Doomsday Dawn, Chapter One
Keleri Deverin, an aristocrat and scholar living in Magnimar, has a problem. Just
a week ago, she received an invitation from her cousin Kendra, mayor of the
nearby town of Sandpoint, to attend that town’s upcoming Swallowtail Festival.
With the festival’s focus on the consecration of Sandpoint’s new cathedral, Keleri
hoped to bring a family heirloom, the Star of Desna, to receive a blessing, but as
she prepared for her trip, an unexpected complication arose.
When Keleri entered the old vault beneath the family estate to retrieve the
star from storage, she found the chamber in total disarray. Chests lay smashed
about the room, shelves were knocked over, and worst of all, the steel lockbox
containing the Star of Desna was missing. The source of the robbery was made
evident by a gaping hole in the center of the floor, leading down into the sewers,
and sewage stains in the shape of goblin footprints leading out of it.
Enraged, Keleri lashed out at the now-empty shelves and ruined containers,
only to find that she was not alone. A quiet whimpering came from behind a
partially collapsed armoire. Investigating, she found a lone goblin, wounded
and wretched. Keleri demanded answers about her stolen heirlooms, but the
goblin only began howling in greater terror and begged for mercy. Keleri’s rage
subsided, and she asked the goblin what had frightened her so.
The goblin introduced herself as Talga and explained that her tribe, the
Mudchewer tribe, had been enslaved by a brutish hobgoblin named Drakus the
Taker, who was forcing members of her tribe to dig into vaults and basements all
around town to rob longshanks of loot and treasure. Those who refused were
taken away, only to have their blood-drained bodies put on display as a warning
to the other goblins. Immediately after the robbery on the Deverin basement,
Talga and a few other desperate goblins rebelled, but they were cut down and
slaughtered. Only Talga survived by retreating up to the Deverin vault and hiding.
Now with no home and nearly paralyzed with fear over the fate of her fellow
goblins under Drakus’s increasingly violent rule, Talga became desperate. She
begged Keleri to send adventurers to her old lair, a complex called the Ashen
Ossuary that was accessible via the Magnimar sewers. She promised to sketch a
map of the lair and to lead Keleri and anyone who might help to the entrance,
and vowed that in return she would work to spread the word among other goblin
tribes in the sewers that longshanks are friendly.
While Keleri was sympathetic to the tale, she is a scholar, not an adventurer.
However, she does have contacts, and knows of at least a few eager new nominees
for the task. Ever the forward thinker, she hopes that by calling upon allies,
she can not only recover her stolen heirloom, but perhaps even start a new
diplomatic alliance between Magnimar and one of its most notorious antagonists.
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