Session 14 Recap & Experience Points Awards

 The company huddled in thick woods north of the pine goblin palisade.  Tupac Shabird, familiar to the ranger Unagi, had returned moments earlier from a mission to reconnoiter the scene.  The news was unwelcome.  Dozens of the rancorous pine goblins clogged the encampment, with several archers perched in its northern tower.  And the pine goblins kept beasts—a wolf-like breed in a makeshift pen, along with several winged reptiles.  These weren’t dragons, the bird did not surmise.  But that wouldn’t exactly make them friendly.

If the group moved quickly, they could undoubtedly take the palisade by surprise.  But their numbers were too severe.  The pine goblins would surely answer any assault with a swift and determined counterattack—and the company soon realized the risk of being fully overwhelmed.  Anyway this adventuring crew had not traveled here for pine goblins.  Their quarry remained the mysterious Kyzagone Rakke of the eastern ruins.  So it was soon resolved to travel east, leaving the pine goblin palisade behind.

The company hadn’t made it far, however, when the snap and crunch of underbrush alerted them to approaching figures.  This was a troupe of pine goblin warriors—eight of them, to be exact, out marching through the forest on a military-style patrol.  Their lucky day, this was not—for several precious minutes remained on the invisibility spells that cloaked the gnomish rogue Schlemeel and the half-orcish sorcerer Onog, and the pine goblins were easily taken unawares.

The rogue’s and sorcerer’s sudden strikes dropped the first of the pine goblins and severely wounded others, just as arrows from Unagi and the elven mage Greyndalf whispered through tree branches and lurched violently through their victims.  In a moment the rout was on, and just three stout pine goblins finally stood against the company as a fourth fled—until another arrow from the elven mage stopped him dead in his tracks.  The last three were no match, and when the dwarf Jowdain sank his blade deep into the first, the remaining two grasped their hopeless circumstance. 

Their surrender trapped the company in a murky ethical dilemma.  Even the purest servant of light would not hesitate to perish a rampaging enemy in true self-defense.  But the company were the aggressors here; was it not they who had attacked this cluster of pine goblins?  And the hapless, wounded prisoners could scarcely be called a threat at this stage.

Or could they?  If allowed to go free, these captives would undoubtedly head straight for the palisade and report the company’s presence.  Worse, should the coming interrogation betray the party’s very intentions—and how could it not—then the pine goblins might send word to Kyzagone Rakke.  Or they might alert even other, unknown foes who might lay in the path.

This realization proved decisive, and only the devout cleric Gambol voted to spare the captured pine goblins.  But even he grasped the futility of his objection, and wandered a brief distance off to allow the dirty work to be done.  So it was that the first pine goblin captive was suddenly slain, right alongside his companion—the unceremonious execution calculated to break the other’s resolve through sheer unmitigated terror. 

Not that it was ever clear the remaining pine goblin had any resolve to overcome.  Readily he admitted having heard of Kyzagone Rakke, but knowing who Rakke  really was.  More importantly, the goblin could not describe Rakke’s location any more precisely than by the same “eastern ruins” trope that seemed to be common knowledge in the region.  No, this pine goblin served another: “Nolinkish,” he called him, the apparent king or supreme chieftain of the local tribes. 

This Nolinkish, the captive explained, had raised a semi-voluntary army of pine goblins (of which the speaker was one) and sent them north in search of “some lady” they called “Cabantha.”  Where this Cabantha might be found, or what Nolinkish wanted with her, the prisoner could not say. 

With that, the remaining captive had exhausted his usefulness.  Without delay he was sent on a journey to the great pine goblin beyond, just as the company readied to resume its march to the eastern ridges.  Yet they did not make it far before the call of battle would again sound through the valley.  Two large boars—fierce, and bearing the same strange taint as the corrupted bears that had attacked the party days before—charged through the thickets into a vicious, determined assault.

As the bears had been, the boars proved mostly a nuisance—dangerous, but few in number and course in their methods.  The company fought them off, then proceeded on its path.  They reached the eastern ridges by nightfall, then pressed south along the high ground. 

The relative safety of their highland perch allowed finally for some bit of revelry at the night’s camp.  Only here did the travelers recall their first encounter with the pine goblins—their haughty chieftain, standing confidently on a rock outcropping before a good dozen of his soldiers, barking his greedy demands.  “I guess he must have thought we had a thousand gold pieces stashed on that cart,” the dwarf Jowdain postulated. 

“Too bad for him,” the mage Greyndalf replied.  “Just elven spirits.”

“Elven pisswater,” the dwarf corrected.  “And a fitting end, if you ask me.”

It was the next morning that the company began to hear the distant voice.  At first a distant laugh—or heckle, more acutely.  Then a warning to turn back.  And then a warning stronger still.  But the company neither answered nor heeded this voice, opting to continue its southerly march and pay no mind to this unseen speaker.  Until finally, the voice commanded the party’s attention.

“You wander too close to my home,” the voice finally asserted, dropping its ethereal quality and adopting a much more serious tone.  “You will go no further.”  To emphasize the point, winds began swirling in the distance to form a small cyclone—undoubtedly the product of this unseen speaker. 

“We seek Kyzagone Rakke,” the mage Greyndalf announced.  And the voice did answer.

“What business have you with Kyzagone Rakke?”

And so began an extended dialogue between the elven mage and his invisible counterpart, in which the latter revealed her name: Cabantha, the same as hunted by the pine goblins and their chief, Nolinkish.  

Yet Cabantha made quite clear she had no fear of pine goblins.  Her concern, rather, rest with maintaining “balance” in the region.  She was displeased with the Lord Soo-Kiru in Horl, whom she accused of “defiling the land” and other crimes against the forest.  She expressed no love for Kyzagone Rakke either, but suggested he might pose a worthwhile check on Soo-Kiru and his increasingly offensive incursions.  Cabantha urged the company to consider this balance in its dealings with Rakke, but she would not stand in their way—provided, of course, they steered a wide path around Cabantha’s personal sanctuary. 

Finding this agreeable—or, at least, preferable to a duel with an unseen enemy having displayed control over local weather phenomena—the company marched down the east face of the ridge before advancing further on its southerly course.  From here, in the tall grasses of high desert plain, the travelers spotted a lonely structure in the distance.  It was high on a nearby peak, perhaps two days’ travel to the southwest.  The company moved cautiously toward it.

Adventure Notes:

·       Corrupted Boars.  Something sinister slants the wildlife against you in this region.  Bears, and now wild boars attacked you without hesitation.  Luckily their numbers were small, and the boars (AC 13, ~24 hit points) never seriously threatened the party.  But you did take note of their incredible strength, and tendency to charge from a distance and catch foes unaware.

·       Pine Goblin Palisade—winged lizards.  Your companion Nomak, a barbarian of the eastern marches, describes having seen goblins from the rugged beaches and rock islands north of Balvin Port ride a variety of poisonous winged lizard they call “dugaar.”  Not nearly as large or powerful and much, much less intelligent than a dragon—but then again, who’s ever seen a dragon?—the dugaar ranges in size from just a few meters to the length of a small house, and like dragons come in many different, typically brilliant, colors. 

·       Cabantha.  The company encountered the mysterious magic-user Cabantha near her home on a ridgeline southeast of Horl—though the conversation took place over some distance, with Cabantha remaining fully out of the party members’ sight.  She was not hostile, but made a show of her impressive abilities that persuaded you to cut a wide berth around Cabantha’s personal homestead.  In your conversation, she described Kyzagonne Rakke as a “useful counterweight” to Soo-Kiru Kiru, and worried about what the Horl warlord might do with the free hand Rakke’s defeat could leave him. 

Experience Points & Inspiration 

DM’s experience award moderation note: In this campaign, experience points are awarded for overcoming obstacles, solving problems, and achieving goals.  Although experience points are typically awarded for defeating adversaries, note that an adversary need not necessarily be killed to earn those points if the adversary can be defeated in another way.  Experience points are earned collectively and then divided among the player-characters.  In addition to experience points, players can earn inspiration for creativity, superior tactics, and especially strong role-playing.

The party faced a pine goblin war patrol and two corrupted boars in this session.  The company is awarded 1,170 experience points for defeating these foes.  In addition, the company the party earned experience points for the following accomplishments:

• ·      Successful interaction with Cabantha, 300 XP;
• ·      Successful interrogation of pine goblin captives, 50 XP;
• ·      Reaching the eastern valley and spotting the mountain redoubt, 100 XP;

This total (1,620) is divided evenly among Jowdain, Gambol, Greyndalf, Schlemeel, Orog, Unagi, and Nomak, for a nice, round 231.428571429 apiece.  But I suppose we can just make that 232 XP per character. 

In the previous session, the company had also defeated a much stronger pine goblin war patrol (worth 1,125 experience points) by luring the pine goblins near a wagon loaded with highly-flammable elven liquor, before igniting the same with an electric blast.  The considerable guile involved in this maneuver garners an additional 350 XP and a point of inspiration to Greyndalf, who both led the dialogue with the pine goblin leader and triggered the decisive blast with his wand of lightning.  The other characters involved in that encounter included Jowdain, Gambol, Schlemeel, Unagi, and Yala, so this additional experience award (1,475 XP) is divided among those six for 246 XP apiece.

Final Session 14 totals:

·      Jowdain acquitted himself well in battle, garnering 478 XP.

·      Gambol pleased his deity and is rewarded with 478 XP.

·      Greyndalf remained a cunning and resourceful (and mostly naked) adversary, earning 478 XP and a point of inspiration.

·      Schlemeel still don’t give a f*k, but he picked up 478 XP.

·      Yalla was one with nature, and nature was one with her.  Or something.  She got 246 XP.

·      Unagi looked fresh as ever and gained 478 XP.

·      Orog played it cold as ice, and acquired 232 XP.

·      Nomak contained his rage, and was enhanced by 232 XP.