A sun elf traveling to Cormyr hears about a group of sun elves (like himself) traveling in the area and decides to see what they're like. He follows their trail west and then south down the road by the mountains. He doesn't stay in the town they did the night before.
Catching up to them he greets them heartily. He's riding a horse and has a rather tattered and torn appearance. At the sound of a horse approaching the group does what the group does. Izzy stands in the middle of the road after sending the goblins into hiding. Nihilus hides on the opposite side of the road. L'oric hides by the side of the road. Finy goes back into his tent.
When Izzy sees a half sun elf she drops her mace and shield and yells out "Dad!". This naturally confuses the stranger on the horse who says that while he may have sired children she's far too old to be one. She also notices that he's not a full blood elf and knows he can't be her father. At her yell everyone else groans and comes out of hiding. Except the goblins.
Introductions are made all around and Daylor takes off the rags to show he's nicely dressed underneath. They all have a short discussion on the benefits of the disguise of being poor while traveling. Without much fuss he convinces them that he should join up since he's also looking for some adventure and excitement. [I asked them to be experienced role players about having him join the group. Once again they agreed. No one wanted to spend the session trying to add the new player to the party.]
Izzy retrieves the goblins who are all tied on a lead. At that they continue to head south, looking for trails into the mountains. It's much easier in the daylight and Nihilus finds a trail. It does help that the goblins know the general area and have said as much to Izzy. Nihilus refuses to admit they helped.
Looking up the mountains they can make out a switchback road that leads to what is probably a tunnel entrance. There's a few fresh avalanches as well. L'oric sees another road to the north of the larger one and points it out. They decide to take the more traveled road.
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| A 10 minute drawing of what they see when they look at the mountains. Not to scale, not a map. But darn good for 10 minutes I think. |
Izzy asks the goblins about the tunnel and about what made the tracks (since she assumes they know about the situation). They don't have much information about the tunnel but try to run when asked about the lizard. While she's doing that Daylor has a look and thinks that the tunnel is mostly natural but has been worked to be taller. [I was going to have evidence that the grey dwarves fed the lizards with goblins but that didn't work into the story. Still they would be afraid of the big ass lizards.]
It takes most of the morning to get up the road and they find an avalanche has covered half of the road. The other half is clear and Nihilus thinks the avalanche has stabilized. Looking at the road L'oric & Izzy see that it's a maintained road. Nihilus sees that it's a very well maintained road with stonework repairs. [Duh. Dwarves. But no one said anything about a connection at the table.]
The tunnel entrance is coming into view when they pass the avalanche when Nihilus sees a boot sticking out from the rubble. He dismounts and starts digging without telling anyone. When they go back to investigate what the heck he's doing they see the lower leg he's uncovered. Izzy every so gracefully stumbles on the path and knocks some rocks down the mountain, causing some of the avalanche below them to move as well.
Finy takes off the boot and knitted sock (both grey) and swears he can feel something in the seam of the sock as he carefully searches them. When questioned about what he's doing by L'oric he talks about things being hidden in boots which gives L'oric the idea of hiding a knife there. Finy puts the sock away for later investigation. The rest of the group is asking him why he wants that smelly thing.
When Izzy asks what he found Nihilus pulls out his blade to cut off the leg to show her. She chastises him for what he was going to do and has a look at what has been uncovered. After having a look she thinks he's been dead about 2 tendays, which matches the timeline Nihilus put on when it happened. [I had to break in hard and fast when the player said "I cut off his leg". Not only would he not have done that in one cut with the weapon he has his character would know about being in civilization that it would be improper to do it. This is going to lead to a talk with the player about his apparent need to want to be 'wild' but still be in settled lands. He can't have both.]
They are able to get the body out of the rubble and by guessing at what it looked like before a bunch of a mountain rolled over it that it matches the descriptions they've been given of grey dwarves. Finy searches the body and drops the warhammer on his foot. He tosses it off the side of the road, into the avalanche, and everyone yells at him both for the noise and for throwing away loot. He defends himself by saying it hurt his foot.
During his search he doesn't turn up anything else of interest. The belt pouch had a few coppers in it which he left there. Nihilus digs through the backpack and the only thing not destroyed were 4 dried mushrooms he'd never seen before so he takes them. Izzy performs rites over it as a good cleric should. She had to explain that to Nihilus as to why should would bother. Everyone else understood without asking.
While Izzy is doing her cleric thing Finy is intent on finding whatever is in that sock. He ends up shredding it down to nothing without finding whatever it was. He thinks that he just missed it somehow and gets annoyed.
Since the sun is behind the mountains they decide to camp where they are. There was discussion about continuing to the tunnel but wiser minds pointed out that going up a mountain road into an unknown tunnel at night - a tunnel that may lead to the Underdark - was probably not a great idea.
While they were doing all this the goblins built themselves a little campsite and have a tiny fire burning. No one from the group can find any firewood to cook dinner. It's all thin scrub and not dry enough. When Izzy asks the goblins what they're burning they all hold up sticks they'd carried up from the road. Goblins 1 - Party 0.
During the night L'oric hears something moving around near the top of the avalanche area. He casts Light and tries to see what's up there. Nihilus - who never seems to be in Reverie when things happen - also sees nothing and blames the Light spell. L'oric is certain he saw motion up there and is confident it's either a grey dwarf or a wyvern. He did that to poke at Nihilus and it worked quite well. The light wakes up the goblins and they now call L'oric "Stupid Elf Bright Light". [At this point L'oric's player remembered he has a raven familiar. I tend not to remind players of things like familiars because they should be doing that for themselves. He's experienced enough not to try to retcon it into the search.]
The day breaks nice and sunny to the east. Nihilus forecasts that it's going to be a bright sunny day. After more trail rations they head up the rest of the trail to the tunnel. The way it's angled the late morning sun doesn't penetrate very far for them to see at a distance. While they're still a reasonable distance away Finy goes off to scout.
He hears two different sets of voices - one set is high pitched and the other is low pitched. He can't make out how many of each there are or what they're saying. When he comes back he startles Izzy who squeals like a goblin. After he relates what he saw and heard Izzy tells the goblins they need to come with the group and they strongly disagree. No one wants to leave them near the horses so they secure the horses to one section of the mountain and the goblins to a different one. [I play down these parts in game because I don't want them getting paranoid about leaving things that have to be left. It's reasonable that they could secure the horses and goblins for the short period of time they expect to be gone.]
Finy asks if there's some word or phrase they can use with the captive goblins to show their good intentions. The one that approached Izzy is offended that they would be expected to share secrets but finds another way. He has them cut off one of the dreadlocks from another goblin as proof they're the same tribe. [I guess in my world goblins use different kinds of hair decoration for the tribes. I'll have to make sure this is in my general notes and use it later as needed. Not bad for something thought up on the fly, in my opinion.]
From the fuss the goblins raised Finy recognizes that the high pitched voices in the tunnel are goblins. The ones in there are more panicked than the angry goblins they have in front of them but he's sure it's the same kind of creature.
While Izzy works with the goblins to get the token and to try to make sure they're safe along with the group's horses and supplies Nihilus is trying to persuade the others that they should kill the goblins which leads them into the start of a philosophical discussion on the nature of keeping promises, evil creatures, and what to do about them. Before it gets too far it's time to move up.
As they approach the tunnel entrance rain starts to fall. They were so busy with what they were all doing they didn't notice the clouds moving in. They all look at Nihilus, who said it would be a sunny day. Finy remarks to Izzy and L'oric that he thinks their ranger is broken. Nihilus either didn't hear it or pretends not to hear it. Neither Izzy or L'orid disagree with Finy.
As they get closer to the cave they can hear the voices. L'oric and Daylor recognize the deeper voices as speaking a dialect of Dwarvish. Izzy can hear the goblins. At this point they still can't determine how many of each are in the tunnel.
Nihilus decides to go to the opposite side of the tunnel entrance from where they're approaching. So he runs across the tunnel entrance. backlit by the late morning sun. Finy is making rude gestures at the loss of surprise now. Finy grumbles as he slides into the tunnel, clinging to the wall. As he enters a mist appears that blocks most of the tunnel entrance, leaving the sides clear.
This mist causes a bit of concern since they don't know who cast it or why but they're taking advantage of the cover it provides. The rest of the party works into the cavern along the sides. They see groups of goblins, just as thin and worn as the ones they captured, on both sides of the tunnel. They're chained together in groups of four.
When Finy goes to pick the lock on the manacle holding who they assume to be a shaman he pulls away and points to the rest of the goblins around him. The manacles are of the same dwarven make as the lock on the warehouse with runes on the manacles and on the chains. Finy shrugs but leaves them locked up.
L'oric sens his raven in to scout out where the grey dwarves are. It comes back and tells him "Behind the food". He has no idea what that means and says he should have asked it to find out how many there were as well. He relays the information that the dwarves are probably further back in the tunnel.
As they progress into the tunnel they see the end of a wagon under a very large amount of rock. It seems that the tunnel roof has collapsed onto the wagon and blocked the way. There's no dwarves to be seen so they go further in, finding the other groups of goblins chained together as well.
As they get closer to the wagon they can see there's been work trying to dig it out and clear the tunnel. They guess that the goblins were doing it but still don't see the dwarves. They approach it with caution, seeing it's the same material and make as the one back at the inn. That's one mystery solved, in their mind.
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| The tunnel entrance showing where it's blocked with rubble. The blue and yellow tokens are all groups of goblins. |
After they catch their breath they search the bodies and the wagon. The key for the manacles is easily found and Izzy takes the hair with her when she goes to free the goblins. She shows it to them and they aren't quite as terrified. She unlocks them and sees a severe, fresh burn mark on the one they picked out as the shaman. L'oric thinks that the manacles are enchanted to discourage magic use while they're worn.
Izzy goes back to heal the shaman after freeing the rest of them but he's done it himself and is healing the others. Finy takes the goblin hair from her as she goes to heal L'oric. The others find three well used lizard skin whips, four sets of the manacles, two light crossbows, and 2 warhammers. Searching the wagon shows broken wood that is probably from crates and barrels of trade goods from the town they were just in. L'oric is trying very hard to find wine but is disappointed.
Finy finds a number of small gems in the belt pouches along with 1 gold piece and 7 silver pieces that have the same look as the ones in the cash box at the warehouse. He shows the coins to the group. He doesn't show the gems.
Detecting magic finds a brass eyeball in one pouch and an ebony box wedged under one of the rocks in the wagon. They set the eyeball aside and open the box. Incautiously. Inside is a carved ivory web and instructions for use in the top of the box both in the spiky writing they can't read and in elven. They realize that they might be able to use the elven to translate the other language. The instructions tell them how to use the web to identify magic items. It needs a gemstone worth at least 100 gold pieces in the center for it to activate and the gemstone will be consumed.
They look to find that the goblins are long gone and took their kin with them from outside. They can see them running down one of the ravines. They shrug and go back inside to make camp for the night and look over their stuff.
GM Notes
First and foremost my goal here was to get them that magic item to identify other magic items. With one arcane caster who is multi-classing they were going to be very light on the ability to identify things. There's limits to how often it can be used but no more so than for a regular caster, really.
Now that they've found their passage to the Underdark and can't follow it they've got another path they can follow. There were two kinds of things they were looking to do here so now they can do the second one. Or they can leave. From the discussion they're going to see what that other road leads to so more than likely they're staying.
This game had a lot of metagaming happening and I kept having to pull them back. Part of it was adding a new player, part of it was the player writing the book and wanting to discuss parts of it while we were playing, and part of it is gaming in general. I asked them to keep it to a minimum and they would look ashamed but it didn't completely stop them.
I need to take better combat notes or keep my combat sheets until after I write up my notes. I'm not completely sure who did what during that last combat so I guessed. I can always correct it later if it matters. Since no one was seriously injured and no one seems to be counting coup it shouldn't be an issue for these. More a note for myself than for the group.
The tunnel setup is 3D printed Dungeonsticks (that I still need to finish painting) and they work very well to get up a fast layout. I kept adding on as they progressed and that helped immersion. They're also portable so they're easy for me to carry around. The tokens are pieces from a Stratego game with colored and numbered paper sleeves taped over them. I know I could 3D print other ones but I like these, I have these, and they work so I don't need to replace them. Even better they take up the correct amount of space even when they're prone (on their side) or down (flat).
The new player integrated well and that makes me happy. I'm hoping that integration stays well as we have more games. I think it will and there was plenty of role play going on as well as effective combat.
What I've been doing with the low level characters is building up the encounters so that they're excited about them and then giving them opponents who are enough to challenge them without being too much of a challenge. I learned from those damn thorn bushes. Extended combats are fun when they're more powerful, not now. Those grey dwarves were darn squishy and that's even with their level adjustment. I thought the combat would last a few more rounds but they were happy with the quick victory this time.
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