The discovery that the serving judge was corrupt had shaken the company more deeply than they might have admitted. The party had assumed that a judge serving under the authority of the Church of Lothian must, by definition, be a priest of Lothian, or at the very least someone whose loyalties lay with the Church.
If even such a person could be bought, compromised or corrupted, then what did that say about the institution itself? The conclusion they reached was uncomfortable: perhaps the rot went deeper than a single corrupt official. Perhaps the Church itself was too compromised to trust.
Unfortunately, having no real institutional power with which to change it, the adventurers could do little more than argue about what to do next. And argue they did. For quite some time. It was a lengthy and surprisingly charged discussion, with the party seriously considering withdrawing from their dealings with the Church altogether. Their official title of Lay Curators of the Ossuary was beginning to feel rather less like an honour and rather more like an inconvenient chain around their necks.
Yet whatever their feelings about the Church, there was still evil beneath its Cathedral that needed dealing with. So, for the moment at least, the company decided to finish what they had started. Descending the well ladder in the cathedral basement, they returned to the cavern where four passages led away into the darkness. To the north lay the route back toward the foul temple of Zuggtmoy, demoness of rot and fungi. That was a problem for another day. Examining the ground, however, the adventurers noticed something more immediate: goblin tracks, leading predominantly west. The party followed.
The passage opened into a gloomy cavern where they were confronted by a bedraggled collection of goblins. Two of them, Bigbad and Mogmurch, immediately raised the alarm. “Stop! Who goes there?” came the challenge, followed by the rather more impressive declaration, “Gutwad commands you to stop!”
The goblins looked hungry, miserable and generally as though life had not been treating them particularly well. For once, the adventurers decided not to kill first and ask questions later. Instead, Bragman stepped forward and announced that they were collecting taxes on behalf of the Church. This caused considerably more confusion than fear. The goblins had no real understanding of what a Church was, still less why anyone would owe it taxes, and when asked about payment they cheerfully explained that they were completely skint.
It soon became apparent that the goblins had rather more pressing concerns than taxation. Their clan had been suffering from a strange corruption spreading from a pool farther south. Some of their number had become diseased and violent, attacking the healthy goblins and attempting to eat them. The adventurers agreed to investigate, on the understanding that the goblins would owe them for the favour. Exactly what form that payment might take remained unclear, although given the goblins' financial circumstances, everyone suspected it would be something other than gold.
After about five minutes of trudging through the gloom, the company reached another cavern. This one was dominated by a pool of foul-looking water, while great stone pillars supported the ceiling. Unlike the surrounding caverns, these pillars had clearly been constructed rather than naturally formed. Something had built this place, and whatever its original purpose, it was now home to the goblin sickness. The infected goblins and their chief, Glurk, attacked with all the desperation of creatures who had already lost much of themselves to the corruption.
The fight was a particularly useful demonstration of why Torvax was becoming increasingly fond of setting things on fire. His Flaming Sphere rolled through the chamber, burning the infected creatures while his enchantments strengthened the party's attacks. Lúthien's magical sword again proved its worth, cutting through foes that might otherwise have been difficult to bring down. But the battle was not confined to the goblins. As the company fought, movement could be seen beneath the surface of the pool. Slimes and oozes began to emerge from the water, advancing with the slow, relentless determination characteristic of creatures possessing very little in the way of intelligence and considerably too much enthusiasm for dissolving adventurers.
Fortunately, slow and stupid proved a useful combination. The party was able to manoeuvre away from the worst of the creatures, avoiding both their acidic attacks and their truly appalling stench. Once the final ooze had been destroyed, the adventurers cleansed the corrupted pool through a rite of purification, reinforced with Holy Water. It was dirty, unpleasant work, but eventually the waters were rendered safe. The goblin survivors had been rescued from the source of their sickness, at least for the time being.
After a short rest and some much-needed binding of wounds, the company continued north. There they discovered the source of the corruption's deeper nature: a shrine dedicated to Juiblex, demon god of slimes and oozes. At the centre of the chamber stood a fountain, with a statue of the hideous demon rising from its middle. Around the edges stood three strange, formless statues, each apparently frozen in place. Torvax's magical senses immediately picked up something unusual. The pool behind the fountain contained magic, and the statues themselves were enchanted as well. They appeared to be held in some kind of magical stasis. Naturally, this meant someone had to poke them.
Using Mage Hand to investigate the magical object within the chamber, Torvax inadvertently disrupted the stasis. The three statues suddenly came to life, their stone forms collapsing into hideous grey oozes. The party found itself facing three creatures whose principal tactical advantages were dissolving things and having almost no intelligence whatsoever. Torvax responded in the most appropriate manner available to a wizard: he set the doorway on fire.
His Flaming Sphere blocked the oozes' advance and began burning them as they tried to approach. Against creatures with almost no capacity for tactical thought, this proved remarkably effective. Lúthien waded in with his enchanted sword, which was particularly fortunate because the weapon's magical properties protected it from being dissolved by the oozes' acidic bodies. Bragman, displaying considerably more common sense than anyone might have expected from a halfling who regularly rode into combat with a crossbow, sensibly remained at range and put bolts into the creatures. One shot was particularly devastating. Lúthien followed up with another Divine Smite, and before long the grey oozes were nothing more than unpleasant stains on the floor.
The shrine was thoroughly searched once the danger had passed. Among the treasures were a +1 drow dagger, a greater healing potion, and a vial of oil of slipperiness, along with a modest collection of coins. More importantly, the party had once again cleared another pocket of corruption lurking beneath Ptolus.
But their relationship with the Church was now hanging by a thread. They still had questions about the caverns beneath the Cathedral. The route toward Zuggtmoy remained unexplored, the goblins still needed deciding what to do with, and there were doubtless more unpleasant surprises waiting beneath the city. Yet the adventurers were beginning to realise that their greatest problem might not be the monsters in the darkness. It might be deciding who, exactly, they could trust.
Their thoughts therefore turned toward another ancient organisation: the Knights of the Golden Cross.
Unlike the Church, the Knights had no Imperial Charter and no recognised institutional authority. They were small, secretive and almost forgotten, with only nine surviving knights. Yet they had endured for millennia, opposing evil wherever they found it and harbouring a particular hatred for House Vladaam. They also secretly revered the Elder Gods, ancient deities remembered primarily by the oldest races and dismissed by most of modern society as little more than myth. Their citadel and homes lay in Oldtown, where they maintained their quiet struggle against the evils of the world.
At their head stood Kaira Swanwing, an elf and a mage, idealistic and generous but possessed of a growing concern that the order had become too cautious. She believed the Knights needed a great victory for the cause of good, something that would restore their confidence and perhaps remind the world that they still existed.
The adventurers were beginning to wonder whether they might be better served working with people who fought evil because it was evil, rather than because it appeared on the correct line of an ecclesiastical ledger.
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