Session 87 - Peppered by Arrows
30th August 2024
In-game timeline: Start of session: 1490DR Tarsakh 18. End of session: 1490DR Tarsakh 19
Before heading away from Neverwinter, our intrepid adventurers decide to spend some time in the library.
Derrick's previous lack of success talking to any librarians, and his inability to hide his frustration at the slow pace of library attendants did not stop him heading to the large library in the Merchant's Quarter of Neverwinter. Him being accompanied by Jaxii did not fill Iwee or Karoshi with confidence, so they headed to the Temple of Moradin to see if the clerics there knew anything. They were all looking for information on The Five and the Cyan Revolution, especially where it related to Abbey Isle.
Surprisingly, they all did a good job of finding out information and they gathered at the end of the day to combine their collective new-found knowledge about the history of the Cyan Revolution.
Having spent a few days in the city, they eventually decide that Neverember has had enough of a head start and so they head out towards Helms Hold to try to get more information about his whereabouts from "Lord" Graysing. Jaxii suddenly wakes up when it comes to choosing a mount for the journey, and they eventually settle on "Gobby" - the best of a poor bunch of pack horses for hire.
The roads around Neverwinter are more treacherous since the city Watch had been decimated by Neverember. The adventurers are on their guard. So when an unknown dog approaches, they look around for an ambush, worried. None came, so they petted the dog and talked to it for a while. It wandered off occasionally, which worried the group, but nothing came of it.
After some hours' walking through an obviously ambush-friendly gorge, the party encountered a "knight" sitting on a rock in full plate mail. When he asked for a 300gp tariff, Iwee was keen to just pay it and move on. Derrick and Jaxii had other ideas, and challenged the knight.
The "Knight" turned out to be three goblins in a single set of plate mail. This would be enough to scare many a caravan into paying up, but Jaxii just strolled up and sliced through two of the goblins cleanly, leaving one fighting goblin trying to poke Jaxii with a longsword from a knee joint and two dead goblins above him!
After such a promising start, the group were dismayed to realise this group of bandits were more than three goblins in a single set of plate mail. As hidden sniper goblins took pot-shots at Jaxii from behind rocks and from the hillsides above, the barbarian stood in the centre of the path, raging, and getting peppered with arrows.
Their advance and retreat was made more difficult when jogs were released from above, blocking the path in both directions. To make matters worse, in addition to the sniping goblins, there were "flying" goblins who seemed to be launched across the top of the gorge and threw jars of angry bees at the party. The jars smash and the bees attack the party, proving annoying and distracting. Iwee, Karoshi and Gobby all get two swarms of bees on them. Iwee lights a torch and keeps her swarms at bay, but Gobby panics and bolts - the bees stinging the poor horse as he tries to escape. Karoshi just ignores the bees and he and Derrick set about trying to clear a path through the logs, though not before Derrick has a genius idea of using his alchemists fire and a catapult spell to cover two of the sniping goblins in burning oil, taking them out of the fight. Jaxii meanwhile stands and rages, pulling arrows from her body that are quickly replaced with new ones.
As the single goblin in plate mail tries to escape by clambering over the logs, the party realise that these goblins may be slightly more troublesome than they originally expected…
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