Camil will cross the room, and listen at the door, seeing if he can hear anything on the other side of it.
After listening for a brief moment, he will wave his companions up next to him, to prepare to open the door.
Zandril moves up next to Camil, "Ready when you are."
Camil hears nothing other than the pounding of the rain and the occasional rolling thunder. However, the thunder does seem to be receding.
Camil opens the doors and enters the courtyard, keeping his eyes peeled for any wandering goblins, while listening for anything which might give them a clue as to where they are going.
Camil opens the door and to his surprise he can make out the whole thing, though barely. It is obvious the rain is starting to lighten up.There is indeed a dead goblin in the courtyard, as a matter of fact it looks like there are two. Then he hears a snort of some sort come from the shack in the courtyard.
After an initial bit of concern you realize it was a horse sound.
Runt moves into the courtyard to stand by Camil's side, though she has no idea what the sound might be. She decides that the best tactic would be to summon a primordial goblin dog 30' in front of her. I mean, a goblin dog gone rogue won't cause any alarms to be raised, even if it does look a little bit nastier?! And whatever is out there will become a mouthful.
AC 13, touch 12, flat-footed 11
hp 11
Speed 50 ft.
Melee bite +4/1d8+3 plus allergic reaction
Zandril follows Camil into the courtyard. Seeing the dead goblins he mutters softly under his breath, "This can't be good."
Camil cautiously crosses to the bodies of the goblins, looking down to see what may have caused their demise, hearing the snort he turns toward the sound of the snort, peering toward the shed, his bow half raised...
He'll whisper to the others in a stage whisper, Its a horse, I think we can relax unless its a battle-trained charger who is angry with us...
Content that the horse likely poses no threat to the party, he looks down at the goblins, to see if their cause of death is immediately evident.
Camil will also withdraw a vial of black, sweet smelling liquid, and drink it down, the taste of a distilled coffee bean warming his throat.
Lavanor follows the others into the courtyard. Satisfied with Camil's assessment of the noise, he checks the door in the south wall.
Camil's comments seem inspired by the dead goblins both of which appear to have had their heads caved in by hooves. Lavanor hears nothing on the other side of the south door which is closed by a simple wood lever. Looking inside he finds it is a storage shed. The back wall of the shed is lined with rabbit cages. The animals just cower and look at him. Hanging on the walls in the shed are tack, harness, and various tools.
Camil crosses to where he suspects the horse is, checking on why there is a horse in a goblin fort.
Lavanor, or anyone? you know anything about horses? Can you come take a look at this?
Runt has a love/hate relationship with horses. On the one hand, goblins hate them so they must be a good thing. On the other hand, they hate them for a reason and Runt doesn't want to get kicked. And she is goblin sized!
Runt keeps her distance from the horse as she eyes it warily.
"Perhaps we should look into a safer room?"
"Someone want to take a look in this storage room for anything of interest while I see a man about a horse," he says pointing to the door he walked out of as he moves across the courtyard.
"It looked like there was some equipment in there. Maybe one of the guests here came on the horse. These two probably thought they had an easy quarry for a meal," he says glancing at the dead goblins with a chuckle.
"I know what they are but I don't have a lot of experience with them. Travelling through a forest on a horse is a good way to find yourself on your back with a large lump on your forehead," he says with a smile.
"Don't goblins hate horses?" he nods and says to Lavanor's comments.
Goblins are not friendly toward horses and have even gone so far as to name their polearms horse choppers. As for knowing much about horses all seem to have just general knowledge.
A damn fine looking horse, easy boy, we'll be back for you! Looking at Lavanor, I don't know, leave it here, maybe we can figure out how to rescue him on our way out? Camil grabs a piece of tack for the horse, and offers it.
Camil, seemingly content with the horse in its stall, crosses the courtyard to the next set of doors,
"Careful, he looks hungry. He might take your fingers with the food," Lavanor says with a chuckle. "Hopefully it will still be here when we're ready to leave. Not much we can do with him now. Let's see what's behind this door," he says motioning to the one in the north wall of the courtyard.
He moves over to check it for traps and to see if he can hear anything coming from behind it.
Zandril moves up behind Camil and Lavanor. He nods, ready for whatever might be behind the door.
When Runt sees that the others have the horse well in hand, she ventures out into the courtyard to join the others. She moves to the other door out of the courtyard and listens at it, her new pet at her side.
You hear nothing behind the northern door. Checking it, you find it is a short hall with single door on the right wall at the end. Checking that one you hear nothing again and find it leads to another small hall with a pair of doors, one north, one south.
Runt waits for the leader, Camil, to open the door.
Camil looks at both doors, glancing over his shoulder at the party, Well, a fifty fifty chance is pretty good odds against the house, here goes nothing...
He grasps the lefthand door and quietly pushes it open..
The door opens on yet another small hall this one with two doors on the left side. Checking those, he finds a seldom used storage room behind the first and a staircase leading down behind the second.
Shaking his head, Camil backtracks to the Southern door, and opens it, attempting to clear this level of the fort first.
He shrugs at the rest of the party sheepishly, and makes motions about the stairs going down, and waves them onward...
He finds the southern door is locked though it has the smell of rotting meat wafting from between the cracks. Then everyone hears the sound of goblins yelling.
Camil will turn to the party, raising one finger to his pressed lips, indicating they should be quiet, and then begins to pick the lock open.
Should the lock give way, he'll step aside and motion for the melee experts to open the door upon whatever goblins reside in the room.
They open the door to find a smoked meat closet. Disgustingly, most of the cuts appear to be humanoid. The sound of yelling goblins continues to find its way through the cracked boards. You in fact are able to see through the meat closet wall cracks into a lit chamber where a group of goblins and a giant lizard wait while another goblin runs to the south, presumably toward a door.
"Camil, can you make out what they are yelling about? Maybe they've discovered their dead guards. Do we want to see what's downstairs first, or move to take on the foes we know about? If we take the stairs, we need to strengthen our rear guard so they don't surprise us from behind. I think we should confront the ones up here first and try to draw them to us in a location of our choosing. If we continue forward, we could find ourselves with enemies in front of and behind us," the elf says quietly.
Zandril listens to Lavanor, a quietly responds, "If we go through this door, Camil might just be able to lock the door behind us, slowing down our pursuers."
Ah crap, they know we're here, good news is, they don't know where we are...I suggest we get this started before we're discovered and cornered. I'll lock it behind us surely!Camil looks to the group, and makes room for someone to open the door.
Nods to the human, "yes, they know we are here and have alerted the place." "I can also grease the door, so if they get through they have something to deal with... it'll only last a few minutes, but its something.
I managed to confuse the whole situation by not opening up rooms. The southern door you opened was the smoked meat locker (C22). You can see through the walls into C19. The room with the 'S' in the middle is just a storage room and then there is the stairwell down. The stairwell does not have a lock on it. The meat locker does.
It looks like options are:
1) go back the way you came and seek out additional things on the ground floor.
2) take the steps and hope for the best.
"They split up. Only a few of them headed out of the room, right? And eventually they are going to find us. I say we lay a trap in the room with the horse. We let the horse loose and hide. When they get there they will attack the horse. That's when we jump out and kill them all!"
"I say we take the steps. They might catch up to us eventually, but I'd rather not fight them outside in the rain. Also, if we keep moving, they might get sidetracked and forget they were looking for someone."
Regardless of what the others say, Runt heads back to the stable and lets the horse out and then runs back to join the others, closing the door behind him and leaving the goblin dog in the courtyard with the horse. Not that he'll necessarily get that far before the goblins appear.
"While I would prefer to choose where and when we fight them, we may not have enough time to get into position before they find us. Let's take our chances downstairs. I'll stay at the back of the group," he says, waiting for the others to start down the stairs.
"If we knew they were coming soon, you could put your spell on the stairs, but I wouldn't want it to go to waste and end before they got there. You may want to keep it for now," he says to the tiefling as he passes by.
Nodding to Lavanor and Zandril, Camil proceeds down the stairs, hopefully not being ambushed by any goblins looking for them...
Isabella's head fairly spins at all of the conflicting options and then she finally just follows Camil.
Camil goes down the steps quietly listening for goblins but hears none. At the bottom of the stairs is yet another door. He opens it and finds the room on the other side unoccupied. A large table surrounded by chairs fills much of this room. A slateboard to the north is covered with scribblings in chalk, but the map of Sandpoint that has been carefully inscribed on it leaves no doubt as to the purpose of this room—this is doubtless where the recent raid was planned.
While this all looks important, I would like to keep pressing forward, time's running out on some of the elixirs I drank, and I'd prefer to get use out of them, does anyone object? Camil presses the group to quickly move ahead, rather than investigate the paperwork present in the room. We can always come back for the paperwork on our way out.
For those who are not able to view the map; you have come down the stairs and entered this planning room from a door on the eastern wall. There is another door next to it and one opposite these two doors on the west wall.
Camil moves to the next door in the room, going left, and checking it quickly before opening it.
So Runt was able to release the horse and get back to the group before the goblins showed up?
Note that there are lighted lanterns and or candles in the majority of the room on this level. You will find that the halls are dark other than light that leaks in from rooms or that you bring with you. Camil hears nothing at the door and opens it to reveal a short hallway with a door on the opposite side. He crosses and repeats his actions hearing nothing there either. Opening the door he finds an odd and somewhat disturbing room.
The lower four feet of the walls in this empty room are covered with crude drawings in mud, blood, and paint. Most of the drawings show goblins engaged in some sort of violence against humans, horses, or dogs. One picture on the north wall is at least three times the size and complexity of the other scrawlings. This image shows Thistletop from the side, the goblin stockade perched atop it like a crown. A cave has been drawn into the center of the image, and looming inside is what appears to be an immense, muscular goblin with snake-like eyes and a dogslicer in each taloned hand. If the scale compared to the rest of the drawing is to be believed, this goblin must be at least thirty feet tall.
There is a door on the south wall of the small "art" gallery.