Met and discussed trolls and dwarves with the witch. She gave us anti-troll poison.
The witch wants a bugbear exterminator. There are eight bugbears, one of them a wizard. The bugbears are vicious and sometimes clever. They are to the north of the hut, past a draw and a narrow pass. There is a large field of stones further north (where the witch lives), and then past that, straight north and uphill, about six miles: you’ll head over a peak and down the other side. About four miles past the peak is the bugbear camp. However perhaps better to go around the peak because a harpy lives on it. So turn northeast instead, past a ruined village, rounding the mountain til the peak is due south, then head north. The ruined village is about a mile, maybe two, from the stone fields.
The gobs resolved to head home, prepare, and attempt to provide the trolls with a Trojan Deer the next evening.
However on the first night, a cockatrice came by the cave and went to sleep in its primary chamber. The goblins were dubious about permitting a cockatrice to live in their cave, and resolved to slay it. They did so successfully and without significant difficulty. They cut off its head and mounted it on a stick, although it doesn’t seem to turn animals into stone any more.
The next day the goblins wrapped some crossbow bolts in pitch (to make flaming arrows) and tried to move in the direction of the trolls, getting somewhat lost along the way. they tracked and killed a deer, cut off a rear haunch and stuffed the poison into it. They then tracked down the trolls, and set them on fire. The trolls died.
Investigation revealed a jug of mysterious liquid and:

• medium banded mail
• medium studded leather armor
• 2x medium leather armor
• 5 jars of troll pee
• leather making apparatus, including drying racks and vats.
• pile of copper coins (ash-covered)
• two flails missing handles
• a bunch of arrow heads
• spearhead
• miscellaneous metal shards
• tweezers

The goblins went in search of the trader dwarf, passing a mysterious obelisk with horns. They saw a bird-like creature in the sky which they assumed was a harpy, and hid from.

They met the dwarf hermit in the ruined village on the northeast mountain. The dwarf was relatively friendly (ie less hostile than usual). The goblins traded their excess armor in exhange for a promise of flour and sugar and baking supplies and onyx in two weeks’ time. The dwarf provided some answers also: Winecrest is 30 miles to the west of the dwarf and contains humans that will kill goblins. Kraksis the demon is an asshole. The mysterious obelisk of the canyon belongs to a kobold.

From the Dwarf’s peak, we could see: The sea to the east. Peak of the big moutnain to the SW. Another mountain to the northwest, somewhat smaller. (Kraksis may live somewhere near there.) There’s a hollow with a lake to the due north. A smaller peak to the north-north-east. There’s a tower type thing on the tower, so the curious goblins headed in its direction. They passed a strange beetle-looking-like creature of great badassitude on the way, but avoided it. Later, after making camp, they heard a sound of slapping and grunting coming from the woods. It turned out to be two ettins fighting each other. bernie led them back to the shark-beetle thing and got it to kill one of the ettins. The beetle was frightened by a Doom spell and fled. In a fight, the ettin killed bernie. The goblins doubled back to the dead ettin and retrieved its brains, then cremated Bernie’s remains.

Made camp.

A necromantic-nature cleric named Baughb (no relation) arrived at the goblin fort while the goblins were crafting and training. He initially made an arrogant nuisance of himself, and nearly got thrown out of the fort, but seems to have settled down.

The goblins spent the next few days making crossbows and hunting using the Druidic method – they turned a bear and a boar into jerky and animated skeletons.

While they were out one afternoon, the human soldiers arrived at the goblin fort. They moved the crossbar for the gate somehow and caused it to open apparently by itself. Snaga, who was the only one in the fort at the time, ran for the priest hole and escaped out the back as the soldiers entered the fort. She ran into the woods and hid. The soldiers burned the fort down. The wolves were present in their ‘den’ at the time, and Snaga doesn’t know what happened to them.

The rest of the tribe returned while the fort was still ablaze, and Bernie used Pyrotechnics and the conflagration to create the biggest flash-bang ever, thereby extinguishing the fire. The goblins picked through the ruins to retrieve what they could – Pyre’s alchemical equipment had miraculously survived, and the digging tools were intact – and high-tailed it for the bat cave, obscuring their tracks behind them.

They spent a couple more days working on crossbows, and set Baughb’s skeletal bear to digging a back exit to the cave, using a mining pick strapped to its forearm. They investigated the well in the back of the cave, which turned out to be entirely mundane. They also went down to the blockhouse to leave the witch a note, and found one she’d already left for them; she’d been by once already, on the full moon, but an appendix to the original note claimed she’d return four days later – tomorrow, at the time the goblins found her note.

We ended play as the goblins were preparing to set out in full force to meet the witch.

The creature approaching the fort turned out to be a goblin merchant, who traded with the group providing magical items in exchange for jewelery and armor.
He requested that we continue to accumulate useful items, and scribe magical scrolls, to sell to him when he returns.
The group then wandered through woods and collected obsidian.
Cannon led us to his wold pack, whom we befriended and dug holes for them in the fort.
For the next couple of days, the gobs dug holes in the fort. Snaga and Smash worked on a crossbow. Bernie made Trousers of Expeditious Retreat and a Magic Tinderbox Of Igniting Minor Flammable Items.
During the second day of digging, the diggers noticed six red-garbed human soldiers advancing on the fort. They proved to be illusory after our attack passed through them. We ran into the woods following tracks presumably from the spellcaster and found a large army of humans.
A massive battle ensued with heavily armored humans (of whom only some were illusory) and a woman who could cast illusion and invisibility spells. Baughb and Fizzle sadly perished when attacked by metal-armored men with greatswords. Zot and Kaiser were knocked down, and then coup-de-graced after the battle.
The fallen goblins’ bodies were looted of everything but their clothes and a sling.
The surviving goblins brought their fallen friends’ bodies back home for a decent burial cremation. The adepts and clerics healed their friends under the light of a full moon.

We mounted the big crossbow on a swivel at the opposite side of the fort from the gate.
Fizzle trained a pet wolf companion named Cannon.

Got into a big fight with seven orcs, of whom one was a spellcaster able to paralyze goblins.
Two of us nearly died due to being paralyzed. We killed five, tied up one, one went invisible and escaped. The loot from this is on the loot list.

This orc negotiated his freedom in exchange for the following interrogation then fled into the woods:
p. “My tribe came from the mainland. We came here in canoes to explore. And the one with the conch shell was a priest. We have also a priest of strength. A priest of war. There are a hundred of us total. Seven on the island. We intend to return by canoe. The invisible wizard probably turned invisible because he is a wizard. This group of orcs have not met the dwarves or the minotaur but have just arrived on the island.”

Fizzle and Cannon tracked him as he fled into the woods.

Buaghb went to find the orcs’ canoes on the beach. Later on the other goblins went running after to meet up with him. Snaga and Barnabus and Kaiser remained in the fort.

We found nothing of interest on the beach and returned to the fort. Some gobs returned directly, others wandered about in the woods looking for alchemically significant vegetation.

Some minions worked on modifying armor to goblin-size.

And then something approached the fort….

snaga crossbow progress – 595
scorpio progrss : 2400 total

Orcs dragged us towards a dwarven barricade
The gobs turned on the orcs and killed them, then fled into an obscuring mist
(but one of the gobs threw a javelin at a dwarf to no effect)
(there was a sound and light show in the mist courtesy bernie)
From the orcs we stripped:
– 2 falchions
– eleven medium-sized studded leather armor
– several globs of meat in a chitinous shell
– 3lb black jerky

Bob tried to negotiate with the dwarves to trade gold for armor, but it was too expensive. He just got some information out of them and tipped them a single gold piece. They said that they probably wouldn’t kill us on sight if we tried to trade again.

left the dwarf cave late afternoon, carrying four dead orcs back to the grimolocks, who were pleased with the gift of orcmeat. we gave them two orcs and butchered the other two for jerky.

The grimlocks were led to an engagement with a large winged insectoid thing in a cave. The goblins followed behind, and arrived in time to heal some injured grimlocks.
we retrieved three spider-eater claws from the insect thing. The dead spider was nearby. It was full of spider-eater larva which Bernie helpfully incinerated along with the spider and its web. we recovered a desiccated venom sac from the spider’s head.

We returned to the fort and set about on weapon maintenance.
Spot The Owl returned near dawn and explained about being nearly eaten by a giant owl. He discovered a human town about a night’s flight to the west-west-north, which is maybe 30-50 miles. It had a harbor with tallships. There are armed men and the town is walled. The town is less than three miles wide. He discovered a mountain with a scary bird lady who fed him. There were also several gnolls on the mountain. There are at least two empty villages on the mountain; one on the north side. There is little else on the north side of the mountain. There is a tower. There’s a road partway up the mountain, connecting the mountain villages. The zenith of the moon is to the south at this time of year.

The tanning racks at the fort provided two bear hides, four deer hides, one bat-hide.

Liz did alchemical work. Created one unit of napalm and various poisons.

Kaiser converted two suits of leather armor to goblin size, with 34 units of progress left over.

Snaga made 570 units of progress on short bow making.

More spot info: nine miles past the mountain is a lake.

Later that night, the gobs went to a human fort. Baughb tried to sneak in by grappling up the wall, but was discovered and fled into the trees. So we gave up and went home.

Raw notes from Session 12 (2/2/13):

explored mine shaft.
found a giant spider in one of its branches, didn’t explore further.
there was a flying quadraped overhead but we hid from it.
went on to grimlocks. they’re looking for a tunnel to the underworld.
we arranged with them to set up a trap for the ogres.
the ogres were feeding grimloccks to a plant monster in a pit.
we lured the ogres into a trap and killed them. we got two ogres’ worth of meat and a deer out of it.
we ate one ogre in a big party with the grimlocks.
the grimlocks traded us mushroom wine for ogre meat and minepick heads.
we then doubled back and killed the plant monster, although barnabas took some injury during the process. the priests healed him.
the plant monster contained only some obsidian axe heads and the metal parts of a dagger. the ogres had clubs which we didn’t need.
then we went back to the fort. we saw a bird of prey on the way.
spot is missing.
the grimlocks asked us to lead them (at night) to the mine shaft with the spider in it in case it leads deeper.
followed dwarf tracks as far as we could, lost them, but found a cave that was a system of lava tubes.
it contained a pile of stones arranged in a manner consistent with an arcane portal, and a floor rock carving looking like a sinewy celtic knot in a tangled shape, like a nest of worms
we found five orcs further in the cave, near two of their dead allies. they attempted to persuade us into attacking eleven dwarves with them.
at the moment we concluded, the orcs had grabbed Baughb and several of the goblins and were charging down a tunnel towards a dwarven palisade.
threerist, twobie, snaga, and bernie were hiding behind a corner and unseen by orcs.

Pyre decided she wanted to see the giant mice and the giant flowers, so the goblins took a trip to the West. They found the giant bee hive on the way, and decided to come back after dark. Then they came across a volcanic scree field, where they met three ogres who were sacrificing two grimlocks to a giant pile of leaves in the bottom of a sinkhole. Baughb convinced the ogres that they were part of the “green tribe”, and that if the ogres killed them, some trolls (who are also green) would come from the woods to kill the ogres right back. So the ogres decided to let the goblins worship their “god in the leaves”, but only if the goblins found their own sacrifice. The ogres pointed them towards a cave further up the hill, where they said they got their grimlock sacrifices. The goblins explored it, and found a small group of grimlocks, but couldn’t talk to them (Snaga, who knows undercommon, was left behind at the ettercap fort). They exchanged friendly gifts of food with the grimlocks, and left. On the way out, the ogres asked if they knew the orcs. The party tried to find out what orcs, but the ogres wouldn’t say.
They returned to the fort to get Snaga and work on projects for a bit. On the way back, they saw what they think was a Spider Eater, and the tracks of 10-15 dwarves, marching West.
They went back out that night to catch the bees while they were dormant. Along they way they stumbled into a wounded giant frilled lizard, which attacked after Pyre failed to make friends with it – they killed it handily, and took the head as a trophy and its feet and intestines for possible alchemical use.
Upon reaching the bee hive, they lit a smoky fire from green wood around the whole circumference of the hive, smoking out the bees, and then carved out a lot of honeycomb and took it back to the fort.

Baughb has been teaching several of the goblins the finer points of stabbing things in the guts, and Fizzle is contemplating becoming a cleric of the goblin god of havoc-through-machinery.

They intend to go back to the scree field, to talk to the grimlocks and see what the ogres meant about orcs.

Spot has been sent to fly due West for a couple of nights, looking for Winecrest, and to see if there’s anything between here and there that the goblins couldn’t cross.

The goblins spent a productive week undiscovered by anything that wanted to eat them, making their new fort better. They added a walkway and some ladders, reset the swinging log trap, dug a secret tunnel out the back (complete with snare trap on the exterior surface) and placed noise-making traps around the perimeter. They also left detritus and spare sprung traps around to make the place look abandoned.

They left a note for the witch girl at the old blockhouse, arranging to meet her on the day of the full moon. They gave her all the ‘shopping list’ stuff they’d found in exchange for information and the promise of help with the trolls. She told them many interesting things about the area, and said she’d talk to her mother about what they might do about the trolls.

She and party met again at the blockhouse the following day, and she said she’d take care of one of the trolls, and that she’d give them some poison to put in the troll’s food in a couple of weeks, which should kill one of them, who would be sick by then. She also gave them a new shopping list.

The goblins decided to cause mayhem at the quarry, which got out of hand, and they slaughtered all the workers there, took the biscuits, bed sheets, and weapons, and ran off (carving “tiny elves” on the exterior wall of one hut first). In the battle they lit the roof and timbers of one of the mud huts on fire. They then fled safely home, disguising their route by starting off to the South at first.

The goblins found the human fort, but decided it was much too scary to interact with. In the process of scouting around it, they also found the anthill of some large centauroid ant creatures nearby. They returned to the blockhouse to sleep. Baughb ventured out on his own to scout the human fort further that night.

The following day, they returned to the ettercap fort, bringing the catapult with them. Their attempt to sneak the catapult in close enough for a flat-trajectory shot failed miserably (more stealth rolls from Barnabus), and the two ettercaps left their fort to attack the goblins. One was splattered by a point-blank catapult shot, and the other was worn down with many sling stones and force missiles.

The goblins harvested their kidneys for the witch, and also their venom sacs (for Pyre to make poison out of). They explored the fort, finding some leather and a log trap that narrowly missed Baughb when he opened the front gates.

They decided to move into the ettercap fort and leave the blockhouse. Some of the party was sent back North to retrieve their belongings. On the way they crossed paths with a pair of rather stupid and dirty giants who were walking through the forest shouting for “Org”. The goblins followed the giants unseen, and let them search the blockhouse – they ate the chickens but didn’t touch anything else (or find Snaga, who was hiding in the false ceiling). Pyre made a stable poison from one of the ettercap venom sacs that afternoon, yielding 4 doses of ettercap poison (she ruined the other one).

The next morning, the goblins toted everything they own down to their new digs in the ettercap fort, and started clearing trees from around it to give the catapult a better field of fire. The hunting trip that afternoon failed, and they ate the last of their food that night.

A new batch of hopeful goblins arrived. They made immediate contact with Snaga, who saw their raft coming across the sea. They set up residence in the blockhouse once again.

Pyre’s idea of slaughtering deer with Invisibility to Animals worked beautifully; they began to build up a small food reserve and have more time for other things. They brought chickens, some fertilized eggs, and a lot of plants, and they set those up.

Over the course of the next few days they rebuilt the catapult, made a shortbow, started tanning several hides, tried and failed to make more alchemist’s fire, and concentrated some poison from Pyre’s castor beans.

The otyugh came back to eat the offal from the slaughtered deer.

On the first morning, a human girl, aged perhaps 11, came walking casually up the beach. She claimed to be out shopping for her mother, and presented the goblins with what seemed to be a witch’s shopping list, including: Giant Bee abdomen, Ettercap kidney, frog eggs, bay leaves, deerstongue, star anise, and wormwood. They said they didn’t have any of those things, but would keep an eye out for them; she said she’d come back at some point.

That night, Baughb woke up briefly unable to breathe; he lost a point of Con that still hasn’t returned. No one could find poison or magic (at least not by the time the spells were available). Bernie thinks it might have been a Night Terror, but isn’t sure what that is beyond ‘an evil spirit’.

The following day they explored the bat cave, and successfully fought the giant bat within. They also claimed a shovel, a pick, and a wooden bucket.

The next day they returned the cave to explore it’s final chamber, where Baughb, who was scouting ahead, was jumped by a pale, emaciated undead creature the goblins decided to call a vampire. It also went down quickly under a pile of goblins.

The cave contains a well with water, a shallow grave-like pit, a metal chandelier, a wooden scaffolding-platform, and a charcoal-scrawling that reads “mind the gap”. And lots and lots of bats and their guano. The goblins are considering moving in, but want a back exit; they’ve considered digging one.

The goblins then ventured further South, toward where the little girl had told them there was a human fort. They ran across an ettercap fort, instead, which Baughb scouted without being noticed. Unsure how many ettercaps there were, the party went around. They also found a giant bee, which they killed (and kept its abdomen for the witch).

The session ended as they were about to arrive near the human fort.

Morale among the minions is high so far; Baughb (and sometimes Bernie) having been entertaining the goblins in the evenings, they have no shortage of venison to eat, and sound shelter. The days have been busy, but with adventures frequently interrupting the labor, and their few fights so far have been clear victories.