Goblins aren’t the only thing here.
The Heroes found themselves locked in combat with Warchief Ripnugget. The goblin was blissfully ignorant of the odds of combat being against him and was bathed in glee over the fact he had fell two of his foes. He had hereto not been touched, the Heroes having been busy taking care of Ripnugget’s allies first. His gecko under him bleeding out, Ripnugget kept fighting on, caught in the thrill of battle.
It was not long before an interesting sight was observed. Another goblin, dressed in dog furs and adorning harpy feathers, charged into the throne room and swore at the Heroes before quickly striking at the first one in sight. Behind him was a pursuing Shaelulu and female human dressed in leather.
This strange-looking goblin was in actual fact a ranger who was living outside of the premises of the Thistletop clan and had caught on to the fact that there was an invasion. Shaelulu was fortunately nearby and took to quick pursuit of this loyally-faithful goblin coming to his warchief’s aid.
The unknown human was a new player character, Merrix: a traveller from an alternate plane and timeline. She has accidentally come into this timeline and is baffled by how everything was different but the same as her world.
Shaelulu, seeing the condition of her allies, propels herself into the fray and pulls out a Wand of Cure Light Wounds in order to rejuvenate the downed Heroes. While this is happening, Darius begins to annihilate the defences of the Warchief, shredding him down slowly and pushing him into a corner. Merrix, seeing the danger some of these adventurers were in, came in and began to strike at the goblin ranger from the back.
Eventually, the goblin ranger fell but not before seeing his liege surrender, realizing that what little victory he began to get a taste of was merely a delusion of grandeur. “No hurt! No hurt!” Warchief Ripnugget was thrown to the ground in the fray of combat and was proclaiming his intent to stop the combat.
Ripnugget, prompted by a Goblin-speaking Merrix, tried to bluff the party into believing he was the one to have orchestrated the raid against Sandpoint. Nobody really believed this, but the goblin stuttered over his words and tried to fabricate more lies. He even attempted to escape as the others were dealing with their fallen but was immediately stopped in his tracks. Eventually, the goblin agreed to surrender his equipment and have the elven ranger escort him back to Sandpoint to see justice done.
Healing their fallen, the Heroes confronted Merrix, who was still nonplussed about the entire thing. She seems to be very aware of the circumstances of the Heroes’ adventure, many of the facts and details, but did not seem to recognize any of them except for Shaelulu who had no idea who she was. This conversation eventually led way to a realization of haste as the party went on further into the complex.
A food storage, armory, meeting room, bed chamber, and treasury were all found on the rest of this floor where various items were obtained. In one of them, Conall pricked his finger upon a rusty knife that sprung out when he tried to open a chest. It inflicted him with some manner of disease that prevented him from opening his jaw.
Descending to the next floor, the Heroes were immediately alerted to the sound of movement behind a door; further investigation into the room behind this door found nothing but scrolls, a large wooden worktable adorned with books and tablets, and a large number of archaeological artefacts. But whatever it was they heard was still there; something very real and very invisible tumbled through the party and swiftly tried to escape but was thwarted by Conall who, through the best of his abilities, tried to alert the rest of the party of her general whereabouts.
The invisible being was a female wizard, dark-skinned and adorned with long braided hair tightly done up in cornrows. Without any pleasantries, she launched into a tirade of magic, releasing a Burning Hands spell on those nearest to her, a Mirror Image spell to protect herself, and a Shatter attempt on Darius’ weapon.
This fight led the party into an adjacent hallway where they began to hear the sound of howling from a nearby room. The party immediately fled when they managed to put the wizard into a state of unconsciousness, bringing her back to the study where the artefacts were.
It is here that Merrix finds an interesting secret door, hidden in the wall, opening up to a descending staircase to another floor.
The following items and experience were obtained in this session; please be aware that I began to perform some random rolling for treasure starting during this session and that, therefore, some found treasure may be missing from this list.
- Warchief Ripnugget awarded 1200 XP, possessed a potion of barkskin +2, 2 potions of cure moderate wounds, masterwork breastplate (sized small), a +1 short sword, a dented crown worth 20 gp, and a key ring.
- Gogmurt, a ranger who was hitherto unnamed and came to the aid of his liege, awarded 1200 XP, possessed 2 potions of cure light wounds, a wand of produce flames (34 charges), a wand of tree shape (4 charges), +1 leather armor, a sling, a spear, and a cloak of resistance +1.
- An armory contained, when counted, 23 dogslicers, 11 shortbows, 80 arrows, 11 suits of studded leather, six light wooden shields, and two coiled whips. These were confiscated by the Sandpoint Guard when they came to investigate the complex (as the party did not seem to make a claim for them, see later post).
- Warchief Ripnugget’s bed chambers possessed a silver holy symbol of Lamashtu with tiny garnets for eyes worth 40 gp. A large iron key was also found that opened the room with the chest (see below).
- A sea chest contained the accumulated wealth of the Thistletop tribe; it contained an unorganized pile of 7432 cp, 2490 sp, a large number of gp, and a sizable amount of pp. It also contained a leather pouch of 34 badly flawed malachites worth 1 gp each, a Medium chain shirt, a Medium masterwork scimitar, a pair of masterwork manacles, a gold holy symbol of Sarenrae worth 100 gp, a jade necklace worth 60 gp, and a fine blue silk gown with silver trim worth 150 gp.
- The female wizard, later identified as Lyrie Akenja, possessed a potion of cure light wounds, a scroll of comprehend languages, a scroll of mirror image, a scroll of see invisibility, a scroll of sleep, a scroll of whispering wind, a wand of magic missile (38 charges), a dagger, a cloak of resistance +1, a silver comb (25 gp), fine silk gown (60 gp), everburning torch, small pouch of artifacts with a pearl earring worth 50 gp, 3 pp, and 278 gp. She awarded 800 XP. Her spellbook contained invisibility, mirror image, shatter, burning hands, grease, mage armor, ray of enfeeblement, comprehend languages, detect secret doors, floating disk, identify, locate object, minor image, obscuring mist, see invisibility, sleep, and spider climb.
A total of 3200 XP was awarded; each player received 640 XP. This places all characters at 8593 XP.