Session 4 - The Kaitjitsu Blossom

We all climb aboard the rowboat behind Megus' shack, and start to row towards the point on the map where we've been pointed out to find the second shipwreck.

We approach the wreck.  It's far more intact than the other one, this one doesn't seem to have been burned.  However, it's still clearly been here for quite some time and is clearly very dilapidated.

The boat also appears to be Tien in origin, same as the Kaijitsu Star.  As we approach the boat, a few skeletons assemble from bits and pieces in the mud and shamble towards us.

We beat them up until they stay down.  As we're searching the leftover bone piles we notice that the ones that look the most dead were the ones that Sula knocked out with her Quarterstaff, and all of our slashing type weapons seem to have mostly just glanced off of the bones without causing as much damage.

The nameplate on the ship reads "Kaijitsu Blossom".  It's a little bit bigger than the Kaijitsu Star.  We search it all over, but there's nothing of value left.  It's clearly been here for quite a long time and been looted pretty well by now.

So we leave, and row the boat towards the location of the cave on the maps.  We row up a small river and search around.  Eventually we find the entrance to the cave.  It's overgrown with vines, although they appear to have been recently disturbed somewhat.

We can't see any footprints, but we think someone's been through here fairly recently.  We start to head through.  Qunna makes it through no problem.  Shadow touches the vines and discovers that they're stinging nettles.  Bukka fixes up the stings, and we cut down the vines from the entrance before the rest of us enter.

The inside of the cave is wet, algae grows on the walls.  The only sound in the cave is the sound of running water over the cave floor.  There's a small stream twisting through the various rooms of the cave.  We walk into one of the rooms, and wade through some of the water.  It's about three feet deep.

As we round a bend a giant spider scuttles out of a corner and rears up at us.  In the corner is the body of a huge gecko that the spider was eating.  The spider tries really hard to eat us, but we don't let it. 

Once we've dealt with that we keep exploring.  There's several forks in the cave, and we manage to determine that a few of them are connected to each other.  One of the forks we explore leads to a dead end with a bit of a deeper pool of water in it.  Bukka casts light on a rock from the cave floor and we throw it down into the pool.  We can see something sparkling down at the bottom of the pool.

We discuss the best way to get it, as nobody really thinks that getting into the water might be the best idea.  While we're all squabbling over how best to retrieve the sparkly thing, Shadow sneaks away from the group and dives into the water to retrieve it.  As she's swimming to the bottom she's slammed by a giant amoeba.

After we dispatch the amoeba, we dive down again and retrieve the sparkly objects.

As it turns out, they're gemstones.  None of us is exactly sure what they are, but we all think they're probably worth at least some money, so we take them with us.

Session 3 - The Witch's Walk

After defeating the goblin chief, we head back into the store room to have a real look through the contents of the fancy chest.  There's a bunch of stuff in there, but the one thing that draws our eyes the most is a fancy paper fan with a map scrawled on the back.

After reviewing the map for a while, we think it's a map of the swamp.  It's got a few places marked on it that we've been, and a few that we're going to check out, including another boat wreck.

We gather up the rest of our stuff and carry on searching the rest of the camp.  We search through a bunch of empty filthy goblin houses and another guard tower.  Shadow sneaks into the next building ahead of us and finds that there's a single goblin left in there.  It's the same one that we beat up earlier who ran away.  It's squabbling over some things it's trying to pack up, and while it isn't paying attention, Qunna catches it in her net so we can ask it some questions.

• What's up with all the burned bodies in the pit?
• "The Big Boss took the chest from the cave, from the empties.  The empties came.  Like longshanks, but no meat!"  We all know that longshanks is the goblin word for humans and other tall folks.
• What about the bodies in the moat?
• He seems proud as he explains that the goblins killed some of the empties.  "Not helpless!  Did it all myself!"
• Did the empties burn the house?
• "No!  Scribbles used words!  Words take souls!"  He explains that the goblins burned that house on their own.
• Do you know about Megus?
• "Don't go there!  She catches goblins...  Changes them...  Not good.  Not good."  He seems genuinely a bit afraid.
• Did the longshank empties come from the witch?
• "No, from the cave.  Nice chest!  But empties didn't like us taking it."
• Where is the cave?
• "Down."  Helpful.
• How did some of you survive when the empties attacked?
• "The empties just left."

We show him the map on the fan.  He points to a shipwreck and tells us that that's where the fireworks came from.  It's not the one we've already visited, it's a bit further into the swamp.  He also points to where the empties cave is.  Since he was actually helpful, we decide to let him go.  Qunna flings him over the fence and we hear him scamper off into the woods.

The last room in the building are an empty storeroom full of rusty tools.  We come across another guard tower and a couple more empty houses.  One is a little fancier than the others and has only a single bed in it as opposed to the rows of bunks we've seen in the other houses.  Nothing worth noting stands out to us in any of the houses though.

We decide that rather than head back to town now we're going to keep pushing ahead into the swamp and investigate the last few points of interest that we've got to take a look at.  But the day is drawing to a close, so we think it would be wise to sleep here instead of exploring the swamp at night.

The Chief's hall seems to be the sturdiest building of the lot, so we head there, clean up some of the battle gore, barricade the doors, and sleep for the night.

---

In the morning we talk through our plan.  We're going to check out the second boat wreck that the goblin claims is where they found the fireworks first, then try to find Megus and see if she can tell us anything.

We head out of the goblin village, and as we're leaving, we notice that there's a path broken through the swamp.  What's strange is that it's taller than a path that would have been left by a goblin.  We think maybe the empties probably left it.  We decide to follow it and see where it leads us.  We come to a narrow place in a small river probably about 50 feet across.  We swim to the other side.

We pick up the trail again, lose it for a minute, find it again, and follow it to the end.  It opens up into a proper walking path.  Based on where we are, we think heading left will lead us out of the swamp, and heading right should lead to the shore.  We head right.

After a few minutes we pop out at a weathered looking shack with an outbuilding. 

We approach the outbuilding first.  It's very run down.  The door is swollen shut from the wet swamp air, and the walls a broken up in several places.  Peering in, we can see that it's just a storage shed, there's some gardening tools and supplies, but most interestingly, there's three dire rats who jump out and attack us.

We fight the rats for a while and eventually fend them off.  We get in the shed and look closer, but all we find is rat droppings and rat prints.  There's some other prints mixed in, they look like they were made by tiny human hands.  We aren't really sure what to make of them.  They aren't doing anything particularly interesting, just wandering around, but it's still pretty strange.

We head over to the house, and peek in some windows.  Someone thinks they see a small flash of movement, but nobody can pin down anything specific.  We knock on the door, but nobody answers.  This door is also swollen and stuck, so Sula kicks it in.

The inside of the house is overgrown with fungus.  It's growing on the walls and the floors.  Everything is damp and humid and gross.  There's a usable broom in one corner, but otherwise, nothing special.  We find what at one point would have been a bedroom.  There's some bookshelves, but all the books are moldy, and we don't really want to take any of them.  We also find a porch, a toilet, and a kitchen.  All of which are covered in fungus.  As we're poking around in the kitchen, a rat with a human face runs in from a hole in the wall yelling "Intruders!"  It attacks us.

We fight with it for a while, and it runs into another hole in the wall on the other side of the room.  We think it's run off, but it pops out behind us and attacks again.  We eventually manage to kill the monstrosity.  Sula looks into the wall where it was popping in and out, but there's nothing special about it, it's just a hole in a wall.

We move past the kitchen and find what looks like it could best be described as a lab.  There's a workbench with chemical stains and crystalline growths on it.   And in a chair in front of the bench is a totally bizarre looking skeleton. 

The skull is half melted, one arm has talons, and there's huge spurs of bones protruding from the ribs, both inward and outward.  It looks like some kind of horrible experiment gone wrong.

In the lab we find another map of the swamp, this one more proper.  We finally put two and two together and realize that we've found the witches hut, and Megus is no longer around to ask questions of.  As we leave we set off a firework in the house to burn away the filth and hopefully deter other vermin from gathering in the area.

We set off to find the other shipwreck, and as we're leaving, we notice that there's a path leading from the house to the shore.  Down by the shore we find a small pier with a well maintained rowboat big enough to seat the four of us.  As Megus won't be needing it anymore, we decide to take it to get over to the other shipwreck.

Session 2 - Brinestump Marsh

While Walthus fixes us a bit of lunch, we discuss our plans.  We figure it would be best to start by checking out the area where the smoke appeared prior to the goblins getting rowdy.  Then head up to the goblin camp.  We can track down old Megus once we're done with the goblins.

Walthus agrees to ferry us across the river in his boat.  Once he has us all across, he explains that in order to reach the smoke, we just need to follow the coastline.  He also gives us general directions on how to find the Licktoad village, and the Witch's Walk.  So we set off walking towards the direction of the smoke.

We eventually reach what appears to be the burned up remains of a sailing ship.  It's pretty destroyed to hard to say for sure, but it was pretty clearly a large ocean going vessel.  We do find the nameplate and we're able to discern that the name of the boat was "The Kaijitsu Star".  That's Ameiko's last name as well, which is an interesting tidbit.  We search it, but it's been pretty thoroughly looted and burned.

We take a look around, and we see some fairly old goblin footprints.  Looks like 4 distinct sets to us.  They head up the river, in the direction where we're pretty sure the goblin camp is.  So, we start following them.

Eventually, we reach what appears to be a big fence, about 10 feet tall.  Shadow climbs up and stealthily peeks her head out to take a look.  It's a series of buildings set about 5 feet up off the ground, connected by a series of catwalks.

There's no activity to be seen, but there does seem to be a pit with what looks like some burnt up bodies in it, and a pool of water with some disturbances in the dirt around it.

We take a quick walk around the fence and find an open gate.  From the gate, we can see better into both the pit and the pool of water.  The pit seems to be full of burned up goblin bodies.  The pool seems to have human sized bones littered into it.  The bones are very well cleaned, and there only seems to be enough here to account for a few people at most.

Shadow takes a quick lap of the camp sneakily staying under the catwalks.  Nothing seems to be happening, nobody seems to be there.  So we go in and have a look at the pit, aiming to find us some goblin ears for the bounty.  As we're starting to rummage, there's a shout and several goblins come running out of one of the buildings.


They're foul little creatures, but they seem to be pretty afraid, despite the fact that they're attacking us.  Qunna captures one in her net temporarily and asks it why it's so afraid.  It manages to string together "All will die!  The Empties are coming!  They'll kill everyone!"  We aren't sure what that means exactly, but he doesn't provide any other useful information.  As he's screaming, more goblins come out of another building.

All said and done, we gather 10 fresh goblin ears, and one goblin gets away and runs back into a building.  We then scavenge another 3 slightly charred ears from the pit.

So, knowing there's at least one more goblin mucking about, we take a look around.  One of the closest buildings is a guard tower about 5 feet taller than the remaining buildings, so Shadow sneaks up to have a look around.  She notices a goblin running along a catwalk towards the rear of the camp.

We decide that's not really a threat, so we take a quick look at the building the goblins initially came out of.  There's nothing valuable in there, it's mostly just a dirty goblin home with a bunch of filthly little beds.

Moving on, we find the burned up remains of an old building.  It doesn't seem to have been burned any time recently, and we aren't sure why it would have been.  We climb up onto the nearby catwalk and look into another building.  It's another goblin house, nothing remarkable and reasonably dirty.

The catwalk behind this house leads to a more fortified looking building.  Slightly bigger than the rest, and with strong looking doors.  We try them, but they seem to be barred from the inside.  Shadow remembers from her sneak about that there was a ladder that lead up to the rear of the building, so we go around back and have a look.  Sure enough, there's a very poorly hidden door.

We all go inside and find a very ornate looking chest.  We have a quick check for traps.   Nobody sees any, so we pop open the lid.

As the lid opens, it tips back and thuds against the nearby wall.  Suddenly, we hear a goblin voice shout out "What was that?!  Check the treasure!"  Then the door opens suddenly and we're in combat with goblins again.  One of these ones is more interesting than the others, he seems to be wearing a crown made of spikes, and he's holding a longbow.

As it turns out, one of the other goblins has fireworks, which he aims at us and sets off.  We manage to put the firework out, and exchange blows with the goblins for a while.  Eventually the only one who remains is the one in the crown, and Qunna finishes him off with a massive blow.  We take his stuff.

We surmise that this was the goblin chief, and we take his head so we can take it back for the Sheriff's bounty.

Session 1 - Animal Party

Introducing the party!

Amy --> Sula, Female Vanara Monk

Glenda --> Shadow, Female Catfolk Rogue

Holly --> Qunna, Female Grippli Fighter

Alex --> Bukka, Male Tengu Oracle

The adventure starts in the small Varisian town of Sandpoint.

Sandpoint has a population of about 1200 people, mostly humans.  We're all familiar with the town, having grown up here.  There's a few popular places in town:

• The Rusty Dragon Inn
• It's a popular inn and tavern with a big metal dragon on the roof that's quite rusty.
• Run by a human woman named Ameiko Kaijitsu, she used to be an adventurer and people come there to hear her tell stories about her travels.  She's been known to give discounts to any adventurer looking for a place to stay who can tell her an interesting story.
• The White Deer Inn
• Another inn and tavern.  This is the primary competition for the Rusty Dragon, although it's tough, the Rusty Dragon is pretty popular.
• Cracktooth's Tavern
• Fatman's Feedbag
• Known for giving large quantities of food.  Not necessarily of any good quality.
• The Hagfish
• A rowdier tavern where people mostly get drunk and fight.  They have a standing challenge where patrons can win money for successfully drinking drinking a tankard of hagfish slime.

One morning, the town Sheriff Belor Hemlock called a town meeting at the Rusty Dragon for all the adventurey type people in town.

Sheriff Hemlock explains that there's been more goblin activity in Sandpoint in recent weeks than there usually is.  There's been attacks on caravans traveling down the lost coast.  Fortunately, it's been more of a nuisance than anything, a few broken limbs, that sort of thing.  The big difference is that this time they've gotten their hands on a stockpile of fireworks.  They've been spooking horses and setting things on fire.  Generally a real pain.

The Sheriff's solution is that he's going to re-instate the goblin bounty.  The town will pay out 1 gold for each intact goblin ear that's brought in.  And they'll pay 200g for the head of the goblin chief.

He tells everyone to be careful out there.  A week ago or so a party of young people headed off into the swamp where the goblins make their home and hasn't been heard from since.  The Sheriff isn't too concerned about them.  Lots of young people are running off to the big city of Magnimar lately, and he figures these ones likely have as well.  However, he's also offering 50g to anyone who can bring him any information about them that he can tell their families.

We stick around for a few minutes to talk to the Sheriff and get some more details.  He tells us that there are several tribes of goblins in the area:

• The Birdcruncher goblins live in caves along the western edge of the Devil's Platter and are known to be traditionally less agressive.
• The Seven Tooth goblins live in Shank's Wood and occasionally raid the local junkyard.
• The Mosswood goblins are the largest tribe, but they don't often cause much trouble, they're too busy fighting amongst themselves.
• The Thistletop goblins hold a very impressive lair, but their involvement in raids on the town in recent years lead to a party of adventurers significantly thinning their numbers.
• The Licktoad goblins of Brinestump Marsh are known for being excellent swimmers, and they're the ones who've gotten their hands on the fireworks recently.

So we ask about Brinestump Marsh.  The Sheriff tells us that the marsh is about 2 miles south of town.  He shows us a map:

He tells us that there's two entrances to the swamp.  The first you come to is called the new fishing path.  The second is the old fishing path.  There's a halfling named Walthus Proudstump who lives along the new fishing path.  He's a little crazy, and lives all alone with his snakes, but he almost certainly knows the swamp better than anyone.  He might be able to help out.

We all agree that it would be best to stop by and see Walthus, so we head off on foot towards the Marsh.  About 20 minutes later, we pass a small bridge.  As we pass, we hear a stick snapping in the woods, and we look and see a pair of glowing red eyes looking back at us, but when we look again, they're gone.  We check around in the woods, but aren't able to find anything to suggest that a creature had just been there.

It's a little spooky, but we just carry on.  Another 20 minutes pass and we find ourselves in a bog where we notice that it's eerily quiet.  There's no typical animal and insect sounds.  As we walk a little further we come to a second bridge.  Near this one we find a footprint in some mud.  It's the size of a human, but none of us can identify the type of creature that left the print.  We can tell it's not recent.  It's been there for a while.

So we move on.  Shadow plays us a song on her lute as we walk.  We find a third bridge.  On this one we notice that someone has set up an eel trap.  Shadow checks it and finds an eel, which she takes.  As we leave the bridge we can see a small two story house
in the swamp up ahead.  We figure this must be Walthus' place.

We head up to the house.  Shadow does a quick once around the house, but doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary, so we knock on the door.  We're greeted by a disheveled looking halfing man. 

We explain that we've come to investigate the recent goblin activity and we've heard that he's a bit of an expert on the swamp, and that we were hoping to ask him some questions.  He seems uneasy, and tells us that he doesn't actually know much about the goblins and that he's rather busy, and it would be best if we kept moving on.

We get the vibe that he's hiding something, so we ask if we could come in for a cup of tea before we leave, we have been walking all morning and it would be nice to rest for a few minutes.  He seems to reluctantly agree and lets us in.  As he leads us to his kitchen, Shadow sneaks away from the group to look at the rest of his house.

He goes about making some tea.  He doesn't seem to be able to find the tea in his cupboards, and when he does, he puts a handful of tea directly into the kettle, fills it with water and sets it on the stove, but doesn't start a fire or anything.  We press him a little bit about the goblins and the swamp, but he maintains that he doesn't really know anything about it.

Meanwhile, Shadow has headed upstairs.  She mostly finds a couple of bedrooms, but while looking around one, she notices a small hidden door and opens it.  Inside, she finds a wounded looking unconscious halfling who looks identical to the one downstairs.  She wakes him up, and he seems very shocked.  He asks if "it" is still here and mumbles vaguely that "it had no face..."   Shadow tells him to stay put.

She sneaks back downstairs and comes into the kitchen with the rest of us and tries to whisper to Sula that she found Walthus upstairs and that this is an imposter.  Unfortunately, the imposter hears what she's whispering.  As he does, his skin ripples and shifts and he turns into a hideous lumpy looking creature with no face.

He immediately attacks us.  As we're all pretty new with our weapons, we all flail around pretty ineffectively not really hitting him very much.  Eventually Qunna manages to land a solid blow and the creature goes down in a heap.

We head upstairs and get Walthus and let him know that it's safe to come out.  He's quite relieved.  And explains to us that the creature attacked him yesterday while he was doing some gardening with his snakes.  They had a fight, and Walthus managed to do him some damage, but it wasn't looking good.  At a decisive moment, he managed to get away and hide upstairs.  He's been hidden there ever since, he thought he was a goner for sure, so he's pretty happy to see us.  He also takes some time to check on his snakes in his garden.

Bukka heals some of the injuries that we got fighting the monster, and everyone relaxes a little bit.  Walthus offers to make us some tea and is subsequently appauled by the attempted tea the monster tried to make.

Now that we've met the real Walthus, we explain again that we're here to investigate the goblins who've been causing trouble.  He's all too familiar with the problems.  He says they're usually not much trouble, but they've recently found a bunch of fireworks, and this has given them a big confidence boost.  They usually leave him alone, but they've been shooting fireworks at him recently, and he's had to chase them off a few times.

So we ask a few questions:

• Where is the goblin camp?
• It's a little deeper into the swap, he explains.  You can either cross a river to get there from here, or you can take the old fishing path from the main road.
• How wide is the river you have to cross if you don't take the old path?
• It's not that wide, but you'd probably still want a boat.  He has one that he'd be willing to take us over in.  He doesn't want us to take it alone because if we leave it on the side of the river goblins are likely to either steal it or burn it.
• Why are the goblins so much worse behaved lately?
• Just before all the trouble started, he saw a big plume of smoke coming from the swamp somewhat to the west of the goblin camp.  He's not sure what it was, but figures it's probably related somehow.
• We saw some footprints and red eyes looking at us from the woods on our way here.  Is that the goblins?
• No!  He seems shocked that we've seen that.  People are calling it the Soggy River Monster.  He often notices it watching him when he's in the swamp and he finds it a little frightening.
• Has it hurt anyone?
• Not that he's aware of, but he's lived here for a long time and he knows the swamp really well.  It's certainly possible that a less experienced person could be in some danger.
• Have you heard of anyone getting lost in the swamp lately?
• No, but people don't often stop by to visit him.  Only the occasional fisherman looking to ask about the best fishing holes.
• Is the Soggy River Monster the only thing in the woods to be worried about?
• Well, there's old Megus, but she's gone quite crazy.  He's found some mutilated animal corpses and stuff around.  He avoids her as much as he can.  If we really want to meet her, there's a third entrance to the swamp that the locals call the Witch's Walk, and it leads to her shack.
• Is she hostile to strangers?
• Depends on her mood.  On good days, she might be pretty talkative.  She tends to wander the swamp and probably knows it better than anyone else.  Walthus himself mostly sticks to the coast, does a bit of fishing and gardening, that sort of thing.

He tells us that we're more than welcome to stay for dinner and rest overnight here if we want to.