The Prisoner Who Blamed Rahab

The temple split into side chambers after the forge. Ash and Jonah found the quieter kind of horror first. Behind a gated door and a cracked work table lay the remains of a headless warforged hybrid, scorched by blast residue and abandoned like a failed answer. Whatever had happened there had not been a clean execution or a clean experiment. It looked like a body caught between craft, cruelty, and collapse. Jonah searched the storage nearby and found useful pieces among the wreckage, including a void capacitor. That mattered. Grease Tooth's workshop was not only using bombs. It was keeping components that could feed larger devices. On the other side of the temple, Maine and Dhaz found a living prisoner. His head hung low in the chamber until they addressed him. He gave his name as Ralos and said he had been traveling from the Luxidran School of Alchemical Studies to Von Queef University because he had heard the rebuilt university was accepting new students. Then he named his captor. Rahab. Ralos claimed the skunk woman had caught him, bound him with her tail, and sold him to Grease Tooth's goblins. He did not describe Grease Tooth with reverence. To him, the bomber king sounded like a lesser villain, a lackey trying to look bigger than he was. But the important part was Rahab. The party had only just accepted help from the Exiles. PP5, Rahab, Araspinn, and Maple had given them shelter, a map, and a mission. If Ralos was telling the truth, that shelter might have been bait. If he was lying, the temple had just placed a weapon directly against the party's trust. Maine tried to keep the rescue simple. If Ralos wanted safety, he could go to VQU and tell them My Alchemical Romance had sent him. Ralos knew the name. He called them the best. That made him easier to want to believe, which made the danger worse.