Abandoned tax office of Osterhn

The abandoned tax office stands in the Harbour Quarter of Osterhn in the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign, across from the inn of Exalon. By Exalon's account it had stood empty for about twenty years, since the town's baron died leaving no one in his place.¹²

The goblin in the cellar

Ephorus chose to search it while Sarah Lia Galanodel's performance emptied the streets. Masked, he forced the door, making some noise, and listened. On the stair to the lower floor waited a goblin with a large serrated blade and two rats the size of dogs; provisions, a small hearth and a bed of hides showed that the goblin lived there, and there were burnt, unreadable papers. Ephorus killed the goblin and both rats in close fighting and came away with a wounded leg.³⁴⁵⁶⁷

The goblin, Pish, had left many notes in the goblin script, which Sarah read with magic. They showed that he watched the town and Jasper's soldiers for the Yellow Eye tribe and reported to the officer Moluk, and that the goblins meant to break their arrangement with Jasper, kill him, and show their strength with a massacre in Osterhn, to win a place in the hobgoblin horde called the Eastern Torment through a pact with someone known as Ruthless Fear.⁸⁹¹⁰¹¹

When Ephorus returned, he could no longer see Pish's body from the upper window, though the dead rats remained. Goblin claw marks were found in the earth around the building, not at the door, which was still locked, while the back was boarded up. Inside, the burnt papers had been rummaged through, and the body had been carried down to the lower floor where it could not be seen from outside.¹²¹³¹⁴

Much later, in a bugbear cave, Ephorus found papers like those they had seen in the tax office and took them.¹⁵

A cell for a prisoner

When the companions captured a goblin officer who could not be questioned without a shared tongue, Ephorus carried him masked through the dark to the tax office, picked the lock and barricaded him inside. Exalon came by night and talked with him at length in the goblin tongue, casting a spell on him and playing a friend who would save him from Ephorus, and asked about Pish, Moluk, the Yellow Eye, Ruthless Fear and the Eastern Torment. Then, as he and Ephorus had agreed, Ephorus cut the prisoner's throat and left the body in the corner on top of the other, locked the building and went home across the bridge.^16171819

Exalon's hiding place

Exalon told the companions that if he could not be found at the inn they should look for him here, and when he heard that a new official witch hunter had come, he took his things and went into hiding in the building. There Ephorus later found him and told him that Jasper had denounced him, and brought the caravan leader to him. Exalon asked to meet the next day in the cellar, where he had a place or a thing that let him come and go quickly.^20212223