Lacking Natural Simplicity

Attending

Clockwise round the table, starting with the Labyrinth Lord:

• T.K.B., the Labyrinth Lord.

• M.A., playing James the Cleric and Jeffrey the Monk.

• T.A., playing Glen the Strategist (a wizard) and Dooley the sly (a thief).

• E.A., playing Curufin the Elf and Drusilla the Ranger.

Camping

Since everyone (pretty much) had been wounded, the characters spent 7 days camping and getting Cure Light Wounds cast on them by James. Drusilla spent the days hunting in the nearby forest, and kept them feed reasonably well, although there were a couple of hungry days.

By the 7^th day the orcs started to stink, so they buried them, still in their leather armor. After they buried them they realized they could have sold the armor, but after several days of decomposition the armor was probably not salable any more.

They divided the coin up, with 10 sp each, with 4 left over for the party treasury. Glen paid his 10 sp immediately to Dooley, which after the interest left him still 12.5 sp in debt.

Oops!

On the eight day they continued north along the road that lead into the borderlands. Before the valley closed in, they could see the outline of the hills under the trees curving in sharply on the west, while the east side continued straight and steep. As they walked along the narrow valley, Drusilla noticed some light tracks leading into the thick forest to the west, although she couldn't tell what had made the tracks. They decided to follow the tracks through the forest. After a lot of bending and crawling and scraping through the thick undergrowth they emerged in a small, partially forested valley. One of the first things that they saw was a cave opening on the south side of the valley. Whooping and hollering they headed straight for the cave. They'd only gotten 30 feet in and had noticed that the original cave had been turned into tunnels carved from the rock, when they ran into a group of goblins, who yelled “Bree-Yark!” and attacked. The characters, though several had been injured, were doing pretty well, having killed 5 of the 6 goblins, when two more groups of 6 goblins appeared, one in front and another behind, an they heard something big stopping its way down the corridor toward them. The new goblins all threw javelins, and by the end of the round Glen and Dooley were on the ground dying, and the rest of adventurers were severely wounded, though still standing. And that's when the ogre arrived, stomping down the corridor. With the goblins behind them blocking their way out, things were looking grim.

At this point I suggested to the kids that perhaps surrender would be a good idea, if the goblins thought the adventurers could be ransomed. Luckily, Curufin knew how to speak goblin, an quickly offered surrender and ransom, which the goblins accepted. They quickly stripped and tied the adventurers and negotiated a 10 gp ransom each, to be paid no later than 2 days from now.

The PCs picked Jeffry to go back to town and get the ransom, as he actually had enough to ransom everybody [1], and although he had a close call on the way back, having to hide from a group of orcs out looking for something, he managed to get back in time, and the goblins kept their word and released the adventurers, wearing nothing but breech-clouts.

The adventurers hurried back to the Keep to regroup. They expected the townsfolk to be mad that they'd stirred up the monsters, but the townsfolk said that the monsters had been killing people already, and at least the adventurers had killed some of the monsters. The townsfolk did suggest the adventurers should be a little more careful next time.

So, the adventurers are safe, but they've lost most of their money, all of their equipment, and somehow have to reequip. T.A. suggested they look for work around the Keep to help get money for new equipment. And that's where we left them.