The First Steps

Session Report (12/10/2023) 16/4/1409 - 28/4/1409
Party: Medyr, Stefn, Scribbles, Dessik.
Travel: 6 Hexes straight northwest and back.
Account: We set out travelling northwest to explore for swamps and forests. We moved swiftly through the twisted forest and hills thanks to Dessik's experience in the wilds, I'd much rather the sea personally but I'd need a bloody ship. We were able to conserve much of our travel rations and ate well on fresh game, mostly birds and rabbits, thanks to Dessik's hunting.
After six days travel out, with Dessik deciding the land ahead looked barren and unforageable and mindful of our food stocks for the return journey, we set about searching the area. We happened on some foreboding ruins, ancient and weathered, when we heard Goblins. Upon careful investigation, we saw a group of four of them cooking around a campfire, guarding the top of a set of stone steps heading underground.
They were caught wholly off-guard by our attack and promptly slain. After a brief investigation, we cautiously descended the steps to find a large chamber where an armoured Hobgoblin directed a group of Six Goblins in weapons training. Again we ambushed them, Dessik's uncanny affinity for shadow allowing him to shoot to great effect. Afterwards we discovered a letter on the Hobgoblin's corpse, adressed to one Grunk, instructing him to train his team in order to attempt the "Tower of Ragnarok."
Descending deeper we came upon a room filled with corpses of all manner of humanoids, piled in high several places. The stench of rot and blood hung thick in the air as we, pausing in our horror to take in the scene, perceived a group of seven shambling Zombies. Scribbles had an ingenious idea - quite unusual for a Kenku, I wonder what inspired him? - to cast an illusion of a dark cloud as cover for us to shoot from. It worked better than we imagined, the Zombies ,barely intelligent enough to notice that anything was out of place, were slow to recognize the threat and were dealt with quickly.
The next room we came to was also thick with the smell of the dead and we saw there three Ghouls. The fight was viscious but we did prevail, killing all three in quick succession. In that room we did find no small number of gold pieces. In this room also there were corpses strewn about, half-eaten and half-rotted. Greatly weary by now, we decided to head back to the surface, but first we looked into the next room down and saw a Fiendish Night Hag in her lair. We could not at that time deal with her, and someone will have to return to deal with her sometime soon.