”Actually, Noelan ... can you fervor? We can’t keep running.” Grenwold whispers to Noelan and delays.
Father Noelan casts blessing of fervor then the hobgoblins in retaliation hurl a volley of javelins at him, hitting Nigel along the way.
Nigel manages to dodge the volley of javelins but Father Noelan gets skewered quite badly.
Robert casts Entangle on the ground beneath the Hobgoblins.
Grenwold activates Fenton’s fire focus, casts a spell, and five flaming wings emerge from his flanks. He snuffs once, his ears twitching, and barrels towards the hobgoblins like a fireball.
Swift (Grenwold) - Fire focus on Fenton
Standard (Grenwold) - Cast Shield of Wings
Free (Grenwold) - Drop glaive
Move (Grenwold) - draw morningstar
Full-Round (Fenton) - Charge
Fenton barrels into the mass off hobgoblins, impaling several with his horns.
The beasts in the hobgoblin troops give a blood curdling howl as they move to engage Grenwold and Fenton.
Everyone except for Nigel and Cavall feel like running for the hills.
Fenton and Grenwold are not distracted but nonetheless get slashed and bitten at by the various beasts and hobgoblins in the troop.
The hobgoblins and their beasts are not entangled by the entangle spell.
Grenwold and Fenton run away.
Father Noelan drops Raincaller as him and Cavall both run away from the hobgoblins and their savage beasts.
"Pila, follow! RUN!"
Hampered by the entanglement, the hobgoblins and their savage beasts do not manage to get in range to volley fire at the party and the party manages to evade the hobgoblins and their savage beasts.
"God,that was the most horrifying bay I've ever heard, I hope never to see them again."Father Noelan says. "And I left Raincaller behind."Father Noelan sighs. "I'll miss her. Now what?"
"We still make our way to Longshadow, avoiding similar patrols, if we can."
Nigel does manage to get the party's dropped bows, but cannot find Grenwold's morningstar.
"The problem is that if that is what we face when the hobgoblins attack Longshadow, what are WE going to do about it?" Father Noela asks.
Grenwold sighs, ”I only have my bow now, too. I hope we don’t get attacked again. Regarding how to beat these things, I do not know if we can. I do not have access to change my spells to resist fear and fire, and we don’t know what we will meet with, so you can’t easily prepare for contingencies. If the Legion has troops like these attacking longshadow, I fear that they could never withstand the assault.”
"I will try to cover the part on resisting fear."Father Noelan replies. "I did use to prepare that, but it never saw use, so I stopped preparing that prayer."
Grenwold uses invisibility to go check the place where they dropped their items and finds that the hobgoblin patrol has moved on. He does not find his morningstar, but sees that the patrol has certainly left a whole lot of tracks behind them.
Nigel manages to find Grenwold's dropped glaive.
”Thanks for bringing back Raincaller – how did you manage it?” Father Noelan asks Nigel.
”Well, we can’t get locked gauntlets at the moment, but at least we should be able to tie our weapons to us so we don’t drop them.” Father Noelan begins to do just that.
Grenwold briefly follows the tracks to see if he can find out what happened to his morningstar, and mutters to himself "I gotta get that back..."
Grenwold follows the tracks for a while and finds they are headed north, but veering off slightly east from Redburrow.
His invisibility runs out and the tracks still head onwards.
Grenwold and Fenton return to the party, "My weapon is gone." Grenwold says flatly.
"Do we have a spare small weapon someplace?" Father Noelan asks Nigel. "Didn't we get a whole bunch of small morningstars off the Spriggans?"
"Good idea," Grenwold approaches Nigel and roots around in the loot sack, with his permission. "Yes, it looks like I can use one of these spare morningstars." He stares at the weapon for a moment, testing the heft, and then sheathes it, after attaching impromptu weapon cords to the weapons. "Let's move on. We do not have time for anything other than Longshadow, if the people are to have a chance of surviving. It was foolish for us to try to do anything else." He stares contemplatively with his glaive on his shoulder, waiting to move on.
Father Noelan channels healing energies to heal the party's wounds.
"So where are we headed to, now? Grenwold votes to go to Longshadow, Nigel, have you made up your mind if you want to go to Redburrow or track down those hobgoblins?" Father Noelan asks the party.
"If we're going after the Hobgoblins, we'll have to use hit-and-run tactics. No more frontal assaults, okay?"
”I could track them down, but Robert is right. We must be better prepared and try to fight more tactically. Do we have any way to deal with their fear aura?”
"I could remove sound within a small area or bolster our resistance to fear but both measures would not be lasting very long." Father Noelan replies.
"It might be enough, we won't have to do much beyond a few seconds of concentrated fire. We can track them down and get spread out, pepper them with as many ranged weapons as we can, hopefully shrug off their fear aura before they can overwhelm us. Does that seem like a good idea?" Grenwold ponders, "I have a few things I can give us as well, teamwork abilities and the like."
”Agreed. So the plan is Robert and I track them down. Father Noelan casts remove fear when we get close-ish, we should have some idea from the tracks. We approach, and he silences everyone as a precaution. Once silenced, we should be less vulnerable, though we won’t be able to spread out as easily. Perhaps Nigel could be the target for the silence, as he has no need for verbal components? Then we hit them with ranged attacks, as many as we can, as often as we can, and hope our ranged attacks are better than theirs. Are there any issues with the plan? Do we have any other buffs we can do, by chance?” Grenwold focuses for a moment and changes his teamwork feat from Outflank to Shake it off, then will cast an extended shared training, targeting Robert and Nigel to give them the teamwork feat, at the same time Remove Fear is cast (less than a half hour away from the hobgoblins if possible).
The party tracks the hobgoblins for about 2 hours, when the ground begins to shake, then 7 bug-like monsters that scuttle about on six legs, drooling noxious green ichor from its clacking mandibles emerge from the ground and ambush the party!
The party recognizes them as ankhegs.
Two of them bite and grab onto Nigel.
The two that attack Cavall have their mandibles slipping off his icy breastplate.
The one trying to bite Robert also does not manage to bite through his breastplate, and the one trying to bite Father Noelan falls hsort.
The ankheg attacking Fenton does not manage to stick its mandibles through Fenton's hide.
Father Noelan takes a step back and tries to kill one of the Ankheg's attacking Nigel, then orders Cavall to attack it as well. One of Father Noelan's arrows bounces off its chitinous exoskeleton but other strikes a chink in the exoskeleton.
Cavall bites the cyan ankheg and pulls it to the ground.
Grenwold grumbles as the ankhegs emerge. He ignites Fenton’s hooves and has him take an attack on the nearby enemies while shifting over to engage the other ankheg.
Free (Grenwold) - activate pack tactics domain power
Free (Grenwold) - drop glaive
Swift (Grenwold) - switch Fenton to flaming focus
Move (Grenwold) - draw morningstar
5-foot step (both) - one square east (if no difficult terrain) if there is DT then he doesn’t (I can’t see under the figure from mobile).
Full-Round (Fenton) - attacks black bordered, entangling on gore attack, switching to unbordered if allowed to 5-foot step and black bordered is dead
Standard (Grenwold) - attack on Black if still up after Fenton’s turn. Attack on unbordered if black is dead and 5-foot step was allowed
Fenton steps to the side and stabs the first ankheg with his horns then finishes it off with a single hoof, then kicks the second Ankheg, wounding it, but Grenwold's morningstar bounces off its chitinous exoskeleton.
Pila 5 ft-steps to get beside Father Noelan. Robert 5 ft-steps to get beside Cavall. +1 Adaptive Comp. Longbow on the Green Ankheg, Point-blank Shot.
Robert sends two arrows stinking into the green Ankheg.
Two of the ankhegs continue to try to tear Nigel apart with their mandibles, with only the Cyan one managing to hold onto him.
The purple and red ankheg try to bite and grab Cavall, but the purple one does not manage to bite through his breasplate and Cavall ducks out of the way of the red one.
The green Ankheg inches closer then tries to bite Robert, but Robert sidesteps.
The unbordered Ankheg tries to bite Fenton, but Fenton dodges out of the way.
Father Noelan fires an arrow into the head of the Cyan Ankheg, killing it instantly, then fires at the yellow Ankheg grabbing Nigel, sending an arrow sticking out of its exoskeleton.
He orders Cavall to attack the purple ankheg.Cavall manages to give it a savage bite to the side but is unable to drag it down.
Robert 5 ft-steps. +1 adaptive comp. longbow, point-blank shot on green Ankheg.
Robert kills the green Ankheg with two shots to its torso.
Gren takes a swing at the nearby ankheg and directs Fenton to take a blow at any of the available targets. "I'm coming Nigel, be there soon!"
Free (Grenwold) - activate pack tactics domain power
Swift (Grenwold) - activate Grenwold fire focus power
Standard (Grenwold) - attack on black bordered
Standard (Fenton) - attacks black bordered or Yellow-bordered if black-bordered drops
Move (Fenton) - move to yellow-bordered/Nigel