as told by the cavalier Olmas Lurecia, himself.

Oathday, 28 Pharast

It never ceases to amaze me.

When we first started this journey, I felt like Qatana acted randomly, with total disregard for her own safety (or that of the others) and it made my admittedly self-imposed duty to keep her safe that much harder.  As time has passed, though, either my understanding of her or her understanding of us has changed, and I’d been thinking of her more as medium strength warrior who can also heal.

And then Zos pulls out a tanglefoot bag and Qatana is like an elfling confronting a squirrel for the first time.  She asked Zos if she could have one to take with us as we went after what we suspected were trysting hobgoblins. He shrugged and gave her one even as I prepared to say, it would be a waste if we were about to confront some unarmored and unarmed hobgoblins.  I shook my head and wondered at her thought process.

So imagine my surprise when Kali casts web on the bed on which they were cavorting.  What?  What is this fascination with tying creatures up? er, down? With a web in place, and no ring of free movement, we couldn’t really do much to engage them.  And hobgoblins are strong enough that … yes, there we go.  They’re not really restrained by them very much.  The web is flammable, however, so we did set it on fire.  And there was a flaming sphere.  And flaming Suishen, also setting webs on fire,  It was not the battle I had anticipated.

The male looked different from your standard hobgoblin.  He was certainly treated differently – the women seemed as eager to protect him from harm as … well, as he was in surrendering.

Yes, just as Radella finally got close enough to slay him, he offered to tell us stuff if we’d spare his life.  He made this offer after I’d already challenged him, and since I wasn’t really expecting a surrender but WAS expecting a battle, I got one solid hit in before I reluctantly held back at Radella’s request.  He threw me a look but then got back to the business of surrendering.  The rest of us took care of his female guests (that is, by killing them.)

It turns out he was the son of the oni we were seeking (Munasukaru).  Even though that technically made him an oni too, with a father that was a hobgoblin he was not very powerful.  Perhaps that’s why he so easily surrendered, knowing he couldn’t win an actual fight.  Being an oni, though, we couldn’t let him live either. I was surprised and a little bothered at Radella’s acceptance of his surrender.  I guess we owe no honor to a foe that continually attacks us, but it still bothered me.  I’m not sure why.

He gave us very crude maps of what lay ahead, but I got the impression that cartography was not one of his dominant skills.  In fact, the only dominant skill he seemed to have – or rather the believed he had – was the ability to have sex with every female he encountered.  Well, except Kali, Radella, and Qatana – not that he didn’t suggest he would be willing,

As we were concluding the conversation, another one in our party seemed to feel that he’d been alive long enough. From somewhere behind me, Ivan unleashed his arrows and the Ichirou, the oni gigolo, went to that big bachelor pad in, er, well, probably hell,

Ichirou did tell us there were more guards ahead, but unfortunately either didn’t know or didn’t tell us any specifics.  Since we’d already guessed there’d be more guards, that wasn’t really headline news.  He mentioned that his mother was somewhere down “the drain” which we assume is some sort of description rather than an actual drain.  We checked out the hardware he and his guests had left:

[567] 2 more MW nunchuks for a total of 3
[572] studded leather armor [+2]
[573] MW composite longbow +6ST
[574] MW nodaki (great sword)
[575] ring of protection +1
[576] 3 lacquer screens
[577] silver ring w/Tien
[578] silver brooch
[579] interlocking jade rings
[580] silver hairpin
[581] carved ivory + coral bracelet
[582] 4 silver wedding rings

Ichirou had mentioned that Munasukaru liked fire AND lightning, and can “make you do things”.  She is all-powerful.  He had two sisters that looked more like snakes – apparently Munasukaru also used little discretion in who she mated with.  Yaasu and, what did he say … Daci?  The latter was known to be magical, whatever that meant to him.

Heading towards “the Drain” we put the reconstructed giants in front.  While it would be disappointing if they were destroyed, if something could destroy them it would likely cause us a fair amount of damage too so … better them than us.

It didn’t take long after we encountered what appeared to be a deserted barracks that a giant got thunked by three arrows.  That was the start of our battle against 8 hobgoblins, in which the giants proved very useful. This allowed us to recover 8 MW morningstars and 8 MW longbows, but while we left those behind, we definitely took up

[583] 8 potions of CSW

and distributed them among all of us.  We also picked up

[584] bearskins
[585] bronze daggers
[586] dagger in lapis scabbard

From here it was a short distance until we reached “the Drain”, which really was a hole into which the river fell.  A staircase seemed to encircle the perimeter and head down, but the spray of the water made it treacherous.  We had to go single file, and the giants quickly slipped and fell into the Drain.  A quick feather fall ensured they would probably not splat at the bottom, but they quickly left our range of vision.

With me in the lead now, I was able to spot another female hobgoblin like those from above, getting ready to attack me at a slightly wider area of the stairs.  She was able to get me with an arrow before I closed with her, but I gave her some incisions in trade.  Meanwhile, alerted now, several of our group noticed some trying to climb the wall and come up behind us.  Once spotted, though, they became easy targets for Ivan (arrows) and Qatana (casting hold person, which has predictable effects when you are climbing)

When we did safely reach the bottom, the giants were waiting for us (yay). After some healing (in which some persistent golem wounds finally closed over), we inspected our surroundings. Radella announced there was a trap here somewhere, but couldn’t really identify it or its trigger.  She thought it might have something to do with a major image.

There was a large underground lake here, and of course we were still limited by our magic-provided dark vision.  We estimated we had come 250′ down the Drain, making us pretty far beneath the surface now.  Radella quietly flew around the perimeter of the lake and scouted it, reporting back that there was a shoreline upon which two more of the monk-like sisters seemed to stand watch.  We guessed that was the preferred way to go, although it was pointed out that we rarely enter an area by the obvious entrance.

In this case though, we have decided we will.  We will fly in (or air walk in) and have Qatana, Radella (invisible) and myself drop on them quickly and, hopefully, silently so that they cannot raise an alarm.