During our downtime in the town of Gren, the party received a proposal to investigate and get rid of several goblins that have taken up residence in a cave to the south east.

The paladin, Talon, did some reconnaissance but uncovered no new information on what the goblins are doing. The goblins are based in a cave about 4.5 miles to the south east of Gren and about 1 mile into the forest line of the West Reach of Hollow. The guard who tasked our group with this will pay us to get rid of them.

The cave can be found by traveling into the “Grenwood” and following a stream until we find where the two forks of the stream meet at a 3 way intersection. In that area we will also find some hills and some tan colored boulders and about 15-20' up the fork of the stream is the cave.

Thomas Duskhallow, leader of the guard, says that there are no reports of the goblins raiding into Gren, at least as of a couple weeks ago. There are also no reports so far of the goblins raiding caravans or attacking travelers on the road.

Talon feels out Duskhallow and agrees with Lathar that he is within his rights to give us equipment for this quest.

The characters played in this session were:

- Talon, Human Paladin of Riswa.

- Ithimyr Sarfanis, Half-Elf Cleric / Ranger of Riswa.

- Oleander, Half-Elf Ranger.

- Zenobia, Elf Thief / Magic-User.

- Haans Blackrock, Dwarf Fighter.

We head out toward the Goblin Cave in the south east, after gearing up.

The weather is mild but it is raining mildly.

We head south east along the road and travel about 3 miles until we reach the edge of “Grenwood”. We come across a stream just as described from the directions of Thomas Duskhollow. We follow the stream directly until we find the 3 way fork and the area near the cave.

Oleander finds small markings indicating the presence of goblinoids. Over the past couple of days, the tracks indicate a group of 3 to 6 goblins traveled to the stream and back. Some of the tracks seem to have been created that same morning.

Henchi, Oleander's war hound, checks out the tracks and is taking it in despite the weather and area. There is rain noise and the shuffling of dark green trees in the wind and there are little flowers all around. We have also seen some recent rabbit and squirrel tracks.

We travel upstream and find the tan boulders described by Duskhallow after half a mile. Here the ground slopes upward and some hills lie beyond. To avoid detection and to better scope out the place, we circle around to approach from the side.

The group gains some elevation and as we go up the slope, two large wolves come into view on the other side of a hill. We can see them from our vantage point because we circled around. After going up a few hills we are on the top of the hill looking down. From here, we cannot see entrance to the cave as the angle will not allow.

Concern about being detected by the wolves, we check that we are downwind from them. The direction of the wind is going perpindicular and the wolves have some soft cover. Oleander brought wither her some hamhocks to use as bait and now is our chance! We deposit the hamhocks at a particular spot so that the wind carries the smell toward the wolves. We can see through the trees that the wolves are going toward the meat.

Two small humanoids with burnt orange skin emerge from the cave and come into view. Goblins…and they are carrying spears. These goblins begin cursing at the wolves as they start going after them.

The goblins are wearing studded leather armor and a shield, granting them an AC 6. Some of us try to sneak up on them, staying downwind. The surprise is our as we manage to kill the goblins before being detected and at this point, the wolves start heading back,

Ithimyr casts Bless on the group.

Now that we have moved away and have gone to the location of the goblins, we can see that just beyond the position of the wolves, up about 30 yards, is the expected cave opening. Suddenly, emerging out of the cave comes a large group of goblins, around 20 of them!

With a group of our size, we quickly decide to flee, about a half mile, and the group manages to get away.

Knowing what we are up against, we will need to get re-supplied, so we head back to Gren.

Some of us buy some bows and arrows and we plan to head back the next day.

The weather has changed and it is no longer rainy. Today is dry and humid.

When we arrive stealthily back at the vicinity of the Goblin Cave, we notice the two wolves out front and this time there are three goblins. One has a sling. We hunker down and discuss our plans. Seeing the success we had before, we are going to place another hamhock out somewhere for the wolves and try and get surprise on the goblins.

Ithimyr goes to place the hamhocks in a location about 4“ to the north and upwind from the wolves. The wolves are trotting in the direction of the meat. We head back and move in to ambush the 3 goblins.

As we enter into the cave, we come face to face with more goblins, 6 of them. They fire their slings! The goblins receive a -2 to hit because of Talon's inherent Protection From Evil which extends out to a 10' radius.

Zenobia is struck by one of the goblins and is knocked down to -1 hit points (hp), she is dropped into a coma! Henchie charges and does 5 points of damage, which kills one.

Each of the goblins have small blades on their sides. Ithimyr swings his blade and kills one with his bastard sword. Henchie moves on to attack another one and kills it, now there are now only 3 left.

With another swing of his bastard sword, Ithimyr hits another for 6 damage, killing it, Haans also takes down a goblin.

The combat is ended and we start our recovery. We manage to find 60 sp from the goblin bodies and consider now we must head back since we are down one party member.

We head back to Gren with Zenobia.

Back in Gren, the party decides to hire a Porter and a Pack Handler so they can handle the mules. Before we can head back to the cave, we will need to wait for Zenobia to recover. Once she is fully healed, we head back. Time advances one week…

Ithimyr has fully paid for his 100 gp upkeep cost, the first upkeep record for this campaign so far. The Porter and the Pack Handler are paid through until Rose Moon the 7th.

With our new hirelings and mules, we head back to the cave.

At the cave entrance, the demihumans check inside using their infravision but see no heat signatures. There are some physical remnants of our fight from the last week but no goblins or wolves are stationed outside this time.

We do find lots of goblin tracks near the cave mouth, about 15-20 goblins coming and going in the past 12 hours. Haans checks inside the cave to determine if it might be unstable but it looks sturdy, completely natural and of good quality stone.

There are no tracks going to other hidden entrances that we can see. Going inside, we search for about a half hour and find more tracks a couple hundred feet from the entrance. Some kind of animal tracks are also found nearby, indicating some scavengers may have been attracted to the area by the smell of burnt meat which still lingers. There is evidence of a camp fire nearby, including a rock that was blackened by smoke. We also find a small opening, about the width of a forearm.

Oleander wields her glaive firmly and two of us have our spears out, including Ithimyr. We enter the cave further and the smell burnt meat grows from the right. On the ground coming from the other direction is some dried blood from a considerable wound. It appears to be many days old and probably came from one person.

The party heads to the right, in the direction of the Goblins and the source of the burning meat smell. We come to a rock formation not far from the cave mouth and the smell is getting stronger. A glow of light can be seen around the rock formation and we can hear the goblins, between 7 and 13 of them. Those that understand the language, such as Ithimyr, can hear them “talking shit” about each other.

We can make out that there is a large group of goblins hanging out around a big campfire. They are cooking the big corpse of some unknown beast. In the center of the group we can see a big goblin, bigger than the others, and two burly looking goblins standing around him.

Zenobia casts sleep while Ithimyr misses a shot with his short bow. The spell successfully goes off and 9 of the goblins immediately fall asleep. 2 arrows are fired back and miss. Now there are 3 of the larger, beefier, goblins and 8 of the other goblins left.

The goblins have an AC 6 and a -2 for them to hit us due to Talon's Protection From Evil. Henchie is struck by some of the goblins and drops to -2 hp! Poor Henchie is dead!

Ithimyr manages to get a Bless spell off and we are now under these effects. The goblins continue their attacks, striking Haans and he is also dropped, falling into a coma! This round, our party managed to kill 3 of the goblins and 9 are still under a magically induced slumber.

It comes to pass that several more of the goblins are destroyed and combat ends. We have tied up their leader begin questioning him.

He says that “Nunbin, the Witch Doctor, is the one that brought them here, to this place. He and the bugbear are probably below, past the big door.”

How many more goblins are there? “Might be a couple of goblins with Nunbin and Yakmow.”

Their leader explains that they used to be part of a bigger tribe to the south. They are the people that follow Nunbin, and they were gonna rob the people on the road.

We notice that he is right: there is a big door in this cave. He explains that Nunbin was obsessed with the door, which is behind their group of goblins in the back. The others are actually a hobgoblin and one is a witch doctor.

They came from a big tribe of hundreds of goblins to the south because Nunbin, the Witch Doctor, made them split off to make their own tribe. Now they wish they had not split off.

Does this witch doctor have any spells? “Nunbin has spells that do things with fire and he can close wounds.”

They are following Nunbin because of his tricks but Kruk gets frustrated, as he has never brought up anything for their group. They did see them come up with fancy new cape trimmed in gold but they all think he looks like an idiot. He will not share the treasure.

Enop is their War Chief and Riekt is the one who had killed other goblins.

They tell us where the closest treasure is but they had a weird problem with wolves earlier so Nunbin brought the wolves underground with him. This must be what happened with the wolves after our last encounter outside.

We find 112 sp on the bodies of the goblins.

The goblin talks further and explains that Nunbin keeps a chest in his tent.

We dispatch the 9 sleeping goblins. In this campaign, once you are dropped to 0 hp you cannot continue to adventure and must be brought back to town to recover.

Zenobia and Oleander go down a side tunnel together to find the chest he spoke about. They find another cavern complex with a big tent flanked by some smaller tents. The big tent is decorated with feathers and some rope which has been dyed into other colors in an attempt to make the tent look important. That is the witch doctor tent. Zenobia does not find any traps on the chest and they discover that the chest weights about 3,600 coins.

Back in the other chamber, we execute all the surviving goblins except for the leader. With the chest and the leader tied up, we head back to Gren to imprison the leader with the local authorities.

We brought back with us some of the morningstars and other weapons to sell.

The big goblin-tribe chest contains: 1,300 cp, 2,200 sp, 100 pp, 172 sp,

A total of 2392 sp, 1300 cp, + 110 sp. Per person we each get 20 pp, 500 sp, 260 cp.

We are rewarded with 242 xp each.

Is there a big book of herbs in town? The group is investigating this.

In regard to guard dogs, this will be more strict. If the guard dogs are not familiar with us, they might bark in the dungeon.