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Post by Tatalia on Dec 25, 2023 6:52:12 GMT -5
Bounding as she was through the forest like a wild hare with her scarf and sash trailing behind her, Tatalia could easily have been confused for some sort of strange fairy spirit. Her movements were energetic, almost heedless as she sprung from ground to tree to ground to tree, using her enchanted boots1 and her enhanced senses to traverse the forest at a breakneck pace. Blue leaved branches were left waving in her wake as she hopped, darted, and swung herself forward through the many-hued woods. She grinned wildly the whole way, her yellow eyes gleaming with delight.
A passerby might have that the young goblin was celebrating some great triumph, or experiencing the joy of winning the lottery or having her first kiss. But Tatalia was on an even greater high than either of those. She was on the cusp of a most inspired archaelogical study, one which could lay the groundwork for future investigations!
To put it bluntly, Tatalia was so excited because she was going to dig a hole and look at moldy rocks.
The goblin threw slowed down only once she reached the edge of a broad, deep stream. Well, maybe it wasn't quite a stream, the goblin thought to herself, but it wasn't really a river, either. She figured it was something in between, really, like a ream or a striver. Something like that! The thinly built little explorer dropped on down from the tree branch she'd swung onto last, rubbed her hands together rapidly, and looked about the area to make sure her mental map was accurate. It was.2 Tatalia never got lost, really.
Taking a half minute to stand to her full height of three and a half feet, stretch, and pop her arms and fingers, Tatalia turned her gaze eastward along the stream. She glanced up at the sun, noted its position, flicked a glance back down the path, and...
"Ten minutes of a walk with plenty of daylight!" the goblin exclaimed to herself cheerily. "Tower of Tyrelia, here I come!"
And so the trek continued, though not at so wild a pace. The dark haired goblin flicked her satchel open and pulled her journal out, jotting notes down to herself as she went. The time, the weather, the height of the striver (what a good word!), everything was documented in detail. That remarkably little snow was noted as well; it was a particularly warm day, and the temperature could be important to notate for the study she was about to conduct...
It seemed no time at all had passed by the time Tatalia arrived at her destination. A ruined tower sat by a fork in the river, its walls having been broken, rebuilt, and broken again in ages past. Excitement mounted in Tatalia's mind, and she started picking up pace from a walk to a jog once more, little boots dancing across the ground with almost utter silence. Such was the goblin's enthusiasm that when she rounded the corner to dash through the entrance and make her way inside, she almost ran into the poor woman seated in the doorway facing the stream.
Luckily for the bystander, Tatalia was able to shift her movement at the very last movement, barely preventing herself from crashing into the woman! Unfortunately for Tatalia, that sudden shift threw her face first into the crumbling stone column.
"OW! OW-OW-OW!" The goblin fell back on her rump, clutching her now uncomfortably bent nose. Her journal fell open onto the grass beside her, and the goblin let fly about a dozen different blasphemous curses before managing to get anything intelligible out of her mouth.
"Pardon me," the goblin began to say, her tone gentle at first but becoming louder, sharper, and higher pitched with each passing second, "but did you HAVE to have your picnic or whatever you're having at EXACTLY this place on EXACTLY this day?! Confound the luck!"
The goblin squinted accusingly at the offending woman... and then realized a moment later that she was an elf, and moreover some manner of priestess. In other words, she was exactly the sort of person that would take offense to the goblin's mere existence.
Tatalia groaned.
2. Hoppers; 2. Tracker Extraordinaire.
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Post by Elvira, Wandering Cleric on Dec 25, 2023 21:19:59 GMT -5
Elvira looked down to the goblin with a curiously cocked head. She hadn’t expected company, especially not one of Tatalia’s sort. An awkwardly long moment passes as the elf studies the surprise guest, her darkened eyes piercing into Tatalia’s soul. She seemed to judge each and every inch of the goblin before tilting her head away and flicking back a stray, deep gray hair.
“Quite an entrance. I’d say it could use some work were you any other, but I understand your kind enjoys the beauty of chaos.” The edges of her lips raised ever so slightly as her voice cuts into the goblins ears; a cold tone that somehow carried a touch of playfulness. It seemed almost unnatural for her to grin, almost as if she was doing it as a formality. As she speaks again her voice takes a more cautious tone, this time featuring a hint of judgement. "You aren't so prideful as to deny me the chance to repair the nose you introduced to the wall, no?"
Before any answer was given, she stands up. The black, gold, and white cloth of her robes spilled down gracefully and delicately, hiding her figure. What they failed to hide, however, was her height. The elf stood a margin over six feet tall, perhaps even reaching six-and-a-half feet. The hood and the hair covered most of her face, but the slightly cold gaze still broke through.
"You asked if I 'HAD to' have my moment alone here," she states, eyes beginning to fill with wonder at the train of thought she was riding, "and to be quite transparent, I did not. I traveled here merely out of curiosity for the cycles of life that both begin and end here. It's interesting that, in a forest so dense, the gods had decided to cross our paths. Were this interaction in the city, neither of us would have batted an eye to another."
"Now, back to that nose..." The unnatural smile returns, though a little warmer this time. "May I?"
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Post by Tatalia on Dec 25, 2023 21:57:51 GMT -5
The goblin woman couldn't help but grimace as the first few words dripped out of the elf's mouth. "Your kind enjoys the beauty of chaos," she said. Tatalia heaved an indignant breath, then thrust a finger upward at the elvish woman.
"My kind? Oh, what a charming way to insult me, miss!" replied the goblin, throwing a hand backward and theatrically waving it about as she huffed along. "Oh, I'm sure you've read so many books about those mean and disorderly creatures called goblins! Did they have pictures in them, by chance?"
Really, Tatalia could have been much more diplomatic. In fact, she normally was. She certainly didn't have to insult the elvish maiden's intellect by suggesting she read picture books. But to be on the threshold of such an incredible discovery only to find the way barred by an elf that ticked all the wrong checkboxes in her head... Tatalia had a wellspring of spite to draw her words from. Her mood was not lessened by the elf's little mannerisms, like tilting her head, flicking her hair back, and staring disparagingly down with those cold eyes. And it was a stare down, for the elf reached six feet once she'd stood to full height, almost twice Tatalia's own height!
Still, the goblin woman had enough presence of mind to recognize that the elf was extending an olive branch... sort of. An offer to heal her nose certainly wasn't remiss. And maybe, maybe she was judging the elf a little too harshly, just a teensy bit. A smidge. Not very much at all, really; a truly infinitesimal degree of difference between deserved insult and delivered insult existed, and Tatalia supposed that meant she could overcompensate ever-so-slightly by dialing her spiteful words back a notch. Yes. Maybe. No, yes, she could do that.
"Given the circumstances... I suppose it would behoove me to accept your offer," the goblin began in a guarded tone. Slowly, she mustered up her willpower and also murmured, "I apologize for, um, for my initial reaction. I'd blame it on plunging face first into a stone wall, but that's a sorry excuse, isn't it?" The goblin cracked a thin, polite smile across at the elf.
"I'd like to start over from the beginning, if that's quite alright with you, without the mad dash to discovery. My name is Tatalia! What's yours?"
It wasn't exactly the finest of introductions, but Tatalia really did try to push her rude words to the back of her mind where they belonged. She folded her arms behind her back and stood on her tip toes, trying to make it just a little easier for the elf to reach down and heal her nose. The explorer quietly hoped the elf wouldn't comment on her grasp of language or on the more human or elvish name she had; she really didn't want to have to waste time telling a story when she was so close to her breakthrough.
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Post by Elvira, Wandering Cleric on Dec 25, 2023 22:40:13 GMT -5
The elf laughs at the jab to her intelligence. It was a genuine, hearty laugh. "I'd say a few of them were, lest I'd lose my sanity being buried beneath the scriptures of madmen. As for our initial meet, I suppose I extended the wrong hand, didn't I? My name is Elvira. I wished merely to inject a touch of playfulness into a rather unpleasant moment for yourself." As she spoke, her hands began to glow with a soft light. She cupped her hands around the goblin's chin, allowing for the light to spread into their body and begin to heal the damage. It warmed Tatalia's body and cleansed it of the small wounds expected of travel, and the rather noticeable wound received from her fight with a stone wall. Upon healing the goblin, Elvira looked satisfied with her work, but not with the situation.
"Good as it were before. Please do your best to refrain from doing that again. One can only take so many bumps to the noggin' before requiring me to guide their soul to the afterlife." She seems to change her demeanor entirely now, taking up a more judgmental and defensive posture by crossing her arms and shifting her weight to her back foot. She begins to speak in a near-murderous tone. "I do wonder how many of those I guide were taken by yours. I suppose the answer is 'never enough' when asking your leaders and militia, but one must question what crosses a warrior's mind when driving a blade into the heart of a hunter who had only wished to feed the people that rely on them." The cold gaze seems to burn through Tatalia before faltering.
"Hells... I'm taking frustrations and pained histories out on the wrong being. A warrior would not even consider allowing me the chance to speak as I have. For what purpose are you here?"
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Post by Tatalia on Dec 25, 2023 23:30:27 GMT -5
Perhaps this won't be so bad, the little scholar thought to herself as Elvira apologized and introduced herself in turn. She seems like she could be polite enough. A bit haughty, but polite!
Tatalia's concerns about having to work with the elf were slowly assuaged by the gentle act of healing provided and some light chiding about taking care not to bust her nose open again. Honestly, perhaps she'd misjudged the el-
"I do wonder how many of those I guide were taken by yours. I suppose the answer is 'never enough' when asking your leaders and militia..."
"Really?!" the enraged goblin blurted out, her newly fixed nose wrinkling up in disgust. She let out an angry laugh, yellow eyes glinting in the sunlight that poked between the trees. "You Elves come and claim every corner of Charon for your own, drive my people into living in caves and swamps, send mercenaries and adventurers to slaughter us wholesale, and then blame us when we deign to take a stand! And you have the nerve..." Tatalia growled those words out, her voice cracking with vitriol. She glared straight into the elf's eyes and clenched her fists so tightly that her knuckles went gray. "You have the absolute gall to paint us as the warmongering marauders? It's not enough to conquer us; you have to blame us for being conquered?!"
Tatalia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She stepped backward, let the sound of the stream lapping against the shore nearby lower her guard, and then opened her eyes once more.
"I suppose I really can't blame you. The blatant propaganda that passes for historical literature in this realm has a sordid lack of regard for reality." The goblin sighed, then pressed her hand against the scarf wrapped about her head and shot a wild grin up at the elf. She slowly paced away from the priestess, getting closer to the stream striver. "But that is actually why I'm here today! Today, I will prove that extreme discrepancies exist between recorded history and the events that actually occurred in the past! And I will do so... with this tower!"
The goblin turned back around sharply and took a flashy, dynamic stance, pointing with two open hands toward the broken tower. Her eyes glinted dramatically, and her hair and scarf whipped about in the wind.
What was so important about some old tower, anyway?
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Post by Elvira, Wandering Cleric on Dec 26, 2023 2:20:56 GMT -5
Elvira stared daggers into the goblin's eyes. Each muscle tensed as her body took a more offensive stance. She was clearly preparing to strike. A few tense moments pass before...
She turns around and lets out a frustrated exclamation. A few curses slip by under her breath before she whipped back around to stare down Tatalia once more. The venom in her eyes had fallen away, being replaced now by a formerly repressed pain. She was fighting back tears.
"You know not of the pain I had gone through because of your kind. I... gods!!!" Elvira stomps her foot and turns away once more. With each passing moment, she was visibly questioning more and more of what she knew... or perhaps questioning the morality of the actions she wished to take. Another moment passes before she turns back. "Ten years old... ten bloody years old! I had been playing outside with the other children when a priest took me aside. That's when I was informed of the death of my parents. Originally, they didn't think I could take the truth behind their deaths and thus had told me it was the result of some accident. I found out the truth when one of the priests accidentally told the wrong lie." She drops to her knees and growls with frustration. "They had wandered too close to a goblin encampment. As they passed, they were ambushed. The man who recovered their bodies couldn't identify who they were until a headcount was taken. They had been brutalized."
With a huff, she shakes her head. "I suppose these battles have taken more than enough from each side... I apologize. Sincerely, I do. As much as I hate to admit, I admire your resolve. I'm sure you've received enough push-back from those like myself."
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Post by Tatalia on Dec 26, 2023 3:08:32 GMT -5
There were so many words that Tatalia wanted to throw back at the elf. She still had plenty of anger in her, after all. But for as much as she wanted to scream back at the elf or retort with tales of her own suffering... she just couldn't help but feel the pain twist of empathy's knife in her stomach.
For a moment, she could remember the heavy, cold chains bound about her wrists and feet, and the smell of fire and the air full of smoke. She could taste the blood on her lips, and see the bodies on the...
Tatalia sighed. She shook her head and drove those unwelcome memories away. She'd had time to heal from her pain, anyway. Clearly, this elf had not.
"Tragedy is a strange and uncaring thing," the goblin mused quietly, having long since dropped her showoff stance and approached the elf with a sad, thin smile. "It often worms its way into places it never should have been and touches lives that deserved so much better.
"I, um... I wish I had the right words to say for this," Tatalia began to say. She cracked a little grin, awkward and apologetic and just a little toothy. "I'm afraid I'm more used to verbal ripostes and clever roasts! Hah." She cast her gaze away from the elf, heaving out a little sigh. "Consolation is a little bit out of my wheelhouse. But..."
The goblin reached out and gave the elf two short pats on the shoulder.
"I'm sorry, too. I, um, let my emotions get the better of me, and you deserve none of my ire. But I guess you can't be in my line of work without a little passion for history, can you?" The goblin laughed a little bit, but the laughter died. "That's... not an excuse, mind you. What you deserve is some respect, which I can tell you're trying to show me. I think."
It wasn't the most elegant of responses, but Tatalia was, in turn, trying to be a bit more polite and sincere. Again, she bit back some of the quips and biting remarks she had in mind, knowing there was a time and a place to use those and this was not either of those.
"I, ah, I do pride myself on my resolve!" she added cheerily, trying to work off of the elf's last few words. The skinny little adventurer glanced back over toward the tower. "And I assure you, I believe my research will be for the betterment of all of Charon in the end! There is an overabundance of Sun Elf propaganda out in the academic world, and I believe we can prove at least a small slice of history to have been rewritten here today! If, um..." The goblin peered back at the elf, chuckling a little bit. "If you're interested in seeing what I mean? I suppose it's only fair to admit I love having someone to talk to while I work."
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Post by Elvira, Wandering Cleric on Dec 26, 2023 3:44:51 GMT -5
"I... umm... thank you. I mean it. I've been nothing but appalling to you. Heh, some cleric I am. I was taught the we are all beauteous under the moonlight and... well... here I am treating you as if you were litter." She allows for a soft laugh, though it doesn't seem too genuine.
"As for your offer, yes, I would love to join you on your journey. I have been wandering for quite some time and, I admit, it has begun to tire me. While the beauty of the world never ceases to fascinate me, one would grow weary from travelling and meeting so many souls, only to leave them within the day. It makes one feel... aimless. At times, I fear that I have no purpose, but I know one day it will present itself." Finally, a genuine smile creeps across her face. Her demeanor softens and she carefully stands. "With that said, please, enlighten me on what you've found so far."
The smile turns slightly devious just as Tatalia would begin to speak and, with a snicker, Elvira would playfully hold a hand to her ear. "Sorry, love, it's a bit of a trouble to hear. Mind getting on my level?"
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Post by Tatalia on Dec 26, 2023 4:37:48 GMT -5
The elf's apology and the expressed interest in Tatalia's passion lit a fire under the goblin's feet. She puffed her chest out with pride when told she needed to get on the elf's "level," and she responded by reaching into a pouch at her belt, removing a jar full of putty, and then turning the jar over so it splashed onto the ground. With a wicked grin, she reached on down and squished the odd stuff about in her hands, and it slowly changed both in color and shape until it formed... a stepping stool.
Yes, it was a stepping stool. That whole theatrical display was just to reveal that she had magic goop1 that she turned into a stepping stool of all things. The goblin stepped atop it (as was its intended purpose) and beamed across at the elf who she now stood equal height with.
"Am I suitably on your level now, Miss Cleric?" the goblin asked. Then she blinked, laughed, and threw her hand up with surprising haste.
"Right! As you know, my name is Tatalia, scholar and explorer extraordinaire!" she said cheerily, seemingly having forgotten all the bad blood between the two women. She posed like she was telling the most thrilling of tales. "My academic specialization is the study of history, but I do dabble in the natural sciences as well. And it's with this combination of expertise that I have formed a hypothesis!
"It's long been assumed that the elves - especially the sun elves - were the first people to build true settlements across our beautiful continent," the goblin began. She paced back and forth on the chair, and seemed to be able to maintain balance with one foot far better than anyone should have.2 "It's universally accepted in academia, in fact! It's one of the beliefs that serves as support for the theory of divine supremacy, alongside the will of the gods and other such things of course, that establishes the basis for the rule of the Sun Elf royalty and their appointed nobles. Elves, humans, and dwarves have so long been accepted as the progenitors of all other civilization that we simply cannot fathom that anyone else would have had settlements in the First Years!
"And that is why I'm here today," the goblin continued, her voice teeming with excitement. "For you see, I needed a location close to this striver - a stream-river if you will - because this striver has a tendency to rise and fall constantly with the phases of the moon and the passing of years. It actually causes constant erosion to the land around it, and moreover has a marked effect on any structures built too close to its shores. Marks of such erosion can be seen on this tower!"
The goblin pointed at the tower, eyes shining with delight as she did so. The tower was old and the stone covered in moss, but it did have unique patterns of erosion upon its rocks. They'd been weathered by water over the years... and there were, in fact, distinct patterns, plural, of erosion. As if...
"Doesn't it seem as if this tower has been touched by the water's rise at multiple different points?" the goblin mused, raising an eyebrow over toward the elf. "The water levels were once higher here, and the earth shaped a little differently. That, I surmise, was from the time of the Collapse, when calamity struck the world and etcetera, etcetera. What makes this interesting is that we can actually figure out what time period individual bricks in the tower are from based on the kind of erosion it has endured!
"Now, I'm sure you're going to ask me, 'Why is this important, Tatalia?'" The goblin paused for a whole half second and then leapt off the stepping stool she'd gooped together and onto the ground, darting over to the tower. She yelled on back, "To which I say, 'It's VERY important!' Why, it's so important because my research into the oral tales of the lizardfolk tribes of the Marsh Flats suggests that one of those tribes once dwelled in this very area long ago, and they had, in fact, made pilgrimage to a tower they had built at a fork in a river - perhaps the very stream-river we stand by now!"
Tatalia turned back toward the elf, yellow eyes glowing in the darkness beneath the broken tower's walls. She threw her hands in the air.
"My hypothesis: there exists beneath this tower a foundation of LIZARDFOLK craftsmanship, and its stones shall have suffered the greatest erosion of all, dating the structure back to the First Years period! And furthermore, that means this tower was once a lizardfolk construction, and that it was either conquered by elves before the collapse, or rebuilt by elves after the collapse and claimed as their own!"
The cheeky little explorer set her hands on her hips, slipped her goggles down over her face, and grinned so broadly that all her sharp teeth could be seen glinting in the shadows of the tower.
"Shall we dig and find out if my hypothesis holds water?" the goblin asked with a lilting voice.
1. Shaping Putty; 2. Surface Scaling
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Post by Elvira, Wandering Cleric on Dec 26, 2023 13:58:19 GMT -5
Elvira nearly fell over laughing at the goop-stool scene. In all her years of wandering, she hadn't met anyone quite as peculiar as Tatalia. The little goblin had begun to fascinate her. Elvira visibly relaxed, her shoulders finally sagging to a more natural position, and she began to genuinely smile. The unnatural smile from before was replaced with one that seemed to light up her whole demeanor.
"Am I suitably on your level now, Miss Cleric?" This made her snort. "I suppose so, my newfound friend."
As Tatalia explained her initial ideas, Elvira seemed to have a bit of apprehension to the idea. Understandably so, as it had been drilled into her by the priests growing up that the Gods had chosen her, her people, and the priests themselves as their hands on the mortal plane. Still, something inside her decided that she would listen, and she would let the goblin do what she felt she needed to do. Besides, no harm could come of it, right?
That "something," that decided to let the little adventurer have her say clicked when she began to speak of the erosion. Pieces of a puzzle she had not thought about, nor had a clue they even existed, began to fall into place.
"Wait. The entirety of my life, this forest that we had played in, had lived off of... it housed secrets to the first civilizations, perhaps even some we had not previously known of? What does this mean for Charon as a whole?" Her interest had been piqued. She began to think of the possible implications this discovery could have for the world as a whole.
She wondered if this could have prevented the slaying of her parents.
Her father's words echoed in her head. "It's no use dwelling in the past, the only thing to do now is what you feel is right. Trust in the moonlight that you carry within, trust as it guides your hand. I know you will do right, my kin."
"How can I help, my bubbly friend?"
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Post by Tatalia on Dec 26, 2023 15:15:21 GMT -5
"How can you help? Why, how else? You can help me dig!"
Manual labor was, perhaps, not the most priestly of duties, but that seemed to be exactly what Tatalia intended to have her friend do. She grabbed the stepping stool she'd squished into form and quickly tore it apart with her hands, revealing it to be the mere goo it still very much was. Then she reshaped it again, this time into a shovel, and held it out toward Elvira.
"You don't mind getting your hands dirty, right?" the goblin asked with a grin.
Apparently, the goblin's idea of research involved a lot of dirt and mud. The little green skinned woman took turns with Elvira when it came to digging. The goblin would dig for a while, and then Elvira for a bit when the former got tired, and eventually it'd be the goblin's turn again. And whenever one of them struck rock with the shovel, Tatalia would crouch on down, inspect the rock, discover it really was just a rock, and tear it away like it was paper.1 No, really! Whatever magic gloves she had on, they let her mold the hardest of rock like it was clay, quickly clearing a path for the pair to continue their dig.
The tower's foundations were fairly deep in the ground, though. It took the better part of two hours of hard labor to make any real progress. Tatalia seemed to fare better both in terms of performance and tiredness, clearly used to physical labor... and perhaps a little stronger than someone her size really should have been.
"We'll be down before nightfall at this rate!" the goblin declared with glee, taking the shovel from Elvira so she could have a turn at digging. "I know it's a lot of effort for no gain yet, but we're almost at the bottom of the tower! I can feel it! Really, I can!"
The goblin hummed away, digging into the dirt over and over, before glancing back to say something to the elf. However, when she saw how the elf was doing... well, she felt a bit guilty. How could she help...? Oh!
"Hey!" Tatalia called out to her assistant. "There's a brown bottle in my backpack full of soup.2 Why don't you help yourself? It's practically magic, even if it isn't actually magic. You'll get your strength back with just a few quaffs, I promise!"
Soup was almost certainly not supposed to be drank out of a bottle, but apparently the little explorer hadn't learned that particular fact yet.
1. Miner's Friends; 2. Flask of Fejioada.
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Post by Elvira, Wandering Cleric on Dec 27, 2023 2:19:34 GMT -5
Elvira, though excited to help, was very cautious about doing so. As Tatalia had begun to dig, Elvira busied herself by carefully removing the jewelry that had some religious importance. After doing so, she began to roll the robes up slightly so that she at least had space to move around without dirtying them.
As she dug, she seemed to have trained hands. She didn't get frustrated, she didn't try to rush, and she didn't overbear herself. Though she wasn't as quick as Tatalia, she had clearly been digging for a decent part of her life. The more she dug, however, the slower she became. It became evident that she wasn't accustomed to deep digging. As the goblin encouraged her, she offered a slight smile and a nod before pushing forth. In her mind, however, she cursed herself for not carrying her casual clothes, or at the very least something that could have been dirtied.
She climbed out and sat down, sweating profusely and huffing softly. "Gods, I haven't dug this much since... well.. ever. How does the small one keep her strength about her?" A few quips pass by in her head and she allows a smirk, though it turns into a wince as she feels the effects of moving so much earth without the aid of the arcane.
Tatalia must have noticed this, because she had offered the soup from the flask. A few ignorant thoughts quickly float through Elvira's head. "Poison? Illicit substances? Hells, even alcohol?" She catches herself and laughs softly. "I'm sure she'd have taken my life should she have wanted to. Let's see what's in this flask..."
She pops open the flask and wafts the smell to her nose. It enticed her, perhaps more than she had ever been enticed by food before. She takes a sip, savoring the flavor, before taking a few swigs. The muscles in her body stopped screaming, the sweat stopped flowing, and she... she felt joy. It had been a long time since she had. Sure, she had felt at peace. The wilderness gave her a sense of it when it wasn't challenging her. Joy, however, had escaped her for quite some time. She tried to hide it, but before she could a giggle would begin to pass through her lips. The giggle soon turned into pure laughter.
She takes this joyous moment to look to the sky, perhaps to feel the power of the twilight wash over her once more. This causes her hood to fall back, followed by her hair slipping past her face. She quickly scrambles to replace it, but not before a flash of gold, followed by the quick glare of darkened blue eyes could be spotted by Tatalia. Elvira quickly plays this off with a quip followed by another giggle, this one featuring a touch mischief.
"I thought I could trust you, but it seems you have spiked the concoction! What manner of things have you planned?"
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Post by Tatalia on Dec 27, 2023 3:03:04 GMT -5
"Spiked the concoction?"
Tatalia paused in her work, stopping to think about the claim. She frowned and scratched the back of her head, then shook it slowly.
"No, no! I never did such a thing. I just added a muscle relaxant, endorphin booster, and a teensy bit of a drug known to relieve the mind of unpleasant thoughts and increase pleasant ones," the goblin rambled, waving her hand in a circle and wiping the dirt off her gloves. She leaned on her shovel and pinched her brow, thinking about the situation intently. "I did have to double the dosage due to the unusual physiology of my body, both because of goblin resistance to toxins and my curse, but that shouldn't be enough to-... wait..."
The goblin paused. She thought very, very hard about what she just said. She blinked.
"Double the dosage... And elves have a reduced resistance to toxins- Oh, fiddlesticks."
A suddenly very worried Tatalia scrambled up the walls of the tower she'd dug herself into without using the rope set up for that very purpose. No, she just sort of crept upwards along a perfectly vertical wall1 and threw herself over the edge to reach the drugged elf.
"Please do not be angry! It was an honest mistake!" Tatalia pleaded to the elf. She darted past the elf and practically leapt for her backpack.
Tatalia knew she had packed something for exactly this situation. At least, she thought she did. The panicking goblin fumbled around inside of it, tossing various objects aside. Caltrops, potions, a set of lockpicks, a key, wands and baubles, loose coins, pouches of various powders, a jar of paste, loose cloth... She wound up emptying the whole bag trying to find whatever she was looking for, and she wound up cursing for a good thirty seconds in the Goblin language.
Okay, no, Tatalia didn't actually curse. She just said lots of fairly innocent words angrily in a confused, semi-comprehensible string.
"Great! No, nothing here to relieve the symptoms of induced euphoria!" the little explorer grumbled, pinching her brow. She took a deep breath, then turned about and smiled over at the elf, who she only just realized had pulled her hood back up. It seemed an odd thing to prioritize at such a time, but maybe it was just a personal thing, like Cantio and his mask. It was a shame, though; she really did have pretty eyes, and Tatalia was more than a little jealous. Blue was a good color.
"Just, um-" Tatalia pressed her hands together in a pleading motion and bowed her head to the elf. "Just... stay there! I'll- you know, you relax and I'll do the rest of this on my own. Just relax! It'll be fine! Everything is fine!"
1. Surface Scaling
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Post by Elvira, Wandering Cleric on Dec 27, 2023 3:47:53 GMT -5
Elvira was startled by the sudden worry of her new goblin friend. She watched the small adventurer scurry up a wall, marveling slightly at the speed of which she had done so. As Tatalia sprinted over and began to empty the bag of its contents, she watched with an increased curiosity. Perhaps it was the joy, perhaps it was the suddenness of the situation, or perhaps it was even that she had fixated on the fact that the goblin had so much stuff (some of which she presumed was illicit due to the reaction), but Elvira had completely forgotten to mention that she was perfectly okay.
As she fixated on Tatalia's various knicks and knacks, she began to wonder about it. She had tried her hardest not to invade, it was none of her business, but each object seemed to pique her curiosity more and more. She was reminded of the halls of the church she essentially grew up in, how each hall housed a room she was never allowed in. She was reminded of sneaking in one night before receiving the worst behind whooping of her life. She snickered, remembering how she couldn't seat herself for dinner that night.
As Tatalia began to attempt to soothe her, she quickly popped back to reality.
"I-... Yes? I know everything is fine. You thought you had accidentally given me a vial of... some sort of home-brewed concoction? I suppose that raises the question, why do you have this vial? It's none of my business, of course, just a decent amount of curiosity given that you assumed I could have been killed by it. in fact, I feel better than I have for ages to be quite transparent." As she asks the question, she eyes the flask she had just drank from with a slightly nervous gaze and gently pushes it away from herself. The taste was wonderous, and she longed for more, but now she was a bit worried about what she consumes from this traveler's bag. "I presume there is a valid reason, having gotten to know you at least slightly. I will not judge, for I have no bearing on your choices. As I stated, it is mere curiosity."
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Post by Tatalia on Dec 27, 2023 4:48:00 GMT -5
The poor would-be archaelogist experienced several emotions all at once. First, she felt relief for knowing that the elf was going to be okay, so much relief that she sat down with a heavy, grateful sigh. Second, she was suddenly afraid, wondering where she'd put her... calming tincture. But that she found was actually in her sleeve the whole time, the little yellow phial exactly where she'd placed it early that morning. Finally, she experienced embarrassment, for the elf asked a very uncomfortable question:
"Why do you have this vial?"
Tatalia just so happened to be holding the little yellow bottle in her hand when the cleric asked that question. It was not a question that the goblin wanted to give, really, but... she probably owed some sort of explanation. Of course, telling a stranger she'd just met something along the lines of... Well, what would she even say?
'Oh, yes, did I forget to mention I was cursed to transform into a horrific person-eating monster every full moon? The sort with six arms, tons of hair, and a proclivity for wrapping people up in cocoons? It must have slipped my mind!'
No, that probably wasn't the sort of thing to tell a stranger. Tatalia decided she would not mention her spider problems. No... but she could be honest about something else. She could tell a lie by saying something true. That didn't feel as terrible a deception as the alternative, even if the truth she was going to tell instead was... particularly uncomfortable.
The goblin turned the little phial over in her hand over and over as she thought all this. Then, slowly, she looked on up.
"I lost the people I cared about in much the same way as you," Tatalia explained slowly, her voice heavy. "Only in my case, it was my whole village. They kept me alive and sold me to a noble to be his pet. You understand, yes? A curiosity! A tamed goblin, housebroken and taught to talk like civilized folk, made to wear civilized clothes, one that could cook and clean and curtsy! T'was slavery in all but name.
"I'll spare you the cruel details of that existence," Tatalia murmured, looking back down at the bottle in her hand. "It's not a topic well suited for polite company. But suffice it to say that... well, sometimes the memories are a bit much. Sometimes I need a way to forget."
The goblin closed her eyes, popped the cork off the yellow bottle, and took the barest of sips from its contents. She twisted the cork back on, then tucked it back up her sleeve and cast a little smile over toward the elf. It was a bit dramatic, perhaps, but Tatalia knew that. She could play things up on purpose with little exaggerations like that. It made her all the more convincing.1
"Anyway! I hope that's explanation enough," she continued cheerily, standing on up. "There's work yet to be done, and if you're not actually sick, then you're well enough to work! Chop chop! We're almost at the bottom, I can feel it!"
1. Smooth Talking
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