Sanguine Sunrise #5: Dungeons and Dragons

General Summary

The group follows the goblin, who reveals his name is Jef as they travel to the Castle where he claims the necromancer is. As they arrive near the castle, they hear drills being performed. At this point, the party realizes they need to rest before venturing on as they are not yet ready to take on a full castle of goblinoids and undead, so they decide to back off, tie Jef to a tree, and prepare to assault the fortress of this dark being in the morning.
During the first watch of the night, Agronok, the newly acquired ally of the necromancer hunters, spots some dark winged figure descend from the skyline into the swamp. He ventures out to investigate the image, and when he does, he spots a hobgoblin patrol, torn to pieces. One grisly figure in particular, a hobgoblin missing his lower half stuck out to Agro, so he decided to investigate the creature, prepared to stab any attacker waiting to ambush him with his trusty punch dagger. He came upon the body, when suddenly, the hobgoblin opened its eyes in abject horror and reached out for Agro, leading to him staring into the eyes of a half orc assailant, as his last bit of life dribble out of the newly acquired hole in his neck. As Agro inspected the dying figure, he noted that he missed his lower half from a jagged bite, and a part of its lung that lay on the ground was dissolved by a caustic material. As he noted this, he heard an approaching patrol and hid as the goblins arrived, kicked the hobgoblin that was stabbed to death and left. Agro followed suit and returned to his unattended party.
The next watches, although a little harrowing from constant goblinoid patrols, go by uneventfully, or so it seems. Once everyone is prepared for the day, Agro casts mage armor and Kiwi pass without trace before setting off to sneak into Death's home. As they approach, they hear similar shouts as yesterday, but it is now from a new voice. The party moves to hide on one side of a large wooden fence, and on the other side, they realize the source of the shouting was from a hobgoblin drill instructor barking orders at a regiment on the other side. They hide there and in doing so, notice a hulking hooded figure stare at them from the entrance of the castle despite being very well cloaked in shadow. After moments of whisper arguing about what to do, the party must move around the side of the fence while the hobgoblins begin marching around it. They finally decide to let Jef pretend to tie them up and lead them inside the castle while the beast continues staring. Jef just finishes tying them up as the Hobgoblins arrive, and the hobgoblins decide to aid Jef in placing these creatures into the dungeon of the castle.
As the party passes the behemoth, it begins striking out with a shovel it had at its side. It hits the leader of the hobgoblins throwing it backwards and continues to strike into its troops as they attempt to fight back as it slashes through them and the party scurries into the castle. As they enter, they notice a hallway and a set of stairs. They clamber up the stairs, but under the weight of the party and extra goblin, the stairs crumble, and they fall into the dungeons below. As they fall into a light stream of water, most of the group, minus grimace and jef catch themselves and survive, but their ears burn as they hear shrieks of the fungus in the same room as them. The water flows through a hole into a room nearby, but before the party can investigate it, a hand the size of Skek slams against the hole. The party decide to instead create a grappling hook and head up. Luthrin summons a hooke and Agro manages to tie it to a rope, forming a grappling hook, but before he can throw it up, a pack of goblins with a couple hobgoblins appear at the top of the hole with weapons that shot fire from them. The party suffers some burns before all running into the other room and fight and kill the starving and chained giant. Sadly, Jef burned to cinders in the first room, being slain by his own allies.
After this one member of the group explores the next room before returning to the room they slayed the giant in, and with some help, he pushes the giant's corpse over some stairs to prevent others from entering. The party then sits around for an hour to regain their strength. During this time, they spot a pack of rats and it tells Luthring that, "We are hungry." This freaks out the party, so the pack escapes before any damage can be done.
The party ventures forth and sees three options to continue. First, there is a lake that they can not see the end of. Second, there is an area of argument. Third, there is another area up north. They take the last option. Once there, they run into another fork in the road. They head north, fight a beholder zombie, and then they open a chest containing poison and coin. They return to the fork and head south and find an inscription in draconic and four images of draconid creatures. A red drake, a black dragon, a copper wyrm, and a green wyvern.
The party then enters the room they heard arguments within and find 4 goblin bodies and two hobgoblins stand over a third one on the floor. The hobgoblins tell the party to back off and explain the conflict of tradition versus progress, fought for by the goblins and hobgoblins respectively. Although the party sees a good looking greataxe in a shrine in the room, they decide to back off before anything erupts. Soon after, the party finds the remains of the goblin leader in that confrontation, half eaten. They decide to move the giants body, and head up the stairs they previously covered.
Once up the stairs, they decided to take the passage east rather than their other options. In here they ran into a throne room/workshop with many workbenches and research tables. As they became curious of the room, a part metal part giant creature revealed itself, charging at the party. A difficult fight ensued where many of the members were badly injured, but via Luthrin's binding chains and harsh cuts, the giant was slain. After this, Agro inspected the metal implants to find they were strictly mechanical and alchemical in nature, barring any runic or other enchantments. Luthrin found an interesting looking drawer, and decided to open it carefully. He stood back and used a magical hand to open the drawer, and he managed to avoid being hit by a sprung trap intended for thieves that released acid on the contents of the drawer instead. Once he reached the drawer, he realized he ruined some sort of art piece and burnt away some pieces of some kind of notes. The notes included the same runes as the inscription in the room downstairs. Beneath these runes, another language was written.
Agro managed to translate the rudimentary goblin language to orcish and read it due to their similar dwarvish scripts. However some of the letters have been burnt away by acid, and this is all they manage to see: In the beginning of time, all creatures spoke to the gods, … The entity that gave form to dragons made a deal… Second he said, “The wyvern is after at least one other, leaving a gasly toxin in its wake.” … The dragon shall come afore the poison in pits of bubbling green.” … the black struck out at the entity,... a wyrm did not receive place, nor element.
Agro becomes enamored by the puzzle, disregards all other paths in the castle and returns to the area containing the draconid etchings. They press the images in the correct order based on their interpretations of the reading, and this causes absolutely nothing to happen. To test a hypothesis, Skek shoots a poison spray into the green wyvern, and in response, the wyvern's image retaliates by shooting poison back at Skek, and knocking him unconscious.
The party decides their best option is to collect the stomach acid of a creature to use for the black dragon. They return to the giant they killed and plan to begin carving. As they do so, they notice the three hobgoblins from earlier arrive in front of them.

Report Date

25 Jun 2020