Recovering from this new goblin attack the party discusses the new developments.
The objective of the expedition to Thundertree was to search for information about the place Grunden was taken to.
With the rough location of the goblin’s castle, the party easily decides to head to it instead.
Changing from heading east to walking to the northwest, they enter Greywood forest, following Dwolf’s steps as he searches for signs of goblin tracks.
It doesn’t take the dwarven ranger long to find signs of passage and they make good time through the green even though, as they move, the trees begin to press on them as the forest becomes more dense.
Nightfall eventually comes, so the party sets up camp with Dwolf’s guidance.
The dwarf prepares a makeshift camp and sets up an alarm around the area.
Brannus takes first watch, which goes by quietly and uneventful.
Sigmar takes second watch and find himself to be a little sleepy.
He drops his guard and is surprised by seven small flying creatures prowling the night for blood.
These are stirges, and they descend upon the group immediately.
Dwolf’s magical alarm is triggered at the same time, waking him.
A skirmish breaks out.
The stirges are weak, but their sting is violent.
Sigmar, Brannus, Kiara and Droop and stung.
Their small size makes them hard to swat.
The stirges are a nuisance, but eventually they are all defeated.
Weary of further attacks by night beasts, Dwolf reinforces the camp a bit and the party decides to extinguish the fire they had created.
The rest of the night passes on safely.
Refreshed, despite the unexpected interruption of their rest, the party heads-out early morning.
They find the forest to be quite thicker from this point onwards.
Dwolf unfortunately loses the track he was following the previous day.
The group moves much slower, but they manage to progress deeper into the forest.
Eventually the tree coverage begins to thin again, and the path starts to incline.
They reach the edge of a very large clearing where at the top of a small hill, an old castle stands.
Sparked by the sight of the castle, Droop talks about the Cragmaw – his tribe.
This castle is their secured headquarters, and it is a place he has only heard about.
Being a lowly ranked member, he was never invited or allowed in such a place.
He was simply part of one of the smaller marauding bands that made their lair in the region.
Even observing it from afar, Sigmar recognizes the architectural style of the building.
It’s definitely an old human construction with, at least, a few hundred years of age.
Since the group is not too keen on approaching the structure blindly, Kiara sends her familiar to do some scouting.
The cat departs from the party’s side, returning a few minutes later with a few useful details:
There seems to be no one in immediate sight.
There is a closed door in the south side of the castle, on top of a short flight of stairs.
The main entrance of the building seems to be a set of double doors on the west side, which seems to be partially open and where a dim-lit foyer can be seen beyond.
Wanting to know more, Dwolf sneaks to the south door.
Once he nears the arrow slits on the castle’s south walls he hears the clatter of crockery and angry goblins arguing over dirty dishes.
Reaching the door, he finds it is closed. It has a lock, but no handle, so he is unsure if it’s actually locked.
At a loss of what to do next, he quietly returns to the group.
The group quietly discusses what to do.
They don’t want to enter through the main doors and see no way to open the side door.
Droop meekly suggests that he might be able to open it.
The party complains about how he never said that before, but in the goblin’s defense he points out that no one ever asked him.
Kiara decides to sneak to the door, with Droop in tow.
As they move Kiara steps on a branch and cracks it, making the goblin yelp in fear.
She glares at him, but fortunately the goblin’s cry didn’t seem to alert anyone.
Reaching the door, and fiddling with it for a bit, Droop unlocks it.
Following this, everyone gathers at the door quietly.
Dwolf goes ahead and opens the door slowly.
The ranger finds an empty hallway, with no one in sight.
He sees a door to his left.
He moves in, and and listens at that door.
He hears the noise of voices again.
Kiara suggests that she should cast Invisibility on the dwarf so he can explore more.
The party agrees, and she does so.
Dwolf, now invisible, opens the door and finds himself looking at an old banquet hall where the western portion ends in a wall of rubble.
Around two large wooden tables are seven miserable looking goblins.
Their obvious leader is also there: a fat, cantankerous goblin, that is verbally abusing all others present.
One of the goblins seems to look straight at Dwolf, but in reality he is looking past him, puzzled by the door opening apparently by itself. But his pause earns him a shout from the fat one.
Seeing so many creatures Dwolf decides to close the door again, and tries to do it discreetly.
He closes the door but he is obviously not stealthy enough because a few seconds later it opens again.
The same goblin from before has come to investigate.
The creature still sees no one, but begins walking towards Dwolf to investigate the hall.
Caught by surprise, the dwarf backs away hastily, and eventually has his back towards the wall.
The goblin continues walking and reaches the corridor, still unaware of the invisible ranger.
But he does, however, notice the open door to the outside.
As it moves to the outside door, Dwolf tries to escape out of the way but fumbles and falls.
In the midst of this, the goblin tries to close the door, but it is stopped by the body of the invisible dwarf.
Not understanding what is happening, the creature SLAMS the door, which hurts Dwolf, ending the invisibility spell cast on him.
Suddenly seeing an intruder on the floor, the befuddled goblin sounds the alarm.
With no options but fighting, the party prepares for battle.
Four of the goblins in the banquet hall move to the corridor.
The three other, along with their fat leader, remain unaccounted for.
Struggling with the closed quarters nature of this area of the castle, the party tries their best to fight the four visible goblins.
Meanwhile, Kiara sends her familiar around the castle, to the main doors, to search for trouble.
The fight progresses slowly, with many ranged attacks missing, but eventually the creatures are defeated.
As this happens, however, the party has no time to rest.
Three more goblins enter the banquet hall through the ruined western wall.
Kiara’s familiar returns announcing there’s trouble on the way – the unaccounted goblins have circled around.
Still outside, Brannus prepares for their arrival.
The new foes that have entered the fray are joined (finally) by the fat goblin, and they all charge Dwolf.
Sigmar is trying to help, but the lack of room to maneuver complicates things.
Outside, Brannus, Kiara and Droop deal with the goblins that tried to flank the party.
And eventually, all attacking goblins are defeated.
With no hostile creatures visible everyone, except Brannus which had decided to around the outside walls, moves in to the banquet hall.
As soon as the human cleric is in sight of the main doors he is attacked by arrows coming from the slits on the two towers that flank the entrance.
Under fire, he tries to move as fast as he can to avoid the shooters.
Unaware of what is happening, the rest of the group progresses inside the castle from the banquet hall in the direction of the main entrance.
Everyone reaches the dimly lit foyer around the same time.
Brannus is rushing in.
Sigmar, at the head of the group, just walking.
Two groups of two goblins each move out from their watch stations by the arrow slits to confront the group.
Another battle breaks in the foyer, but it resolved rapidly as the party dispatches all the creatures efficiently.
As the slain body of the final goblin defender hits the ground, the castle falls to silence…
The Draconus Dictum
