The Green Hag's Den

Life, Achievement/ Win

The party is lured into a Green Hag's lair, but manage to defeat the Green Hag and her minions. They discover a young human girl, Emma Laith, was being held captive within a large iron cage. They free Emma and eventually decide their next course of action is to reunite her with her family in Marsember.

After a quick breakfast at the same table they dined at the night prior, the party is back on the road bright and early the next morning. They head straight to the south east outskirts of Hermit's Wood and begin searching and investigating. Immediately, they realize that as they approach the forest edge, the sounds of wildlife seem to vanish all together. The party is a bit on edge with the lack of wildlife noises and decides to proceed cautiously into the woods to investigate for signs of anything that resembled a green dragon lair. They eventually come across a clearing near a small creek where it was evident that someone had camped for a night, but it looked to have been at least a couple days prior when it was last visited. Stella's ranger skills detect the presence of fey within a mile of their location and deeper into the heart of Hermit's wood.   They decide to continue deeper north, but the forest in this area is much more dense and way more difficult to traverse. The heavy foliage from the forest not only impedes travel, but was disrupting navigation as the party had to constantly change directions to circumvent the denser sections of the underbrush. The innumerable tree branches and leaves constantly obstructed any attempts at moving in a straight path or getting a clear view of the area ahead. This slowed the parties pace considerably and despite searching a full day, the party fails to find any signs of a green dragon lair. With night about to set again, the party decides their best course of action is to set up camp on the outskirts of the strange forest. Caddell uses his mystical wizard powers to create a 5 foot wide 10 foot deep trench around the entire perimeter of their camp. The party then sets to preparing food and winding down for the night. Frozen volunteers for 1st watch while Oharn offers to take the 2nd watch.   The night passes uneventfully under Frozen's watch and Oharn is near the middle of the 2nd shift when things take a strange twist. Oharn, while patrolling the perimeter of the camp, hears a rustling noise from within the center of the camp in the general direction of where everyone had gathered to sleep. Instinctively, Oharn spins to investigate the source of the sound to discover Sir Sleepsalot slowly rise to his feet with his eyes still firmly shut. The halfling rogue casually trots to the edge of the camp with his arms outstretched then deftly leaps across the trench surround the camp. Upon landing on the other side, the rogue breaks into a brisk jog headed back into Hermit's forest.   Oharn begins shouting frantically waking the remaining party members. The commotion from Oharn causes everyone to quickly scan their immediate surroundings for danger while scampering to their feet amidst the confusion. Oharn with a tone of urgency describes to everyone what he had witnessed regarding the recent disappearance of their halfling companion. Caddell, sensing the urgency of their situation, immediately casts a prepared spell to magically fill a small section of the surrounding trench with a bridge formed from the soil that was piled along the inner banks of the trench. Once across the bridge, the remaining party members break into a full sprint headed in the general direction of where their sleepwalking halfling was last seen.   The group of adventurers rush recklessly into the forest desperately looking for signs of their missing halfling companion and after several minutes they spot the halfling through a clearing barely visible through a beam of moonlight that managed to break through the thick canopy of leaves above. As they move closer, Sir Sleepsalot darts off chasing behind a small floating globe of bluish-white light which is moving around evasively to avoid being caught by the halflings outstretched hands, yet remaining close enough to encourage a continued chase deeper into the forest.   Despite the parties best efforts to keep up, they eventually lose sight of the halfling again, but they eventually arrive at a strange clearing. At the center of the clearing is an ancient yew tree devoid of leaves which starkly contrasts with the taller silver birch trees thickly covered in leaves. The canvas of leaves created by the surrounding silver birch trees prevent the pale moonlight from penetrating anywhere outside the small grove. The party members carefully creep into the small clearing, examining the ground as they advance for signs of the halfling. Oddly, no footprints of the halfling can be found anywhere along their path, but as they get closer to the tree without leaves in the center, they spot enormous footprints belonging to a giant size creature.   Eventually they arrive near the ancient yew tree and just past the tree is a hillside rock cave with several points of entry. The foul stench of rotting flesh seems to emanate from the middle of 3 visible cave entrances, forcing the party members to wrinkle their noses in disgust. While examining the different cave entry points, Featherface spots a giant like creature in the northern most entry way hiding behind a section of the cave wall. After passing this info along to everyone else, the ranger encourages the group to avoid attacking the creature before they had a chance to speak with him first. Caddell agrees and tries to persuade the creature to reveal himself for a chat. The creature cautiously peers his head around the corner to see who was addressing him and the party gets a rather clear view of his face which reveals the creature to be an ogre.   After a brief dialogue, it's clear the ogre wants nothing to do with the party and after warning them to leave, he retreats further into the caves structure in an attempt to remain hidden from sight. From within the center cave entrance a disgusting green humanoid creature resembling a naked old lady with rotting flesh and a morbidly disfigured body appears to face the party from within 30 feet of the cave entrance. She screeches and cackles while taunting the party to enter her caves. She continues to taunts the party by mentioning her halfling rogue guest within. Frozen refuses to bargain with the creature and demands she return her halfling friend unharmed. Eventually, she loses her patience and lets an arrow fly from her readied long bow. The arrow penetrates through the ugly creature's left forearm entirely causing her to recoil in pain while letting out a high pitched enraged scream before disappearing back inside the cavern.   The barbarian, Nimbus, decides to circle down towards the southern cave opening and finds herself within 10 feet of another ogre, except this ogre was much less shy in appearance and already advancing in her direction. The startled yet mildly annoyed ogre heaves his massive club into the air and brings it down in a thunderous crash scoring a direct hit on the barbarian, but not before the barbarian managed to enter a trance-like state of primal rage. The devastating blow from the ogre barely registers in the barbarian's mind despite taking the full brunt of the ogre's club. The ogre's eyes widen in astonishment as he raises his club expecting to see the broken body of his opponent mangled beneath only to find a very disgruntled and bruised up barbarian glaring back at him clearly unimpressed.   Caddell is the first to react and launches a web spell on the ogre completely disabling his ability to move. The barbarian Nimbus seizes the opportunity to deliver a nearly fatal blow with her great axe causing the ogre to stagger to his knees, still encased in sticky webbing. Oharn charges the same ogre and follows up with a perfectly placed leaping mace strike to the side of the partially prone ogre's head. The mace blow kills the injured ogre instantly splattering blood and skull fragments in a wide arc in front of him. But just as everyone is about to catch their collective breath, the wooded area surrounding the party begins to rustle suspiciously followed by the sound of clicks accompanied by the flight of crossbow bolts whizzing through the air. One bolt barely misses the monk as it whizzes harmlessly inches over his head, but another bolt manages to score a direct hit on the wizard. Caddell grimaces in pain as he sees the crossbow bolt's head protruding from his left thigh.   The adventurers soon find themselves in a small skirmish with a group of 8 goblins armed with crossbows and accompanied by a couple worgs. They manage to dispatch every last one of the ambushing goblin patrol with ease. The party turns their attention to the only creature they could still see from their position, the lone ogre still cowering deep inside the north most cave opening. Caddell and Featherface attempt to convince the ogre to help them, but it's clear the ogre is deathly afraid of the ugly green creature they spotted in the central cave opening. Featherface decides to try and trick the ogre by telling him that the creature he is afraid of is dead and manages to completely fool the ogre with his fib. The ogre is immediately ecstatic by the news and repeatedly shouts, "The hag is dead!" while rushing out of the cave and eventually vanishing from sight much to the monk's dismay.   Meanwhile the ranger, Stella, begins to fear the worst when the grotesque green creature fails to return to the cave entrance and decides to charge inside the central cave entrance by herself. About 40 feet in, she arrives at the point where the southern cave opening merges with the central tunnel forming a Y intersection leading deeper into the cave structure. She continues deeper into the caves but before she can get more than 5 feet from the intersection, she triggers a well hidden tripwire. The tripwire causes a roundish boulder roughly 200 lbs. in weight to dislodge from along the top of the cavern wall which lands directly where the tripwire was triggered striking Stella in her right shoulder with a glancing blow sending Stella tumbling to the ground clutching her injured shoulder in pain.   End of Session #4.