5e playtest Heroes of Freeport: Currently in Chapter 2 - Skeletal Society

My name is Shala, Shala Earthdream. I'm the owner of the Saucy Mermaid down at the Freeport docks. Maybe you've heard of it- nah, on second thought,I'm sure you haven't. We ain't in the best part of town,ya see. But we got a reputation for fair prices, good food and drink, and a generally calm atmosphere with few fights. In part, that's because some of the orclings and dwarflings of the city made friends here, and everyone knows if those two races join up, then beware the force standing between them and their wishes. The other part is that the captain of the Blue Skies, a no-nonsense elf merchant with, so some say, a pirate background, has declared that we are his favorite hangout. So, there you go, now you know the Saucy Mermaid. At least, in theory.

So,as I said, I'm the owner. I'm also a bounty hunter on the side. Or maybe I'm a bounty hunter and an innkeeper on the side. I'll leave this for you to decide. And if you haven't figured it out yet – hard to do with my build, no? – I'm a dwarf. A hill dwarf, to be correct. Yes, there's a difference. For one, we don't talk in a funny dialect. But that's all not important to the story you want to hear, so just let me continue.

It was last year, just after the storm season. Me and some dwarf friends were sharing some drinks just after we closed. That's the best time – and often the only time –for me to sit down with friends. Dorha, my half-orc serving maid, was cleaning up, entertaining us with her surprisingly clear singing voice. But our mood was a bit sour. There had been stories about people going missing without a trace for some weeks now, but it was hardly ever clear who supposedly vanished. But the night before, a good customer and friend of many, Krag Blackhand, son of a local smith, had vanished. Just like that, on his way home from my inn.

I know what you are thinking. Did we check the brothels, streets and so on. Well, for one, the young man was not known to frequent those places but yes, I'm sure his father checked, and some of us had gone through all the streets earlier that day. No one had found anything.

So there we were, discussing the possibilities. Dorha heard us as she passed by the table and expressed her sorrow that she had not taken him home as she sometimes had done. But she said he had turned her down and left with a stranger. “Not one I recognized," she said,"but no chance missing him. Had tattoos all over his face like one of them wild men.”

As she said that, I remembered the guy. He had been asking all kinds of weird questions about Freeport. Who the current ruler was –what a weird question, I'd say everyone would know that even on the mainlands – and if we had any good defenses. I had dodged most of the questions, as the man seemed fishy to me.

Randa Longlegs, a former soldier with a bit of a limp but a good heart, was who suggested we should go after the tattooed guy to see what he knew,or if he even was responsible. Cusbath Thunderfeet, my long time mentor and friend – not to mention cleric of the God of Knowledge – heartily agreed. "If there's something amiss,we ought to find out what, not like anyone else seemed to be caring."

Only Thorian Warfart – yes, he has this name for a reason, but I'm not going to tell you – our weird yet trustworthy warlock, was unsure. "We have no idea who and where the tattooed man is. And then again, nothing says the tattooed man will lead us anywhere. We could poke around in the dark forever." He's a pessimist, did I already mention that?

But being a good friend and all, he agreed to come with us. Thus, we decided to retire early so we'd have the early – relatively early – morning to investigate. After all, the inn needed tending to at midday again. Our hopes were that someone had seen the tattoo man. Curiously enough, the next morning, we heard of several tattooed people in the city. It was said they'd camp inland, just outside the city. Of course, it just had to be furthest from the Saucy Mermaid.

Let me tell you, short dwarven feet used to the city aren't made for walking. "Are we there yet?" was what we constantly heard from our warlock, in a whiny tone at that. Randa got a bit annoyed with our low speed, she was, of course, used to marching.

When we finally found the camp of those tattoo freaks, we weretired and had to have a drink first. From a well, too, because none of the fine inns around looked they were open already,not even to talk of their likely prices. We found the camp, alright. And Cusbath – famous scholar that he is – immediately cautioned us. He said the tattoos on those people marked them as scouts of their tribe – the so-called Moonless Tribe. Scouts who, according to him, had killed before,to top it off. But, there were only 2 of them, a man and a woman, so we were confident enough we could deal with them if needed.

They were cautious when we arrived, but not hostile, thank the gods. The man who had gone with our missing customer wasn't present, I saw that at once. The other tattoos were similar, but not the same. "We'd like to ask you a few questions about a friend of ours who went missing," our priest began with one of his winning smiles. "We believe one of your friends tried to help him back home last night but he never made it there."

They both nodded. The woman said her name was Slow Tongue, and that a man they called Sharp Tooth had come to get them the night before to help with a city dweller who got,as she put it "wasps in his head from fire water." She had a weird accent, too, that one. "Sharp Tooth said he passed out and was too heavy to carry. We got there, no one there. We thought maybe he woke up and went alone, or someone else helped him. We wanted to make sure but a group of other wasp headed men and women came our way and they were not friendly, so we left."

We had no reason not to believe them. Yet, they could be a thread to the city. In our own language, Thorian suggested subduing the two and get them to the authorities. He said they looked like preparing an attack, by scouting Freeport out. Cusbath agreed. But first we needed to know where exactly Krag had been left,so we thanked them and asked them to show us where they had gone to. To our surprise, the man agreed. The woman said she would need to tend their camp. City dwellers, supposedly,were mostly a bunch of thieves. Couldn't very well argue with that.

So we went all the way back to our inn. By the time we arrived, I vowed to do some endurance training – I'm a city woman, alright, and an innkeeper doesn't need to be able to walk a lot. Carrying barrels is more important. But I have a feeling I'll need a bit more flexibility when it comes to my other profession, and asides, it will do me some good.

Krag had been dropped just a few streets behind the Saucy Mermaid. Now that it was light, there were a few details those tattoos had missed at night. The man, named Wild Eye, pointed at the ground and commented on the signs of lots of blood and a torn piece of clothing. It looked like there had been an attack after all. Wild Eye seemed truly sorry about not being able to help us further. All the other trails, it seemed, were washed away by the rain in the early morning and the constant stream of people walking through.

Randa invited the tattoo barbarian back to the inn to "thank him with some food and drink." I didn't get what she was planning, until she put sleeproot in his soup. "We need to talk to the authorities," she insisted, "and hand this guy over. They are planning something, and whatever it is is not good for the city." That was the soldier talking, and of course, she was right. This was the best way to subdue one of them without hurting anyone. So, Randa went along to get someone to take care of it, and I made us all a decent meal. The cook was not there yet, but would arrive soon as the Saucy Mermaid was to open in an hour.

It turned out the authorities already suspected something was up. They asked about where the camp was, and Randa led them there before joining us again. By then, Cusbath had to head back to the temple for some duty or the other, and Thorian had to attend to a customer who needed something only a warlock could provide. Or so he said. We all knew, of course, that he was fancying Larla the merchant from the upper city, and that that woman's husband usually was not around in the afternoons. But we pretended not to know about it.

So when Randa came back, it was up to her to ask around about who else disappeared and where. I had to stay at the inn, as my barkeep was home sick with the southern flu. Which was as well, because I heard all sorts of rumors about the disappearances now. One thing became clear quickly. People vanished when they were alone. Not one of the rumors said they had ever been in company. Which meant, had the tattoo man stayed with Krag he might very well still be alive. That he was dead, I was sure about. One does not leave blood and part of his clothing behind unless something hungry has taken him. Or some other sort of crazy killer. Personally, I was thinking vampire, or were-something. We have wererats around, and even the goblins or the lizardmen under the city don't want to talk about those creatures.

Randa came back with much the same hints. Except that she had found a woman living on the streets who insisted she had seen a bunch of small demon like figures taking an old man she was familiar with. She could do nothing but watch from her hiding place in horror as they dragged him into a sewer opening. At least, Randa said, that was her story and she sounded believable. Yet she had also smelled of wine and ale, so it might have been just a drunken dream.

The sewers... I have my issues with them,and that's not because they smell bad and are dirty. That's one thing, sure. But what's worse is that it partly seems like tunnels at home,except that it is not. It's like badly made tunnels, with water seeping in and roots growing down. To a proper dwarf, it always feels as if it would come crumble down every minute now. I have heard similar thoughts from all of my dwarf friends, so I know I'm not the only one.

As a dwarf, you have some disadvantages in a world mainly made for big folks. Like getting to the shelves in a store or library. Seeing what's going on in a crowd. Being overlooked and shoved aside. But in the sewers, being smaller is an important advantage. Without any big people in our group, we got around quite good.

But I'm getting ahead of the story.

In the late afternoon, just before the inn was in full swing, Thorian came back all upset. The husband of the woman he fancied had come home early and confronted him, and he was steaming angry at the fat old merchant, so he said, who had thrown a bottle of brandy at him. A full one, too, and he said he was lucky to catch it. Imagine that, wasting good brandy over a woman. I was about to slap him for that comment, too, but he had a point. Not that he's ever serious with any woman, mind you. In any case, he needed something to do to take his mind off the trouble.

We told him and our dear cleric about the sewers, and Cusbath suggested we investigate right away, maybe have one of us go near a sewer outlet and pretend to be alone. "But we could be doing that for nights on end," he admitted. "The other option is to just go down there and see."

So we did that, right through the basement connection the Saucy Mermaid has to the underground canal system. I've been down there before when I had to sneak out, pretending to be in the inn somewhere while going after bounty. I'd never gone far though, just around a bend or two to get out unseen. This time, I had no clue where to go to. Freeport's sewers are immense, and the supposed victims had come from all over the city, though the harbor area seemed to be the preferred hunting ground of whatever it was. Randa said it sounded like kobolds or goblins to her,from the one witness' description. Well, my vampire idea was unlikely now, but I pointed out it could still be wererats. There were small wererats after all, as dwarfs and halflings got hit by it, too.

We had barely discussed this while trying to head into the direction, at least approximately, where Krag had vanished, when we heard a telltale sound of squeaking and scratching. Freeport has, you see, a great many rats. At times, huge swarms rush over the city and through the sewers, and no one is quite sure why. Sewers got clogged before because there are so many they get stuck and kill each other. That's what the sound clearly was, and we seemed to be right in their path.

Randa, knowing as well as the rest of us that we couldn'tmake it back to the inn or even around the next bend, pointed to one of the many old doors which usually led to abandoned storage rooms or overflow outlets. She broke it open with her shoulder when she found it was stuck. This seemed to be a good idea at first, but once we were all in and the sounds of impending ratvalanche grew louder, we realized that with no way to close the room off, rats would spill into the room, which wasn't exactly big.

So we took up battle stance and waited for the rats to come. And come they did. In the 10 or so minutes it took for the ratvalanche to pass, were were busy killing rats, fending them off with axe and hammer. It's not the preferred activity of any dwarf. Even being lower to the ground, we still have to bow low to catch those pests, and it's harder to hit something that small anyway. But with so many of them spilling in, it wasn't too hard at least. They usually noticed us too late. Randa had some moves to fight them off all of us, and I'm pretty decent fighting in groups,too. We didn't really have problems with the rats as such, it was the mass of them that posed a threat.

I was getting worried we'd drown in rats, as they were, dead or alive, filling up the room around us. I was up to my hips in rats, no kidding. And rat blood stinks, worse than any other blood save that of some monsters,let me tell you that. Probably because of what they eat.

As the ratvalanche was over,we waded out of the room. We all had some scratches, but none had been bitten. Still, rat scratches, especially from sewer rats, are bad. So we spent some time cleaning and disinfecting the scratches – we had healer kits, of course. When we were ready to move on, past some drowned rats in the drainage, we heard the sound of small feet and whispering voices in a language we knew well, although we only knew a few words in it. Goblins!

We went right after them, or so we thought, but the sewers are tricky. Even for a dwarf, it's hard to guess the directions and distances of sounds. Yes, we got lost. And by the time we didn't hear them anymore, I wasn't even able to tell which way was back to the Saucy Mermaid.

We could have taken the next exit, but we weren't to admit defeat just yet. So we took the second tunnel to the right where we thought we had heard them last, and checked carefully for signs that someone had come through.

Someone had come through, alright, but probably not the goblins. 2 giant centipedes were eating something off the walls and hadn't noticed us yet. We could have backed away quietly, maybe, but Thorian, who is a bit squeamish at times, shrieked loudly. And it seemed centipedes do have ears.

There is something to be said about fighting in a sewer environment. If you don't want to fall into the filth, you need a good balance, and in a group, teamwork is essential. We had less issues with balance but with the teamwork. Randa and me had fought together before – long boring story you don't need to hear – and Cusbath was taking his cues from our movements. But the warlock...

I was just dodging out under one of those things, trying to avoid the bite. While the poison those things tend to have may not be of danger to a dwarf, it still hurts. Thorian saw me duck and thought it the right moment to let lose one of those magic blasts. It was pure luck that he didn't hit Randa with it, as she used my ducking as a chance to cut off one of those poisoned fangs. Randa can curse something awful, and she doesn't care if a cleric is there or not. But, the magic attack made the centipedes flee, at least. Those beasts may be dumb, but they aren't dumb enough to risk their lives if their prey suddenly does dangerous things.

Before we could berate our warlock, Cusbath made a movement with his head back the way we had come. "Someone is following us," he whispered in dwarven. "I think it's a goblin."

I decided to deal with this directly. Maybe it would help us, and if not, we might get rid of a potential thread. "Hey, you there," I called out in my bad accent goblin. "We are no threat." In common, I added "And we don't speak much goblin, so we hope you understand us."

We didn't move. I hoped whoever it was would come out on their own, so we stowed our weapons away and waited. We were lucky.

A large male yellow goblin with a big chunk of his left ear missing and an array of weird clothes and adornments poked his head around the bend and blinked. "No harm Gozzy?" he asked. "Gozzy want make sure no thread to our Kingdom."

"Kingdom?" I wasn't sure he knew what the word meant, but he nodded wildly. "You humans all not know about kingdoms down here. We best Kingdom, Kingdom of Slergrad!" He sounded very proud of it, too.

Now we didn't know what a slergrad was, but when he came closer and described it, with waving arms and wide open eyes, we gathered that it was the goblin expression for a gelatinous cube. "It big, eats lots of things. Still can see things when done eating."

It was, as it seemed, their totem, as the little fella carried an amulet in roughly the shape of a cube. He explained that there were 2 more – in his eyes less great – kingdoms down her. The names of the others were Centipede Kingdom and Rat Kingdom. All named after the most common threads down here – which told us that, while we hadn't heard of them being an issue, gelatinous cubes weren't a rare sight down here. That was a good piece of information.

"Do you happen to know of folks disappearing from above?" Cusbath asked. "We're missing a friend." He tried to describe him, but Gozzy insisted that humans – his term for all people above ground, as insulting as that was – looked almost all alike to him.

But then he took on a thoughtful expression. “You talk to Korth Fat Rat. He take lots of human bodies. He in Rat Kingdom.”

"Takes bodies? What exactly does that mean?" As usual, when our warlock frowned, it looked very frightening, but luckily, Gozzy was looking at me.

"See them sometime, dragging humans. Dead ones. From dead people place. From streets. No know what he wants with them."

"Can you show us where this Kort is?" Cusbath asked, much friendlier than Thorian.

"Me no like go there. Korth bad. Can take you to Big Flurx, yes? Big Flurx not so bad. Not..." he exaggerated the word "...eeeeviiil."

It sounded good enough to us. So we took him up on his offer. On the way, Gozzy explained that Big Flurx was a powerful goblin, with a huge warren under his control. "Most stone, too," he said. But we make bigger with some wood we find."

The area he led us to was darker than the part of the sewers we had been to. I was afraid if it would get much darker, even a dwarf would not be able to see. But that was when we arrived at an entrance to our left where two large goblins were standing guard. Their eyes went wide when they saw us, but Gozzy spoke to them in a fast onslaught of goblin I could not make out a word in. Then Gozzy was allowed to bring us in, through a large room full of goblins, whole families, who all pointed and stared and started whispering about us. No surprise, I guess. We'd do the same about goblins in one of our residences.

The room after that was but a sinkhole with a narrow ledge to run around it. But the hole was occupied. By a large gelatinous cube unable to get out. "This Shiny," Gozzy explained. "We feed it good."

That much we believed. It seemed they fed it goblins, among other things, as Shiny was just digesting one. Gozzy shrugged when we asked. "Bad thief want steal from Big Flurx," he explained. "Himself a-fault." He had a point there.

Then we arrived at the bosses' chamber. At the center of the large room, an unusually tall goblin with a cruel looking sword sat atop a tattered bar stool. “You human come to Big Flurx’s home,” he said. "You better have good reason.”

Cusbath, who was still mumbling about Shiny, couldn't help himself. "That's a nice... slergrad you have out there. How long do you have it? Did it grow much? How much food does it need? You must be quite rich to afford to feed it."

While our scholar can be annoying in his quest for more knowledge, he sure knows how to flatter. The goblin's eyes lit up while he actually answered the questions.

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At that point, my net connection died. We'll continue asap.

Sorry for the delay, eye inflammation makes everything slooow.

This concludes Rats in the Sewers, we already started Skeleton Society.

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While the – partly exaggerated, I'm sure - story of how the goblins managed to get a gelatinous cube was certainly entertaining, it didn't help us to find the smith's son, and I was beginning to get impatient long before he came to the part about forcing some Goblins from the Rat Kingdom to be the bait. Still, we needed his help and I didn't want to appear impolite, so I laughed at all the right places and expressed my admiration for his shrewdness.

Towards the end of the story, Big Flurx mentioned that he detested the Rat Kingdom and didn't like being in an alliance with it, but with what the Centipede Kingdom intruding into their areas of gathering food, he supposedly had had little chance to avoid joining with them. We had the impression though that alliances were always fragile down here, and I saw our warlock scratching his meager beard.

"Big Flurx," he began, "if you dislike them so much – and from Gozzy we gathered that their leader is evil anyway – why don't you take over their kingdom? What name is Rat Kingdom anyway? A name of weaklings. Anyone can kill a rat. Centipede and especially slergrad sounds powerful, but rats? Rats are only a danger when they come in masses, and if you pick them off one by one, they aren't a threat at all."

Randa nodded. "We just came through a ratvalanche, we know."

The eyes of the goblin went over us, and he sniffed. Surely, we smelled off rat blood still. He blinked, then nodded. "Is true. But when boss rat in swarm is bad ass, other rats follow and you drown in. Rat Kingdom big. Not best fighters, but many. Take them one by one, we need years."

"But take out the boss rat alone, and the others might fall," Warfart suggested.

"We try. Korth Fat Rat clever. Never alone, and always veeery careful when us around." The goblin looked angry now. "They not quite right in head, the Rat Kingdom bosses."

"That's why we are here. We heard that they are stealing bodies," I added. "And sometimes, they make them bodies first."

"Yes, Korth do things like that. Drag bodies of humans around for some weeks. Makes no sense. Rat Kingdom is very strange goblins. I do not trust them.”

"Maybe..." the warlock seemed to think hard. "Maybe you can trick Korth. Maybe we can help you do that. Us... humans would like only one kingdom down here. One with a powerful and clever leader." Yes, Thorian was always good with words, and flattery has gotten him to lots of places before. Including beds he had no business in. And it worked like a charm this time, too. After a bit more sweet talking – most of it I drowned out – and a few ideas as to how to unite the kingdoms – mostly doable in my eyes – he had the goblin boss in his figurative pocket.

Thorian's main idea was that, as the Rat Kingdom was currently an ally, they would be receptive to tales of what the Centipede Kingdom had supposedly done. While Big Flurx made Gozzy draw a rudimentary map on the remains of a crate, Thorian listened to what the goblins had to say about both of the other kingdoms. Cusbath and our soldier gal had to offer a few ideas, too, but I kept back. It's not that I'm no good in tactical, mind you, but I'm more the 'get in, get your bounty, get out' type of person. Complex plans, unless there is a definite target to apprehend or kill or something specific to destroy, bore me out quickly. Asides, too much can go wrong with them, so detail planning in a group endeavor, especially something war-like as this particular plan, makes little sense to me. I'm the one to come up with ideas on the spot, and am more likely than not good in fixing the oversights of others.

But they kept talking. At this point, I'd really have loved a drink or two, but I dared not to mention it, because who knows what a goblin sees as drinkable. So instead, I looked around at the trophies collected in Big Flurx' audience chamber. Not much of value, really. Except maybe the mummified corpse of a halfling – must be kept by magic or something because I don't think the sewers lend themselves to creating mummies. I also went out to the gelatinous cube again and could watch a feeding of refuse from above. While a smelly process, it was also interesting – I never knew those things could grab up food so quickly. How did they move anyway?

But again, I digress. What came to me walking around a bit was that I had already figured out a weak point in my friends' plans. Home defense. By what I had overheard, our warlock planned for almost the whole warren to take part in decieving and defeating the other kingdoms. But who of us hasn't read about similar endeavors, just to find that not only had the enemy trapped their area, they also conquered your own while you were out with every man and mouse. So I talked to an older guard goblin who spoke passable common about defenses. He was not trusting me at first, until he heard the others talk tactics. He understood what I meant, and explained to me about what he called the "slergrad defense." They had a way to get the cube out of its confinement after all. An old water pumping system allowed them to float it up and set it free in the main entrance area, while the non combatants would hide in secret areas. They had done so twice before, once against a rogue lizard tribe and once against the kobolds of the dock warrens. Getting the cube back in involved a bit of magic and more water, but he assured me it could be done. Then he offered me a drink

I don't know how, but he had managed to find a bottle of fine red wine. From my inn, too. I need to talk to someone about preventing entrance from the sewers. Turns out wine isn't good for goblins, they get a stomach ache most of the time and the hangover is abysmal. But that was all the better for me as I now had something to get rid off the dirty taste in my mouth with. And one bottle really does not impact a dwarf child.

When I got back, the others, wondering where I had gone off to, started explaining the plan to me. All of them, including the goblin chief, and they were talking very fast. I suppose was I an elf, my ears would have been twitching. Luckily, I'm not, and as an innkeeper, I'm used to listen to several conversations at the same time. So I nodded at the right places, and grunted here and there, and then I told them about the home defense issue. For a second or two, they were quiet, probably berating themselves for the oversight. Just Big Flurx laughed. "We best defended warren in all under Freeport," he chuckled. "Not to worry. We goblins good with defense, you humans good with battle plan. Then when only Slergrad Kingdom left, we make trade, yes?"

Sure, I can think of so many things I want to trade in from Goblins. But there would be something, one way or the other.

In under one hour, my friends had their battle plan ready and were sure of its effectiveness. It involved splitting up, though, which didn't make our priest too happy. Something he had once heard from an adventuring friend of his was not to split the party, ever. The goblins couldn't be trusted to execute the plan as needed, though, even with the cleverness they displayed. Their way of thinking is different from us, and the ore carts of thought may run into directions we don't want them to go. So it was not to be helped.

Me, I'm used working alone, or at least only in 2-person teams. So I was fine with it, and the role I was given, a bounty hunter on search for the missing man, was my own. I only took Gozzy along because a goblin guide made sense and would be less suspicious than finding the warren of the Rats without one.

Randa went with the group that was supposed to lure the Rat fighters to a place where supposedly the Centipede folks were damaging their fresh water supply. Our priest went with the group that was to lure out the Centipedes to the same location, and Warfart was with the group to trap and trick the area at the water supply, including damaging the makeshift bridges over the canals. He was all exited about that, too. I know he's picked up some rogue skills from a gnome a while ago and was always one for practical jokes and a little trapping. Although – don't tell him that, but anywhere else but in a mess of sewers or abandoned mines, his tricks are often quite obvious.

Gozzy proved to be a quiet comrade, until I managed to start a conversation about the different races, and how us dwellers from above weren't all humans. Turns out the goblins knew this but keep getting confused about who is who, except for the orcs. And to my surprise, there is more than goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears in the wider array of goblinoid races. Big Flurx, for example, was half something called a goblet, which was like a goblin just bigger and with – and this part seemed important to him – a short nose. Probably as important as the pointed ears on elves to distinguish them. It seems we know little about the goblinoids, it might be a subject for my scholar friend to investigate.

When I told him what a goblet was in the above world, he could not stop laughing. And I can tell you, goblin laugh isn't all that pleasant. When he had finally calmed down, he explained that "empty cup" is a goblin phrase for totally dumb, and the goblets were said to have a lot of those who could be called that. Which makes me think that the goblets are probably the goblin version of barbarians.

On the way to the warren the Rats used, we met a few of them, mostly females and children, who were walking dire rats around on leashes. They stared at us, naturally, but didn't interfere as they knew Gozzy as a member of their allies. I don't particularly like being stared at, but I was a good dwarf and grinned back at them, making sure to show a lot of teeth.

Then we began meeting the patrols. While they didn't bother us, they raised my inner alarm. Compared to what I'd seen with the Slergrad Kingdom, those Rat warriors were astonishingly well equipped. Most them had new looking armor and arms, definitely not made by goblins. No, it rather looked as if someone had given them gnome or halfling armor, and some of it even looked dwarf made. Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with goblins learning what the good things are, but I wondered how they had gotten them, as it wasn't likely that this was all just equipment of their past victims. Someone from above must have been equipping them.

The guards at the entrance to the Rat complex itself were a bit more attentive, but after Gozzy explained that the "small human" had business with their boss – making it sound like I had rejected dealing with theirs – they let us through, although they insisted on an escort. That was to be expected, of course.

About the same time we arrived there, Randa and her team must have reached the Rat barracks. Randa posed as a canal worker who had seen the Centipedes doing the damage, clogging up the canals in the process. She supposedly knew the Slergrads from having them help with clean ups, a story easy enough to believe as the "human" canal workers are usually from the small races and use the help of the goblins quite often. She later said it was no problem at all to have the enraged Rat warriors follow them.

Cusbath had a bit of a problem luring the Centipedes out, supposedly being followed by Slergrads who were angry because he had traded with some of their group. Not too many of the Centipede Kingdom manage to trade, but that he was a priest finally convinced them. While the Centipedes were closer to the planned battle site, the delay meant that the group arrived just barely before Randa's showed up.

Luckily, our warlock had been mostly sufficient to prepare some traps with his group. Goblins were dumped into the sewers, got stuck in mud and rubble and – his masterpiece – were scattered by the symbol of their own tribe, a really large giant centipede looking as if it wanted to eat every goblin. While it had been his idea, though, it was the goblin wizard, or shaman, or whatever they called it, who had conjured it up. Learned illusions from the gnome canal workers, so he said, and found it so hilarious and useful that he had chosen to specialize in it, next to the usual stuff they did. It was also helpful that he could not only make people, but also things invisible. The Rats thought the main bridge over an important canal was gone, destroyed by their enemies, when in fact it was just not visible. I wish I could have seen that, really.

By the time they had gone at each other for about half an hour and fallen to the traps like flies, the Slergrads only needed to clean up. Of course, those were not all the warriors of both sides, but a large contingent, and the Rats probably had their best armed and armored men and women there – yes, female goblins do fight, and quite a few other things, so I learned. Mostly when they can't have offspring, but it seemed for some reason almost "one room of each warren" full of women were infertile each generation. Maybe it's like with rats and they just stop multiplying so much when it is overcrowded.

Well, I didn't have nearly as much fun. Because when I met the boss of the Rats, a surprise was waiting for me. In the cavern we were led to, a fat goblin with greasy black hair sat upon an oversized wooden chair. He looked at me and sneered. “What bring humans to Fat Rat’s table?”

I almost didn't hear him, though, because it was the guard standing right behind him who held my attention. I knew him, though not his name. "Bounty hunter," he snarled at me. "What you want from us? Is there bounty on Fat Rat now?"

I shook my head in response, trying to think quickly. About a month or so, I had discovered, and not in a pleasant way, that goblins do, in fact, have bounty hunters, too, and that they tend to prefer to go after bounty marked by orcs, maybe because they feel closer to them. This particular goblin had been after the same target, a half-orc murderer who wasn't wanted in Freeport but the merchant of another free city had paid a lot to get the guy's head. I had been first to our prey, but as the goblin had given me a big advantage making the murderer run from him, I'd given him a share. Now, this situation was partly beneficial, because my story would be all the more believable. Yet, it was also dangerous because this goblin had seen what I was capable off. Including some not so nice tricks I had pulled to get to the murderer first.

"No, there is not, bounty hunter," I replied with a grin. "If there was, you'd have known and taken care to catch your own chief for the money, isn't that right?" It was the first thing to say that came to mind, and it was probably true, too. Couldn't hurt to sow some mistrust in their own rows, either.

The head of the fat goblin whirled around, and he stared at his guard. Then he waved for two of the escort that brought me to take him away. "You not tell me you go hunt for bounty," he growled. "You not trusted anymore."

That had gone well. I waited for the goblin to be removed before I finally addressed Korth. "I'm sorry to disturb, but I was told your people take a lot of dead people and sometimes make them dead, and may have taken, and probably killed, a... human I need to find. I don't much care if he is dead or not. I just need proof."

Korth tilted his head and listened to the description of the missing man without surprise. "Not remember. Maybe," he then said. "If you want check our storage, you pay me some as you get paid, too, yes?" He chuckled.

"Sure, but... storage? What in the name of all gods do you need stored stiffs for?" I asked, while making a move for my bag.

To my surprise – and Gozzy's - the goblin started talking. Seems there was some guy they called "The Pale Man" going around collecting bodies, and paying well for them if the Rats collected them for him. They were meeting this man regularly at an abandoned mausoleum. First, they jsut stole bodies, including from graveyards and undertakers, and wherever they could find them on the streets. But there are only so many bodies in Freeport, and while there is death everyday, it looked like it was never enough. So, they went out to kill whatever they found helpless in the streets. They thought, so Korth said, no one would miss the homeless rubble. Well, he was partially right about that. Except that they had killed the wrong guy. I told him that, while faking admiration - he bought it, too – for his freeing the streets of above from the unwanted.

What was that? I heard that, someone just said that this sounds way too easy. That's true. While i got my information, by this time I was beginning to get really worried. See, whenever a villain, in his own lair, starts to tell you all his plans without regard that you may tell someone who could do something about it, they are either stupid – what this goblin was not – or they intend to kill you. Another body to get money for, ya know, and getting rid of a problem as well. Or two, considering that Gozzy was with me. Goblin or not, he wasn't theirs, and I doubt that they would have spared him.

So once more, I did the first thing coming to mind, forgetting all about my bag. And I admit freely I had had some lessons from our warlock by now. Flattery. And a business proposal to top it off. I asked him if he would be willing to help me with a problem, considering he had use for bodies. Without waiting for his answer, I went on about my dwarf clan having a feud with a mountain dwarf clan – and to my surprise, Korth knew the difference, if barely. We had taken to killing the others off one by one while we ourselves had loaded up in magical protection, but throwing the bodies into the seedy part of the sea by the docks was getting bothersome and dangerous. We had, so I claimed, 2-3 bodies per day, not all of them dwarf but also their allies. If his buyer wouldn't mind their faces burned off to make identification harder, we'd pay him for getting rid of those dead – a silver each plus equipment – and he could get double pay for delivering them.

There is no better way to get to a greedy character than by the offer of profit. His ears perked up and his eyes lit up. "sounds like a plan to me. And maybe you can help find more people no one misses, yes?"

"Oh, probably," I nodded. "The docks are full of those no one wants around. Bit far from the sewer entrances, but I can lure them with promises of profit, and your Rats take them at the sewer entrances. The city will be all the better for it." I had trouble keeping my face straight at that, and Gozzy seemed unsure what to think. But my life was on the line here, and I was ready to promise the city to him if I could make it sound believable.

Korth chuckled. "We talk details, now. You..." He pointed at Gozzy. "Wait outside with the guards. This doesn't need listeners. No dumb Slergrads to know everything."

When they led Gozzy out, who seemed very worried for a reason, Korth looked at me. "You trust this one?" he asked.

"not really," I said, knowing that saying yes would make me look foolish. "But I pay him more than he gets from his chief, and he helps me without this... what's his name again.. Flax?"

"Flurx," Korth corrected, laughing like a goat on fire.

"Right, Flurx. Without Flurx knowing, and he's been the only reason I have found my bounty, dead or not, here with you."

"You are still paying to get proof, right?" he wanted to know while waving me closer.

"Sure thing, as I agreed on it. Where do you keep the stiffs anyway?" I came closer, going for my bag again.

He pointed behind him to a tunnel. "Next cave. You aren't going to damage him are you?"

"Nope, just need an ear. Long boring story about that."

Again, he chuckled at that and didn't pay attention what I took from my bag. I keep lots of things in it others would keep on their belts – like the manacles I need for bringing my targets back alive. He just saw a silvery glitter and bowed forward, and next thing he knew he had them slapped onto him. They were, of course, a bit big – haven't been able to afford those magical ones yet which adapt to the wearer – and then I pushed him on his back, counting on his fatness causing issues with him getting up to begin with. He only got out one little cry before I gagged him with a torn part of his own dirty pants.

Still, that cry could have been the end of me, considering that usually his guards would be close. However, this was the moment the others arrived. I could hear the faint sounds of fighting. I admit I was surprised, the plan had had so many things that could have gone worse than they did. I had not counted on a timely arrival.

The problem was, to me, that I was expected to kill the Fat Rat. It was part of the plan, and it made sense. Yet, killing someone helpless that was not, to my knowledge, a major villain, was not something I really felt like doing. Luckily, the decision was taken from me, as an upset and frightened Gozzy reentered the room. "They here," he shouted. "Gozzy not know what to..." He stopped right there when he saw the gagged and manacled Korth struggling to stand up. With amazing speed, he grabbed the next discarded rusty sword – their old weapons before they got new equipment, I guess – and ran it right through him. Not once. Not twice. I stopped counting at 10. A goblin is, after all, still a goblin even if you consider him a friend. I learned much later that the Rats had killed some of his family a while back when they weren't allies.

"Gozzy do help," he grinned at me after he was done. "Gozzy hero of Slergrads now."

No doubt about that. I took the gag and the manacles off. "Let's say he was free and you rescued me, yes?" I winked at him, a gesture that, so I had noticed, meant much the same among goblins. Can't hurt to make a useful friendship stronger. I'll probably go through the sewers lots of times in the future.

I went to search the room of course, and found a hidden compartment with some useful stuff in the... well, let's call it throne. Gozzy was too busy gloating over his achievement to even notice or want a share.

The Slergrads obliterated the warriors of the Rats that day and incorporated the rest into their Kingdom. A day later, they, with the help of our battle plan loving warlock, they drove the Centipedes so far back and out of their warrens that they are, for the moment, a non issue.

We found the body of Krag. While it already smelled very bad, we had little choice but to carry it back in the sack it was in. His father needed some closure. It was also hard to tell him that it had been goblins. Us having helped dealing with cleaning out the responsible Kingdom made him feel a little better. He promised to give us some weapons and armor if we needed it, and he sure meant it.

After we had cleaned up – it was almost morning already and luckily, not too many people had missed me at the inn – we had one ale before taking a good long nap. We were in a really good mood until Cusbath pointed out that this was not the end of it, that we needed to find the man the goblins had been selling the bodies to - and probably still were as Big Flurx wanted the stiffs out.

Leave it to the cleric to spoil the celebration.

We were recently unable to schedule, but with module 3 still not out, it is probably a good thing. So to show we are still on it, here is the part of chapter 2 we already did.

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The next day was mostly business as usual, except that Randa told us about the guards and volunteer militia being boosted and even some outside mercenaries were brought in. Turned out the scouting attempt of the tattooed group that had been arrested due to our involvement had not been the only one, and the council seemed under the impression that a battle was coming up soon. With who or what exactly, Randa did not know. Cusbath, who joined us late that night, said that there had been a lot of cases of grave robbing lately. Too many to all go on the account of goblins, and some witnesses said they had seen shadowy figures a "normal size." He said that with some disdain, because normal, in most areas, means human sized, of course. Never mind that we make up a good part of the population now. It is a disgrace that even some dwarf and halfling citizens consider normal to be human sized. Bah!

So Cusbath was pressuring to go back to the sewers, to find out where the bodies are taken and thus find who was behind it all. Naturally, he assumed it to be some sinister cult, probably necromancers, and probably aiding our would be attackers. Discussions went back and forth, but in the end, it was decided that the city officials had other worries and we might as well look into it ourselves.

This time, we brought presents for the goblins. To our surprise, the former enemies, now united in one "kingdom" got along surprisingly well. Seemed they were tired of the fighting for a long time, but once it had become a tradition, they had been unable to stop. We were greeted very friendly and learned that they did deliver the last set of corpses as per the now dead Fat Rat's contract. They added the dead goblins to it, too. After all, they didn't want all the stiffs lying around stinking out the rooms and attracting diseases. The payment had been nice, too – all the new stuff, including some alchemist's fire and other minor magics the Rats had owned came from those payments.

The tunnels behind where the dead had been stored led to an abandoned part of the city's underground – storage areas for work materials, mostly – and from there up next to a mausoleum of an old abandoned graveyard our priest identified as Green Bough Cemetery. And before any of ye asks, no, we were not as foolish to venture into it at night. Seeing in the dark is all well and dandy, but as everyone knows some bad things only lurk at night, it was best to go there during the day, and do so above ground, too. And asides, we needed rest as it was late already. No point in missing a good night's sleep when ye can do stuff the next day, y'know?

Next morning we went there early – really early, the su was barely up. We wanted enough time with light to check things out. Turned out there were only 8 mausoleums, though the cemetery was big enough. Graves were disturbed and the first 2 mausoleums we checked were also empty. Necromancy was almost a certainty by now.

We found the mausoleum used to drop the bodies at. Strangely, this one was not empty, all the sarcophagi contained half mummified, half skeletal bodies. Save from evidence that the burlap sacks had been dragged around and a few footprints from a larger person or two, we didn't find anything. That, of course is the disadvantage of checking out things during the day.

While the others checked out the other mausoleums while we were here anyway, I tried to track whoever the goblins gave the bodies to. But I'm not that great a tracker, a skill I badly need to pick up considering it's useful to track bounty, too. When I heard some commotion from one of the mausoleums and rushed back, it turned out to be Warfart laughing out loud in front of the mausoleum, with the others trying to calm him down. Took a bit for them to explain that there had been wights inside, locked in by magic. They had tried to trick them into freeing them, but our warlock knew the arcane symbols on the ground for a binding ritual and so they didn't fall for the trick. After that, the wight had tried a different approach, giving them some info about the necromancers binding them and calling herself a "good wight fooled by destiny." Since that day, "fooled by destiny" is Thorian's phrase of choice when someone who is clearly guilty pretends to be innocent.

But they got some descriptions. A tall, slender pale, almost white man with only a ring of thin silver hair. A stocky, fat guy with a bushy mustache going up to his sidebuns, who constantly kept stroking it when thinking. Not much to go by, I thought, except that our priest seemed a bit disturbed by the fat guy's description. "Sounds like someone I know at the temple," he explained. "Can't be, can it?" he continued, talking to himself more or less after asking us to follow him to the Temple of Knowledge. He wanted to talk to the man there right away.



The man he was referring to was called Ober the Reader, an overseer of the scribes in the temple of knowledge, among other things. Cusbath described him as an effective, quiet man always on the look for new things to learn. Didn't sound to me like he'd be in with evil. We went straight to his office without waiting and came right in where he sent off a young acolyte with new orders for the temple storage. While he was surprised at us barging in, he was friendly enough and even made us some tea. Cusbath didn't jump right into it, but explained form the beginning what had happened lately. Me and Warfart were getting a bit impatient about that, but he later explained it was so Ober wouldn't attempt to explain several things away.

But he didn't even try. The man listened with polite interest, asked a few harmless questions – like why the guard wasn't looking into it – and seemed to find it somewhat amusing that his fellow priest thought him to be involved. "I'm in the area sometimes, yes. There is a tea house I love to go to. I even checked out the graveyard not too long ago, old burial sites have always interested me. But there were never any wights there, and I certainly have no desire to go there at night."

He sounded honest, yet the description, the way he stroked his mustache and all, fit very well. He then changed the topic to the guard being too busy. "Heard it might be the goblinoids setting in the mountains we might go up against. Could be a serious thing. Maybe the temple should prepare for the worst."

When we finally left, we were all unsure about the situation. Cusbath said he was almost convinced we had bothered the wrong guy, or that the wights had seen him and made it all up. However, he suggested someone stay behind and tail Ober for a while. And he looked at me when he said this. Of course.

What I hate most about being a bounty hunter is the waiting time. Sometimes, all ye do is wait for the one you are after to show up. It can be very boring. And asides, I had to tend to the bar. But Warfart volunteered to help out – he's a good barkeep if he wants to be, and he always wants to be if it means free drinks – so I had little excuse. Randa was supposed to be at a militia training this afternoon, something she volunteered for as she really likes shouting at recruits, and Cusbath said he wanted to check something in the temple's storage, although he didn't want to say what.

But what in the Nine Hells... it's not like anyone else of our group knew how to tail someone, anyway. I settled down in the inn across the temple – was time for lunch, anyway, a good, long dwarven lunch – and waited. Cusbath had said that it would be at least an hour before Ober would have time to go anywhere, and he was right. I was already in my 5th coffee – real brew, not the weakened stuff humans or elves like to drink – when I saw Ober leaving the temple. I later realized he could have sneaked out of one of the many back entrances, but Cusbath had been right about the habits of the man. On the way out, he was very friendly with everyone he met, shook hands and talked to some people. I waited until he was off the steps and into the crowd before I followed him.

That's one advantage of being smaller than most in your environment. You don't get noticed so easily by the big folk as long as you keep a low profile. Humans and especially elves who aren't used to dealing with us or halflings or gnomes much just tend to look at their eye height for any shadows. They might look down occasionally, but if they do so, they look down at a specific angle, and to the side of the road and right over the heads of those following closely. So, if ya ever have to tail a human or elf and you are small, stick close. If ya follow any small folk, no matter yer size it will be much more difficult, naturally.

Ober didn't do anything suspicious, save visiting a brothel for a few hours, but I seriously believe it was on behalf of a faithful. While following him, I bought a bunch of small things I didn't really need, just to have an excuse to stay close to him. I noticed he didn't seem to be in any sort of hurry. Not at all like a man who is worried to be found out, or who needs to warn his companions.

Late in the afternoon, he returned to the temple. I waited around for a bit, considering the option to stay the night and probably make sure somehow that he wouldn't leave through a back door. That's when Cusbath came out of the temple, knowing where I'd wait. He looked worried. Turned out he had spent the afternoon trying to trace what Ober had been doing in the temple and elsewhere lately. Nothing seemed suspicious but one thing. The man had ordered an awful lot or burial sacks for the temple to help the poor bury their dead. Burlap sacks like we had found the stolen bodies in. There had been no epidemic or other causes to need so many sacks, and strangely enough, the temple storage showed the usual number. If that wasn't suspicious, I don't know what was. Cusbath said we would need to keep the guy under permanent observation now.

Later, the other joined us. Randa was confirming that the goblinoids were likely to be preparing for war, and Thorian had done some digging around for information about any cabal of necromancers. He didn't have that much, save for the rumors about a secret group called Grey Society, which was believed to be involved into research about life and death – which usually involved necromancy. But as you likely know, Freeport if full of such rumors and real and imagined secret societies and cults. Such information may mean anything or nothing. The only tangible clue in all of it was the name of a rich woman supposedly involved with it. Kalynn Drummbach.

Now that name stood for business efficiency and for the tendency of larger businesses swallowing up the smaller ones. That woman owned a lot of business ventures in the city, not all of them legal as it was said, but other than that, we knew nothing of her. She wasn't involved with inns or restaurants so I never had had a reason to investigate. It seemed weird that such a woman, who came from a simple family and supposedly had no magical talent to be involved with anything like we were looking for. She also was not the type to mess around with. No, our best bet was Ober, so we decided to keep a watch that night. Our only worry was that we'd be split up in case he'd come out of one door and there was no way to alert the others. But then, Freeport was usually busy to way after midnight, and all we wanted was to observe anyway, and one would be efficient to do that.

But the night passed, too, without anything happening. Cusbath finally went to bed in the morning hours, saying he would make sure the back entrances would be locked and the keys misplaced so we would now only have to watch the main portal. That job, this time, fell to Randa, so I hurried home to the Mermaid to catch some dreams.

I woke the next day at my usual time and went about inn business until Thorian came in, saying that this morning he had almost lost Ober but managed to follow him to that tea house he had mentioned. Earl's Garden it was called, and it appeared to be a nice, bright, well liked tea house with lots of customers, set in the ruins of an ancient building. He said he had been about to go in and talk to Ober in a "wanted to check the place out" sort of way, but then he saw Kalynn Drummbach go in. He knew it was her because his arcane mentor had done some minor magical stuff for her a few months ago where he had assisted. While he doubted she would remember him, he saw her sitting down with Ober. A bit later, a tall pale man fitting the description the wights gave of the other necromancer joined them, and then they got up and vanished into the back of the building. It seemed clear that the tea house served as a meeting point for those we were looking for.

So now, we were watching a location, not a person. Which can still be boring, but at least there is no chance of it getting away. It took us another day of watching to notice several influential people seemingly involved with this Grey Society. Including the city councilor who had alerted the city to a possible goblinoid threat. This seemed not to fit in, because at that point we considered the creating of so many undead to be a preparation for the necros to take over Freeport. The goblinoid thread was not imagined, Randa could confirm that and we had seen the scouts of the barbarian tribes probably working with them. The only explanation we could come up with was that the necros had somehow staged the war, to weaken both sides and be able to collect the spoils. Dangerous, and not very clever in our eyes, but then, we were talking people who messed with life and death.

We eventually decided to abandon our watch and make plans to check out the tea house. Under a bit of influence of ale and frax – some local liquor the gnomes make – we decided to get a good night's and day's rest and then go in the next night in the early morning hours. At night was no good, going against things that might have an advantage then, and we sure didn't want any innocent customers involved in a probable fight. We also decided to alert the goblins to watch the way into the sewers, as we didn't want anyone to escape, or in case we'd need reinforcements. Lucky for us, the Slergrad Kingdom readily agreed after we brought them some more presents, including some of the ale and frax.