Once the characters freed the two Chiefs and their people, the returned to the Frostfur village and a huge party was held to honor the PCs who had rescued their Chief. They learned that the bugbears had been tempted by a powerful Bear 'demon' who had granted one of the secondary shamans far more spells and powers than the Chief Shaman who was held back by the totem's limitations. This show of power had swayed some of the tribe into following this evil shaman and they had overthrown the Chief and led them off to be sacrificed.
The Wiqowin Chief headed back to her town but the PCs stayed and drank and partied with the bugbears all night. In the morning, the bugbears made the PCs honorary elders for the tribe and presented with them pelts and treasures worth 500owl. More significantly, Byron SongMauler was offered the role of WarChief with the Frostfur tribe and with a ring of warmth decided to remain in the village.
Back in Wiqowin, the Chief Duvessa offered them a Wiqowin trade bar worth 1000owl and Boots of the Winter and wrote a letter of appreciation to the Toskwanik Councill thanking them for the assistant of their scouts. The PCs explored the last remaining warehouse owned by Dunavon, of the Midnight Sun and inside discovered the body of a young asian man. As the PCs approached the young man sat up, eyes aglow and gave the PCs a vision.
The PCs saw that the three rulers of the old world gods Zeus, Odin and Sun Tiang had worked together to convince the ruler of the native gods, Old Man Sun, to turn his back on the native tribes, sealing himself, his family and totems away from their worshipers. This is why the native tribal clerics and shamans have had their powers limited, their spells only available to level 3. The asian god is using his Animal Generals to tempt the totem clerics away with gods who seem similar to their totems but who are evil and demanding but offer more spells.
When the vision ended and the PCs awoke the young man was still there though he didnt know where he was. The asian god of joy had transported him away from Asia, from the site of his home burning down, his parents killed, by hobgoblin troops in his village. Humans exist only as serfs in Asia and are bullied and eventually 'fed' to the Masters by the hobgoblins. There is a resistance movement called Sticks and Stones where humans are trained to fight with staffs, axes and stones. The young man's name is Kwai Chan and he had been trained since childhood by his mother to be a Stick Warden skilled in the use of staff. Stick Wardens are trained as Fighters/Rogues with Polearm Mastery immediately and Stone Wardens have Druid/Fighter training and use Magic Stone & Shillelagh to create weapons capable of harming the Uni Masters.
They also found maps and notes about an ancient bone tower and a frantically-searched-for artifact. This bone tower was outside Fort Edmonton (a European outpost city run by a Duke) and greatly desired by the Black Sun Order.
They learned from the Guard Captain that Dunavon had been charged with slavery and negligence but was not imprisoned after the Guard consulting with GooGal who didnt want to see him harmed. Instead the report said he had been fined.
The PCs were summoned back to Toskwanik to report in about everything that was happening. Also the goblin cleric Amaranth had used their names to gain access to the Toskwanik Library and had been doing research. To speed things along, the local druid had cast WindWalk on the group and taken them directly as far south as Fort Edmonton and then shapechanged them into hawks to get the rest of the way to Toskwanik that evening. They had landed at Grom's mother's inn and spent the night there.
In the morning they had headed over to the Chief's Lodge and filed a full report of their recent adventures and what has happened. Corn then talked about his plan to take over the local goblin tribe because the WarChief was planning on wiping them out after so many attacks had been made on settlements and other tribes. They also bargained with City Elders' Wise to take over the former merchant warehouse of the Midnight Sun since it was currently sitting empty and they agreed to the monthly 30owl tax.
ADV005 The Goblin who would be King: 1589/11/10-11
While in the city, Corn, Grom and crew tracked down Amaranth at the library who turned out to actually be Deep Strike, one of the Amaranth's lovers and their former ally in Tatiniwa when they were rescuing the kids and capturing Randar. She has been appearing as Amaranth at the Library while the real Amaranth is off on some secret mission to find this fabled lantern at this legendary Bone Tower. She refuses to take the characters back to the goblin's lair "that awful place" but two of her goblin escort agreed. It was half a day west of Toskwanik in the forest along the Sheep River.
When entering the forest they encountered a gnoll female carrying her half grown son. Both of them were weak, sickly with patches of hair falling out and a strange green stain to their underlying skin. The PCs healed them and they explained their tribe had been captured and forced to work on growing 'flux emeralds' under toxic conditions. Many gnolls had died and these two had barely escaped after a riot had left the place in confusion for a bit. The PCs healed her son and in return she had walked back to show the party where this place, the Emerald Fort, was. Then, they had sent her and her son to live at Minkas' house in Tatiniwa.
The group had scouted the Emerald Fort and Corn had finally gone in under cover and said he was a representative of Amaranth and made friends with both the scouts in the trees and the Fort Commander. The fort itself was a simple small building but it had lead underground to several rooms filled with captured gnolls, yellow goblins and some humans being forced to work on growing the flux emeralds. The rest of the group had followed individually. They had confronted Tsaksis, a shaman and one of the tribe's sub-chiefs, defeated him and the champions and alchemist bombers that worked for him and had continued to work themselves deeper and deeper into the tribe's underground caverns.
Grom had discovered that Tsaksis' emerald eye actually fed a view from the various cam-spiders that crawled along patrolling the ceilings of the underground complex. He was able to see a clear picture of several areas but not able to control how his view shifted.
Initially they had triggered several traps and alerted the goblins -who began to drum- before they slowed down and moved more cautiously and delved deeper underground, past an underground river, murderholes, spike pits, etc. They eventually reached a small room that held a tinker gnome working away on the spidercams.
ADV005 The Goblin who would be King: 1589/11/12-14
From Salazhar's Journal:
"We started off by entering into the room of a tinker Gnome by the name of Nipner. He was busy working on a flying version of the cam-spiders we had encountered in previous sessions. We convinced him with the promise of work in our Northern Blades warehouse, healing his ailing mother, and a couple of well timed Manticore spines, to aid us in confronting the current goblin king. He pointed us in the direction of a group of Gnolls whose leader was free, hiding in the caverns and avoiding capture, had the ability/curse of turning into an otter.
The leader, a druid by the name of Arrias, granted us the ability to breathe underwater and led us to his home via a series of aqueducts. The group was able to take a much needed rest and heal up before they set out on their quest to confront the goblin king. After their rest, they returned to Nipner and he led them to where they would need to go in order to confront the goblin king.
We entered into what appeared to be a huge fighting arena where Corn was able to officially challenge Tukluk to a duel, the Rite of the Fierce. Corn chose single combat and a dramatic confrontation took place. Once Corn was able to knock out the four camspiders crawling continually over the blind goblin Chief, he was able to defeat Tukluk and solidified his place as Chief of the goblin nation. Much celebrating was had, healing was given, and the party decided to check one final area that was unexplored. It contained a simple small pagoda defender by an earth elemental. The pagoda itself was empty but backed onto the cavern wall and had a secret door that lead into a huge secret cavern area. Inside was a giant pagoda/castle filled with dozens of Hobgoblins. An epic battle broke out involving fireballs, bombs, and brute force. Having cleared out most of the Hobgoblins, the party is now faced with the difficult choice of how to proceed..."
ADV005 The Goblin who would be King: 1589/11/12/15
The group mostly focused on getting the caverns set up and organized -a small party consisting of Grom, Minkas, Ta Osa went to explore the hobgoblin castle. On the way there, one of the former captives, a young man named R Hero joined them. They snuck in the secret door and were surprised to see a half dozen hobgoblins cleaning up the bodies from the last battle. They attacked this group but an alarm was raised so Grom ran and quickly gathered 30 goblin warriors to join them as they set off to explore and clean out the castle. Around the back way from the secret door entrance they discovered half the castle was made up of tiered water gardens and that in the fall cavern wall was a 20ft high heavy wooden gate with a watch tower carved into the rock above this gate.
As the goblins fought the hobgoblins in the first part of the castle the PCs ascended the water gardens with Grom climbing and lowering a rope up the three levels. They surprised a slave working on harvesting rice on the second level but climbed up to the terrace and ended up fighting Kama Masa and her two changed slaves who had been lobotomized and carved up. There was a long battle but PCs finally forced her to flee via Dimension Door and then using the Teleport Circle.
The PCs now have the terrace to themselves and have discovered her treasures and a black iron wand of command. They have a ton of treasure and need to explore the rest of the citadel.
ADV005 The Goblin who would be King: 1589/11/12/16
The PCs were not able to catch Kama Masa from using the teleport circle but they, with the help of the Arrias the druid they moved large stones onto the circle and this killed several other hobgoblins that attempted to teleport back into the cavern. They left goblins as guards and explored -clearing out- the rest of the Citadel of the Morning. They freed over 170 prisoners after battling the last remaining hobgoblins as well as some Spider Folk and some strange eel-headed spider creatures, one of whom was using an umberhulk as a mount. This creature also carried some sort of energy type weapon that shot a magical beam of light. Nipner the gnome took it apart but was unable to put it back together again.
The PCs cleared out the main level of the Citadel with the help of Oglaf Tyrson, a cleric of Thor, discovering all sort of creatures who had been captured as prisoners/future slaves. They also discovered a dozen horribly altered human, gnoll, goblins who have had the top half of their skulls removed and hands replaced with various tools and weapons. They have armor plate grafted to their skin and they have been non-responsive except to watch whoever is close to them.
Inside the Spider General Temple pit in the floor of the Citadel they discovered a tiny secret entrance that led out to the mountainside outside.
Now Corn, Grom etc are making plans for the best use of the Citadel and supplies, freed prisoners are being sorted and helped and guards have been posted to watch the giant wooden doors at the far end of the Citadel cavern.
The PCs made their way over the seemingly deserted gate and found two hobgoblins trying to escape on a large handcart on rails that stretched off into a large manmade tunnel. The handcart was slow so the minotaur the paladin -on his cheetah(!)- had no problem catching the hobgoblins and killing them. The handcart had a large bellshape enclosure in the middle which, when opened, revealed four of the living zombie creatures cranking away to drive the handcart in either direction, depending on which way the bell was turned. They turned the handcart back to the gate and figured out how to get the zombies to start and stop.
They proceeded deeper into the cavern, walking for two days and stopping once to fight off a cave fisher which was unable to lift Minkas. They also found a rest stop for 30 carved into the side wall of the tunnel every 7-8 hours walk. The first one was empty the second one contained two powerful hobgoblin warlords and a wizard. They struggled to kill them and rested afterwards. They encountered two giant gelatinous cubes and managed to kill them as well.
By the third night in the tunnels Minkas was getting restless to see the sun. On the fourth day they encounter a large group (maybe 100) hobgoblins proceeding down the cavern towards them. They have neogi and umber hulks with them. They figured out that the hobgoblins have been sent to try and recapture Corn's new stronghold so decide to stand ground and fight them.
In the midst of the battle the hobgoblins are attacked from the ceiling by strange asian halfling rangers riding giant spiders. (the Yimen) With these allies the PCs are able to drive the hobgoblins back and are taken up through the mountain to the halfling's village.
ADV004 Wiqowin vs Wererats: 1589/11/06-09
Once the characters freed the two Chiefs and their people, the returned to the Frostfur village and a huge party was held to honor the PCs who had rescued their Chief. They learned that the bugbears had been tempted by a powerful Bear 'demon' who had granted one of the secondary shamans far more spells and powers than the Chief Shaman who was held back by the totem's limitations. This show of power had swayed some of the tribe into following this evil shaman and they had overthrown the Chief and led them off to be sacrificed.
The Wiqowin Chief headed back to her town but the PCs stayed and drank and partied with the bugbears all night. In the morning, the bugbears made the PCs honorary elders for the tribe and presented with them pelts and treasures worth 500owl. More significantly, Byron SongMauler was offered the role of WarChief with the Frostfur tribe and with a ring of warmth decided to remain in the village.
Back in Wiqowin, the Chief Duvessa offered them a Wiqowin trade bar worth 1000owl and Boots of the Winter and wrote a letter of appreciation to the Toskwanik Councill thanking them for the assistant of their scouts. The PCs explored the last remaining warehouse owned by Dunavon, of the Midnight Sun and inside discovered the body of a young asian man. As the PCs approached the young man sat up, eyes aglow and gave the PCs a vision.
The PCs saw that the three rulers of the old world gods Zeus, Odin and Sun Tiang had worked together to convince the ruler of the native gods, Old Man Sun, to turn his back on the native tribes, sealing himself, his family and totems away from their worshipers. This is why the native tribal clerics and shamans have had their powers limited, their spells only available to level 3. The asian god is using his Animal Generals to tempt the totem clerics away with gods who seem similar to their totems but who are evil and demanding but offer more spells.
When the vision ended and the PCs awoke the young man was still there though he didnt know where he was. The asian god of joy had transported him away from Asia, from the site of his home burning down, his parents killed, by hobgoblin troops in his village. Humans exist only as serfs in Asia and are bullied and eventually 'fed' to the Masters by the hobgoblins. There is a resistance movement called Sticks and Stones where humans are trained to fight with staffs, axes and stones. The young man's name is Kwai Chan and he had been trained since childhood by his mother to be a Stick Warden skilled in the use of staff. Stick Wardens are trained as Fighters/Rogues with Polearm Mastery immediately and Stone Wardens have Druid/Fighter training and use Magic Stone & Shillelagh to create weapons capable of harming the Uni Masters.
They also found maps and notes about an ancient bone tower and a frantically-searched-for artifact. This bone tower was outside Fort Edmonton (a European outpost city run by a Duke) and greatly desired by the Black Sun Order.
They learned from the Guard Captain that Dunavon had been charged with slavery and negligence but was not imprisoned after the Guard consulting with GooGal who didnt want to see him harmed. Instead the report said he had been fined.
The PCs were summoned back to Toskwanik to report in about everything that was happening. Also the goblin cleric Amaranth had used their names to gain access to the Toskwanik Library and had been doing research. To speed things along, the local druid had cast WindWalk on the group and taken them directly as far south as Fort Edmonton and then shapechanged them into hawks to get the rest of the way to Toskwanik that evening. They had landed at Grom's mother's inn and spent the night there.
In the morning they had headed over to the Chief's Lodge and filed a full report of their recent adventures and what has happened. Corn then talked about his plan to take over the local goblin tribe because the WarChief was planning on wiping them out after so many attacks had been made on settlements and other tribes. They also bargained with City Elders' Wise to take over the former merchant warehouse of the Midnight Sun since it was currently sitting empty and they agreed to the monthly 30owl tax.
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ADV005 The Goblin who would be King: 1589/11/10-11
While in the city, Corn, Grom and crew tracked down Amaranth at the library who turned out to actually be Deep Strike, one of the Amaranth's lovers and their former ally in Tatiniwa when they were rescuing the kids and capturing Randar. She has been appearing as Amaranth at the Library while the real Amaranth is off on some secret mission to find this fabled lantern at this legendary Bone Tower. She refuses to take the characters back to the goblin's lair "that awful place" but two of her goblin escort agreed. It was half a day west of Toskwanik in the forest along the Sheep River.
When entering the forest they encountered a gnoll female carrying her half grown son. Both of them were weak, sickly with patches of hair falling out and a strange green stain to their underlying skin. The PCs healed them and they explained their tribe had been captured and forced to work on growing 'flux emeralds' under toxic conditions. Many gnolls had died and these two had barely escaped after a riot had left the place in confusion for a bit. The PCs healed her son and in return she had walked back to show the party where this place, the Emerald Fort, was. Then, they had sent her and her son to live at Minkas' house in Tatiniwa.
The group had scouted the Emerald Fort and Corn had finally gone in under cover and said he was a representative of Amaranth and made friends with both the scouts in the trees and the Fort Commander. The fort itself was a simple small building but it had lead underground to several rooms filled with captured gnolls, yellow goblins and some humans being forced to work on growing the flux emeralds. The rest of the group had followed individually. They had confronted Tsaksis, a shaman and one of the tribe's sub-chiefs, defeated him and the champions and alchemist bombers that worked for him and had continued to work themselves deeper and deeper into the tribe's underground caverns.
Grom had discovered that Tsaksis' emerald eye actually fed a view from the various cam-spiders that crawled along patrolling the ceilings of the underground complex. He was able to see a clear picture of several areas but not able to control how his view shifted.
Initially they had triggered several traps and alerted the goblins -who began to drum- before they slowed down and moved more cautiously and delved deeper underground, past an underground river, murderholes, spike pits, etc. They eventually reached a small room that held a tinker gnome working away on the spidercams.
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ADV005 The Goblin who would be King: 1589/11/12-14
From Salazhar's Journal:
"We started off by entering into the room of a tinker Gnome by the name of Nipner. He was busy working on a flying version of the cam-spiders we had encountered in previous sessions. We convinced him with the promise of work in our Northern Blades warehouse, healing his ailing mother, and a couple of well timed Manticore spines, to aid us in confronting the current goblin king. He pointed us in the direction of a group of Gnolls whose leader was free, hiding in the caverns and avoiding capture, had the ability/curse of turning into an otter.
The leader, a druid by the name of Arrias, granted us the ability to breathe underwater and led us to his home via a series of aqueducts. The group was able to take a much needed rest and heal up before they set out on their quest to confront the goblin king. After their rest, they returned to Nipner and he led them to where they would need to go in order to confront the goblin king.
We entered into what appeared to be a huge fighting arena where Corn was able to officially challenge Tukluk to a duel, the Rite of the Fierce. Corn chose single combat and a dramatic confrontation took place. Once Corn was able to knock out the four camspiders crawling continually over the blind goblin Chief, he was able to defeat Tukluk and solidified his place as Chief of the goblin nation. Much celebrating was had, healing was given, and the party decided to check one final area that was unexplored. It contained a simple small pagoda defender by an earth elemental. The pagoda itself was empty but backed onto the cavern wall and had a secret door that lead into a huge secret cavern area. Inside was a giant pagoda/castle filled with dozens of Hobgoblins. An epic battle broke out involving fireballs, bombs, and brute force. Having cleared out most of the Hobgoblins, the party is now faced with the difficult choice of how to proceed..."
(They hope it was most of the hobgoblins.)
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There's not nearly enough description of Corn's epic duel in here...
Maybe Salazhar was distracted by something shiny?
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ADV005 The Goblin who would be King: 1589/11/12/15
The group mostly focused on getting the caverns set up and organized -a small party consisting of Grom, Minkas, Ta Osa went to explore the hobgoblin castle. On the way there, one of the former captives, a young man named R Hero joined them. They snuck in the secret door and were surprised to see a half dozen hobgoblins cleaning up the bodies from the last battle. They attacked this group but an alarm was raised so Grom ran and quickly gathered 30 goblin warriors to join them as they set off to explore and clean out the castle. Around the back way from the secret door entrance they discovered half the castle was made up of tiered water gardens and that in the fall cavern wall was a 20ft high heavy wooden gate with a watch tower carved into the rock above this gate.
As the goblins fought the hobgoblins in the first part of the castle the PCs ascended the water gardens with Grom climbing and lowering a rope up the three levels. They surprised a slave working on harvesting rice on the second level but climbed up to the terrace and ended up fighting Kama Masa and her two changed slaves who had been lobotomized and carved up. There was a long battle but PCs finally forced her to flee via Dimension Door and then using the Teleport Circle.
The PCs now have the terrace to themselves and have discovered her treasures and a black iron wand of command. They have a ton of treasure and need to explore the rest of the citadel.
FundPirate
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ADV005 The Goblin who would be King: 1589/11/12/16
The PCs were not able to catch Kama Masa from using the teleport circle but they, with the help of the Arrias the druid they moved large stones onto the circle and this killed several other hobgoblins that attempted to teleport back into the cavern. They left goblins as guards and explored -clearing out- the rest of the Citadel of the Morning. They freed over 170 prisoners after battling the last remaining hobgoblins as well as some Spider Folk and some strange eel-headed spider creatures, one of whom was using an umberhulk as a mount. This creature also carried some sort of energy type weapon that shot a magical beam of light. Nipner the gnome took it apart but was unable to put it back together again.
The PCs cleared out the main level of the Citadel with the help of Oglaf Tyrson, a cleric of Thor, discovering all sort of creatures who had been captured as prisoners/future slaves. They also discovered a dozen horribly altered human, gnoll, goblins who have had the top half of their skulls removed and hands replaced with various tools and weapons. They have armor plate grafted to their skin and they have been non-responsive except to watch whoever is close to them.
Inside the Spider General Temple pit in the floor of the Citadel they discovered a tiny secret entrance that led out to the mountainside outside.
Now Corn, Grom etc are making plans for the best use of the Citadel and supplies, freed prisoners are being sorted and helped and guards have been posted to watch the giant wooden doors at the far end of the Citadel cavern.
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ADV006: The Immortal Road 1589/11/12/18
The PCs made their way over the seemingly deserted gate and found two hobgoblins trying to escape on a large handcart on rails that stretched off into a large manmade tunnel. The handcart was slow so the minotaur the paladin -on his cheetah(!)- had no problem catching the hobgoblins and killing them. The handcart had a large bellshape enclosure in the middle which, when opened, revealed four of the living zombie creatures cranking away to drive the handcart in either direction, depending on which way the bell was turned. They turned the handcart back to the gate and figured out how to get the zombies to start and stop.
They proceeded deeper into the cavern, walking for two days and stopping once to fight off a cave fisher which was unable to lift Minkas. They also found a rest stop for 30 carved into the side wall of the tunnel every 7-8 hours walk. The first one was empty the second one contained two powerful hobgoblin warlords and a wizard. They struggled to kill them and rested afterwards. They encountered two giant gelatinous cubes and managed to kill them as well.
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ADV006: The Immortal Road 1589/11/12/21
By the third night in the tunnels Minkas was getting restless to see the sun. On the fourth day they encounter a large group (maybe 100) hobgoblins proceeding down the cavern towards them. They have neogi and umber hulks with them. They figured out that the hobgoblins have been sent to try and recapture Corn's new stronghold so decide to stand ground and fight them.
In the midst of the battle the hobgoblins are attacked from the ceiling by strange asian halfling rangers riding giant spiders. (the Yimen) With these allies the PCs are able to drive the hobgoblins back and are taken up through the mountain to the halfling's village.
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