Duty Session 628: Goblins are Forever

Branches are disturbed, leaves shake, and finally are parted, revealing Uta behind them, leading the party of Adventurers heading towards a specific spot.

"When I was at the Hunter's Guild, I heard that according to the Temple of Law, the Goblin Queen from Karlruin is attempting to reform their army near the Great Tree of Lios. To which I said, great!", Uta beams, and then goes serious again, "They said it wasn't great. At which point I said, it isn't great that they're turning a new leaf and becoming good?" Uta sighs. "Long story short, we were not agreeing on what specific meaning of 'reform' the sentence was using-"

Uta stops abruptly. At this point, one should start seeing the camp they were supposed to be heading to in order to start the attack on the goblin, but instead of a distant camp, there is only the smell of smoke in the air and the signs of fire on the horizon.

"Oh no."

Uta rushes forward, and as she gets closer, it becomes clear that the goblins got there first, and left ruin in their wake.

It's been a while. The hunter needed to hunt, be in the wilderness. Fortunately there were goblins needing to be hunted, and that was all Shiruba needed. Them being near the Great Tree was just extra motivation, they probably shouldn't be poking around such places.

Of course it's never -just- a duty when it comes to Uta being involved. "It was likely they meant reform as in forming a new one, trying to find other tribes of Goblins she can sway under her command. Not that they're trying to be better--" Shiruba stops as the scent of smoke hits her. Frowns. "This can't be good." And picks up her pace through the underbrush.

Schneider has joined up because there's been a lull in the goblin hunting lately, and not very much to set on fire. The idea that we can find goblins -and- set them on fire seems to him to be perfect, so he's following along, enjoying the slightly warmer weather, and not looking alarmed until it looks like we got here a bit too late.

"Well, this is a problem," Schneider says, looking around, "And the Temple of Law is a bit behind on current events, too, it looks like. At least behind on what goblins have attacked." As to the Goblin Reformation, he says, "I don't think the Goblin Queen is nailing 95 theses to the Temple's front door. Though I do imagine she's looking for a fight."

Gwen has been doing so much crafting as of late, orders, personal projects. Things her mother ordered and paid good money for but made even Gwen turn red over. She was happy to get out once more in her heavy blade armor. As some things never change for Gwen, it is clear Gwen is Morri's daughter but has some more levels of tact and self control at least when it comes to personal outfits.

"This is not good Uta, Shiruba? Schneider we must make haste."

The towering woman pushes forward fopr the camp.

"Indeed, I was a victim of semantics," Uta confirms to shiruba. And then to Schneider, "That was my other hypothesis, maybe the Temple of Law prefers a traditional, more orthodox approach to- oh goodness me."

Upon entering the camp grounds there is carnage everywhere. It is clear they were unprepared for anything that was about to happen. What exactly happened here is hard to say though, the crosses in the ground among the corpses show it wasn't just landers.

"They're all male. All the landers, here: male," Uta comments with a lower, concerned tone. "I don't like it. I don't like it at all," she says with a shiver as she hugs herself, thinking back about some discussion about the dangers goblins pose that took place the early days, during a certain adventure where Xander attempted to negotiate with them to see if they could be reasoned with.

(They couldn't).

Uta (possibly with the help of others) engages in a frantic search for survivors among the bodies, a search that turns out to be successful: one of the landers appears to be alive but out cold. If only there was a way to see his memories of the brutal goblin attack that occurred here and them kidnapping the women. Otherwise they will have to rely on more modern approaches of treating this lander back to decent health to hear what he has to say.

Shiruba exhales as they reach the campsite. "So much for a rendezvous," she mutters. "They must of realized they were being watched and took out the camp before help could be gotten." Some times the limitations on communication times in this world was a pain in the tail.

Fortunately they do find a survivor that's badly beaten and unconcious. Shiruba tries to use her limited Light magic, but after a few moments shakes her head. "The wounds are too severe for my limited ability," she remarks as she glances over to Uta and Gwen, knowing they have stronger healing skills than she does.

Gwen see the camp and is concerned as they look through the carnage as she finds Uta as found someone she'll come to add her own healing skills to aidint the lander.She seems to be a bit distracted for other threats though thankfully she's used a healing potion so it shouldn't be that bad, right?

Schneider will help the others when we discover the wreckage and victims, and the one stricken survivor. The Explosion Wizard, though it's not apparent, has diversified a bit. His healing potential, generally focused inward, is significant, but it's the purification of things that often surprises people.

With the Lander, it's a gentle process, and slightly metaphorical, but he can burn away the corruption that's twisted his psyche so badly, so that the fellow can tell us what he's seen.

A flick of her finger, and a medical bag shimmers into existence in Uta's hands. She opens it, extracts potions, syringes and bandages, and begins working on the poor lander, alternating between wrapping gauze around his limbs and chest, uncorking and waving a bottle under his nose, and summoning healing slimes to temporarily apply on the affected areas.

The combined efforts of the party are successful, and soon the man stirs enough to be of use, "I... Sir Goblinpuncher... have been victim of an attack..."

With Lander dragged back from the brink of death, Schneider finds that, through his Data Drain power, he has acquired the Lander's recent memories: memories of the attack, where the campground was raided by goblins led by a large Goblin Champion. Death. Carnage.

"They took the women!," exclaims Sir Goblinpuncher, with urgency. "They took my wife! And my daughter! Please save them!"

With a direction given the party sets out west, and are able to initially find tracks easy enough but as they get further away from the ruins of the campsite, the tracks and goblin signs get harder and more confusing to follow. Eventually the group comes to what seems like a heavy traffic area for the goblins, tracks everywhere going every which way. Even broken goblin weapons and armor lying in the dirt. If only those items could speak they could tell you where they came from. Alas one will have to search for clues or find th right tracks to find the culprits and save everybody.

Schneider doesn't much like the memories of goblin carnage, but it kind of only stiffens his resolve as to what we've got to do, which is destroy all goblins. He relates what happened to the fellow, though it's not like there was doubt. The only real question is which way did they go?

"We'll save your family," Schneider tells the Lander, but it's a hollow reassurance. There might not be any family left to save. But he'll try his best!

"You get back to safety," he tells the Lander. "We've got it from here." And he will set out with Uta and the others, and he'll let them track, he's just here to blow things up.

Shiruba frowns at the revelation from the survivor. "Kidnapping the women and children? That is definitely not good." She leans over to rest just a comforting hand on his shoulder. "We'll do everything we can for them." Then gets up and walks away to start looking for more clues. It doesn't take her long to find tracks from the attackers. "This way." And off they go, the wolfgirl fully in prowling mode now.

Up until they reach a crossing point of several paths, and the various tracks getting mixed together. "I don't like that they're sending out so many parties, and I don't just mean the confusion it causes with the trails. It means she's finding a high number of new followers."

She walks over to where some broken armor has been discarded, placing her hand lightly against it. She wasn't the only Loremaster in the group but items and objects were her specialty in the Path. It doesn't take long for her to get a vision of the armor being fitted and worn, then perception blurring a bit as it follows it leaving the goblin lair.

Finally she huffs as she steps back, giving her senses a chance to realign with the normal world around them. But at least the ability doesn't knock her on her butt like it use to. She breathes deep the recompose herself. "They have a hideout nearby... that way," she turns and points towards some formations in the distance that could be the start of caverns.

Gwen hears Sir Goblin Punchers word she frown nods once and will do two things leave him a potion and a normal quality short sword so he has some defences. "Then we must move and we will do our best to save them." With that she'll head out and stasrt using an earth spell in an attempt to track where the goblins have gone...It's a good thing she's not alone on this.

Uta nods in confirmation at Gwen and Schneider's promise to help. Sir Goblinpuncher looks relieved at having such valiant Adventurers taking care of his case.

Gwen and Schneider's attempt at using Earth magic is valiant -- too bad that the tracks, here, are too confused, too mixed up to be of any use. "You did well," Uta comforts the Earth-users. "It's just a case of bad luck."

"Nothing in this story is good. Nothing," Uta mumbles to Schneider. "They attacked the camp first. That was not supposed to happen. Did they have access to special information? Have they been 'empowered' beyond their normal abilities just like the gnolls and the rats have?", she wonders. "How could someone be so heartless to help them perpetrate all this carnage and kidnapping?"

When faced with the items, Uta pulls a fountain pen from her outfit (it's always good for a nurse to have a pen ready, after all, often more so than medical equipment), and after shimmering a small booklet into existence, she begins scribbling on it, at varying speeds -- quick, slow, at times seeming like she's fighting with it.

She eventually seems satisfied with her writing, and slams the booklet shut. "I got an interesting story about how these armors got here. The goblins apparently have a bunch of trapdoors on the back of some caves, they work as a back door. Well secured, but-" Looking up and tapping her chin, she comments, "If only we knew -where- those caves are..."

In her defense, she was focusing on the writing when Shiruba spoke.

The party reaches the caves, following Shiruba's directions, and following Uta's, they locate the trapdoor. Upon closer examination of the trapdoor they find it locked shut tight. The lock is rather complex looking but with enough time one could pick it. On the other hand there seems to be some condensation on the lock, with fine enough control one could simply freeze the internals of the lock. If only someone could just make that which is locked unlocked.

With Uta, Schneider and Shiruba at her side? She's very confident they can pull thiks off. She will also put some water to use attempting to help break the the lock. Lets be honest Gwen is not a theif and it shows here she does get some points for being creative but she has no luck its a good thing she's got good friends who can help with this.

Shiruba has learned to take Uta's bits of distracted spaciness in stride. "I'm a step ahead of you on that. Come on." This is why it doesn't hurt to have two different specialties in the same Power Path about. Between the two of them they both found where the cave is, and that there's an alternate entrance they can use.

Which is of course locked up tight. She glances back at the small group, no one she knows possessing lockpicking skills present. Sets her expression back into one of determination. "There's lives at risk, we don't have time to be gentle about this." She draws on her weather magic, and unleashes a freezing blast at the door in an effort to make it fragile enough to just break open.

Schneider will tell anyone he doesn't even know any water spells, or have any water magic, but he /does/ command all the elements to some degree, and these locks, while beyond his technical skill (of zero), still is subject to some of his more obscure talents. He channels fire, but rather than the airy, flickery fire, it's like a liquid fire, and it flows into a lock, and what it does on the inside is not clear, but a few moments after, the lock mysteriously falls open, and there's a soot stain by the keyhole.

Uta had already begun to summon some water, by singing a flowing melody, but- well, it turns out there was no need to. "Great, let's get in!", she exclaims, and kicks the trapdoor in with a smashing sound.

While her foot is enevloped by elemental ice. She did start the song, she's not going to let it go to waste!

She takes a couple of tentative steps into the cave system, and loses traction immediately. Managing to keep her balance by grabbing onto a providential jutting rock, she whispers, "Careful! It's slippery her- wait, no, I forgot to dispel the ice around my leg. Nevermind."

This is one massive cave system: winding paths, branches after branches, it would be easy enough to get lost down here for days. The good news is that there is fresh oxygen and any goblin patrols appear to be lone goblins here or there.

Schneider's mastery of fire doesn't help much with directions, but he does have a very fine sense of the air. It's for generating lightning, of course, but mastery of lightning requires mastery of air, and it's the subtle currents of the air he follows, allowing them to inform his decisions as we make our way through the labyrinth.

They may be out of the wilderness but Shiruba was still in her element. She does a preliminary look around the passage they've entered into, and nods. Though there is a lot of trails it's actually less chaotic than the crossing point because there's only so many directions to go. And she has specific things to look for, like sighs of struggling from the prisoners. So as they find more passages, it's a process of elimination of the ones that don't show signs of both goblins and their victims, and she can start forming a simple map of the layout from that. These sort of cave structures usually have one or two large interior chambers were all the important things gather, that's what they need to find.

As they get into the tunnels/caves Gwen will make use of air magic to track the way the air is going and it take a moment as she looks ahead and grins. "This way I think they went this way..." She seems as confident on this as she is about her tailoring skills...

Between Shiruba's experience in reading unfamiliar territory for the passage of creatures, Schneider's sense of air, Gwen's detection of magical currents with the certainty she has when using her tailoring skills, and Uta's... occasional chaotic bout of good luck, really, the party finds the right path and soon they start hearing goblin chatter mixed with screams of help. The stench is getting worse to and even some lit torches in the halls to show well traveled paths. Before they know it, they stumble into the main cave entrance.

The cave is large, several goblin warriors and workers moving about tossing bound women in cages and it looks like they will be wheeled off to a deeper part of the cave soon. That is when you hear it, a large howling wail through the caves that seems to rattle those who hear it with fear. A palpable fear of the legendary creature that helped wipe out the camp, a goblin champion. If someone could just protect the group from such psychic attacks it would be much easier to do what needs to happen. Either way they are going to need to sneak over and free the prisoners before anything bad happens to them.

Wolven hackles stand on end as the roar echoes through the caverns. Okay, they need to work quickly. Well, stealth isn't one of her strong suites but for these people Shiruba is willing to try, and she does have some simple Dark magic. But she's more familiar with working in darkness that's already there, so there's a fair chance she's going to get spotted in the end, even as she moves to knock aside some goblins before they can throw some more people into a cage. And by that point probably not care that she is, because sneaking takes a lot longer than she's comfortable with at times like this.

Schneider looks on quietly as we peer at the goblins and their prisoners from cover. An assult right now would be very hard, we need the odds stacked a bit more in our favor. He can do that, of course. He casts a quiet spell. Unlike his bombastic fire magic, this quiet spell merely tells him things. Where enemies are looking, and blind spots. Enemy HP and status. Things that will help him make a cunning plan, indeed. It will have to be a very cunning plan indeed, because with this small a party against that many goblins, they're going to have a hard time of it.

Well now as the party gets deeper and deeper into things and now they get to the core of it she looks at the monster. She has a plan she'll plant her feet and will make use of a powerful ability she's create a massive golden wall flareds out bearing the symbols of the goddess on it, yeah the powerful system protect barrier known as Wall of the goddesses is in full play now.

A goblin does indeed turn and spot Shiruba right when she'd least like it.

He opens his mouth to call out to the goblin champion, but no sound ever comes out. In fact, it freezes, still, in place, then falls down on his stomach, a syringe sticking out from his back. The darkness behind him dissipate for the briefest of moments, to let Shiruba glimpse at the silhouette of Uta for the briefest moment.

Then she is gone.

Thanks to Gwen's protection, the rest of the sneaking proceeds without incident, and the party unlocks cage after cage, setting the prisoners free. There are other incidents where the party is this close to tripping the Goblin Champion, but Gwen's Wall of the Goddesses manages to prevent communication.

It was just a matter of time before the goblins noticed, so a battle ensues. The good news is that the goblin warriors are rather easy pushovers, the bad news is that one can feel the presence of the champion approaching.

Moments after the fighting starts the goblin champion steps forth from his tunnel and easily towers over the others. A club in one hand, it charges forward swinging wildly at the adventurers and landers. After everything the party has gone through it is probably best to provide a distraction for the prisoners to escape. This is unfortunately easier said than done, they are panicking and scattering in all directions, it would take some presences to rival the champion to corral them all. At the same time the party has to slow the monster and burn it down at the same time so it doesn't regenerate.

Burning the monster down, that's Schneider's job. It fits his skillset perfectly, and he conjures, summoning a collosal wall of fire as he steps up. His swordplay is weak, barely passable, but he can't be touched with that burning wall without the goblin burning himself badly whenever he does. The goblin, though, seems uncaring of the pain, and strikes Schneider over and over, despite the damage he takes in doing so. It's a lot, but Schneider's taking damage, too, and he's a caster, so he's no HP sponge.

It's kinda odd having your back saved by a Spriggan rather than stabbed in it, but Uta is hardly the typical Spriggan. What matters is they've got the people free, and Shiruba memorized the path back out of the caves. The only problem now is the situation is still going south quickly as the Goblin Champion's attention has been drawn to the chamber, even if the underling goblins are pretty low class. Think fast, Shiruba, think... Well how would she deal with an angry stompy monster rampage...

"Keep the people moving towards the exit and cover them," she shouts, even as she nocking a magic arrow in her bow, taking aim, and firing. It explodes with a loud flash right by the Goblin Champion's face to momentarily disrupt him. Then followed by several smoke inducing arrows to make it harder to see the Adventurers and the victims they're trying to escort back out of the cavern. It's the best she can do to try and corral the angry goblin and give them more time to clear the former prisoners out. That is her primary concern over just outright fighting.

Gwen is focuisng on protecting the people she did make goblin puncher a promise no? Save the victem they purge some goblins but they will need to return. Whatever this goblin champion's got? She's not going to let it get to the people or the party if she can help it. "We'll have to hunt this beast /again/ until it is done."

The explosion of Shiruba's arrow has the side effect of removing a chunk of HP from the monster -- and as already stated, the wall of fire eats away at his health, but not fast enough. "I got this!", Exclaims Uta, who summons a bunch of slimes that begin to bounce about the place, wreaking utter chaos upon the location, among monsters, prisoners, and adventurers alike.

She so has not 'got this'.

"I so haven't 'got this!'", Uta wails, as the messy result of her attempt becomes evident. "You're right, Gwen, we need to prepare better for this quest!"

The battle is long and tiring; having to split their attention between fighting the boss, saving the hostages, and not being hit by randomly ricocheting slimes, the party's energy is drained at a much faster rate than is healthy.

It is so that the priority shift primarily on saving the prisoners.

When all the captives have been freed and led to safety, the party can finally disengage and run for its life.

"...eEEeeEeeeeEEEeew......", says Uta, as she flops on the ground with a sticky, wet sound, sue to her being slathered in goblin grease, especially her hands and feet. "Normally it's pretty great, but there are days like these where I kind of regret being a melee fighter..."

It's a chaotic yet obnoxiously long fight, and eventually they have to make a break for it once they're sure all the prisoners are actually fleeing out of the caves.

After a lot more running they reach a clearing and Shiruba leans against a tree to catch her breath. "We got the prisoners free, that's the important part. We can get people together and go back to clear that lair out another time."

Schneider hangs in the fight until we've got the prisoners out, but his health is down to a sliver and he's starting to get nervous. So when the signal comes that they've got the last of the prisoners moving, he will back down, and while he's certainly got the aggro, he can also shake it off. A faux Schneider remains in the fight, while the real thing executes an emergency retreat with the rest of the party.