Hit Points: 5/12
Despite the pain across his abdomen, Caerwyn deftly tumbles past Chief Gutwad and comes up behind him, placing the goblin chief between himself and Ikoma.
Striking quickly he sinks his blade in the goblin's unprotected side.
Caerwyn's blade manages to get past the chieftain's guard and slice a wound into his hide!
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Yui moves around through the bedroom until she has a clear line of sight to Gutwad, then begins casting distracting shadows all around him and his firework!
Confounded by the sudden influx of shadows, Gutwad points his firework at Caerwyn, and fires it... he's cackling so loudly it's clear he doesn't care if his own men live or die.
...the firework explodes with a loud
The explosion engulfs the room in fire and light! Caerwyn, being at the centre of the explosion, gets blasted off his feet into unconsciousness. Yui and Ikoma are momentarily blinded by the blast...
Goblins drop like flies from the explosion. Two of them grab at their eyes and flail about, blinded.
And Gutwad?
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! TO BYL ŠPATNÝ NÁPAD!" Is bleeding from his ears. Turns out exploding a firework in your face really IS one of the dumbest things you can do.
Gutwad draws a spear from his throne and stabs wildly at Ikoma...
...and despite the samurai being blinded by the flash, misses him by that much.
Hearing the deafening explosion, and glad she's behind the wall, Nestasha quickly moves into the room, licking her kukri as she does then stabs the blade into the goblin chief.
Gutwad teeters forward enough that Nestasha's kukri falls short of its mark.
For a moment, Ikoma swings blindly, and everything goes still.
"Kurva, to bylo štěstí." Is all he hears before it's followed by a THUMP.
When his vision clears, he is standing over Gutwad's bloodied, burned corpse, his katana shining with goblin blood.
Duchess looks at the goblins pouring out of the warren with the excitement of a puppy playing with mice, trying to bite the goblin currently busy smashing himself in every wall, shouting some gibberish and covering his eyes.
Gilbert looks at the spot being freed, and Ikoma decapitating the goblin chieftain and lets out a tiger-like roar. Leaning in the spot, he draws two arrows and fires them at the two remaining goblins.
The two arrows fly in the direction of the first goblin, jamming into him, sending him darting across the room, right above the one who's legs are being torn by Duchess. The corpse flies and lands just next to the last goblin, in a mysteriously yellow puddle.
Gilbert's eyes, blood-red and widened to the maximum, turn towards the last goblin as he draws another arrow, nostrils dilating with every breath.
Hit points: -2/12
Caerwyn stabilizes.
The last goblin standing, realizing that his chieftain has been slain and his buddies slaughtered, shrieks in terror. "Oh, k čertu s tím! Jsem odsud!"
He turns and bolts from the walkway, landing in the muck and running as fast as his legs can carry him away from the ruined village.
#PartyLoot
The normal goblins each had:
--1 small dogslicer
--1 small suit of leather armour
Gutwad, on the other hand, was carrying:
--a quiver of 5 arrows with designs of goblins slaughtering horses and dogs
--2 vials of clear blue liquid
--1 skyrocket firework
--1 small masterwork chain shirt
--1 small masterwork composite longbow
--6 arrows
--1 small spear
--32 GP
"The sheriff's told me to tell you what you'll earn for this bounty: 10 gold per fresh goblin ear with a 300 gold bonus if you bring back the goblin chieftain's head."
Once the party has taken stock of the situation (and taken goblin ears & heads), it's a simple matter to investigate the rest of the goblin chief's hut. The chieftain's bedroom is somewhat gaudily furnished, by goblin standards--many dog & horse skulls are mounted over a pile of furs that serve as a sort of bedding.
The treasure room Nestasha & Yui passed through contains one chest. Wiping away the mud reveals the beauty of the chest's design--it is made of red, lacquered oak wood with delicate engravings of cranes and frogs playing on a beach together decorating the lid.
"My skirt!" Yui yells loudly, looking down at the burn marks all over her once pretty skirt. She stomps angrily and kicks the goblin chieftain for good measure.
"This chest...it is from Minkai! A province in Tian Xa... What is it doing here?" Yui says with surprise in her voice.
With the fighting done Nestasha begins helping go through the bodies for loot though she leaves the task of taking the ears for the others. The chest draws her attention as well, particularly once Yui speaks about it being from Tian Xia. She begins to examine the chest, checking for traps and whether it's locked.
The chest does not appear to be trapped. Muddy and with a broken lock, certainly, but not trapped.
Inside the chest are the following items, nestled in its velvet-lined interior:
--6 masterwork shurikens, crafted to look like miniature stylized suns;
--329 SP and 112 GP in loose coinage. The silver coins are minted with a tiger's head on one side and a crane on the other, whereas the gold coins have an image of a humanoid female fox with nine tails on one face;
--a long hairpin with a pearl on one end;
--a gold & ivory fan depicting a gecko walking amid cherry blossoms on one side. Upon closer inspection, some sort of crude map has been scribbled on the other side of the fan.
Caerwyn continues to lie on the floor, unconscious.
Caerwyn twitches on the floor.
Upon seeing Caerwyn twitch on the ground, Gilbert fights his instincts to give him a quick death and instead hands the potion to Ikoma. As Caerwyn wakes, he says in a surprisingly quiet tone, "I apologise, my friend. I hadn't noticed that you'd fallen. Shall I mend the rest of your wounds?" giving the survivalist a smile.
"A chest from your place?! What's it doing in a goblin's den?! Stolen? Or something more sinister?!", says Gilbert, obviously surprised by Yui's response. "Shall we take it, and see if someone in town recognises it?"
As she examines some of the loot Nestasha quickly becomes bored with the process and gives up, "We should probably take thiss back to town to examine in more detail."
Getting groggily to his feet Caerwyn tries his best to smile."I would appreciate that, Gilbert." he tells the Hunter. Looking over the fan Caerwyn scratches his head "I spent a good deal of my youth getting into trouble in this swamp but I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. These two marks here are two shipwrecks and over here is a cave I've never seen before."
Gilbert stands next to Caerwyn, guiding his hands over the half-elf's injuries. "This may hurt a little. I forgot my liquor at home!", he exclaims before beginning to mend the bruises, cuts and burns on his body.
"Bah! I'm not as good as Koya, it seems. She'll probably chew me for that! I think I can do some more magic once, but I'd keep it for later. But, ask me again when we're going to sleep!" Gilbert's ability to exclaim the simplest sentences amazes once more, as he stands up and says, "Shipwrecks! And caves! Could it be the one where the goblins fought the skeletons?! I suggest we take a night's rest in here, after I clean up the goblin carcasses, and we set to go there tomorrow!", he says, already beginning to take the goblin corpses and tossing them over the edge, checking for ears beforehand.
"But what would ships from my country do here." Yui says surprised.
As Caerwyn peruses the map, he marks the locations of the shipwrecks and new cave on the party map.
"I want to see the ships. Maybe they are ships from my country..."
Gilbert shoves the last goblin corpse, cutting off the last ear with an experienced motion and says, "Hah! Homesick, are you?", with a friendly tone. "I see no harm in checking out the ships first. After all, there could be ghostly pirates in there! How marvelous would that be!", he says, eyes on the next pray. Realizing he's grabbing the dead body of a goblin, he tosses it over the edge.
He calls over Duchess and begins scratching her belly, the massive hound rolling on her back and whimpering happily. "Who's a good girl! You're a good girl! I'll get you some pig ears when we get back to town!", rubbing the belly enthusiastically.
"If you don't need us at the moment, I'll go and tend to the horses. They'll need some feed and a walk, probably they weren't too excited about the goblins. Hah!", he says, shouldering his bow and trotting happily towards the horses. I think I left my skin of whiskey there as well..., he thinks as he sees the horses.
Nestasha nods agreement, "Yess, that sseems like a good idea to me."
Once the party has had a chance to rest and get their bearings, it's a simple matter to set out into the swamp once more. There are two shipwrecks to choose from on the map--the closest one to the Licktoad village is due west.
The trip to the shipwreck takes half an hour, thanks to Caerwyn's skill at finding paths. As he leads the team through the undergrowth, the moss-covered hulk of a ship comes into view.
The years have not been kind to this ship--it has run aground atop an outcropping of rocks, and vines can be seen criss-crossing what's left of its upper decks. A great crack in the ship's belly leads deeper inside, and its timbers are scorched black. The style of the ship is clearly not one of local design--it appears to be smaller than a merchantman.
Caerwyn approaches the ship and slips inside through the crack in the hull. Once inside he quietly makes his way around.
Yui looks at the ship with her mouth agape.
How could that vessel end up here on dry land...
Taking a closer look, you notice that the prow of the ship has a serpentine, draconic figurehead carved into it. Upon closer inspection, you realize that this ship is, indeed, of Tian origin.
Caerwyn creeps into the crack in the ship's belly, and is greeted with the stench of swamp gas and decay. The hold of the ship is dimly lit by beams of sunlight streaming through the upper hatches leading to the ship's deck. Looking around, he sees that a violent struggle took place here.
Upon closer inspection, he notices several additional details--there are several spots on the ship's interior hull that are blackened and scorched, as if fire of some sort was being thrown around with wild abandon. The corpse of a giant frog slumped against one wall also draws his attention, its mouth burned and its stomach cut open from several jagged wounds. Moving further into the ship, he comes across the corpse of a goblin, this one with most of its skin flayed off and its bones brittle from prolonged exposure to fire.
All around, he notices several sets of footprints. It's clear to him that this goblin (and, presumably, his frog pet) were attacked by other goblins and brutally slaughtered.
It reads Kaijitsu Star.
Caerwyn will make a quick inspection of the wreck before abandoning ship.
"Looks like the goblins got here first. If there was anything of note inside the Licktoads took it with them. There seems to have been some kind of fight inside and quite a lot of fire damage, probably from fireworks. There's also a badly burnt body of a goblin and his or her, hard to tell from the extent of the damage, pet frog inside."
Being in this swamp is beginning to give Nestasha a bad feeling. Thiss is the firsst time I've ever been out of town like thiss. It'ss getting kind of boring sstanding around here, but I guess that'ss what they never tell you about adventuring, hours of boredom speckled with minutes of fear and violence.
"The Kajitsu star... could that be related to Ameiko? " Yui says quietly as she reads the name of the ship.
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"Miss Ameiko having a ship! Ha! We should tell her, at least she could give us a small bonus on what we're getting on the goblins!" says Gilbert, looking around the ship. He eventually gets bored and begins playing catch with Duchess, tossing a piece of debris around.
"So, next step, the scary cave? Or are we investigating more of these ships?", he says as Duchess returns without the stick, licking her freshly healed wounds. "No! Bad dog! Don't lick that!", he shouts, running towards the dog.
Could just be a coincidence. Kajitsu could be just as popular a name in Tian-Xia as Smith is here." Caerwyn says with a tinge of doubt in his voice "Perhaps we should tell her anyway."
Caerwyn studies the map on the back of the fan "If we cut straight across the swamp we could explore the second ship on the way to the cave. It wouldn't be too far out of our way. Although according to this" he shakes the fan for emphasis "we should keep an out for more skeletons."
"Uh" Yui confirms with a nod.
"Let's head for the second ship. I'm curious to see if that one too is from Tian."
The party leaves the wreck of the Kaijitsu Star behind, setting off into the swamp once more.
As the party slogs through the undergrowth, battling mud, brambles and thorns along the way, you all feel a few drops of water fall on your heads. Then another. Then another, and another and another. Looking up, you see that rainclouds have gathered above the swamp. Rain starts pelting down in earnest, making the going slower.
Eventually, following the route on the map, you make it to another clearing, the rain still falling. A sagging one-story shack sits in this clearing, its walls dingy with age and encrusted with lichen and fungus. A partially collapsed shed sits just to the northeast, while small pouches, twisted knots of feathers, and dangling wind chimes made of bones hang from branches and roof edge alike.
Nestasha looks around the clearing and, seeing the disturbing wind chimes, can't help a shudder that goes along her spine. She quietly says, "Isn't thiss place creepy?"