My travels took me to Enonia. After days of solitary travel, introspection, prayer, and scourging of my flesh with barbed wire and a cat-o’-nine, I was ready for a mission. And for my sins, they gave me one.

The bad news was that the King would not be sending troops to help these poor people. The good news was that there were people in town who were better than the King’s men. I joined up with 7 others, an auspicious number…

Dolph the Littleing; full of surprises, a fighter and mage. Izil, a skilled fighter tired of living on the streets. Castin, a powerful fighter with a disturbing penchant for flaming oil. Myself, a humble paladin, and barely that after the incident that nearly stripped me of my calling. Jorann, a female cleric encased in enough armor to stop a siege tower and protected by her silent men at arms. Dul, a dangerous and efficient ranger, and Darius, a cleric of The Light. Both were familiar with the surrounding area. Irem, a thief and apparently proud of it. At first I considered ways to set him on fire, but he soon proved he was not an ordinary thief.

We set off for the goblin’s fortress. On the way there, an impossibly rare and disturbing earthquake shook the earth. It brought with it feelings of despair and fear. When it ended I found myself on the ground with the taste of copper in my mouth. Darius was pale. We kept moving.

An incident in the woods where we had to camp for the night surprised us all. The Children of the Troll found us; they were entranced by Izil’s horn, and delighted by the candy that I gave them with the stipulation that some was for their Father. They shared with us what they knew of the Crystal Tower, which Dul had spied moments before from a treetop perch, and showed us The Dark by means of a visual hallucination. The Dark was their name for a hideous creature with bony plates on its head and tentacles where its face should be that they promised would soon arrive to our world. It is good to know your enemy. I failed in making them understand the difference between good and evil, however, which made it impossible for me to rest the remainder of the night.

Around midday we reached the goblin fortress, or “inn” as those with me insisted on calling it. A large rambling structure, only partially mapped by members of my party in previous visits. I took the front rank with Dul and we charged in, down a steep flight of stairs. To my surpise, the goblins showed military sense, and had posted sentries armed with shortbows. They let loose their arrows but we were upon them quickly. Dul dispatched his in a lightning flurry of blows and moved further down the hall; mine proved more resistant, but soon died horribly. Castin replaced me in the front rank and pushed on into the fortress with Dul.

Goblins were dying left and right. We soon found ourselves in an intersection of hallways, subject to a deadly crossfire from goblin archers. We broke off into teams and killed more of the hideous gobbos, but they kept coming. They just kept coming. It was dark and not always possible to fight effectively. Dolph went down after taking many wounds. Darius collapsed shortly after. Jorann was out of healing spells and one of her men was near death.

During a fighting retreat with Izil I was cut down. I’m told the following, that Irem saved all three of us by binding our wounds; without that, nearly half the party would have died in the putrid-smelling darkness. Dul threw burning oil at the goblin captain and his elite, Izil and Jorann fought to keep them at bay, and when all looked bleak Castin slew the goblin chief. This threw the gobbos into disarray and they fled. Gathering up the wounded, the party made camp in the woods and Jorann healed Darius. Between the two of them, they saved me and stabilized Dolph, but the little one remained in a coma until we reached the temple.

It was a source of dark amusement for me to see the faces of the town guard when we arrived the next day, covered in blood, goblin excrement, and organ meat. Luckily, they did not fire upon us.

I was left with this thought regarding the forces of evil, of chaos, of the dark here in our lands. We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Goblin after goblin. Kobold after kobold. Camp after camp. Army after army.