S08E01 – Rescuing Gighur

Setup

Minnesota, a well-fed female dwarf, has hired a group of adventurers to rescue her brother Gighur Shatterheat from a clan of goblins that recently set up shop in the abandoned monastery near the lake. The group consists of Dawn, a male wood elf ranger; Salazar Astorio, a male human paladin; and Til Grassthorn, a male halfling rogue. The group has split to gather intel and secure a way into the goblin’s lair.

A way in

It’s taken several beers, but Dawn has found a way to get into the lair. If only he could remember the details… Pandjed, the dragonborn merchant he’s made the deal with, offers him extra help if he can gulp down three more ales, but the elf passes out after the next beer.

The dead people left first

Meanwhile, on the dark and muddy streets around the tavern, Til and Salazar play catch with two kids who reveal that days before the goblins were first seen, clerics started complaining about upturned graves, and people that died died during the day, would disappear at night. When the cemeteries ran out of stock and everybody deadly sick died, villagers like Gighur, started to disappear. The kids also saw a big female dwarf arguing with Gighur.

Waking up

The heroes wake up inside a crate full of corpses that is being unloaded by two goblins. After a few rounds of combat where the goblins show how to critically fail over and over, and where Salazar physically expresses his hatred of worms slithering between his armor and his skin on the poor goblins, the fight is over and bodies are looted. The heroes look around a bit more relaxedly and realize that they are inside a cave, at the bottom of a shaft that acts as loading dock connecting with the outside.

The heroes start exploring. First they go to the first few levels below the cave, but they decide it doesn’t look promising, and they go back to the cave’s entrance and explore the 20m high shaft separating them from the fresh air. There they find the entrance to a crypt a few meters high and they go in. On the first level of the crypt they find purple moss grown on crypts, old helmets, clay containers and bottles. The second level is dedicated to storing lots of bottled humanoid and monstrous body fragments. Dawn decides that life is too short, he drinks one of the bottles with the most interesting bubbles, and starts levitating uncontrollably. The walls of the third level of the crypt are covered with sentences like “Psychopaths make the world go round”, “They are not the victims, I’m the victim”, and “You cannot understand me”. The highest level is dedicated to books, and contains a bed, a journal describing the painful existence of someone, and two checklists: one with a series of steps involving “poison the lake” and “destroy Ridgeport & kill my parents”, and another with a list of drug names.

It’s not until that moment that Til notices that they are not alone…

Featured characters

The heroes (level 1):

• Dawn: male wood elf ranger.
• Salazar Astorio: male human paladin.
• Til Grassthorn: male halfling rogue.

NPCs:

• Pandjed: dragonborn merchant who helped the heroes enter the goblin’s lair.
• Minnesota: female dwarf who hired the group to rescue Gighur.
• Gighur Shatterheat: male dwarf merchant.

Quotes & mementos

• Dawn throwing his fired up torch into a room full of alien purple moss to see if it’s flammable. DM note: on a parallel universe it was flammable and the party TPK’ed themselves out of existence in the first 10 minutes of the session.
• Salazar kicking a crate wall onto the unsuspecting goblin outside.
• Salazar carrying a levitating Dawn around the crypt by holding him through his foot like a balloon.