Conallglen Session C4

In our last session, the party had departed Broadwater and headed to Ednowain’s Keep, led by the woodsman Hannil. They had scouted around the keep a bit and then decided to scout the caves on the cliff below the keep, caves in which bandits have been reported to reside. As Shory and Bryn kept a lookout on these caves as night fell, a group of goblins climbed down and ran off, giggling, down the trail. The pair also spotted Oscar!

The giggling goblins had reached the spot where the rest of the party was hiding. Instead of just passing by, one of them called out for the humans to come out and play!

There are potential spoilers below the break for the adventures, “The Crucible of Freya,” from Necromancer Games (although a heavily modified version) and, “The Mysterious Tower,” from Goodman Games (also a heavily modified version).

Hiding in the bushes with overcast skies, only Drogar could see the giggling goblins. The other three (all humans) couldn’t see more than a few feet away so Remus cast light and moved towards the giggling. Clarissa and Drogar both charged forward to engage the goblins with Romulus following in support. It didn’t take long for five of the six goblins to lie dead on the forest floor. The last fled the battle and escaped.

Bryn and Shory descended from their leafy perch and moved back towards where they had left their companions. Once the party was reunited, they decided to head a distance away to make camp, hoping that the goblins (and Oscar) would not find them during the night. Although they were not attacked during the night, Bryn did hear footsteps some forty or fifty feet away during her watch. She could not, however, see who was making the noise.

The next morning Shory did spot goblin tracks not too far away from the camp. Heading back to the scene of the prior night’s carnage, the goblin bodies were still there. Gathering them up, the party started to carry and drag them towards the keep. Upon arriving, Romulus went to the door of the intact stone building, knocked upon it, and backed away a few steps.

The door opened and a very large and burly male creature came out. Romulus offered it the pile of dead goblins and it said, “Tribuuu,” in a deep, rumbling voice. He then asked if the dwarf and other humans were also “tribuuu” but but Romulus said only the goblins. The creature then called out for Karga and its female counterpart came out from the building. They proceeded to split a goblin and relished eating it in front of the party.

Romulus told Kargor and Karga that the party would like to tie some ropes to the pillars around the sinkhole [I forgot to mention the stone pillars near the sinkhole in the last write up…they looked like they might have been the corners of a building whose walls were now gone]. This was agreeable to the two half-ogres (which is what Remus concluded that they must be).

It wasn’t long, however, before the party realized that the caves below the keep weren’t actually in line with those pillars. Instead, they’d need to tie the ropes to some trees just outside the keep to effectively reach the caves. Romulus got K&K’s attention gain to ask permission to use the trees. The brutes made it clear that such would require more “tribuuu.” It also became clear that K&K knew about the bandits below the keep and had received “tribuuu” from them before, including the guy hanging in the orchard.

Not having additional tribute, the party left the keep and headed back down the trail towards the bandits. K&K followed the party down to the fork in the trail. Karga, in particular, seemed to enjoy munching upon goblin while looking right at Drogar. Kargor headed back towards the keep without much problem but Karga seemed intent on hanging around. She eventually finished the goblin she had brought with her and followed her mate up the trail. The party decided to find a camp some distance away from all of this potential trouble and did just that.

The party spent the following day scouting out the caves. They were able to determine the pattern of the changing of the guards in the caves. Goblins would take shifts in two smaller caves around the larger one. Everyone decided that the following day they would make their assault on the caves and headed back to their camp.

They made their way back to the keep the next morning. Scouting about showed that K&K were not out and about. So they went ahead with the plan of using the trees outside of the keep. Remus and Bryn were lowered down on ropes to one of the smaller caves. They planned on taking out the goblin guard before moving on. The party had only seen one guard at a time going in and out of the cave throughout the prior day and so the assumption was that only one was within. That was not the case.

Remus reached the cave first and found two goblins hiding behind a wooden barricade. One goblin stabbed at Remus over the barricade and took him down. Bryn reached the cave and took out one of the goblins but the other ducked down behind the barricade and blew an alarm horn before Bryn could kill it. Another horn answered, apparently from the larger cave. As Bryn peeked out, she could see some spears bristling from the entrance of the larger cave. Shory could just make out the muffled sound of the answering horn faintly coming from the direction of the keep.

Bryn was able to help Remus and the pair made it back to the top of the cliff. With the bandits on alert, the party decided to not go with their assault plan. Instead, they decided to head to the keep and see if they could locate where the sound had come from and hope for a “back” entrance into the bandit caves or to find an entrance into Ednowain’s tower.

At the keep, they decided to head down the sinkhole. A torch was dropped down first and landed about thirty feet down. Drogar and Bryn quickly followed. The sinkhole opened up into a room with cells (all empty) and had lots of the “pole tracks” that had been seen above [the ones that the players were assuming had been made by very big spiders]. The rest of the party came down the rope. This old dungeon had two apparent exits. One with lots of pole tracks and one without. The party scouted the latter first. A long hallway led off into the darkness. A stone door was partway down the hallway.

A small room beyond the door looked to once have been an armory that appeared to have been ransacked long ago. Only broken and rusted weapons and armor stands remained. Some booted tracks were spotted in the dust on the floor but they looked to have just come in the room and leave.

Continuing down the hallway, the party came to its end. A ladder was built into the wall and it led up to a stone trapdoor. Based on Drogar’s estimation, the trapdoor probably opened up within the stone building that seemed to be K&K’s home so it was decided that they would not head up that way.

Heading back to the “dungeon,” the party took the other exit. It led into a small room and it looked like some creature(s) had dug a hole through the wall of the room and the rock under the keep. The tunnel appeared to lead towards the cliffside and so the party hoped that it might have an entrance into the bandit caves. Before heading that way, however, they searched the room for any hidden exits, hoping one might lead in the direction of Ednowain’s tower instead of towards the cliff. Drogar found a stone that seemed to be out of place on the wall that was closest to the direction of the tower while Clarissa and Bryn kept an eye on the tunnel. As Drogar started to give the stone a closer look, Bryn and Clarissa heard a skittering sound coming from the tunnel.

That is where we ended the session. Lots of exploration and lots of indecision about what to do dominated this session. That was all about to change as the PCs are put on the defensive in the next session and barely survive the attack of the skittering creatures.