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Session 18, Parts I and II of Storming the Goblin Mines

Two game sessions combined into one writeup:

Episode IV: A New Party.

The rescued fighters, a brother and sister pair of ex-mercenary guards, pledge their service to their rescuers for a year and a day.

Or something. It's not the most dramatic expression of fealty ever expressed, but at least the new players are part of the party?

The party tends their wounds, and takes the stray (human) crossbow bolt out of Jessamine's leg and patches him up, too.

"Wow that really is a really big thing in your leg."

Part I: Into the Mines. Again. The Goblin Mines this time!

So. The Goblins definitely keep slaves. Heck, they might even have the prisoners the party is trying to rescue. And they definitely have Jessamine's warhammer^1,2 - and he wants that back!

So the party sets out at dawn to Storm the Goblin Mines!

Part A: First guard post

Light shit on fire

Note: the party left at dawn with the idea that goblins sleep during the day, so this is a "night" raid, as it were.

The entrance to the goblins' section of the mines, as we all recall, has a firepit in the open and two entrances covered with thick canvas tarps. A little bit of scouting reveals another entrance off to the left, with no tarp, but the party decides to stick with the ones they know goblins frequent. But which one? Well, some careful searching reveals the right tarp has some sort of tripline attached to it. Okay. That can't be good.

...No one in the party really knows much about traps. So, what does any good party do, when confronted with a situation that is outside their skillset? Light shit on fire. In this case, the canvas. It doesn't burn very well, but eventually their work pays off, and the taut line snaps free, and BOOM. A large boulder falls to the ground. Hey, it might have made a lot of noise, but at least no one's foot is underneath it!

It turns out that's not even an entrance after all. Sneaky goblins.

Many entrances! To pits.

The party gathers their courage and creeps into the tunnel shaft. What had seemed a natural cave mouth quickly turns into rough-worked tunnels - tunnels too short for the humans to fight well upright! Sadly, this GM forgot the penalty in several of the fights that follow. Ah well, next time.

The tunnel brances fairly quickly, with another canvas tarp in front of them, a passage off to the left (into the darkness!) and what appears to be some room off to the right. After much wrangling of hands, the part decides to go right.

The tunnel opens up to a room whose purpose rapidly becomes clear: guard room. A handful of goblins notice the party, shout a warning, and start throwing small javalins! Javalins, as we know, hurt.

You know what else hurts? Pit traps. Especially when you rush forward and they suddenly open up underneath you. Lucretia, brave soul that she is, found this out the hard way, as she bravely charged the little bastards that had kept her locked up and forced her to clean up after them. She almost managed to jump free, but in the end took a jarring fall.

Highlights of the fight:

• nice knife throwing by Lori
• Lucretia jumping out of the pit and slaughtering goblins.
• The goblins deciding to make a break for it...and getting cut down.
• "We fought goblins and we didn't die!"

Highlights of after the fight:

• Everyone slinks along the edges of the pit to make it to the other side
• Jessamine is tall enough he can brace against the ceiling, which is good, as he's clumsy
• Actually, the note is "They can walk across it easy peasy"
• They break *all* the javalins and throw them into the pit

Interesting parts of the room:

• There is a lever they do not touch
• There is a door they do not open
• There is a passageway off to the right they do not follow (yet) - where the goblin try to flee
  • Oh, hey, there are like, no tracks heading this way?
• There is a stairway heading to a higher level they do not go up - but they do talk about it
• There is writing on the wall - they do actually read this. "Avoid the step of Francor'Dieus" or something?
  • They do not understand what this means
  • They do think there's a likely trap on the stairs

The party licks their wounds, cleans up, and spends a long time arguing about which way to go

Part B: Second guard post

Eventually, the decision is made to head back to the entrance and try the corridor to the left.

Finding some more goblins. And finding a trap, too!

That canvas trap/curtain? Yeah, there's something alive behind it, and they don't want to know. So they leave it behind them.

The passage goes for a little bit and ends in a T - with the left choice heading to a room. Jessamine is religiously checking for traps, and is lucky enough to discover one! Jessamine, for the record, had incredible luck with rolls. But this is not one of those times. You see, he found the trap the hard way.

That room, off to the left? Another guard post. More goblins, more yelling.

There was a big fight, and it went something like this:

• Jessamine realizes what's going on - the party is under attack!
• He charges, because death to goblins. Also, they didn't let him play with his warhammer.
• He finds a trap! Because the pit opens up under him. He smacks into the far wall of the pit trap and lands on his feet, shocked.
  • Jessamine has so few hit points, falling into the pit triggered a Threshold of Pain check! Woohoo!
  • Remember that bit about lucky rolls? The warrior just shrugged off the pain and keeps going.
• Everyone else starts fighting, much ranged weapons.
• Lucretia (by popular acclaim - her player was absent) jumps the pit and engages.
• Jessamine climbs out and engages.
• Fight! Fight! Fight!
• Lori carefully crosses and engages.
• The goblins see the writing on the wall (as it were - no actual writing in this room) and one of them bolts!
  • He (more on this later) grabs a big sack and starts running out of the room to the right.
  • And gets nailed to the wall for his trouble. Not literally. But more holes get put into him, and he dies.
• The last goblin standing tries to run, grabs the sack,
  • and gets killed as well.

Treasure. And, oh, hey, there IS a hidden door here!

That sack the goblins were so interested in running with? Full of coins! Woot!

The party starts tending to their wounds, exploring the guard room, etc. There's another passageway out the back, a door on the side (that is a trap, as far as Jessamine can tell), another door, a table, and a lot of dead goblins to loot.

Jessamine, in between searching fanatically for traps, also searches for secret doors. Guess who gets lucky and finds one!

The back corner wall (incidentally towards where the goblins were running?), the whole thing suddenly folds aside as Jessamine triggers the opening mechanism. He is greeted by the shadowy sight of 9feet and what must be 350lbs of big strong and ugly coming towards him, with a big-ass club (tree?) in its hand. The creature has a slightly curious look on its face...that turns to fierce joy as it spys the fighter. Jessamine screams. "Cave troll!"

It speaks. "Hrrrmmmmm. Should I keeelll you?"

Jessamine draws his borrrowed sword and gets ready to fight as the monster hunkers down and climbs steps thru the doorway. Having a sword out seems to be taken as a "yes." The monster casually - and happily - swats Jessamine aside. The fighter gets his shield in the way, but that only blunts th force of the blow - he goes flying across the room to land in a pile against the far wall, shield broken!

Holy crap!

Things get really exciting really quickly. Everyone panics - with good reason - and runs to try and position themselves for this new threat. A quick phone call is placed to Lucretia's player - yay modern technology - and the decision returns: Lucretia will try to defend her brother. So Lucretia steps up to face the monster that so casually knocked her kin onto his back. Jessamine, meanwhile, jumps to his feet (I swear, making all those ToP checks...) and tries to figure out what to do. Lori is getting ready to get killed. Roger sticks an arrow in the monster...which doesn't seem to do much. Lucretia just misses getting smashed flat when Vanessa - remember Vanessa? There's a story about Vanessa. Vanessa comes around from the side and with some choice words to Sumar-Farren, puts holy fear into the monster. It bellows in terror, turns, and lumbers back out the way it came, thru the room on the other side of the door, and out into the sunlight.

o.O

Okay, then!

A quick thinking looter takes a short look in the new room (no chance to check for traps), sees a sack, and grabs it. Then everyone flees.

Licking their wounds. Also, loot?

The big question is: which way to run? Back outside? Where a big monster is shortly overcoming the magical fear? Down one of the unexplored corridors - perhaps littered with traps? Back to the first guardroom? Upstairs? Maybe...maybe cautiously down that unused corridor that extended past the first guard room. It's as good a choice as any.

So the decision is made. The party moves quickly to the first guard room and then proceeds cautiously into the darkness.

Careful scanning of the ground as they move forward reveals another pit trap - and no one even fell in! Woot! Past this trap (carefully), there is a small section of corridor that's out of direct view from behind. And the corridor continues into the darkness around the corner to the left, but before that turn, there's a little section no one can see directly into. This seems as safe a place as any to rest for a bit.

So.

Wounds are quietly tended by candlelight. The Mage is exhausted by his work and lays down for a nap. The sack stolen from the Ogre's den was also full of coins. Loot! Hey, wait a minute... A lot of the coins in both of these sacks are copper painted with a cheap gold wash. WTF? Still, it's a nice pile o' coins!

Jessamine, who had been helping count coins, starts to sneeze. ... That will make staying quiet easier. Yay allergies? (GM: "Yay allergies!")

Cliffhanger!

Suddenly, someone hears things around the corner they have not explored:

Footsteps.

...is that some sort of door opening?

A soft percussive sound. Maybe a door closed.

Silence for a while.

Another sound, scraping, maybe a door?

A loud click.

Jessamine sneezes. Echos fill the halls.

Pause.

Hurried footsteps fading away.

...

That's not good.

The mage is woken up. The party decides to press forward. The corridor is bare, they don't see the door they thought they heard. As they are searching for traps and a secret door, suddenly Lucretia (on point) grabs everyone's attention: A door at the far end of the corridor has just been opened, and a figure stands, partially lit by a torch. It's yelling something to those in the room beyond. It's a goblin.

Cliffhanger!

Note 1: Or do they? Dun dun DUN!

Note 2: I'm just going to point out what Captain Hammer said: "The 'hammer' is my ..." --GM

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