Expedition - Foxy: Bounty On The Goblin HQ - 02 June 2021

[Dram]

Baxtaw- We do not have time to mourn our friends yet. The battle is not over. Kill the archers. I shall deal with the king. Moves towards the Goblin King and will cast "Charm Person" on him.

[Starbeard]

I thought the king was already a corn husk. The archers should still be asleep for a long while, so my concern is attending to the downed characters before they run out of rounds and die, and before more baddies show up. Does Mors look like he needs immediate help?

I say we stabilize whom we can, while those who are free slay the sleeping goblins, then we high-tail it out of here. We'll have to cut our losses and just call this one a moral victory. Most of us are a hit away from death and we can't afford to get into another fight.

[onlyme]

I agree we need to save anyone we can, finish off archers, and high tail it home; especially with no cleric to boost our health.

[Marullus]

The Grizzly Woman drops to the side of her loyal ursine companion, checking and binding his wounds. She finds Huckleberry to be unconscious but stable (0 hp); he'll live, and in a few hours will wake and be able to stumble slowly out under his own power.

Baxtaw, Grizzly Woman, and Halfpint are all pale and grievously wounded but standing (1-2 hp each). Foxy is cut deeply by the skeletal axes but looks a bit more hale. Mors is a little dazed, but largely uninjured.

Mors whines plaintively at the pile of dwarven bones that lies atop where Clay fell; he begins to dig through the bones and armor as Halfpint comes to help check on Clay's status. They uncover the banner staff, the mystical Sigil of Pain invoked by Sdubok's magic still glows upon it. Halfpint feels a wave of agony run through her flesh as she sees the banner, but is able to surpress it, rolling up the banner to prevent it from being seen by others.
Halfpint Save [1d20] = 17

Attached to the banner is the remains of a hand. Halfpint looks down to see gobbets of a dismembered Clay at the bottom of the pile, closer in appearance to mulch than to the young boy she remembered. The scene is made more surreal by the continued thumping of Shortbread's drumming, as he is still unaware the battle has concluded.

The Goblin King's remains lie at Foxy's feet, continuing to rapidly decay, collapsing in on itself. He wears an amulet around his neck with a sigil carved of obsidian stone. A golden ring engraved around its entire circumference with symbols is on his hand. The remains of the pouch are scorched, still tied to his belt, the contents destroyed by Baxtaw's magic. Foxy holds his curved scimitar, still flickering with a green balefire flame.

Grizzly and Baxtaw notice an odd smell coming from the Hell Hound's body... almost like savory barbeque. Then they see its flesh crack open, flames within its body consuming it from the inside out. Within moments, all of its flesh are alight, reducing the corpse to just scorched bones.

The archers are indeed asleep on the balconies at the far ends of the left and right sides of the cavern; the other goblins (at least three dozen) having fled down the open stairway on the far right end of the room or through the two sets of electrum doors that stand open to either side of the tunnel where you entered. You don't spy any other exits or entrances. You do note that there are a number of dwarven chests and coffers scattered around the dais-side of the room, roughly three dozen of them. Due to the collapsed skeletons, there are also two dozen dwarven suits of armor and fine dwarven axes scattered around you on the floor of the cavern, each in good condition as the grave-goods of a revered dwarven ancestor.

Date: 1:30pm, 05 June 2021
Light: Braziers in the King's Chamber
Spell effects: Sleep spell on archers until 2:20pm; Banner of Pain until 3:40pm (now concealed); Dwarven drums ongoing
Injuries: Huckleberry (mortal injury), Halfpint (grevious injury), Grizzly Woman (moderate injury), Baxtaw (moderate injury), Clay (moderate injury), Foxy (mild injury), Mors (mild injury, unconscious)

[Starbeard]

Noticing that the bear is still alive, The Grizzly Woman grabs her Good Knife from the remains of the hell hound's scorched remains, touching it gingerly with one of her sack cloths to see if it is too hot to handle. She then examines the electrum doors, noting whether they have any beams to lock them up, and if there is anything in the chamber other than a treasure chest that could be used to barricade them.

[Marullus]

Grizzly Woman peers through both sets of the electrum doors. The doors themselves are solid metal and impossibly heavy, swinging on specially-designed dwarven hinges to open inward into the chamber beyond. The doors had elaborate dwarven key-locks on them, but the locks have been smashed open, now burst and unable to latch. The chambers beyond are large and circular, a low dome above in the ceiling, not as high as the throne room where you stand. You can see in dimly by the brazier-lights - enough to make out the rough form of the space but not as much detail as you'd like. The chamber extends deeper than you can see, but every inch of the rounded rooms which is visible - floors, ceilings, walls - is masterfully etched in breathtaking dwarven decorative engravings, murals, and writing. Stone coffins are arrayed at regular intervals around the perimeter of each of the chambers, their heads against the walls and their feet pointing to the center. The coffins appear to be tossed open, covers lying next to them, some broken. In the chamber to the left of the entry hallway (right side when facing towards the doors), you also see an ornate circular stair descending in the center of the round chamber.

The massive throne room hall is spacious and magnificient, but still is occupied by goblins. There is assorted trash and mess in heaps against walls, around the support columns, etc. Grizzly can find as much heavy trash as she needs.

[Starbeard]

"We had better do something about those goblins before they wake up. I will try to block these stairs so that no one will come up to get us." She heads into one of the side chambers, examining the coffins to judge whether they can be slid over the stairwells without falling in. If they can, she tries to slide a few of them over the stairs to block them up completely.

Then, she returns to the main chamber and begins to pull as much heavy trash as she can in front of the stairs on the far right of the room.

[onlyme]

Halfpint quickly looks for any treats Clay may have kept for Mors, and offers them to the dog. She will then quietly go behind the archers and start cutting their necks.

[Stirling]

Foxy O'Hare

Shame that the skeletons were crushed, we could have turned them to our side, relieving Shortbread on the kettledrums and getting the bone warriors to beat a new tune to reverberate throughout the rest of this goblin warren.

Foxy will wrap in some cotton strips the severed hand of Clay. We might not be able to take his whole body away but at least we can bury a token of him in his beloved memorial ground. She will also exchange her curved sword for the still Flaming scimitar.
(what colour is the flame? Green fire!...sorry an acknowledgement to hours watching acquisitions Inc) Maybe she can will it to burn ginger-carrot red instead?

Check the contents of the pouch to make sure the Fingers of Zhint were inside. You say the contents are destroyed by the magic missile fire, so does that mean only bone powder remains? Toss the powder into the nearest fiery brazier to be fully consumed. Did the king wear a crown? It might be prudent to actually give to Shortbread to wear and seat him upon the dwarven throne. Maybe it will animate some kind of 'authority' over the place.

She also needs to find at least 300gp, which was the payment for the ogres to assault the palisade gateway. Foxy will also return down the tunnel while Half-pint cutthroats the sleepers to fetch Shortbread.

Was there also any kind of collar on the hell hound? Foxy looks at the burning beast ruefully, she had hoped to send it away with its tail between its legs and a message to the Ruins of Monoc.

sorry so many actions but if we can secure the doors we might be able to rest up a while. I feel that a better strategy than trying to sneak out to the hidden cave were the retainers are and if any ogres or Thundred and his men are sheltering.

[Marullus]

Shortbread continues to drum and drum as the minutes pass, alone in the chamber above.

The Grizzly Woman enters the pair of electrum doors on the left side, where she pulls the heavy stone sarcophagi, now empty of their dwarven residents, and positions them over the downward stair. She is able to position them to block the downward passage there. She then returns to the main throne room and shifts bulky items - wooden boards and chairs, stone tables, etc - to block the stairs down on the right end of the room. Huckleberry groans and vocalizes unhappily, licking his wounds.

Halfpint slips up the ramps to the catwalks and balconies on the left and right ends of the room, efficiently ending the lives of the slumbering goblin archers by slitting their throats with her sword, one by one in gristly succession.

Foxy goes to the massive mound of skeletal debris, looking to take up Clay's hand or some other part of his remains. She holds the dismembered hand, but finds that it begins to disintegrate as she tries to swaddle it in cloth wrappings. The hand flakes apart into a loamy dirt, falling out of the wrapping even as she tries to contain it.

The bone pile shifts, bits of dwarven armor and rivulets of bone-dust cascading down as it does so. Something is moving underneath, something is crawling out. Mushrooms pop up on the cave floor around it, growing and then popping to spray spores. Tendrils of vines unfurl through the bone dust, then wilt. The overpowering smell of loamy earth pervades the room, overcoming the goblin stench. After several minutes an amorphous ball of flesh and fur pokes through. It appears to be stretching, evolving, until finally it pulls completely out of the death-mound - a giant badger, about five feet long.



Date: 2:00pm, 05 June 2021
Light: Braziers in the King's Chamber
Spell effects: Banner of Pain until 3:40pm (now concealed); Dwarven drums ongoing
Injuries: Huckleberry (mortal injury), Halfpint (grevious injury), Grizzly Woman (grevious injury), Baxtaw (grevious injury), Foxy (moderate injury), Mors (mild injury)

[onlyme]

Does it appear the badger was there hiding and we just saw it... or did it appear to be spawn from the flesh, etc.?

[Stirling]

I think more that Clays goddess has called him home and his spirit reincarnated into badger form.

We can kill it mind and make him into a nice furry coat for Halfpint...

shame about the hands melting, Foxy did think on nicking his fingerprints and forging a will....

[Marullus]

I described as best I could. Let's react IC. (These roleplay scenes are important for character development and XP accordingly.)

[Rusty Tincanne]

Morr growls a full-throated warning as the badger totters around, looking somewhat drunk, as if it isn't used to walking on all fours. The dog backs up when he is approached by the badger.

[Dram]

Baxtaw- Moves back away from the badger. He will not make any threatening moves toward it. Let it be! Lets see if it may lead us out of this place safely.

[Rusty Tincanne]

The badger rises onto its haunches with what might be taken as a confused expression, were one to spend much time with badgers. It shakes his head as it looks around the room. It's over then? Why is Shortbread still pounding those drums so loudly? Can he stop now? The voice is very familiar. Morr whines. What's wrong, pal? He looks at the group and notices their guarded stances. Are you all okay? Where is the King and Zhint's fingers?

[Stirling]

Foxy O'Hare

before we leave this throne room can we check on the following:

1) That the Fingers of Zhint have been destroyed. If the flaming brazier did not consume the powdered bones, Foxy will pouch the remains for the sage in Gaul to study further.

2) If the goblin king wore a crown, as a symbol of authority over the place, I would prefer we give it to Shortbread (or Thundred if alive). It is a former dwarven hold and it will be good relations for us if we return the place into their hands.



I think we have two choices to make in deciding what to do next:



A) We came to kill the king and destroy the Finger-bones. If we have achieved that objective and want to return to Gaul immediately to cash in our treasure and XP before any goblin counter attacks, Foxy is fine with that and is ready to leave.

B) We rest up for a few days. Bringing in any surviving dwarves and paying off the surviving ogres. We secure the place from goblin counter attacks and enthrone the dwarves in their ancestral hold. It makes more sense having won a victory to try and keep the place not just desert it if the dwarves can hold on to it. Kudos for us from both the dwarves and the duke for extending 'civilized' settlements. Foxy prefers this even if it takes a few days to sort out.

[onlyme]

Halfpint looks inquisitively at the badger. Good day our new friend. We you hiding there? Or were you inside Clay all this time? Halfpint wonders how that could be, but also realizes she didnt see it previously. "I should name you 'Furpot' since you are really furry, and well, you came from Clay. Furpot, this is Morr. He was Clay's dog.

[Starbeard]

The Grizzly Woman, satisfied that she has blocked the descending exits from whence any fleeing goblins might try to mount a counterattack, returns to the central chamber and nurses Hucklberry Bear a little more. "Wake up sleepy head. It is not that bad. You were just ruffed up a bit." She tries to get the bear to lap up a bit of water from her canteen.

When the badger presents itself, she looks up, wide eyed. "Oh look our friend Clay has turned into a badger." When the thing starts to speak, she scrambles to her feet in shock. "Oh no. Quick! Everybody greet the badger or else it is crossed luck for us all."

She performs her best bow, which is still very awkward, and says, "Good day Mister Badger." She then touches her throat makes sure all of her pockets are closed, clearly acting the tenets of some superstition.

OOC: Resting in here sounds dangerous, unless we already have an idea of how many goblins total we are up against. We haven't fully explored the upper levels, so there's still a possibility that all of our exits can become surrounded, and we haven't got the manpower to cover all four ways out of this room, while sleeping to regain strength.

We do have food (fish) to keep us going for a long time; but we'll have to find water. The bear is also still unconscious for awhile.

Do we have any volunteers to sneak out to the surface and scout around the mountain, check up on the dwarves and ogres, then sneak back in with an update?

[Marullus]

Shortbread's drumming is starting to flag and sound tired, still left alone on the level above.

Date: 2:10pm, 05 June 2021
Light: Braziers in the King's Chamber
Spell effects: Banner of Pain until 3:40pm (now concealed); Dwarven drums ongoing
Injuries: Huckleberry (mortal injury), Halfpint (grevious injury), Grizzly Woman (grevious injury), Baxtaw (grevious injury), Foxy (moderate injury), Mors (mild injury)

1) That the Fingers of Zhint have been destroyed. If the flaming brazier did not consume the powdered bones, Foxy will pouch the remains for the sage in Gaul to study further.

The bones were destroyed, along with the majority of the pouch, when blasted by Baxtaw's magic missile.

2) If the goblin king wore a crown, as a symbol of authority over the place, I would prefer we give it to Shortbread (or Thundred if alive). It is a former dwarven hold and it will be good relations for us if we return the place into their hands.

You did not note that he wore a crown. His possessions were previously described.