Snaps McKracken

Goblins in the Forest
Man, what a fun day! I met up with some very interesting characters today, including a Giant Tree, and boy did I like them. They all wanted to help do something in this town, or more specifically they all wanted a drink like I did! This prohibition business is no fun. We’d been told that the reason for the prohibition was the goblins in the forest, so after chatting a bit we decided to ask Orland if there was something we could do. He told us that there were goblins all in the forest, and if we could get rid of them it would help the town start recovering. So off we went!

On our way to the woods, we ran into a terrible storm that made us set up camp out in the open. I wasn’t fond of our situation, but it worked out. During the night one of our watchmen saw some dwarves trying to masquerade as halflings –walking down the road in the middle of a storm in the middle of the night! What crazy people! They were fleeing the goblins and apparently orcs! That we weren’t expecting. But in the morning, off we went to go find the goblins and orcs to rid the forest and Lands’ End of them. We wanted our booze!

In the morning, we spotted a tower with some smoke rising from it so we headed that direction. While almost there, we found a dead body! It was so cool. I think it was one of those missing hunters. Still have no idea what killed him, but our Wizard, Finn I think is his name, got trapped while trying to steal from a dead man! Serves him right for looting a poor dead guy. A bell rang when the trap went off, but nobody ever came to see what happened. We eventually made it to the tower and Finn took out their sentry on top for us to approach without being seen. Definitely didn’t want them knowing we were coming! We ended up sneaking in just as a goblin was coming up the trail. We waited and snatched him and interrogated him! What a thrill! We found out that he was the local chief of the goblins, and his name was FutFut. In return for us not killing him, he told us what to expect in the tower and where there was some treasure! He did warn us of a basilisk though in the bottom, I immediately decided we didn’t need to go down there. I’m not ready to face a monster like that yet! We knocked out futfut and tied him up to take with us when we left.

We walked in and found a lift going downstairs that we couldn’t tell anything about, and then some stairs winding up around the tower. The basilisk was downstairs according to FutFut, so we went upstairs and found a room with some orcs and goblins in it – and there was our treasure chest! We had to kill the orcs and goblins first of course – I set one of them on fire and watched him burn… it was fascinating. After that fight, all the noise brought up another orc and more goblins! How fun! After barricading the door, we let them in with spells ready, and I tried to push them all off the ledge and tumbling down to their doom – I only got one of the goblins though unfortunately, though the splat he made when hitting the ground was funny. These guys were much tougher and a couple of members of our party went down! Eventually we killed them and managed to stabilize the party. We looted the chest and I thought we’d scamper back to Lands End and lick our wounds. But nooooooo.

We went back downstairs and discovered FutFut had escaped and the lift was down – not up as we had left it. Finn, barely living and all, wanted to go down to see if FutFut had escaped downstairs. Everyone else was very reckless and decided to join him. I almost stayed up top, because I didn’t want to die you see, but I figured that if the party was going down they may need my help. And plus, I’d never seen a basilisk before! So it would at least be interesting!

Downstairs we went, and we saw the basilisk. It was asleep thank goodness. We went back a different way and found Futfut – and my heart stopped. With him were dozens of other goblins. According to Futuft, they were all women and children and elderly goblins, but I don’t know goblins well enough to tell. After some tense moments, we spoke to futfut and he let us go if we would let them go. We told him to leave the tower and never return, and he said he would. I don’t know if goblins are trustworthy, but that’s what he said! We weren’t in much fighting shape to do anything about it at the time regardless.

After that, finally went back to lands end, and our travel back was uneventful. Thank goodness. But what a fun couple of days that was, I met new friends, saw some new sights, got to kill some evil creatures, set fire to some things, and made it back in one piece! I can’t wait to go out again! It seems our band may be sticking together and doing more stuff in the future, I’m very excited!