Level 2 Human Fighter
The room beyond was obviously a barracks, one occupied by six goblins and a half-dozen hobgoblins. The goblins stood closest to the door and they rained their spears down on the party as soon as they sought to enter the room. At the far end of the chamber were the hobgoblins, three of whom sported drawn short bows and scanned the battlefield for targets of opportunity. The party began to try and fight their way into the room and a long, pitched battle commenced—one that would take up a great deal of the game session.
Allow me to digress and break the narrative here. One of the aspects of classic D&D that I find superior to later editions is the round-by-round initiative system. While many prefer the simplicity of rolling once at the start of a battle and then repeating that order again and again, I find that having the uncertainty of resolving initiative each round not only makes battle flow faster (strangely enough) but gives it a greater sense of urgency. You never know if you’ll get that spell off before you get perforated with arrows or cut down your opponent before his can finish you off. That’s great, tension building stuff. Of course, the downside is that when you have a session where the dice start to go against you constantly, even the simplest of fights can turn into battles whose events are remembered far and wide.
Over the course of the next hour or so of real time, the players found themselves pitted more against their own rolls than the enemy. Low “to hit” rolls plagued everyone and a disproportionate amount of those rolls were “1”s; luckily not fumbles, but it was still odd how often that single digit glare balefully up from the guys’ dice. The referee, on the other hand, was on a hot streak, and the party felt the pain.
As the Society boldly battled to cut down the goblins that stood in their way, the small humanoids avoided blow after blow, landing more than a few in return. The hobgoblin archers at the rear of the chamber fired through the doorway to strike party members in the hallway with great accuracy. Kaldar, his body clad in plate mail and his preternatural dexterity protecting him was pushed to the forefront to drop a sleep spell upon the massed goblinoids. As he did so, the archers took aim and fired, albeit with little chance of striking his AC of 0. The dice clattered: 6, 19, 20! A single arrow sailed past the massed fighters to strike the elf just before he could complete his incantation, ruining his daily spell and injuring him greatly to boot.
From this point on it was a grind. Mars managed to hold a single hobgoblin with a prayer to Mog, but the majority of the fight was an old fashioned slobber-knocker. Korlack did slip in and drop a successful sleep spell on the hobgoblins near the end of the battle, which finally freed the party from suffering through missile fire each round, but it was almost too little, too late. The party was badly beaten by the time the fight ended, but the battle ended with a hobgoblin prisoner who was both asleep and held by magic.
And that’s when the ogres showed up.
Unbeknownst to the party, a pair of ogres had quarters just down the hall from the barracks. As the battle raged, I made a check every few rounds to see if they heard the scuffle and came to investigate. They only heard the sounds of battle just as the melee came to a close, which was lucky (when looked at in a certain way) because the party would have otherwise found themselves in a pitched, two front battle with nowhere to run to had the brutes arrived earlier.
There were a few half-hearted chuckles when I dropped the ogre miniatures in the hallway as the players hoped I was joking. They had taken a lot of lumps in the fight and were not up to dealing with two ogres now but they had little choice. The fighters (and Mars) stepped up to the door to try and hold them back, but Baragkus took a door to the face when the lead ogre bashed it off its already weakened hinges with his club. To complicate matter, Grumble decided to employ his special wrestling “piggy back attack” maneuver against the brutes and leapt upon Baragkus’ back without warning. This both negated Baragkus’ dexterity bonuses and allowed the ogres to hit two targets with a single blow. The sole thing going for the party was that only a single ogre could attack at a time through the doorway.
The ogres landed a few blows, one of which would have killed Grumble outright had he not chosen that moment to cash in his “protection from death” card. Baragkus quaffed a healing potion which likely saved his own skin. Finally, the first ogre fell, allowing the party to concentrate their efforts on a single opponent and the second ogre fell seconds later.
The band had determined that there was a single locked door at the rear of the chamber during the brief interlude between battles, but decided to run for the hills before the hobgoblins could rally more reinforcements. To the party’s mind, their excursion had been a failure. The hobgoblins obviously outnumbered them and they had no hope of battling their way into the dungeon below and slaying the hobgoblin command. They gave up, utterly and completely, and I’m sure that decision will have absolutely no ramifications on the rest of the campaign.
Fleeing into the night, the party decided to lay low and nurse their wounds before heading back to the cave they had used the night before. They wanted to see if they could extract some information from their hobgoblin captive and possibly go through the pouches they had lifted from the dead goblinoids. As they reached the barren clearing at the end of the trail, they looked about for a place to hide…
How about the abandoned cemetery? Sure! Let’s go hide there.
That sound you just heard was my hand colliding with my forehead.
The party reached the thorn-filled, overgrown cemetery with dreams of taking shelter in a mausoleum so that only one worg at a time could attack them. Not long after arriving, they detected the sound of something coming their way from both the south and the northwest. In the flickering gloom of their single lantern, the party saw four lithe, leonine forms streaking out of the shadows, their long, filth-encrusted talons and slavering mouths leading the way. A quartet of ghouls!
These undead, having the benefit of open ground, attacked from two directions, making it impossible for Mars Markus to turn all four at once. To make matters worse, the ghouls won initiative and closed on the party before they could react. In the first round, Baragkus, Fisk, Lyrax, and Cleopos the porter were all struck and paralyzed, leaving only Grumble, Mars, Korlack, and Kaldar standing. Of those four, only Kaldar the elf would be safe from the ghouls’ incapacitating touch.
The players stared at the carnage, fully anticipating a TPK to end the session. Luckily, Mars was able to turn two of the ghouls and Grumble, with the dice finally on his side, cut down one ghoul and then the next with his bonus attack. Mars reached into his pouch and pulled out a scroll that would ward of the undead for an undetermined amount of time and read the words swiftly. A barrier of blue fire erupted in a 30’ diameter and the party closed ranks. With four people mobile, some hard decisions were about to be made in regard to who was dragged to safety and who remained behind as ghoul chow. The captive hobgoblin was slain outright and the fate of Cleopos was in the balance when he began to stir. One by one, the paralyzed party members started to regain motion as the protective barrier collapsed. With only Baragkus still inert, the party slung him between them and departed the cemetery in the dead of night, hoping to make it back to their cave shelter and avoid any hobgoblin patrols…
The party debated several options, including packing the survivors off and sending them either downriver or to another settlement. Tars, the eldest son of the slain leader, Pidar, was not about to abandon the homestead his farther build—no matter how tentative its future seemed.
Fortunately for all, the decision was resolved when a party of fifteen woodsmen arrived at the settlement. Hailing from one of the few nearby homesteads, these men had caught sight of the flames in the night and marched through the darkness to come to the aid of their fellow settlers. With their help, the family of Fort Wolf’s Head would be able to begin rebuilding and bolster their numbers enough to feel safe should the goblins try and mount another attack. The party was now free to continue with their mission. If their mission was still attainable, that is.
According to the party’s intelligence, the traitorous Storm Crow agent was due to meet with the hobgoblin command on the 25th of The Bloom—that very day. Exhausted, with no idea where the hobgoblin citadel lay, and a good half-day or more of travel ahead of them, it was obvious that the party would miss the arrival of the agent. Not knowing how long he intended to remain at the Citadel, the band could only hope that he dallied long enough that they might find him in residence when they finally located the goblin stronghold.
After a brief excursion outside the partially destroyed walls of the homestead, the adventurers determined that the goblins had fled east, away from their intended goal. Some discussion was made about tracking them down, but time limits, fatigue, and the encroaching darkness sent the party back inside to rest.
The party spent the rest of the day and the following evening at Fort Wolf’s Head, resting, healing, and memorizing spells for their journey out to Hob’s Hill. On the morning of the 26th of the Bloom, the band departed the homestead and journeyed west, encountering signs of the wolf-mounted goblins, but these quickly disappeared as they got closer to the river. Luckily, their recently-acquired canoes remained hidden in the underbrush and they crossed the river without incident to arrive at the base of Hob’s Hill.
They landed on the shore of a peaceful meadow strewn with wildflowers and watered by a gurgling waterfall that cascaded down the slope of the hill. A brief search uncovered an animal trail that led into the thick forest that covered the mound, winding its way slowly up towards the crown of the rise. The party ventured into the cool forest shadows, eyes peeled for danger.
After an hour of travel and picking branches at random, the party found themselves under attack by stirges, but were able to quickly dispatch these with only minor injuries. They would not be so lucky later in the day when they chanced upon a pair of giant, droning bees, flittering about the woods in search of nectar. The majority of the group stood stock still or dove for cover behind the bole of a tree. Raijek the monk, however, decided to engage the buzzing apoidea and charged towards them with his claymore ready. Having caught their attention, he then fled back to the band and took cover behind his comrades. The bees were having none of it and remained fixated on the unarmored martial artist. A sting later saw one bee dead and the monk writhing on the ground, bloody froth sputtering from his lips. The other bee buzzed away, disinterested.
Having seen the signs of fatal poison once before, the party did their best to lave his wounds and draw out the poison. A healing potion was forced down his throat to no avail and a “Hail Chance” attempt to save him by giving the dying monk an unidentified potion revealed it to be a potion of giant strength—which did nothing to save Raijek. He then expired on the forest floor, the first party casualty in weeks.
The party took a moment of silence before Grumble and Mars slung the dead monk in between them and the party traveled on. The light was failing and they had yet to discover any sign of hobgoblins. They were not looking forward to a night spent in the dark woods with who-knew-what lurking around them.
The trail ahead seemed to enter a clearing and Korlack was sent down the path to see what lay ahead. The animal trail did indeed terminate in a rocky clearing that ran up the slope of the hill. At the base of the open area stood a cave mouth surrounded by tumbled boulders and brush; at the top stood a tall humanoid-shaped statue, much worn by weather and time. The magic-user returned to collect the rest of the party and they creeped along the edge of the forest before dashing towards the cave and into its dark mouth.
Relieved at finding shelter just as the sun went down, the Society did a quick, incomplete recon of the grotto, finding much tumbled stone and a pool of stagnant water. Bedding down for the night next to the pool, the party set up watches and awaited the coming of dawn. An hour before daybreak, their rest was interrupted by the five giant bats who made the cave their home returning from their nocturnal hunt. Angered at finding intruders in their lair, the five fluttering fledermaus laid into the party. With half the band stripped of their armor, the combat was more brutal than expected and poor Kaldar nearly died in the struggle. Most of the other party members suffered some damage before the bats were overcome.
The party took a long breakfast to heal up before resuming their trek. Outside the cave they headed up the hill to examine the statue in greater detail. The granite form stood 8’ tall and seemed to have once depicted a pit-bellied humanoid form with a languid expression. Two empty eye sockets showed signs of tool marks around the edges of the eyes, leading the Society to believe that the sculpture once held jewels in its visage. Cursing their luck at arriving several centuries too late to loot the statue, the party chose one of the four trails leading out of the clearing at random and began their search anew.
Their trail led them on a winding journey that eventually reached a rocky promontory bare of forest cover. From that lofty post, the party was able to get their bearings and they determined that they now knew their position on the map they had been provided with. They assumed their target lay further to the northwest and returned to the trail with hopes of finding a path that headed in that direction.
Their trek was interrupted less than an hour later by the sudden cry of Lyrax’s dog. Trailing the party, the hound had walked beneath a giant horned chameleon perched atop a branch in ambush. Its tongue had snatched the poor dog off the ground and into its gaping maw. The party whirled about the see the dog hanging halfway from the now-revealed lizard’s mouth. As they watched it horror, the chameleon slurped the rest of the dog down its throat and sighed contently. Unwilling to allow the wanton murder of a party member—even a less than reliable war dog—pass without address, the Society unleashed a hail of missile fire on the beast, slaying it as it descended to do battle.
A dog down in membership, the band continued down the trail to find that it terminated at a river. The freshet continued a short distance before plunging down an embankment to a small pool 80’ below. At the edge of the pool, another trail began, running deeper into the woods to the west. As it seemed to lead in the direction they wished to travel, the party carefully descended the slope via ropes and redundant safety lines. A length of hemp cordage was left behind to assist a sudden retreat back up the hill if they encountered danger ahead.
The trail led deep, deep into the forest. The party followed the winding path for nearly two hours and they began to suspect that they might be on the wrong leg. Just as they were preparing to double back and see if they had missed a turn-off, the sound of heavy footfalls and a baritone humming was detected heading in their direction. The party scattered into the woods and dove for cover.
They had just ducked out of sight when a hulking figure dragging a tree limb behind it stomped down the trail. The swarm of flies buzzing about its head and the jagged tusks protruding from its mouth marked it as an ogre, one of prodigious size. The massive beast continued down the path, obliviously caught up in its own meager thoughts. However, just as it passed the band's position, it stopped abruptly and began to sniff the air.
The party waited tensely, hands wrapped around the weapons and preparing for the worse. After a moment’s pause, they were relieved to see the ogre start up its journey once again. At that moment, Baragkus, tired of wandering aimlessly about on the hill, stepped out and hailed the brute with confidence that his recently identified magical helm would allow communication between the two.
Things might have turned bad for the valiant man-at-arms when he discovered that the enchanted helmet only allowed him to understand unknown spoken speech, not speak it himself. Luckily, the ogre had enough command of the common trade patois to understand Baragkus’ words of greeting. The two began a protracted exchange with the fighting man hoping to discover the location of the hobgoblin citadel and the ogre attempting to wheedle as much coin out of the lost traveler as possible. Offers were made and counter-offers proposed, and eventually the ogre revealed that the trail they currently stood upon led to the hobgoblin lair and departed with an extra hundred gold coins in his pouch. Armed with this new information, the rest of the party emerged from the trees and their westward journey recommenced.
Another two hours on the trail brought the party to the southern edge of a massive clearing. The ground here was rocky and only tuffs of scraggly grass poked its spear-like blades from the gray earth. The party began to skirt the barren meadow, keeping to the woods as they journeyed northward. The woods were quiet and an almost preternatural hush hung in the stifling air.
The band had almost reached the edge of the meadow when they detected two features previously obscured by the thick trees. In the northwest corner of the meadow, several white, featureless stones protruded from the ground. Cloaked in thick, thorny underbrush, these monuments hinted at being a long-forgotten cemetery, one untended for centuries. Directly ahead of the party, a thin trail exited the woods into the clearing and the sound of jingling mail and clanking steel indicated that someone was headed down it!
The party hunkered down and prepared to meet the unseen forces with steel. Through a break in the trees, they saw the orange skin and red uniforms of hobgoblins—a small patrol obviously on their rounds. For once, the party was to be the ambushers and not the victims of a trap. A volley of arrows rained out of the trees upon the patrol as the band’s melee men ran amongst the boles to meet the enemy. Half of the patrol dropped, yard-long shafts riddling their bodies, before the fighting men burst from the woods to cut down the remaining goblinoid soldiers. In less than a minute, the hobgoblins lay dead.
Cocking their ears to listen for possible reinforcements, the band seemed pleased to find their attack was undetected by any other hobgoblin forces and riffled through the dead soldiers’ pouches for coin and intelligence. A mere handful of the former and none of the later was found, but Baragkus, seeing his brawny physique was comparable to that of a hobgoblin, liberated one of the dead creature’s helmets and placed it atop his head, hoping to be mistaken for one of the massive goblins if observed by the enemy at a distance.
The trail the hobgoblins had been traveling ran east and up a slope, and the party suspect that their objective lay in that direction. With caution, they moved back the way the patrol had come and was rewarded with the sight of ancient, vine-covered walls in the trees ahead. The Hobgoblin Citadel had been found. Now all that remained was to infiltrate it and disrupt the threat to the Kinan-M’Nath. What could possibly go wrong?
This is the rough map I did of Scuttlehole. I didn't expect the PCs to come ashore on this trip, but it pays to plan ahead. In my mind, the swamp village is a mix of Mos Eisley, Innsmouth, and Port Royal, and my description of the place in play reflects that. One player asked some probing questions about the physical appearances of the locals, undoubtedly caused by the way I described Scuttlehole and the fact that I'm connected with a certain Lovecraftian rules supplement for Labyrinth Lord. I refuse to reveal whether his suspicions are true or not at the present time.Special thanks go to he who managed to get me a copy of the battle map from Night’s Dark Terror. I have the module in a second-hand, incomplete form and it was missing. I would have gladly paid the $5.00-$10.00 for a PDF of the module and just printed out the maps from that, enriching the coffers of Hasbro a little, but they still remain convinced that hoarding the PDFs of their products makes the best business sense. I think I’ll go buy a Pathfinder PDF on general principle.
As the gates of the barbican slammed shut behind them, the party beheld a young woman with a face streaked by soot and whose hand clenched a bare dagger in a white-knuckled grip. From the roof overhead came the leather-clad man as his zipped down a ladder to the ground below. The smell of smoke grew as the first flames began to spread from the burning barn to the wooden gatehouse in which they stood. The man pointed across the muddy courtyard before them, indicating a two-story hall and hearth made of stone and timber. “Run!” he cried, indicating the stout oak door that stood in the face of the main hall.
As the party crossed the courtyard they could see a three-story stone tower attached to the hall that peered down at them with crenellated eyes. To their left, the settlement’s barn was now an inferno and the palisade that connected it to the tower and gatehouse was a sheet of flame. From out of the smoke came more high-pitched cries and a half-dozen goblins charged through the flames and smoke to cut off the party’s run to safety. Green-skinned and clad in crimson from head to foot, the chittering humanoids were thirty for blood and battle. While the man and woman continued their run towards the hall’s main door, the rest of the party angled to meet their attackers. Lyrax fired the first of what would be many arrows that night, taking down two of the attackers with arrows through the throat. Raijek’s crossbow dropped a third, and Baragkus, Grumble, and Mars Markus made fast work of the remaining three. With their assailants dead, the rest of the party reached the hall and the warriors held a quick debate over whether they should hold their ground or let themselves be bottled up in the (possibly flammable) hall. Grumble, Mars, Baragkus, and Fisk decided to hold the line while Lyrax, Raijek, Korlack, and Kaldar headed inside to take position atop the stone tower that kept watch overhead.
As the courtyard warriors prepared to dispatch the next wave of goblins, they heard more screaming coming from the smoke around them. The sooty clouds parted briefly to reveal ten wolf-riding goblins racing their way. Then, the slavering fangs and serrated blades of their enemies were upon them.
After Grumble was bitten and stabbed, and Mars Markus took a serious wound, the fighters determined this was one melee they had little chance of winning. Their own attacks had only slightly injured the massive wolves and the goblins’ spears were all too sharp. Mars and Fisk broke and ran through the hall door while Grumble and Baragkus covered their retreat. The spider cleric and hired fighter reached the hall just as the panicked inhabitants of the settlement were closing it, stout locking bar held at the ready. A cry of warning was shouted and the dwarf and fighting man in the yard retreated with haste, taking more wounds as they turned to run. Despite these new injuries, they dove into the hall just before the door was sealed and barred against the invaders.
Inside the rough timber hall, the party made the acquaintances of “Fort” Wolf’s Head’s residents: Pidar, the patriarch of the clan, his wife, Darya, his 10 winters-old son, Matthias, and their aging manservant, Steg. Also in attendance was the weeping, recently widowed, Masha, and her infant daughter. The young couple they had met at the gatehouse was Tars, Pidar’s eldest son, and his wife, Allana. Pidar’s mother, Kumuk and her granddaughter, Irina, were also in the settlement, but were currently cloistered in their room in the tower above.
Pidar explained that two tribes of goblins had attacked the settlement at dusk, striking from out of the woods without warning. There seemed to be two distinct tribes: the orange-skinned wolf riders and the green-skinned, crimson-clad goblins. This attack was one of several which had occurred along the frontier over the last two days. Pidar was hopeful that with the party’s help, the settlement could hold out until dawn, at which time it was likely that the sun-hating goblins would slink back to their lairs. With this information in their possession, the party began making preparations for the long night ahead of them.
Mars originally suggested that everyone retreat to the tower for fear of the goblins torching the hall. But the tower would be a perfect death trap in the goblins broke in so fortifying the hall was undertaken as the next best option. Tables and chairs where broken up to barricade three of the main building’s entrances while the armory was opened and stripped of arrows. Lyrax and Raijek ascended to the tower’s roof to keep an eye on the goblins. Once there, they discovered that full night had fallen and the wan light from the crescent moon mixed with the smoke pouring from the now-charred remains of the barn, gatehouse, and palisade provided limited visibility. In the woods to the north and east they could see a score of small campfires burning, the shadowy bodies of goblins passing in front of these blazes with great frequency. The sound of drumming and chants filled the night air as the goblins prepared for their next attack.
In the hall below, the party hustled the settlement’s non-combatants down to the tower’s secured lower storeroom. The rest of the family was armed with bows and slings, and then stationed about the building to overlook the north and south courtyards. Baragkus dragged the hall’s largest chair to in front of the main door and sat with sword in hand to wait the inevitable attempt to break in. Kaldar and Korlack kept watch from the hall’s second story on the courtyard to the south. Grumble and Mars took up position in the tower armory, but not before learning that Pidar’s mother was a cleric of the Sovereign Flame when she healed the spider priest of his wounds. Fisk prowled the halls, a free safety ready to run where needed.
An hour after dark, those on the tower found themselves under attack by goblin snipers, slingstones smashing against the stone walls and battlements surrounding them. The darkness and cover made missile fire difficult for both sides, but when Grumble’s shortbow finally picked off one of the hidden snipers, the barrage of slingstones fell quiet.
As the night crept closer to midnight, the sound of drums ceased and a stillness filled the air. Then, from out of the gloom came a charge of goblins. Two wolf-riders led a half-score of infantry across the wooden bridge as another ten skulked through the shadows to take up position in the smoking ruin of the barn. As the wolf-riders and their soldiers laid siege to the hall’s kitchen door (which had been barricaded stoutly), the barn-hiding goblins began letting loose a fusillade of slingstones at any visible defender.
Lyrax dropped a pair of flaming brands into the courtyard, which allowed the defenders in the tower and those in the room above the kitchen to see their targets easily. Lit by the flames, the two worg-riders found themselves under concentrated attack by missile fire and they only managed to strike the door a few times before they fell to ground dead. Their underlings’ morale broke upon their deaths and they fled for the bridge that brought them.
Korlack rushed to one window, taking a vicious hit from a slingstone when he revealed himself. With his lack of protective armor, the warlock paused to wonder why it was that the plate-mail clad spider cleric was the one positioned behind an arrowslit while he was put on window detail. Deciding enough was enough; the sorcerer turned and entered the tower, finding shelter with Kumuk and Irina. The matronly cleric took pity on the injured magic-user and used her last curative spell to heal him.
Kaldar, despite seeing what happened when Korlack revealed himself, cautiously worked his way to a window that overlooked the barn below. Conjuring up a magical slumber, the elf took out most of the hiding goblins and the barrage of slingstones dropped off to a patter. Unfortunately, one of these stones struck Allana, knocking the woman senseless.
With most of the goblin slingers asleep, the defenders were able to concentrate their attacks on the few remaining snipers and it wasn’t long before they too fled back into the darkness. Raijek and Fisk went out to quickly dispatch the slumbering goblins.
The party took the opportunity to further shore up their defenses after this attack, plundering iron stock from the settlement’s forge to lay a series of obstacles about the hall. The unconscious Allana was turned over to Kumuk to attend to, and new positions were taken up around the hall. There came a period of anticipation an hour later when the drums again stopped, but they resumed after a half hour’s pause. The goblins were well-versed in psychological warfare.
It was deep into the night, midnight several hours behind them when the next attack came. Grumble, Lyrax, and his dog companion stood on the tower roof, watching the woods around them. Grumble’s bushy ears detected the sound of great leathery wings in the air above, and the dwarf glanced up to see three warm bodies dropping out of the night sky to attack. Within moments, the rooftop trio found themselves under siege by giant vampire bats!
Meanwhile, down in the hall, Kaldar’s keen ears detected the sound of breaking glass. He cautiously crept forward with bow in hand…
Back on the roof, the first bat landed atop Lyrax’s dog, delivering a painful bite and causing the canine to begin twitching and frothing out the mouth before falling motionless. Grumble and Lyrax glanced at each other and mouthed “Poison” as they fought against the flying menaces, now with a heightened sense of fear.
In the corridor below, Kaldar peered around a corner to see two more of the giant bats awkwardly climbing through a broken window. “Crickey!” he cried. “Look at the size of those beauties!” That was enough to draw Baragkus’ attention and the so far unneeded fighter dashed up the stairs to take on these new foes. Unfortunately, Kaldar’s cries also attracted the attention of Darya who had been stationed in the room across from where the bats entered. As she opened the door to see what was amiss, one of the creatures launched itself at her and the two combatants stumbled back into the room out of sight.
Up on the roof, Grumble managed to dispatch one of the bats, but the remaining two put up a stiffer fight. The dwarf took a bite for his efforts, but was able to resist the bat’s paralytic enzymes. Lyrax’s arrows dropped a second bat just as Grumble launched a flurry of axe swings at his own opponent. With a solid “thunk,” the axe met meat and the flying assailants were dispatched completely. In the hall below, Baragkus made short work of the bats with his great sword, but not before Darya had succumbed to the bite of the bat and fell into a deep coma. She too joined the unconscious Allana under Kumuk’s care.
Dawn was fast approaching and the defenders, although tired, found their spirits on the rise. Just another hour or two and victory would be theirs. They were injured, half-delirious with exhaustion, and completely out of spells, but the sun would be their salvation. It was with these thoughts in their heads that the sound of drums stopped one final time.
To the east, Lyrax and Grumble saw a horde of goblins appear at the tree line, a score and a half in all. Great, tall ladders were held in their green hands and they stared with undisguised menace at the unprotected windows along the halls’ eastern flank. With one last chant, the mass of goblin attackers charged out of the woods and headed towards the hall.
Lyrax and Grumble began firing at the charging horde, with the human archer cutting down goblins like a scythe. Arrow after arrow connected to send his targets falling to the ground to be trampled by their comrades. Grumble kept up a steady rain of death as well, and soon found himself to be on the last of his arrows.
Inside the hall, the defenders scrambled to meet the goblin charge. Kaldar and Raijek bravely fought against the first of the goblins to reach the wall while Mars and Fisk raced down the stairs to support them. Korlack, with no spells remaining, grabbed a sling and pouch of stones to join Grumble and Lyrax on the tower. Baragkus remained seated near the main door, suspecting this might be a feint.
As the goblin ladders were thrown up against the walls, the party found themselves locked in one last, desperate melee. Goblins were cut down as they topped the rungs, ladders were pushed away to send their climbers falling to their deaths amongst the horde below, and all the while, Lyrax, Grumble, and Korlack continued to rain destruction down upon the screaming masses. Under their hellish hail, more than half the goblin’s numbers perished within the shadow of the hall’s eastern wall. Grumble unleashed his last arrow before throwing his bow at a goblin’s darting head and then rushed down the stairs to join the melee.
Several of the goblin attackers managed to clamber through an unguarded window and stabbed at the unarmored Raijek while others clashed with the armored form of Mars. Down on the hall’s ground floor, Baragkus finally heard what he had been waiting for—the sound of axes hacking at the main door. Gripping his sword in hand, he took up position next to the barricaded portal, Pidar joining him on the other side. After thirty seconds of hewing away at the valve, the door gave to admit a trio of the largest goblins Baragkus had ever seen, each clad in crimson and led by a battle-axe swinging warlord. The fighting man clashed with the humanoid potentate as Pidar slashed at one of his henchmen. Raijek abandoned the battle upstairs to bolster the defenses at the front door as Grumble arrived from the tower.
Outside, the last of the goblins perished under Lyrax’s arrows and the scattered numbers inside the hall were cut down by Kaldar, Mars, Fisk, Grumble, and Tars. The last goblin stared at the steel wall arrayed before him…and dived out an open window to land on the hard ground below with the sound of snapping bones. Struggling to his feet, he limped away, straining to reach the safety of the forest. Lyrax nocked one last arrow and sent it barreling through the goblin’s chest, dropping him to the muddy ground with one arm still outstretched towards the forest’s gloomy sanctuary.
In the main hall, Baragkus and the goblin leader remained locked in battle. One of the goblin’s bodyguards moved to flank the towering fighter while the other pressed his assault against Pidar. The clan patriarch lost his footing on the blood-streaked planks of the floor…and his goblin opponent ran him through with his blade, dropping the stout frontiersman to the cold, bloody floor, dead. With his host slain, Baragkus went into a rage and started to hack through the goblin king’s defenses. Raijek arrived just in time to stem off the bodyguards’ counteroffensive.
Moment later, the goblin king’s head sailed across the hall, tumbling to a halt in a dusty, forsaken corner of the room; his bodyguards fell dead in the doorway soon after. The defenders were victorious!
As the sun rose above the trees, the party stared wearily about at the destruction surrounding them. This would just be the beginning of their quest to end the hobgoblin threat to the Uncertain Lands.
Recaps will resume in two weeks. See you then!
The boarders, even in their mad rage, had no hope of winning the day and it wasn’t long before the last of their bloodied bodies splashed over the side of the boat to vanish beneath the river’s surface. The party stood victorious once again.
On the far side of a narrow river stood a frontier settlement ringed by a palisade of hewn trees and under attack by scores of orange- and green-skinned goblins. The settlement’s northern wall and barn were in flames and desperate defenders fired arrows down at their chanting attackers. From the underbrush around the party, ten goblins dressed in wolf pelts leaped to their feet and hurled spears at the new arrivals. Minor wounds were taken, but Korlack’s sleep spell quickly rendered the goblin attackers inert.
The party pushed toward the wooden bridge that crossed the small river and terminated at a gatehouse. From atop the parapet of the wooden barbican came a warning cry. A man dressed in leathers pointed to the south and screamed for the party to get inside the wall. Looking down the riverbank, the party saw a dozen goblins riding the largest wolves they had ever seen. The goblin cavalry was headed their way with murder in their eyes.
"No recap this week. Mike's got a bunch of stuff to do and can't spare the time to put one togther. Besides, he says last game's events all ties in with what happens next Sunday and doesn't want to ruin any suprises. All will be explained next time. Gabba Gabba Hey!"
