Dear Xeilah,
You wouldn’t believe what happened this time. I thought I was a goner staring at six crossbows leveled at my head. I’m getting ahead of myself let me start from the beginning.
I accepted a mission to find a rumored cave that could be potentially turned into a mine. I was accompanied by Oogway the monk, Zoren the warrior that carried a holy symbol, Mac the fighter, Snipper the wizard, and Khora another fan of tinkering. Snipper seemed all to ready to lead the search, and after we put together our supplies we headed out west. Once we had made our way to the end of the road where it T’s, we ran into a Yaun-ti. At first we couldn’t tell what it was and approached it with caution, until it wobbled and fell to its bum calling for help. As we got closer we could tell it was in duress…..he didn’t even have his boots.
The Yaun-ti said his name was Sarasstim and he told us his party was ambushed by gnolls and that he had ran as fast as he could to get away, can’t say the old me wouldn’t have felt the same. Anyways he told us that they were ambushed further to the west and that they were following someone named Darrell, who sounded like a treasure hunter. We never did find that poor fellow, hopefully he survived the ambush.
The party decided to head west in the direction Sarasstim had pointed where his party was ambushed and we happened upon a turned over wagon. Snipper sent his pet owl Snapper to see if there was anything around the wagon and in fact there was, several goblins. At first their leader was yelling at us to go away and that this was their land. Shortly after that Mac flung insults from behind a tree which escalated the situation into Mac exchanging insults with the whole lot. I could tell that things were going to go wrong very quick, or so I thought. Unbeknownst to me Oogway was trying to calm the situation by talking to them in goblin. I raised my crossbow and the violence began.
It was a massacre, the goblins didn’t stand a chance as the party slayed one right after the other. Several ran away but one ran into the open planes out of range of our attacks, well so I thought until Mac drew back his longbow with an almost maddening look in his eyes. The arrow flew several hundred feet and struck true and the small figure in the distance fell over. Unnecessary but an impressive display of marksmanship none the less. After inspecting the goblins, I found a charm they all seemed to have, that shared a common theme “from the caves to the plains”. I took this as confirmation that there indeed was a cave nearby.
We continued to venture on until night, Snipper thought it would be a great idea to make an illusion of a bear growling in the distance to set the mood for the night. Luckily we were able to see through the illusion and being that my shift was later in the night, I rested up against a rather nice looking tree. Unfortunately for me Mac had decided to take his watch from that tree and saw some fog. He threw an arrow at me to wake me up and said there was some scary magical mist……after a quick look I realized it was just fog rolling off a nearby body of water, city folk. Once Khora’s and my shift started, I decided to find a local owl and ask him if he had seen anything that looked like a great opening in the earth. To my luck he had, directly to the south, which is what I told everyone in the morning and we ventured south.
True to the owl’s word we happened upon the mouth of the cave. Oogway tried to sneak up to the entrance to examine it with Mac close by. Suddenly there was the sound of bells and two humanoid creatures charged out, they looked as if they were made of glass.
They attacked Oogway and Mac with great ferocity, Oogway seemed barely phased by the attack but Mac was bloodied and looked like he could collapse at any minute. Quickly I pulled out my compact turret deploying container and threw it behind them. The turret expanded from the container, standing up on six legs attached to a platform which held the upper torso of a minotaur. The minotaur pulled out two small crossbows from the platform, loaded with miniature vials of feel better serum. It took aim, hitting both Oogway and Mac. Mac looked much better and Oogway unleashed a furry of blows on the monster. I won’t bore you with the details sis but we destroyed them.
Seeming to have no other guards we entered into the cave, some of us less gracefully than others…….but that’s irrelevant. We entered the cave and began our search. I found a wood pile with a bunch of mice that told me that there were more of those glass monsters so we tried to sneak the best that we could. The cave branched four different ways, the first branch to the left is where I found the mice and the next branch, well that’s were a fire was started.
I decided to go down the next tunnel seeing as I was the only one able to see in the dark. As I was making my way down the tunnel I heard a cry “Help I fell, I think I broke my leg”. My first thought was to run to the aide of whoever was in need, but I decided I should go back to our leader and let him know what I had heard. He sent Oogway with me to check it out. As I rounded a corner that lead to a more open area I saw two Halfling sized figures dash over the edge of a ridge. I told Oogway what I saw and we initially decided to head back but I couldn’t let a call for aide go unanswered. I got low and started to crawl towards the edge. Oogway, the ever loyal companion, followed me instead of his gut instinct to head back.
As my head cleared the ridge I saw several sets of red eyes looking right at me, their crossbows trained on my head. It didn’t take me long to realize these were well trained and well organized kobolds! I engaged them in conversation and complied with their orders, I didn’t want to die. At the mention that we must be from White Moon Cove I showed them my armband, and they lowered their weapons. Having seen we were from White Moon Cove they had relaxed and that cause my party to do the same. They claimed to be called the 202nd recon force under High King Darliserius Macamoondi. It was assumed by a party member that they must worship a dragon god, to which they replied that they in fact did not, they worshipped Macamoondi, who had united them. They did not make an attempt on our lives as we began to move back towards the entrance together.
As we entered the split point in the cave we noticed that Mac’s…I mean…some ones fire had generated a lot of smoke. We decided it was best to just leave the cave. While saying our farewells to the kobolds, Snipper asked the leader his name and he identified himself as Sarlbodius Jarklin. Sarlbodius gave us a potion as a small token of his thanks for leading them out of the cave. He informed us that deeper in the cave there is some giant monster that looked to be elemental in nature and it had held his team at bay. Feeling that we had accomplished all that we could for now, we headed back to White Moon Cover. The return journey was thankfully uneventful minus Khora finding a box. The box contained some rather expensive looking female nightwear, which we decided best to sell. Now I just need to figure out who to report all this too.
As much as I miss you, I’m having an amazing time and making a lot of friends here. You should’ve actually got on the boat, it’s an amazing island.
Love, Gaven McThistlebrook Artificer Apprentice