Session 13 Report

General Summary

Sergeant Sinn pushes for them all to leave quick. They quickly search the bodies and stealthily move their way away from the area they fought, aiming to take refuge in the nearby bank of the town. They reach near the bank when they see it being guarded by goblinoids. Katerina casts a spell to understand any language and hears the goblinoids talking about fighting going on in the town and squads being on high alert and searching for the enemies. The party talks amongst themselves about what to do next when an arrow hits the nearby wall. They notice a goblin having seen where they were. Katerina gets an idea and walks out of the building with no weapons or armour and acts like an innocent bystander. The goblin takes the bluff and calls a hobgoblin sergeant over, who speaks to Katerina in the human language, asking her questions about what happened in the town and where anyone else is. She lies and says she was caught in the town when it started burning and she's trying to find her elven merchant parents. The hobgoblin says that her parents might be in the bank and invites her inside. She denies and says she just wants to go. He brings a few elves out of the bank and asks if they're her parents. She speaks to them in the elven language and asks them about how they're being treated and saying she needs to go to the northeast over the bridge. They tell her they've been given food and water and treated well, then they tell the hobgoblin in the human language that her parents escaped northeast while the town was burning. The hobgoblins let her pass to the northeast out of town. During this, the rest of the squad snuck out of the building and made their way around the bank area. They met back up with Katerina and headed northeast out of town.   Goodman, Sergeant Sinn, Gorgol, Ciquk, and Centurion scouted up ahead the mountain path. As they made they're way up close to the bridge, Goodman sends Ciquk and Gorgol across the river before Centurion notices movement inside of the rocks. He points it out to the others as they all see the same holes in the rock structure they remember seeing before, and movement through the holes. Goodman quickly walks back up to the river and calls out for Ciquk and Gorgol, who appear on the other side of the river. He yells across at them to go back to the camp, to which they jump back in the river and do so. Goodman turns to the rest of them and suggests leaving as well. Sergeant Sinn agrees and the three of them quickly make their way down the mountain pass back to the camp. They meet up with everyone and start to discuss how best to get past the bridge, where Goodman suggests hiding the dwarves on their backs under ponchos. Katerina grabs Centurion's disguise kit after quickly questioning why he would have one, and she disguises the poncho-covered dwarves on their backs to look exactly like giant backpacks. They tell Ciquk, Gorgol, and the rest of the undine to swim up the river and meet them past the bridge, then they walked up the mountain pass together. As they made their way to the bridge, they noticed the same movement in the rocks following them. They reached the bridge with no troubles and began to debate on whether it was trapped. After a few bickering minutes, Goodman starts walking across the bridge alone. Once he reaches the other side safely, the party and the soldiers (all carrying the dwarves) crossed together, with the exception of Centurion who held back in case. After they reached the other side, he then went across. As he made it halfway across, a squad of goblinoid soldiers came walking down the mountain pass and saw them all. Centurion proceeded to walk casually and gave a nod to the passing goblinoids, to which the hobgoblin nodded back. The party met at the other side of the bridge and regrouped around a hill with the undine, where they then took the dwarves off of their backs and began marching on to find the northern secret entrance to the stronghold.   The squad made it to where Khigad says the door should be. They start questioning how sure of the location that Khigad is and he tells them that he was told once that it was in this region, to which they relent on how little information they have to go off of. Khurom, another dwarf with them, speaks up about how he came through this door a few times with a squad of dwarves. With his help, they look around and eventually find the door in the area. They approach it and ask him how to open the door, to which he admits he doesn't know. After several minutes of toying with they door, Kazrik and Khigad find what looks like a dwarven keyhole, to which no one has a key. Centurion uses his magic to unlock the door and open it. After which, the squad walks through and door and everything is entirely dark. Katerina finds a lever on the wall and pulls on it. Distance noises start sounding off and the group prepares to run away. Next thing they see, molten materials start pouring from the ceiling into troughs on either side of them and flows down to light up an endlessly long hall in front of them. Katerina, Khurom, and 2 other dwarves stay at the entrance trying to figure out how to close the door while the rest of the group proceeds down the hall. After several minutes of walking, they hear voices and draw their weapons. Kazrik makes them out as dwarven voices, and they immediately begin calling out for them. The dwarves hear and one comes out to talk to them. They reveal they've been living down here for the past several years after the goblinoids took over the stronghold and have been putting up resistance to the goblinoids ever since. Kazrik tells them to lay low and that an army of men, dwarves, and undine are coming to take back their home. The dwarf hands them a key to the hidden door and they part ways. The group makes their way back to the door and tell the others what they found. They close the door with the key and leave the area.   As the sun starts to set, they find a small wooded area nestled between some hills and set up their camp next to it. They decide to take turns keeping watch throughout the night. Halfway through the night, as Centurion is keeping watch, he randomly gets hit in the chest by a deadly dagger that almost kills him. He screams out and immediately uses magic to make himself invisible. The others all rush out of their tents with weapons in hands and see three hobgoblins assassins rush up. One immediately throws a dagger in the throat of an undine, then charges and kills another two. Another one rushes at Sergeant Sinn who fights him off long enough for others to come up and help. The last one rushes at Goodman, who also fights him off long enough for the others to come over and help, where he kills one dwarf and critically wounds Khurom. Kazrik then rushes up and kills the assassin that struck down the dwarves, then proceeds to do his best to try healing Khurom. The assassin fighting Sergeant Sinn breaks off and yells to the other hobgoblin, then they begin to take off. The one killing the undine easily runs away while the one fighting Sergeant Sinn pushes through the other soldiers and begins running, only to have Centurion drop out of his invisibility and fire into his back to kill him. The squad starts recovering from the attack and healing each other.