Session II: Dissonant Whispers

9-10 Resting, 1304 AM

  During the party's well-deserved rest, Malgrim had a look at the defeated ambushers and was able to conclude that the hobgoblins' plate armour was likely dwarven in origin, but not Malakadan. Further, the armour was inscribed with a symbol that looked like a "V" with an "X" in its negative space which, combined with the ambushers' unusual resolve, led them to assume that this symbol denoted Vyriavaxus, the Demon Lord of Shadows. Shortly thereafter they could hear footsteps coming towards them, and learning from their shoddy attempt previously, managed to expertly hide from this new figure. It was Caerlin Krexis, a knight of the Order of Hyron, who had arrived, and he had received instructions to locate a lost transport which passed through Gloomlight Forest. The knight saw the fifteen corpses of felled goblins, bugbears, and hobgoblins, and pre-emptively drew his sword. Though, once again, Malgrim broke the ice (and his concealment) and introduced the group to him. When introduced to Jacqualine, Caerlin made some moves that could possibly be considered sly in some underground circles; Jacqualine, and the rest of contemporary society, were left unimpressed. However, realising that they had mutual goals in the Gloomlight, they joined forces.   Following the tracks left by the retreating goblins, the adventurers got to know one another a bit more. Knight Caerlin asked Del'Gado to "tell me about your homeland, furry" upon which Del'Gado explained that he was, in fact, from Akk-Ur. Afterwards, Malgrim explained the fundamentals of Malakadan dwarven culture and their pantheon to Del'Gado, highlighting the importance and pre-eminence of good alcohol, which the tabaxi agreed was an impressive feature of tradition. Around four hours later, the goblin tracks diverged, and the adventurers went into high alert. Going ahead of the group, Malgrim spotted unusual spots by some of the trees, but was unable to determine exactly what without a closer look; the party went closer and the hobgoblin-monk saw that the bases of the trees had been used for underground storage of supply caches, which had all been emptied. Following the dwarven doctrine of "always going right" the five adventurers followed the goblin who went to the right-hand side. Malgrim stepped right down into a well-concealed spike trap, but was able to control his fall and easily climb out of it; still, this caused a smaller ambush group consisting of six goblins, one bugbear, and one hobgoblin to attack them from scattered positions, including two who were shooting from tree canopies. Del'Gado immediately rushed up and slayed one of the tree-bound sharpshooters, causing him to fall down in pieces, with the rest hanging from a safety line. The hobgoblin led an advancement towards the adventurers, which was resisted by Malgrim, who even taunted the weakness of the goblins' poison: he heard a voice in his head accusing him of hubris, and a wave of total darkness extended from where he stood, covering the area. The bugbear moved to take down Del'Gado, but before he could disarm him, Caerlin managed to down him. The darkness eventually contracted and everyone could see clearly again; Caerlin used thunder-magic to impale one of the goblins on a sturdy tree branch, and Del'Gado tried to tackle and subdue the last sharpshooter out of his tree. Before they touched the ground, the darkness appeared again, noises sounded all around, and Del'Gado found himself on the ground holding the safety line. The bodies of the enemies, and the last living goblin, had all disappeared.   The party decided to camp. Taking first watch, Malgrim sighted a very elaborately-dressed figure wearing a mask in faded gold, standing between two trees, who was observing the party's camp from afar. Malgrim waved, and the robed figure seemed to make some sort of salute back. When the monk moved closer, the figure slowly started to dematerialise, and Malgrim decided not to go closer. Afterwards, he heard a voice in his head, darkness enveloped the figure, quickly contracted, and a goblin was now standing where the figure stood. The goblin was petrified and entirely immovable. Malgrim took the goblin and tied him to his back. At dawn, the adventurers followed the tracks again.   A camp was soon spotted, which had a dozen-fold tents, training grounds, holding cells, armoury, and was enclosed by a small palisade wall. However, there were no sentries at the front. Del'Gado immediately went up to the palisade wall and looked over, triggering a silent alarm spell that had been placed there, which Caerlin was quick to inform. A small formation of halberd-wearing hobgoblins started to make their way to the entrance, and Jacqualine placed an illusory image of Del'Gado there to keep them occupied. One of the halberdiers threw a javelin at it, but missed, and after the image jumped over the palisade, two of them marched to the palisade and tried to spot it. Speaking in goblin, they addressed a camp commander Urak, who formed up his squad just at the entrance, and ordered that the "Black One" be taken out for a search. The party, after some internal deliberation, decided to engage them here.   Knight Caerlin fired two quick spells at the group which killed two of the halberdiers instantly, whilst Malgrim and Del'Gado moved into melee. Jacqualine managed to charm one of the hobgoblins, rendering him useless. After quickly causing enormous damage to commander Urak, the "Black One," which was a black dragon wyrmling, joined the fray alongside its handler, a spellcasting hobgoblin captain. The adventurers, through great effort, eventually eliminated the commander and his whole retinue. They started to tie up the charmed halberdier, but were rudely interrupted by a robed figure dressed like a king, a figure that Malgrim recognised from his watch. Trying to attack him, Imaros noticed that the robed king was not there in a physical form.   The robed king lambasted the party for upsetting his "perfectly legitimate rebellion," and challenged the party over the concept of innocence: his associates, as he called them, only targeted soldiers of Akkon. Likewise, since the whole party either worked for the king or the Karapanate, he afforded them no exception to this distinction, and had a few negatively-laden comments hurled to the adventurers, notably not issuing this treatment to Malgrim, whom he praised for having a code of honour. Still, before he left, the robed king assured them that they would find the answers they were looking for; but before that, one last hurdle was to be overcome. He raised his right hand, and the captured halberdier, the hobgoblin captains, and one of the other halberdiers dissolved and were raised as translucent, shadowy spirits, whilst the encampment was engulfed by non-magical darkness.