Game log 11 October 2015

Characters:

Kim, thief (John)
Yémos, cleric (John, at least for now)
Mayhem, barbarian (Chris)
Caleb, wizard (Chris)

NPCs:

Anêr, swashbuckler
Kúflaug, orc slave

They saw the hobgoblins vanish. Caleb held back the yen to step on the tiles afore the statue. Instead, they got off the daïs and walked along the north wall. As they got past the east edge, they saw some movement and then some strands of web. They chose instead to walk south, along the edge again, and Kim found a panel with the carvings of a god fighting a demon that was but a few millimeters back. After Caleb poked it with his smallsword and found it did nothing, Kim pushed it open, and found a stairs going down.

Characters like these, aside from someone else's copyright.
(Why I linked, rather than copied.)

They walked down the stairs, and found themselves in a room with 12 wooden boxes. One of them had strange markings on it. They pulled out their crowbars and opened the boxes, and found:

• 180 crossbow quarrels
• 3 kits for making a crossbow that shoots many quarrels at a time, albeit with unreadable instructions
• 60 spears, 30 of which were rusted
• 20 bronze swords
• 20 fireworks
• 10 shuriken
• 4 shields
• 1 nunchaku
• 1 sword with a 40 inch long, thin blade
• a suit of odd armor, which Caleb felt was magical

Anêr took the sword (we're treating it as a balanced edged rapier), Kim took a firework and the nunchaku, and Kim and Caleb split the shruiken. For the moment, they left the armor, and walked down the hall leading out of the room. They found two sets of doors after some turns. The ones farther down the hall wouldn't open, but the doors nearer from where they came opened easily. Behind them was a monitor lizard. A 40-foot-long monitor lizard, whose eyes fluttered open when they opened the door.

A little longer than this.

They shut the door, and turned back.

Kim and Caleb made some signs saying "treasure" out of the opened boxes and made them lead to the lizard's room. Then, they took the armor, one crossbow kit, and some quarrels, and left. As they walked back, they felt a strong gust of wind on the first floor. Caleb thought it was strong enough to have been an air elemental.

Back at camp, they stowed the armor, as they could find no buyer there. They showed the crossbow kit to Likháfrikh, but he couldn't put it together either. He did think the armor was sweet, however.

That night, it rained. Thus the next day, the first of Párūs, was wet, though warm. Caleb tried putting the crossbow together, but couldn't quite figure it out. But soon, Péllē called the gang to her office, and gave them the 500 silver she had promised for the hobgoblin slaves.

The next morning, Anêr the boatman awoke the gang, and bade them to go to Péllē's office. There, they found Péllē bound and blubbering, and Lôā the baker sitting quietly. Anêr bade everyone to sit down, and then accused them of helping Péllē to steal from the mining company. After telling him they had not stolen anything, Anêr told the gang that they were in league with Péllē in selling off the hobgoblin slaves, as she had given them 500 silver pennies for the sale. After more denials, Lôā spoke up, and, through her brogue and stuttering, said that she knew they were not working with Péllē, but owing to the issues, the company was buying out their contracts, and sending them out on a barge right away. She told them to keep the 500 silver pennies as the buyout, and let them keep Kúflaug as well, as he knew too much about the hobgoblins' lair in the mines. As for the caverns of Thracia, she said the mining company was sealing off the way into them, to keep the hobgoblins away from the rest of the mines.

Anêr the boatman, some ogres bearing ore and Péllē, and the heroes spent the next three days going back to Rēlaístis. After some guy in cloth armor and a spear watched them as they walked to their barge, not much happened in these three days, other than Mayhem keeping everyone away from a hornets' nest and Anêr the swashbuckler falling down a sinkhole.

Now in Rēlaístis, they shackled Kúflaug, as village law bade. Luckily, it was market day, and Caleb got 260 silver pennies for the armor. After this, they bought more gear: another tent, fishing gear for Mayhem, survival gear for Kúflaug.

More … stuff (think of Chuck Barris)

The players wanted to maybe trek to Mayhem's tribe to see it on the summer solstice, its holiday. To do this, we had to get them away from the mines, wherein they were starting to hit things that would beat them silly without many more points. As it happens, I had the sale of the hobgoblins on the calendar, and knew this would be a spot where they could go back to hex crawling. It took a little bit to get back to the step-by-step adventuring, but luckily, I somehow rolled now encounters, though at last got some mishaps, those being the hornets and the sinkhole.

Two character points. Not much happened, but they did get good loot and found the hidden stash of cool Asian gear from the Far East.