The cleric Damin, having taken a sip of tea, places her cup back into her saucer. The plump, jovial priest across from her continues his anecdote about being mistaken for a higher ranking member of his order by a landowner outside of Hope.
“... and so I told him, actually I’m *NOT* the bishop, but I hope to be one day! Ha!” he finishes, laughing at his own story.
Damin smiled in response and tried to get back to useful information “So, you don’t have any ideas about what could have been causing the attacks?”
“Sadly no,” he replied, looking crestfallen. “Being on the edge of civilization, I suppose it isn’t surprising that issues like this come up. We certainly need to be able to safely travel in the area and it will be well worth establishing trade and relations with the non-humans! Did I tell you about the time I was trying to talk theology to a dwarven work party? Well, all I’d asked them was what their early theological education was like, and …”
Damin tries her best to remain attentive as another prolonged story begins.
---
Gathered in their rooms, the party discusses the next step in their adventure.
“So, the travelling priest doesn’t know anything about the caravan attacks. I told him about the weird energy column in the cave we found and he said he hadn’t heard of anything like that either, but promised to write to his superiors and see if they had any ideas about it. He suggested that there are a number of temples and sages in Hope who we could consult about it,” relates Damin, bringing the party up to speed and quickly summarizing her 3 hour meeting with the priest.
“Ya’ll know we could always consult Sages about the items we found back there in Hope. I reckon it might be worth the trip back,” muses Hernan.
“There are still quite a few caves in the gully that we haven’t explored. It might be worth going out there before we travel to Hope. We’ll probably find other things that we want to consult on. The good people of the Frontier Fort need our help and that should be our priority,” decides Beler.
---
Moving through the gully, the party re-enters the kobold caverns they had previously visited. Scouting through the system, they find it undisturbed from how they had left it.
Moving as a group into the cave with the giant rats, the party springs into action as soon as they see movement, with Nalda and Hernan putting most of the rats to sleep, then the rest of the party finishing off the survivors.
They make camp in the entrance to the kobold’s cave to let the magic-user and elf memorize their spells again.
---
Entering the second cavern, higher up the gully slope above the kobold’s cave, the party sees that the cave continues straight then branches to both sides, much like the entrance to the kobold's cave. At the juncture of this cavern are shelves decorated with the rotting skulls from humans, elves, dwarves and halflings. Sounds echo from the west of the caves, while the east passages are silent.
As the party moves past the grizzly warning decorations, one of the heads pulls itself back from the wall unseen and a sentry departs deeper into the complex.
Moving into a large banquet area, the party sees a large, roaring fire, an assortment of chairs and tables and a large chair at a table on the north end, clearly meant for a leader of some sort. As they examine the unoccupied room, noises alert them to a party of five guards charging them from behind.
Powerfully built with green skin, each carries two spears. Dirty tusks protrude from their jaws and they scream a warcry and begin running at the party as soon as they realize they have been seen.
---
Stabbing her enormous sword through the last guard’s chest, Beler pulls it out of his dying body and begins cleaning it. Hernan slips between the sleeping guards, executing them and looting their meagre possessions.
Moving back down the passage, they investigate where the guards had come from.
---
The leader’s powerful blows crash against Beler’s armor, as she shifts position to absorb the blow. Rushing in from the side, Damin’s mace crashes into the side of his head, smashing his head to an unnatural angle. His cowering mates gasp as the powerful creature's body collapses.
Murder in his eyes, the elf Hernan advances on the leader’s now helpless family.
