Feverborne

Bern sent a message that he needed me to help u-Heury explore some barbarian tribe burial mound, so I went over to check it out and met up with Ygnas and Landon, who were presently dangling u-Heury down a well from a rope. The rest of us followed, and the kid promptly stuck his spear into the wall and opened a secret door, revealing a small group of drunken goblins. We negotiated and found out they were being oppressed (“Help! Help! I’m being oppressed!”) by a new dark elf arrival named Skazzic, who had convinced their old chief or shaman to be friends. We went and talked to the dark elf, who seemed to hit it off with Landon remarkably well. One might almost say suspiciously well. Landon immediately proposed we go convince Hogarth (the goblin leader) to submit to Skazzic, for… no discernable reason aside from a vague promise of a reward. We returned, negotiated further with Hogarth, poisoned most of his goblins, drank with the rest, cowed Hogarth into submission, then convinced him to pretend to submit to Skazzic so we could double-cross and kill Skazzic. (And it made even less sense than that as it happened).

The battle with Skazzic was over remarkably quickly. He was on to our planned double-cross immediately and started spellcasting, as did Blekh his goblin friend. Neither of their spells took effect. Landon’s also fizzled, as did all the melee attacks. I nearly dropped the fae blade, but managed to recover; switching between two different swords on the regular is trickier than it seems. We all looked at each other like idiots and tried it again. This time the fae blade took Skazzic right through the heart, and I immediately threatened Blekh with the bloody blade. The goblin surrendered, but refused to hand over his holy symbol. I was about to ask Hogarth to take it, when Ygnas just smashed his head in. That cost us the goodwill of Hogartb and the help of Carl, the goblin rogue.

I looted the drow; he has interesting chain mail, and less interesting cloak, boots, and sword. No spellbook. I’ve got my eye on that chainmail but I bet Landon does too. We’ll see if it turns out to be magical before we fight over it. He also had a small chest with some coin. Apparently he was here trying to raid barbarian tribes for… something? Makes no sense to me; elves rarely do. Finally, three books that seemed to express a theory that libraries held portals to other worlds. From some of the rumors spreading among the Glorious Blades there may be some truth to that.

The room also had a trapdoor leading downwards, with a ladder and another room below. The lower room held two centipedes, swiftly dispatched, and two exits. To the south, a room with a large set of double doors and two goblin skeletons clutching their throats. Obviously poison, probably from a trap. The kid thought he could open the door because of his special barbarianness. I pointed at the goblins and reminded him barbarians are famous for curing poison with poultices; no doubt they use poison traps assuming a group of barbarians could cure each other and goblins or other people couldn’t. If I can get the kid to slow down long enough I’ll tie a rope around his waist so we can drag him back out of the cloud of poison gas and make sure we take anything useful he’s carrying, since he seems to have forgotten he’s our only barbarian.

If Ygnas hadn’t basically murdered Blekh for being reluctant to part with his holy symbol, we could have had Carl the goblin rogue open the doors (and thus die to the poison cloud). Now it’s going to have to be one of us.

Maybe I can convince u-Heury to tie a rope to the handles so he can pull them open from a distance instead.

Ygnas

So, somehow, the entrance to barbarian boy’s ancestral barrow is down a well? Barbarians are weird. Why not just put in a door? We all dropped down with a rope into a rough hewn room. With shelves full of garbage. The elf tried the passage to the south, and fell down a pit trap. We dragged him out. Feverborne’s boot laces somehow got tied together. I swear nobody was near his feet. Barbarian boy found a secret lever in one of the shelves, and it opened a door into a room full of goblins. Drunk goblins. At least they weren’t attacking us. Although they didn’t like the elf at all.

After a sob story about how a drow took over his raiding group, the lead goblin said he’d help us find the entrance to the barrow if we killed the drow. Seemed straightforward. We went to talk to the drow, and he talked to Landon for a long time. Suddenly Landon wanted us to tell the goblin leader to submit to the drow. The elf should want to kill the drow on sight. That’s how it’s supposed to work. Hell, I want to kill the drow on sight, and I’m not an elf. We went back to talk to the goblins.

While they were babbling on about whether to submit to the drow or just pretend so we could get the jump on the drow, as if it mattered since we’re killing the drow anyway, my frog lighter went missing. I announced to the room as a whole that unless the thief gave it back immediately, everyone died. The goblins panicked and started madly searching. Feverborne, barbarian boy, and the elf didn’t take me seriously. I have no problem burning the whole barrow down, and everyone in it. It didn’t help when the lighter suddenly turned up in my backpack. They all thought I just misplaced it. I didn’t misplace it. Someone took it. I never put it in my pack, because I want it accessible at all times. There’s something else going on. I started looking for shadows moving in the torchlight that shouldn’t be moving. It can’t be a spirit, since spirits can’t affect the physical like that. It has to be someone using an invisibility spell. And I’m going to catch them and make them beg for death.

Meanwhile, barbarian boy thought it would be fun to poison the goblins, by pouring some dried fungus from his pack into a cask of the swill they were drinking. So half of the goblins were sick and blind. We went back to the drow, only nobody shut the doors or thought to be quiet, and he heard the whole plan, so we had no surprise. He and the goblin with him started casting spells. Luckily their spells fizzled. Not luckily, so did every one of our attempts to hit them with weapons. Eventually we got some hits in, and the drow died. The goblin turned out to be a cleric. He refused multiple requests to give his holy symbol to Feverborne, or even the goblin leader. So I bashed him in the head, because the holy symbol made him a threat. I should know. Everyone got mad at me for killing him, even the goblins he betrayed.

The entrance down to the actual barrow was a trap door. We went down and were promptly attacked by giant worms. They were easy to kill at least, but yuck. The room we were in had a doorway into a big room that the elf said had an altar at the far end, and another room to the south with double doors with wolf heads. That room had to goblin bodies clutching their throats. I gave thanks to Zuul for the warning that those doors are trapped. Barbarian boy was all for barging in there, and we had to talk him out of it, because that was suicide.