S1 E10: Chasing off the Reclamation

General Summary

Finally getting some time to think after a series of vicious skirmishes, the party decides after a brief discussion to go back to Raven's Rock Keep then over to the cave that Willow's map marks as cave K. But as they're leaving, literally climbing the rock pile to exit at cave mouth #C, they realize they haven't yet checked in with Voshagul, who had set them on the course to destroy Maglubiyet in the first place.
So they leave through the cave mouth and circle back to entrance #B, heading for the shaman in area 10. Along the way through the caves to the Shaman they notice 2 goblins in spiffy uniforms labeled PACC on the sleeve, as well as other noncombatant Orcs with them, scrubbing bloodstains off the stone floor. A short while later they're enjoying refreshments with a nervous Voshagul, who evidently didn't think they'd return at all; but they retold the story of the previous encounter (see Session 9 ), and Gormdas, the last surviving Orc from Maglubiyet's forces, verifies the portions he was witness to, namely that no fight was necessary with Maglubiyet or the remaining red fang as they were taken, evidently as punishment, by their bat god. After some hesitation on Voshagul's part, the party is paid the fairly astonishing sum of 200 platinum which she seems perhaps understandably unwilling to part with, and nervous that the party will betray them and kill the weak force remaining for additional gold - because that's what an Orc would likely do. She seemed sincere enough, but they also know she could have stopped with 100, or even 50, and it's doubtful anyone would have complained, when a single platinum is worth more than a normal person's wages for a week. 
They got a weird feeling, but decided she seemed more clumsy or someone not used to diplomacy/negotiation than anything malicious. More than this, she worries about the future, and seems to suggest that she may as well pay the party all tribe's liquid wealth because they will be unable to survive as such a small group here now, and going to the Keep with all that money is ludicrous when they would likely all be shot dead from the parapets before even entering the Keep; and she is not upset by this, in fact stating that it would be entirely fair of the guards there to do so. As the party tucks in to the barrack rooms for a rest, she tells them that she has no control over the other Orcs in the tribe, but she advises that they will all most likely make the trek over to live with the Gnolls, mentioning that they live in the cave marked #J on the map. 
Keebler shares their map with her then and she points out the inhabitants of a number of the other caves - "Stay out of the cave marked G here. It's a miserable place, contaminated with slimes and fungus-monsters." She also points out that the Goblins call themselves the Clot-Cutters and live in D, and a proud Ogre mercenary named "Kirbozag son of Ozag, the Bearslayer" Lives in E, and the Hobgoblins - the Hai Kainan - live in F, and that all three of these caverns seem connected by passages or secret doors. The Bugbears - "Lemon Lords" is the name she recalls - are the Orcs' neighbors to the west but they had no relations or communications with them, and they seem to have none with their genetic cousins, the Goblins and Hobgoblins. Cave I also comes with a warning, that it is said to hide a great treasure but also to have shifting and illusory passageways connected to a Minotaur that chases and kills people in its maze; She calls it immortal, as something that has been here fifty years at least, as long as the memory of her tribe in these caves, but also speculates that perhaps it's not alive at all and is some kind of enchantment or magic effect on those passages, cast by a forgotten magic-user before the Orcs came here. She doesn't mention cave K other than being the source of their troubles; the party told her the batswarms that had been Malbyish and the red fang went directly there.
Eventually, finally, the party completes their long rest, and decides that what they need to do before heading back to the Keep is to go back and loot the throne room Malbyish had been in when he was turned into the bats. They leave Gormdas behind with Vosh and head back to the White Spear's area, heading to the double-lobed throne room there throne to loot it, since they only took the armor and obvious things. After struggling with that giant door bar a second time, they head back into very familiar rooms, and when exiting the first room on the White Spear side, find a couple Hobgoblin scouts in the room that had the pail and the centipedes. At first, Mae wants to spare them, but when one shoots at her and grazes her with an arror, she goes Dire Wolf and rips its throat out. They fight the other, and it eventually tries to flee the room - but not towards the exit, instead moving to the secret door it evidently already knows about, to go deeper into the lair. The party briefly captures and then kills the second Hobgoblin, but realizes after the fact that this suggests there are more of them on the other side of the door, and while the party was shooting the breeze with Voshagul these Hobgoblins were here working for eight hours on clearing out this Orc Lair...Opening the door, they are confronted by 5 Hobgoblins, one a captain, another a spellcaster. A vicious fight ensues, hobgoblins having great armor and good weapons and making more challenging opponents than Orcs. Xi Shi gains control of the battlefield and wisely splits the Hobgoblin coterie with Cloud of Daggers. But the Hobgoblins have a spellcaster, and she casts a fireball perfectly placed to catch all of the party in its blast area. Keebler, ironically the most agile under normal circumstances, takes the brunt of the blast, but the others duck away to at least take less damage.  Mae hit the caster with moonbeam, but the inevitable second fireball was surely coming. The Hobgoblin captain tried coming to his spellcaster's aid, but he was hampered by Lorfel's time-stuttering spell and could only watch as the puny little turtle-person somehow dusted his own spellcaster with a different spell. The Captain and one warrior run off around the corner, and the remaining two Hobgoblins are slain. The party doesn't pursue them, but it's unclear if there are others, and whether or not the Hobgoblins have already looted that same throne room, reached through the door in the northern wall during the entire fight, or not.

Rewards Granted

• Quarterstaff of Water Locating, +1 (https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/5069079-quarterstaff-of-water-locating-1)
• 2 x Longsword
• 2 x Longbow
• 200 Platinum pieces

Missions/Quests Completed

• "Malbyish slain"
• "Meet the Hai Kainan"
• "Hobgoblin Devastator, Devastated"

Character(s) interacted with

Voshigul, Orc Shamaness

Created Content

Quarterstaff of Water Locating

Report Date

31 May 2022

Primary Location

The Caves of Chaos

Secondary Location

The Borderland Marches