The crash of branches, leaves, and splash of water alerts two goblins to the presence of the party. A third goblin is quickly alerted by those two who darts into the cave entrance. The rising sound of wolf growls and howls echoes from the cave entrance. The two remaining goblins, shielded by a thick, impenetrable screen of briers, can be seen through small gaps here and there, readying their shortbows.

Celeryn smiles coyly at the playfulness of the pup, in sharp contrast to Bearhans' composure, but his mirth his interrupted by the unnatural rustling of leaves and the glimpse of a goblin scout darting into the cave. Following Jhessana's eagle-like vision, he also catches the motion of two others hidden deep in the thicket.

"More of them, then? I suppose we ought to have expected this. I suppose it's already time to be brave again," he says, convincing himself.

 "Friends, whatever you intend to do to save us from these goblins, may moonlight guide your way!" He prepares an outstretched arm for the casting of Guidance, for the benefit of any who would receive it.

With Celeryn's signal that goblins lurked in the thicket Schminke takes the opportunity to hide in the bushes to the left of the cave. She takes out her longbow, nocks an arrow, and waits for the goblins to leave through the opening in the thicket.

Seeing Schminke dive into the bushes, Bearhans reacts quickly. Scooping up the pup he runs back to the others. Turning to face the cave, he drops the pup to the ground and hits the dirt with his palm. The wolf immediately responds by going prone, his belly flat on the earth. Bearhans takes a fistful of arrows out of his quiver and jams them into the soil at his feet. He takes one and knocks it onto the string, holding the bow half-way drawn ready to release on the first thing to show.

"The blessing is appreciated," Jhessana says as she moves over to Celeryn and takes his hand, "but I'd suggest not standing out here in the open when the goblins and their pets come storming out of the cave."

With that said, Jhess moves up to take cover in the bushes near Schminke, bringing Celeryn along with her if possible.

The howling of the wolves reaches a fever pitch, sounding like an entire pack is rushing out of the cave mouth. You can just make out the shaggy forms of three emaciated wolves however... one of which is twice the size of the other two. Behind them, the goblin holds three lengths of chain in one hand and its shortbow in the other. The goblin drops the chains with a snarled command and the wolves rush forward.

As the wolves' chains are dropped and they start to run Bearhans focuses on the largest of them, a great beast of fur and teeth. He knows them; he knows they're weaknesses, their strengths, the way they work together. As the pup's movement catches his eye next to him, he is reminded that this is definitely not the first time he's faced beasts like this. And it certainly won't be the last.

"Sorry girl"

He looses the arrow,  sending it towards the wolf's chest just in front of its shoulder. There the arrow would enter cleanly, meeting no bone or cartilage that might stop it piercing the heart.

 The wolf dips it's shoulder as it runs, just as the arrow hits. It is not a mortal shot, but the wolf howls as it starts to bleed heavily down its side.

As the wolves come charging out of the cave, Jhessana is briefly indecisive over which one to target first, but Bearhans' arrow makes the decision easy.  Opting to focus fire on the big one, Jhess brings up her pistol.

"Well, it's not like we're likely to surprise anything now anyways..."

 As the big wolf staggers from Bearhans' arrow, Jhess sees her opening.

BANG!!!

The creature's left eye seems to explode as the shot makes contact and passes right through its skull.

Schminke lurks in the bushes waiting for the perfect opportunity to fell one of the wolves that had just sprung out of the cave. The big one looked juicy but before she knew it the wolf had met its end by the hand of Bearhans and Jhess; a spectacular display of marksmanship! With the big wolf down there were just two what could only be considered pups in comparison. They could even be considered cute until Schminke reminded herself of what they would do to her if they got close.

With her arrow still nocked Schminke slid out of the brush and delivered a fatal blow to the smaller of the two "pups" as it was running along. It had hit the body but obviously did some nasty things to its internals which causes it to whimper and collapse to the ground. With the task at hand done Schminke moves south to try and get a better angle on the goblin in the cave, and hopefully put enough distance between her and the goblins in the thicket.

 The remaining wolf charges Schminke in the brush alongside the cliff, faltering momentarily as the thundering blast of the pistol almost sends it fleeing into the woods. The low growl of the wolf cuts off with snarl as it leaps towards the wood elven fighter. Hunger drives it to attack despite everything telling it to flee. Its teeth sink into Schminke's leg and its weight bears into the wood elf, dragging her down to the ground.

Celeryn plugged his ears for the pending blast of gunpowder and whine of arrows, and when the reverberations stopped giving him goosebumps, he knew he could open his eyes again. Doing so, he saw two of the wolves slain mid-stride (mercifully including the alpha), and the third snarling over Schminke.

"Ah! Gods, Schminke, are you alright? Are you... you look alright, yeah? You're, actually you're doing okay I think?"

Nothing personal, he thought (and would try to explain to her later), but the goblins just seem fouler, don't they? I hope she doesn't mind I aim for one of them instead...

"I am the guardian who fights for love and justice!" he cries in a celestial tongue, invoking the moon goddess without (hopefully) embarrassing himself in front of the others.

 No amount of brush can spare the goblin from the cleansing silver flame, but Selûne's intervention - this time - was not sufficient to destroy it; if its beady eyes weren't calculating against the timid priest before, they certainly would be now.

 The goblin inside the cave steps out to take aim at Jhessana, shouting at the others to do so as well. However, the goblin scorched by Celeryn's divine magic has other plans... and takes careful aim at the half-elf. The arrow strikes true, the broad bladed arrowhead cutting a deep furrow in his cheek, narrowly missing his left eye. The other goblins attacks vanish into the thick brush Jhessana is taking cover in, one arrow stopping just inches from her face. The kobold rogue traveling with you dashes forward, and falls to his knees. 

"Don't kill us! Spare us and take pity on us!" Killian surreptitiously draws a pair of daggers, hiding the thin blades along his forearms.

The goblins and the wolf all peer at the tiny pathetic creature and are momentarily taken aback or distracted by the high pitched whiny voice.

Schminke thought the time was now to fell one of the pesky goblins while Killian distracted their foes. "Power shot!" said Schminke as she loosed the arrow but to her dismay it missed by little more than an inch. "Tsk," she muttered under her breath as the arrow would have surely put the goblin in the dirt if it had hit.

Schminke put her longbow away as things were about to get rough as the wolf would not be distracted for long and she'd need her rapier handy for the ensuing melee. Schminke didn't dare to move as the wolf would probably take the opportunity to take a bite out of one of her legs again; not a pleasant experience to say the least.

Finally Schminke says to Celeryn, "Thanks for the consideration before and as you know I'm fine. Tend to your own wounds with haste!" The goblin had hit Celeryn with ruthless condemnation and Schminke was worried that their foes would focus their attacks now on the wounded half-elf.

Bearhans watches as the head of the wolf he hit gets thrown to the side in a mist of red. A rolling thunder fills the small clearing. It takes a few seconds for him to regain his senses and when he does he sees one of the other wolfs dead in its tracks and the other latched onto Schminke. Switching his focus onto that one he runs to the right to get a clear view of the wolf and to put the cover of dense woods between him and the goblins, carrying the pup with him. As he reaches the bushes he drops the wolf, who obediently hugs the ground, and turns with an arrow on the string. He releases and sends the shaft just above the wolfs armpit.

 The arrow hits true, piercing through fur and skin and then sinking up to it's feathers. The wolf is dead before it knows anything has happened; the blade cutting cleanly through his heart. A hunter's kill.

It took a moment for Celeryn to realize that he had not, in fact, lost his eye (although it had felt like it for a good moment or three). Emerging from that moment, in a fit of discomforting pain for which he was not-at-all accustomed, he felt unusually calm, as though the world around him had slowed down just a bit.That must be what adrenaline feels like, he thought, and was about to begin pontificating on the nature of danger, bravery, war, duty, sacrifice, and...

And the whine of Bearhan's second shot snapped him out of it, and turned his focus back onto the real danger at hand. The goblin had stolen a clean shot at him, but was now preoccupied with Killian's embellished surrender, and its hands were on its bow instead of its shield...

Celeryn threw down his shield and, for the first time, drew up the crossbow Sir Nylef had given him. He lined up his shot and squeezed the trigger, unable to help squeezing his eyes shut also. There was a clamour and snarl as the bolt released, and when he felt it was safe to open his eyes again, the goblin had been felled with his bleeding bolt adorning its clavicle, lodged deep and deadly.

"Huzzah!" he cried, against everyone's better judgment, and he leapt momentarily in the air, pumping his fist. When he came back down, he scrambled for his shield.

{OOC - since the light crossbow is two-handed, Celeryn had to drop his shield. His AC is 15 until he can pick it up again on his next turn}

A quiet but still audible click sounds as the cylinder of Jhess's pistol cycles to the next chamber.  That arrow had been a bit too close for comfort, but she takes a deep, steadying breath as she takes aim for the goblin that had fired it, who is presently distracted by the sneaky little kobold rogue.

The bullet strikes the goblin in the shoulder, prompting it to yelp in pain but not fall.  It spins to face Jhess again, it's face contorted with pain and rage, as Jhess ducks back into cover again.

 Killian's blades flash in the dappled sunlight filtering through the overhanging tree branches. He charges towards the two remaining goblins. The first blade sinks deep into the goblin's chest, piercing the heart. With a quick sidestep, Killian lunges towards the second goblin. The green-skinned foe manages to back away from the attack, turning what might have been a killing strike into a glancing blow.

The goblin tosses aside their shortbow, drawing a slightly bent scimitar, scuffed and dirty. WIth a snarl, it slashes at the kobold rogue in retaliation and Killian tries to parry the blade with a dagger held flat against his scaled forearm. The goblin's blade slides down the dagger and then cuts into Killian's leg. Outnumbered, the goblin then disengages from the fight and flees into the mouth of the cave.

As Bearhans puts the next arrow onto the string he sees Killian fell one of the last goblins before taking a blade to his leg. He watches as the goblin disengages and starts to retreat into the cave. Knowing that if the goblin escaped they would lose any element of surprise that they had, he sprints after it. As he is halfway towards the cave, he pulls the string up to his cheek. The goblin at this point is a grey outline against a black background, but that's never hindered him before. Focusing on the back of the goblins neck, Bearhans releases.

Jhess springs out of her cover as the last goblin makes its break for the presumed safety of the cave.  Less concerned about surprise than about having one more goblin waiting for them in ambush inside, Jhess moves up next to Bearhans and raises her pistol at the small, retreating form.

"Might want to cover your ears," she says quickly to the half-orc before taking a steady breath.

BANG!!!

Ears ringing, Jhess and Bearhans watch as the faint outline of the fleeing goblin crumples to the floor of the cave.  A moment passes before Jhess lowers her pistol and with practiced ease flips open the the cylinder to replace the spent rounds.  She glances sideways at Bearhans then around the clearing at the rest of the group.

"We probably don't have much in the way of surprise at this point, so we'd best be on alert."

Once her pistol is reloaded and holstered, she takes just a bit of time to look over the dead goblins to see if they have anything of note on them, such as any kind of tribal insignia that it might be helpful to recognize and remember later.

The dead goblins have nothing much upon them aside from the well used, beaten, and battered weapons, shoddy shortbows, and quivers nearly full with black-fletched and flint tipped arrows. The wolves pelts are mangy and ridden with lice and fleas. Near the entrance, the babbling stream echoes off the rough cavern walls.