Session 3

Most of the party is huddled, peering in through the crack in the stone door at the goblins fiddling around at their makeshift forge. The five of them decide to try another approach. Wary of the large cavern mouth at the bottom of the ramp around the sinkhole, they suggest to Garret that he venture on down the third path - the slight tunnel - by himself. Garret, confident in his ability to escape from danger and undaunted by the possibility that some threat might loom ahead, shrugs his shoulders in his typical, jovial manner and strides around the pit to the tunnel. He takes a brief account of the broken brass pipes protruding from the tunnel and scampers inside. He finds that the tunnel ends in a small room where pipes protruding from all of the walls and the ceiling converge into the ones he'd followed to this point. He determines that the area is safe and calls his friends to join him.

A hallway out of the utility room branches into a staircase that leads up into darkness and down into a dimly lit chamber. Garret is again sent ahead to investigate. He opts not to check the staircase, but instead the room at the other end of the hall. He discovers that the light is emanating from torches in a room above him, peaking through the grates in the ceiling. Before he leaves, he notices a dark shape huddled against a contraption at the center of the room that seems to be a central conduit for many of the pipes in this section of the dungeon.

Garret calls in his friends who are more adept at seeing in low-light conditions and they discover that the shape is, indeed, a man. They rouse him and are surprised to discover he's still alive. The man, they see, is a gaunt and dirty figure, with a large head and scraggly, thin long hair grown green from his time in the dank underground environ. He is unable to say for sure how long he's spent underground. Whether for days or weeks, he has been hiding away in these chambers since the goblins broke through and massacred the mine. Wary as they are of this stranger, they oblige him without a second thought when they learn he might have gone for as long as a week without food.

The party does not trust him. They interrogate him about the second ledger that they have not found and the man assures them that he can get it for them - if they get him out. Tensions are high and they debate the with him the conditions of his escape at a dangerously loud volume - they argue on, almost oblivious to the goblins that must lurk nearby. At last, the man reveals that he possesses the second ledger. Fortunately, for him, the party proves themselves not to be the crude ruffians he feared they might be, and promises to assist his flight.

As the six of them crawl back out of the tunnel onto the ledge around the pit, they notice a tall shape investigating the corpses left in the wake of their last skirmish. The party clumsily alerts the new threat to their position and find themselves engaged in combat with a hobgoblin. They defeat it, but his companion flees into the large cavern before he can be dispatched. In a few moments, the group finds itself fleeing from a trio of goblins, narrowly beating them to the thin crevasse and setting up a choke point on the other side.

The starved man presses on, however, and Aramil rushes after him, catching him and pinning him into place to ensure that he does not flee with the ledger. In the meantime, the rest of the party gangs up on one of their pursuers, who have been forced to move through the passage one at a time. The first goblin through sustains a battery of attacks and squeaks away from the initial assault, barely alive, only to be cut down in the crevasse in full view of his companions. The other goblins realize they have been effectively defeated and disappear, yelping in fear, from the passage.

The party remains true to their word and help their hostage to safety, emerging from the mine in time to catch the sun setting over the sea in the distance. The man gladly delivers the second ledger and jogs down the path out of the mining camp, disappearing into the shade of the woods. The party decide that their business at the mine is unfinished and set up for the night in the dormitory. The conditions are rough - old bedrolls, a hard floor and short hours of rest broken by shifts watching the mine's entrance from the window - but the sleep does them well enough.

In the morning, the party discusses their options. While they could clearly return to Stoneport and hand over the ledgers to Icano, Keg insists on clearing out the rest of the goblins - he can't stand the thought of suffering them to live. His companions concur, but before they can even ready their gear and delve back into the mine, they are interrupted by the sounds of conversation drawing closer through the woods at the edge of the mining camp. Keg darts around one of the buildings to hide from whoever it may be that approaches, but when the strangers arrive at the camp, the others see that they are a party of soldiers - two knights and two squires, all human.

One of the knights - a dashing young man in shining steel armor, clearly the leader - introduces himself as Argander Reeve, captain of the garrison at Fort Frosthorn. He explains that he and his companions were on the way to Eastrock to provide extra support to the town guard during their summer festival when they were alerted to news of trouble at Mended Bow Mine. The party recounts their earlier misadventure, sans mention of the cooked books and tax evasion, and receive a gracious offer from captain Argander to accompany them back into the depths. The party accepts and follows the knights back into the mine - even Keg scurries out from his hiding spot for the opportunity to destroy more goblins.

The first skirmish inside of the mine ends in minor tragedy. The knights take the vanguard and press on into the mouth of the large cave at the bottom of the sinkhole, where they are ambushed by a party of three hobgoblins who have taken cover at a short ledge on which a wall of spears has been fixed. One of the squires is felled by a hobgoblin's arrow and the knights prove unable to best the hobgoblins.

The party charges into the fray and, reinvigorated from their rest, quickly dispatch their enemies. Bharash, the dragonborn paladin, elects to use his maul and finds it a much more capable weapon than his greatsword. He delivers the killing blow to two of the hobgoblins by driving them into their own spearwall. Meanwhile, Keg illustrates the fearsome power of his magic by casting a ray of frost at the last hobgoblin archer, who succumbs to the eldritch cold of the spell and is left a black, blistered corpse, crumpled up beside his own defenses.

The party elects to take point in the next room, sending Garret in for a quick recon. He discovers that the chamber is the same large Dwarven hall that he and his companions espied through the crack in the stone door before. The goblins have finished their work at the hearth forge and sit in the semi-dark beside it sharing a drink. Aramil chooses to join Garret for the attack, but the goblins see him and move to engage. Garret and Aramil are too quick and manage to kill the goblins before they can react.

Garret and Keg examine a raised platform carved into the wall at the top of a short flight of stairs opposite the heavy stone door. They discover a bugbear fast asleep under a pile of rags and pelts. When Keg arrives at the top of the flight of stairs, the bugbear wakes. Keg is a little quicker on the draw and manages to douse the sleeping bugbear with a fan of magical fire, setting its bedcovers alight. The bugbear is a hardy warrior, however, and despite having caught fire, it chooses to fight on. The bugbear knocks Keg unconscious with a blow that might have outright slain a lesser hero. Garret capitalizes on the situation and strikes the killing blow while the bugbear has its back turned.

The party gets Keg back on his feet and confer with the knights. They thank them for their assistance and promise to come see them while they are at Eastrock. Once the knights leave, Keg gets to work at the forge, smelting and shaping the adamantite ore that Bharash obtained from the storehouse on the surface. Without proper tools or a good workspace, Keg is only able to shape the metal into crude ingots, and even that takes him two days of almost non-stop work. Satisfied with their work, the party leaves the mine and heads back down the trail into the woods where Wolter is lazing about a little camp of his own with George the dog and Aramil's horse.

They arrive back at Eastrock in the late afternoon of the day before the festival. Bharash and Aramil wander about town to see if they can't find captain Argander. Keg crashes into bed at the inn and immediately falls asleep, exhausted from his long days of hard work, while Alvalor settles in and reads a letter that was left for him by the priest at the local temple to the Church of the Seven Doors to the House of Heaven. The priest, Lexermis Regermane, heard that a fellow man of the cloth had passed through town and was curious to meet with him. Alvalor gets directions from the innkeeper and leaves for the temple with Garret in tow.

After a couple of hours of walking around the town, Bharash and Aramil finally bump into Argander and his men while they are crossing the square nearby to the inn. Bharash and Argander share a few friendly words and some shoptalk about serving in the military before Bharash asks for a recommendation about a good smith in town. Argander gives them directions and the two depart his company.

Alvalor and Garret arrive at the temple and enter the main chamber to find it unoccupied. As they are looking about, examining the ornate portraits of the saints and the seven gods of the faith and the golden screen before the altar, a kindly man in his late middle years approaches them and asks how he might be able to help. They discover the man is Lexermis and Alvalor introduces himself. Lexermis is quite happy to make his acquaintance, but surprised and dismayed to discover that Alvalor is not an adherent to his same faith. As Alvalor explains the tenets of Enanthionism, Lexermis seems to them to be confused, fundamentally unable to comprehend why anyone would choose a different religion. The exchange amuses Garret more than a little.

At last, Lexermis decides that good people are good and it really doesn't matter. He explains that the town of Eastrock has long maintained a tradition of raising and keeping giant eagles - a single one at a time to serve as a sort of living civic symbol. Their most recent eagle died about a week prior and they need someone to retrieve a new egg from a nest in the mountains. Lexermis was hoping that Alvalor would understand the importance of the mission and its consequences for the spiritual wellbeing. Alvalor offers his assistance but says he'll need to bring his companions along to ensure that they can accomplish the job. This strikes Lexermis as a fine idea and extends an invitation to sup that evening with his friend Keldar Stronghammer, one of the magistrates of Eastrock.

Aramil and Bharash arrive at the smith and inquire in a careful, roundabout way what his experience with adamantite is. The smith admits he's never had the privilege of working with it. Bharash shows the smith the metal from the mine and manages to negotiate a handsome bargain for its sale.

The party makes their way to the home of Keldar Stronghammer and his wife Wenda that night for dinner, where they meet Lexermis. The topic of conversation turns to the eagle egg and they discover that Keldar was the one who retrieved the last eagle egg, some thirty years ago when he was just a young man beginning his career as an adventurer. He tells the party where he went to find the last one and urges them to be cautious because, as the old adventurer's adage goes, 'One monster's empty nest is another's open house'. As an example, he tells about he cleared out a cavern full of kobolds many years back, only to for it later to become a beholder's lair.

Bharash surprises the party and his hosts when he reveals that he happens to know the historical significance of the eagle to Eastrock, a little bit of trivia he picked up from his years of travel. In the days before the Kingdom of Valinor had been established, he explains, the people of this area used to dwell up in the cliffs and the mountains where they lived alongside of the giant eagles. After some of the Wyrdishmen sailed from the north across the sea and conquered the Fang, the old Valinese civilization was forced to leave their mountain homes and come down into the fields to settle and work the lands for the Wyrdishmen's benefit. Eventually, the giant eagles became less and less essential to everyday life but were instead transformed into a symbol of the town.

With business out of the way, things become more casual and the party swaps some stories with Keldar and Wenda. As the group is so large, they are eating outside and the guests choose to leave when the wind picks up and it becomes clear that a storm is approaching. Full of wine and the first good homecooked meal they've had in almost a week, with the thunder and the rain pouring outside, the party has a fine, cozy rest at the inn. The party sets out early in the morning, hiking southeast out of Eastrock to give Wolter the day off so he can enjoy himself at the festival. They cross rolling hills of heather, filled with wildflowers in full bloom. After an hour and a half they pass through a small, thin wood and arrive at the base of the mountains. They pass villagers from the small settlement of Heatherhope, where they find Fort Haymaker. This fort is an incredibly small garrison, comprising not much more than a stone wall built across the pass into the mountains, a pair of towers and another small building. The soldiers manning the fort open the gate but warn the party that they are responsible for themselves once they pass through it. Our heroes remain confident that they will need no help to achieve their goal this time.

The path winds up into the mountains and the terrain becomes drier and more inhospitable. The rocky soil supports only stunted juniper shrubs and sage bushes and the only occasional source of shade are the short mastic trees, twisted and bent by years spent in the strong mountain winds. Though the clime is typically a cool one, the air is thinner up in the mountain and the sun feels quite fierce as it approaches its height. At last, the path leads to a stone wall built around a mountain ledge. The gate door is made of old, windworn wood, but it is sturdy and barred from the other side. Aramil climbs the wall easily and unbars the way from the inside. The party passes within and finds themselves in a deserted and mostly empty courtyard. Only two modest wooden structures, long-since collapsed into piles of old timber remain. A stairway carved into the face of the stone leads up into the interior of the mountain.

The party climbs and passes through a room choked with spider's webs, then up two further flights of stairs where the way turns back toward the face of the mountain. They enter into a dim hall, lit only by the glow of the late morning sun through a trio of natural windows carved through the stone by the wind. Around the corner, through a doorway carved into the stone, a hall leads them along the mountainside. The face of the mountain here has been carved out of the stone into towering windows that run the length of the hall and each stretch from the floor to the ceiling where they are topped with gothic arches. From the darkness of a small side hall, the party can make out an angry buzzing sound, which they elect to ignore. The next chamber is quite long, extending deeper into the mountain and set with the same characteristic windows overlooking the valley below. A staircase winds up again to another story, and a hall turns in from the mountainside where the stonework is interrupted by a large, round sinkhole cavern, the floor of which is at their level. The cave is open above and the summer sun streams in, illuminating the chamber. Another passage leads back toward the face of the mountain, a thirty degree turn to the left around the chamber. The floor of the cavern is littered with small boulders and covered in a carpet of moss. Straight ahead, six feet above the floor, a long natural shelf is recessed into the wall of the cave. In the center of the shelf, a hole extends deep into the stone. At the very center of the room, glittering in the light is a pile of coins and gems.

The party is naturally suspicious, so they hold at the entrance while Garret and Aramil creep carefully into the room to investigate, paying particular attention to the hole and the ledge. They find no signs of traps, but when they go to retrieve the treasure laying on the floor, a rubbery tentacle-like trunk rises from its hiding spot in the debris. The end of the trunk opens into four little tentacles around a vicious beak that stabs at the party furiously. Despite being surprised, the party avoids the creatures attacks and strike it numerous times. The creature - a grick - possesses a tough, almost stoney hide and it proves difficult to deliver it any serious wounds, but shortly it becomes injured and tries to flee the fight into the hole on the ledge. Just before it can disappear into the crevice, Keg zaps it with a bolt of magical cold and it withers and dies, lolling halfway out like a numb, stupefied tongue.

With their pockets a little heavier from the gold and the diamonds they picked up, the party exits out the second passage and climbs again to the next story of the complex, only to be deposited into an alpine meadow. The ground is broken by the hole in the roof of the cavern below and ancient dwellings are carved into the walls of the cliffs around them. The meadow itself meanders up and away, and the party can see that it bends around a cliff wall about a hundred metres ahead before it cuts back up to the top of the wall, where another cliff rises up. At the very tippy top of this cliff is perches a huge bird's nest of at least four yards in diameter.

The party hikes down the meadow and reaches the bend around the cliff, where they find a brown bear barring their way. Aramil attempts to befriend it and discovers that this strategy really doesn't ever work as well as he thinks it should. The bear takes a swing with its huge mitts and misses, but as Aramil is ducking he opens himself to a bite attack. Before the bear can dig in and make Aramil into its afternoon snack, Garret intervenes and attempts to soothe the bear. To the surprise of absolutely everyone, the bear takes a shine to the little halfing and picks him up by the collar in its mouth and starts lumbering away across the meadow toward a cavern. Bharash runs after the bear and manages to get it to drop his friend. The bear stands up on its hind legs, lets out a loud yawn and continues on toward its home.

Reaching the base of the cliff, Bharash and Garret both choose to make the treacherous climb to the nest where they discover three eagle eggs nestled together. Bharash takes two and ties his rope into a little purse to carry them safely to the ground, and Garret decides to take the last one for himself. As Bharash descends carefully, Garret considers attempting to climb down with an eagle egg in hand and only one free hand. His companions shout warnings to him, assuring him that it will end in disaster, but Garret shrugs them off and hops easily down the wall.

The party returns through the complex only to find that a trio of giant wasps has taken up residence in the long room on the first floor of the cave. The party chooses not to risk sneaking past them and opens up with a barrage of arrows that manages only to enrage the wasps. The wasps are singed, shot and smashed up, but still manage to inflict an incapacitating sting against (someone?). At last the party defeats them and emerges from the cave.

When they return to Eastrock, the festival is in full swing. Musicians are playing in the street, revelers are hard at work gorging themselves on food and drink and spirits are high. As people notice the party heading toward the temple to meet Lexermis, carrying their eagle eggs, a crowd begins to form behind them. When they arrive at the temple, the festival spills into the courtyard and Lexermis emerges to see what all the fuss is about. He thanks the party for retrieving the egg. He pleads with Aramil and Keg to please not turn the third egg into an omelette and Garret promises to keep them from doing so - he'd much rather sell it. This doesn't sit much better with Lexermis, but he's in the middle of planning a funeral so he can't bother with it at the moment.

Bharash, meanwhile, speaks to Lexermis' daughter, Asmry, who has taken on the responsibility of raising the new eagle. Bharash asks her to raise the second egg for his own use, and Asmry is hesitant to accept the added responsibility. She tells him that she'll think about it and asks him to come see her before he leaves town so she can let him know what it would take from him to make it worth her while.

In the midst of the merrymaking, Argander arrives to ensure that things don't get out of hand. He tells the party he's impressed with their heroism and selflessness and promises to provide them with a letter of introduction if they'll come see him before they head back to Stoneport.

In the meantime, our protagonists look around at their adoring fans and decide that this whole 'adventurer' thing might not be such a bad gig - provided they can manage to keep keeping themselves alive.