After breakfast the next morning, we told the would be thieves to get lost. Boy did they vanish fast! We packed up and headed south towards the hills. The morning passed uneventfully, with the exception of meeting a group of farmers. They seemed pretty stupid, which I suppose is run of the mill for farmers. After questioning us for a moment they spun a tale about church burning and witches that I found quite entertaining. They said it must have been witches because they didn’t see anyone and only witches would burn a church. They seemed to think that anyone who didn’t worship Sylvania must be evil, so I tossed off a few “Praise Sylvania’s” to keep them happy and sent them on their way. Sometime after lunch we met another band and had a very similar conversation. Funny that, all these farmers seem to be alike.
That evening we came upon a farmhouse called the Circle T, owned by a Henry Morgan and his wife. Mrs. Morgan came out to greet us and agreed to let us sleep in their barn. It was a bit smelly in there above the cows, but the hay was much softer than the rocky ground from last night. We heard Henry complaining from inside the house, but it was Mrs. Morgan who came out to milk the cows that evening. We got some fresh food for dinner and passed on the news we’d heard from the bands of farmers. The night passed pretty much without incident, except for a couple of “killer cows” that wandered in from the fields and terrorized the folks on watch! After breakfast the next day we continued south towards town.
We arrived there shortly after lunch, and were able to see the burned church for ourselves. I didn’t see any evidence of witches though. My guess is some fool fell asleep while smoking a pipe and made up the whole story to cover his ass. We did get some strange looks when we said we had spent the night at the Morgan place. Especially when we said we’d heard Henry yelling from inside the farmhouse. Henry, it seems, has been dead for years! Given the time of day and the strange looks we were getting, we decided to push on along the river towards where the kobolds had attacked the riverboat. We followed the river for the rest of the day and made camp.
Sometime in the middle of the night an enormous crashing was heard off to one side of the camp. Something very large was making its way down to the river. Our best guess was that it was a giant of some kind. Neu Gai wanted to attack it, but I manage to convince him that anything that could kill us with one swing was a lot more than we were ready to handle. After a few minutes it moved back into the woods, and we heard a sound like a waterfall that went on for a long time. I guess giants must have bladders of proportionate size! Later on we heard a group of creatures going by, speaking in a strange tongue that none of us knew. Once again, after much hushed debate, we decided it was more prudent to leave them be.
Today we decided to head up into the mountains. There didn’t seem to be much sign of kobold activity along the river, so we decided to search up a trail Chicot found that led into the hills. The day was pretty dull, but the night more than made up for it. We decided to lay a trap on the trail and then another off to one side of the trail. Under Bernina’s direction, we dug a pit in the trail and covered it with stuff to catch people charging down the trail. Then we set up an obvious camp to one side of the trail and hid beside that to surprise anything that attacked. Later that night a band of around eight goblins came down the trail. One hit the pit, and the rest spotted the campsite and moved in to attack. Unfortunately for our plan they decided to split up and try to surround the campsite, rather than charging into the light. More brains than I gave goblins credit for. We did pretty well though. I slept two of them, and we killed most of the rest with a combination of arrows and hand to hand fighting. We also realized a little problem that will probably keep annoying us. We seem to do a lot of fighting at night, and Chicot doesn’t have infravision! He hung out at the edge of the firelight to attack any goblins he could see, but he wasn’t as effective as I might like. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. Unfortunately, these were goblins and not kobolds, so we didn’t get to do any pedicures! We were a bit worried that the ones who escaped would return with help, but I guess we got lucky.
The next day we decided to head farther up the mountains, hoping for better luck. Around mid afternoon we heard a ruckus on the trail ahead. We dove off to the side and took cover immediately. Moments later, a small band of goblins appeared, fleeing a couple of ogres. The ogres were looking for a little goblin tartar for lunch. They caught and killed a few while we watched and continued chasing the rest down the trail. We (I) decided not to interfere. Neu Gai wanted to of course, but he seems to do most of is thinking with his sword. Not wanting to be surprised by the returning ogres we started down another trail to the Southeast. We found a decent spot to camp and bedded down for the night. Once again we had an “Interesting” night.
This time it was kobolds, but they didn’t come alone. They came mounted on wild boars, complete with nice, pointy, tusks! Oh joy. The kobolds came charging through the campsite trying to run us down and trample us. We were pretty successful at dodging them, but it made it difficult to do much else. They moved so fast and stayed so spread out that I couldn’t get them with a sleep spell. I got one with a magic missile, but the rest we had to do with arrows and swords. It was a tough fight. Eventually we learned to hide behind trees to avoid the charges, which forced the kobolds to get close enough for us to attack with swords. We also learned that if we took out a rider the boars would flee the battle. Things might have been a lot uglier if Glug hadn’t been around to heal us as we got hurt. In the end we killed six of them and drove the last two away. I pulled out the little metal gadget that the wizard gave us and collected 6 kobolds’ worth of toenails. What a night!
On to Journal Four