The ooze tries to catch up to you as you slowly move away. "Run!" Shout Phly Loughphray. You decide its a good idea.
Your party, including the gnomes and Dorinthians, begins to run through the marsh, moving quickly at a sprint until everyone is exhausted. It seems you have lost the creature behind you. Thankfully no one gets stuck in the mud. It takes two more miserable, rainy days for you to reach Loughphray Burrows, the underground settlement of the gnomes. The people there seem happy to see you, although they sometimes throw a wary glance in Rix's direction.
The gnomes have dug a series of living areas inside the hills, although barracks and towers are manned outside the settlements. Some of the towers seem quickly patched up, as if damaged before. Alexander has trouble fitting into the tunnels, but otherwise manages himself well. After a day of rest, Silas is given a new quarterstaff that a gnome craftsman helps create from the abjurer's specifications.
The party receives a briefing from Harindan Loughphray, the clan leader of the hills. "Thank you for coming, adventurers. I've been told about your talents from Phly. Recently we've suffered badly from several attacks from goblins and kobolds. The kobold attacks have been the toughest, and we've suffered some horrible damage to our defenses. I doubt we can take another one or two assaults. I am hoping that we can go on the offensive using you as our shock troops. The two threats are coming from the Hound Totem clan of goblins southeast of here, and the kobold tribes to the southwest. The goblins have a population of a few hundred people, but we recently discovered the headquarters of their shaman who is uniting them. He has done so by finding a valuable totem staff, which is an important symbol of clan leadership and an item from the Hound Totem clan's mythology. Kill the shaman, or steal his totem staff, and the goblins will fall into chaos. Or we hope, anyway. We will pay 100gp to each of you if you present us with either the shaman's head or his totem staff. Also, the goblins have been getting new equipment lately. Find out who their supplier is and bring back proof, and we'll throw in an extra 50gp each."
"The kobolds are a greater mystery to us. We have always fought with the Lizard Scale, Hill Delver, and Two Horned tribes. Now a fourth tribe has appeared and quickly dominated the other three. This group is called the Dragon Eye tribe, and has somehow dominated its neighbors to the point that they are willing to conduct suicidal attacks against us. We know we have wiped out a huge number of Lizard Scale, Hill Delver, and Two Horned kobolds, but they keep coming and we are nearly exhausted. Kobolds are not insane, so we do not understand why they would be willing to kill themselves in futile mass assaults in order to destroy us. Find out what is going and try to break the control of the Dragon Eye tribe. We do not know their base of operations, but we know they are somewhere to the southwest. The kobolds still number close to a thousand, while we are down to a population of six hundred. Stop these kobold attacks and be rewarded with 200gp each."
"So gentlemen. Where will you go first?"
