Patchwall 9th, CY 588 The party leaves Carla and Toladrome to gather the circus caravan and scattered entertainment troupe. M'bubble wants to join the party but agrees to fix some of the "improvements" that he and the party have made at the inn. Meanwhile, the rest of the party returns to Tresendar to deal with the remaining Redbrand Ruffians. Plans evolve from capturing the bandits to trying to convince them to take out the Wyvern Tor orcs of the Many-Arrows Tribe. Things don't quite work out and murder ensues with bugbear reinforcements showing up too late to stem the tide of a victorious party. They do capture Mosk, the leader of the bugbears who affects a fake eyepatch and agree to spare him in exchange for information about the location of Cragmaw Castle and Wyvern Tor.
Patchwall 9th, CY 588 The party leaves Carla and Toladrome to gather the circus caravan and scattered entertainment troupe. M'bubble wants to join the party but agrees to fix some of the "improvements" that he and the party have made at the inn. Meanwhile, the rest of the party returns to Tresendar to deal with the remaining Redbrand Ruffians. Plans evolve from capturing the bandits to trying to convince them to take out the Wyvern Tor orcs of the Many-Arrows Tribe. Things don't quite work out and murder ensues with bugbear reinforcements showing up too late to stem the tide of a victorious party. They do capture Mosk, the leader of the bugbears who affects a fake eyepatch and agree to spare him in exchange for information about the location of Cragmaw Castle and Wyvern Tor.
Our intrepid band of misfits and far travelers gather in the Townmaster's Hall where they find that Harbin Wester may be a fat, pompous old fool but he does care for the folk of Karrigan. Speaking with Carla Serrington they find that she was the ringmaster of the Jade Menagerie circus which plied the lands on the border of the United Kingdom of Ahlissa, the Kingdom of Sunndi, and the remnants of the Iron League to the west. A few days ago, her caravan was ambushed by a group of goblins and Redbrand hoodlams. Some of her troupe were killed but most fled and she was captured. At this point they meet the singular Toladrome Waybrill, Carla's right-hand dwarf and majordomo who had recovered her mistress' gear from the Jade Menagerie's camp and had been working to find a way to rescue her. Harbin and Sildar offer rewards in gold for finding Gundren Rockseeker and eliminating the Many Arrows Tribe orcs at Wyvern Tor. More, they offer to deed the Tresendar manor to the party of they can clear out the Redbrands and will repair the property. Resting and drinking at the Stonehill Inn, the party has quite the encounter with Song Cull and her man Sallston Thatcher. They also meet the interesting goblin M'bubble who has been trying to get a magical oven working for the Stonehill family's kitchen. With several misadventures they find out that Song is an illusionist working for one "CCL" possibly the Chloricalnicon leader of the Emerald Path (what's with all the green) criminal organization. Song manages to escape but the party captures Sallston and places him in the townhall stockade under the watchful eye of Sildar.
The party interrogates the Redbrand prisoner and Harbin Wester in the townhall. Zizz plays the role of a goblin prisoner with the ruffian and Shien reveals her changeling abilities to the party to help interrogate Harbin as the Redbrand sergeant, Henninger. Getting a better idea of how the Redbrands are organized and that Thel Dendrar’s family is alive in their dungeon but soon to be sold into slavery, the party rests and mounts a raid using stealth and deception the next day on their hideout in the basement works of Tresendar manor. Fighting a telepathic Nothic in the main entryway the party discovers a magical sword (Talon, sword of the fallen hero, Lord Tresendar) and secret passages in a nearby storeroom. Finding one that leads into a study they find...Glasstaff the Wizard! With a quick thinking sleep spell and some role playing by the party and shapeshifing by Shien, the group rescues the Drendar family and another prisoner…the mysterious Carla Shandar. With Witty posing as a slave purchaser they whisk the prisoners away saying that they’ll be back…and they will! Delivering Glasstaff to Sildar they discover to their surprise that he is in fact the missing Iarno! Iarno is a fallen member of the Jade Mask, an order of adventurers and nobles who work across the old Iron League, Sunndi, and the frontier with Old Aerdy to right wrongs and help maintain peace and order. Sildar is a ranking officer in the Jade Mask which explains his willingness to fund the party to help the people of Karrigan and the vicinity with his quests and bounties. Turning over Glasstaff to Sildar, the party prepares to return to deal with the remaining Redbrands. Before they do, Mima Threndar offers some token of reward for the heroes, Though her family has nothing to offer as a reward (indeed, the group gave them some coin), Mirna tells the party that she might know where a valuable heirloom is hidden. When she was a young girl, she and her family fled from the town of Thundertree after undead overran the place. Her family had an herb and alchemy shop, inside which a case containing an emerald necklace was hidden beneath a section of storage shelves. She never dared to return and retrieve it. The shop was in the southeast part of Thundertree which is further up in the mountains from Karrigan.
The party accompanies Sildar to Karrigan where they have a tense showdown with the Redbrand Ruffians. After some night work, the local village kids show them the secret entrance to the Redbrand hideout and Sildar offers a reward for the capture or elimination of their mysterious leader...Glasstaff.
The party infiltrates the cave-complex of the Cragmaw Hideout…home to a band of goblin bandits led by an ambitious bugbear by the name of Klarg. Initially with subterfuge and stealth, then with quick strikes and coordinated actions the party captures Klarg, slays the goblin bandits, and rescues Sildar Hallwinter. Sildar is a Ranger of the Rieuwood and a member of the famous griffon cavalry of that group that protects the border regions between Ahlissa and Sunndi. He is also a member of the Iron Ring, an organization that some of the party members know quite well. Upon finding that Grunden was spirited away to “King Grol” on the orders of the mysterious Black Spider and that Grunden and his brothers had found the location of Morant’s Deep the party must decide whether to press on to rescue Grunden and his information from Cragmaw Castle deeper in the forest or to continue on to Karrigan with their cargo.
The party gathers for libations and scheming at the liveliest inn and adventurer haunt in all of Sunndi. There they meet the battlescarred but kindly Blount Hardrock (proprietor) and his partner Cord the gray orc from Montesser in Old Medegia. With Nelly and Kelly the halfling staff underfoot, the party is offered a job to escort a wagon of goods for his cousin, Gundren Rockseeker, to the town of Karrigan on the frontier with Ahlissa and in the foothills of the Glorioles just beyond the eaves of the Rieuwood. Gundren and locally famous warrior Sildar Hallwinter have left on ahead to attend to business in Karrigan and the party is to escort the goods to Barthen’s Provisions in exchange for 10 gp each. It seems that Karrigan has experienced quite a boom as new mines are being opened on the western face of the Glorioles range and the three Rockseeker brothers have opened a new claim there themselves. But, there have been problems with goblin bandits along the way. The fine-clothes proprietor Song Cull interjects that she too needs protection to run clothing goods to Karrigan and (much to Blount’s displeasure) buys her way into the expedition. The party generally enjoys the remainder of Freeday before Brewfest and sets off the next morning for Karrigan with a two-horse wagon and Song and her assistant on their smaller one-horse wagon. Under the pelting rain of a late summer storm, the party is ambushed by goblins at the Rieuwood eastern crossroads on the Triboar Trail about halfway to Karrigan. After a warning from an alert Zizz, the party quickly defeats the bandits and captures one “Dar” for questioning. It becomes clear that Gundren and Sildar were ambushed previously and a force of up to a dozen Cragmaw tribe goblins took them away to the “eating cave” in the Cragmaw hideout about 4 miles deeper into the forest. They were instructed specifically by their leader, the hobgoblin Klarg, to look for Gundren and capture him alive. The order to Klarg came from King Grol (chief of the Cragmaw tribe) by a messenger who told Klarg that someone named the Black Spider was paying them to capture Grunden and bring his personal effects back. Cragmaw Castle is 15 miles further in the forest beyond the cave hideout and is where Grunden might be taken if he’s not at the hideout or eaten. Dar helps the party avoid traps along the forest trail (which Edge noticed anyway) and brings them to the verge of the cave hideout before fleeing from fear from the Lizardfolk, who had been munching on the remains of some of the recently deceased goblin ambushers. Song protested the diversion but is following the party with her attachè from a distance to not be set upon by goblins on the remainder of the road. What will the party find at the entrance to the Cragmaw hideout?