Against the Goblinoids (Updated 9/22)

OK, here's some quick background. We were sorta gearing up for a Star Wars game, but one guy didn't show, and we hadn't gamed in so long we wanted to do something. We decided to play a fantasy game -- pretty much core D&D rules -- because we know them better and could wing something much easier. Me and shadowlight rolled off to see who was going to DM first (he got it -- I'm next) then we all threw some characters together and started right away with an impromptu game. The house rules were that we rotate DMs, you essentially don't prepare anything other than a few randomly generated NPCs ahead of time, and everyone brings a little bit of setting development with them every time we play. We also made a tweak or two to the classes -- my fighter has Wilderness Lore as a class skill, for instance, and we handwaved away a prereq or two for some feats that we thought would be fun to play with. We decided that although we'd make an attempt to run XP more or less as per the rules, we'd also arbitrarily level up after each session regardless of what the XP did.

For the setting itself, we did a really bare bones start -- we had a map that had an uncharted wasteland of dead trees and dust taking up the western end of the map. This land was called Abbis, and is known to be the homeland of various goblinoid peoples and nations. A north-south mountain range splits the map in two, and goblinoids from Abbis are known from time to time to pour through the Blood Pass in an attempt to subjugate the more bountiful lands on the eastern side. These lands comprise the mostly human kingdom of Inistaad (or, Inista'äd as we jokingly dubbed it) and an unnamed "elf forest" that abutts the mountain range. The city of Liska is a treetop city a few days on foot from the mountain range that has a mixed population. Liska has a "Swiss style" militia -- all able-bodied citizens are expected to take tours of duty patrolling the surrounding area six times a year for about a week's time. The three initial characters were about to start a patrol together at the beginning of the game, a week in the woods on a route that would take them through various locations between Liska and the Blood Pass. There hadn't been any goblinoid activity in the area for many years, and the patrols, while still maintained, were not taken terribly seriously anymore.

We begin play with my character Baenn -- a human fighter (played by me) who uses a greatsword and is at home in the woods, Cyrus "Not Black" a human sorceror played by shadowlight, and Amallind, a human ranger played by Mrs. shadowlight. Because of the nature of the game, we didn't really flesh these guys out to start with, but we're working on that even as we speak. We initially proposed the game as a kind of stop-gap thing; something to do when we all really wanted to game and our whole group wasn't yet available. However, we had so much fun with it that we decided to run with it for a while. I don't know how long we'll play it, as we do all have other games in the backs of our minds to run (including Star Wars, Mutants & Masterminds, a homebrew fantasy game, Arcana Unearthed, GURPS, etc.) but I figger "what they hey, it's fun right now."

I also took very good notes this session, so the report will be fairly accurate. However, I'm not writing this report to be a game session log, it's a story first and foremost, based on the session, but not slavishly. For one thing, I probably won't have such detailed logs in the future, and for another thing, I didn't take any real notes on the dialogue anyway.

Wow, first one in the theater. I guess that means I get the best seat in the house.

Sounds fun Josh. I'm in my seat, coke and popcorn at the ready. Let's do this thing.

Unfortunately, I left the first installment half finished on my computer at work! I won't be able to finish it tonight without looking to see exactly where I left off. But, I anticipate having an update tomorrow.

Two days into the forest on their tour of duty, Baenn, Cyrus and Amallind set up camp. Cyrus and Baenn have little "pup tents" while Amallind's is a bit larger. "I need more room for my things," she says, finishing her unpacking while Baenn and Cyrus start to build a firepit, their tents having already been completed. They turn and roll their eyes at each other. "Of course, Amallind, whatever you say."

The trip has been enjoyable so far; the weather has been warm but not too hot yet (it's early May) and the forest is, as usual, beautiful and calming. Both Amallind and Baenn have been able to bring down the occasional bit of small game, so they've not had to live entirely off of their MREs. The camp for tonight is in a clearing surrounded by darker fir and pine trees; the clearing itself a soft bed of reddish and brownish fallen needles. Later, as the fire is burning cheerily and roasting a brace of squirrels to supplement the MREs, Baenn lays against his bedroll playing softly (and poorly) on a small wooden flute.

"I'm glad we get the chance to do these kinds of things," Amallind says. "It's great to get out of the city."

"Won't be so great if we run into a patrol of goblins now, will it?" Everyone laughs. Hardly anyone alive (amongst the humans anyway) in the city has ever seen a live goblin. "Still, we better be a bit cautious; there's bears and the like around. Should we set a watch now that we're officially on the first leg of our patrol?" Amallind agrees to take the first watch, and Baenn the last one, leaving Cyrus to split his sleep in two (his player was the DM -- he didn't get a chance to argue much anyway.) The boys gradually roll over and sleep as darkness falls and the fire burns down to ashes.

About an hour into the watch, Amallind hears a rustling in the bushes. She quietly wakes the boys up, who groggily reach for their weapons and scratch themselves into some semblance of wakefulness. A small rabbit comes out of the bushes. "Rabbits! At night?" Amallind says. She's all set to investigate, but Baenn snorts and falls back asleep before she can.

The next morning is cool and misty -- Cyrus builds the fire back up and tries to make the MREs as palatable as possible. He does have some skill in the culinary arts, but this feat is completely beyond even his talents, unfortunately. Baenn sits on a log pulled up near the fire disconsolately munching on a hardtack biscuit until he finally snaps into a semblance of wakefullness.

After breakfast, the group takes off again, Amallind in front to blaze the trail and Baenn to bring up the rear-guard. He stays a little bit behind, keeping his eyes and ears open for any sign of disturbance. In the afternoon, Amallind hears another rustling, and she holds up her hand for the group to stop and remain silent. Suddenly a large elk pushes through the brush in front of them. They all look at each other for just a few moments, then go their separate ways.

Later that night, Amallind again hears some rustling in the underbrush, but this time she hears some stealthy voices approaching. She wakes the boys again, and starts trying to put out the smoldering embers of the fire. Baenn doesn't think it likely this is a threat. "Leave it to the women!" he says. "Everyone knows you're supposed to put out campfires by peeing on them!" Amallind scowls at him, then squats over the fire, meeting the demands of modesty quite well in the resultant column of steam the comes from the coals. (OK, not really, but we did joke about it, at least...)

"I'm not so sure about this," says Cyrus. "Let's get out of sight until we know who it is." Baenn laughs, but joins him in the trees, not even bothering to get behind anything; counting on the general darkness to keep him hidden. Amallind on the other hand goes completely out of sight.

To Baenn's complete surprise, four goblins walk into the clearing, mumbling to each other. They see Baenn and Cyrus and draw their weapons. Baenn can already see where this is going, so he raises his greatsword and charges across the clearing, leaping over the remains of the fire pit and chop one of the goblins nearly in half. The other two turn to attack him, one with fists and feet and the other with a spear, but neither is capable of piercing the sturdy studded leather Baenn wears. Amallind sends two arrows flying into the trees; one of them sticks shaking into a tree trunk near a goblin at least. Cyrus hunkers down and protects himself with mage armor. Meanwhile, Baenn mauls two more goblins like a cuisinart, and the last one flies screaming through the trees.

Baenn and Amallind decide letting the goblin get away may not be a great idea, so they run after him. Through their own huffing and puffing, and the slapping of branches and crunching of leaves, they can hear a few phrases in goblin coming back towards them "... camp... three humans...." then they hear chanting.

Breaking into the clearing, Baenn and Amallind can see the runaway goblin talking to another one who appears to be chanting. Before he can do anything else, Baenn rushes up and gives the chanter a greatsword haircut that takes about 8 inches off the top of his head. Seeing the grisly death of his companion, the runaway yelps in fright, dodges Amalling's quarterstaff and runs off into the woods again. Baenn and Amallind try to give chase, but it is extremely dark and the goblin is able to make better time through the thick undergrowth, so they give up and head back to the goblin camp. Baenn scored a total of two critical hits just in this small combat, while unfortunately the other characters didn't score any damage at all.)

There, a little bit of investigation shows that the chanter has a small bit of copper wire. Figuring that this may be a spell component that Cyrus can identify, Amallind picks it up. Baenn finds a brace of freshly killed rabbits. Still bitter about losing sleep over a rabbit the night before, he gleefully collects them and walks back to his own camp with the intention of rebuilding the fire and having a second supper. The only other item of note was a strange design painted on the clothes and shields of the goblins; it resembles some kind of bat-like creature, but the design is crude and difficult to interpret. None of the three can make anything of it.

Back at their own camp, they find Cyrus has been busy. He's gathered fifteen gold crowns, a few rusty daggers and brightly polished stones and a dusty spellbook. He's also been able to stabilize and save the life of one of the goblins for questioning. They wake him up.

"What are you doing here?" Amallind demands. She's not gentle. Her hatred of goblins is legendary amongst her friends.

"You'll get nothing from me!" the goblin spits in its gutteral language (which all the PCs speak, by the way) but when Baenn puts the goblin in a headlock and threatens to snap his neck, his tune changes a bit (natural 20 on the Intimidation roll!)

Snivelling and crying now, the goblin begins to rant. "You puny people, think you are safe and protected in the fertile lands, but Grendu will teach you! Grendu will rain fire and blood on your entire people!"

"Bring it on, ya punk!" says Baenn, tightening his grip on the creatures neck. "We'll take care of Grendu just like we took care of the rest of you here tonight."

"Acckkk.. gaaah... Grendu... is not a mortal, you fool! He lives with the gods!" The goblin sneaks a knife from behind his back and tries to make a lunge at Amallind. She swats him with her quarterstaff, putting him unconscious again. After a few vicious kicks, she dumps him (and the other bodies) on the fire.

"Aawww, I was gonna cook on that!" Baenn whines.

"We may have problems," Cyrus says. "This spellcasting one you killed? Can you remember, was he whispering anything after he finished chanting?" Baenn scratches his head (and probably his crotch as well) but Amallind nods her head.

"Yes, I'm pretty sure he was. What does that mean?"

"It means," Cyrus says slowly, "that he was sending a message, I think. I doubt our presence here and the results of this attack will pass unnoticed."

"Great!" Baenn says. "So now we have to pull up camp and move in the middle of the night!"

The next morning, all three are up at the crack of dawn. There is a half-hearted argument from Baenn to track the stupid rabbit that woke him up the other night. A more serious argument is whether or not they should cut short their patrol and send a warning to Liska, or pursue the still-fresh trail of the goblin who fled last night. Upon deciding to follow the goblin, they head off into the woods together. The trail is relatively easy to follow, and the three pursue it in the same order as before, with Amallind in the front, Cyrus close behind her, and Baenn at good three or four meters behind him. After a few hours of walking, Amallind holds up her hand; she has heard a rustle in the woods. The other two look around them expectantly.

Suddenly an arrow flies through the trees in front of Baenn. He sees the goblin archer a few feet away and mows him down with his greatsword. As if by magic, the woods are suddenly filled with goblins -- it's a trap! An unarmed warrior attacks Amallind, but she ducks out of the way, steps back and fires an arrow point-blank into his chest. An arrow narrowly misses Cyrus, while another grazes Baenn's shoulder. Cyrus gestures and chants; one of the attackers falls in sudden slumber. A blue dart of magical force arcs through the air to slam into Baenn, who stumbles to his knees. The source was a hobgoblin. Baenn runs up and slashes at him, but heavy undergrowth turns his blow. More arrows are in the air, Cyrus screams and slumps into the ferns, bleeding heavily from a shaft stuck in his guts. Amallind grits her teeth, tears running down her cheeks as she runs to attack another goblin, but with the sound of more chanting, she falls asleep to the forest floor as well.

Baenn sees that he is alone, but has no intention of stopping. Two arrows thunk into his torso, knocking him back, but with a scream of rage he swings his sword at the hobgoblin sorcerer again. The creature merely raises an eyebrow in curiousity, stepping aside from the blow and sending another magic missile blasting into Baenn. He even smiles and bows appreciatively when Baenn props himself up on his sword and rises to a hunched standing position one more time, with hatred burning in his eyes. Then two more arrows slam into his back and his world falls into blackness.

Waking from fitful and feverish dreams of strange creatures flapping blasphemous wings in the darkness, Baenn, Cyrus and Amallind find themselves alone, each in a small cell with a tiny window in the thick wooden door that looks out into a hallway. They are all poorly tied with ropes that they can escape from relatively easily. A bit of croaked shouting, and they discover easily enough that they are all in adjoining cells. Someone else calls from the cell next to them as well.

"Bria Jens is my name," they hear a woman say. "I'm a librarian from Liska." Indeed, the three adventurers know her; she is well known for her habit of disappearing into the woods for several days at a time with a backpack full of books. When they left Liska, she had been gone on one such trip for a few days already. "I was camping in the woods, asleep in my tent. Something woke me one night, and when I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by goblins. I screamed, but they merely bound me and forced me to run through the woods until I arrived here. I've been here for two days now. They plan to kill us all -- make us sacrifices to some foul god of their's named Grendu.... I've never read of such a being before."

Cyrus stands up to the window, looking out into the dimly lit hallway. "There's another room on this hallway too; it doesn't look like a cell; the door is solid. Do you know what it is?" Bria believes it to be no more than a storage room. "Well, let's see what they store here, shall we?" He chants softly for a minute, and then using the arcane mage hand he opens the door.

"What do you see?" asks an eager Amallind. Cyrus's eyes are focused inside the door, and he is chanting again. Then, each of the prisoners gives a muffled cheer -- through the air come floating a ring of keys that land right in Cyrus's lap. Within seconds, he's opened all the cells and allowed all of them out. Baenn and Cyrus are only barely patched together, with wounds that open as they move to leak more blood on their clothing. The hallway they are in is short; besides the rows of doors, there is also a window on one end and a heavy door on the other. Baenn limps over to the window; it is not an encouraging sight. The window looks outside, and it appears as if they are in a squat building placed against a ridge that falls away from the window to a gray, dusty plain below. Across this forbidding desolation, about thirty miles, they can see what must be the Blood Pass. They are on the hostile side of the mountains.

Slightly better news is that all of their equipment seems to be in the storage rooms. Cyrus downs a healing potion that he had the foresight to buy, while Amallind gives her last one to Baenn. Cyrus is now skipping through the hallways; a picture of perfect health, while Baenn is grimacing noticably less, at least.

Through the door, the adventurers can hear some movement. Amallind looks through the keyhole and sees a largish room, with two goblins in conversation in an alcove nearby. "It's almost time for them to bring us our food," says Bria. "They'll be preparing it as we speak."

Amallind gets a nasty smile on her face and her eyes glint. "Well, now it's our turn to set the ambush then, isn't it?" She takes Cyrus and Bria into the storage room, while Baenn stands next to the door on the hinge side, to make sure he's not seen when the door opens. Within a short while, the door does creak open and a goblin with bowls of crockery steps inside. Baenn lets him enter and then shuts the door quietly. With a savage strike, he cuts the goblin nearly in half. The other goblin opens the door and pokes his head in. Amallind is waiting for him with a nocked arrow. She looses it at point blank range right into his face. He falls without a cry to the floor.

The four of them sneak out into the room, and hear the sounds of a few goblins in a small attached barracks. Inside, they see four goblins sitting on their bunks with sheets of paper in one hand and strangely shaped dice in the other hand. They appear to be having a discussion of "+2 sword of human-gutting" whatever the heck that is. Cyrus steps up and casts a spell that makes three of them fall asleep. Amallind nails the last to the wall with an arrow like a grotesque decoration. With a small dagger, she slits the throats of the other three, mumbling her hatred of the foul creatures the entire time. Bria looks a little pale, but nods approvingly.

Sneaking past another doorway, they see what appears to be a large mess hall, with many goblins. Even Amallind thinks it best to leave them alone. It's a bit quieter again on the other side of the mess hall, and ahead the group sees a four way junction. To the right is an ornate door guarded by two goblins. Cyrus holds Amallind back wordlessly as he steps up to cast his sleep spell once more. Both of the guards slump to the ground. Amallind slits their throats as well.

The door itself is finely constructed, with gold filligree and a design that looks much like that marking the goblins all had on their clothing. Here, it is much more detailed, and it is clear to see that this is no bat, but some kind of obscene demon. A great number of voices chanting in unison can be heard through the door. Baenn looks at Amallind and shakes his head pointedly.

They turn now to the openning that would have been straight in front of them earlier (it's now to their right.) This is a richly furnished, but short, hallway with tapestries on the wall. The few doors in this small hallway are locked and nothing else of interest is to be seen. The final passageway leads downward through a stairwell. At the bottom are five more goblins waiting in a large hall and large doors on the opposite side. Cyrus casts sleep a final time, and all five slump to the ground. Amallind is about to go to work with her dagger again when the sound of shouting is heard from above. It appears the group's handiwork has been discovered. "Run!" Cyrus shouts, and they all bolt through the large doors into the outside.

Here there is a rocky and somewhat steep slope (although not as steep as the ridge around the corner) and all of them start down the slope and hide amongst the rocks as best they can...

Like I said, because we had so much fun, after this session's cliffhanger ending, we decided to keep this up. Also, because we didn't design our characters to really be long-term characters, we decided to take them to the drawing board. For one thing, we rolled our stats in order.

So, to keep our high stats, we're thinking of going back and doing a 35 point buy (the highest I've ever done, I think) and arranging the stats as we please. Cyrus is going to be reworked as a Magister from AU, and Baenn is going to bump up his CHA so he can later multiclass as a Mageblade (also from AU.) I'm not aware of Amallind's player making any changes to her concept, so she may remain the same. We're also going to not arbitrarily level up after all, as the XP tables aren't the same, for one thing.

We've also got our fourth player interested in joining us, and he's talking about making a halfling rogue that concentrates on acrobatic skills -- kind of the medieval dwarf/jester in concept, I suppose, although neutral evil. He made the character under our old rules, though, so he may need to tweak him as well. Next up I'll be running, and that should happen sometime this week -- maybe Saturday evening.

Here's a map I whipped up in the Heroes of Might and Magic III map editor. I added some text to the map, but accidentally deleted that version. This is still pretty cool, I think...

Yeesh! I hadn't realized the quality of that image had degraded so much in the conversion to a gif file. Sorry! The original looks tons better.

Mrs. Shadowlight just wrote up her character history: journal style. It's really good so I'll try to get her to post it!