Date: 25 October 2011. Present: Zach (Haley), Matthew (Jaren) and Eric (Goblina).
After navigating the previously inundated section of caves and picking up the elf’s tracks again, the party continued on and rested. The following day, they came to a complex system of passages where it seemed the elf and his party had made several wrong turns. A collaborative tracking effort allowed our heroes to avoid making the same mistakes and therefore gain some time on their quarry.
That night, they set a watch and went to sleep … only to wake up to find they had all been seized during the night. They found themselves bound and blindfolded and lying on a cave floor.
Goblina heard footsteps approaching her location. A voice gabbled at her in an unknown language, at first aggressively and then soothingly. Then a spell was cast on her. Goblina’s blindfold was removed and she saw two pale grey-skinned goblins with large black eyes. The elder of the pair then spoke in a deep, gravelly voice. He demanded to know who she was and why she was travelling through their caves.
The older goblin was Briigtangroozh, shaman of the deep cave goblins of Thanthrang Caves. Goblina told him the story of the party’s adventure and the reason for their being there. Briigtangroozh gave his own story – namely that the elf had visited his tribe and cast powerful magic on them that made them unnaturally generous towards him. As a result he made off with several of their magical artefacts and secrets about how to find a balruga, a creature sacred to the deep cave goblins. Afterwards, the goblins sent their best people to track the elf, and others to contact the other villages to gather support for a revenge attack.
With a phenomenal intellectual effort, Goblina learnt enough of the deep cave goblins’ tongue to be able to continue communicating when Briigtangroozh’s spell wore off. Later, once the party had been freed and reunited with their possessions and animals, the chief of the Thanthrang goblins explained to Goblina in private that it seemed that the elf was heading to a cavern of lava where the balruga – named Megdondarakh by the deep cave goblins – rested in its decades long period of inactivity. The entrance to this cavern was concealed by magical means, but it could be entered by reciting ‘Megdondarakh’ six times in front of the right stone in the Passage of the Kissing Snakes.
The goblins assigned a youngster called Grushblig to accompany the party as they continued on their way. They also gave them some items to help. Some Anima vessels that had properties that made them easy to use, and some small pots of cave spider egg paste that granted temporary dark vision when rubbed around the eyes. They also held a Feeding of the Multitude ceremony to see the party on its way. A veritable swarm of invertebrates were summoned with Nature Magic, and a host of juvenile cave spiders (about a foot in leg span) descended to eat of this insectile bounty.
The party left Zirg, Malack and Dolo behind with the goblins, as Zirg wanted to learn more about their culture, Dolo was still nursing a healing critical wound and Malack probably had his eye on some goblin maiden.
At the end of that day’s travel, while pushing on to make up more time in the evening, Haley heard chittering sounds from up ahead. According to Grushblig and Randak, these sounds were being made by cave spiders. Goblina constructed an illusion of fire to surround the party as they advanced and to scare away the cave spiders. Unfortunately, her casting check didn’t quite beat the difficulty of the spell and it came into being half-formed, with half the effect.
The party advance, only half of them surrounded by a less realistic fire illusion than intended. They saw the cave spiders and realised that they weren’t natural creatures, but Vilstrithiani-mutated monsters created by the mysterious elf. These spiders had the appearance of arachnoid deep cave goblins. They had eight legs, but each leg ended with a cave goblin hand, and the spider was topped with the twisted upper body of a deep cave goblin.
It seemed at first that the goblin-spiders were scared away by the illusory fire, but one of them saw through the illusion and called its comrades back. A fight looked inevitable.
Jaren and Haley got 3 XP, while Goblina got 4.
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