The Bandit Gobbers
The young paladin Arthur, Lutz the enormous ogrun druid,
and elf swordsman Fingalad are unlikely friends with little
in common except a thirst for adventure. Arthur is fresh out
of the temple where he learned the ways of knighthood. Fingalad
has stories of fighting in battles in ages long past with
the elves of old—nobody's sure if there's any truth
to all that. Lutz hasn't said much about his background.
They were passing a slow night in the only tavern in Foreschmidten, a sleepy forest town of very little consequence, when a local ne’er-do-well trapper named Silas sat down like they were his long-lost buddies.
Silas said he knew the hideout of a gang of gobber bandits that had been terrorizing merchants on the road near town. The local knight wouldn’t do anything about the raiders, ostensibly because nobody knew where the gobbers were, and Silas didn't expect to get anything out of sharing that information with him. But he would share it with the would-be adventurers for 60 gold pieces. They got him to agree to 46 down, everything Arthur and Lutz had, and the rest when they beat the gobbers and recovered the loot. Fingalad paid the bar tab.
After a long hike the next day they approached the hill where Silas claimed the gobbers could be found. Walking ahead of his companions, Fingalad spotted the string and bell of a noise-maker strung between a line of trees. Avoiding that, they soon spotted a gobber sentry sleeping soundly in branches overhead. They brought him down from the tree and interrogated him (through Lutz, who spoke the language). He confirmed there were gobber raiders living up ahead but claimed (not too convincingly) to have nothing to to with them. The adventurers tied him up and dragged him along.
As they neared the steep hillside, arrows came zipping through the branches from three gobbers attempting an ambush. The arrows did no harm and the adventurers charged. Lutz and Arthur killed one goblin and Fingalad killed the other two.
They
found the cave entrance. Inside they surprised four sleeping
gobbers, despite Arthur’s tumbling down the steep, slick
rocks at the entrance. They subdued one gobber but two managed
to escape the cave—and warned other sentries in the
woods, who likewise fled. The other remained sound asleep
throughout the encounter.
Deeper in the cave they found the gang’s boss, an ogrun sorcerer as tall as Lutz, with his three best gobbers. The ogrun cast a flashy spell that knocked Arthur out cold and nearly knocked out Lutz, but the druid shook it off. In a short, sharp fight, Lutz and Fingalad killed all three gobbers and the ogrun before Arthur came around.
The adventurers came through relatively unscathed: Arthur had a cut on his forearm from a gobber’s knife and Lutz had a minor gash in his shoulder from a javelin hurled by the sorcerer’s bodyguards. Nothing serious. They collected up the small trunks of gold and silver that the bandits had hoarded, as well as a pair of artifacts held by the boss—a fine old battle axe and a magical rope—and headed back to town to pay Silas the rest of his share.
Game date: 26 February 2006. Arthur: Jon Ivey; Fingalad: Bryan Crowson; Lutz: Matthew Crowson; DM: Shane Ivey.