Perception on the notes
Wren quietly moves into the room and starts looking at the deceased man’s notes for anything of import. She couldn’t figure out anything. ”We aren’t going to be hlowing up stumps, we are going to be hiding in them!”. She hands them to the next person in line and goes to look for anything else interesting in the shop.
She next moves to the work table to look around.
Perception on table
She was too distracted by all the neat little vials tonpay much attention to anything else on the table. ”Any of you good at making alchemist stuff? That’d be a neat hobby. Drink something and you turn invisible! Or throw something and it blows right up! That’d be cool all right,” her voice trails off.
Selde locates the hiddens the hidden compartment in the worktable and extracts two folded pieces of parchment that detect as magical before handing them over to her brother.
She moves the rug aside and reveals the cell trap door, cautioning Caspan to open it. Weapons drawn, the party opens the door to the cellar below to find two more tearful townsfolk. Excited to be rescued, an eight year old girl climbs up and then gives Caspan a big hug, holding on for longer than necessary. "Thanks mister! You saved us!"
A woman climbs the up next, also tearful. She embraces Selde and then offers her a backpack stuffed with provisions thanks. "Take these, they are yours! We stuffed all of them in there while we were down in the cellar. We are in your debt! Thank you! I thought for sure we had no chance when we heard Oreld scream. Where is he? Is he ok? When the trouble started he brought us in here to protect us."
Selde is visibly uncomfortable as she is embraced by the woman. She stutters a few attempted replies before taking the bag and stepping behind Thael.
Wren tries to usher the woman and child outside. ”Don’t look over that way. We’ve got to get out of here. Oreld was very brave, you know...” the halfling keeps chattering, trying to escort the two outside, before handing them off to the other survivors.
She returns to the main group of warriors that had fought beside her. ”I’m sure we all want to go back for personal items, but I just don’t think we have time. These people have to be gotten out of here and it looks like that’s going to be tough...,the hobgoblins don’t appear to have slowed down any. I vote we head for the forest and if we can figure a way to take the bridge down, all the better. It’ll be tough to rebuild, but better than allowing them to follow us and you all know the rest,” she added, not sure the feelings of the group. ”I’m Wren, by the way!”
Caspan, who also looks uncomfortable at the girl's hug, doesn't bother to look at the notes, figuring that's more for someone like the wizard, Thale or whatever he said his name was, than someone like him.
"Yeah, we need to get out of here. If there's nowhere else important to go, it's time to get," he agrees.
"That dwarf said she was building the bridge. Maybe she can tell us how to bring it down?"
Nodding along with Wren's suggestion she notes "I agree, we should get everyone to safety and then figure out our next course of action from there."
Looking about she adds "Grab what is useful and let's be on our way."
Emil slumps against the wall as the last foe falls. He is not sure how much more mayhem and death he can cope with. He helps gather equipment, welcomes the survivors from the cellar and assures them he will do everything he can to keep them safe.
He makes sure he has the healing kit and one of the alchemist's fire flasks, but otherwise encourages others to take what they think they can use.
Looking at the notes on the stump removal, he wonders, "Something that can remove a stump might be helpful at removing key parts of the bridge."
He takes the instructions out and shows them to Kinning. "Can you make sense of this?"
If she cannot, he opens the question to the survivors, "Is anyone familiar with alchemy?"
Emil is very nervous they have tarried too long and may be noticed and chased by the hobgoblins before they can destroy the bridge and flee into the relative safety of the forest.
Showing the information to Kining gets a soured response, "Whit is thes nonsense? It looks like pish ta me!"
Either the gathered group of survivors do not appear to be the type to understand alchemical theories and instructions or they are too out of their mind to notice.
Led by Jillian's and Selde's darkvision, as well as that scattered among a few of their followers, the refugees head out of the Fine Shop and head northeast, away from the town proper and into the fields surrounding the village. In the dark, the going is not swift, but most of these people know the terrain fairly well. In just a couple of minutes you have reached the steep, if not terribly tall, cliffs that channel the rushing Marideth through this part of the Nesmian Plains. The Marideth is about 80-85 feet wide here, and the Phaendar Canyon cliffs are about 20 feet high over the churning waters.
Once you reach the river, it is a simple matter to turn back toward the southwest and follow the cliff edge to the Bridge, which the group reaches in just a minute or two more. Colorful gobs of lichen and moss dapple the ancient, basalt bridge, built here at the Marideth’s narrowest crossing centuries ago by Chelish engineers. The ravine below drops twenty feet into raging whitewater and jagged, exposed boulders. To the northwest stands a ramshackle shed and a weathered but sturdy-looking wooden crane. Twentysome bloody and motionless bodies litter the ground, and above them flap banners painted with an ominous, fanged red shield. To the north, three hundred feet past the bridge, a wall of trees and ferns marks the edge of the Fangwood. Tall torches in iron sconces line the bridge on both sides, their flames flickering and whipping around in the continual breeze blowing up from the angry river below.
Despite what you might have expected, there is only one hobgoblin visible, a woman wearing a breastplate and cradling a light crossbow in the crook of one arm while she continually moves her gaze over the bridge and the landings on each side. A massive wolf sits calmly but alertly by her side. Your group has stopped outside the lights of the bridge's torches and beyond the range of the sentinel hob's darkvision and are thus, for the moment, undetected.
"So how do we take that thing down?" Caspan asks, looking to the dwarf in the nighttime gloom to see if she could help.
"Me and the girls can probably take out those two dogs on it," he jabs at the hobgoblin and wolf.
Thael pours over the documents and items from the workshop and quickly uncovers all of their secretz! Using the information found about the stump remover, he spends about a minute combining ingredients until he believes he has done what was described. He believes that you could use this to "set" it as a timed explosive. Once it is lit , it should take about explode in about 30 seconds .
Thael also discovers the parchment contains a dose of dust of illusion and a dose of dust of tracelessness.
"Well, that'll do it then," Caspan says. "We get rid of the guard and her dog, set the timer and run for the woods!"
Caspan scratches his head, looking over the scene in front of him.
Jillian quirks a brow at Caspan's suggestion "I am by no means an expert but if we just set this on the bridge will it be effective in actually destroying it?"
She looks around at the surrounding area to get an idea of additional threats that may notice a fight or activity at the bridge.
”Do any of you know anything about bridges? Are there weak points or something that the stump remover could be more effective? I’ve never really considered all the interesting features about this bridge,” she mentions thoughtfully.
Unfortunately Jillian can't really make out much in the shadows of the night. The only other objects that stand out to her other than the bridge are the crane and the shed.
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Thael, exhausted from the day's exertions, just wants to rest. But that will have to wait.
"With only one sentry, I suspect this will not be overly difficult given all we have encountered today," the wizard muses. "Once we have dealt with this guard, we can set the charge to destroy the bridge. Though this bridge looks sturdy, I believe placing the charge on that center truss might do the trick."
Whispering, Emil offers a plan to deal with the sentry. "I can channel positive energy to charm an animal, such as that wolf, but I need to get closer. What if I use that dust of illusion to disguise myself as a hobgob and we attach that slave chain collar around Caspan here. I lead him toward the hobgoblin, who will likely not become alarmed. When we get close enough, I try to charm the wolf while pretending to just be curious about it. Caspan can appear to slip his bonds and attack the hobgoblin. Those with bows and wands can step out of the bushes and try to hit her with arrows and those thorn missile thingies. I can join the fight next and if the charm is successful, I can send the wolf away or at least get it to not attack us. Assuming the attack works, I can remain on sentry duty and we can get across, set the explosives, and be on the other side when it explodes. We can also use that other dust to cover our tracks."
"You're not putting some damn stinking chain around my neck!" Caspan objects, face growing red. "Lock someone else up if you want to, but I'm not spending any more time in irons!"
His fist clenches and it looks like he's on the verge of punching the old priest.
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As the priest and the weaponless man exchanged words, Thael was reminded of the fact that though he had spent half a day with these people, he did not know them very well.
Aside from my sister and Father Emil, these new compatriots are complete strangers to me...
Hoping to ameliorate the situation, Thael speaks up.
"It is a sound plan," he says to Emil. "Perhaps someone else would put the chain on...loosely secured, of course."
He turns to the aasimar woman.
"This is probably as well as we are going to do for a plan. Perhaps you might play the role of prisoner?"
Jillian shakes her head "While I have no issue acting the part, I think I would be more useful with my blade in hand. I'm not as well versed in hand to hand combat."
Looking to Caspan she puts a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to ease the tension. "It is just a ruse. You seem the most capable in close unarmed combat so it makes the most sense for you to go. However, if that isn't an option I can go. I'm just not sure how effective I will be."
Wren looks away from the group as the mood turned uncomfortable between them for the first time. ”I think the Father has a good idea whichever one of you volunteers to play the victim. And we need to decide quickly. The hobgoblins are going to notice a group of 25 of us sneaking away, if we don’t vanish quick. So we need to decide,” the halfling hissed quietly.
Caspan hesitates, looking back and forth. Finally, Jillian's words sway him.
He nods, clearly very grudgingly.
"All right. But don't no one go cotton-plating any ideas," he warns. "Don't think I won't beat anyone who even thinks about it twice to death."
He furiously works his jaw, as if he's ready to bite someone, or perhaps holding in any other words.
"The collar is a symbol that will cause the hobgoblin to let down her guard. We need to get close with the element of surprise. Let your emotional reaction to being a prisoner power your eventual attack. Think how it will feel to get revenge on one who would claim she can own a person. You won't be bound. Just put your hands behind your back and she will assume you are. She won't know what hit her. Everyone else, get as close to the bridge as possible and watch us for your cue to attack."
Emil gets out the dust and gets ready to sprinkle it on himself. "As I understand it, I just sprinkle this on myself while imagining what I want others to see." He pauses and glances at Caspan and winks. "As much as you may hate the idea of being a prisoner, it is nothin' compared to how I'm gonna feel having to look like a hoggob for a few hours. Ech!"
Emil sprinkles the dust on is head and shoulders while concentrating and his form changes into a male hobgoblin of about average height. His scythe appears as a greataxe and his holy symbol appears as the unholy symbol of Lemashtu.
"I will try to charm the wolf once I get close," Emil rasps out in an attempt to sound like the hobgoblins he heard earlier. "Be ready to attack when I do. How do I sound?"
With the disguise and facade in place, Father Hobgoblin Emil and his pet human brawler make their approach. When they have closed half of the distance, the sentry takes note of their approach she raises her crossbow at them. She calls out, "Stop. Who goes there?"
Seeing it is a hobgoblin and chain, she barks out orders as she lowers her weapon and points back the way you came. "What are you doing out here? I've secured the bridge per Scabvistin's orders, get back to your assigned area."
Though she holds a light crossbow in her hand, she has a dark colored scimitar readied at her hip if she were to need it. Unlike other hobgoblins you've encountered, she is heavily armored with a fancy looking breastplate and buckler. In the back of your end you realize that this is probably a the most senior officer that you've come across yet.
As you pass by the shed, you take note both doors are open and the chains which locked it previously are smashed on the ground outside. Multiple sounds of snoring can be heard from within the building.
Agitation is evident in her voice. Something is clearly bothering her and has her all spun up and frustrated.
Selde sits on top of Nur, bow in hand and arrow notched. "I hope this plan works."She whispered.
"There's someone in there," Caspan mutters as they pass the shed.
As they get close to the bridge guard, he keeps his eye on her, hoping she's not going to be the death of him.
"You got not right!" he growls. "I wasn't discombobulating anyone!"
As Emil and Caspan approach, he snorts as he reflects on what he would have said if someone had told him this morning that by nightfall he would be disguised as a hobgoblin trying to get the jump on an Ironfang officer. As he is challenged, he tries to get in character and gives the chain a jerk, hoping Caspan can keep it together and play along a little longer. His scythe/great ax is resting on his shoulder. As he approaches he keeps himself and Caspan to the left as far as possible to keep the way clear for ranged attacks.
"Thought you'd like to let me check something out. This prisoner claims he knows of a secret compartment in the bridge wall where valuables are stored. Let me check it out and you can have the greater share." Emil points toward the little alcove on the upstream side.
Once they get to within 30 feet, he points at the wolf and says, "Nice wolf!"
He concentrates on the wolf and sends out positive energy toward it, while thinking friendly thoughts. He lets go of the 'leash' as he finishes, his sign to Caspan to attack.
As a standard action, you can use one of your daily uses of channel energy in an attempt to control animals within 30 feet. Animals can attempt a Will save (DC = 10 + half your class level + your Charisma modifier) to negate the effect. Animals that fail their saves fall under your control, obeying your commands to the best of their ability as if under the effects of a charm monster spell with a caster level equal to your class level.
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As Father Emil and Caspan close the gap, the sentry picks up on the brawler's mutterings. She remarks, "Yeah. Worthless good for nothings!"
She seems genuinely interested in whatever this secret compartment is. She walks towards the area where Father Emil is motioning and grunts, "Ok. Show me, quickly."
When the cleric blasts the wolf with positive energy, the wolf tilts its head towards Father Emil and then trots over next to him and nuzzles his right leg.
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Emil speaks in the wolf's language and says, <How about you run to the forest and get us a couple of fat rabbits?>
Then he steps closer and swings his weapon at the surprised hobgoblin.
HP 13/13
AC 17, touch 12, flat-footed 15, CMD 17
Fort +4, Ref +4, Will +0 (+2 resistance bonus to recover from a continuing effect)
Unbreakable Survivor 0/1
Martial Flexibility: 3/4
Effects: +1 morale bonus, Weapon Focus (unarmed)
Caspan's eye is still on the wolf as he throws a punch at the hobgoblin, once again spoiling his aim.
<Rabbits are the best! I was just thinking of a juicy rabbit! I'll go get us fat rabbits!>
The wolf dashes off to the north across the bridge, making off for the Fangwood. The hobgoblin sentry spins and watches the wolf go, confused. She raises her voice and starts to call after it just as Father Emil's scythe finds its way into her back.
She screams loudly in pain and in shock. She spins towards Father Emil and shouts, "I'll have your head for that, fool!"
Caspan tries to add to the attack, but the chain around his neck is way too distracting.
Thael and Jillian hear the sounds of the scream and know that it is time to engage.
Hearing the sounds of battle break out Jillian moves to assist her companions.
With the sounds of combat underway, Jillian and Thael take off at a sprint in the direction of the bridge.
The sentry screams loudly "WAKE UP YOU DAMNED FOOLS!" before turning her attention towards Hobgoblin Emil. She pulls out her fancy scimitar and slices it across his right shoulder . "I'm going to enjoy bringing your head to Scabvistin for this."
As you move past the shed on your north, you hear the sounds of multiple creatures snoring inside.
P=8
As Father Emil attacks, Selde spurred Nur in to a gallop. With her cloak billowing and her bow aimed and drawn, she made a noble figure speeding through the darkness.
Unfortunately this illusion is broken as takes too much care to avoid her allies, sending her arrow sailing harmlessly in to the river.
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Thael's heart continues to race from excitement and the exertions of the day. Though he still holds a wand in his hand that could be used to hurt the sentry, he hears the sound of snoring in the outbuilding.
"There are reinforcements!" he exclaims.
With only two remaining spells for the day, he mentally reviews his limited options, but one of them is excellent.
With a few arcane words and a gesture, the black-clad wizard conjures a layer of grease to cover the floor at the exit of the building. Thanatos, his golden familiar, chitters on his shoulder with excitement.
Hearing the sounds from inside the nearby building and seeing Thael has it in hand, Jillian makes haste to get into the fight to help Emil. She charges forward and attacks the hobgoblin.
HP 13/13
AC 17, touch 12, flat-footed 15, CMD 17
Fort +4, Ref +4, Will +0 (+2 resistance bonus to recover from a continuing effect)
Unbreakable Survivor 0/1
Martial Flexibility: 3/4
Effects: +1 morale bonus, Weapon Focus (unarmed)
Caspan edges around the hobgoblin and with it distracted by the other two finally lands a powerful blow, snapping her head back as his knuckles split.
"Scabby's gonna get your head," he growls back at her.
Wren accepted Selde’s offer to ride on her steed. ”This is quite fun,” she whispers to her new friend as they gallantly charge into battle. She hoped to help finish the hobgoblin before dealing with any others. She pointed her trusty wand of magical thorns and fired it at the bridge guard.
Damage
Emil flinches at his new wound, but the day's events have slightly inured him to such distractions. He focuses on his adversary, content to let him talk smack about gathering heads while he concentrates on his next swing of his scythe.
Caspan's blow is solid and causes the sentry's sight to blink white for a moment. She shakes it off and glares at him only a moment for Father Emil strikes again, inflicting nearly as much damage as his first strike. Wren's missiles explode on the sentry, blasting and scorching her. Gritting her teeth and growling in frustration, she swipes her scimitar towards Emil once more. She returns his strike in kind with another of her own, slashing the blade across his upper body . She takes a step back towards Jillian and away from the brawler.
Jillian charges in, but it's too difficult to get a solid angle with Father Emil and Caspan, her attack falling short.
Thael's shout for reinforcements was timely. Three hobgoblins all come rushing out of the shed rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. The distracted state does not favor them noticing the grease however and all three slip and slide as they fall to the ground over top of each other.
Noticing the complete cluster that they've caused, the sentry unleashes a litany of curses ending with "...you bumbling fools!"
[ooc]R2: Thael, Jillian, Sentry, Reinforcements, Caspan, Wren, Selde, Father Emil
P=26
Wren wants to make sure the sentry is down before dealing with the pile of hobgoblins currently on the ground. The best way to do that was to keep chipping away like hatchet blows trying to fell an oak tree with her thorny wand.
Damage
Wren and Thael's 1-2 combo finally do the trick and send the sentry slumping to the ground, unconscious.
The pile of greasy hobgoblins take note of the sentry falling and cry out, "Kergri, no! We're coming!"
With the sentry down, Selde surveyed the battlefield. Things were going well for now, but the stump clearer would need time and more reinforcements could come at any moment. Selde took a breath "Nothing else to it then." She thought to herself before nocking and arrow and releasing it with her breath.
"Thael, get the bomb ready."
Emil prefers once again to take no chances with foes recovering from their wounds, so he hooks his scythe under the neck of the sentry and jerks up.
"We'll be holding onto our heads for now, I think," Emil deadpans as the goblin head rolls across the bridge.
"One down, three to go!" he exclaims with more vigor as he turns to see how the fight against the Keystone reinforcements is going. Erastil is with us!