The Valley #7

Have any of you heard any rumors about 5E being worked on?
If so, have you heard anything about it being dice-less?

If that happens, I guarantee you that I will drop D&D immediately.
No hesitation.
No regrets.
Hackmaster here I come.

Personally I think Dale will love Hackmaster, due to its joking references to AD&D 1E.
The rest of the group probably not so much as none of them have played much of anything before 2E.

Why would I give up a game I love over the removal of little plastic polyhedrons?
Because it would be just another step in removing what makes D&D into D&D.

At this session we discussed how D&D could be made dice-less, and we could only come up with something very similar to Magic: the Gathering.
Each round you gain X amount of a power, let’s call it mana, and you use that power to perform certain special actions, like spells.
You can add certain mechanics to make it different, but it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck named M:tG.

I’d rather be an anachronism than play that.

I just hope those rumors are just rumors or a joke.

There’s been a running joke in group – one day we’ll have to buy new PHB’s every couple of years, and if we’re lucky we’ll get the one with the rare fighter class in it.

Yeah I know; it’s only a matter of time before I just say “Screw this game! I’m done with it!” unless WotC/Hasbro cuts the crap.

This session consisted of a decent amount of role-playing followed by one long fight and one average length fight, both of which were very tough.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 4 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 3 halfling sorcerer
Duncan (Justin); level 4 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 4 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 4 Silverhome dwarven rogue

Ander, finding that all of his friends had disappeared on him and still feeling under the weather (hangover), chose to sleep in a full day. Then on the morning that the rest of the group found the Voice of Brekaneth and returned with it, Ander began a search for other sorcerers in the Valley.

But sorcerers aren’t exactly on a list (anymore), and he has no contacts with the rogue’s guild, so he decides to head to the Valley’s newest dive-bar.

So he gets relatively naked and brings only 2gp with him and heads to an open-air bar in the Crag area of town.

The place’s name is Hellcrag’s Diner, but the only food served there is low quality cheese.
Of course the bartender was neither nice nor helpful, especially not for two gold pieces.
As is required with a stereotypical dive bar, several less-than-savory characters decided to take out their mommy issues on the halfling sorcerer.

That’s when Bobby McDonaldson showed up.
With a few words, none with any kind of obvious malice, the thugs left.
Bobby, a dark haired halfling, with a pleasant smile and demeanor immediately befriended Ander. According to him, it never hurts to have friends of Ander’s sort.

When Ander filled him on his idea of creating a group or sorcerers, Bobby let him know that it was not the best of ideas to create a sorcerers’ cabal in the Valley, but he’d try to get in contact with some other sorcerer friends of his.

They made plans to meet at the Roaring Bull Inn the next day and Bobby would bring some of his friends.

The other four members of the group had returned to the city with the Voice of Brekaneth hidden under Admon’s robes.

After reporting in what they’d found about the destroyed goblin encampment, Kergan and Duncan headed back to Silverhome (for some relatively sundry role-playing) while Admon and Edward took the Voice directly to the Grand Temple of Brekaneth.

Upon walking into the temple Edward had a vision of him leading a troop of men into battle while he wore gleaming armor and wielded his sword that now had alternating bands of steel and onyx on its blade.

They first showed Girvan Torl the Voice, who then takes it to Father Jason Adrek.

Adrek is quite shocked and pleased to have the Voice back, but when he hears that those who don’t revere Brekaneth were involved in its reclamation, he sent someone to summon Kergan and Duncan immediately.

When the two dwarves were arrived, Adrek almost bluntly asked “What do we need to do to keep you quiet about this?”

Kergan had some requests at the ready – he wants information about the platinum pick his father gave him and he wants to know about someone in the Thieves’ Guild named “Sam”.

Duncan asked for nothing more than to aid the church without betraying his own loyalties to Moradin. Adrek is pleased by this response (because Justin rolled a 30 on his diplomacy check).

Admon asked for information about the Herollus family.

Edward is not asked, but sought nothing either as it was his duty.

Later that day Ander goes to report his activities to the ever-unpleasant Sibylline Tarn.
After berating Ander for something insignificant he states/asks him “You don’t smell it do you?”
“Smell what?”
“That’s what I thought.”

The next day Bobby and Ander meet at the Roaring Bull Inn but Bobby sadly responds that none of his sorcerer friends seem to be available for anything. Ander fails to add 2 and 2, and it gets him killed.

That evening the whole group is back together relaxing at the inn. Everyone around them seems to be irritated as if it was a hot and oppressive summer’s day.

While just chatting away, Ander is yanked out of his chair and through the door of the inn (breaking it) into the area outside of the inn that has been recently converted to a small grove of trees. All was done by some unseen force.

When he moves to run back into the inn, he is hit by a blast from a multi-colored point of light that coalesces out thin air. That same point of light pulls a woman from out of another building and disintegrates her on the spot and then it shoots out a red, black, blue, and green bolt of energy that form into a fiery harpy and a black, blue, and green humanoid dragon creatures. None of them look like they want to play Twister.

The party immediately rushed into action.

This combat beat the hell out of the party with almost everyone dropping at least once. The fire harpy did 5 fire damage to everyone on their round and the dragon-men did poison, acid, and lightning damage to the party in addition to dazing them.

If anything, this combat showed me the upper limits of the party’s abilities as the plethora of healing and damage prevention the party had was pushed beyond it limits.

The most interesting tweak to this combat was the “Chaos Spark”, the multi-colored point of light that started the whole thing. After a few rounds Admon and Ander realized that they (“they” meaning those with arcane abilities) could possibly take control of the Chaos Spark to prevent it from randomly striking out at the party (2 attacks per round and +8 vs. AC for 2d8+3 damage). By using a standard action they could make a DC17 Arcana check to force the Chaos Spark to include the party’s opponents in its random attacks. On a DC27 Arcana check, they could force the Chaos Spark to shoot only at their opponents, and on a natural 20 (still DC27) they could force the spark to attack specific targets.

This control must be done every round, so Admon was pretty much relegated to spark duty for the rest of combat. This was arguably the most important job in the party at the time, if anything just to keep the Chaos Spark from attacking the party.

On the second to last action of the combat, Ander died due to the ongoing fire damage.
On the last action of the combat, Kergan got a critical hit on the harpy, killing her and ending the combat.

But before they had the opportunity to mourn him, everything that the Chaos Spark spit out got sucked back into it while everything that had happened during the combat was put back together (in a reverse action like in bad sci-fi movies). When that was complete the spark spit out some items and turned into a gem, then fell to the ground.

Then the officials showed up to ask questions.
The lady who was disintegrated was back together, but she was hysterical for quite a while.

Then the sorcerers began showing up, and all were upset (or worse) that they had missed it.

Even Sibylline arrived, and was quite irritated that Ander was the lucky one who was gifted with the appearance of the Chaos Spark.

Ander, after the usual berating from Sibylline was done, got a little uppity with Sibylline. Ander was rewarded with being thrown into the wall with a flick of Tarn’s wrist.

The officials nearby did nothing to help.

The next morning Bobby shows up at Ander’s home and rapidly tells him that he was finally able to contact a couple of his sorcerer friends. And although Ander doesn’t quite trust him, he follows Bobby.

An hour later Duncan, Edward, Kergan, and Admon each received a letter stating something like “If you ever want to see Ander alive again…”

A short while later they all had gathered together outside the warehouse they had all met at.

They knew it was an ambush, and they discussed whether or not saving the halfling was worth it, but at least one person in the group has a good alignment so they went in.

Inside they found the warehouse slightly cleaner than the last time they saw it, but it had a pair of unconscious halflings hanging upside down from the ceiling.

On the ledge was “Evil Bobby” laughing at the party and talking rapidly.
“Hi! Remember me? Kill them!”

With that Evil Bobby laughed and turned into the quickling from the last session, plus a displacer beast and owlbear appeared.

Ander wakes up early in the combat, and is cut loose by Kergan, but that doesn’t help the party much.

Instead of this simply being a tough fight, the party made some bad decisions, and later that night they knew it.

Early in the fight they focus on the displacer beast, but once he’s bloodied they ignored him and started going after Evil Bobby and the owlbear. This means that for several rounds longer than it should have the displacer beast was able to rip into the party.

When they finally started focusing on one target at a time, the combat ended fast, but not before Duncan died from failing three death saves.

Lucky for him he didn’t ask for anything from the church earlier in the session.

Quests completed:
Starting quest – Your First Steps [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Use the Ritual of the Younger to enchant the Armor and Sword of the Younger to at least a +1 status.]

New quests:
None

The Valley #5 & #6

Ok, these past few weeks have left me with very little free time, hence the lack of blog entries.

My options are to either spend my time making a half-way decent module for game night, or to make a blog entry.

With that said, let’s jump right into sessions #5 & #6, with a bit less information than what I usually give.

Mike and Justin couldn’t make it for session #5, and Dale had to skip session #6 (after the next session he’s going to miss a lot more too).

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 3-4 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 3 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 3 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 3 Silverhome dwarven rogue
Ander (Dale); level 3 halfling sorcerer

We last stopped where only Edward and Admon had been told of the Voice of Brekaneth being a fake, the original had been taken by a misguided fanatic of Brekaneth, while the town went on alert and Silverhome shut its doors due to warnings of a goblin attack.

Edward, given the way the facts appeared to him, did not believe that the Broken Bone goblin clan had the Voice. He considered it more likely that something else snatched it from the thief on his way into Broken Bone territory.

So he and Admon began researching for information about the Voice of Brekaneth and the person who took it.

During this time Ander is on a personal quest for a new home in the Valley and the DM successfully drains his coffers of nearly 100gp. He is also instructed by Sibylline Tarn to spy on the church, but he pretty much ignores that and mostly just hangs out at the church with Edward during his search for information.

When he sleeps his first night in his new place he has weird dreams that he is either really small or the trees are really tall and he is terrified and running during a storm. He has these dreams more than once throughout the night.

Their research and interviewing gives them plenty of information, but nothing that concretely tells them where to go, but a rough idea.
- The thief’s name was Valendorn Desh, an unassuming sergeant in the military wing of the church with some friends that had dreams of adventuring.
- The Voice of Brekaneth is an onyx-headed mace that was either gifted-to or created by the high priest Kretack during the purging of the other human religions early in the Valley’s history. In the hands of a believer of Brekaneth it is stronger and can be imbued with divine power.

While all of this is going on there are occasional hit and run attacks by goblins throughout the area outside the city walls, but nothing large; attacking guard towers for just a couple of javelin throws before running off, killing farmers and/or stealing livestock, or just simply making itself known and running away.

All of these actions have no obvious pattern, but they succeed in keeping the city’s defense off-guard.

One particular night the goblins finally attack. The main focus of their attack is the Grand Temple of Brekaneth, but a few attacks occur throughout the rest of the city.

While walking home from the Roaring Bull Inn, and very drunk (-3 to all attack/skill rolls, but +1 to damage and 3 temporary hit points) Ander is the target of one of those random goblin attacks.

He survives the small attack (4 goblin minions & 1 stormclaw scorpion), but is nearly killed. When that’s done with, he resumes his walk home and passes out on his new bed.

Admon had to deal with a similar situation where he needed to get up to a guard tower near the church to aid in controlling the waves of goblins. He simply had to run 100’ through a gauntlet of variable goblin minions and a fire beetle to get to a door, open it, get inside, and then close it. He succeeds while nearly dying in the process.

Edward is put in charge of guarding the main church, where the fake Voice is located. He surmised correctly that they were going to try to come get the Voice with this attack. Each round more friendly guards or not-so-friendly goblins would appear. To simplify the combat if one of those were to move into the square of the other they would both disappear. Edward’s biggest target of issue was a stronger goblin with the intent of taking the Voice and leaving.

Dale: “He can die defending a fake?”
Yes he can (but he didn’t).

The next morning, after resting and some “hair of the dog” they interviewed the last person to have seen Valendorn Desh alive, a man named John Grey who works for the Silverblade family as a guard.

But he gave very little information. Desh and his friend headed out of the main gate of the city and headed in the direction of the Broken Bone clan.

Given that Crater Lake lies along that path, they figure they have a long shot chance that the Voice will be somewhere in the lake or its vicinity.

- End of Session #5 / Beginning of Session #6 -

During the lockdown of Silverhome Kergan begins learning more about the church of Moradin, setting up a role-playing reason for him to multi-class into cleric.

Once the lockdown was lifted Duncan immediately went to see Mayor Ryan. After the usual small talk, Duncan was told that the party he was invited to was cancelled for the time being, so no chance to schmooze with the other council members and influential people in the Valley.

He also filled in Duncan on a little information – the city council asked Silverhome for help, but Silverhome refused, citing the council’s refusal to help them when they asked. There was also an unofficial report that Silverhome has no representation in the City Council and was unlikely to get it handed to them without playing hardball.

The mayor understood and agreed with that sentiment, and he intended to remedy it, but was unsure how.

Duncan tried to think of a multitude of ways to do this, but nothing that was workable. The only ways are to totally change the city council or get them to see that having a Silverhome representative would be best for all.

As per what’s becoming the group’s standard, they meet up at the Roaring Bull Inn.

While there Kergan receives some signals from someone in the Thieves’ Guild to come have a chat. He is told in calm and clear tones that he owes the guild 2000gp and it must be paid within 3 days or he’ll become pudding-bait.

He asked about Sam, the purported trap-smith Kergan’s been looking for. He was told “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop asking.”

He knows that this is his only way to get back good with the guild.

He also begins looking for ways to scrounge every last bit of money he can get. Too bad he gave Rushgar Hammersmith his dwarven plate +1 just a few days prior.

Wouldn’t you know it, the city is still on alert and has all of its guards protecting the city and its main interested. So they have offered money for independent scout to search through various areas; including an area for Crater Lake.

So the party set out to scout for the city with an extra task just for them.

Their first encounter consisted of an attacked goblin supply post. They found several goblin skeletons stripped clean by rats. What they didn’t find until afterwards was one goblin body was still intact and had dozens of small knife wounds all over him, all done by a quickling.

While attempting to scout, Mike botched Kergan’s stealth roll. Then they heard rats and some evil giggling.

Word of warning, quicklings can be one giant pain to a party that can’t pen them in. Add in a rat swarm and a vine horror and you have a party irritated at you (I’m used to it).

In 4E, the fastest way to piss the party off is to stun, immobilize, or daze them.

The vine horror and rat swarm didn’t last long, but the quickling just kept slicing at the party round after round. No until they got him to 25% of his hit points did it run away.

Next they began searching around the circumference of Crater Lake (which indeed looks like a weather worn crater with several fast-flowing rivulets converging on it).

They stumbled across, literally, a hole in the ground made out of fresh webbing and camouflaged to appear like the ground. Peering down below they saw a 30’ drop with a webbing net at the bottom to catch them (how thoughtful).

A couple minutes later and all of the webbing they saw was burned away, and after the smoke cleared they lowered themselves down the pit, expecting a fight.

The trio of ettercaps and deathjump spider didn’t disappoint them.

The fight took a good chunk of time and no side had a clear advantage for the longest time.

And to make it more entertaining, Admon used a Flaming Sphere. The webbing smoldered and fire and smoke spread, giving ground hazard and the potential for obscured vision and suffocation (but it didn’t happen).

Eventually the party won, but it was definitely not a simple and easy win (poison + webbing + poor player rolls = fun but long fight).

After putting out the remaining smoldering fires and collecting their loot (lots and lots of copper pieces) they found another concealed pit, this time blocked off rather than a trap. When they listened they could hear the faintest electrical hum.

The room only contained five bodies that had been dragged here and not much more. The bodies had only a little webbing on them, and the party did not notice that the bodies had not been drained of fluids as you would usually expect from spider attacks.

They started searching the bodies one at a time, Kergan began with searching the body that looked kind of roguish (dressed in leather armor and daggers).

When Duncan touched the front and center body of what they thought might be the priest of the group (chain armor, no shield) he was blasted with radiant damage and then the spirits of all 5 rose.

The spirit of priest spoke “Keep your hands off of me you damned, dirty dwarf!”

The priest had in his hands a ghostly version of the Voice of Brekaneth, so Edward attempted to rationalize with him.

But the spiritual version of Valendorn Desh had no interest in handing over the holiest gift of Brekaneth over to someone who is friends of a believer of Moradin.

“If you want the Voice, come claim it!” (He was a warrior-priest after all.)

Instead of 5 ghostly apparitions to face, they faced 5 flesh and blood opponents, each with a little magic item (if just to say to the players “How do you like it?”).

But the party kicked ass. They burned action points and dailies early in the first round, targeting Desh almost exclusively.

In short term they had possession of the Voice of Brekaneth.

And that’s where we stopped.

Quests completed:
Ander – On Your Own [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Obtain new living quarters and spend 25gp on furnishing it.]
Edward & Admon – The Holiest Gift [Level: 3. Reward: 150XP. Find information leading to the whereabouts of the Voice of Brekaneth.]

New quests:
None

The Valley #4

If you want to mess with your players’ heads, pull out some extra miniatures when prepping for the game.
Whenever I do it one player always takes notice and makes comment like Aaron, “I just noticed what you’re doing and I don’t like what I’m seeing.”

Speaking of Aaron, he didn’t like the revisions to the paladin’s marking ability, so he went back to the PHB version. He didn’t like that the only penalty for a marked target not coming after him was a -2 to attack. I certainly understand, though I feel the pulling effect makes up for it and I’m not a fan of marking when it causes a break in the flow of combat.

Ah, do you remember the good old days when all you had to do was attack once or twice, and then roll damage, and you never had to check for modifiers each round?

Oh early D&D, how I miss thee.
Though I just know if I was in a 1E AD&D game I’d find something screwy there that I totally forgot about (hush THAC0 haters).

This session went well, though the group almost didn’t do what I expected which meant I would have had to drastically change my plans.

Luckily I was able to make the path I wanted them to go all nice and shiny so they’d be attracted to it. Hopefully I wasn’t too blatant about it.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 2 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 2 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 2 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 2 Silverhome dwarven rogue
Ander (Dale); level 2 halfling sorcerer

As usual we started off with role-playing.

Kergan is almost desperately trying to get in contact with the Thieves’ Guild, but no one is talking to him, and he’s getting the feeling that he’s a pariah to the guild.

Not letting that stand in his way, he has other business he wanted to check into.
Kergan asked Duncan to get a temple historian to check into something for him. The best historian the temple has is Duncan’s superior, Agramarr Flamehammer

Before he died, Kergan’s father had given Kergan a tiny platinum pick. This pick supposedly is the key to some great treasure in the Valley.

Agramarr said he knew nothing but would research into it. And in a sign of trust I did not thing someone playing a rogue could do, he left the key in Agramarr’s care while he researched.

Ander had a different dilemma; he had murdered a captured goblin , and some of the people in this group he was with didn’t exactly act in an honorable manner.

So he talked to the only person he felt he could chat with, Sibylline Tarn.
Unfortunately Sibylline isn’t exactly the best person to ask questions on morality. His responses were in his normal blunt and scathing manner “Killing goblins is not something to cry about.” “Killing someone who has tried to kill you is what you are supposed to do.” “Honor is just a bunch of rules that your adversaries can use to kill you with.”

Mr. Tarn is not exactly a nice elf.

After other role-playing, we jumped right into initiative.

Encounter #1 was against yet more goblins. Initially the party didn’t exactly know why they were fighting the goblins. That would be explained over the first three combat rounds, in addition to something that wouldn’t happen until much later in the session.

The combat was setup next to a cave, with several goblins in and out of the cave and a tangler beetle, with four human guards being forced to mine for gems inside the cave.

As usual the party had no real trouble overall, but one thing for your own use – goblin sharpshooters are dangerous. Just ask Ander. In two different fights he’s been blasted unconscious by them.

Read to Admon and Edward over the span of the first three rounds before their action:

Round 1
Admon, why is it that every time you take a job from the city, you get into worse trouble than the pay is worth?

Edward, just a few hours ago you were doing your duty. Now you’re filled with confusion and rage. And worse, you can’t even kill this “thing”, this goblin.

Round 2:
Admon: All they said you had to do was make rounds to several of the guard towers, and you would each get 5 gold. Apparently the number 7 is not your lucky number.

Edward: You hear their voices behind you, telling you that you can’t do it. This wretched creature deserves to die for its blasphemy, but doing so means you and your comrades-in-arms die also.

Round 3:
Admon: Save the captured guards from the goblins became your new task. Then it turned into a hit-and-run attack. And now you have to stop a paladin from getting you and your friends killed.

Edward: With the grace of Brekaneth you calm yourself. You now have to let this piece of filth live or face a couple hundred goblins that have you pinned in here. But now it will have to answer why there’s a drawing of Brekaneth’s holiest gift on the table.

When combat was over the guards thanked them and told them that they’d been forced to mine for gems, even though this cave was no longer viable as a gem source.

They also found a map on the lead goblin. Edward, who’s learning the goblin language could make out some of the writing, but to ensure they missed nothing Admon cast Comprehend Languages.

It showed a simple map from a hilly area to the cave they were in. The hilly area had a spot marked “talk cave” and this cave was marked as “gem cave”. The writing read “The Dead Dwarves are dead and gone. We need more treasure to convince the Cracked Shields to join us. With them on our side we can destroy the human’s city.”

Given the two options of going back to the city or investigating the area of the “talk cave”, thankfully they chose to scout the cave.

The location of the talk caves had several small hills, perfect for hiding from a distance, but also perfect to sneak up on. This made it possible for the party to get to the near top of one of the hills and then for Kergan to do scouting of the staging area of the talks.

With a natural 20 perception roll, I gave Kergan all the information he needed, and a little extra to get the party to actually go and interrupt the talks.

Kergan determined that the talks were under way, both groups had set up camps and were doing regular patrols, both were around 300 strong, and there was a lone door on the side of a hill flanked by one goblin from each of the two clans (Broken Bone and Cracked Shield). But most importantly he noticed a pattern to the patrols; one he could exploit to sneak up on the door with only the two guards to protect it.

After much discussion (and another discussion about how plate armor had a mere -2 to move silent checks), the group decided to take out the two guards and ruin the talks.

The only possible snags would be not being able to take out both guards before they were able to blow a warning signal with their horns, to open the door before any of the guard patrols showed up, and to do it all quietly.

Another snag they wouldn’t see until it was too late was that the door was magically locked and required some skilled lock picking to get opened. What the DM didn’t know was that DC16 was entirely too low of a difficulty for Kergan.

The entire group made their move silent checks (though just barely), they took out the guards with their surprise round and normal round, Kergan got the lock open with Admon’s arcane assistance.

They were noticed by a guard patrol, but it was too late for the party to be swarmed. They got everyone in the door and closed it, and the door relocked itself, giving the party time to do some damage to the talks.

After barring the door additionally, they got a quick rest in and checked the next door.

That’s when I found out that Edward only has a strength score of 13. The door to the talks was jammed shut and if the party wanted to get a surprise round they had to bust it open with a DC16 strength check on the first try.

That was a failure until around the tenth try.

The room was relatively small (3x5) with a large stone table in the center. On the table was a suit of plate armor, a pile of good, and a piece of paper.

Two goblins from each of the two clans were on the long side of the table.

The party now knows that they need to capture a leader goblin to get out alive as there are no other exits from the cave.

Admon uses his first action to use Mage Hand to grab the paper, seeing that it is only the drawing of a mace (bye-bye action point).

The party then let loose with their daily powers, thrashing the goblins pretty hard while taking a good beating from the goblins.

In the end they decided to subdue both goblin leaders as an insurance policy.

Then they take a closer look at the drawing of the mace and recognize it as the Voice of Brekaneth – the holiest weapon the church has. Now insert the part where Edward wants to kill one of the goblins from the first encounter.

The leader of the Cracked Shield contingent knows that he won’t be killed so he just laughs at the party while the leader of the Broken Bone contingent much more easily believes the party’s threats, so he spills his guts.

The extermination of the Dead Dwarf goblin clan terrified the Broken Bone goblin clan, as they see themselves next in line (being closest to Silverhome and the city). So they are trying to create a truce with the Cracked Shield goblin clan and unite to make they aren’t exterminated too.

So they brought money and magical armor to the talks, but the Cracked Shields wanted the mace on the paper and they believe the Broken Bones have it.

That’s when the party barged in, but the goblin claims to have never seen that mace.

In the end the party succeeded in escaping intact by holding the goblins hostage, letting them go at the right time, and then running for their lives directly to the city to warn them.

Once back in town Duncan warns the mayor, who in turn sends warning to the appropriate people.

Ander talks to Sibylline, who is very short with him for wasting his time while he should be defending the city. Out of spite Ander leaves out the bit about the Voice of Brekaneth.

Kergan heads to Silverhome to warn Agramarr Flamehammer.

Duncan meets up with Kergan and Agramarr and all three warn Rushgar Hammersmith, including the information about the Dead Dwarf clan’s extermination starting all of this. Rushgar sounds the alarm while being amazed that the goblins would bother uniting at all.

And finally Edward and Admon go warn the high priest of Brekaneth, Father Jason Adrek and Girvan Torl, of the situation.

Note: Jason Adrek is not a fan of wizards, sorcerers, and their ilk, so he’s not exactly friendly to Admon, though he’s not as openly irritated when he finds out that Admon is a follower of Brekaneth.

Edward fills them in on the situation, with an emphasis on the Voice.

Adrek points out that the Voice is “right over there”, on the wall behind the altar.

Long story short, that Voice was a fake.

According to Father Adrek, several years back, after “I gave a particularly amazing speech” a sergeant in the church became filled with delusions of glory and stole the real Voice of Brekaneth. Then he gathered some friends and headed off to destroy the goblin clans.

Neither he nor any of his group were seen ever since.

On a rumor that the Voice fell into the hands of the Broken Bone clan, a force of loyal soldiers of the church attacked the clan. But Brekaneth was not with them, and they were slaughtered.

So a fake was made to hide the church’s shame.

And that is where we ended.

Quests completed:
Kergan: Goblins! [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Kill 10 goblin minions.]
Edward: Proven Superiority [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Be the only one of your group to be bloodied during a combat equal to greater than your level.]

New quests:
Edward – The Holiest Gift [Level: 3. Reward: 150XP. Find information leading to the whereabouts of the Voice of Brekaneth.]
Admon – The Holiest Gift [Level: 3. Reward: 150XP. Find information leading to the whereabouts of the Voice of Brekaneth.]

Next session: No Justin and no Mike.