The mayor of Marshport was impressed to see a group of Relkingham rangers offering their services. He told us there had been some complaints of Goblin raids in the north-eastern farms and roads and that he would reward us if we could do something about it.
Having nothing better to do, we did some preparations for the journey. As it will be seen, it was not enough, but everybody else was so frantic about leaving the city that they did not allow me to spend a little bit more time preparing; a pity, as I was really enjoying the scholastic atmosphere of Marshport's library.
There are two kinds of adventurers: those that rush to action and those that fill their bag of holding with useful stuff.
The Ice...
We spent the following days freezing in various meadows, hills, forests and gullies of Marshport's countryside. Even though we were well prepared for the cold, the winter was being specially harsh and the wind and snow was our constant companion.
After some days of exploring and tracking, we met a group of Elves! They acted very suspiciously and after some "talk" they were forced to give up their fishy attitude...- Streisan calls it surrendering. They had bought a map which, according to them, pointed to a treasure. When we accompanied them to their camp, we discovered it had been robbed by a group of Goblins, who we promptly tracked, battled and soundly defeated. Only the goblin boss avoided our wrath.
With nothing better to do -apart from freezing-, and not knowing for sure whether the Goblin menace was vanquished, we followed the map instructions. The map led us to a cavern complex which we navigated with great spelunking skill, to arrive to a strange-looking black plate with the words "Death awaits those who enter here" or some crappy scary phrase like that.
There are two kinds of spelunkers: those that know when to turn back, and those that don't...
Brave adventurers as we are, we disregarded the warning and tried to open the obvious door. Unexperienced as we were, it took us some hours to figure out that we only needed to push the plate.
...the Fire...
The plate was some kind of doormat, cleverly set in rails that allowed it to rotate and show different phrases "Welcome", "I'm not at home", "Trespassers will be Incinerated", "Death Awaits Intruders" and such... the smell of treasure and hidden knowledge attracted us, like Kobolds are to adventurer's swords.
Anyway, to describe it quickly, in another great show of recklessness and thoughtlessness, Streisan managed to fall in every single trap of what we considered a tomb seemed to contain, even when she was not leading the way: she got dumped into a pit of filth, burnt, crushed and more, all of which she endured with her usual stoicism and good humour (this is obviously a joke, dear diary).
There are two kinds of elves. Those that jump on the pit and those that hover over it.
After some time wandering the tunnels we came face to face with what looked like an enormous wyrm of legendary power. After some time observing the wyrm, we realised it had to be some kind of mechanical contratption, and Tyrion and Streisan could finally show their best skills and did what they are best at: destroy the machine-dragon.
...and the Gnome
It turned out that what we though was a Tomb full of treasures was the household of a gnome artisan called Aygon, fond of traps, mechanical devices and stupid jokes. And what is more, someone or something had turned him into a weapon! So he could not leave his house and had a mute Goblin servant that helped him go to the loo and read him bedside stories.
Anyway, the Gnome's house was warm, full of intelligent games, nice wine and better books, so we decided to stay and talk with him. He constantly demanded jokes from us, and though we all tried, I must say Tyrion's were the best -must have something to do with him being a Hummy and all.
In exchange of letting us stay and sleep at his home, Aygon requested our help to contact an artisan friend of his that lives between Marshport and Fort Eyrie, so that he would come and repair the dragon.
Well, and that's all for the moment; I'll start reading a couple of books I borrowed from Aygon before going to bed.
Tomorrow we'll try to find more Goblin tracks. We are going to give it a couple more days before going back to Marshport... I must not forget to put some mining stuff in the Bag of Holding, I think it would be useful.
Scientific Notes
Not that it's really my area of expertise, but I found Aygon's traps amusing and clever thought, so I asked him to sketch them for the group. I don't think anything I saw in Aygon's home can really help me with my Ecology book, although we found some interesting beetles in the cellars... bugs are great in Ecology books!
