| Splurg |
| M Goblin Druid 7 |
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Splurg looks with great concern on the zombie masses realizing he isn't the most stable at the best of times
The moment of duress brings upon a change as Splurg begins to grow smaller and sprout feathers finally turning into an eagle he once saw fishing in the ocean. He inspects himself for a moment before taking flight to the other side of the walkway.
| Crang |
| Male Goblin Barbarian (Invulnerable Rager) 7 |
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Crang waits for everyone else to cross, so that he can do what he does best and charge over the beam.
| Our Mysterious Benefactor |
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Whosi moves first across the gang plank, nimbly avoiding the grasping hands of the zombies. The plank strains under his weight, but does not break.
Splurg disappears, changing into a raggedly eagle, which looks somewhat out of place in the sunken ship, but who easily flies over the gap and arrives next to Whosi by the ornate door.
| Crang |
| Male Goblin Barbarian (Invulnerable Rager) 7 |
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Crang grins excitedly and charges over the plank, yelling as he goes, WoooHaaa!
| Our Mysterious Benefactor |
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Ank-hore, I need Acrobatics checks from you based on this:
Crang, using his characteristic style, barrels down the gangplank. However, he gets only halfway before the sheer weight of the zombies holding onto him pull him off the gangplank and into the mass of murderous slave zombies below. There is a sound of crunching, tearing and ripping as the zombies, unfed for years, descend upon the goblin.
| Crang |
| Male Goblin Barbarian (Invulnerable Rager) 7 |
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The choices are:
1. Rage and Kill Everything.
2. Rage and run away, praying to survive the many hits.
3. Rage and smash a hole in the hull, filling the place with a cascade of water which should create chaos and opportunities for escape.
Is 3 an option?
| Our Mysterious Benefactor |
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| Splurg |
| M Goblin Druid 7 |
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Our Mysterious Benefactor
| Our Mysterious Benefactor |
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With a graceful nod and a confident smile, Ank-hore steps out onto the plank, only to tumble off into the mass of zombies as the plank gives a heave. Crang follows a moment later, and the two gobs disappear into the sea of ravenous undead!
| Splurg |
| M Goblin Druid 7 |
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The Splurg Eagle slowly unfolds, as Splurg comes back to his magnificent self he begins a wild serious of gestures and gibberish.
| Crang |
| Male Goblin Barbarian (Invulnerable Rager) 7 |
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Or is that too cheeky?
| Our Mysterious Benefactor |
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| Crang |
| Male Goblin Barbarian (Invulnerable Rager) 7 |
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Freaked-out by the undead horde, Crang flies into a rage and tries to smash through the hull of the boat in order to escape.
| Our Mysterious Benefactor |
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With a great cry of rage, Crang smashes a hole in the ancient wood of the slave ship. A rush of air is replaced with water as the sea rushes into the hold. A zombie near the hole is sucked through, and as all the corpses are shackled together by old chains, they all begin to float out toward the hole. Crang and Ank-hore are clawed and clutched by the corpses and begin to feel the hands dragging them into the open dark water...
| Crang |
| Male Goblin Barbarian (Invulnerable Rager) 7 |
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Strength Check: 1d20-1
or CMB 1d20+1
| Our Mysterious Benefactor |
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Crang fights free of the grasping hands as the zombies are pulled out of the hold, into terrible terrible freedom. However, something huge and dark moves outside in the black water, and suddenly the line of zombie slaves, still shackled together, begins to speed up. The zombie chain whips out of the hold at break-neck (sometimes literally!) speed. One of the last zombies has a death grip on Ank-hore and he is quickly dragged toward the gaping hole into blackness, leaving him only a few moments before he hits the open sea. Even the grasping tendrils of Splurg's entangling sea-weed are unable to hold onto the clerical gob. Certain doom approaches! How will the goblin be saved?
| Ank-hore |
| Male Goblin Cleric Level 7 |
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Ank-hore feels himself being pulled under not knowing what to do he begins to pray to the Lady Last Breath, if she wants him alive she will help him if not he will perish and become one of her undead servants. trolling the oceans bottom for flotsam.
Ank-hore feels his new arm being pulled from his body. Then he feels a pressure building in his stomach. He continues praying to the Lady. he gets pulled down and the pressure in his stomach increases. He opens his eyes to face his final moments and he see her, his goddess and he murmurs her name "Zogmngot" she grins at him with a mouth of shark like teeth. "It is not your Time to scavenge the bottom of the sea yet, Go forth and drown many in my name. still smiling at him.
Ank-hore sees a tentacle moving towards his bloated stomach. As it touches it, he feels a rumble in his backside.
His vision blurs he knows death is near, something white is floating towards him. The rumble get worse. the white gets closer pain and the rumble worsens the white object is within his reach he grabs for it. BOOOOOOOM it feels like his stomach and body explode as something shoots from his backside propelling him up. he is going up fast, he thinks "the lady has forsaken me" he blacks out clutching something in his arms.
| Our Mysterious Benefactor |
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As an unconscious, but alive Ank-hore arrives on deck, he scatters the goblins who are currently staring intently at the giant squid which seems to be trailing a line of shackled zombies off into the dark of the oceans.
On board the slaver, Crang is able to crawl back onto the gangplank and join Whosi and Splurg standing in front of the ornate golden door. Whosi checks and rechecks for traps and finding none, tackles the lock. It takes a few moments, but finally he trips the last tumbler and an intricate series of clicks and sliding noises erupts from the door. A second later, it pops open.
Inside the room is treasure. Mounds and mounds of treasure. Chests of gold and gems. Swords and shields made of gold and silver. Chunks of gold and silver and iron ore, as well as a small brick of adamantine. Paintings of landscapes and sailing ships. A cask of what seems to be perfume. Three wooden barrels of strong Dwarven ale. A chest of silken robes. Gold coins stamped with a strange sigil of a dragon rampant over a castle.
And an urn. Exactly as the strange sea goblin described.
In the corner of the room is a ladder leading to a well concealed trap door with a very well made lock. While easily unlocked from this side, it would be nearly impossible to unlock from the other side.
All of it makes you gobs very, very rich.
Splurg's detection of magic reveals one last thing: a large plain leather sack lying in the corner. A bag of holding, large enough to fit all of the treasure save the paintings.
Very, very rich.
| Our Mysterious Benefactor |
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Two years.
It's hard to believe, really, that it was only two years. It all began after the plunder. Having hauled the treasure from the wrecked slaver onto the ship and after returning the urn to the sea goblin, the band of the Accursed sailed the seas in search of more. And more they found. They attacked three fat merchant ships in a row, easy pickings and full of gold, spices and rum. It wasn't until they were aboard the fourth ship that things went bad. The fourth ship turned out to be a Chelish Naval cruiser in disguise and many brave gobs were lost that day before the ship could escape. Thus began a long chase lasting three months, with Chelish Naval forces seeking to end this Goblin Scourge once and for all.
It did end, during a hurricane. The storm raged as three Chelish destroyers attacked the Accursed, their catapults and ballista wreaking terrible damage, as well as the spells of the devil-worshipping wizards on the Chelish ships. Fire and flame, wind and wave, smoke and thunder. It was almost over for our intrepid gobs, when a sudden gust of wind drove the gob ship over a reef and into the harbor of an island. The reef tore at the bottom of the ship, but it did much worse to the Chelish destroyers and all three were smashed upon that reef, their heavier weights driving them to death. When the storm passed, the Accursed was beached upon the tiny island and the Chelish ships were sunk, their sailors given to Zogmugot's hungry maw.
At first the island was a godsend. It was full of wild pigs, fresh fruit and wood aplenty. The center of the island was dominated by a giant volcano, which smoked and rumbled in the night. It was paradise and the goblins populated it thusly. The tribe grew and the Captains were hailed as Big Chiefs, earning many wives and great admiration.
But no good thing lasts forever.
It all began with the map in the bottle. It washed up not long after the sinking of the Chelish ships. It showed was appeared to be their island and the hidden treasures drawn on the map did look lovely. But then someone used the map to wipe themselves with and it was rightly forgotten.
At least until the Great Remembering of Nearly Two Years Later. A great torrential rain came down and one of the things that washed out of The Place Where Goblins Go Poo was a newly cleaned map. Also three wooden legs, a small and frightened raccoon and a goblin named Pug, who claimed complete confusion as to what he was doing in There.
Since the ship was mostly repaired and the goblin wives were undoubtedly satisfied, the Captains decided to undertake the Great Quest of Wealthiness and seek the riches hidden in the volcano.
In retrospect, maybe that was a bad idea.
It was certainly a bad idea to toss the flaming barrel of hog poo at the sleeping Magma Dragon. It was definitely a bad idea to try to pole vault over it using spears (wrong end up..). It may have been brilliant to summon the water elemental in the magma dragon's mouth, but the resulting explosion caused the surprised dragon to smash a hole in the side of the mountain and trigger an eruption.
It was definitely a bad idea not to read the words written on the map in bold frightened strokes of Common: BEWARE THE LAVA DRAGON! But what can you do? Writing steals your soul, you know.
What did happen was a sudden flight down the side of the volcano as it exploded, screaming all the way. They weren't nearly fast enough, of course. It's quite hard to outrun lava when it's propelled by a mountain, but through some twist of luck or divine providence they were able to jump on the still stunned magma dragon and ride him like a surf board down the lava flow. They managed to leap off as he began to regain his senses and flee to the ship, which was rapidly re-populated with goblins and rolled into the sea, mere moments before the wave of lava twisted its way to cover the goblin camp (and most of the ill-gotten fortune) in a hard crusty shell of rock 22 feet thick.
As the goblins looked back in dismay at their burning home, they were comforted by the fact that some things never change.
Unfortunately one thing did: their figurehead of Lamashtu was gone, having taken with it Whosi's small red globe and Splurg's evil sword. With it and Her went the magic that made the ship dive and sail on its own, leaving its crew the only means of propulsion again.
It also left behind a terrible dream, burned into each of their heads the first night they slept on the ship:
In the dream four golden figures of myth and legend stand in front of an adoring multitude. A shiny man in armor, an elven woman in white robes, a slightly lewd beardless dwarf and a sneaky halfling bow and hold aloft their prizes, the heads of several goblins, including your own. In the dream they tell a tale of how they defeated a wooden statue of the Goddess Lamashtu and foiled Her evil plans, thus allowing them to finally capture and execute the scourge of the seas, these evil goblins.
Behind the adoring heroes, you see a familiar if not friendly face, the ghostly devil you remember from your first encounter with a Chelish ship. It seems that the Heroes have received some assistance in their heroing efforts...
As the dream pulls back, you see the Heroes being soundly defeated by an army of Devils, who sweep the land, imposing their lawful evil upon the land, turning goblins into mindless soldiers, pickle-less and reputable, a reliable fighting force. It's madness!
And all of this because of a missing figurehead, sword and marble? From the sun in the sky and the clothing of the cheering people you guess that you have about a year to find that figurehead and get it back before it can lose its battle and usher in the age of Devil and the loss of Pickles.
You wake from the dream with an unfamiliar feeling: a sense of destiny and your place in it, as well as a Quest.
Let the forces of Good and Evil beware: these goblins are aimin' to behave.
Chapter Four: To Save the World (and Pickles)
| Ank-hore |
| Male Goblin Cleric Level 7 |
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"Eye, Eye captain we shall findz your Schimitar" he then pulls out a few eyes from a belt pouch and eats one and offers the other to Splurg.
| Crang |
| Male Goblin Barbarian (Invulnerable Rager) 7 |
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Crang spends a few moments pawing through his axes. Finally, he cannot bear to lend any to Splurg: Ay, we getz bendy knife.
| Splurg |
| M Goblin Druid 7 |
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Splurg takes the eye abscent mindidly and swallows it. "But wich wayz to go..." Splrug ponders it for a minute... "Me sword be gone me figurehead be gone... which wayz figurehead go.."
With sudden inspiration Splurg points towards the front of the ship "Figurehead always go dataway!! To the sails!"
| Our Mysterious Benefactor |
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The ship heaves as the goblin crew, slightly rusty from its island sojourn, springs to obey. The wind is caught and the ship begins to move forward.
As the ship travels, your Captains' peace is interrupted by a shout of anger/annoyance. Gutbucket, the erstwhile cook, comes to the deck. "Capns! All the gobbin babies is gone! Cages is broke and babies is free!" He looks close to a panic. Apparently in the fleeing of the island, the goblin young were simply thrown, cages and all, into the hold. And now they're free aboard the ship. May the Gods have mercy on your souls...
| Splurg |
| M Goblin Druid 7 |
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"Crew to ARMS! Man the pickles and batton down the hatches" Confused Splurg adds as an afterthought "Me Hardies"
Spots gets an evil gleam in his eye as he thinks of rounding up the babies.
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From the decks below you hear a scream, followed shortly by a cry of alarm, then a crash from above. In the span of a moment, the babies have gotten into the pickle stores, set a fire in the bilge and chewed through a rope holding up the sails. Hell hath no fury like a goblin child loose.