With a bit of work, everyone but Jack is able to clamber up the fissure; Jack isn't able to make any headway up, but it would be simple enough for the party to toss down a rope for him once they've reached the top.
Would be, were it not for their findings. At the top of the fissure is indeed a crackling fire, which looks to be on its downswing and starting to smolder. Around the cavern are boxes and bags of provisions, not unlike the containers on the wagon; the party's best guess would be that these have been looted by the goblins. The floor slopes up slightly from the shadows where the fissure opens, and the only other exit from the cave is to the north, where the sound of rushing water echoes.
Most importantly, though, the room is occupied. Two goblins are currently going through the supplies, and near the fire, a bugbear lounges in a large wooden chair, cradling a shotgun in its lap. At the bugbear's feet lies a wolf, and as the party crawls from the hole, it lifts its head to look toward you and growls.
Aren attempts to sneak behind a stack of crates, but bumps it as he moves into position and knocks off the top crate. He looks sheepishly for a moment then draws his pistol.
Tex takes a quieter step to the side of the lad, letting him draw the attention, but wincing slightly. Ooh, lad, he mouths, bringing his axe up and angling around for an ambush.
Seeing as the whole attemp is crumbling before it even started, Eberac grunts as he pushes himself forward, as he pulls his greataxe, and clashes with the bugbear
Jack hears scrabbling above as Tex slips into the shadows, Aren knocks over a crate, Eberac charges forward with his greataxe, and the wolf lets out an angry bark. The bugbear turns as Eberac brings his weapon down, and it dodges back just enough that the axe catches on the hides it wears, and it lets out an angry shout. "You dare attack mighty Klarg? Now you die!"
The bugbear responds to Eberac's attack by dropping its shotgun and grabbing an iron-studded club from its belt, swinging wildly at the dwarf, who dodges back from the swipe. A loud growl announces the wolf's attack, and Eberac spins and bats it back with the haft of his axe, keeping the snapping jaws at bay. The goblins simply scramble for weapons, shrieking in surprise.
Aren will level his gun at the wolf attacking Eberac and say "Bang."
"Yeah, I don't think so, pardner," says Tex quietly before spinning his axe and then swinging for the fences on one of the unarmed Goblins.
Eberac takes a second swing at the bugbear, and this time his axe chops into the brute's arm as it tries to block, resulting in a stream of blood and cursing. Tex leaps from the shadows on one of the unsuspecting goblins, and it doesn't even have time to shout before his axe slices through its throat, dropping it to the ground. Aren once more proves his mettle over the minds of beasts, and the wolf lets out a whine and turns to look at him with hateful eyes. Jack, meanwhile, struggles to climb the fissure, but certainly roots on his teammates up above.
The bugbear struggles to recover from Eberac's assault, and its swings in return are easily dodged. The wolf, however, darts after new prey--Aren. It leaps upon the youth and snaps its jaws on his arm, wrenching its neck to the side in an attempt to bring him to the ground. The other goblin grabs a hatchet and moves to avenge its fallen companion, and it gets a lucky hit on Tex, slashing into the dwarf's shoulder!
Jack spits in his hands for better grip while trying to pull himself up the shaft.
Aren struggles with the wolf as it bounds at him
but this time manages to keep his feet and his calm, once more pointing his gun at the wolf and saying "boom."
"Shut ya mouth, ya damn screwy bugpile of horsedung. Get a taste of this" as Eberac lunges with his greataxe forward.
"We'll make it quick, awright?" Tex says, spinning his axe toward the second Goblin and stopping short as he catches a blade in the shoulder. "...Slow way it is then, pardner." He mutters, wincing as the axe draws back from him with a nasty schlk.
Eberac continues to have success in his fight with the bugbear, and draws more blood from the brute. Tex returns a handaxe attack with the goblin, but his own swing is slowed from the pain, and he strikes only air. Aren focuses his psychic energy again, and the wolf lets out one more yelp before collapsing to the floor, unconscious. Jack, meanwhile, finally reaches the top of the ravine, clambering up just in time to see the wolf drop tot he ground.
The bugbear howls and swipes its club at Eberac once more, but the dwarf braces against it and the hit against his shoulder is barely felt. "Klarg is unstoppable!" the creature exclaims, spitting. The goblin squeals in glee and slashes at Tex again, but its attack falls short and it chitters in anger.
"Not for long, ay. Here, taste the might of dwarven axe!" Eberac bellows as gives brutal swing down towards the bugbear's head
Aren will aim his attack this time at Klarg: "Bang."
"Come on buddy, you know how this ends," Tex mutters, wincing around his damaged shoulder and swinging wide and low with his axe arm.
"You boys eve been busy." Says Jack as he stands up from the chute brushing his hands on his pants.
Eberac swings once more, but this time the bugbear is able to step back, avoiding the attack. Tex has little more success, still struggling to attack with the pain in his shoulder. Aren and Jack assault the brute with their magics, and though the orb of acid splashes against its thigh, it seems steeled against a mental assault in its anger.
"Klarg cannot fall!" it shouts, and returns Eberac's attack with its own. The club finally connects with the dwarf, a dull thud against his ribs, and he fights not to double over in pain. The goblin attacking Tex swings again, and hits once more, a slash that draws another streak of blood from the dwarf's arm.
"Alright," Tex mutters, his eyes slowly drawing from the fresh wound back to the goblin. "Fair enough, but I'm gonna need you to fall down, buddy."
Aren will turn his gun on the goblin and say "Bang."
Cursing from the pain and swinging his own axe to give the pain back twice the amount "Bigger things than you have fallen front of me you damn cockroach!" Eberac curses
"The bigger they are, the harder they fall. "
Jack fires another glob of acid at Klarg.
It starts to seem as though the bugbear's protestations about its invincibility could be true, as Eberac chops deep into the brute's chest, but it remains standing. The monster even wrenches free of the axe quickly enough to avoid Jack's magical orb of acid. The goblin harrying Tex dodges another swipe of his axe, although Aren's mental assault does catch it off-guard.
The bugbear roars and slams its club into Eberac's jaw, and the dwarven rager falls for all his toughness. "Klarg will crush you all!" the thing screams, but flecks of blood fly from its lips and there's some froth at the edges--it looks to be on its last legs. The goblin attacking Tex doesn't do so well, though, as the brain damage seems to have slowed it, and its attack misses.
"I'll be back," Tex says to the woozy goblin, watching it swing at air for half a second, and he turns, running, then half-sliding to catch Eberrac. His hands, and the badge hidden under his coat take on a faint glow. "Kindle the Light, pardner," he says as he sets Eberrac's jaw back into place.
As Tex leaves the goblin, Aren will "fire" another of his invisible, silent bullets at it.
Another glob of acid sails through the air.
Grunting as his eyes open and wild look appears, Eberac screams as he pushes himself up only to give a wild cut to the bugbears direction
healed
The goblin gives a swing at Tex as he dives away, but its axe catches only air, and soon after, another "shot" from Aren and an acid orb from Jack combine to bring it down, dropping it to the floor. Tex, for his part, slides to prop Eberac up, his hands glowing with mystic energy that sets the dwarf's jaw back in place and pops open his eyes, filled with new vigor. Eberac puts that new energy to work immediately, screaming and bringing his axe up in a vicious arc. The bugbear, utterly unprepared for a downed opponent to respond in such a manner, merely looks on in horror as the axe splits its throat and jaw wide open, and it jerks once before collapsing heavily to the ground.
The party breathes heavy in the aftermath of the fight, but soon it's clear that the trouble is over, at least for now; no more goblins come running, and the only sounds are some trickles of blood and the roaring water from the northern passage.
"Well," says Tex, giving Eberrac an appreciative thump on the back, "Now that that's over, y'all wanna take a breather?" Grabbing a crate and pushing it up against the garbage chute the party emerged from, Tex sits heavily with his back against it. Pulling the badge from inside his coat, he bows his head and quietly prays for a few moments.
Once he looks back up, he nods to the others. "There's vittles around here, I figure. If we keep an eye on the exits, should be enough time to eat up and rest a mo'."
"Sounds good."
Grunting an acceptance to Tex and Aren, Eberac propped with the head of axe bugbears body before moving closer to crates and going through them to find something to use or eat.
Finally setting after a while to rest and eat what he can, Eberac eyed the entrance and cleaning his greataxe. "Ay, someone want to be checking out, what we got here? Just to be checking, we be getting usefull stuff. Maybbe if we kill all gobbies here and after rescuing those two, if they still be alive, we can come back here to get rest of the stuff" and rubbing his cheeks after the long speech which he was not used to
"That's settled. I'll take watch. You three rest up. I'm at the bottom of the barrel of me spells so fer the rest of the cave I won't be real useful. Least I can do is watch while you all rest up. " With that Jack walks to main entrance of the cave and begins erecting a sizeable pile of crates to one side of the entrance.
After some debate, the party decides to set up to rest in this cavern, figuring it to be a defensible location. They pile the corpses near the fissure and set about securing the place, building a simple barricade with a stack to collapse across the entrance. The supplies themselves are mostly long-lasting foodstuffs and basic equipment--rope, tools, consumable material--but there's some food worth eating and a barrel of rainwater along with some tin cups for drinking. Most of note is a symbol stamped on several crates and barrels: the outline of a shield with a blue lion on it. Tex recognizes it as the symbol of the Lionshield Trading Company, a business from back east that deals in all manner of finished goods, from basic gear like this to firearms.
Time passes and the party is able to regain their strength without interruption--it seems the rest of the cave is as yet unaware of their presence here.
"I really don't want to crawl back down the fissure, if we're having a talk about what to do."
Getting slowly up and warming his muscles as he slowly moves toward the entrance and stuff piled in front of it "Well, me be not the fancier stuff so I might as well blow everything out of mah way as we keep going. Might as well take a look if we can find missing people here and give a whacking to gobbies." Eberac speaks out as he peeks at the other side of entrace and starts to clean a small passageway for the party
Pausing for a moment to think "You dont happen to have some of that... magic still left? What if you disguised as one of those dead gobbies here and went again front of us, to distract others as we be coming from behind and striking hard before they be having any idea what happened?"
"Welp. Sounds like we best move on a bit. See what kinda trouble we can find. "
"Reckon me and you take point, big guy," says Tex, clapping Eberrac on the shoulder. Moving toward the exit, he stops short, giving a mild kick to one of the shield-emblemed crates in the room. "Lionshield Trading, idnit?" He says. "Looks like our boss ain't the only folks the gobs have been thievin' from."
After their rest and some debate, the party decides to attempt a further foray into the cavern complex, and with the dwarves in the lead they begin moving up the passage from their rest area. The cave that comes into view ahead is half-filled with two pools of water, fed from a narrow waterfall that cascades down from high in the eastern wall. The pools themselves are dammed with low fieldstone walls, which overflow slightly into a stream that runs off to the west, probably the same one that exits the mouth of the cave opening. Besides the passage the posse's taken, and the passage the stream runs down, there's one more exit from the chamber, set in the northwestern corner--apparently a set of rough-hewn stairs.
Currently in the room are three goblins, lounging against and by the walls of the pools. Each has a weapon on its belt or near at hand, but none seem particularly alert at the moment, and one even looks to be dozing against the wall. As of now, they haven't spotted the party--it seems that despite the length of the battle in the other chamber, the noise didn't quite reach these sentries, most likely drowned out by the waterfall.
Aren will point his gun at the closest one, say "Bang" and then turn to the group and say Go!
\
"You and me, big guy," Tex says quietly to Eberrac, "We go slow and jump 'em up close, just stay quiet," he says, then winces as Aren audibly says "Bang."
"Well don't that just beat all y' ever stepped in," he says, drawing his pistol, lining up a shot for one in the back and leaving Eberrac a clean line for the closer ones. "Rush 'em, I'll cover you."