Session 14 -- Triple Crossed?

On the way back to Granny Crabapple, the party continued debating whether or not they should hand over the nail for passage to the Shadowfell. The fire giants had told them that the nail could be used to bind the Sylvana, a powerful nature spirit, in an effort to harness her power to destabilize the Feywild and the Shadowfell both.   Desiring answers, Murchad called out to Lily, hoping she would hear him, as she seemed to be watching them.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, holding the nail aloft, and hoping that would get her attention.

It did.

Lily appeared nearby.

She tells them that she is niether friend nor foe to Granny Crabapple. Her concern is to keep the children from falling into Malek’s hands.   She also tells them that Malek is already known to them by another name: Moloch, the demon. He and his consort are the ones trying to get the children, and Lily wants to stop them.  

Still, the party wanted to avoid Granny Crabapple and go to the Cave at the World’s End.  The party asks her for help in the form of transportation or magical items, but she said she could not help them in that way.   Instead, she gave Murchad inspiration to fill in more of the map, which he did.   She also explained more about how time works in the Feywild and the Shadowfell. She was able to tell them that while they had only been in the Feywild about a week, 187 days had passed back on Earth.  Before she left, she said she’d do what she could to help them and ease their journey (they had no random encounters during the hexcrawl).

The party wanted to see if they could get the attention of the water elemental and/or the river spirit, so they had Jack shoot his gun, and when that didn’t work, they started dancing. None of that brought the attention they wanted, but the ferry halfling thought they were very odd (but he started dancing with them anyway).

The party took the halfling ferry south.   As they made their way around the Caldera Mountains (they wanted to avoid Granny Crabapple), they separated into two groups, with Dwårfy, Jack, and Ceangal going one way, and Murchad, Vedica, and Tiv going the other.

The rest of this story involves Murchad, Vedica, and Tiv.

They stumbled across the fortified village of the hobgoblin Shadowfoot Tribe. On a cliff overlooking the village, however, they noticed a party of the Bloodfang Tribe.  

The group went down to the gates in the palisade wall of the village and were stopped by a guard. He and those on the parapets didn’t want to let them in, but one of the hobgoblins up there recognized the party as the people who rescued him and his friends in the Swamp of Ineffable Gloom when they were attacked by the Bloodfang Tribe. Once the party called the Shadowfoot hobgoblins’ attention to the Bloodfang presence above them, they panicked and closed the gates. Murchad shot a crossbow bolt in their direction, and they backed away from the edge of the cliff (the couple that had been up there, watching the village).

Vedica used her ring of invisibility to conceal her as she slipped over the palisade and snuck up to the Bloodfang camp. There were six hobgoblins up there. She couldn’t tell exactly what they were talking about in Hobgoblin, but it seemed to her that some wanted to attack the village right now, while others knew they had been seen and wanted to leave. Vedica snuck around behind their tent and set it on fire. In the ensuing panic, she saw their leader grab a bag from inside the tent. She ran down to the village to get back inside the walls before their attack.

The attack never came, however.   The Shadowfoot Chieftain, Rorbog, told them that the Bloodfang leader, Lurg, has a magical axe that rends hobgoblins in two.  The party offered to raid their settlement and steal it, and Rorbog told them that they could take Shac, the shaman, as a guide to the Bloodfang settlement. First, the party went to the camp, which was still burning. They realized that the camp was really only there to scout the village, and that the Bloodfang hobgoblins likely took the north road back to their settlement. They decided to catch up to them and try to prevent them from reaching their base.

They did catch them, and a battle on a forested road ensued. This was made much easier by Shac casting Web and entrapping the Bloodfang. They killed all but one (including the commander), and they took him back to the Shadowfoot village as a wounded prisoner. They also managed to retrieve the bag which contained plans of the fortifications and weaknesses, as well as a count of how many Shadowfoot were there.

The party opted first to go to the Ironclaw village. Rorbog had told them that the Shadowfoot had been allying with the Ironclaw for mutual protection and a chance to get Gobrender, the magical axe.

Once they got to the Ironclaw village, however, they found the gates closed. They approached from the north, and the guard there would not open the gate for them. While Shac and he argued about why he wouldn’t open the gate for a friend, Vedica again used her ring of invisibility and climbing skills to get over the wall and look around. While there, she looked through a window and saw the Ironclaw leader meeting with three of the Bloodfang Tribe.

Heading back to her friends, she told them (but not Shac) what she had seen. The party started coming up with a plan to get inside and burn the village for its treachery, which morphed into a plan to get inside and fight the Bloodfang contingent, which eventually morphed into a plan to just go directly to the Bloodfang fort and attack them directly (the Bloodfang fort is a stone-walled outpost abandoned by the Neheuol elves long ago). They wanted to have Vedica sneak over the walls and use the tarantella poison they have to kill the entire outpost.   On the way, they realized that the poison would not kill them, but it might make it easier to kill them themselves.

When they arrived at the site, they found a war party of Ironclaw hobgoblins already there, getting ready to attack.   As the Ironclaw plan (a frontal assault on a fortified position) was not a very good one, the party convinced them to let them get in there with the poison first, and to use Shac and the two Ironclaw shamans to cast dispel magic in the event that the dancing spread to any party members.

With that, they thought they heard Jack, Dwårfy, and Ceangal approaching, so they paused to see if they could launch their plans with more allies instead.