The goblins demanded (in common) that the party lay down their weapons, because the party was being summoned by "the ladies." Evidently, these "ladies" were in charge of the goblins, and, as the party discovered during a brief parlay, they had been watched and deemed powerful enough for an audience. The party used this to their advantage and in return demanded that the goblins lay down their arms and escort the party. Keeri Lo turned into a giant crab, Julius spoke as the voice of the crab lord, goblins bowed and mostly bought it. After a brief whispered discussion, the two goblins riding on crabs told the rest to give up their weapons, and the party had an unarmed escort to...somewhere.
That somewhere ended up being a village several miles away in a bay by the ocean where there was a goblin town made of mud huts and buildings created from several wrecked ships. As the party entered the town with their escort, goblins lined the streets, forsaking their menial jobs and play to see the crab king and company. Even the goblin daycare (complete with bugbear nursemaids) came out to see them as they wound through the crooked streets to a huge house in the middle where three women waited on the veranda to meet them.
The first woman was an ancient crone asleep in a rocking chair, the second a grumpy and pudgy middle aged woman, and the third was a young lady who looked like Amy Winehouse. The youngest lady took the lead, greeting them excitedly with a loud, nasal voice and gushing over how stoked she was to finally meet them, because the ladies had "been watching the party for a while to see if they were the kind of people they needed." The youngest lady introduced herself as Hindra, the grumpy one was introduced as Haras, and the oldest was Hagatha, and the party was invited into the home for dinner.
RIP. Also, voiced by Janice from Friends.
Inside the house, the party was first struck by how large the house was compared to the outside. Clearly, magic was at play here. Secondly, they were overwhelmed by the amount of...stuff inside. There were Hoarders style piles of boxes, crates, scrolls, weapons, clothing, armor, tapestries, and just random junk everywhere. As Haras moved off to start the dinner (and Hagatha stayed asleep on the front porch), Hindra leveled with the party and explained why they had used their goblin minions to summon them to meet with the three ladies.
Basically, the ladies were tied to the area magically (speculation, in order, ran: hags, fey, or minor deities. nobody got a straight answer on what they were). A green dragon, just a small one, had stolen a magical jewel from the ladies several months back, and the ladies wanted their artifact returned but couldn't get to the dragon. They wanted the party to go recover the jewel and offered dinner and item-based compensation plus whatever they wanted from the dragon's hoard as log as they returned the jewel.
After pretending to use the bathroom, slipping into the curtain, and consulting with the Barrys (the chimera heads gave no real answer other than their master was scared of the ladies while he was still alive), the party decided that they could really use some more stuff and agreed to help. Everyone went to bed except Keeri Lo, who slipped out of the guest room after his friends were sleeping. He was searching for Hindra, who had also gone to bed, but the newly awakened Hagatha pointed our horny merman to Hindra's room, where the sexy time happened. Both Hindra and Keeri Lo had "a good time", and our merman slipped back into the guest room. Julius and Valen woke up enough to guess what had happened, but everyone slept for the rest of the night.
It's been a while since I've had to do one of these in a game...
The next morning, the party was given wooden, toy horses by the hags over breakfast. Keeri Lo took the red horse, which comes into play later, and there was a white one, black, green, and blue too. Each could turn into a full sized wooden horse that could unerringly take its rider to a set location. The team took off, and headed to the dragon.
Finally, they found the ruined keep where the dragon supposedly lived, parked the horses in the nearby woods, and decided to come up with a plan. There were several trees growing through the keep's walls, and since they couldn't see the dragon, they surmised that it was hiding in the trees. Keeri Lo decided that he would head up to the keep and try to draw the dragon away by turning into something that could outrun it while the rest of the party looted its hoard.
Keeri Lo headed in, and was quickly confronted by a juvenile green dragon. Because of course why not, he flirted with it, it threatened to eat him (oddly flirtatiously), he turned into a seagull, and a chase scene commenced. The rest of the party sneaked into the ruined keep, busted into an old storeroom, realized there wasn't much there, and headed to the stairs. Upstairs, they found a hole in the roof and the dragon's nest (which was made of pine branches and thousands of copper pieces), so they headed back downstairs and down to the basement.
In the meantime, Keeri Lo was leading the dragon on a merry chase. He had noticed a collar on her, and also noticed that when he got too far away from the keep, she kept herding him back, so he decided to land. She did too, and they spoke. Through the sexual tension, he realized that the dragon was actually a princess dragon captured and kept in the tower by someone she referred to as "the master" and that his friends were in grave danger. The dragon let him go, and he turned into a horse to race back. Now, as a merfolk, he had never seen horses before, so he turned into a red one, and this became a bit of a running joke.
Who cares if it stretches the Wildshape rules? It's not mechanically different, and it's funny.
In the basement, the party found a giant brush pile, a well, and a locked door. Something moved in the brush pile, and Valen was suddenly hit by a beam of energy that made him extremely afraid. Fechedette shot a firebolt at the huge piles of brush hoping to burn them off, and illuminated a huge, hulking, circular form with tentacles. It then shot a beam of energy at her that paralyzed her, and a struggle followed with the Gauth (for that is what it was) doing serious work on Valen, Fechedette, and Julius (because remember, Charmagnus and Gilroy's players were not present).
Luckily for the party, red wooden horse Keeri Lo charged in several rounds later, and despite quite a lot of damage for the party, and most of them having been hit with paralyzing or fear rays at least once, they managed to take out the evil Gauth who was holding a dragon princess captive in a tower, because occasionally messing with tropes is fun, and I wanted to throw a Beholder at the party, but they were only 2nd level.
Beholders and Beholder-kin (including Gauths/Spectators from 5e) are my favorite D&D monsters. Also, obligatory artist credit.
After the party did some quick healing, they dealt with the fact that the fire Fechedette had started in the brush the Gauth was hiding in had started smoking out the room, and set to work on the locked door. Once it was open, they discovered a veritable treasure trove with the following treasure:
- +1 Darkwood Longspear
- +1 Longsword
- Brooch that gives the wearer a 1D4 bite attack, does 1 poison damage a round after the bite for 11 rounds if the victim doesn't make a DC13 CON save, and lets the user talk to snakes
- Boots of +4 Stealth
- Cloak that lets the user Wildshape into a bat 1x a night.
- Several mundane but nice tapestries
- 5 pieces of carved elephant ivory
- 2 suits of scale mail
- 500 GP
- An elephant foot trash can that is enchanted to automatically write any "trash" thrown into it out of existence. DM chooses what constitutes trash so the players don't throw enemies into it.
- The realization that their DM was being nice and was consistently giving them way too much treasure for their level.
They also found a Lesser Orb of Green Dragon Control, which they quickly realized the danger of, especially when the baby green dragon came back and told them about how much her dad hated it and how it was what was keeping her a slave. The party also realized that the Ladies had sorta lied to them, because the dragon hadn't stolen the orb. The Gauth had just had it in his collection, and the Ladies had severely underplayed how powerful the artifact was. Clearly, this was the Ladies trying to steal someone else's powerful treasure. The party decided they didn't want the Ladies to have the orb, set the dragon free, but Julius kept the orb to keep it safe and keep them safe if the dragon decided to come back to hurt them. He's a paranoid fellow.
We left off with the party ascending to level 3. A good time was had by all, and I got to use a cool Beholder mini I got for a fight. It was a good night.
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