[SirFozzie]

Chapter The First: The Frantic Four and the Goblin Tower (part One)

Kandos (the fighter/Paladin currently serving as Town Mayor) summoned the four heroes to the Mayor's residence. He informed them that a couple of the town's militia had noted goblinoids using a local watchtower as a base of operations. The watchtower had been thought abandoned, but this changed things. The watchtower could easily see merchant caravans that used the Trade Path (or worse yet, look and see the barely defended borders of the new town). He charged the four with investigating the tower, and returning to the town once the goblin menace had been turned away. In return for half the treasure found, the town would build their new residences, and identify any magical items they found (which the party would get to keep).

The militia would use any money brought back to pay for resources to develop and defend the town.

The party left, and decided to travel through the woods so not to alert the goblins in the tower that they were coming. They were lucky when they literally stumbled across a rogue ghoul, who had been snacking on the bodies of some dead merchants the goblins had ransacked previously and taken off the road. The ghoul nearly paralyzed Jeremy with his sharp claws, but his armor held, and they managed to defeat the foul creature.

That night was clear and cold, Jeremy managed to simultaneously lead the party and to cause a bit of fractiousness when he set the watch order, he of course would take the first watch, Demeter volunteered for the night watch, and while Dagon and Alexandras looked at each other, trying to will the other into taking dawn watch, Jeremy told Dagon it was well of him to volunteer for the dawn watch (he did no such thing), since Alexandras needed her rest to properly help prepare her spells the next day.

The night passed, with the only issue being shortly after dawn was Dagon being swooped on by a giant eagle, who mistook the curled up gnome for an extra large chipmunk. Dagon managed to dodge the eagle's talons , but fell out of the tree. Demeter and Jeremy woke to Dagon mumbling fell words while staring at the eagle.

Alexandras proved.. difficult to wake, as it turned out that she had taken a small sleeping draught to help her sleep (she was unused to "roughing it", and was denied even her herbal teas by Jeremy's insistence on a cold camp that night). Dagon argued that they should just make a traverse and drag her along till she woke up, while Demeter argued that they should splash a canteen on her to wake her.. then realized it was probably.. unwise to suddenly wake someone who apparently carried several daggers on her, and was used to using them.

Jeremy had gone on a walking patrol while the party gathered their items, and was.. frustrated to find that Dagon and Demeter were still arguing about the best way to wake up Alexandras.. while not getting any closer to actually WAKING Alexandras. He managed to finally wake her, and just shook his head at Dagon and Demeter. "The three of you catch up when you're ready.. I'm going to scout ahead."

Well, Jeremy's confidence was nearly his undoing.. as he saw four goblins in a clearing over a pot of oatmeal. Now if he had spoken Goblinoid, he would have realized that the Goblins were arguing over the fact that most of the Tribe was "Back home" electing a new Chief, after the last Chief had "displeased the Master". Between that and arguing over the fact that one of them was planning to steal the oatmeal for themselves (now to be fair, all four of them had the THOUGHT, just one of them had jumped the gun, and had been caught in the act), the goblins were quite unaware of the party.

Things had gone from bad to worse, as Dagon and Demeter were arguing, fairly loudly a short distance behind them (Dagon had accidentally tripped Demeter by getting tangled up with the larger cleric, which Demeter thought was intentional, but Dagon was just explaining that first of all he had shorter legs and thus had to work harder to keep up, and it's not HIS fault that the big armor clad oaf wasn't looking where he was walking..)

Jeremy decided that if he didn't act, the goblins would be aware of the party soon enough, and attacked the four goblins himself. The goblins best tactic would have been to have one or two of their mates hold the lone human off and grab their shortbows and fill the overconfident fighter with arrows, but alas, the craven natures of Goblins meant that all FOUR of them went running for their bows, so by the time they got there and got their poorly made bows ready to fire.. of course, the human had caught them and was waving that sharpened bit of steel in their face again. Jeremy's armor kept him from taking the damage his reckless actions surely deserved....

Jeremy slew two of the Goblins, but the other two ran for their lives. The rest of the party did what they could as they FINALLY had caught up, but while Alexandras's magic missile took down one of the freeing goblins, Dagon's eldritch blast could not find the last one, and it disappeared into the woods.

The party knew it had to investigate the Tower, and quickly, before the fleeing goblin informed his compatriots that the townsfolk had sent a party to investigate.