Osric: Escape from the Crypt of Kas the bloody (5)

Well, this adventure log is finally up to speed with the start of my blog. I'm trying to spread out the posts to get regular updates but we played recently on a saturday morning via google hangouts.

Our party was recovering from being zapped by a goblin shaman and having an extended dungeon (re)clearing adventure. Dan, Renault, Jenks, Scabs and Chester had all survived but were in pretty sorry shape. Even after resting and burning through the few cure light wounds spells Jenks had we decided we needed to rest some more. Alas it was not to be.....

(It probably didn't help when I said no one can come through the wizard locked door unless they have the key, and what are the chances of that? *ahem*).

*Click* The door starts opening, Renault slams is shut on a goblins nose, thereby de-nosing him. The amusement of this act loses it's glow after a moment as the goblin is heard screaming and running to the west. Towards the (presumptive) orc hall. We skedaddle out of this deadend section of the dungeon and proceed to lock doors behind us. We hear clashing and alarms and yelling behind us, followed shortly by splintering doors.

We quickly reach the great hall with the massive table that the golbin tribe used to eat at. We dodge under the table and hide. We dont' wait long before we see two small sets of goblin legs leading a group of about a dozen... hobgoblins!

 They pass us by for about 10 or 15 minutes before a reduced group returns. Just as they are about to leave the room one stops, lays his shield down and stoops down to look under the table. Scabs stabs him to death through the eye (surprise backstab). The fight starts under the table, but their leader (of great strength) tosses the stone table aside and the fight continues till our victory.

After catching our breath we hear the rest of the group returning and we manage to ambush them entering the room. After some quick looting we hurry back to the staircase and head to level one. Right by the staircase there is a trapped room of crushing pillars (on a checkerboard pattern). We manage to jam one pillar so that the way to the stairs is blocked (later revealed to us by the GM as a party saving measure). We camp again and strangely find a mouse skull in the centre of our camp with a goblin symbol on it. We decide the cheeky goblin chief we left here is threatening us. 

As we move back to their throne room we find all our trap deactivation work has been undone. As well the doors are smeared with contact poison and dammit, it's pretty lethal around here. As we bash into the throne room (with Renault and Dan using a stone column as a battering ram) we find the chief is with a scary looking goblin assassin type.

After some near poisoning blows we manage to charm him and stop the fight. The chief is pissed that his demon deck of cards (a ply from a previous adventure) doesn't work. We manage to pump the two for information about downstairs and what's going on. Apparantly the skull was a safe passage token. And the traps are reactivated to try and prevent the level 2'ers from coming up. An unexplored room on this floor (the wax sealed one with the dead adventuring party and cleric outside of it) actually contains a liche that 'usually keeps the dueregar downstairs' by some sort of agreement. Man, has our group ever 'stepped in it'. We manage to negotiate a safe passage agreement for the future (to avoid the mistakes of last session) and pay off the chief and assassin (slay-gur). They plan on abducting goblin women and children to start the notched ear tribe. We are pretty okay with that. 

We head back to the Village of compliments, with the intention of improving the town a bit. The largest issues are shortage of housing and no skilled tradesmen. Scabs knows a dwarven blacksmith in shadowdeep which we plan to speak to. A shopping expedition is probably in order as well.