We find our merry band of former slaves sailing freely away from the doomed island on a burial ship containing the pirate king’s deceased son and a large amount of sacrificial treasure. While badly wounded and traumitized by their experience on the island, the group still sought to return to their homes, so they set sail for the mainland while healing their wounds. After a few days out on sea, the group finally spotted cherished land as the dark evening overtook the sky, and they were able to find a beach to approach and unload their tired selves and newly acquired riches. The goliath, Arkon, felt compelled to send the deceased prince to a final flaming rest, so the group loaded the extra equipment up onto the boat, lit a funeral pyre, and pushed the boat out to sea.
Soon after the funeral rites had been performed, the group proceeded to hunt and set up camp in the nearby forest, and they all proceeded to take loose watch turns. Soon into the first watch, the exhausted party found itself waylaid by over three dozen goblins and wargs, and rather than fight, the party agreed to be taken into shackles once more. All of the world posessions were stripped from them immediately, and they were pushing into a cart where they met a Jopranie Quid, a traveling merchant who was ambushed along his trade route. They waited and schemed as best they could while chained to the wagon heading to once again an unknown and uncertain future.
By the following the day, the group was commanded by several goblins to get off the cart in the little farming town of Borest, and the members were further ordered to go to the Grey Lantern Inn to find work in the town. Upon their arrival to the inn, the group was introduced to owner Angela Surestout who promptly gave them the history of the town’s enslavement by the goblins. The group also made acquitances with a tabaxi cleric by the name of Musie who also wished to see the end of this town’s enslavement. The group decided they needed to gather more intelligence on the matter before they would act, so they would decide to obey and observe the goblins in the meantime.
Angela further asked Avery to help break up her daughter, Sarah, and a village boy that Angela did not have an high opinion of because the boy sought to take Sarah to a nearby city to start a different life from the one in Borest. The company also talked with the mayor of Borest to discovered the goblins were stealing a portion of the crops and taking to their likely base of operations away from the town. The mayor further divulged that their were mystical powers afoot around the town edge as several villagers had attempted to leave, but others found the attempted runaways as bloody shreds little to no ideas as what caused their deaths!
Arkon, the goliath babarian, was the boldest of the party as he was able to convince several goblins he was ordered to accompany them and offload the wagon filled with the harvested crops. The tiefling wizard, Dacryia, spotted Arkon’s deception, and attempted to follow them in without being noticed. While Arkon and the food wagon exited the town’s perimeter without troubles, Dacyria soon found out what was preventing the people from escaping the town, for she soon found herself facing off against several wooden sprigs. After a brief exchange with the creatures, Dacyria soon retreated back into the town perimeter after receiving several mortal wounds.
In the meantime, Arkon taken several miles to a place that was likely the goblin’s main camp outside Borest. He offloaded the wagon near the place where he spotted the party’s equipment stored, and he was even able to sneak away with one of the wands the group had found on the island. After his work was complete, he was ordered back into the wagon and returned back to Borest. By the time he returns to the village, it is getting past sundown when the party regroups to discuss their findings and the next path forward. The group decided they would start killing several goblins off in the hopes of finding what gives the goblins free passage in and out of the town while also arming themselves to fight them.
Arkon impulsively acts on this new plan by going out to the latrine area for the goblins, and he proceeds to kill two of them and hides their bodies in the defecation station. He is joined by Dacryia and Musie who attempt to leave the village while wearing amulets all containing the same feature worn by all the goblins: a human skull with a blade plunged down through it with a ruby atop the pommel. No sooner then the trio approached the perimeter, they found themselves face-to-face with the sprigs which also alerted a goblin riding a warg to the fray. The group was able to slay the goblin-warg duo and several sprigs, but more sprigs appeared to take their fallen bretheren’s place. Thus, the party returned to the inn with newly acquired knowledge and weaponry.
Having sensed they had out-stayed their welcome, the group devised a new strategy the next morning. Idris, the half-elf pirate, spoke with the mayor, and with magical inspiration convinced the mayor that the town ought to rebel against the outnumbered goblins come tomorrow at dawn. Soon after their meeting, the goblins arise to round up several villagers likely to interrogate and find the culprits behind their goblin allies’ demise. In the confusion, Avery attempted to disguise herself as a goblin, but she soon realized she would have a hard time acting the part since she did not understand the goblin language. She retreated back to the inn and removed her disguise, but unfortunately, a goblin lieutenant witnessed this transformation and assaulted her. She was swiftly knocked out, but luckily Dacyria, Musie, and Idris were able to the goblin under a magical sleep spell. They proceeded to drag his body into the inn, and attempted to murder the goblin. After a slight tussle, the group was able to finish the creature off, but the commotion caused several other goblins to come investigate.
Musie and Avery tried to play off the recent commotion as an attempt to murder Dacyria, but at the same time, Musie and Avery revealed their cleric healing abilities which caused the goblins to chain them up and drag them out the inn. The goblin guards proceeded to drag the two clerics to the goblin barracks in town with orders to heal any wounded goblin they brought. At the same time, Arkon had gone off to seek more armaments when he stumbled upon a lonely hut on the outskirts of Borest. As fate would have it, the goliath barbarian happened upon a ring hid under a rock outside the hut, and he proceeded to put it on his finger. Shortly afterwards, the town mayor came to talk with Arkon, and the mayor quickly questioned the origin of the ring. After a little persuasion by Arkon, the mayor revealed that he was being blackmailed by a woman claiming to bear his child after a night he could not remember. Arkon proceeded to perform a simple goliath ritual to divine that the mayor was the victim of a love potion, and a short investigation of the hut revealed the woman had no such child belonging to the mayor.
The goliath soon gave the ring back to the mayor in exchange for a favor, and he returned to town to find Musie and Avery being placed in the goblin barracks. The goliath corned and made short work of the goblin guards, and he and the others proceeded to arrange the bodies as if though they had killed one another. However, their plan went awry when several more goblins with a warg also appeared. The group at the barracks soon fought the reinforcements with the assistance of Idris and Gye who happened upon the barracks in search of Avery and Musie. In the fray, Gye revealed a new side as she proceeded to charge the warg in a blood crazed frenzy. Once again very luckily, the party was able to dispatch the goblins and set the bodies as if though the goblins had been fighting amongst themselves.
The stranded members returned the inn with fresh and deep wounds from their recent fray, but they had now accelerated their course towards freeing the town from the goblin rule… will they succeed? Can they discover the source of the sprig monsters trapping the village and its people? Find out next week!
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