Haruspex Niv, Siliceous Slagg, John Grond, Brother Langdon, Jolith Rhygar, and his hireling Trebor had all decided to stay in the City of Greyhawk and see what they could do to help at the “Cursed Tower,” the still-under-construction chapel of Boccob that had been delayed by many accidents, including the recent death of the laborer Greybill. If they were expecting a deserted tower they were much mistaken; it was bustling with activity, with a small security force outside, laborers on the scaffolding and going in and out of the chapel, and over a dozen clergy standing around, seemingly supervising.
John Grond split off to go visit a nearby bakery, while Jolith told Trebor to take up a position somewhere he could watch the tower from an unobserved distance. The others went up to talk to the adept, Brother Tybalt, who summoned Brother John from inside. They all knew Brother John from Castle Greyhawk, and he related to them the story of how a wizard and his hirelings had driven the ogres of the castle to the far western towers, but then broke off their assault. The wizard cast a spell that lowered the drawbridge so his hirelings could come and go, and John took this opportunity to leave himself; and this was a week ago. In the course of the conversation, John returned with a loaf of bread. He had also been followed.
An old lady, perhaps 60, but wearing armor and armed, came to meet the party, bearing a box of pastries for them. More importantly, this was Grandma Erin, whom Jake had earlier talked about admitting into the party as his possible replacement, now that his priestly duties were so great. Erin wanted to help out, so she stayed with the outdoors group, watching for trouble, while Haruspex and Langdon went inside to take a tour of the chapel.
Inside, the two of them met Bishop Carolus. Carolus squashed Langdon’s theory that it was a spirit or fairy causing mischief by sharing the secret that notes warning of further “accidents” had been left several times inside the chapel. It seemed more human agents were responsible, perhaps even one disguised as a clergyman. Carolus also shared that he had avoided taking more actions than hiring security because he was waiting for a sign, but last night he had a dream about Brother Langdon that Langdon found only semi-reassuring.
Speaking of clergymen, they were met on the second floor by the two curates of the church, Artemidorus and Ptolemaeus, who felt “Langdon’s friends” were disruptive at best and suspicious at worst. Ptolemaeus also had some noticeable magic about him, as he made no noise when he moved.
Outside, the group followed music to a female bard wearing a man’s flat cap and playing pipes by the tower. She was Stenburch the Bard and they talked to her until another accident happened – a scaffolding plank collapsed when one of its support poles broke. Erin checked the pole and found that it had been partially sawed through sometime earlier. Jolith tended to the broken leg of a man who fell, putting a splint on it, but changed his mind when two other laborers were leading him away. He cast his only healing spell to fix the leg, but then traded the miracle for information. Sure enough, the laborer was harboring some knowledge he’d been hesitant to share. He had not wanted to say anything, but the stonemason Hilge was suspiciously always early and leaving late.
It was decided that Haruspex would charm Hilge so they could all interrogate him. It worked – maybe even too well, as Hilge began to draw attention to himself by how he fawned over Haruspex. Niv drew Hilge away from the tower and, some distance away, they pumped him for information. Sure enough, he was a spy working for the Iron Workers Guild. He had not done any of the sabotage himself, but was there to observe and make sure it happened, as was at least one more laborer (who was not scheduled that day). The Iron Workers Guild were racketeers…
Just then, they noticed a man dressed all in red running away from the tower. He reached the stream just east of the tower, with the security detail in hot pursuit – but then the ‘man in red’ made a 30-foot leap over the stream, leaving the fighting men well behind. The man in red doffed a flat cap – of the same type Stenburch wore earlier – and then fled the scene. Before he was out of range, Niv cast his Charm Person spell, but it failed to affect him.
The party converged outside the tower to find out what had happened. The man in red, representing the Iron Workers Guild, presented a final ultimatum, that the Church of Boccob would need to fire all its workers and hire through the guild instead, or would suffer their worst disaster that night.
Someone else came to meet the party. Vask, a strong but dumb fighting man, was in the employ of the Wizard Prospero, who sent Vask to help protect the party.
There were four hours to darkness. The party used this time splitting up and fetching their heavy armor and adventuring gear (they had worn their traveling leather armor until now). Haruspex bought throwing daggers, since he was out of spells. When they came back at dusk, they talked to Trebor, who had been watching this whole time. Trebor had observed Stenburch leaving, and had talked to four ratcatchers who were looking for unusually large rodents in the area. The party wanted to inspect the cellar level of the chapel, which they had grown suspicious of since hearing it mentioned a few times earlier in the day. Carolus had sent most of the clergy home for their safety and the increased nighttime security was outside, so the party was able to descend from the nave to the cellar uncontested.
The first side room in the cellar contained a grated trapdoor in the floor that seemed to lead into the city's sewers. The grate was not locked, but resisted opening. Barrels were moved onto the grate to keep it from opening. The party spent a lot of time searching around the statue of Boccob in an alcove at the far end of the hallway and that amounted to nothing. When they returned to the upper level, there was a commotion outside. While Siliceous, Langdon, and Erin remained below to watch the grate, the rest of the party went out to investigate.
There was no sign of the security forces, and four men were trying to set the scaffolding on fire with torches. The fighters in the party chased them off, seriously injuring two with missiles, while Trebor took down one with an arrow fired at distance.
At the same time, the grate was being rattled in the cellar. Someone was trying to enter, during the distraction outside. Erin dropped a lit torch through the grate and they could see it was four hobgoblins. The hobgoblins shrieked and fled down a tunnel away from the grate. Erin summoned the people outside back to the cellar. There was talk of taking the hinges off the trapdoor to see if it could be opened then, but by now enough time had passed that it was determined the hobgoblins had too good a lead.
The party returned to the nave, planning to all go outside, when they found that a third wave of attackers had taken the ground floor. A big chaotic melee ensued as nine men with torches and axes attacked the party. Some of them were good fighters, one taking three hits to drop, but they were not too loyal to their cause, and many tried to flee as soon as injured. Several party members were hurt in the fight, but none worse than Vask who was smashed in the face with a torch and went down! The party did win the fight (with Niv finding he was actually pretty good at throwing daggers), and the adepts on the upper floor were roused from their sleep to heal him.
Sunsebb 14, 620 CY
On a freezing cold day, the adventurers Haruspex Niv, Siliceous Slagg, John Grond, Brother Langdon, Jolith Rhygar, and Vask -- now calling themselves the Company of the White Oak – headed once more towards Castle Greyhawk from the nearest village of Hawfair Green. Their last forays had not made them rich and fears that a long winter would cut into their savings too deeply brought them back one more time. However, the castle itself was not their main focus, and turned out to be unavailable anyway (the drawbridge was once more up, no doubt the work of those pesky ogres!). Instead, they planned to descend into the dry moat and try the cave tunnels once more.
The first caves were not only uninhabited now, but the furnishings had been cleared out of them, even when nothing more than crude nests. Soon they reached a cross tunnel that led, to the right, to what had been a small guard room and, to the left, to a large common room cavern. The party had stood there and debated for a bit about which way to go and had just decided to skip checking the guard room when they were attacked by three fresh goblin guards from the rear. Siliceous, the rear guard, held them off while John and Vask turned around and aided him with spears. Niv, from his position in the middle, threw daggers over people's heads at the back rows of the goblins. Meanwhile, five more goblins emerged from the cavern to attack the clerics who were now the rear of the party.
It was the very pincer move the company had feared and, initially, it looked like it might prove deadly for them. Vask was struck a critical hit and went down, while Brother Langdon was seriously injured after several hits. These goblins, perhaps their elite fighters, fought smart and teamed up on the same opponents instead of spreading their numbers out. But the party soon turned the tide, struck down all the goblins save two, who fled back into the large cavern. John pursued them into the near-darkness of the cavern and found that Jolith’s guess as to what happened to all the furnishings turned out to be prophetic – the goblins had constructed a long barrier, up to 4’ high, crossing the entire 30’ width of the cavern. The goblins scrambled over it and escaped, for the moment, while the company dealt with their wounded. Jolith had called on Delleb to heal Vask and Vask was immediately restored to full health. Langdon had called on Boccob to heal himself and the Uncaring One had still left Langdon moderately hurt...and a little resentful.
A strategy was quickly devised for dealing with the barrier -- three flasks of oil were poured out on top of the wall, and then the band stepped back and waited. When they heard sounds in the dark on the far side of the room, they lobbed sling stones into the darkness, with only Langdon getting lucky enough to strike anything. Then the goblins made their charge -- all 10 of them. The company were themselves exposed to some sling shots, but the goblins were not effective with them. The company held their ground until the goblins were right up to the barrier - then Jolith tossed his lit torch onto it.
FWOOSH! Three goblins standing right up against the barrier with their spears caught on fire and burned to death. Spears and sling stones rained down on the fleeing goblins until only a few were left to escape.
Which left the company with a problem. They had set a huge fire that now blocked their pursuit of the goblins, and the wall of smoke it was throwing off meant they couldn't even watch to see if the goblins were coming back. The party backtracked to a side passage they had passed charging into the chamber and found a second small side cave, this one was apparently a lavatory for the more civilized goblins.
Since it was going to be maybe 20 minutes until the fire died down enough that the company could knock over the remaining barricade safely, the company decided to leave this area and explore elsewhere. Way back at the entrance was a left side passage they always ignored, but this time they planned to take it. They returned to their hirelings first to make sure they were okay, and they were. Trebor and Haldor had heard rocks falling out in the moat earlier, but saw nothing.
Circling carefully around the pit blocking the left side passage, the company found themselves in a new cave full of garbage and waste -- the lavatory for the less civilized goblins, perhaps, and judging by the size of the mounds the less civilized ones were more numerous, or these had been left behind by the ogres that had inhabited these caves sometime in the past.
But this was not the time for solving such mysteries -- for the room was inhabited by nearly a score of huge rats! Niv judged it was time to finally break out his Sleep spell and half the rats fell asleep. The remaining half seemed hesitant to advance and some of them fell to sling stones. The remainder fled either behind or into mounds of garbage. Rather than waste time dealing with them in order to search the room for buried treasure, the hirelings were brought in and given spears to do the dirty deed with.
A small tunnel to the north led to a sunlit cave with unusual occupants. Bats hung from stalactites on the ceiling, while below them, caked in guano, were two orcs, a hobgoblin, and a hairy, half-naked man. All four were bound to the walls by lengths of chain attached to manacles at their left wrists and ankles, the chains feeding through a loop spiked into the wall behind them. Jolith came in and fed the prisoners, then suggested a strategy of using an iron spike to pry the loop out of the wall (but it was given to John to accomplish, for Jolith had not the strength for it).
The man was freed. He said his name was Oslo and that he had been exploring the moat with an adventuring party, but being tortured in this cave made remembering anything else hard. Oslo did have many small, fresh wounds on him. Oslo was sent one room back for the hirelings to watch over. Then the company had to decide what to do with the other prisoners. Rather than free or kill them, they were just left where they were, struggling impotently against their chains.
There was a door in the north wall of the cave; Oslo had said that other monsters lurked behind that door that were not his goblin captors. From his description, it was clear they were about to deal with gnolls again. They advanced down a long tunnel and came to a gnoll lair with three of them arguing. The company had surprise, but their true advantage was in the gnolls only having long pole weapons; once the fighters closed into melee with shorter, faster weapons, the gnolls did not have a chance.
The gnolls seemed to be the jailors, given they were carrying keys, but they had only 9 gold pieces between them. The goblins had been poor too, with the company only collecting a few dozen silver pieces from them so far. Down to only one spell, the company knew they would be cutting this expedition short soon, but wanted to see where the east tunnel from the prisoner cave led. This took them to a four way intersection of tunnels. Turning south, they came to a new large chamber that served as the goblins' kitchen. Nine goblins toiled at cooking over cauldrons, or working the large, crude crane that moved the cauldrons over a giant fire pit. Again, the company had the advantage of surprise, as the goblins were unprepared for combat. And again, the goblins fell easily to the better-prepared company. Also again, the goblins had little treasure.
When they returned to their hirelings, though, the hirelings proudly showed off a silver, gem-studded necklace they had found in a mound of poop!
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