"Oh, don't feel sso bad Gilbert, the treasure sounds like fun, but I agree the nasty goblinss firsst." holding the candle thoughtfully, "Anyone mind if I hold onto thiss for now?"
The party continues to follow the old fishing trail through the swamp, leaving the now earless goblin corpses behind. It's slow going, but thanks to Gilbert, Duchess & Caerwyn, they're able to stay on course. Trekking back into the swamp involves crossing over a rickety bridge and slogging through more muck, but it's certainly faster than trying to cross the marshlands themselves.
It isn't long before the party arrives at some sort of settlement.
A filthy village-fort surrounded by a crude wooden palisade sits atop a low hummock of solid ground here. A wooden gate in the north wall of the palisade lies in shambles on the ground. Nearby, a large, algae-filled pool on the northeastern side breaks the palisade and allows a clearer view into the village’s interior, which consists of a collection of ramshackle huts connected by wooden walkways, all built on thick wooden stilts.
The area is eerily quiet...
Gilbert draws his bow as he approaches the gate and nocks an arrow. He points to the house on the right. and whispers, "Let's go there first. I can keep overwatch from there."
Moving carefully, Nestasha takes cover and looks through the gate to see if she can spot anything of interest.
You don't see any goblins in the immediate vicinity...
You don't see any goblins in the vicinity, but looking around the broken gate you do notice a mess of tracks. Some of them are about as large as Yui's, but several more are about as large as your foot... and they're bony.
Caerwyn will duck through the gate and, sticking close to the pallisade, make his way around to the ladder leading up to the nearest building. Once under the cover of the building Caerwyn will take a moment to survey the compound.
Looking down, Nestashe notices several tracks, some likely goblins from their sizes, but there are a few that are human sized, and bony. She points at the prints and looks to her companions, "It lookss like the sskeletonss may have come to take revenge for the goblinss raiding their treasure horde."
"Bah! As much as I like karmic revenge, I was looking forward to something challenging!" he says, nodding at Nestasha. He then follows Caerwyn up the ladder, ready to shoot any goblin or skeleton appearing.
Caerwyn makes a godawful racket as he approaches the ladder.
*SLOP SLOP SQUISH TROMP TROMP*
...
...
...
...
...
...
...nothing happens. A breeze blows through the village, whistling through the broken palisade's timbers.
Nestasha quietly replies, "No, we don't know what might be in there other than the goblinss." Thinking a moment, she continues, "It's be better if we could get in there quietly, but I don't know that we can."
Not unless we wan't to blow everything and everyone up. We dont where there stash of fireworks are or how many they have." Caerwyn shrugs hopelessly "Looks like we do this the old fashioned way and go house to house to root them out."
"Aha! A good old-fashioned hunt. The houses are the forest, and the goblins are the prey!", says Gilbert, excited about the idea. As he says 'prey', his face shifts a bit to a more feral expression, before he moves to the door and nods over to Caerwyn. "Open it."
Caerwyn opens the door to the hut to the northwest...
The interior of the hut is riddled with debris and rocks. It looks like this hut took the brunt of a major attack--though whether the worst of the damage was inflicted by the goblins or the skeletons is unclear.
There doesn't appear to be anything of interest inside the hut, but there is another exit in the southwest corner that leads up to the walkways.
Nestasha follows along once Caerwyn goes inside and no fighting occurs. Once in there, she takes to the shadows and begins to follow along behind him, watching for any goblins or things of interest that he might have overlooked.
Ikoma moves to open the door to the next hut. It appears to serve as a sort of watch post for the goblins.
Three goblins are cowering inside the post--when they see their visitors, they start shrieking & howling in panic!
Yui loads a crossbow bolt but holds off on shooting it. The sight of goblins hiding and panicking does not comply with what she expected.
As Yui rides closer, the goblins pull blades from their belts. Two of them move to attack Ikoma!
The goblins manage to catch Ikoma off his guard and savagely stab him with their dogslicers! The remaining goblin drops his weapon and starts unlimbering a wooden tube from his back!
Caerwyn enters the room, tumbling by the goblin in the doorway, and places himself near the rear door blocking escape.
Gilbert looks at the goblin pulling the wooden tube and draws two arrows from his quiver, shouting, "Go!"
Gilbert nocks an arrow, flying straight into the goblin's chest. The goblin bends in half, luckily just in time for the second arrow to land with a resounding thud in the wall behind him. Duchess tries to scurry in the mess, , but her jaws snap just as the goblin shrieks, jumping to the back.
Gilbert's arrows pin the goblin's corpse to the edge of the watch post. It drops its tube.
Seeing that she can't get in to attack the goblins, Nestasha gets out her crossbow and loads it, ready to use it at the first opportunity.
Yui sends in her shadowy assistants to harras and laugh at the left most goblin. The goblin is so distracted that his attacks are harder to execute.
Ikoma's blade, thanks to Caerwyn serving as a distraction, cuts the goblin down.
The goblin Yui tried to hex appears to not notice the shadowy figures trying to distract it--odds are, it's too stupid to notice them.
It swings its dogslicer in a blind panic at...
...Ikoma again.
And misses entirely.
The sounds of many footsteps can be heard throughout the village. Duchess folds her ears back and growls.
With the sounds of all the footsteps, Nestasha moves closer to the door and and carefully peaks around it to watch for incoming goblins.
Caerwyn swings his sword at the remaining goblin.
Gilbert takes aim at the last goblin, nocking an arrow, and tries to pin him to the wall. ,
He doesn't even see if the attack lands, before moving a step backwards and tries to spot the goblin shouts' location.
No arrows, blades or hooves manage to strike the remaining goblin.
Yui takes exception to the last goblin standing. "Stupid goblin--fall down when you're told!" She drops her staff and pulls her crossbow out before firing at the last one!
The bolt hits the side of the watchtower.
The footfalls have grown louder and louder. With a cry of surprise (and bloodlust), several goblins come flooding out of the village!
"Hej! Jsou to není kost muži!"
"Dlouhán! Masitý Dlouhán!"
"Získat je! Jezte je nahoru! Dejte je do guláše!" They cackle.
"Longshanks! Meaty longshanks!"
"Get them! Eat them up! Put them in a stew!"
The goblin facing Ikoma & Caerwyn swings his dogslicer in a blind panic at...
...the samurai menacing him.
The blind swing nearly slices off a chunk of Ikoma's nose, but he manages to parry the swing in time!
Nestasha sees the goblins come out of a building across the way and run towards her position and decides to take a shot at them. She aims her short bow at the lead goblin and hopes that if she drops him it will slow down those behind him. Then moves to the other side of the entrance.
Nestasha's arrow skims the side of the lead goblin's head, leaving a nasty mark!
Caerwyn swings his blade but can't seem to maneuver the large sword in such a cramped space.
At the sight of the hordes of goblins appearing Yui starts to prepare a spell. Her twin shadows whirl about her and light seems to fade around her immediate area.
Gilbert looks to the east to see lots of goblins screaming and shouting, and begins firing at them, a bestial grin on his face. Turning to Duchess, he shouts, "Duchess. Help Windspirit."
Gilbert's arrow, Ikoma's blade & Windspirit's hooves all ruthlessly cut goblins down with ease.
A group of five goblins swarm out to the front of the village, eye Duchess & Windspirit, then abandon all sense of tactics and move to attack the animals en masse! One goblin manages to reach Duchess, and swings her dogslicer!
The wolfhound sees the attack coming and grabs the dogslicer in her teeth, snarling at the goblin!
Another goblin up on the walkway steps into the gap left by his bisected brethren and stabs at Ikoma!
The samurai easily dodges the clumsy thrust.
One goblin further back on the walkway pulls out a wooden tube and lights one end of it...
...causing a lit projectile to shoot wildly off-target as the goblin struggles to aim it.
Nestasha, seeing the goblins close in on the animals, takes a last shot before moving in closer to engage them. Her arrow is aimed at the rearmost goblin but unfortunately the sight of so many goblins so close to her throws off her aim and she misses entirely. Cursing at her lack of accuracy, Nestasha shifts her short bow to her right hand and twists her left wrist causing one of her kukri to drop into her hand as she jumps down and moves close to Duchess. Having reached her destination she drops her short bow and flicks her right wrist causing a kukri to spring into her right hand.
Caerwyn dives from the tower to the ground below. Tumbling beneath Windspirit he kips up next to the nearest goblin. Sword in hand, he attacks.
Where Nestasha's arrow fails, Caerwyn's blade succeeds--the elven curve blade skewers the goblin through the heart, dropping it dead into the mud.
The samurai's sword
Cuts through the poor goblin's neck,
Leaving it headless.
The movement of Yui's shadows has reached a climax after 5 seconds and a large blob of darkness remains. Yui looks at her best target and decides to throw the shadowy globe at the bunched goblins outside.
The ball lazily flies over the companions heads and comes to burst once it reaches the goblins.
Any standing goblin gets harried by the one eyed shadowy companion and finds it harder to strike at Yui's allies.
-Posted with Wayfinder
All the goblins that are engulfed by Yui's darkness promptly fall asleep, dropping into the mud with several *THUMPS*.