With the castle cleared, we retrieved our fallen man, bound our wounds, raised Darkmoor’s banner, then packed up and set out to return to Darkmoor, where Myrelin would report to her boss, the Baron. Lucky for us we met no dangers on the road and reached the castle, where the Baron’s steward, one Harlan Linford, listened to Myrelin’s story, showing the most unimpressed mien possible. He was especially unimpressed by the death of our archer, and particularly about the hardships we had endured.

Leaving Myrelin’s toxic workplace, she went to visit friends, while we visited our tavern and tried to orient ourselves for future plans. West of the liberated Castle Redshield was another, Castle Wynwick; most likely also in the hands of evil. There was a river called “Dreaded Run”, beyond which started the Infernal Lands. And the Baron wanted the refugees from the village Julvet near Castle Redshield to re-settle their land as soon as possible, so he was sending them out immediately, together with a knight and some troops that were to claim Redshield for the Barony.

Farin wanted to show people our maps to get more details about the spots we had marked there, but Minig stopped him. His thieves’ instincts told him that hard-won knowledge about potential treasures should be played close to the chest, not shown around. Still, Farin gathered knowledge, for example about the hobgoblin threat in the south: they work together with local bandits and they form teams to ambush caravans.

Back into the fray

Our choice was clear: We would re-supply and join the knight and villagers to get back to Redshield as early as possible – for we had unfinished business: Some of the goblins had gone underground and disappeared, and we felt we needed to figure out their ways of traffic, and stop them from moving freely where they pleased.

With fresh food, light, oil, and ropes, we met the troop of fresh mercenaries and their knightly commander as they gathered on the main square. Together they set out, the riders in front and the villagers trailing after. On the way, the knight quizzed us about our adventures at the keep and tried to gauge the tactical situation. We informed him, an Minig also mentioned the underground warren that infernals supposedly use, and that one infernal disappeared from the keep.
The knight’s opinion of us seemed to rise considerably given that we felt a calling to close these underground ways rather than to simply line our pockets with treasure.

Missing Magic

Farin and Willem worried about an important aspect when it came to infernals: Myrelin had been our resident magic weapon wielder, and with her not present we had no way to actually banish one of them back to their realm. We would very dearly need such an instrument, as soon as possible.

We spent the night in Julvet, then left the villagers to their designs and rode onward to Redshield. A quick check of the place showed that no-one had messed with it in our brief absence. The banner was still flying and even the dead goblins lay undisturbed. The soldiers went and collected the dead for burning and set out to clean the ruin. The adventurers went belowground to inspect the caverns.

Underground

We found a relatively narrow tunnel, three feet wide, with low ceiling, a bad place for Willem and his fighting style. Farin and Minig crawled in for a few meters and discovered that it was quite long. So we collected our things, left the beasts in the care of the soldiers, and lit our lanterns. With lights held high we went forward, toward the unknown.

The tunnel was way longer than we thought, very long — an eternity even. The ground was soft and sanded, and we saw a great number of goblin tracks in it. We began to worry how long this could possibly go. Then suddenly it ended. We had reached a larger cave, where we could hear the sound of water.

With light in hand, clearly visible, we appeared at the entrance to the larger cave, and found natural steps leading down from our entrance to the floor, and to a further tunnel at the other end. This seemed like a place that goblin troops used to rest between legs of underground journeys. But no-one here. No encounter, no material, no useful hints.

We decided to keep moving.

Recap the whole story of Wildehaven