in the swamp

Ya well I had a nice post all written up about the second part of the last play session but god damn blogger god damn ate it on then god damn auto saved a god damn blank page then I lost my god damn browser page cache.  This was on Tuesday and I didn't have the motivation to rewrite it before.  Here is the less flowery version*.

So lets just say the party ended once the guards arrived.  The gang took the captured bad guys and poor despondent (and drunk) Henril back to their room in the inn.  Brother Tim kept watch on the bound baddies, and in the wee early morning hours the guy in the red cloak turned into a hobgoblin.  This caused all kinds of trouble but in the end they determined that one of the bad guys was a fresh recruit, the sneaky bad guy from the tavern was a recruiter, and the hobgoblin (who could only say "Margesh") had been as far as they knew, the bandit leader.  They released the recruit and killed the recruiter and kept the hobgoblin tied up.

The next day they visited the sage and got the skinny on the old shrine in the swamp, apparently a evil hag has desecrated it many years ago and on occasion clerics or adventurers would try to explore it and they would never return.  They also found out that the word "Margesh" was hobgoblin for "boss guy".  Since that and "imlori" were the only words they could get out of him they figured he wasn't a wizard and more likely a pawn.  They thought about going to the city watch with the hobgoblin, but decided instead to go hire a boat to take them to the shrine.  No one would take them all the way but after they agreed to purchase a boat they convinced the merchant to let them hire a guide to take them to the mouth of a river which was about half a day away from it.  So they rowed across the lake and down the river mouth until they came to a sand bank where the locals came to catch crocodiles for meat and skins.  Their guide left them there with their boat and rowed away with a nervous glance into the swamps.

I'm not so cute now eh you little bastard!

So the best thing about swamps was I got to use my Swamp Encounter table.  First they got into some quicksand, then they were attacked by an assassin vine in the trees, and finally they ran into some giant frogs.  Giant frogs are great - because frogs are pretty mean looking with the eyes and the big mouth and the tongues - and just like rats and spiders - giant ones would really be terrifying.  The frogs were chewing on Tim's arm and Henril was all getting his angst out ramming his sword through one's spine and trying to pull it's brain out through it's eye-hole.  Good times.  After that battle, Tim cast a heal on himself (the new cure light wounds spell seems to be working OK BTW), and then realized that he had Comprehend Languages.  Well never too late to interrogate a prisoner, he cast it and started asking the hobgoblin questions.  They figured out that the Hobgoblin was one of many band leaders who would be visited by a "magic lady" called Imlori and made to look like the red cloaked bandit leader everyone was looking for.  Shouts of "Margesh" by during fights seem likely to be the source of the confusion among the bandits and on the reward posters.  He didn't know anything about the swamp or the shrine except that he didn't like it.  Since the hobgoblin didn't know who the magic lady was, where she was or when she visited specific hobgoblin bands, Henril killed him.  The party was a bit disappointed that the swamp shrine didn't seem to have anything to do with the hobgoblins.

Come on in folks, free cake and pies!

They finally came to a clearing and saw a statue and an alcove which seemed to be the entrance to a ruin of some shriney place.  They also found two old corpses, one badly burned, and one with a backpack which had some old coloured candles in it (and lots of mold and rotted paper too...).  When they entered the alcove to check it out, the statue began to steam and heat up.  Figuring that this might have something to do with he burned corpse, they pulled a hasty retreat and slowly investigated the alcove.  Thedric** figured out the answer to a secret riddle which disarmed the trap and the stone doors slid open.

And now we're all caught up on the situation.  I would have liked to get further sure, but I wouldn't have missed that wedding.  It was a pretty good session and everyone seems to be enjoying it still.  Talking about our plans at the end of the night, we decided to do a short one off of Trail of Cthulhu over October (for Halloween!) and then everyone seems to think we'll probably be squeezing in at least one or two more sessions of this game before we hang up the Beacon for the winter.




*Note version contains just as much flower.
**Note, I've been calling Thedric, Theodric for some weird reason so I fixed up all the posts.  It's all the same dwarven enchanter folks.