to eat Aeren alive.

When the PCs arrive at the Barett house, they find it disturbingly
silent. Upon reaching Aeren’s room, they find Alergast Barett on
his belly, as if he had crawled into the closet. In truth, he did just
that. In an attempt to kill the goblin, Alergast underestimated
the creature. When he reached down into the hole to try to grab
Gresgurt, the goblin jumped up and cut his throat. Ravenous, the
commando tried to haul Alergast’s body into the crawlspace to
eat it, but the body got stuck once he got the upper torso through
the hole.

Nathan casts a spell on the body while Mits tries to pull it out of the hole.

Mishann is standing ready to grab anything that might jut out of the crawlspace. She appears too angry to talk. (Readied attack grab)
This message was last edited by the player at 04:25, Tue 31 Jan 2017.

  "I know this is incredibly insensitive, but not it for telling the family he didn't make it, if that can't get sorted." He'll try to make it up to them by making sure he's not the one to put the goblin out of it's misery.

If the PCs pull back Alergast’s body, they find him to be
quite dead, the flesh of his face and upper torso eaten away.
An instant later, the insane goblin shrieks in rage at its stolen
dinner and leaps up out of the hole to attack! By this point,
Gresgurt’s long captivity in the crawlspace has left him almost
feral with hunger and fear, and he’s come to view the entire
house as his.

If not for Mishann being ready to grab the Goblin, Mits would have gotten a knife to the face.  With little time to react, Mits blasts the goblin with a magic missile, but it's not enough to stop the goblin who stabs Mishann in the neck!

"You no take dinner!" it screams.

Mishann doesn't notice or feel the stab as she immediately retaliates with fire from her mouth to the goblin's face!

Feel or no, though, Mishann's wound is a nasty one and will need tending to very soon.

  It's that time again, for mixed feelings at being outside of melee harm's way while your friends are the ones getting stabbed (While civilians are even worse off).

  He works out his frustrations with an arrow through the BBQ'd goblin's knife arm.

Blasted, burnt, and shot, the goblin screams its last breath!  Nevertheless, Mits draws her sword and beheads the jerk for good measure.  Nathan removes the knife from Mishann's neck and heals it good as new.

Mits cantrips her sword clean and sheathes it.  "Not the worst case scenario after all, but certainly far from best case."

Pyrus punches the severed head's face.

Nathan stares at the father's body in silence.

Mishann says, "The worst part about it is something like this and the glassworks are horrifying to the point where we can't inform the public or else there will be panic and they will make things worse for themselves than if they were ignorant! And yet, if people could just handle truths like this, then people like this man wouldn't have to die and instead would take the threat seriously, inform the authorities, vacate the house, and let the pros deal with it."

 "His kid was being chewed on.  I don't think being able to handle the truth about goblins in town would have changed his reaction much." I'll evacuate in an orderly manner after I've killed the goblin with my bare hands!... if only.

"That's what mayors are for," Mittens asserts, "Our job is to just deal with the murderous little weeds.  It's up to the town to deal with the rest."

Nathan takes some sheets from the bed to cover the bodies.

"I could resurrect this man right now, but it would cost 5,375 gold.  Scrolls of raise dead aren't cheap.  And I only have one."

Mits stares speechless.  Pyrus facepalms.

Mishann says, "I think you misunderstand me, Joe... the guy's son got bitten today. After several days of warning. Had we been able to share with the town that goblins are *still* in the town, he may have taken his son's warning more seriously and gotten authorities long before his son got bit. But no. Telling the town about such would mean more people would have died because some panicky townsperson killed them by accident just from panicking."

She looks at Mittens. "Being trained up as a princess means I know these kinds of things. But I never had to look it in the face."

Mishann then looks at Nathan with a "what are you waiting for" expression and says, "So raise him. The scroll is expensive, but life is priceless. Especially this case; we either resurrect him or people find out they aren't allowed to sleep and goblins could be under every floorboard waiting to kill them. We can ask the mayor to compensate you for the scroll."
This message was last edited by the player at 05:41, Tue 31 Jan 2017.

  Joe nods to Mishann, "There is that, yeah." As well there is only so much you can do when you get the time accelerated version of a plot to account for a party that would actually take it seriously before 2d4 days pass.

  "Even if they couldn't compensate us for it, it's worth it not just so one less kid has to deal with their dad eaten by goblins.  It's also because if we save if for ourselves when one of us dies protecting the rest of this place, they will still think we're assholes even mid rescue."

Nathan headshakes.  "People will think you're an asshole for spending thousands of gold on magic armor so that you don't get killed rescuing their hungry family, but they'll still be alive to think that and continue begging.  It is precisely because I think life is priceless that I'm not going to waste this scroll on a man that can't handle one goblin and save it for those expected to handle 200.  Besides.  I've only told the people in this room about the scroll.  He was a decent man, so his soul will be going to his eternal reward.  The scroll is for the sake of bringing back one of you when failing to do so means the entire town gets slaughtered."

Mittens rubs her chin.  "We were awarded 50 gold for rescuing one nobleman.  For the sake of argument, assuming the peasant to noble exchange rate is five to one, that means the collective value of this town's population is around 12,400 gold.  Consequently, one of us would only be worth 3,100 gold.  Less than the value of one scroll of resurrection."

Pyrus rolls his eyes.

Mits continues, "How much time before the corpse is beyond the power of your spell?"

"Five days."

"Great!  Then we can ask the mayor and Aldern to cover the cost before the spell is cast.  Everyone wins!"

Mishann's anger was rising for a bit, but Mittens makes the statement of letting the mayor handle it. "...gotta remind myself Sandpoint isn't my jurisdiction." she mutters. She eyes Nathan briefly. "Thanks for the heal." she comments before turning back to the dead man. "The sooner we inform the Mayor, the better."

She throws a cloth over the guy so he can't be seen and carries him like a sack of potatoes over her shoulder, heading for the mayor's office.

  Adventure economics is always a headache inducing subject, even without the additional prospect of civilians and resurrection magics.  Both financially, and '404 error soul worthy of return not found' wise.

  "I think, I will try to let you guys field the commentary more than usual for this."

Nathan reaches to tug Mishann's tail.  "And what about the people slaughtered in the glassworks?  It's not to late for them.  Are they less worthy than this man?  What about Amiku's dad?  She'll never have a chance for reconciliation with him dead.  It's not just about cost."

Mits hrms.  "We'll hold a lottery!  50 gold a ticket.  Winner gets their dead back.  Proceeds cover the cost if we sell 107 tickets!"

Pyrus falls over.

Nathan sighs.  "I'm sorry I mentioned the emergency scroll.  I only brought it up because I had a moment of weakness and was thinking out loud."

Mishann looks over at the tail-tugger and says, "If concern for others is weakness, I don't ever want to be strong. And the reason why everyone else gets passed up, Nathan, is timing. The other people have died during and close enough to the initial attack. This guy died just when everyone was beginning to catch their breath. "Morale is life; lose it and you lose the kingdom." Mittens' idea works fine and absolves us of any moral obligation. I don't disagree with your assessments, Nathan, but I do feel you disagree with mine."

Mishann looks at Mittens and says, "We don't need to speculate any further. The mayor will decide how to deal with her people and whether they get resurrected or not."

She nods to Joe. "Not to worry, Joe... I've got this. I already feel guilty for doubting the boy, so I feel it my responsibility to give the report."

  "So far as problems go, your fellow adventurers even considering for a second to do such thins is a problem you would likely come to miss among others."

  Like, maybe if they were teamed up with an adventurer who was angry because the goblin started to eat the Dad before they could.

Nathan deadpans, "If this is about morale, then why are we going to be dragging a fresh corpse through the streets to the mayor's office?"

Mits continues to try and work out the math.  "Let's see.  Not much chance of selling over 100 tickets.  Maybe the price should be divided by the number of dead.  Well... those dead who's families are willing to put up the gold for a ticket.  Could be the whole town turns down the resurrection if a ticket costs 1,000 gold.

"Oh!  Yeah.  We should probably leave the body inside."

Pyrus gives Nathan a cheek kiss then flutters up to Mishann to kiss her cheek too.

Mishann says, "That's why I covered the body. Though now that you mention it, any dead body being carried would be a bad idea. If it is assumed a monster, that means the heroes just had to kill another monster inside town. If it is a villager.. well I could pass it off as a drunk I knocked out and covered to keep their identity a secret lest people think less of him for opposing the heroes? Main reason I wanted to take the body was so that when the mom and kids come home to see this mess, they don't have to see daddy's half-eaten face. We'll just tell the family that the house is off limits for now?"

Pyrus' attempt to cheer up Mishann helps a tiny bit and she pets him for it. But her expression is still that of someone very shaken.

  "Yeah I figured Mishann did because of the family reaction reasons as much as anything." The molten glass thing was terrible, but this one was a much more awkward corpse.

 Sorry, your dad died with his face eaten and his butt still sticking halfway out of the floorboards. Very hilarious-I mean, tragic.

http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/...63/goblin_closet.png



"Resurrection won't fix his face, by the way," Nathan points out.

The mom is waiting outside for news of her husband.  Mits is quick to boast that the goblin is slain.

If the PCs kill Gresgurt, Amele is thankful until
she discovers her husband’s fate, whereupon she has a complete
breakdown. The PCs might be at a loss as to what to do with
the situation, but fortunately the commotion quickly summons
Sheriff Hemlock, who takes in the scene with his customary grim
expression. He thanks the PCs for helping and arranges to have
the Barett family stay at the cathedral for a few days.

(Sorry!  He's traveling.)

"Fear not, madam," Mittens assures, "No less than an actual angel has assured me that your husband is safely in paradise!"

Nathan nods.  "He gave his life to cover the escape of his family.  A noble deed."
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:24, Tue 31 Jan 2017.