From the journals of Rowan, Druid of Eaglesford
The beginning of this account I got from the others in bits and pieces. I was unconscious for a time, and not part of any of my friend's decisions. Garrett gave what healing he had to stabilize me; Thaile would have to tend me later.
Tieran, and later the rest of the boys, looked at what the goblin king had on him. He was, first off, a particularly ugly specimen of his kind; maybe he had demonic blood in him? He had a halfling-made magical shortsword named Silverleaf, a silver circlet of some sort of illusion magic, and his clothing looked like the usual, dirty, rather smelly, goblin garb, but felt like it might be chain mail; an illusion again.
While we were in the throne room, Thaile and Lissia questioned that captured goblin, Glebesh, and so they were surprised by a group of goblin warriors running past. Lissia killed two of them, and Thaile wounded one. The rest made it to the stairs and ran up. At the same time another stream of female goblins, these hooded and carrying noisy bundles, ran for the stairs. Thaile and Lissia shot several of these before the stairway.
Then I guess Garrett and Kytum-up arrived, having heard Thaile shouting at the fleeing little buggers. Thaile told Garret what had happened, and so Garrett and Kytum-up stormed up the stairs; they found the goblins trapped in the corridor above. I heard that the two holy warriors slaughtered the whole lot, goblin females and children first, then the remaining goblin warriors, even after the greasy humanoids threw down their weapons and screamed for mercy.
There were still a few more goblin women and children hiding about, but Riva set about to herd them up the stairs, into the blades of Garrett and Kytum-up.
As I said, I was out for this part of it.
After all of this, we all regrouped, and Thaile was able to bring me to consciousness. I noticed right away that Garret and Kytum-up were covered in goblin gore, more than just from our battle with Calebbleed. ....I found out the rest later. I guess I'm not sure what else to say about that.
Riva, as is his habit, wandered around the empty rooms, gazing raptly at the stonework. Thaile told me later that she had seen him wondering around, and had thought that maybe he was under some strange magic spell. "Naw, jus' lookin'." was the reply from the dwarf. He told me later that he noticed that any artistry or symbols on the rock had been defaced with stone-cutting tools. Even the faces of the collapsed ceiling blocks had been gone over. Not even a speck of anything recognizable remained. Riva says he's pretty confident the damage is all old.....how can he know all that? All I see are stone walls and collapsed stone ceilings.
In a side passage, called the "orcish bedrooms by our captive, we found a young human man, perhaps seventeen years old, severely beaten and unconscious, as well as three horse carcasses, slightly rotted. They brought the boy back to the main room to be tended by Thaile, left the horse meat where it was. They noted that there were some other foodstuffs there as well. We started off to the pit room to wash up, but were distracted by the sounds of someone moving around in the corridor to the right of the one that led to the pit room.
We moved down the hallway and an elven woman stepped out and asked us to stop. She was older, scarred and bruised. Her feet had been crushed and healed, so she walked with a bad limp. She had obviously been captive for quite a while. She told us that it was she who cast the sleep spell upon the goblins and saved Riva's life. We asked her about the prisoners behind the statue base. She said that "the gnome" was the only one back there.
The woman's name was Kaezubeth, she said that she had been the cook for the goblins. Zook, the gnome behind the statue base, was the one who made potions for the goblins. Kaezubeth would not speak to Zook, she said that's because Zook had helped the goblins. Riva helpfully pointed out that by cooking for them, Kaezubeth had helped the goblins too. She just glowered at Riva after that, not that the dwarf noticed.
We moved into the throne room, with Calebbleed's headless body, and set up camp. Tieran and Riva both really wanted to explore that last "blank" space on our map of this level, the place of "bad magic". Glebesh told them again, in his very fluent common (where did the goblin learn to speak like that?), that going there was a bad idea; not even Calebbleed had fully explored that area.
Of course, you can guess what that meant: Tieran, Riva, Kytum-up, and Garret went off to explore that corridor. Yup, the whole male contingent of our party. Thaile, Lissia, and I stayed behind, with the three people we had rescued.
Men.
So anyway, they moved down the corridor, which after a while ended with a deep pit, ten feet across. They could see a room beyond. Tieran used some bodily fluids to check the depth of the pit. He did not hear it hit the bottom, but he felt much better for having relieved himself.
As I said: Men.
Garrett found some narrow poles in the goblin lodgings some to make a bridge. Once Tieran was done heeding the call of nature, Garrett set up the bridge and started across it. As he stepped out onto the ground on the other side, it seemed to ripple and suddenly a dull red-hot glow shone up from the floor. Tieran, Kytum-up, and even Garret's wardog took off running in mortal fear, and hid against the base of the statue in the pit room. Some of the rest of us, even as far away as we were, were also overcome with fear. Even our cleric of Darmon the Wayfarer.
Riva and Garrett looked at each other, shrugged, and continued on, curious to see what was in the room. Riva went across the make-shift bridge, after a moment of wondering if it would hold him. A huge symbol filled the floor of the room, its lines glowing bright red-orange. (See attached picture!)
The room itself was much like other rooms we had seen, except that chisels had been used all over all the walls, floor,...even the ceiling. The glowing symbol, though, was "below" the floor, somehow, and was shining through the rock. (Light can do that?) Riva began to say hello in various languages (and boy, does he know a bunch),....I guess he was trying to activate something. It didn't work on any ancient magic in the room, but it did annoy Garrett. Even more ancient magic, I guess.
Garrett went to find everyone else and to ask Tieran about the symbol. Tieran had never seen that particular one, but did think that it was arcane. He copied it down and resolved to find out more about it once we were out of this place. The glowing symbol disappeared after a little while, and with it went the fear magic.
After we rested and healed up a bit, Garrett, Riva, and Thaile went to move the statue base. It wouldn't budge. Eventually, after alot of manly grunting and a few choice words from Riva (in Terran, he says), it rolled aside. They explored the openning beyond, which led to a hallway with alcoves to one side, and a huge pile of collapsed rubble at its end. The room had been turned into a workshop with tables and chairs and a lot of equipment, but very messy, very disordered. Tables and chairs were upended and after a short search, a gnome was found hiding behind an overturned table near the pile of rubble. Riva called to her to come out, but she didn't. Tieran called out as well, Riva offered her food, but she still did not come out, he also told her that Calebbleed was dead and she was free. Tieran asked if there might be a healing potion here. Finally, she whispered something to Tieran, but it was unintelligible. Tieran was pretty exasperated at this point, and yelled at her to get out of there and answer him. She immediately stepped out from behind the table. She was ragged, thin, and pallid. She reached out for a potion, but accidentally knocked it off the table in the process, shattering the vial.
Riva and Tieran put out the fire (not realizing that doing this would ruin the potion cooking over it) and brought Zook back to the throne room. Kaezubeth would not speak to Zook, and Zook spoke to no one without being asked a direct question. Even then, her answers were so soft that we could not hear her. I tried to draw her into conversation, but she seemed to be in a daze, or so traumatized that she could not, or would not believe that she was truly free.
Much later we found three more goblin females and one goblin baby that were still hiding in the rubble in the throne room. The females were tied up, though I allowed one of them her hands free to hold the infant. Glebesh, our other prisoner was tied up on the other side of the room from the females.
We also brought the more palatable food back to the throne room. Boxes of dried fruit were there, very expensive to get, but very good. There was other food as well. I saw that the prisoners were fed and we all had a good meal.
The human boy came to after a while and we found that his tongue had been cut out. We found out from Kaezubeth that his name is Merrrick Gingsman, and he's from Woodston, captured last year, sixteen years old, the son of a farmer. He can neither read nor write. The elf woman Thaile had saved, who was still out, was the last of four adventurers who had come down here a week and a half ago. Kaezubeth did not know what had become of the fourth party member, but we had found the elf woman and two others in the main room on stakes, so.....it can't have been good.
Kaezubeth was from the Elvish village of Maylin, far to the West. She was traveling when her caravan was attacked and she was taken three years ago. Others were taken prisoner with her, but she is the last left alive. She was traded from tribe to tribe until ending up with The Bloody Skull tribe when they were in the Aldersmere swamp. We were pretty eager to hear that she was there when the bright light came, killing many goblins. It also attacked "the beast", as she called Calebbleed, but Calebbleed was able to flee with his life.
Good thing we put a stop to that.
When we asked Kaezubeth about the people working with the goblins, she said that Calebbleed never allowed her around when he was dealing with them and he just called them a human and a halfling. They were always masked, with black cloth.
Questioning Glebesh, we found out that Makkesh was the one in charge up above. He was the one we killed in Tower 1, the one who almost killed me. Tower 3 he said was five levels or so, but they never used that one because while it gave a view of the valley below, it did not allow them a useful view. Tower 4, he said, is mostly collapsed like Tower 5. We also discovered that the Grinning Death tribe of Orcs currently inhabit the Garresh and that they have something called a "render" with them. Tieran thought that it might be a 12 to 14 foot tall creature with lots of eyes and four arms. Sounds nasty.
We set up watches and bedded down for the night, planning on burning the bodies the next day.
Watches were uneventful, though on third watch, I did see some vapor rising from the rubble pile. I mentioned it to Riva, but forgot about it after that.
June 21st
The next morning, I went into the workshop area to brew some potions. Zook came with me, but soon I discovered that she was not very helpful, so I had her sit down and just kept talking to her. She's not very good company, since she doesn't talk much, but then, I talk a lot, so it worked out pretty well in the end. When the fire was put out, some potions that were nearly ready had been ruined, oh well. The equipment was very good though and I put it to good use.
Garrett, Tieran and Riva worked on burning the bodies. It was a very time consuming task, though Tieran helped it along with well-placed fireballs. He seemed to be having a lot of fun with that, far more than the task required.
The elven woman awakened, but was in a severe state of shock. She was able to tell us that her name is Faelan. She had little memory of anything that happened and her mind seems broken, perhaps her memory will return, perhaps not. She is definitely not able to care for herself yet.
At the end of the day, we regrouped in the throne room, the smell of burning goblin flesh heavy in the air. We looked again at the items Calebbleed had with him and decided who should use what items. Garrett laid claim to the Silverleaf sword and wanted to clean up the clothing-armor to see if he would like to use it. The two sets of bracers were claimed by Riva and Tieran, Riva choosing the ones with the goblin faces on them, which magically toughen his skin, but also caused him to look and smell goblin-like! (Ugh! A goblin-like dwarf?) Riva also laid claim to a magical composite bow and a magical greatsword. Tieran got the ruby eye brooch (that sees invisible creatures, I'm told) and the bracers of magical armor mentioned before. Thaile has the circlet that Calebbleed had, but doesn't know the command word yet to activate it.
Thaile asked Glebesh about the circlet and its command word and discovered that he was becoming worried about his survival. He figured that with what had happened to the others, he really didn't see any benefit to helping us out without some sort of assurance that he would not be killed the instant his usefulness to us was finished. (I can't really blame him for that, given what he has seen and heard, he has no reason to believe that we would behave honorably toward him.) He said that if we let him go, he will never go near humans again and will tell us the command word for the circlet before he leaves us.
This led to a discussion of where people want to go when we leave the fortress.
Kaezubeth would like to go to Eaglesford
Merrick would like to go home.
Zook and Faelan did not make any preference known
Glebesh and the goblin females will be happy to survive and be let go into the Aldersmere.
We moved to the pit room to discuss what we might want to do next, so that the goblins and the others would not hear our discussion. Kytum-up was very nervous about them hearing any of it.
We discussed what to do with the prisoners. Kytum-up was not sure if it is safe for his people to return here, nor was he at all sure we should even return the idol. If we decided to return the idol, he wanted us to get rid of all the others before we uncovered the doorway so they wouldn't see the secret entrance.
This led to a discussion of the prisoners. Garrett and Thaile thought that we should just kill them outright, Tieran and Riva were uncertain which would be the right course of action, and I was against killing them since they had surrendered and were helpless against us. I tried to explain to them that goblins, as unpleasant as they may be, are a part of the natural order and as such are a part of the balance of all things. Their response was that these goblins are Evil, with a capital "E", and deserve to die.....I guess I believe that all creatures can be redeemed and I cannot stomach killing something simply for being what it is. Garrett made a snide comment about me handing them swords as we let them go.....so I just walked away, telling them to do as they wished, since no one ever listens to me anyway.
Amazingly enough, they decided we should let the goblins go! In a day or two, when we're rested and I've made another potion of healing, we'll return to the surface. We'd have to send the people we rescued home somehow before we went on, and as long as we were at that, we'd let Glebesh and the goblin women and baby go too.
I'm now writing this, fully healed and rested, and just finishing up the last brewing of this healing potion. I'm so much happier over the group's decision to release the goblins. It's the right thing to do; I know it. Garret, though, seems pretty somber today. I'm not sure why, although I think I've got a guess.
Thaile told me that at the end of the battle, while I was busy with one of the goblin sergeants and Garret had cornered Glebesh, Glebesh had said he would surrender if Garret guarantied his safety. Garret had given his word to keep Glebesh safe, apparently, which is why Glebesh given up so easily.
Good thing Glebesh is still safe, I guess.
Safely bound too; I just went to check.
