Wrath and Taint: Tsuto’s Treachery and Rumours of Nualia

…what she calls her “celestial taint” and replacing it with her Mother’s grace…

The main components of glass are all found in abundance nearby: sand, seaweed, salt-resistant plants…, and lime extracted from stone quarried from the cliffs of Devil’s Platter. All that remained was the technical proficiency to work these components into glass. The fact that the building’s basement once doubled as a smuggler’s base is one of the Kajitsu family’s secrets. ¹

The adventurers carried on through the eerily quiet and dark interior of the Sandpoint Glassworks. Darius and Conall were most interested in the whereabouts of a goblin that escaped from a previous combat while Leica appeared to be most interested in the dimensions of the floor or the patterns and intricacies of the works of glass.

Curtains were drawn over all of the windows, all of the doors leading outside on the main floor were locked, and only death loitered in the face of a dark and twisted night of murder.

Descending down a stairwell led the Heroes of Sandpoint to a basement where mortar, stone, and bricks were strewn about in many directions, byproducts of the dismantling of brick walls. Waiting for them there was a sadly diminished group of goblins, including Zug, who proclaimed himself Guz’s brother, and Tsuto Kaijitsu, cousin to Darius.

Immediately firing at Darius as he bursted into a dusty office, Tsuto made his intentions immediately known. This half-elf was not backing down without a fight. After intense combat, the exiled Kaijitsu son began to retreat but was beat down into unconsciousness as one of his goblin minions made it out through a series of tunnels connected to the basement.

On his person, Tsuto possessed a journal which portrayed a very horrifying reality.

The raid went about as planned. Few Thistletop goblins perished, and were able to secure Tobyn’s casket with ease while the rubes were distracted by the rest…. My love seems bent on going through with it — nothing I can say convinces her of her beauty. She remains obsessed with removing what she calls her “celestial taint” and replacing it with her Mother’s grace. At the Thistletop Shrine seems to have started the transformation….

Realizing they were on borrowed time this late into the night, the Heroes brought Tsuto to the Sandpoint Jail and Ameiko, who was found in an adjacent room, to her home at The Rusty Dragon.

An interrogation with Tsuto in the morning proved useless; he seemed adamant in his resolve. Ameiko brought forth news of her brother’s treachery: Tsuto had warned Ameiko that she did not want to be in town when plans of his came through, and offered her a chance to join a group at Thistletop. It was revealed that Tsuto and several other mercenaries, led by the thought-of dead Nualia, daughter to the late Father, were planning something.

Later that day, an investigation of the tunnels in the basement of the Glassworks reveal a strange network that led for some distance through the bedrock below Sandpoint. Built probably decades go, the tunnel remained stable as it winded lazily northeast around 1700 feet to a secret door into a cave overlooking the Varisian Gulf. Adjacent here is another passageway that winded about 50 feet until it came to a strangely-different architecture and complex.

A sinspawn dwells in this cave…. The sinspawn does its job admirably, standing at its post for hours at a time until relieved by another.

The Heroes found themselves in a very bizarre cave of horrors, battling strange abominations to a chamber that housed a statue of a Thassilonian Runelord. Leica, an extremely well-read scholar of the Thassilonian Empire, was quick to explain to the party that this empire, centuries old, possessed a very powerful and twisted magic that thrived on sin.

What on Golarion was down here?

In this session, the following encounters were defeated or dealt with, awarding the following experience or loot.

• Goblins (4): 135 xp each.
• Tsuto Kaijitsu – male half-elf monk 2/rogue 2: 1000 xp. Possessed a potion of cure light wounds, a composite shortbow with 20 arrows, a ring of protection +1, masterwork thieves’ tools, a masterwork flute, silver earrings, a journal, 6 pouches of gold dust worth 50 gp each, 8 pouches of silver dust worth 5 gp each, and 10 pp.
• Ameiko was rescued safely. 1460 xp is rewarded.
• Sinspawn (3): 600 xp each.
• In the catacombs, a scroll of flaming sphere (CL 5th) and a masterwork ranseur were found.

The players were rewarded 1 hero point each for levelling, and, as a whole, earned 4800 xp. This means each character received 1200 xp. This should put all characters to slightly above 2400 xp, and thus puts all characters at level two.