Session 1 - The adventure begins
General Summary
The story of our future well-knit group of adventurers starts in one of the many taverns found throughout Lunaris. It's getting pretty close to dinner time when the tavern goes quiet for a second as the door is flung open and a human cattlefarmer called Fred Fredrikson is standing their, sweat covering his body and the blood drained from his face: "Go...gob....goblins!" he finally utters, "out of the forest, near the old war camp.". In disbelief one of the fellow patrons calls out: "Right, ya must be daft." and the conversations picks up again and the band starts to play. Our future group of unwilling adventurers, just keeps an eye on the lad who wanders to the bar and orders some ale. After some discussion amongst themselves, (Warlock) walks over to Fred and asks: "How many goblins did you see?", to which Fred answers still in disbelief himself: "Twenty, thirty, maybe more... I don't know, it's not like I stuck around to count. I hollered my arse out of there with my cows and ran straight here." he takes another gulp from his ale. "Why didn't you go to the federation?" (Warlock asks). "Why would they help me? I thought I'd have more chance here than with them...". "Maybe there's a bounty let's go and check, shall we?", Fred drinks the rest of his ale and goes out the tavern with the party following him (some more willing than others).
They arrive at the Federation's main office and enter the it, inside the main hall, there are some doors leading to various locations inside the building. There's a single large desk with an obese Human snoring loudly in his chair. (Rogue) coughs trying to wake him up, but as nothing happens, he leaps up the desk and slams his foot down. This startles our sleeping bureacrat: "Huh... what do you want?" as he looks at (Rogue), (Rogue) simply leaps back off the desk and points at (Warlock). "Hello there, this man over here..." pointing at Fred: "has spotted some Goblins." The clerk shifts his gaze towards Fred and goes: "and what do you want?", to which Fred turns an ever lighter shade as he has no idea what's going on: "I don't know..." he stammers out. "Well, we're hear to wonder if there's a bounty?" (Warlock) intercedes, before Fred has the potential of fainting from the shear weight resting on his shoulders. "Bounty...?" the clerk goes: "...oh...oh bounty, why yes." he finally says as it clears on him what's going on. He reaches underneath the desk and pulls out a huge tome at least a couple inches thick. He flips it open to a page and starts looking through the various entries, while his finger skid over the page. "Ah yes, here it is... 1 silver piece per goblin head. Does that do it for you?" at which point (Druid) casts Charm Person, befuddling the mind of the clerk and just asks him: "Isn't there something extra and what's your darkest secret, in case you decide to come after us.". Charmed by (Druid), the clerk goes: "Now why would I come after you, we're friends... well, the bounty is actually 4 silver pieces per head, but I usually just pocket the 3 silver myself." he says without pausing, a confused look appears on his face: "Why am I telling you this, I could lose my job... Oh and I also slept with my boss's wife." he puts his hands in front of his mouth: "I'm sorry, I didn't want to tell you that. Please don't tell him." To which the party just smiles and heads out of the office with Fred in tow.
They leave Lunaris behind and head for the old war camp. After about 2 hours of walking they reach the outskirts, Fred points to where he saw the goblins and (Rogue) goes out by his little self to investigate. He sticks close to the grass as he stealthily combs through the camp that is overgrown from years of abandonment and some of the old buildings. A particular building catches his eye as there's a lot of unearthed rocks and dirt lying around. It's made of stone and wood and seems to have been an old storage room of some sort. Crawling through the high grass he enters the building, half of the first room is filled with rocks, ground and a lot of broken mining equipment. To his left, there's a closed door. He grabs a rather large rock and throws it at the door. He hears a high pitched yelp and a crunching sound as the door gives way from the force and something is squashed by the weight of the door and rock. He sees the flickering light of torch appear, followed by three goblins. He runs out the door and hides in the tall grass. As he sneaks back to the others he hears a goblin curse and shout something to his companions, a couple seconds later he hears the sound of a horn filling the otherwise quiet air.
A bit further away, the party is alerted by the sound of a horn they look around the area, but see nothing, until (Rogue) reveals himself and explains about what he did and what happened. Coming to terms with the fact that they probably alerted the goblins, they venture towards the building. Looking in the second room, it appears the goblins have dug a giant hole and a very deep one. Roc picks up a rock and throws it in and the sound shortly after reveals that it's a pretty deep hole. He leaves Fang behind and climbs down, using the rope (apparently everyone ignores the ladder for some reason...) shortly followed by (Barbarian) and (Druid). It doesn't take long before trouble finds our threesome of adventurers, just as (Yuan-ti) is climbing down. They are assaulted by two creatures that look like upright lizards, but with a rocklike skin, accompanied by four goblins. As the rock-lizards (troglodytes) go in melee, the goblins pepper the party with arrows from their bows. It doesn't take long for the first Troglodyte to meet its gory demise as his disfigured head (from Yuan-ti's Poison Spray) is severed from his body. Shortly after the second one dies, the group focuses on the goblins as everyone beside (Grung) is down in the cave. After dismembering one and knocking another one unconscious, the remaining goblins flee the scene. As Roc is the only one capable of speaking with the vermin, he's put in charge of interrogation. At first the goblin isn't very co-operative, but after his leg gets sliced of his body he starts saying, almost chanting: "Lunaris will fall for ever and ever and ever..." repeating it with a widening grin on his face. Roc snaps the goblins frail neck and the body goes limp, the head lolling with a smile ingrained on its face.
After some more scouting of the cave system they realize, due to distance and general direction, that they're heading back towards Lunaris. The tunnels start dividing as they approach what is now essentially underneath Lunaris. Along the way they also start to see an increasing number of markings, which (Druid) and (Barbarian) identify as Explosive Runes, which normally explode upon proximity, but these seem to be inert and burned into the stone tunnels. After (Rogue) scouts ahead a bit, he comes across an enormous open cavern, within view of his torch he can see multiple more tunnels leading up to this giant hole underneath Lunaris. It doesn't take long, before his general area is peppered with arrows coming from far below. So the party eventually decides to go down. It's here where they find a goblin leader, his one-armed shaman (currently envelloped in a magic barrier) with two magical lines crackling with power streaming towards two nearby pillars and a high number of smaller goblins. He tells his shaman to complete the ritual while he deals with the intruders. After a long game of cat-and-mouse where the goblin leader keeps switching places with his goblin soldiers, who are then killed in gruesome fashion, the leader is finally killed. The reinforcements stop coming and the eventually one of the pillars is destroyed, when the last of the goblins loses his life. This angers the shaman, sending him into a frenzy, but he too finds his demise at the hands of our Yuanti archer.
The party collects all the heads, head back out and bring the heads back to the federation. At first they don't want to believe them, but after some careful discussions, the federation has a look for themselves and discover the plot that would've seen Lunaris plunge into the depths for all eternity... As a way of thank you the party has earned a favour from the Skyshard Federation, to be used at a later point as well as the free use of their reviving services.
Rewards Granted
- Party is now level 2.
- 8 gold pieces and 4 silver pieces
- A revived Roc, he'll be a little feeble for the coming days
- A favour from the Skyshard Federation
Missions/Quests Completed
- Investigate the Goblin sightings
- Save Lunaris from being blown out of Ashteran
Notes
If you've reached reading this far, good on you. I'll be adding your characters to World Anvil as well, so you have a place to write down everything from your point of view.
Report Date
17 Nov 2023
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