What Smells Worse?

General Summary

From the Journal of Tyengandrill

Ches 19, 1373 (Year of Rogue Dragons)

The ‘what smells worse’ game! I will tell you that dead dire wolf smells worse than live dire wolf. Dead goblin smells way better than a snarling, spitting and heavy breathing one; the blood masks their stick believe it or not! Carrion Crawler? I just held my breath. All these we fought in the goblin warren. This was not what I was thinking about when I imagined a ‘fun adventure’; nor is the combat at all like my service with the Knights of the Tel’Quessir, this was a chaotic ebb and surge of death. On an intellectual note, I almost feel bad for the poor Carrion Crawler; here it is munching on its human corpse, sitting in its pile of refuse and in burst a mob of snarling and screaming small folk who chop it to bits.

Lots of Answers

I’ll start with the Human Question. Here are some orders we found on one of the human corpses.
“Someone is on our trail, and we needed the goblins to intercept the delivery for the goods to disappear. Trace the goblins back to their lair and wipe them out – no loose ends. The two casks need to be delivered to the stall of Zarcos Dourstone in the Ironspur Trade Center. Middle of the night – no witnesses. Do not bring any spice containers you recover to the trade center – we can’t afford to have anyone making that connection. Once you’ve delivered the goods, use any proceeds from the spices to pay the boys – no tithe – completing the delivery is the guild’s cut. If you fuck up – you better be dead – if not, you will be.”

In another hand scrawled on the bottom: “Oh – casks are magically sealed – directive Do Not Open – penalty DEATH”

That explains all the human corpses here at least.

The Demon Tunnels Question.

This one is incredibly interesting and made the whole crawling through a goblin warren worth it! We found a large room/area with three summoning circles and power binding runes. Pacing in through that area is a Pentadrone! A creature of absolute order. Here is a rough sketch:

It was completely alien, but didn’t consider us a threat. It engaged us in conversation and shared a lot of information. I’ll paraphrase, it is called Pentadrone 1298 and it has been guarding this summoning area and imprisoned howler in the powered runes. Specifically, 186 years ago the Demon Lord Mu-Tahn Laa was plane shifting his keep, Slaughtergarde, into the material plane. The point of incursion was in Vaasa and there were no local forces to oppose this incursion. Deals were struck with the Modrons and Celestials to oppose this incursion. Slaughtergarde exploded and pieces of it were scattered. This place is one of those pieces. There are still two Shadow Folk and a Hobgoblin Cleric of Maglubiyet, who sought out this place remaining. It asked us to collapse the tunnel when we are done to re-secure this fragment of Slaughtergarde.

We just finished off a goblin beast tamer and his dire wolf. The little green bastard was stabling in the Slaughtergarde Library! So many ruined books and so many missing, where are the rest? I did find an apprentice’s spell book with some first order spells in it at least.

So it must be decided, do we continue on and try to defeat the hobgoblin cleric and the two shadow folk, plus whatever else or do we retreat and recuperate? We are nearly spent, but the thought of the goblin cleric getting away or jumping us in our sleep propels us to push onward after short break. That and the two healing potions that are consumed by our injured warriors adds some confidence as well.

Notes

Post from the Game Session on December 5, 2016

Report Date

05 Dec 2016