12.26.20
"Who let the wolves out? Awoo woo woo woo..."
December 26th, 2020
Our party members have been recruited by Gundren Rockseeker to protect a delivery of supplies from Neverwinter to the town of Phandalin. The party was promised 10 GP each for the safe delivery to Barthen's Provisions in Phandalin. Gundren was secretive about why he was headed to Phandalin, only implying that he had found something big but not elaborating.
We join our adventurers as they are on the road to Phandalin with their ox drawn cart, laden with supplies for Barthen's Provisions in Phandalin. As they make their way around a sharp turn in the road they happen upon two dead horses blocking the road. Their equine bodies are riddled with black fletched arrows. Rowan who had been scouting ahead, recognizes these as goblin arrows, and looking around spots four hiding in the woods. It's an ambush! Still undetected, Rowan sneaks back to the rest of the party, and uses hand signals to to indicate the enemies ahead.
Rowan, using the element of surprise sneaks back and strikes out at one of the hiding goblins with his bow. Despite heavy cover, Rowan manages to kill his target with a single precise shot to the head. Now alerted to the presence of the adventurers, the two groups engage in combat.
Dripp and Lilian both lash out with their bows, but fail to to connect with the enemy. Keras and Billie seeing a threat for the first time in their journey, rush ahead to engage the enemy. Demna lashes out with a Mind Sliver, wracking one of the goblin's head with stabbing pain.
Rowan, clearly in his element, snipes another of the goblin archers. Dripp, feeling mildly inadequate after watching Rowan so clearly show his mastery of the bow, carefully aims and takes out yet another of the four goblins.
The remaining goblin shows great fear in his eyes. As Billie goes to close in on it, another goblin, drops from the trees and dashes off in sheer terror down an previously unseen path to the north. Billie uses the momentary distraction to incapacitate the remaining goblin with a strong shot to his head with his quarterstaff.
Keras takes the lull in combat to restrain the surviving goblin, hog tying him with some rope from the cart. Rowan loots the goblins. The party recovers:
Scimitars (x4)
Leather Armor (x4)
Short Bows (x4)
Shields (x4)
Lilian and Keras take a moment to investigate the downed horses. Lilian seeing the sigil of the Rockseeker brothers, identifies these as the horses of their patron and Sildar. Keras, searching the saddle bags, discovers the following.
Empty Leather Map Case
Demna begins to interrogate the surviving goblin as it starts to awake, Billie assists by pulling over one of his dead companions and starts brutally dismembering it. Thoroughly frightened, the goblin urinates and then soils himself. Billie continues to dismember the corpse and feigns eating it. Increasingly terrifying the survivor. In response to questions about where the horse's rider went it shouts out:
"The dwarf got sent off to the castle and the human that was with him... well that depends on how hungry the others are."
The goblin eventually explains that King Graul wanted the dwarf, and it is to his castle that the dwarf was taken with all of his belongings. The goblin states that the Black Spider had promised to pay them for the successful delivery of their targets. The party does not recognise the name of King Grawl as a noble, although they have heard rumors of a new goblin king. The castle is approximately 20 miles to the north of their location.
Looking for a place to store the passed out goblin, Keras, opens a barrel in the cart. Inside he finds many small nondescript sealed packets. Curious, Keras opens a single packet and a viscous red liquid comes out of the packet. Casting identify, Keras discovers the contents to be artisanal ketchup. Thinking back, Keras remembers Gundren mentioning an invention of his that allowed cold storage of perishable items.
Rowan decides to scout ahead in the direction the terrified goblin went. He discovers two traps along the way and eventually ends up at the mouth a vast cavern. Rowan warns the party of the traps and informs them of what he found on the scouting trip. The party takes the time to hide their cart in the nearby woods to ensure their cargo does not go missing while they go after the human victim of the goblin ambush. After it is safely hidden, they head out toward the cavern Rowan had scouted earlier.
The party heads up the path and comes upon a river. Keras immediately hops in, as a Triton he is at home in the water, but the splash is far from stealthy.
Three goblins hearing the approach of the party, sneak attack the party with their short bows. They all miss. Keras is quick to avoid the arrows with his speed and comfort in the water, and takes the opportunity to mock their poor shooting by spitting water at them.
Rowan, ever attentive, laughs at the goblins, taking one out with a judicious arrow to the eye. Dripp follows up with an arrow shot to the knee of the goblin beside him. The goblins attempt another round of arrows but now frightened they fail to connect.
Keras leaps out of the water and kills one of the goblins with a forceful upward swing of his conch mace to the injured goblin's most sensitive area. Billie not wanting to be left out of the action, attacks with his quarterstaff, smashing its skull in.
With the enemies defeated, the party proceeds into the mouth of the cave.
As they make their way into the cave, the party hear the faint sounds of yipping getting louder. The yips become growls and the party happens upon a dimly lit chamber with three emaciated wolves chained within. Seeing the adventurers, they begin straining against their rusted chains trying to snap at the party. Feeling sympathy, Lilian and Keras share some of their rations with the wolves, calming them down and allowing Keras to explore deeper into their chamber.
Billie and Lillian both experienced in animal handling, start to pet and console the poor creatures. They react strongly to this first expression of humanoid affection. With the wolves distracted, Keras discovers a narrow steep incline at the back of the chamber. Understanding how difficult the climb will be Rowan gives Keras some pitons and he climbs up the sheer rock face. At the top of the incline, Keras spots a room filled with what appear to be supplies, but at a second glance are *clearly* just mounds of trash.
In the center of the vast upper chamber, Keras spots a vicious looking bug bear, an intimidating looking wolf, and a couple additional goblins. Realizing that he cannot easily take on all of these enemies, Keras gracefully comes back down and informs the party of the enemies and what he perceives as piles of trash in the above chamber.
Unsure of what to do with the now calmed down wolves, Keras decides to free the wolves. They lick Billie and Lilian, then run off into the cave. The wolves are heard howling and seem angry, but not at the party... Dripp and Billie follow after one of the wolves, spotting a goblin who yells out an alert that the wolves have escaped and that there are invaders. Meanwhile, Keras hops back into the cavern river and swims up to spot another goblin, attempting to calm one of the wolves with food and just beyond that a fragile looking stonework dam.
Rowan comes to the aid of Dripp and attempts to shoot the goblin he his engaged with, but slips on the wet rocks and misses. The wolf seeing its new friends attacking the goblin who had mistreated it, leaps at at the goblin and eviscerates its throat, killing the goblin on the spot.
Realizing their comrades are falling, a goblin further up the cave strikes at the stonework dam which explodes outward, unleashing a wall of water down the cavern. The wall crashes into all of the adventurers in the water. Everyone but Demna manages to avoid the wave. Demna is swept down the cavern smacking into rocks along the way and taking serious damage. The wolves are unharmed but frightened by the crashing sound and flee to the entrance of the cave.
Dripp, unaffected the tidal wave ventures further into the branch of the cave he was in, revealing what appears to be sleeping quarters and four additional goblins. In the far corner a human male is strapped to a rock. One of the goblins lashes out at him with its bow, striking him seriously in his torso and dealing significant damage to him.
Keras having just narrowly avoided the wall of water, hears more rocks moving further up the cave and swims further into the cave to find the origin of the sounds. Inside the next chamber he spots three additional goblins, one of whom is working on dismantling another dam. Keras shouts out a warning to the rest of the party. Billie hearing the warning, but unable to see in the dark, makes his way slowly up to Keras. Keras attempts to cast Sacred Flame at the nefarious goblin, but it easily evades it. A goblin nearer to Keras, seeing him shoot fire at his allies decides to strike out at him. The goblin deals a vicious near fatal slash to his abdomen and renders Keras unconscious... bleeding out slowly out in the water.
Meanwhile, near the sleeping quarters chamber, Lilian runs to Demna, healing her of the wounds she sustained when she was swept away by the wall of water with Cure Wounds. Dripp is attacked again by two more goblins, leaving him in very poor shape. Demna seeing her ally in trouble approaches the enemies and lashes out with a casting of Mind Sliver, wracking the goblin in pain.
At that very moment another cracking sound of a dam breaking reverberated through the cave, casting nearly all of the party back out of the cave. Lilian, seeing Keras on death's door, heals him with her last Cure Wounds spell. Seeing the rest of the party in dire straights, Billie and Dripp make a strategic retreat. As he makes his way down the cave, Billie hears another damn being dismantled.
The entire party, seeing they are outmatched, retreats back to their cart and sets up camp. As the party prepares for a long rest, they strategize that they will go back to the cavern goblin lair, but next time working as a squad to methodically take out the goblins. Keras, who has studied the behavior of drylander creatures, knows the Goblin's are not likely to expect a repeat attack. The wolves have followed the party it seems unsure of where else to go. The party feeds them some of the meat from the fallen horses blocking the road. The party names the wolves Fluffy, Gruffy, and Snuffy.
Keras takes a moment to go back and loot the three remaining goblins from the earlier encounter by the cave entrance. Recovering:
Scimitars (x3)
Leather Armor (x3)
Short Bows (x3)
Shields (x3)
In the distance the party hears a final dam crack and sees the winding river swell with the waterflow once more. After which, things get quiet and curled up with their new wolf friends around the campfire, the party takes a long rest.