It has been a rather trying and eventful day. It seems that
all of us in the group need to have a purpose and keep busy. So with the quasit
dead and all our leads inside the town already pursued, we decided to follow up
with the goblin problem and use some of the intelligence we got from Shalaylu,
the elf patrolling the forest in the region. Before I go any further, I didn’t
think goblin had the organization and intelligence to create a fortress, for
that is what we walked into.
Thistletop, our destination, is located along the sea cliffs
north and east of Sand Point. We found it surrounded by a large barrier of
briars, and as much skill in getting through obstacles as I have, climbing a
20-foot-tall hedge of briars is more than I want to tackle. It took us a little
bit of time to find the entrance, but it proves that we shouldn’t underestimate
any of the goblins in this area. They had taken bamboo and long briar thorns
and created a screen that went over the tunnel entrance and blended in quite
nicely with the hedge. The tunnel was uncomfortable to get through (it was
sized for goblins, not for us), but we made our way through all the rooms with
only a few hiccups.
Suzy impressed me today, much as I hate to say it. I don’t
know what happened between the battle of the quasit and now, but little Miss
Cleric has grown a backbone with spells to match. I was being lowered into a
hole in the ground to see where it led (I’m light and I can see in the dark)
when we were ambushed by goblins. All I heard was the commotion of fighting,
but my colleagues tell me that she literally shot a stream of fire into the
tunnel they were approaching from. She managed to kill four of them before they
even got to the room. It bought the orc-man and the cat precious time to pull
me up. We dispatched the rest of the goblins quickly and continued to explore.
The second major encounter in the tunnels was with a goblin
druid (I’ve never heard of such a thing) that called himself Gogmurk. He was
more than a little annoying because he kept casting this spell that created
these vines all over the floor that would grab us and make attacking
impossible. His animal, creature, whatever was a firepelt cougar. It was a
dangerous animal, and together they made a tough fight. Towards the end of the
fight, the cougar went down and was unconscious, bleeding. I took the
opportunity to kill it outright, something I know that shocked a couple of the
others. But here’s my reasoning. I’ve been trained and I know from experience
not to leave any foe in a position to come back and hurt you, either right away
or later on. There’s no way to say that it wouldn’t have recovered and followed
us later. There’s no way to say that it would have either, since it was
bleeding heavily. Killing it quickly meant it wouldn’t suffer a prolonged
death, while leaving nothing to chance. It also seemed to have some tie to the
druid, so killing it would hurt him and end the fight sooner with fewer
injuries to us. If anyone ever finds this journal, I hope they understand that
it was a strategic move, not an evil one.
After getting past the druid, we passed through the
remainder of the tunnels and came in view of Thistletop proper. The front door
was closed and it didn’t look like there was any easy way to get it, so I
finally revealed another of my talents to the group: my ability to change into
another person. The half-elf seemed miffed that I didn’t let them know earlier,
but as I told her a slayer never reveals all her secrets. I turned into Tsudo
and led a “restrained” orc-man to the front of the stronghold, hoping to fool
the goblins into opening the door. We got in without any problem, but it was
because the door was unlocked and the guards in the watchtowers by the door
were distracted by a card game. Apparently, goblins make lousy guards. Sadly my
idea of appearing as Tsudo didn’t work too well. He was there and quickly
killed that tactic.
I won’t go through all the fights and skirmishes we had with
the goblins, Tsudo, and the wizard we found downstairs. I will say that I was on
my game today and did myself proud. I did get hurt a bit, but I doled out way
more hurt than I took. In the end, we ended up with a mess of dead goblins and
their shit dogs, a dead goblin king (aka Ripnugget) and his giant lizard mount,
two unconscious hostages (that would be the real Tsudo and the wizard), a
trained warhorse named Shadowmist that we rescued from the shed he was locked
in, and a ton of loot (including a new sword for me!). All in all, we did
pretty well for ourselves.
We haven’t yet finished exploring the stronghold. It’s
getting towards evening and we’ve spent a day fighting and searching. We’re
tired, all of us. I think we’re going to try and make some sort of camp and get
what rest we can before we finish clearing out this place. I don’t know about
the rest of the group, but I’ll be sleeping with my weapons close tonight.
