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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 4791794" data-attributes="member: 386">We had our game last night.We started off on the King's Road with the PCs having just cleared out the bandits.  One of the players mentioned said "and NONE got away!"  Of course everyone knew this wasn't true.I told them that the bandits might find out that Nolor tipped them off; I went over who Nolor was again (brother of a bandit, was giving his brother information about merchants) and they shrugged off any consequence.  The feeling I got was that they thought Nolor was a douche and whatever happened to him was his own fault.  Cool.Anyway, with the bandits dead, they don't have a strong direction.  Apothis the Deva Invoker recalls a piece of lore about the people who lived at Fallcrest centuries ago - they bound up great defensive power in their staves.  Apothis was interested in obtaining one of these, so they went along with Bairwin Wilderson to Fallcrest.[Behind the hood - I let PCs make checks to locate a specific magic item.  Apothis succeeded at his; later on, Lendil the Shamed, Halfling Sorcerer, tried to locate a Chaos Tooth but failed (meaning he needs to gain another level before the can try again).  Successful Aid checks meant that chaos teeth are the teeth of warped creatures, with too much exposure to the Elemental Chaos.  I have the Chaos Tooth in one of my maps, since the players let me know they wanted to find it.]They get into Fallcrest and pass over the brigde.  Hekubus the Tielfing Paladin/Warlock of the Raven Queen is from Fallcrest and he wants to head to the Silver Unicorn, the place that would never have him before.  It's empty; the owner tells him it's because all the people are going across the river to the new Nentir Inn.  She says that the guy who built the Inn must have come across his fortune in a duplicitous manner.  [Just dropping some gameworld info out there.]  Anyways, Hekubus and the gang have a nice evening, avoid Kelson and the River Rats (two of the PCs have a history with him), and head into the Tombwood in the morning.The Tombwood is a scary place.  Young men go in there as a rite of passage, a test of bravery; some never find their way back out.  The PCs look around for trails and Hrogar the Dwarven Shaman finds one.  That trail soon dies out, however, and before they can try to get their bearings, Wandering Monsters attack!A pair of zombies bursts out of the ground and from the other side a Deathlock Wight and a Corruption Corpse start shooting at the party.  The Corruption Corpse deals a fair amount of damage, but Apothis blows most of them away with his divine radiance.  What a guy.Lost in the Tombwood, the very trees possessed of malevolent intent, Apothis calls on a divine favour or his deva heritage or something like that and asks for guidance.  A Hand of Fate appears (and no Wandering Monsters do) and helps guide him through the wood.[I allow him to use Religion for navigation checks and give him a +5 bonus if he spends one of the questions.  He spends the first one.]The Hand of Fate leads them to the barrow mound, a large mound half-buried in the earth, built hundreds of years ago to hold the honoured dead.  In they go.Probing around the entrance, Apothis finds some coin stuffed into a crack in the wall.  They don't think anything of this and use the Hand of Fate to direct them towards the Staff of Defence that Apothis is looking for.They come to an empty chamber, obviously a tomb.  There's a small depression on the ground (a grave) and some shards of pottery but not much else.  Hrogar digs up the grave and reveals a wight, who attacks.  He drains a healing surge from Hrogar but dies quickly; no XP is rewarded.Apothis notices a secret door in the back of the room and they take it.It leads to another secret door, on the other side of which they can hear someone screaming curses in goblin and a man wimpering in pain.  They open the door and head into the room, a torture chamber; one goblin is torturing a human strapped to a stone coffin by spitting curses and hexes at him.  Another goblin watches.Hekubus takes the lead and strides boldly into the room, saying "The boss wants to know what you've learned."  The goblin hexer doesn't know what he's talking about - they're just torturing the man for fun - but his goblin nature kicks in and he accepts Hekubus as his better.  "Oh, yes, it's coming along great, just great."Ral, the man on the coffin, sees Hekubus and calls out: "Hekubus you traitor!  Why are you working with these goblins?"Hekubus considers blasting Ral with an Eldtritch Blast but, before he has the chance, there is a shout from the darkness of the secret door: "Don't trust them!  They are intruders!"Apothis hears what sounds like three creatures in the dark but no-one has darkvision so they remain hidden.We roll initiative, the PCs with a surprise round against the goblins.Hrogar summons his spirit companion and orders it the hall towards the secret door to block off whatever's coming.  The other PCs blast at the hexer and the blackblade, but not enough to kill either of them.The blackblade waits for the hexer to flank with him, but the hexer (the quintessential goblin) flees towards the door.Out of the darkness comes a rubbery, tentacled arm that grabs Hrogar and starts choking him.  They have no idea how capable his spirit companion is [nor does the DM!] so the three of them suck up some OAs.  The PCs toss their torch down the dark hall but the chokers just throw it back.The hexer is able to flee and runs down the hall, out of sight.The chokers are boxed in and can't do anything to the spirit companion, they get pushed and shoved around so they don't get the chance to choke anyone, and soon enough they are dead.That's when the PCs hear growls - drakish growls - coming from the hall, and getting closer.  They slam the door shut.Hekubus lets Ral go and he sprints to the secret door.  "I'm getting out of here!"Moments later the door comes crashing down, revealing a guard drake and a pair of beady goblin eyes staring at them from around the corner.  Hekubus challenges the drake, but the drake doesn't care - it just wants to guard its masters.  It bites Hekubus hard and he falls.Apothis calls an Angel to help him fight and it blocks the hallway.  Some goblin cutters are slain by it, but a couple javelins and sword thrusts later send it back to the astral plane.The hexer, still alive but badly hurt, drops a vexing cloud, providing concealment to the goblins.  They laugh, assured of their eventual victory.Hekubus gets back up and the PCs move down the hall, the Hexer their main target.  He falls from an orb of acid launched by Lendil and the cloud disappears.The goblins fight on, but things start to turn against them.  One of them runs while the underboss says, "I'll hold them off."  He does, but he pays a price for it - he is cut down as he is trying to flee.About that time Ral comes sprinting back from the secret door.  "Run!  Drakes!" he shouts and sprints past them all.  The PCs follow him out of the barrow mound, through a pair of rooms and finally out the main entrance.The goblins do not follow and the PCs have a chance for a short rest.They ask Ral if he knows how to get out of the Tombwood.  He thinks it's just a simple matter of walking out.Hekubus asks Ral what he was up to.  He tells him: "Kelson's got a good thing going - we take the bodies of the dead up to the catacombs in the falls and sell them for a tidy profit.  You want to get in on this action?"Nope.  They attack him and Ral turns to run.  The Tombwood, mysteriously, seems to open up for him, but he doesn't get far - Lendil blasts him with an orb of acid and he falls, another dead man in the Tombwood.[We rolled Init checks and the PCs won; that was enough to resolve the conflict.]I made another wandering monster check and nothing showed up so we called the night there.  The PCs gained enough XP to level up already! but they can't do it until they take an extended rest.I believe they are planning to head into the barrow mound again.  That could be interesting - there are still a number of goblins there.</blockquote>

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