After our recent clashes we had circled around, taking two full days for it, to give the goblins time to calm down and feel safe again. Now we are coming back from a new and unexpected direction. Our first round of overwatch told us that they were pretty content staying inside now. We did not spot any hunting parties going outside. Maybe we had seriously depleted their numbers?

Farin discussed size and composition of a foray party that would breach the castle at the northeastern tower and strike fast and deep to take out the goblin “king” and the imp, and do as much damage as possible around those goals, wiping the goblins out. Minig was not on board with that. He was no big fighter, so he wanted to just go gather intelligence first, make plans, be sneaky. Not at all what Farin intended. The dwarf feared that if Minig was seen, our surprise would be spoiled.

Breaking and entering

Still, in the end Minig prevailed and they went with a small scouting party, Minig, Willem, and Farin. Minig climbed up to the window and looked in. There he found two goblin guards, snoozing. He decided to take them out quietly and sneaked in.
Ouch!
He stepped on a caltrop, lost a hit point. Luckily he managed to keep quiet.
Frustrated, he hunkered down and stacked the caltrops to the side to clear a path in. That done, he went in and murdered the two goblins in their sleep. Alas! one of them jerked up and, dying, fell to the floor. That made a noise and someone from downstairs called out.

Minig quickly threw his rope around an old bench and let it down through the window, then hissed to his comrades: “Quick! Someone heard!” And right then the first goblin already came up the stairs and saw Willem trying to heave himself up, so Minig attacked the goblin straight up to buy time.

Chaos, noise, many missed swings and stabs, Willem stepping on a stray caltrop, more goblins rushing to the place, Minig suffered a wound, and lo! Our surprise was more than thoroughly ruined – just as Farin had feared.
“Let’s sod off!” yelled Minig, but secretly had a plan to stay and spy. Farin cast “Hold Person” on the first goblin, thus blocking the space. Willem and Farin rappelled down the rope and made a straight bee-line to the nearest trees; Minig swung outside in the same way, but then sidestepped and pulled up the wall to hide on top of the tower. Thanks to the good thief ability he managed that with ease, then he “hid” with his halfling gift, and looked like some random boulder. Even Willem and Farin failed to spot him at that point … and so he stayed, waiting, watching, listening. We had killed two goblins – those who had been asleep at the time. I am a shit fighter, but I climb and hide quite well.

The goblins dragged their paralyzed front man down and came up, five of them, plus an armored elite goblin. The warrior showed good competence, sadly: he ordered the caltrops to be put back in action and posted two archers at the window, backed up by three melee fighters.

Pit

For four hours Minig stayed to see what was going on. The goblins were slowly calming down, but they always kept at least two alert posts. Finally Minig accepted that this had failed, and carefully went off the tower — alas, his climbing roll turned out 93! Fail. He made noises, and the goblins noticed him up there. He knew he had little time before they would either climb after him up here or reach him from somewhere else. He dropped to the eastern wall and saw that the center of the castle was taken up by one gigantic pit, or hole, at least 25 times 13 feet. A ladder went inside, and a wooden plank crossed a narrower part.

He dangled from the wall on the outside, then raced along the wall, underneath the archer-window (where he was noticed!) but in a moment he rounded the corner to the north, where the goblins had no windows. Here he ran straight out to the forest, counting on the cover provided by the ruin itself.

He re-joined the others and they returned to the camp, telling their tale. Minig was especially gloomy, because he was convinced that the pit was one of the “hellholes” they had heard about. With that present, the castle was connected to the whole dominion of the demons; they could get supplies and reinforcements at their leisure. A shocked Minig suggested we retreat and come back with full force and clerics to plug the hole and consecrate the ground.

Myrilin demanded proof. Was it really a hellhole or was it just some drainage pit? She argued that she could hardly come back to the baron with a wild story of a halfling who thought he had seen something. If the baron were to act on incomplete information, he would be humiliated, and then he would take it out on her as the bearer of the information. She wanted to know details.

Tactics Gap

Once again we argued tactics, and along the same lines as before: Farin wanted an all out attack behind tower shields to quickly dispatch the castle guard — now more than ever! He theorized that the pit was the beginnings of a fresh dungeon dig and drafted a plan where one part of our force would attack the main entrance and force their way through, while the other part would storm the back wall with siege ladders and overrun the confused goblins. Or, alternatively, fight them outside the castle in an open field battle.
Minig felt that both ways were too bold. He wanted to collect intel and stay hidden.
It came down to the fact that Farin was counting potential losses and suggested that we might win with a casualty rate of X percent, while Minig insisted that casualties of any sort were unacceptable to him.

In the end, Minig sneaked in alone from the rear, by night, slow and quiet, to memorize all he’d see.
He climbed up the back wall and discovered that once again Farin had been right.
The ground hole was the beginning of a new dungeon fortress in the making. In contrast to the northeast tower with one elite and five to six goblin fighters, in the inner yard there was only one guard. From the southwest tower there was a huge door into the courtyard, from the southeast tower, the main entrance tower, there was some sort of wall-break.

A potential plan could involve coming across the wall, shooting the guard in the courtyard with archers, taking the northwestern tower and killing its sole guard, then pulling the ladder and plank from the pit. Result: We would have a foothold in the northwest which could only be attacked from the east, across the rear wall, and with the ladder gone any goblins residing in the deep would be cut off. At least for a while.

Holes in that plan: The goblins had a lesser demon and a shaman. So the archers would have to kill the shaman as early as possible, and Myrilin, the only fighter with a magical blade, would need to take out the imp.

In chess, that sounds like good odds. But if you are a small halfling who misses his attacks 70% of the time, it sounds jarring.

Main Gate

With that cleared up, Minig snuck around the castle to check out the front gate from close up, for those crazy enough to want to storm it straight up (like the first troop the baron had sent).

• He found that there were stone blocks dropped from a window above the entrance, suggesting that was one tactic of the defenders.
• 5 shrunken heads hanging from the lintel.
• A battered old canister hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room.
• A thin string spanning the breadth of the gate right behind the entrance.
• Inside were cluttered stairs up
• and a closed door.
• And crumbly old benches pushed to the walls.

Finally Minig failed a Hiding check and someone inside noticed the little spy. Two goblins reacted and came toward the gate to make sure. Minig retreated, went around the corner, then some two yards away from the wall, where he “hid” like only halflings can do.
Success!
The two goblins stepped out, stood right next to his huddled form, but missed him in the dim half-light.
“must of been an animal or sumfin”, they may have muttered in goblin, potentially — the language barrier is real.
Anyway, that was it! Minig returned back to base to report, and we had to finalize a plan before next session, so we can go to implementation right away. Something has to be done, and we cannot theorize and plan forever.
But given my “talents” in hand to hand combat, if we end up going into open battle, I’ll be right back behind the big tower shields and focus on archery.

The story of Wildehaven