First Strike

S IS OFTEN THE CASE, we were sitting around the 1st Elven table in the Elk's Roost enjoying a quiet drink, when a commotion outside attracted our attention. The portal from Xorhun had opened, and it appeared they were in dire need - they were again being attacked by Berghast. Along with many others from the city, we quickly gathered our equipment and passed through the portal, to arrive a little disoriented in the city of Xorhun.

All those gathered were briefed on the situation, and asked to undertake various missions to help or assess the situation further. We volunteered to find & put beyond use a hidden goblin outpost, and bring back a Berghest Shaman dead or alive for questioning. The outpost was thought to be hidden by illusionary magics, somewhere near a tall finger of rock: the closest the mages of Xorhun could send us was about 2 hours' travel north of the place. A Shaman was in charge of the outpost, and had a distinctive scar across his face. We were transported onto a small plateau in the mountains with Xorhun just visible in the far distance. A mountain path led south.

The path we travelled was intermittently crossed with others that had been used recently by booted feet. Anghil's hawk kept an eye on the surrounding countryside, and alerted him to an extremely large bear on the path ahead around a bend. Darwin approached cautiously, and gave it some food while we skirted carefully around it. Some time later, Hawk again warned of a troll ahead. A brittle twig alerted it to our presence and it started to wave a big meat cleaver at us menacingly. Jean-Neve and Vega moved in to engage while Anghil and I raised our bows and started firing.

At that point two more trolls literally burst out of the ground behind Vega and Jean-Neve: as they moved to compensate for this, the first troll charged Vega and bullrushed him over the side of the cliff, leaving him hanging there by his fingertips. This proved even more unfortunate for the troll though, as Jean-Neve was able to catch her off-balance and tip her completely over the cliff, leaving space in the melee for Eldaryth to fireball the other two. Despite this they managed to flank Darwin and rend him badly. We regrouped and redoubled our attack, Vega re-entering the fray with a backflip up and over the cliffside, and it wasn't long before they were all down and over the cliff. From the scattered pieces of armour around it looked like they'd probably been ambushing and eating goblins.

We continued to a fork in the path: both had been used recently, so we arbitrarily followed the more southern path. About half an hour later we could see the other one below ours in the valley, with 8 heavily armoured figures on it, heading the same way as us. The paths were steadily converging, and we were slowly catching them up. It became apparent that they were following a patrol pattern, as they left and rejoined the main path periodically.

Anghil & Darwin scouted a little ahead, and warned us that a different patrol was heading our way. We quickly went to ground, but a patch of Eldaryth's backside was somehow still visible and they attacked. Two of the patrol appeared to be Shamans, using magics to dazzle and stun us temporarily, but we soon rallied. Eldaryth sent one of the Shamans into crippling fits of laughter, Anghil assumed Bronze Dragon form and attacked along with the rest of us (Darwin had remained ahead to keep an eye on the original patrol.) The laughing Shaman didn't get any respite as Eldaryth then commanded him to undress himself. Anghil andJean-Neve were held, but we won the fight. After some attention to our wounds we caught up with Darwin, who said that 'his' patrol had apparently walked in the air across to the finger of rock, then disappeared through its side.

AREFULLY MOVINGto the base of the valley, we found a lever in the rock, which when pulled revealed a wide tunnel with 2 open portcullise. At it's end there was a staircase going up a long way, and at the top of that was another room with arrowslits in the rock and a lowered portcullis that seemed to have nothing but a sheer drop & a waterfall beyond. However, we did notice two red lines on the floor in front of it, about 4' apart, and Eldaryth explained he could see that these marked the width of an invisible rope bridge spanning the chasm in front of the waterfall, to the finger of rock.

We went across carefully to a landing platform on the other side, with more murder holes and magically-crafted Bronzewood doors. There were noisy goblins on the other side! On the count of 3 we slammed the door open to reveal a semi-circular room and some surprised goblins playing cards. We took them out very quickly, but they'd managed to shout an alarm, so two more (briefly) appeared from another room before retreating & barring that door. Some major door-battering later, we entered another room with curving walls and a staircase going up and down. Another room was visible beyond with lots more goblins in - so Anghil webbed it to prevent them wasting our time any further.

Vega led the way up the staircase, into another semicircular room with some more goblins and 2 Shamans in. Darwin, Jean-Neve, Vega and myself were hit with a blast of painful sound as we ran in to attack, and Vega got held. The tables turned again as Anghil webbed an entire side of the room & Eldaryth revealed one of the Shamans that had gone invisible. As the fight continued, we noticed a previously hidden door opening, and a large white winter wolf emerging: Anghil quickly forced the door back, but it came through again and plunged into the attack. Things were now in the balance for us, as Jean-Neve too had been held, the web had been dispelled, and there were simply too many of the enemy for us to be able to counter them effectively. Eldaryth got himself a tame goblin who went off to kill his boss, but as it wandered into the other room, a big goblin with a scarred face stepped through another door and started casting spells against us.

We'd all been trying to reposition ourselves defensively, but now Anghil shouted for us all to get against the room's flat wall. When we were in position, he placed a Wall of Fire in front of us, trapping all except Scarface and the wolf. This gave us a chance to maneouvre ourselves so that we could get to Eldaryth and Darwin for some healing then rejoin the fight, which was now in a 5' space along the wall. Suddenly the fire disappeared, but Anghil soon penned the other goblins in again with fire. The fight carried on as before: Eldaryth, Darwin & I all got temporarily taken down, but we were able to cover each other and administer potions or spells as needed between us. Unfortunately the goblins weren't as scared of the fire as they should have been, and they appeared through it. In the confusion it wasn't possible to be too discriminating about how we were hitting, and Scarface was killed with a mighty blow from Vega. The remaining goblins weren't far behind.

After a short respite to tend to our wounds we searched the other rooms on that floor: they were an office and bedroom with nothing of note other than some distasteful tapestries of strange creatures killing dwarves, elves & goblins.

Now that we could take stock, we also noticed a smell of rotting meat coming from upstairs. Apprehensively we made our way up. Darwin in front stopped short when he could see a Wyvern at the open top - unfortunately the Wyvern had smelled him, but spiral staircases are kind-of useful in that situation! We knew there was a chance this thing was going to attack us as we left, so we chucked as many dead goblins as we could up there in the hope that it would gorge itself and go to sleep. We then investigated the lower portion of the stairway, but were prevented from going too far by a magical barrier.

We started making our way back out, towing the dead Shaman behind us with the aid of a Levitate spell. Having jammed the portcullises behind us, Jean-Neve and Vega started across the bridge. As feared, the wyvern flew in, but it fell under a rain of mundane and magical missile fire from the other 4 of us. There was the sound of a horn in the far distance - had we been spotted? We severed the bridge at both ends behind us as the sound of horns came closer, and made our way down the stairs as fast as we could and back into the open. Anghil and Darwin laid false trails behind us as we travelled, but it was obvious that there were many goblins out looking for us, and at one point we saw the dark winged shape of another wyvern fly across the sun above us. It was time to make a speedy exit - Anghil made us all Levitate, then cast a spell to make him move faster, and towed us all the way back to Xorhun, surprising the city guard as we flew in with outstretched arms, singing...

1374DR   (Sarbreenar Lives 2002)

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