Escape From the Goblin Horde

2 Legit 2 Crit once joined to run through the module: Escape from the Goblin Horde, and it went like this.

Players began with their PCs tied up in the dark, with memories slowly resurfacing of being captured by goblins.

Players began with their PCs tied up in the dark, with memories slowly resurfacing of being captured by goblins.	A morose man explained that goblins have eaten the gnomes who made the warren, and all the other prisoners, and they’re going to come back down for more soon.

The new prisoners tried to figure out how long he’d been down here by the size of his appetite.	Finally, a goblin druid arrived with an ogre, to take one of the PCs.

Luckily they’d prepared to ambush him, using a plank of wood from the ground.	The druid attempted an offensive spell…

..but someone managed to tear her head off while another stabbed the ogre in the brains.	And more luck! The goblin druid had a fresh human foot in her bag, so the gnoll got to gnawing on it.

Out the door, another goblin and a giant rat immediately attacked the crew.	The new crew slew the pair, but were still fumbling in the dark, with no way to co-ordinate.

And when they found the kitchen, whatever root-vegetables remained were mixed with half-cooked human.	Finding an empty room that goes nowhere, the group discussed the purpose, until they figured out it was a magical lift.

…but being alone and scared, they decided to look about, and found a dragon trapped in the warren, and unable to reach through the tiny gnomish door to the treasure-room. The dragon spoke into their minds, demanding that they find a magical portal-scroll so he could return back the way he came, with the treasure.	So everyone emptied the treasure room, leaving the lot to the dragon. The dragon cast a spell to compel one of the characters to speak the words to open the scroll (‘cabbage’). The character managed to resist the enchantment just long enough to barter with the dragon - they would give him the lot, but wanted some of the ogres dead.

The player had to name every vegetable he could which was not cabbage in order to hold off. The plan worked, and the dragon left through the portal only after leaving some charred ogre-corpses.	Soon after, more ogres came down the lift, and the group managed to dispatch them, then go up the lift.

The lift couldn’t take the weight of everyone at once, so the first group went up, leaving the gnoll to explain to the elf how humans taste.	Once everyone reached the top, they found a locked cupboard full of screaming gnomish children. Seeing the gnoll did now help.

One of the warren gnomes had survived with a spell which warped his body to look like a goblin. Unfortunately, he also acquired the goblinoid hunger. When he couldn’t take any more, he slunk into the darkness to eat the gnoll’s half-masticated human foot.	The next room finally allowed the crew some light, as it was full of fireflies…and acid spitting slugs.

The crew found a massive pile of sleeping goblins, sneaked past, and found an ogre guarding another cell upstairs. They managed to rush the ogre-guard, but did not notice it was guarding a prison, so I guess everyone in the cell was eaten soon after.	Upstairs the characters found the exit-door locked, and the goblin-druid with the keys had magically twisted various dogs into monstrous, deformed creatures, ready to kill.

Time to go? The party ended up fleeing down the lift, rather than fighting while (mostly) unarmed, and (entirely) unarmoured. This left them trapped in the lift, as a raiding party returned; the raiding party simply went down the stairs to kill them while an ogre stood at the top with a massive sword.	The elf devised an incredibly stupid plan: taunt the ogre jumping into the lift. Nobody would fall for that plan, so I set the Target Number (TN) impossibly high. However, ogres are incredibly stupid, and this one had a -5 Intelligence penalty.1 This reduced the TN so much that the player could actually make the roll.

Falling creatures add their own Strength to falling Damage2 so the ogre went ‘splat’.	The crew went up the elevator (still with the gnome-children), and ran after the goblin, and found themselves in a massive fungal-garden, where semi-sentient acidic oozes stalked them.

The raiding party of ogres and goblins began chasing after them while they ran after the little goblin-druid who still had the keys to the exit-door.	Two of the crew grabbed the little goblin by the keys, and threw him into the acidic ooze. The others redirected the acidic oozes to chase the goblin horde.

With a ‘click’, the door opened, and they all felt Sunlight.

This was the first play-through where a group managed to save all of the gnome-children.