The Dungeon Game: Weekends at Stonehell, session 6
The Crownless Company clear out the Gatehouse from goblins, at the cost of some of their hirelings.
Party Members
- Tiny Tina - Level 1 Cleric
- Telperion Desh - Level 2 Magician
- Vaco Adjacent - Level 1 Paladin
Followers
Sparkles (Porter and Torchbearer), Packet and Loadwell (Porters), Medium Sized Marta (Woman at Arms), Sinthia (Woman at Arms), Duchess de Capitaine (Woman at Arms), Konan (War Dog), Kurgan (War Dog), Krull (War Dog)
Session Recap
In-Universe Date: March 21st, 3017
Tina the Titanic, after the previous expedition, informs the group that she is stepping back from active adventuring in order to manage the logistics of the organization as well as their forward base in the valley. She introduces her lackey, who she calls Tiny Tina - a young girl of 17 that looks and is dressed exactly like Tina the Titanic. The group also hire another Woman-at-Arms and two more porters.
As the Crownless Company head back into the valley of Stonehell dungeon, their routine trek is interrupted when several arrows shoot out from the arrow slits on the second floor of the gatehouse, hitting one of the war dogs pretty badly and missing everyone else. Incensed at the attack the group turn around and head into the gatehouse. Going upstairs they are attacked by stirges, strange bat-like animals with long beaks.
They dispatch them easily and proceed into the next room, where opening the door they are greeted by a bomb lobbed at them. The explosion catches several people, including Sinthia Headgiver, one of the party's Women-at-Arms and kills her. The party respond with a Sleep spell and then have their first encounter with goblins - strange, muppet-like creatures made of trash, felt and fur. They decide to leave one tied up to interrogate later once the spell wears off and proceed through the rest of the second floor of the Gatehouse, killing a bunch more goblins along the way.
However as the group head back to interrogate the captured goblin (which is mostly unhelpful and gets killed) a larger force of the creepy buggers sneak up on the group and catch them by surprise, killing Marta the Woman-at-Arms, severely hurting one of the war dogs and threatening to finish off the party. The group manage to disengage, close the door behind them and just run as fast as they can back into their camp.
They recuperate there for a few days, tending to their wounds. The goblins try to bug the party, but get driven off. Deciding to go into the dungeon, because, quote "It's safer down there" the group stops by the stone oracle to ask it some questions, then decide to explore some loose ends on their map. In one room they get attacked by zombies, which they dispatch fairly easily. The ruckus however draws the attention of a nearby band of orcs, who attempt to take down the party. One of the wardogs and the only remaining hired warrior, the fighter known as Duchess de Capitaine, manage to keep the orcs in place for Telperion to cast Sleep. The spell does hit the hireling and the dog too, but lets the party dispatch the orcs and drag their helpless party members into a nearby room where they wait out the spell's duration.
Heading back out again, they unload the orc gear and decide to finish off the goblins in the Gatehouse. The party suspect that the goblins might be spawning from all the trash, since they appear to dissolve back into trash when killed. They spend several hours cleaning out as much trash as they can, but ultimately they decide to just go finish off the goblins.
After blowing up a couple of them with a bomb of their own, they go downstairs and clear out the rest of them, looting the northern portion of the gatehouse and finding a hidden alcove with some magical items and a potion of healing, along with the chewed up remains of their two former hirelings.
Tina the Tiny decides to give proper burial rites to the fallen women, along with the remains of some phantasms that seem to haunt the gatehouse. With that complete the party load up Tiny Tina's mule with their loot and head back to Zorb.
Observations
We were supposed to have four people this session, but a player dropped out due to being sick. With three people and a few hirelings, the party were already debating checking out the Gatehouse as the decision got made by them through the dice.
The session, about 4 hours long, mostly consisted of a series of fights as you can tell by the numbers of slain enemies above. The goblin infestation had gotten quite bad over at this point. The encounter with the 10 goblins was quite brutal too - had the party failed the initiative roll they likely would have had a TPK.
My take on goblins is as more or less literal muppets. They are made out of trash, scrap bits of fabric, felt and so on. They are violent, malicious and have access to way too many explosives. An interaction I particularly liked was Telperion trying to interrogate the captured goblin while it just grinned at him and didn't break eye contact with its big, unblinking, eyes.
The beauty of classic D&D also very much showed itself in this session. As I said, this was a 4 hour session mostly consisting of fights, and we had like 6-7 of them, mostly because interactions with the goblins resulted in "we cast sleep, they use arrows and/or bombs" which lead to very few fights lasting longer than a single round of combat.