Oathday, Lamashan 10

It’s a shame, really, that we more or less ran out of goblins. I must give credit to the group for the clever ways in which we lured one goblin after another out onto the bridge and into the woods to their ultimate demise. How many total? Six? a dozen? I lost count. Finally, they stopped coming out, but it wasn’t clear if natural selection had thinned the herd of the stupid ones or whether they just had no more to send.

So a last final attempt, Sedgwick tried changing his illusion from a hated dog to what we thought would be a respected Tsuto. However, I found myself eyeing the goblins with a newfound respect. I’d thought the goblins to be vermin, slightly more evolved than rats and unfortunately bearing a slight resemblance to we bipedal humans. But when the goblin at the gate saw Tsuto, and saw him gesturing to come over, and responded with a rude gesture involving a single finger, I finally found something likable about the butt ugly critters. Wow, they hated Tsuto too! Really sucked to be him. Well, to have been him.

It made me chuckle a bit at Tsuto’s expense, seeing that gesture. And it reminded me that the goblins really could think, even if they chose to react most of the time instead. Nevertheless, we were still on the wrong side of the gate. We thought some more.

We decided to inspect the base of the island. Maybe there was some clever, secret way in. And after a few hours of nighttime swimming later, we could tell that .. well, no, there didn’t seem to be.

We decided that we would need to do a frontal assault after all. But perhaps our illusion of Tsuto could still do us some good if he appeared to be bringing us back as prisoners. Even if they hated him, they’d probably not fire upon him as he neared the gate. And then once the gate was opened …

Only hiccup in this plan was that if were were challenged, still none of us spoke goblin, and that would serve to end the ruse quickly. But there was no way around it. The best we could do is comprehend languages, so we could understand but not respond.

And then fate smiled.

A returning goblin party stumbled over our camp in the morning, and we made quick work of them. But more importantly, they bore a halfling prisoner, who was soon freed. Kanelbene, was his name I think. (It’s always tricky spelling people’s names, as they can be so creating in spelling it sometimes.)

But he also spoke goblin! He’d been waylaid before the original raid on the town and held prisoner.

A halfling who spoke goblin! What better accomplice for our disguised Tsuto! Now our plan could not fail. Much.

So after carefully secreting weapons on our persons so that each behind us could easily grab them when battle broke out, we were “led” across the bridge. But upon coming out to meet us, the gate goblin quickly recognized the ruse when he recognized a cape from one of the goblins we’d killed, and called out “intruders!” Immediately a fog (of our making) surrounded us and obscuring us from both the archers in the towers and the fighters rushing out at the alarm. I think we killed six or seven before they stopped coming.

From the outside this had looked like something of a garrison, but once inside it looked a little better than a hovel. It had clearly been constructed from reused lumber of various types and sizes, and “decorated” with horse and dog head trophies. A pair of bat wings stood out on one wall, and provided just the right ambience for a roomful of decaying small critter heads. Olithar snagged a steel, pearl handled knife [1100].

Avia and Sedgwick headed up the west tower to take out the guards. It proved exceedingly easy, from the account they relayed later.

Another room led to a partially covered outdoor area, in which there were several of the goblin ‘dogs’. We chose to not go there right away.

But inside another room we found the king, or chieftain, or head honcho of this tribe. And he had some well trained warriors with him that were either training or demonstrating to him their consummate skills, and a chanter or sorceror by his side as well. Add in an unusually large gecko and it looked for a while like we may have bitten off more than we could chew.

My attacks at close quarters aren’t anything special, and I am less able to survive hits my companions take, so I was tending to attack from the rear. I especially was trying to take out the chanter, as I suspected he was generating magic to aid the fighters. The one time I found myself in close quarters, my burning hands worked nicely to heat things up. But most of the time, it was magic missiles. Avia and Sabin were their usual effective bloody selves and ultimately we did triumph. Healing all around was dispersed before we started gathering their — er, I mean OUR — belongings.