Miners and Mages

Summary

Adventure: Miners and Mages (Goblins and Gold)
GM: Phil
Season: Summer 797 WK

Party

Kern Silvercrest, An Earth Mage and Capable Fighter. (Elven / 6’2”)
Raithmoor, A fellow Earth Mage. (Human / Male / 5’6”)
Dido,An Earth Mage too but also a place of power for our college. (Dwarf / Female / 3’10” good PB - for a Dwarf)
Red Brian, A fighter of some repute. (Dwarf / Male / 4’2”)
Antonio (the plant), A renowned Ice Mage of power and prowess. Cunningly disguised behind a screen of bush. (Human / Male / 5’8”)
Kate, An E & E search mage of note. She has few combat spells but plenty investigative ones. (Human / Female / 5’8” good PB)

Time on adventure: 2 Apr to 30 Apr
Original Scribe Notes: Media:Snsu9707.zip

Scribe Notes

In The Beginning.........

We were all bought together in Guild meeting room 3A after volunteering for this potentially lucrative mission that we’d been offered at the Second quarter guild meeting at the Seagate Guild.

We decide who will take what party positions and Raithmoor is voted leader with Kate as his closest contender. Red Brian becomes the Military Scientist unsurprisingly and I become his second in command in case of mishap. I’m also the scribe as you may have guessed by now!!

Meet with the Bank’s representative and decide that we will opt for the % share of the mine (if found & producing gold that is) rather then the flat 10,000sp each we were offered. We think that 2% of this mine each may be worth it. Decide that we need further equipment and start our purchases.

Tuesday 2nd April 1996

A new day has dawned and we continue our purchasing and preparation for the mission. Have a brief meeting with employer and advise him to return to his plane ahead of us and arrange mounts for those without them (not RB or I), he does so and we continue planning to meet his transportation mage next morning.

Wednesday 3rd April 1996

We arrive at the rendezvous at 9am and see a hunched figure in a dark cloak. We greet him and he turns to reveal old and weathered features as well as his Aura, which we find is that of an extra planer mage. We show him our letter of introduction and he sends us to the other plane - well all but RB who turns up later after his portion of the transport spell was absorbed by his armour for some reason. Once together we reported to our employer in the nearby field for instructions and supplies.

We pick up the necessary goods and we then set of towards our initial destination of Lucky Gulch. We travel for the rest of the day and have no significant encounters.

However we run into an inordinate number of mages and it seems that people are forced to become mages if at all possible and the most present college is the Namer college cos it seems they will accept just any dim wit with enough MA. In the evening camp is made off the road and watches are set as follows

6pm-10pm Raithmoor and Kern

10pm-2am Kate and Dido

2am-6am Red Brian and Antonio

The night passes uneventfully and Red Brian stands guard as we mages purify in the morning before breakfast.

Thursday 4th April 1996

We start again on the road towards Lucky Gulch and find it is much the same as the previous day but with traffic diminished somewhat. Late afternoon sees us camping at the roadside again in a secure area. Again the night passes uneventfully.

Friday 5th April 1996

After purification and breakfast we again set off and travel all day until early evening when we ride into Lucky Gulch. Don’t ever believe that this place is for tourists as it looks like a ghetto with a low opinion of itself. One that has let itself go to the pack whilst continually vomiting crap. This was being kind to it as it’s a squalid dump if ever I’ve seen one (Caulder’s sewers were prettier and more functional than this town).

Anyway we pulled up to the biggest and most solid looking building in this dump and saw that a stiff breeze would blow it and most of the town over but it was the best of a worst lot unfortunately. So stabled our horses in the corral outside and went inside, we were surprised to find people inside it and we acquired a room for the princely sum of 10sp a night.

We had a quick round of DA’s on the occupants of the pub and found that one table had 5 people which were all Spies, Thieves or Assassins (4 Thief/ 6 Thief/ 7 Ass/ 5 Spy/ 6 Spy) as well as being Celestial, Mind, Namer, Namer and one other college which we failed to ascertain. Needless to say we were petrified at the thought of spending a night here with such reprobates in close proximity and it did cross our mind whether we should exterminate the vermin here but we didn’t!!

The night was spent fitfully whilst fortified and under strict watches in our room but nothing untoward occurred.

Saturday 6th April 1996

We left as soon as the sun came up and found few others moving at this time - possibly due to the fact that most of them would be purifying. Anyway we had several Locates on the reprobates as were keeping a close eye on these in case we started to be trailed by them.

We continued heading northeast towards the hills. We stop at 10am and make breakfast after checking to see if we have been followed out of town by the “Peasant Slayers”. Dido manages to hide our tracks quite well and after an hour we decide to continue our journey once more.

Our line of travel is along the river but we follow it at some distance as we avoid all the staked claims. Most of the miners we see have a very proprietary look about them and we don’t feel they would welcome visits from strangers.

An old timer happens along our path (a Namer) and we strike up a short conversation with him, he however seems very closed mouthed about things in general and mining in specific. It seems that everyone is quite paranoid about people and won’t tell anyone anything, which is of value or interest without similar information in return. We encourage the old mans paranoia and after some minutes let him on his way.

We continue moving for the rest of the day after a brief stop for lunch in a small hollow. Around 3pm we come across a sizeable claim occupied by 4 dwarfs - 3 working and 1 guarding the area, naturally (obeying the first rule of adventurers - talk to all NPC’s in your path if at all possible) we strike up a conversation and he seems equally closed mouthed as all the rest of the general population.

Stop for the night in a secluded copse of trees about 1/2 a mile from the river. We again check the locates on the “Peasant Slayers” (the reprobates from Lucky Gulch) and find something very interesting - around 11pm the locate on one of them lifts off from town and flies in our direction, passing by at some height and continuing on towards the Fort that we are heading in the direction of.

Night passes without any further occurrences.

Sunday 7th April 1996

The dawn brings another overcast day but with some sunshine, the mages all arise early and undertake purification for three hours until 9am. A quick breakfast follows (having been prepared by Red Brian) and we break camp and rejoin the trail by 930am.

Around 1130am we encounter a squad of Ducal troops from the 27th Imperial Skirmishers in fine livery - lead by Captain Durrick. We discuss the area and it’s safety at some length with the Captain while his troops stand at ease. We don’t however find out much information from the good Captain and after some 15 minutes we are again on the trail.

The locates reveal that one of the reprobates is still at the fort and we decide that it would be a good place to avoid. We therefore have Kate locate the fort before we are in sight of it and then arrange for us to detour around the fort at a distance of no less than 2 miles. The fort itself seems quite sturdy from our limited sightings and all the open ground for some distance has been staked out as claims but not mined in any way. We surmise that the area is a planed killing zone and we were right to avoid it.

The travel through the woods near the fort slows us down somewhat and we rejoin the trail proper around 2pm. We continue our travels until 6pm; we do stop occasionally and make attempts at hiding our passage from any peering eyes. Dinner sees the cooks squabbling about what we shall have and Raithmoor makes one of the quick, insightful and decisive decisions that he is renowned for and details the cook with the most experience (ranks) to be in charge. What a truly inspired and unexpected decision.........

The night however passes uneventfully once dinner is over and the heat from the food has died down.

Monday 8th April 1996

The morning sees us up bright and early to greet the mediocre day which has dawned and we mages proceed with our daily ritual of purification followed closely by the casting of a multitude of spells for the day ahead.

Since we are now past the fort we move closer to the river, as all the claims are back downstream past the fort. We find the river not to be deep but fast running in places and cool. We pass a ford in the river and soon afterwards pass a ford across the other side of the river (the northern side) and I examine more closely the maps we have in our possession in order to gain a better perspective on the geography of the surrounding area.

The mountains to our north seem linked as part of a chain with the nearest mountain being classes as “medium”, the middle being “huge” and the three along the backbone being “big”. At around 2pm after a spot of lunch on a small grassy knoll beside the river we pass a small sign saying “Once beyond sign you are beyond the range of Ducal protection. May God have mercy on your souls”. We are outright pleased at seeing this sign as it coincides nicely with the passages from the journal that we have in our possession.

Our days travel continues on until 6pm again when we set our camp off the trail and in the woods by some 50 yards (it got too thick after this point), camp is set up and food is cooked to the most experienced cook after no debate and we settle down to sleep.

This is rudely interrupted at 3am when Red Brian hears some noise in the near woods, quickly the party is roused and before we are ready Red Brian charges off headlong into the undergrowth after Kate (with her Wizards Eye up) reports back “ Oh, they are only very short - stunted even - Goblins “, Raithmoor casts his special spell of Earthhand of something and splatters a goblin completely.

Two other Goblins run away as fast as they can and are not seen of again, we get the body and examine it, we then dispose of it in the nearby bush and return to our restful slumber.

Tuesday 9th April 1996

Sun up sees us purifying in preparation for possible encounters in this very hostile terrain and it is not until about 920am that we break camp and start on our way northwards. At 130pm we sight a stream on the other side that turns northish - we plot this and continue along the riverside. We continue our travel until 5pm when we find a tributary on our side of the river. We decide to set camp here and arrange our watches after a hearty meal. We have delineated the area whereby the northern side of the river is characterized by as being “copse and hilliest” and the south side “bushy”.

Antonio does some spying with his crystal of vision upstream and espies a boat, which we will investigate tomorrow as it was mentioned in the journal. It starts raining around 2am but the night passes without incident.

Wednesday 10th April 1996

The morning dawns wet and misty but we purify and leave the camp by 9am. At around 930 we spy something floating downriver and find it to be the remains of a barrel, we surmise this to have come from the boat and it looks like there has been some smashing of this barrel. We decide to make haste and proceed at a fast pace.

We cross to the north side of the river by way of a small ford and proceed towards the boat we sighted in the crystal. We arrive at the boat - which now turns out to be a wreck that has been beached by pulling it up on the bank. We see some giant footprints at either end of the vessel where they obviously pulled it onto the beach and broke into the hull by smashing in one end. It also looks as though there has been a fight or struggle of some sort, but unfortunately there is no sign of the occupants who we surmise were water mages.

One set of the giant tracks head north and the other don’t seem to head anywhere. We search the vessel for clues of it’s occupants and find the log - which is very wet and will take some time to dry out and find the occupants hidden stash which they had hidden well but didn’t have time to retrieve.

We decide we can do no more and decide to proceed upriver following the directions of the journal on this matter, since the journal had said that he had passed this boat before going up the side river towards the horde.

The women check out the fashionable clothing situation and distribute some useful clothes to the party, they also check the food situation while we men worry about attacks and the goblins we detect lurking in the nearby bush. We engage the goblin in conversation and find out that Rankyn and his wife were on the boat and were attacked by giants from the northern side of the river.

We find out that they have seen “ Adimar Wood” - our intrepid journal writer, and they have buried him after he had an unspecified ‘accident’. We get intelligence on the north side of the river - The North side (Left) is controlled by the ‘Blacktooths’ (an unruly barbaric bunch of goblins and giants with some wolves thrown in) and the South side (right) is controlled by the ‘Bloodhands’ (a civilized trading bunch of goblins).

We arrange to get passes from the goblins on the south side of the river in order to avoid further attacks from them. We then continue on our way upstream after crossing to the northside again. We continue our search for the elusive river and find one possibility at around 230pm.

We are then attacked by a motley assortment of goblins and wolves whom we quickly dispatch since we spotted them first lurking in ambush. We had instigated some cunning tactics of charging them first and using Antonio as a point defence weapon for the non-fighters. The death toll is 18 Goblins and 5 wolves for the loss of a few fatigue and endurance points.

We also managed to get some prisoners for questioning and upon their regaining consciousness we question them at some length and then they spend some time “talking to the fishes” in the nearby stream. I was told, “don’t waste any good rocks or rope on them” which seemed a good idea at least!!

We proceed up the side river and set camp around 5pm just inside the woods. We hear horns during the night and judge them to be downstream and probably an alert in regards to us in the area. Night passes..........

Thursday 11th April 1996

We purify, recast our basic spells and continue our daily journey following the watercourses in this geographical area! We spot some Goblin tracks and then those of a giant. Have lunch in the woods (while we wait for a giant which we have spotted to pass) and then continue along our peaceful way.

We encounter a Goblin and quickly sleep him then ‘feed him to the fishes’ again. Carry on upstream to within 5 miles of Thloth’s (the bad Goblin Shaman) village of Goblins, we espy the area and estimate the population therein to be a couple of hundred.

We decide that this is the wrong stream and head back, avoiding the giant and his 2 dozen goblins as well as roving patrols. A goblin on batwings flys by and lands and the village behind us to report no doubt. We have noticed that the goblins still follow the hierarchy of biggest is toughest and best; therefore these are the leader types. This evil tribe of goblins seems to dip their hands in the blood of their enemies thereby earning them the name “Bloodhands’. The giant seems to be in a stupor as he again passes us heading downstream.

The night passes quietly and uneventfully.

Friday 12th April 1996

Find another stream, the confluence area has lots of dead goblins. Go to uplift our passes from the “good” goblins, are met by Jimmey and lead to the main camp. We get there and meet Kent, discuss with him our intentions and get information from him on Egel (the evil mercenary mage). Stay the night.

Saturday 13th April 1996

Arise, purify and cast our daily spells. We arm and train the goblins a bit and then fall asleep after a hard nights sleeping under plan 1A472 “Raithmoorgate”. Night Passes...

Sunday 14th April 1996

A nice day dawns upon us, we do our usual purifications and castings then leave the camp and travel upriver on this safe “goodies” side. Find a log bridge that is warded with some type of alarm magic, which “communicates” when non-goblins cross it. Avoid the bridge and investigate some side streams.

We change sides of the river some miles up and continue along it for a bit then cross back to this “safe” side. See a major tributary and decide to let Dido stop and pan for some gold and surprisingly enough she finds some. Set camp across the river in better concealment terrain. Eat, sleep and have watches. Night passes .................

Monday 15th April 1996

Another nice sunny day, arise purify and cast. Travel up the promising muddy money tributary (we think it’s muddy cos it’s being mined therefore our target area) in an ESE direction on the Northern/Top/Left side of the river. Spot some tracks, travel till 8pm. Camp & set watches. Night Passes...

Tuesday 16th April 1996

Nice sunny day again, Purify and cast our spells. Continue our travel up the river. Around lunchtime we come across a stream heading for the ‘Big Mac Mountains’ to the south. At 2pm we enter some foothills with “smarter” trees. Around 5pm it turns even more hillish. Find decent campsite and arrange watches. Night passes............

PS: To the north is Big Whopper Mountain.

Wednesday 17th April 1996

The weather has turned decidedly crappy; still we undergo normal preparations and then continue our travel. Our intrepid leader during the day ‘ whips out his “weapon” which is big and floppy but becomes rigid quickly!!!!’ Rain sets in around midday but being hardy adventurers we continue travel, and we find a cave around 4pm. Rest up and camp here cos it’s nice and dry!! Night passes.................

Thursday 18th April 1996

Stay in cave cos Raithmoor says it’s raining and he’s a woose that doesn’t like getting wet. Nothing happens and the night passes uneventfully as well ...............

Friday 19th April 1996

Weather is OK. Continue travel. It’s now really swollen and muddy after the rains. We decide that Raithmoor has “ lead us up a certain aquatic passage without a certain instrument “ and decide to head back as this is obviously not the right river to go up. Around 1pm we pass the Big Mac Stream again!! We set camp around 5pm and the night passes...

Saturday 20th April 1996

Fine day and we purify and cast as normal then proceed backtracking where we have come from. Pass up a shortcut trail to the south. RB notices to the south a cloud flying against the wind (about 10 miles up) and thinks it’s a Vampire!!!!! Camp around 5pm, night passes....

Sunday 21st April 1996

Decide to head back to Kent’s village and recover our horses. We break camp early and head for the village at a brisk walk.

Arrive there late in the afternoon, see Kent and volunteer to help defend his village against an upcoming expected attack. We sleep and rest up, night passes uneventfully.........

Monday 22nd April 1996

See an enemy aerial scout flying around on shadowings searching the area in a methodical manner, obviously looking for this village. Use Antonio’s crystal around noon to espy the enemy village. Set off around noon for gold prospecting, i.e. take all our stuff and bug out. Again head south through the forest avoiding ambushes and later set camp at 530pm. Set watches and the night passes peaceably...

Tuesday 23rd April 1996

Break camp around 9am, come across battle scene with 1/2 a dozen dead Blacktooth heads. Reach the river and head SW to the ford and cross the river after securing the perimeter for the period we broke cover in. Head south then SE to cut corners to the “golden” river. Travel through denser woods.

At around 230pm we arrive at the supposed river. Find some nuggets after a quick bit of panning by Dido and RB.

Continue moving southwards and set camp around 430pm. Espy the enemy camp and see preparations for leaving and at the same time get a message from Kent that their village had been located by enemy scouts and that therefore an attack upon their camp would be occurring quite soon.

At about 11pm during the girls watch a goblin overflys us and hovers for a while, we try to entice him closer but to no avail, we figure he may have located us by the distinctive axe we have and we therefore get Raithmoor to take it underground to a small cave some 100 feet down and leave it there. He leaves after a time around 2am. Night passes...

Wednesday 24th April 1996

At 6am we finish purifying and leave quickly in order to avoid any encounters that may have been heading our way as a result of yesterdays location by the flying gobbo.

We decide to attack the bad guys camp with the tactical objective being “if they see their home camp burning behind them they may stop their attack on Kent’s village and return to protect their home one”, we don shadowings and depart for the enemy camp arriving at sunrise. We fly into the center of the camp with the sun at our rear and all land safely in tight formation! We immediately attack and kill the guards on the Mule Temple and then set fire to it and the surrounding plusher Goblin/Guest quarters.

We then head for the section of the village with larger structures and encounter resistance. We set up defences and lay down some Darkness clouds to give us time to reorient ourselves to the new threats and then proceed. A fight ensues whereby we slew some 14 goblins in total and severely wounded several others and we only left due to the enemy goblins triggering and Necrosis on us and stripping all our fatigue. We then leave the bodies behind believing we have achieved our tactical objective.

We arrive back at camp and hastily move on. We head up river and find a fork in the river with 4 stones on it, stream is to the south, and the main stream continues ESE however. We decide to continue ESE and 200m further along we find another fork with four more stones and a goblin skull atop a stake. We go up this fork after panning reveals more gold.

Around 2pm we find a pile of stacked goblin bones and others.

We set camp around 530pm and send notes to Kent. Use crystal on enemy camp. Night passes...

Thursday 25th April 1996

We move further upriver. Pass notes to Kent as we travel and he is getting increasingly scared and alarmed, I give him advice and some instructions regarding my bag.

Around 930am we find the concealed cave mentioned in the journal and continue onwards. We encounter wooded terrain, which is heavy going, and I go forward to scout. I encounter a Troll and fight him off with some help from the party and then we sleep and hibernate him so he won’t worry us again or give away our position by burning him. Find the gully from the journal which now has a wall across it, we tunnel through and carry on after making sure there are no guards. Encounter more trolls but they get scared off when I summon my elemental. We arrive at the target site - the gold bar.

Send the message to our employer stating “We have found Adhimars objective, come now, Hostiles around are trolls/giants/goblins. Bring beer, wine, cheese and crackers. More magic required i.e. Quick-Wings-Fire” Set up a defensive perimeter including trenches and hands of earth using the elemental and magic. Trolls attack and very nearly overrun us around 9pm but after hard fight we survived and our employer arrived soon after. We slept and hibernated the trolls for later burning.

We decide to go and help Kent and his tribe even though he has disappeared from our locate’s, and launch a dusk raid on the now ruined ex friendly fortress to free the women and children from their captors.

We go and help Kent with his problems and achieve our objectives there.

We head back to the guild 30th April 1996.

The End………………………