We started heading toward the bridge and
came across a hole in the ground, an ominous howling coming from within. I had
an uneasy feeling being near it and kept walking toward the bridge while Cairn
and Hamlin stopped to look at it for a minute.
Across the bridge, we could see a
rough-looking wooden fort, with watchtowers on either side of it.
One goblin was milling about in front of
one of the towers, apparently just picking up rocks.
Two goblins on the east side of the
building were “playing” with a seagull. One was throwing rocks at the bird
while the other would yank on a string attached to the seagull’s leg to make
hitting it more difficult. Two others were doing the same on the west end.
Three of their grotesque dogs were
lounging in the bushes at the base of the building.
We contemplated a few plans, and decided
to have Hamlin use his acting skills to pretend to be injured by a goblin
blade, which he tucked under his arm, then stumble back into the bushes where
we would be lying in wait to ambush them when they came to finish him off.
His ploy worked, and the lone goblin
came across the bridge with the three dogs.
When they got close, Hamlin fired a
crossbow bolt into the lead dog, Shadow following up with a grazing bite while
Cairn moved in behind the goblin at the rear to prevent its escape. I did a
flip over the dog to flank it with Shadow, and managed to skewer it with my
offhand, finishing it off.
Everything else fell quickly after that,
in a flurry of blades and claws and teeth. Only Cairn took any significant
damage in the fight, and he drank some potions while I snuck out of the brush
to see what the other goblins were doing.
The seagulls from before were being
consumed by two of the creatures while the others were pulling another set of
seagulls out of cages and trying to tie strings to their legs to continue their
games.
The remaining goblins didn’t seem to
even notice the missing goblin or dogs, so we decided to rest in order for
Cairn to meditate and regain his spells. It was dark out by this point, and the
goblins had all moved inside, so we made our way across the bridge.
Cairn went across first, followed by
Shadow and Dante. I went next, then Hamlin. When he was almost all the way
across, the bridge suddenly collapsed. Hamlin managed to grab onto a plank of
the falling structure, slamming against the cliff face before climbing up.
Looking down the rock face, I noticed a
pulley system. The bridge was apparently rigged to collapse, and there was a
rope system that would let you put it back in place.
Hamlin and I circled the building, but
there was only one real entrance at the front. It didn’t even appear to be
locked, but I could hear a couple goblin voices behind it. We decided to sneak
up on the roof and make our way in through the western tower.
We made our way down the stairs, and
came upon a sleeping goblin, which I crept up on and executed without making a
sound.
Another goblin was at the bottom of the
stairs, rummaging through a sack, though I was not as successful at ending its
life quietly as I was with the sleeping one. It managed to get a scrape in on
me.
Shadow came leaping down the stairs and
jumped over the railing to finish off the creature in front of me, while another
goblin came charging into the room, taking a swing at me, but missing.
Cairn barreled down the stairs and
chopped that goblin in half.
Moving to the east, we found the main
entrance to the building. It looked like it was once a grand entrance hall, now
in… disrepair, to say the least. A pile of junk was in front of the entrance.
“The door opened outward, didn’t it?” I
whispered to Cairn. He nodded as I shook my head at the goblins’ stupidity.
Poorly taxidermied horse and dog heads
were scattered around the room, and feathery black wings were poorly tacked onto
the southern wall. They looked large enough for a person-sized creature.
We charged into the room and started
hacking away at the two goblins milling about. Shadow eviscerated one with its
first claw swipe, and Cairn stepped up and practically exploded the other.
Taking a closer look at the wings on the
wall, Cairn said they looked like harpy wings. They were pinned to the wall
with a half dozen daggers, one looking a bit more nicely crafted than the
others, with a pearl embedded in the pommel. I pocketed it.
Cairn and Hamlin pointed out two of the
collars on the mounted dog heads. They were made of fine leather and had a few gemstones
attached to them. I estimated each collar to be worth about fifty gold. Into my
pack they went as well.
We moved down the hallway headed east
from the entrance hallway and came upon three goblins in a room at the base of the
eastern watchtower. Two seemed to be playing some sort of card game, but all
three were surprised at our sudden appearance in the doorway.
One of the goblins at the table started
chanting as the others moved up to attack Cairn. I got stuck behind Shadow in
the hallway as everyone tried to shuffle about to attack the goblins, the druid
managing to actually move into the room.
In a blur of blades and claws and teeth,
Shadow killed two of them and wounded the last before we could do much else
than watch Hamlin stab it in the neck. I moved up the tower and didn’t find any
other enemies, so returned to the group.
Moving north up another hallway, we came
upon a crappy-looking throne room. There were some shamanistic goblins in the
room chanting, and ghostly images that looked like the battle in Sandpoint we
participated in before, but with images that looked like us, lying dead in the
street… the dirty little liars.
The goblin on the makeshift throne
greeted us warmly, stated his glee at our not actually being dead, and asked if
we had come to swear allegiance to the Thistletop goblins.
We walked into the room calmly, and I
noticed four pillars around the rugged throne that were covered in rusty
spikes. Would need to make sure to stay away from those, or at least keep a
goblin between me and them, during the inevitable fight.
Hamlin immediately answered, “Yes,” and
I gave him a funny look. He shrugged.
Cairn said, “Your time is done. Leave.”
So much for the ruse Hamlin tried to start.
The leader jumped onto a giant gecko and
gave the command to attack. “No, you
are done!” he shouted.
“You’ve obviously never fought humans
before, have you?” I asked. The goblin leader shook a necklace at me, which had
what looked like finger bones on it. “… that weren’t mere farmers you caught
unawares or some such. I mean, you’re goblins, and we aren’t pushovers.” I
looked to Cairn, who nodded in agreement as he readied his weapon.
The druid, surprisingly, did not use his
axe right away, though, instead summoning an earth elemental in the back of the
room.
A net was suddenly thrown over Hamlin
and myself by one of the goblins, but Hamlin managed to slip out right away.
The gecko-riding goblin leader leapt
into the air and flipped upside down, attaching to the ceiling, and came
scurrying over to attack the druid… who promptly collapsed to the ground from a
heavy blow.
Hamlin stepped back into the doorway we
entered from to fire his crossbow at a goblin, and I followed behind him,
managing to cast the net off of myself with a flourish and toss it onto the
goblin who put it on me all in one motion.
“Ha ha!” I exclaimed, then fell silent
when I saw Cairn’s body on the ground.
The leader attacked me from the ceiling,
landing a blow, and I managed to hit him back with my shortsword. The goblin
I’d thrown the net onto was struggling to get out of it, and I whipped my
rapier over, stabbing it in the neck and finishing it off.
I dodged another attack from the ceiling
as the (horribly) singing goblin nearby stepped up and tried to stab me with a
horsechopper, and I got another small stab in on the leader, who I realized
suddenly must be Ripnugget, the Thistletop tribe leader.
Shadow leapt off the ground, swatting at
the gecko’s tail, but failing to knock it off the ceiling.
I somehow managed to keep not getting
stabbed from both the side and above, and noticed out of the corner of my eye
that the earth elemental had disappeared at some point, and Cairn, while still
on the ground, suddenly moved. I thought I saw him drink a potion, but then he
appeared to be immobile again.
Shadow pulled the lizard down from the
ceiling, but Ripnugget managed to land a blow on me as he fell, and everything
went black.
I woke up what must have been only a
moment later, the singing goblin standing over my body, and managed to sneak a
healing potion off my belt without being noticed, feeling a slight amount of
vigor return to my body.
Cairn stood up and I saw him drink
another potion of his own.
Shadow landed a claw and bite on
Ripnugget, who retaliated, wounding our feline friend.
“From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee!” I
shouted, as I leapt to my feet, landing a vicious stab on the suddenly
flat-footed leader of the Thistletop Tribe.
“Why
you longshanks not stay dead!?” Ripnugget shouted as Shadow landed another
bite.
Cairn then hefted his axe… right into
Ripnugget’s face.
Hamlin took a small slash from the
remaining goblin, then stabbed it in the face with his dagger. It died from its
wounds.
I leapt onto the gecko’s back and tried
to calm it down. Shadow decided he wanted a gecko dinner and started clawing at
it. Cairn then decided to help him and my newfound dreams of having a giant
gecko mount were dashed upon the edge of my druid friend’s axe.
We found a couple of more powerful
healing potions, and Cairn drank one since he was on the brink, while I drank
one of the potions we had brought with us.
Ripnugget had an oversized (for him)
breastplate, and Cairn noted the shortsword was magical. From my experience in
the Bartered Coin, I was able to recognize the craftsmanship and determined it
was just a minorly enhanced blade. Slightly sharper, easier to land a blow,
that sort of thing.
Because I use a shortsword more often, I
took it, and Hamlin asked if he could take the cold iron blade I had had
crafted before so he had something with more reach than the dagger he’d been
using up until now.
Shadow’s ears perked up, and he looked
toward the west wall, then I heard a thump and what sounded like a pumpkin
being smashed, followed by a goblin-sounding yelp.
I let the others know what I heard, and
we decided to look into the rooms on the east side of the “throne room”. We
found an armory filled with run down equipment: scrap metal blades,
goblin-sized suits of studded leather armor, and two masterwork daggers. Hamlin
and I each took one of the finely crafted daggers.
I picked the lock on the door on the
north side of the room and found a ring of keys right inside. How did Ripnugget get into the room if the
keys were…? I thought to myself. Oh
yeah, he’s a dumb goblin and probably just locked himself out.
Also in the room was a silver holy
symbol of Lamashtu, the Mother of Monsters, and a brass key that wasn’t on the
keyring. The floor was covered in poorly tanned dog and horse hides.
The door to the south of the room filled
with dead goblins led to an empty hallway, which led back to the entryway to
the fort, with the poorly-taxidermied animals.
We peeked out of another door off the
main entryway, and there I saw the smashed pumpkin. Well, what had sounded like a smashed pumpkin was
actually a goblin head being smashed, as there were two of them in the yard,
along with two of their gross dogs, also dead on the ground, heads or ribcages
crushed. Another dog looked wounded and was barking at a small shed at the back
of the little yard that was shaking from something inside pounding on the
walls.
Hamlin and I took aim with our bows and
let fly at the dog. We both hit our mark and the dog fell to the ground barely
making a sound, and the pounding in the shed ceased suddenly once the barking
stopped.
There was a door just next to the one we
entered the yard from, and on the other side was a small storage room with a couple
dozen rabbits in cages.
Cairn moved up to the shed slowly and
after a moment asked whatever was inside if it understood Common.
A whinnying sound came from within. A
horse. Goblins don’t like horses, and horses don’t like goblins.
“I think I know what crushed the
goblins’ skulls over there,” I said.
Looking inside the shed through cracks
in the wall, we spotted a horse clad in fine barding, neatly tooled leather
pieces, and… I recognized it. I knew this horse.
“Shadowmist? What are you doing here?” I
threw open the door on the shed.
“You know this horse? How do you know
this horse?” Cairn asked.
“My… My father trained this horse, years
ago. He was sold to a nobleman, though I can’t remember who. But I’d never
forget this fine steed. He’s one of the
finest my father ever raised.”
Shadowmist had appeared to calm down
somewhat with all the goblins and dogs dead, so I coaxed him out of the small
shed. One of his legs appeared to be wounded and didn’t look too good. Making soothing
motions, I managed to calm the horse, and moved to the storage room quickly to
get water and what had to be the last clean cloth in the entire fort.
With help from Cairn, we cleaned the
infected wound as best we could. At this stage, there wouldn’t be any permanent
damage to Shadowmist’s leg, as long as we got it cared for back in Sandpoint
soon. Unless it somehow took us multiple days to clear out this little fort,
that wouldn’t be an issue.
Further exploration found what appeared
to be plans for the attack that had taken place on Sandpoint. Cairn took them
as further evidence against the goblins to turn over to the mayor.
We found a chest behind a false wall in
a room with a rather disgusting toilet. I couldn’t disarm the trap we found on
the chest and wound up being stabbed badly enough I barely survived, needing to
drink one of the more powerful healing potions we had found on Ripnugget’s body
in order to recover.
Inside the chest we found a large amount
of copper and silver (it had to be in the thousands, so we would count it
later), about 150 gold pieces and 3 platinum. There were also a few gems I
estimated to be worth roughly 20 gold each.
All that was left was to head down the
nearby stairs and see what awaited us in the underground levels of Thistletop.