Summary
Fizzwig seemed particularly fascinated by Splug, peppering him with questions about the comfort level of his cell and if there were any neat contraptions down in the dungeons, the iron maiden apparently not qualifying as esoteric enough for the gnome. The rest of the party retreated to the main room to discuss their plans, but Vaunea pointed at the still occupied gnome and said she had better keep an eye on him. Ruhsbaar collapsed on the bench in the corner of the room, silently watching as the others discussed which of the rooms Splug had drawn out looked the most promising. "Don't forget the other door just outside of here that isn't marked on this map. Maybe he left it off on purpose, we should check that first to see if we can trust Splug" said Baelfius. "Then this chief," responded Daelius. The rest chorused their assent and moved off to the door. Daelius turned to the seated monk and said,"Ruhsbaar, stay, meditate and regain your strength. Some of us are scouting more of this forsaken keep, join us when you are able. For now may Torm watch over and protect you." A weak nod from Ruhsbaar sent Daelius after the others who were already huddled around the small door just west of the torture chambers entrance.

Baelfius leaned in to the door, banging his helmet against it before declaring the room silent. Before anyone could check for traps or do a more careful check of the door, the tiefling opened it and stepped inside. Crates of rope and piles of shovels and pickaxes lay against the back wall of a small room. "Not very efficient to be placing the digging supplies so far from 'dig'," remarked Rolem. Daelius picked up a shovel and weighed it in his hand. "We should take a few just in case we need to do some digging ourselves. No telling what they are up to, but I doubt it is good." A few shovels and pickaxes later, the party moved across the hallway to the large double doors that should be leading to the goblin chieftain.

A long creak echoed down the hallway beyond as Rolen pushed the door open, but it seemed to go unnoticed as a few excited goblin voices came back towards them from down the corridor. The party dimmed their lights and moved forward, letting Rolen lead the way with his keen elven eyes. Rolen suddenly stopped and jerked his head back, but before the party realized what was happening he let out a loud sneeze. With yet another would-be ambush thwarted, the warriors charged forward, rounding a corner to a dimly lit room. Two goblins were frantically grabbing their weapons from where they lay on a table that was dominated by a metal cage similar to the ones the party had seen out by the dragon burial ground. The melee fighters payed no attention to it and instead rushed the goblins.

When Rolen entered the room he carefully surveyed the situation, and when his eyes fell upon the cage he let out a choked scream. Within the cage was a golden tinted chitinous creature and two rats, fighting for the amusement of the goblins that were doubtlessly supposed to be on guard duty. The rats were no match for the young kruthik and were quickly dispatched, but Rolen did not need to see the dead rats to know how dangerous kruthiks could be. "Kill it, before it escapes!" he shouted, knocking arrow after arrow towards it and ignoring the fierce fight the rest of the party was engaged in. Daelius once again found Rolen behind him not paying attention, and another large backswing of his greatsword clipped the poor half-elf on his shoulder. A shouted apology was cut short as the two curtains in the back of the room were thrown aside and approximately nine goblins flooded into the room screaming.

Galstaff saw the superior numbers of the goblin and decided to try improve the odds. He unbolted the cage and lifted out the thrashing kuthrik, catching a nasty bite on his hand as he did so. He then used his arcane powers to toss the kuthrik into the midst of the approaching goblins, where it began tearing at everything nearby. Daelius ran to confront these distracted goblins as Baelfius and Pale Noon held back the other wave of goblins, working in close concert.

A miffed Rolen peppered arrows into the two groups of goblin, but few of his shots connected and he seemed more concerned with composing new song lyrics on the spot than contributing to the battle at hand.



Seeing how easily Pale Noon was defeating the goblins Rolen shouted "You lot are getting beat by a halfling, how pathetic are you?" Rather than breaking the spirits of his foes, this comment broke Pale Noon's concentration as he remembered being mocked back at the warrior academy, and his next swing went wide of the mark.

Meanwhile Daelius had found himself overextended. He had pursued the goblins back into the hallway behind the curtain, but some reinforcements and an enraged kuthrik that had bit clean through his plate armor leggings were too much for him to handle on his own. Galstaff ran up to help him, throwing the kuthrik towards the reinforcements and summoning a pillar of crackling lightning between them and Daelius. Pale Noon and Rolen had flanked the reinforcements from the other side, and were able to see a fat goblin commanding the others while shooting crossbow bolts down the hallway. After taking a hit from the concentrated crossbow fire, Rolen ran nine feet to the side, out of sight of the crossbowmen but right next to the kuthrik. Pale Noon followed and let out a fearsome roar aimed at the chitinous creature, which responded with a fierce bite just below the halfling's right knee.

Galstaff continued to force the kuthrik into the goblin ranks with his mage hand, and the goblins finally overwhelmed the creature. Baelfius took care of the remaining goblin warriors allowing Daelius and Rolen to rush forward and engage the crossbowmen in the chieftain's room. They both skirted the broken carapace of the kuthrik, not truly believing it was dead and were too preoccupied by it to properly engage the crossbowmen, allowing the chief to slip back through some curtains hung on south wall of the room. Pale Noon took control of the situation, and with his voice ringing in Daelius' ears the tiefling swung his greatsword in an arc above his dead and sent it crashing through first the crossbow and then the goblin.

The battle apparently over, the party rushed forward to pull back the curtain through which the fat goblin had escaped. Only a bed and a small chest were in the corner separated by the curtain, and no sign of the goblin. Methodically banging on the walls did reveal a secret door, but no the mechanism with which to open it. The members of the party hefted the stolen pickaxes and began attacking the false wall, taking turns.

Meanwhile the chest was opened to reveal a pile of gold, and a magical scroll was found on a nearby desk. Baelfius held it up, but since he was looking at it upside down he couldn't make head or tail of it. Rolen took it from him and rotated it ninety degrees to the right, insisting it looked much more arcane this way... but it was still gibberish. Finally Galstaff held it up correctly and easily identified it as a ritual scroll for an Eye of Alarm, the same spell that the party had triggered upon first entering the dungeons.

Daelius explored the other rooms that the goblins had emerged from and found yet another storage room. He heard some strange noises coming from one of the barrels, though, and after opening it found an armed goblin who had hidden from the battle. Taken by surprise Daelius suffered an initial blow, but made short work of the goblin after that.

The party finally broke through the secret door, and after nine steps leading down to a short passage they found an exit that opened upon a dark hallway. Rolen applied his keen senses to their surroundings and declared that they were just to the east of the dungeon entrance, and that the "dig" marked on Splug's map was down the hallway to the east. The sound of a muted explosion came rumbling down the hallway from the east, and they decided to dim their lights and investigate. Loose pieces of rock started littering the hallway, and Baelfius stumbled over a piece of stone and his shield clattered against the side of the hallway. Cursing their luck the party charged forward into the room and found much of the floor broken and removed leaving a nine foot drop to the bottom of the excavation.

A single goblin was visible within the circle cast by their torches and arcane light, and it threw a ceramic pot towards them with a shout before scuttling back into the shadows. The pot exploded as it landed in the middle of the vanguard, bits of heated shrapnel penetrating their armor. Other goblins could be heard shouting back and forth in the darkness, but these were drowned out by predatory calls as two guards drakes ran out of the darkness and towards the ramp leading to the party. Daelius and Pale Noon moved to cover the top of the ramp from the leading drake as Galstaff dropped a pillar of lightning cutting the second drake off from the ramp. Seeing the second drake cut off, Baelfius jumped gracefully down from high ground and drew its attention away from the ramp and onto himself.

Ceramic jars continued to rain out of the darkness, chipping away at the party as it was forced to deal with the ferocity of the guard drakes. The first one fell as Daelius called upon Torm's divine power and struck as Pale Noon distracted it and Baelfius managed to hold his ground against the second one. Just as the party began to move down to help Baelfius, two dark shapes detached themselves from the ceiling and swooped in to attack Rolen. Taken aback by these new foes, Rolen retreated a short way down the hallway, moving out of the light cast by his companions. The two shadowhunter bats honed in on the separated half-elf, diving after him into the hallway. "Go help him," shouted Daelius, "I will go help Baelfius."

Galstaff and Pale Noon ran back to Rolen, who had grabbed on to one of the bats. Pale Noon found himself once again dumbfounded by Rolen's attempts to direct him when he shouted "Hurry halfling, give it a good fucking from behind." The three adventurers recovered from this setback and sent one of the bats fleeing into a side passage before Rolen, haloed by a light conjured from Galstaff, let loose an arrow that sent gore flying backwards and spattering Galstaff's robes. In the meantime, the goblins had run out of alchemist fire and started raining javelins down on Daelius and Baelfius from nearby platforms. Daelius attempted to leap onto one of these platforms, but weighed down by his platemail he misjudged his leap and clanged loudly off of the side of the excavation wall. Frustrated with his failure, Daelius let out a guttural roar as he threw the shovel he had been carrying at the nearest goblin, hitting it square in the face.

Pale Noon rushed down the side of excavation to flank the drake that was beginning to drive Baelfius back, and Daelius called upon the power of Torm to draw the drake's attacks upon himself. The drake narrowly missed a ferocious bite aimed at Daelius' neck, but the concentrated efforts from the party were able to bring it down before any more damage was done. One of the goblins had slipped down from the high ground, and was quickly surrounded once the drake was defeated. Rolen remained on the high ground trying ineffectively to throw both insults and arrow in their general direction. Galstaff did give one of the goblins pause when he offered to hire it for 10 gold a day, but apparently it was getting a better deal now and didn't understand why it would want to take such a poor offer. With a rude gesture from his mage hand floating nearby, Galstaff turned and threw a blast of fire down into the middle of the battle on the floor hitting Pale Noon as well as the two goblins now engaged in melee combat.

Soon the only goblin left standing was on an isolated platform, and Daelius tried his luck throwing digging implements again with less spectacular results. This barrage did give Pale Noon time to clamber up the side of platform to face the goblin. The goblin attempted to rush the halfling and push him back down into the excavated pit, but the lower center of gravity and the grappling training from the warrior college let Pale Noon reverse the rush and instead throw the goblin down. Daelius ran over, exhausted, and threw his weight down upon his sword as he impaled the dazed goblin before sliding down to his knees and offering a mumbled prayer to Torm. Not being able to see what was happening, Galstaff tried to scramble down into the pit but instead fell with a loud thump and a groan.

The party members slowly tended to their wounds and shuffled about the excavated floor, trying to determine what the goblins had been up to. The only object of interest was an apparently recently unearthed holy symbol of Selune, which Baelfius recognized as a symbol enchanted for battle. Selune was often in opposition with Shar, her evil sister deity, and this ancient symbol seemed to indicate a further connection with an ancient struggle against the shadows. What had happened here those long centuries ago?

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OOC
Well that was a long session. I feel like the summaries are getting quite verbose, but I don't want to leave out anyone's cool stuff so I guess it is inevitable. I know I mentioned this a few times during the session and wanted to reiterate it here: I am curious to see how far the DnD 4e healing surges can be pushed and want to see if we can capture some of that adrenaline rush of being close to death from the early editions of DnD. Taking a glance at the blue bars in roll20 now, I think we are getting there but please let me know how it feels from a player's perspective. I don't actually want to kill you guys off, but I do want it to feel challenging. In regards to forum RP, I want you to stay limited to the dig site and just the five of you that were there on Sunday for now. I am planning on doing a short session with the other three on Wednesday, and I can figure out how to merge everyone back together after that. Cheers!

Experience

• 210xp (1050/5) for the chieftain's chambers

  • Pale Noon, Daelius, Baelfius, Rolen and Galstaff

• 185xp (925/5) for the dig site

  • Pale Noon, Daelius, Baelfius, Rolen and Galstaff

Exhaustion gripped Daelius as he knelt over the last goblin corpse, and it was all he could do to keep a hold of his sword. Gripping the pommel with both hands to stabilize himself, he bowed his head and closed his eyes in prayer.



Daelius remained kneeling for several more seconds and just as he was about to gather his strength to rise he felt a cool stream of air pass by him. A disembodied voice whispered in his ear, and a blurry vision came to Daelius before he blinked and it was gone. "The rift must remain closed, light bearer. Do not fail as I did." A stone sarcophagus with a knight carved in high relief and holding a sword with three diamonds set in the blade that caught and held the light, leaving three spots still swimming across his vision as he opened his eyes and stood pensively.

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OOC
DnD IRC gambling shenanigans happened.

<Galstaff> I wonder if I can change the representation on this amulet of Shar to Mystra. The thing gives me the willies as it is.