Present:
- Cody Dieback. Human Male Wizard from Highport – Andrew
- MARMALADING Jack "Blocker" Jones. Human Male Temple Fighter of Aquamarina from Porn City – Jamie
- Tom Eade. Human Male Fighter from Porn City – Jeff
- Grim Hand. Human Male Rogue from Porn City – Jason
- Esmeralda "Ezme" Abernathy. Human Female Temple Fighter of Soixante Neuf from Scabport – Shane
- Ardern. Human Female Priestess of Mr Quail from Porn City – Kevin
- Rock Hammer. Human Male Barbarian from Central Plains – Steven
- Willow Woods. Half-elf Male Caribou Gorn Priest from Porn City - Chris
- Kippy Hunt. Human Male Barbarian of the Central Plains – Ian
- MARMALADING Munch Ease. Human Male Thief from Porn City – Darryl
by Jason
Battle on the hill
As you’ll recall, I (Grim) was down in the caves looking for the boy as several goblins and
a human ran up the hill to engage the bulk of our party. Just outside and above the cave
entrance, Jack had succumbed to marmalade. Rock, in the same spot, waited half a
minute before pursuing the goblins.
Up the hill, the party had barely survived its own ambush attempt on a human-led goblin
group that they’d spotted coming from the opposite direction (an exit from the cave system
over the ridge giving access to a stream). The human fighter and several goblins now lay
dead around them. Munch had fallen, while a fresh Ardern wiped the marmalade aside and
appeared from the bushes.
The party now had less than a minute to prepare for the second goblin group coming up
the hill from the main cave entrance. They did their best to apply first aid and healing and
got ready to do it all again. Some had a few seconds to find cover to hide behind.
Unspoken were the shared thoughts of certain death. But they stood to fight anyway.
These heroes, whose achievements I am sure will one day be put to song, included Kip,
Willow, Cody, Ezme, Ardern and Tom.
The enemy engaged. Kip (on 1HP) faced two goblins; Willow (fresh) faced two goblins;
Cody and Ezme faced another two of the vermin. Meanwhile, Tom had succeeded in
concealing himself and prepared to attack the tough-looking human from behind.
The melee went something like this:
- Kip takes a goblin down with arrow
- Tom does 9 on the human from behind (armour stopped 2)
- Ezme chops a goblin head off with double handed sword
- Kip hits second goblin with sword for 5
- Willow misses hers, is hit for 4
- Ardern casts armour on self
- Tom does another 5 on the human – kills him
- Ezme kills hers
- Goblin fighting Kip fumbles, weapon locked with opponent, both lose next attack
- Willow takes a hit and falls unconscious
The fates had intervened and the battle’s fortunes turned. Just three goblins were left, two
on Ezme, one on Kip:
- Ezme hit for a kill and was missed by both opponents
- Ardern went to aid Kit, finishing off the wounded goblin
- Ezme takes out the last one goblin
- Tom rushes in after killing the human, but isn’t needed.
The battle was over and won.
After
Rock entered the clearing, panting after his run up the hill, frothing at the mouth and
looking for something to kill. The space was almost silent, lit only by the gurgling deaths of
the enemy. Rock pivoted, applying first aid to Willow, bringing him back to consciousness.
Ardern gave further healing to Willow, Tom and Kip.
A search was done of the dead humans:
- 2 x studded leather armour and 2H swords.
- 2 x quivers with silver tipped arrows
- no valuables on them
Rock explained Grim’s whereabouts and the group trod carefully back down the slope to
the cave entrance. Just as they got there, Grim came out with the dead boy – dead for
days, he said, before they got any ideas. Indeed, the blood in the bucket that had been
collected under the body was found to be congealed and dark.
Unsure whether there were yet more of the vermin requiring extermination, we crept
quietly into the cave, with Grim and Kip (with lantern) in the lead. We went past the
kitchen, sleeping room and prison room I’d scouted earlier. We heard water down a
passage to the left and there was a very (goblin-sized) small tunnel to the right.
Kip and I squeezed into the crevice, expecting any time to be ambushed in this impossibly
tight space. But it went on and on, and up. Which led us all to take the risk of continuing.
Eventually, after maybe 200m we emerged at the crater rim, not far from our vantage point
earlier in the day. Clearly, had we not attacked proactively during the day, there was a high
chance goblin scouts would have found us in the night.
We returned overland to the cave entrance to explore the left tunnel. This led to a chamber
with two human-sized sleeping mats and a few possessions. The chamber faced direct to
a rock ledge with a stream bubbling through to the outdoors. Presumably the route the first
group of goblins had taken to attack the party from behind, on the hill.
In the chamber we found travelling kits, an old, ornate sword hilt broken at three inches,
small bags with 400gp, three ceramic vials and three clear vials with red liquid in them
(corked/half full). Ardern identified the ceramic vials as 2D4 healings. We weren’t sure
about the red ones, they didn’t appear magical.
We decided to camp in the humans’ cave as it was nearly nightfall. Cody, Willow, Ezme and
Ardern managed to rest up and the others kept watch. To enable this we did two shifts of
two: Kip & Tom; and Grim and Rock. No more goblins appeared. The night passed without
concern.
In the morning, we attempted some more healings with little success. Cody detected slight
magic on sword hilt we had found.
We started the trek back to our job master, carrying the boy’s body. Our night watches
swapped to Grim/Tom; and Rock/Cody as we tried desperately to get some more magic
points across the party. That night was fortunately uneventful and allowed some more
healing – Ardern on Kip (6), Ardern on Ezme and Kip.
Standing Stones Base
The next morning, after an hour or so travelling, we saw the wolves again and soon after that, we make it to the standing stones and Ester the blind druid.
The druid was unhappy about the state of the dead boy – saying she needed fresh blood, not congealed. We realized she didn’t care about the welfare of the boy at all, just his blood. Geez, we carried that body for miles for no reason! The druid was very perceptive in her questioning of us and interested in the vials of red liquid we’d found. It turned out the vials contained fresh blood. The druid did a taste test and seemed relieved. She said she’d use one in the evening.
We were made welcome to stay the day (resting) until the evening. During this time, the cooking fire grew. At nightfall, the druid grew the fire further and threw in the blood from a vial. Our spell users felt a tingling. Cody even saw shapes and a woman’s face in the flames for a flash. Then the fire calmed down. The rest of us felt like minions in someone else’s plan.
 |
| Ester the Druid |
“I need an item, a short spear of some importance to me. I have seen four men go into the tower of Autorock. They are the ones who killed the boy and they have knowledge of the spear.”
On further questioning, we learned Autorock was one of four towers once built by Porn city as a rather unsuccessful defence line. The tower faces the sea. It is rumoured the tower was built to defend the Annal Passage – if you like, a back passage to Porn City. The tower is thus also the short-cut we seek to get home. The spear the druid wants was a relic looked after by the Elessari Circle governing the barbarian lands. It has a gem in the hilt.
Tom asked about the sword hilt we found. It turned out this was another relic of the Elessari Circle that the druid has been sent by them to find. We agreed to leave the hilt with the druid for information about where the sword blade was.
New Job
There was some discussion in the party about why this new quest was a fair deal given we’d already carried out the task that supposed to give us the shortcut to Porn City. But the muttering quietened when the magic users were bought off with small bags of fine, white coloured bark – which apparently acts like the wafer Ezme and Ardern use for getting back their spells.
We were told it would take a good ten days to get to the tower.
So we agreed to do it, given the quest and our desire to get home faster seemed to coincide.
That night we slept under the protection of the hollow. Spell casters got a D4 +2 magic points back. No watches needed. Grim overheard some discussion among 2-3 party members about the wisdom of the approach taken against the goblins in the cave system. He didn’t hear everything, but distinctly picked up the words, “military genius.” It gave him a warm feeling knowing his powers of persuasion had been put to good use.
Next morning we headed off. The first day and night were uneventful. On day two, we got to a relatively wide river (40m) that we had to cross. It was the braided style, quite rapid, about knee deep but probably with holes and dangerous bits. Kip used his survival knowledge to rope us together, using poles to cross. The strong party members helped the weak. It was a successful crossing.
That night Willow and Kip rested again to get to near full strength. The third day and night went well also. Everyone was now back to full strength except Cody and Ardern.
On day four things were going well until we heard the roar of hooves and saw a dust cloud coming towards us. A massive herd of bison were running our way. Kip advised us to find a small rise and form a circle. The bison got real close but missed us. Those outdoor survival skills were proving really useful – who knew?!
On the night of day five, Rock and Willow were on watch when there was a close howling of a lone wolf. It then went quiet but Willow could see a large wolf at the edge of his infravision and medium bow range. Willow decided to wake the fighters while scanning around for other threats. The wolf stopped, started sniffing and then charged toward the party.
Willow tried to cast light on a stone to make the wolf visible to the party but failed. Kip got his small lantern out – spotlighting the speeding wolf. We could see it was already bleeding and clearly injured. It went for Tom, who’d kindly stepped out in front. It missed, but we were horrified to see its bulk – it was as tall as Tom’s shoulders while standing on its legs.
Melee:
- Willow tried charm animal – it didn’t work. Must be magical, he says.
- Rock narrowly missed the beast
- Ezme did 7 damage
- Tom was hit and took 10 damage
- Wolf gets into second row of us and goes for Grim – hit for 8
- Tom hits back for 11 points
That beast sure took a lot of damage – what was up? Willow saw the wolf circling out in the dark, ready to come back. Kip got his silver tipped arrows (from the defeated humans) ready. He missed his first shot but hit on the second. The wolf reared up and ran back into the dark.
Cody took the chance to give Tom a small heal. Grim held the torch and spotted the wolf returning. He bravely stepped into the second row. Kip did another 8 damage with a silver arrow, followed by another 5 damage with a third arrow. The wolf went for Rock while Kip inflicted another 5 damage with a fourth arrow.
On the next sweep, Rock, Tom, Ezme all hit the wolf. While no single blow seemed to have much effect, the combination brought the wolf down down this time. We could see it was the silver-tipped arrows that did the real damage. The sword hits were nicks. While we were watching, the wolf’s body shrunk down to a husk of a normal large wolf size (no innards). Kip managed to collect all but one of the special arrows (23/24 remaining). Grim got some healing for his 8 point wound, but the wounds still seemed red afterwards. Cures got him back to 10/11 HP but he still had red rashes.
After some solemn prayer overnight, Ardern told the party the next morning that the wolf was what is known as undead. The party burned the wolf body in their fire. Grim’s wounds seem a little more raw in the morning.
Day and night six were thankfully uneventful.
Another Lone Pine
Similarly, on day seven’s travel there were no events. But that night, while on watch, Rock and Willow saw a big fire flare up around 300-400m away. Tom had asked for an uninterrupted night but was woken for some reason. The trio noticed Grim was having a nightmare so decided to wake him as well.
Grim was sent to sneak up and see what was going on. He saw eight goblins dancing around a lit tree. The tree looked the same as the tall, white pine the party had seen almost two weeks ago – but surely trees couldn’t walk around like that? Grim started feeling nauseous and had to crawl back, report and have a lie down.
Next morning (day 8), we visited the tree. There were now eight smoldering goblin corpses there. So the flames were a form of the tree defending itself? Time for some tree hugging. Grim hugged the tree and felt something funny go through his body.
Cody’s hug generated bits of bark falling off for him (four doses). Ardern tried a hug but got rejected for some reason (probably a die roll). Willow (our proto-druid) came in for some lovin' and got six doses of bark and got three power points back. Ezme tried and failed. It was during watch on night eight that Grim noticed his night-time eyesight was getting damn good. Must be acclimatizing to the plains he figured.
Old Ruins
As we got going on day nine, we saw up ahead what looked like old, ruined buildings. Campfire smoke was coming from them. Grim and Cody sneaked up for a look. There were a couple of intact stone buildings, rubble in the middle, surrounded by a collapsed perimeter wall. We carried on closer – seeing several human bodies around the smoldering campfire (clearly dead – ripped apart, fresh entrails). Three men, two women barbarians. A horse was tethered beside them, with broken ropes suggesting there had
been others.
It looked like the people had tried to get inside one of the buildings because the door was still swinging, open. Or – had some beasty from within (the wolf or something worse?) come out to inflict this carnage? Cody sent a smoke signal (danger) back to the party to come help.
On arrival at the site, Willow calmed the frightened, tethered horse. Kip went looking for the other horses and after a couple of hours managed to find two of the four that had bolted. He came back to us triumphant.
On reflection, the site looked like an old ruined outpost from when Porn city had tried to expand its borders using the towers to defend. Of course we searched the bodies of the miserable barbarians. Besides their basic belongings, we found 70gp, silver tipped arrows and studded armour. One suit of armour fitted Ardern perfectly (but of course would impose a penalty if worn while casting). One suit of armour fitted Grim very well, so he took it.
We burned all the bodies, seemed the best thing to do. This scared the horses even more, but luckily they didn’t run again. The horses gave us the opportunity to move faster as the weaker party members wouldn’t have to walk. We left the accursed place.
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