We had all 5 characters for this session - Aludiana, Erik, Gwenn, Iados & Reed were all present. Sterling was unable to make it, so I played Reed this session. Seemed a bit short to me, but then again we did go long last time. Here's what happened.
After waking up, the party found that Iados had at last recovered from his injuries and was waiting for them at the Temple of Pelor. They went over, checked on him, and satisfied with his state of health they headed out of town toward the goblin camp. Their first encounter was with a scout, a hobgoblin falconer who sent his blood hawks at them. This was a fairly easy encounter, and the party rolled it pretty quickly - one of the blood hawks attempted to escape, but it was killed before it could do so. For some spice the blood hawks all were given Pokemon names - Pidgey, Farfetch'd, Spearow and Taillow. After this, the party sent Reed ahead to scout out the area - he rolled pretty badly on his Stealth check, and came back with the sound of a barking, howling wolf traveling over the hills. He gave the party a report of what he'd seen, and told them that the wolf had spotted him. They deliberated on whether to try and go around these goblins or just go straight through them; eventually they decided to go straight through.
Here the party met Grugamug, a goblin hexer, and his bugbear guards, who stood across a stream from them. Grugamug told the party to turn around - they refused, and went to attack. However, they failed to notice a number of reeds sticking out of the water which happened to be serving as snorkels for a group of goblin snipers who erupted from the water and attacked the party. These snipers failed their attack rolls, and spent most of the encounter failing in general. The bugbears, however, were more deadly; they both hit Erik on their first attack, doing a staggering 37 damage and leaving him with 4 health. They never managed any more hits this good again, though, and the rest of the encounter went pretty smoothly for the party. The snipers were quickly mopped up, and the bugbears, despite having a ton of health (and a weird name, according to certain members of our audience), went down once damage was focused on them. This left Grugamug, who spent most of his time antagonizing the party at a distance with attack penalties and his stinging hex, which did a ton of damage to any enemy who moved while it was in effect on them.
In the end, the party managed to cross the stream and force Grugamug's surrender. He told them that he knew nothing about any warlocks, or anyone his master, the hobgoblin warlord Vagra'kon, might be working with - he only knew that Vagra'kon meant to take over Cairnmoor. After some deliberation, the party decided to let Grugamug go, Iados having confidence in Grugamug's desire to simply flee the area after a solid Insight check.
The party moved ahead toward Vagra'kon's lair, following Grugamug's direction, and managed to surprise the goblins guarding it - though Erik's critical failure on the Stealth roll, a 0 due to a -1 Stealth skill, resulted in him falling on his face during the surprise round. This was a long encounter, due mostly to the large amount of enemies involved - 8 goblin snipers, 3 goblin cutthroats, another bugbear, and a hobgoblin. Reed had a brush with death due to a pair of nasty attacks from two goblin cutthroats, but no one else found themselves in any real danger during this fight. If the blood hawk had escaped, this fight could have gone much differently, as the goblins would have known the party was coming, and would have had the opportunity to hide themselves and conduct an ambush.
The guards defeated, the party moved into the cave to face Vagra'kon - and discovered to their displeasure that he happens to have a pet ogre by the name of Horpdorp. We ended the session there.
Almost all of the party is Level 3 now - Aludiana, Erik & Gwenn all reached it in previous sessions, and in this session Reed hit it. Iados shouldn't be far behind. Looking forward to having a full house again next Wednesday, August 3rd - hope to see everyone there!
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