The Rise of the Runelords campaign continues one year after our party stopped the goblin threat facing Sandpoint! Here are our character!
Garinn Brightstar – halfling summoner 4, and his eidolon Brutus
Graak the Demolisher – half-orc fighter (two-handed fighter) 4
Inigo Montoya – half-orc hunter 4
Niozif Minar – human (Varisian) paladin (divine defender) 4
Oparal Tanglevine – elven alchemist 4
As Skaroband struggled to escape the giant crab’s death grip, a goblin chew toy shaped like a human fell out of her backpack. She clenched her teeth in agony. The crab’s pincer clamped more tightly, causing a spray of blood to burst out of her mouth as she fell still. Desperately, Courage laid his hands on her to stop her from bleeding.
Galadriel tossed a bomb at the beast, and Sanguinia charged in with her rapier and landed a blow. But the crab’s armor blocked many of the party’s attacks. Eventually, Garinn’s eidolon, the minotaur Brutus, gored him with his horns, scooping out a chunk of crab meat!
17th day of Lamashan, 4712 AR
The tentacled monstrosity proved to be no match for the experienced party. In its lair, they found the belongings of its previous victims, including some magical hide armor.
Sanguinia walked around the dungeon and started thinking about living in the complex.
“We could use a curtain here, to hide the fact there used to be human sacrifices here for demons and such,” she said.
“Let’s have a bridge toll!” yelled Galadriel.
“Maybe the goblin children’s room would make a good torture chamber,” Skaroband said.
“How about we deal with the monsters first,” said Courage. “I still sense lurking evil in this place.”
Jaden surveyed the rooms with his hunter’s eye.
“This place would need some major renovations.” Indeed — they would need to air out this old house before redecorating.
(Catching up on old write-ups! …)
The party of Sanguinia (rogue), Courage (paladin), and Jaden (ranger) had gone ahead to explore the dungeon beneath the goblin fort on Thistletop, and were now being overwhelmed by another party consisting of a mage, a bugbear ranger, a human fighter and some goblins. Courage and Sanguinia soon fell, as Jaden backed into a corner, shooting arrows at the goblins menacing him.
Just at that moment, Skaroband (ninja), Galadriel (alchemist) Garinn (summoner) and his eidolon the longspear-wielding minotaur Brutus, arrived at the scene, having returned to Thistletop Island from Sandpoint! The mage cast a spell causing multiple copies of her to appear, and other spells to harangue the party, including a spell that made the floor slippery. Galadriel’s bombs felled the goblins easily, as Skaroband did an acrobatic flip over the enemies’ heads and beneath the dungeon ceiling that allowed her to get into better position. She performed her vanishing trick and snuck blows in against the bugbear, who under the combined blows of Skaroband and Brutus soon fell. Skaroband than retreated back into a side passage.
The fighter, a man wearing magical armor, did heavy damage to Brutus (sending him back to his home plane) and others with his wicked-looking bastard sword. He charged toward Skaroband but was tripped by Brutus! As the party swarmed around them, and as Jaden’s arrows sifted through the illusionary copies of the enemy mage, it was clear that the battle had turned. The fighter turned on his own party, slicing down the mage with his bastard sword!
After the battle, Orik Vancaskerkin explained that he was a mercenary for hire, rather liked Sandpoint, and had no deep devotion to their leader, Nualia, and her cause to raid the town and burn its inhabitants. The party, nearly depleted by the tough battle, decided to return to town before exploring the underground complex further. They left Orik behind in town…
Sanguinia clambered atop the jutting island that supported the goblin fortress. The island’s rounded top made it difficult to establish a solid support for the rope. She eventually found a place to secure her rope and drop it down to the rest of the Sandpoint raiding party.
Silently, Sanguinia, Courage, Jaden, and four men-at-arms reached the top of the island. They surveyed the fort and its surroundings, as chilly sea air blew in from the west. Sanguinia scouted ahead to look around the right corner of the fort, when a goblin dog approached her from the fort’s other side. She took a dagger and threw it into the feral creature’s throat, silencing it. Three more goblin dogs approached from the far corner.
Jaden loosed arrows from his bow, firing twice as many arrows at the goblin dogs as did the men-at-arms next time. They followed suit in admiration of their compatriot. Sanguinia charged ahead into the fray, maneuvering into position for one of her brutal backstabs.
One of the town guards tried to put the fort to the torch, but the wood was damp with moisture and slow-burning. They would have to resort to a more direct approach against the goblins…
Courage sliced the goblin druid’s throat, and the party began to argue over whether to camp or to explore farther ahead as Galadriel and Sanguinia sat on the ground weakened by their wounds. After several minutes of dilly-dallying, about a dozen goblins approached them from behind! However, they offered little trouble: Skaroband held them off as Galadriel flinged bombs into their midst. Only four of them remained when they chose to flee.
The party decided it was wiser to return at this point, now that their magical abilities were largely depleted. As they traveled back down the rise along Thistletop River, the elven ranger Shalelu Andosana appeared!
Galadriel searched her backpack for an appropriate wine glass for the occasion. But alas, this was a rare instance in which the alchemist was unprepared. Sanguinia, not a stranger to improvisation, sipped the wine they had found in the Catacombs from a wooden cup, as they relaxed on the back porch of their new home looking out over the Sandpoint Beach. The sun shone down on the party in the bright, clear morning.
Jaden closed one eye as he trained his longbow on his crude drawing of a goblin on the porch step.
“Watch where you point that thing!” yelled Skaroband. She turned her body so that the sun could reach her neglected spots. Courage, the eldest among them, sat on the corner of the porch in his breastplate, maintaining his vigil looking at the dock.
“Ah! I see one of the halflings now!” he yelled, pointing toward the Fatman’s Feedbag. A halfling had his arm in a sling and looked up at the morning sunshine.
“Maybe Garinn will forgive us after all?” asked Sanguinia.
“Even if he does, I doubt we’ll ever see him again,” quipped Skaroband. The others chuckled.
“Aww, give him a break,” said Jaden. “After all, this is a time to relax. We did nearly get killed yesterday.”
“Again!” said Sanguinia, shuddering at the thought of wrestling a cold zombie at the bottom of a pit. “Whenever I see a hole now, I jump away.”
Courage continued looking toward the dock. Skaroband looked at him knowingly and propped herself up on an elbow.
“Feeling guilty now, eh?” said Skaroband. “Is this about how we used some of Garinn’s money on the new house?”
Courage turned to her.
“So it doesn’t bother you that we might have MURDERED several innocent people last night?”
“Oh,” Skaroband said. “That.”
Erylium
Sanguinia stood in the darkness with her awkwardly-angled limbs and considered fleeing the horror befalling her friends beyond the double doors. Desperate screams of battle echoed through chamber. Finding a last ounce of resolve, she grasped her rapier with her one good arm and limped through the portal.
She found her friends scanning their eyes about and pointing towards the ceiling.
Suddenly, a small, scaly demon with wings appeared out of thin air, her sharp claws pointing down toward Courage trying to gain a grip on his mind.
Courage buckled under the quasit demon’s mental assault, panicked, and ran out of the room.
Jaden closed one eye and trained his masterwork longbow on the demon and nocked a cold-iron arrow that entered her leg. She recoiled from the blow.
“How DARE you invade the Mother’s sanctum!” the demon, Erylium, cried. She yelled at two deformed sinspawn that stood near a glowing, orange pool on a raised platform above the room.
“Attack them! KIIIIILL them!” She hovered near the room’s ceiling, out of reach of most of the party’s weapons. She began casting a spell that caused the air in the middle of the room to shimmer.
The party, after searching some of the goblins’ bodies for valuables, darted among the shattered glass toward the back of the Kaijitsu Glass Factory where the three goblins had escaped. They soon found a locked door and a stairwell leading down into the darkness.
They lit their torches and sneaked down quietly. They turned a corner and came upon the remaining goblins! The goblins put up a fair fight, but backed away behind another corner, where a tall half-elf — the Rusty Dragon owner’s brother, Tsuto Kaijitsu — joined in the fray.
The upcoming melee was long and brutal, as Tsuto proved to be an accomplished martial artist as well as a crook who consorted with goblins. It took the combined effort most of the party — some members, such as Garinn, weren’t able to be much use in the crowded hallway — to take him down. (Galadriel stuffed a bomb down his shirt, with explosive results.)
Tsuto Kaijitsu
The interrogation proved quick and… fruitless. Tsuto, bound and bloodied, stared defiantly at his tormentors and said nary a word. They killed him after it was clear that nothing (short of magic… ahem -GM) would have convinced him otherwise. However, his journal proved more revealing:
“Awkward!” said Sanguinia.
Indeed — it had a picture of a naked woman with demonic wings. But next to Tsuto’s provocative portrait of “his love” was evidence that he had been part of a larger group of conspirators, the same group that had orchestrated the goblin raid a week ago:
The young heroes stood around the mausoleum at Sandpoint Cathedral which was supposed to house the remains of Father Tobyn. Apparently, the goblin raid at the Swallowtail Festival was to create a distraction, while another group of goblins (with another larger humanoid apparently) stole his remains.
On the next day, Toilday, more and more young women were giving Garinn flirtatious looks — he and the other students were becoming the talk of the town.
A distraught Amele Barrett ran up to them with her two children in tow. Ever since around the time of the Swallowtail Festival, soon after she read her son his bedtime stories and tucked him in, she and her husband would hear him screaming in his room. He said there was a goblin in his closet. Her husband scolded the child to “be a man” and not to imagine such things. But on this particular night, their son’s screams turned shrill. They ran in to find that a goblin had stabbed their dog dead and was trying to chew their son’s arms off. Amele had taken her children and run to the young heroes in a panic.
The party reached the house to find it eerily silent. They saw Amele’s husband’s silent form lying face-down in the closet.
 | John on Abomination Vaults #6: The Gre… |
 | Roman on Signal of Screams #2: Operatio… |
 | DM from somewhere ir… on Rappan Athuk #122+123: To Chal… |
 | DDOCentral on Hell’s Rebels #63: The… |
| Hell’s Rebels… on Hell’s Rebels #56: Jackd… |
Pathfinders' Guild of Berkeley 