Where to begin?

12/1/18

We stack the goblin bodies in the abattoir/kitchen. OB cleans the throne room and Ripnugget’s bedroom using prestidigitate. OB’s unseen servant, Herkemer, mends the rusty kukri and all our weapons.

Fiona has a dream with a 3-tail fox person who tells her Dog will help her, but Dog has forgotten who she (Dog) is. When I awake, Groot is gone.

When we all wake up, Dog has 3 tails. Groot is gone. Dog goes over to a pillar and gestures and barks, and Groot reappears. 

We find one silver piece in the stinky, dirty goblin bunkroom.

We battle a bunch of goblins and win. Fiona gets a badger! There are two other dead goblins slumped against a door on the north end of the room. Two of the dead goblins have a broken masterwork horsechopper. One half is lodged in one of the goblins; there is a U-shaped impression where the blade is stuck in (like a horseshoe).

There is an occasional stamping against the door at the northwest corner of the room. We open the door and find a war horse. We calm it, find an apple to feed it, give it (and the badger) water (made by Aether), take off and clean its barding, and brush and clean the horse.

There are two creatures in the room with the horse. Their heads are crushed in, but if they had heads, they’d be lying face-down. We take the horse with us.

We search the room and we find … a masterwork chain shirt (goblin-sized) and 65 gold pieces, 129 silver pieces, 1,000 copper pieces. There are a few semiprecious gems: 1 chrysoprase, 1 tiger’s eye, and 1 unworked carnelian. Groot tells us the horse’s name is Shadowmist.

We find a room with a bunch of rabbits. We clean the rabbits’ room, OB and Fiona gather some food and water for them, and we lock them in a room with the food and water until we can come back for them.

We find a latrine with a secret door at the back. There’s a chest in the room behind the secret door. Fiona tries to pick the lock on the chest and a blade stabs her hand. I open the chest eventually and find the accumulate wealth of the Thistletop tribe: 7,432 copper, 2,490 silver, 89 gold, 3 platinum, 1 leather pouch with 34 badly flawed malachite pieces (worth 1 gold a piece), 1 medium-size chain shirt, 1 medium-sized well-crafted scimitar (320 gold), 1 pair of masterwork manacles, 1 gold holy symbol of Sarenrae (100 gold), 1 jade necklace (60 gold), fine blue silk gown with silver trim (150 gold). Dog licks and heals Fiona’s hand, but she still feels ill. Dog and Groot diagnose her with tetanus.

OB, Thunderfists, and Fiona ride back to Sandpoint to see Father Santos, who heals Fiona’s tetanus. The whole trip there and back takes about a week. Aether stays behind to guard the dungeon. OB brings her back a brush to replace the one she broke. See asks us to buy up to 100 ingots of crafting, if available.

When we get to town, Father Santos offers to heals Fiona’s tetanus, who was a day away from infection. We pay him 180 gold for his services. OB and Fiona add 10 gold pieces each to the church’s collection box. Thunderfists gives 100 gold pieces. Father Santos suggests we go to the Tavern to check out the Services Wanted notices. We do, and we see a notice asking for the return of a sturdy, black war horse. What a coincidence!

We bring Shadowmist back to its owner. He gives us 1,000 gold pieces. As we leave, he hands us a smaller pouch with 5 platinum pieces to thank us for cleaning the barding.

Groot, Badger, and Dog hang out together outside town while OB, Thunderfists, and Fiona go to sell loot and buy badger food. Fiona picks up some badger treats (freeze dried fruits and jerky) for training and emergency rations. OB sells some bags of grain, some arrows, some quivers, a deck of goblin cards, and a gold chess set.

We go to a jeweler. There’s a dazzling array of shells filled with jewels from semiprecious to precious. We sell some jewels for small change. He offended OB  with some low offers, and OB got up in his face. Sadly, the jeweler didn’t change his tune.

We go to an armorer. OB shows him all the weapons and armor we’ve picked up. We get $4K for the lot.

We buy a +2 Belt of Strength for Thunderfists. The belt has a huge buckle with a steer on it. The shop has a Fireball Necklace that Fiona is eyeing. It’s $4K. We don’t buy it. He has 4 Horseshoes of Crushing Blows he’s selling for $64K. Too bad we gave back Shadowmist! We also find Major Burglar Books for $46K.

We buy 50 ingots of crafting and an art brush for Aether.

We eat a divine meal at the Rusty Dragon. It’s game hen with blackening spices with frog sauce. We bring some spices, frog sauce, and a growler back for Aether. Fiona kills two game hens to bring back for dinner.

We ride back and meet up with Aether, who has taken the form of a troll (a very crafty troll, too). She’s killed about 30 trolls in our absence. She looted a +5 Kukri of Brilliant Energy.

We went back into the fortress to explore the lower levels. We heard some barking hounds of a type that Fiona didn’t recognize. We heard some bubbling and chanting from behind another door. We ran into a Tentamort that surprised-attacked Fiona. Everyone worked together to bring the butt-ugly beast down quickly before it could do more damage.

One of the blink dogs was poisoned by the Tentamort. Groot had a plant that looked like a bone-white cat-tail, and he told Fiona to strap it to the dog’s wound. Fiona did, and Groot said that the dog need to sleep to get better. Everyone in the party camped out and took a nap while we waited for the dog to heal.

We explored further and found a room with goblin concubines and a Bugbear, Bruthesuz. Rho went in and punched the living daylights out of Bugbear, nearly killing it, and everyone else attacked the concubines, quickly overwhelming them. OB stabilized one of the concubines to question her, but she was unconscious. 

Potion of Cure Moderate Wounds, Medium Studded Leather, Medium Heavy Flail, Masterwork Composite Longbow (4 strength), 20 arrows, 4 +1 Elfbane Arrows (to Fiona), 4 platinum pieces, 1 necklace of elf ears (4 elven ears).

12/9
We question the concubine we stabilized. She tells us that Nualia’s chambers are to our east, as well as the Temple of Lameshtu, and says that the goblins and non-goblins lived separately. Once a month, one goblin was thrown down a hole in for sacrifice. We also learned we killed her husband. We ask her to describe the Temple of Lameshtu, and she says there’s ‘water collectors’ on either side of the door, and stone columns along the room, and an altar at the back. There may be another door to the back and the left of the room. She tells us Bruthezus is a traitor. Her husband was Ripnugget. He didn’t want to be anywhere near Tsuto.

We manacle the concubine and tell her we’ll come to free her after we clear the dungeon. 

We search the first room to the south. It’s the bugbear’s bedroom. Nothing of interest.

We search the room next to the Bugbear’s bedroom. It’s another bedroom. There’s an everburning torch in the room. We pick it up. 

We search the room to the end of the hallway. It’s Nualia’s bedroom. We find nothing.

We search the next room. There’s another bedroom with a large chunk of obsidian. We take the obsidian. There’s a stack of papers, which turn out to be the plans for the raid of Sandpoint. This appears to be Tsuto’s room. 

The final door in the hallway appears to be blocked. We all put our shoulders to it, and fall as the weight is moved away from the other side of the door. Rho is caught flat-footed. We find Jorgen, who strikes Rho with his sword. Orin tells us that he’s a mercenary for Nualia who’s just holding out for his last payment. Nualia has a deadly hound who follows her everywhere, and Orin doesn’t believe we can kill her. We also learn by Lyra, Nualia’s sorcerer. Lyra has an evil cat. She’s helping Nualia plan the raid. The cat is her familiar. We learn there’s a side door into the Temple from the prison in this dungeon. Orin doubts that the wizard and Nualia are together right now. We also learn there’s a war room north of the temple.

We wander to the next room, which turns out to be a prison/dungeon. We don’t see anything of interest in there, but we see two doors to the north. OB detects faint transmutation magic behind the door to the left. 

We find the jailer’s room. We take 7 keys from the room. We also find a pile of torture implements. We leave them behind. We find the nursery. We leave it quickly.

We find the war room. We know this is where the recent raid was planned. We search the room and find reference to something called “the whispering beast that’s tamed.” Apparently, the plan is for goblins and sin spawn to raid Sandpoint. OB keeps the plans.

I open the door on the left of the war room and nearly take a fireball to the face. I manage to dodge it, but Badger doesn’t. Badger gets hurt bad. After a long battle, we take down Lyra (the wizard lady). OB gets some loot, including a +1 cloak of resistance, silver comb, pouch of artifacts, scrolls, wands, and a silk gown. There are a bunch of 10,000-year-old books in the room.

We go into the Temple, and there are two Yeth Dogs waiting for us. Fiona and Dog go into a panic. The rest of the team manages to hold it together long enough to defeat the dogs. We sleep in Nualia’s bedroom, and wake up refreshed and ready to face Nualia.

We fight Nualia. She escapes. We loot. We find 9 gold, 87 silver, 19 copper, platinum cup with a royal crest, ivory drinking horn with copper ends, 1 pyrite, 1 unworked turquoise, 1 jasper, 1 obsidian, oil of bless weapon, single masterwork longsword. 

In another room down the hall from the room in which we fought Nualia, we find a pile of gold with strange runes. The bard detects a very strong spell of Strong Image. We leave the gold alone. OB finds two slots in the pillars around the door. He puts a coin in each of the slots. A secret door opens. He sends Herkemur inside to test for traps. Herkemur doesn’t set off any traps, so OB throws an everburning torch into the room and we go exploring. 

****

In the secret room, we pick up a set of fancy tools. 

We also find a seven-pointed star that opens a secret door.

3/1/2019

Bargheist: Invisible; 50% chance of blinking when attacked; resistant to non-magical attacks

After getting our butts handed to us by the bargheist, we regroup and formulate a plan. The bard uses his scroll of see invisibility and his wand of magic missile to hit the bargheist. Then, Rho, Aether, and Fiona follow up with Ray of Frost, Acid Splash, and other tasks when they can.

We hit it for a little bit and then decide to run away once the bargheist starts to mumble something that sounds like a curse.

We continue down the hall and we see a door with two skeletons holding a skull between them. The bard recognized this a possibly being a door to a crypt. The bard sticks his fingers into the skull’s eye sockets and the door opens. 

Even with her deep studies of the undead, Fiona does not recognize the creatures depicted on the sargophagi in the room. The bard (ever the loot hound) uses his magic to detect a secret door in the back of the room.

Rho pulls open a sarcophagus and there’s a nasty corpse in it. As the bard goes to check out the corpse, a ghostly hand swipes Rho and he’s noticeably weakened. The bard starts humming a creepy tune, and we all take on a shadowy appearance. The bard also throws in some everburning torches so we can see something in this room.

Fiona turns invisible, walks in, and sees nothing. Rho walks up to the sarcophagus again and nearly gets swiped again. Fiona feels an icy chill on her shoulder and loses 3 strength. She levitates into the air. After a brief scuffle with the ghosts, during which Aether walks in and helps out, Fiona takes another 4 damage to her strength and retreats.

Then Nualia shows up. Just great. The monk goes to punch her and just barely misses. The bard tries to blind her and misses.