The rogue peeked into the room we’ve been eavesdropping on, and let loose a bolt from his crossbow. I hear him curse under his breath. A miss, I assume. A quick kick threw the door wide open, and we were greeted with the sight of a bald man tattooed with arcane runes sitting on a throne, flanked by two worgs, one in each corner of the room. A huge tapestry with the symbol of Vecna hung on one side of the room. The subject of his disapproval is a bugbear standing in the middle of the room, clad in breastplate, with a greatsword slung across his back. “The goblinoid captain,” I heard Marcus mutter.

Even as we charged into the room I grew uncertain. We had vanquished many a band of goblins, however these two before us appear clearly a class above the norm. Despite the fact that our fighting abilities have improved, myself and the wizard have not had the chance to prepare our spells, rendering us practically at worse than half strength even if fully healed. The man I presume to be the necromancer cast a spell and vanished into thin air. We later saw the stone panel behind the throne slide open. The man must be escaping. Even as the righteous warrior within me shouted out indignant pursuit, I felt relieved for surely we could not handle one with power such as he.

Despite the necromancer’s absence, the bugbear captain and the pet worgs quickly proved too much for us. One by one my companions hit the floor as grievous injuries gush their precious lifeblood onto the ground. In the face of what is clearly certain death, I found myself frozen for a split second. “I can still run…” the thought kept crossing my mind. “Any sane man would run! Caution is the better part of valor!” Instead, I kept on fighting, using the wand to judiciously heal my recently met comrades.

When the blow came and I found my vision fading to darkness, I wondered, is this the end? “Why didn’t I run?”

Our luck held it it seems. Daro, the only one among us who didn’t pass out from an injury during the entire battle with Marcus, whom I revived earlier, managed to take out the bugbear and the worgs, through a series of very lucky events. The bugbear dropping its weapon for instance.

Upon recovering from the fight, we quickly withdrew, not bothering to pursue the wizard lest we meet a premature doom. We have accomplished our objectives after all. The goblinoid army was vanquished.

—–

When we returned to the city, we were told that other farming villages have also been hit by various creatures – goblins as well as kobolds and gnolls have been showing signs of organized movement. Something is afoot. I was anxious to discuss the symbol of Dol’guldur and Vecna that I saw in the goblin dungeons with the St Cuthbert clergy. They too were quite shocked, but could not offer any further insight.

We returned to the inn and reported our findings to Torgan, Princess Azalea and Gorak before retiring in exhaustion. By the next morning, the three of them have already paid a visit to the goblin lair to check out the tunnel through which the necromancer made his escape. They found a puzzle-like mechanism with 9 pressable buttons at the end of the tunnel, but they could not solve it. That appears to be a dead end for note. Time to find explosives, highly skilled rogues, or a very high level spellcaster. Perhaps we will encounter these later.

The next step is to escort Princess Azalea to New Sporigal as per our original plans, so that she may consult with her brother there, a Prince named Magtaroth.

Before we began our journey, I scrubbed the breastplate I looted off the bugbear clean, shined it up nicely and donned it. After the last brush with death, a little extra protection is always nice. We also visited the various tradesmen in town to pawn of the items we had retrieved from the goblin lair. To my astonishment, the reason the local blacksmith bought the weapons we were selling him is to melt them down to forge armor. I understand creating more armor out of old weapons if there was a shortage of metals in a time of war. However, the weapons that we sold him were all in serviceable condition, and it does not make economic sense to pay for another craftsman’s work just to melt it own for raw materials! Isn’t it much cheaper to buy ore!?

The precious mugs with jade inlays that we found we sold to an enthusiastic Trogan. We later found him drinking ale out of the mugs as we prepared the caravan for New Sporigal. Gorak parted ways with us to survey some of the other locations that were attacked. I question the wisdom of that, considering Princess Azalea’s safety may be at stake, but it is not my place. There is also the matter of Marcus’ obvious attempts at ’striking up a conversation’ with the Princess, now that the half-orc is gone. He has become a lot more ‘friendly’ after finding out that Princess Azalea is unmarried. What improper behavior towards your charge!

We set out once again.