Our prisoner couldn’t speak any of our languages. We parked him with the donkeys and kept watched what was going to happen. Minig expected a small scouting party to come look for their missing friends. But 9 came out: 8 normal goblins and one armored warrior-goblinesse.
This new development toppled our plans, but Minig kept the others back when they wanted to rush the group. Farin stated that he had no animal control spell any more, so he could not repeat our last ambush. “No matter,” said Minig, “they are not out to hunt anyway. They are looking for their friends.”

Soon the situation turned in Minig’s favour: The search party split up. Five went south, after the hunters, four went east.
Hermione wanted to go after the larger force, but Minig wanted to go after the smaller one. Willem decided the question: We went east, after the weaker group, trying to ambush them on their way back from whatever they were going to do.

Hide and seek

Hermione was forward scout tracking the group, which went to an odd hill with a fireplace on top. Looked a bit like a ritual site. The goblins noticed Hermione and she ran away, towards the rest of us. They bounded after her with yip-yip! yells, eager to nab the seemingly weak little Hobbit.
Surprise roll: they didn’t notice the trap, and we massacred them.
Short debate if we should hide the bodies — I was against it, because by now the others must surely have found their dead friends already, and so the situation was clear anyway. But the others insisted to at least pull the bodies behind trees or something.

On the ritual hill there was a pile of rotten meat. I suggested lighting a fire, so the other group may see it, come to investigate, so we can ambush them too. The majority of the party rejected the idea though. So we just returned to the castle to watch it.

On the way, Hermione noticed a sneaky goblin scout busy observing our soldiers: we had run into the other group by accident, but so far only Hermione and that one goblin knew it. Hermione chucked a pebble at Myrelin to alert her and try to capture the sneaker. The girls attacked him with bare hands: d20+attack bonus. Success! They wrestled him down to tie him up as a second prisoner.

Three more goblins noticed the situation and ran away! And the armored goblinette ran with them. AWAY from the keep. Only Hermione saw them, the rest of us were oblivious. We decided to form a hidden line near the keep to catch them on their return, while Hermione followed their tracks — but she lost them and returned.

Finally they returned from another angle and made a run for it, toward the keep. We hobbits, the elf and the archers pilfered them with arrows and got lucky! We got all of them, including armor-girl, and with a desperate rushed shot with steep negative modifiers Minig even got the last one, moments before he would have reached the gate. All down!

Obviously now the other goblins in the keep knew what was up, and they shot back at us in the treeline. We retreated somewhat.
Farin suggested now might be the best time for Minig to infiltrate the keep, but Minig disagreed. Now was the time of absolute high alert on the goblin side. “We’ve got time. Let them calm down.”
Willem agreed and yelled out “RETREAT! RETREAT!” to make the goblins think a larger force was out here in the woods.

The goblins ran back and forth on the battlements, and we even spied one very big goblin with something like a crown. And a goblin-sized infernal! An imp, small, red, twitchy, with a stinger tail.

Maneuver

Minig suggested a new plan: We would slink back into the woods and go far around the keep in a wide circle. Let’s give them two days without contact. Time enough for them to look around, seek tracks, fail to find us, and decide we are gone. THEN we hit them from a new direction.

It took some convincing.
Myrelin wanted to go and hole up in the abandoned village — Minig hated the idea because that would be the first place for the goblins to look for humans, and then they would know where we are and how many we are. Exactly what I do NOT want them to figure out.
Willem wanted to make a big show of us retreating and moving away. Minig hated that idea too, because he did not want to give the goblins clear signals that we were going away. Rather, they should be in doubt! Then they should look for us in vain, and guess and wonder.
Farin suggested we could go back to the town and buy fresh resources, tower shields, and scrolls, and get more men, maybe even mounted lancers for an open battle. Myrelin hated THAT idea because the beastly baron was her boss, and he would ask her what the heck she was doing back here with the job not finished and now asking HIM to commit troops.

In the end, Hermione and Farin built on Minig’s original idea and refined it, figured out an optimal route, with Myrelin and Hermione hiding our tracks. First part would be to APPEAR to return to the town, but then veer off south and circle around the keep.

War crimes

One issue, as always in these situations, were our prisoners.
We could not speak with them, as both knew no languages of ours, and we could not let them run, because they had seen our numbers and troops, so if they returned home they our game would be up. So Hermione wanted to slit their throats.
Willem and Farin were opposed on moral grounds: They wanted to keep them with us, treat and feed them fairly, and protect them against potential dangers, just as the Geneva convention demands. So they planned to keep a separate guard roster just to guard the prisoners against potential mistreatment. Farin also suggested we could transport the prisoners back to the town to integrate them into society, and if Dark Moor was not up for that, they might find a new home in Wildehaven.

Minig was dismayed to hear that: We were few enough to begin with, and if Willem and Farin, and potentially more, were tied up to guard these two guys, and if we fed them from our rations, and if we would even transport these useless dolts back to Wildehaven for seven days, and return here for another seven days, we would be severely hampered and our operational capabilities weakened beyond any reasonable measure. So while unhappy about the prospect of murder he felt that Hermione’s idea was the only possible way.

Myrelin decided the matter by reminding the Geneva-crew that the baron had decreed (after the brutal goblin attack on the village) in very explicit terms that every single goblin here had to die. She AND her archers and spearmen all were under orders to kill these dudes, not to feed and protect them.

So with heavy hearts, Farin and Willem took a short stroll into the forest to get a bit of fresh air and pray hard, to allow Hermione and Myrelin ample time to finish the guys off.
Which they did.

The situation reminded me well of several similar incidents in other games, sometimes even ending in arguments and RL anger.

New position

Anyhow!
We reached a forested hill south of the goblin keep.
Farin suggested that now Minig could sneak in to look around in the keep, while the rest could prepare fire pots to light belching smoke fires, so if Minig was noticed he could run away, they let heavy smoke roll across the field and he could use the smoke as concealment, while our scouts and archers would sit behind tower shields to cover his retreat.

Minig feels that it would take some time before the smoke would be thick enough, and until that moment was reached the smoke would do more to alarm the goblins than to help.
Still, there might be a moment for all this.
For now, though, Minig wants to stay quiet, keep our heads down, and watch from the new position, to find out what new routines the goblins have introduced after that night of terror, three nights ago.

Then see where that takes us and what options present themselves.

Wildehaven: the whole story.