Hogar's Journal (Translated from Giant)
Year 781 of the founding of the City
3rd Day of Meloramensis – Part II
Thunderspire Mountain
As we progressed down the tunnel hoarse laughter and guttural voices drifted to us from further along. Soon a faint halo of light became visible in the distance outlining a wooden double door leading off from the main tunnel.
Vicrael waved the party to a stop and nodded to me. Stringing my bow I dropped to a crouch and crept up to the door. The shouts and the laughter grew louder as I edged closer but muffled by the thick wooden doors I could not make out what was being said. I notched an arrow and drew back slightly, feeling the satisfying tension of the bowsting on my fingertips. Gently I pushed the door open a crack with the point of the arrow. The old hinges creaked but the noise was easily masked by the racket coming from inside the room.
A hobgoblin soldier had been posted behind the door to detect the approach of someone such as me but he was too interested in a conversation taking place at the back of the room to notice my appearance. The door led into a narrow room with barrels stacked up against the right hand wall. The sentry was leaning back against these barrels looking back over his right shoulder to a desk perhaps fifty feet away from the door. Here a crowd of four more hobgoblins, three in chain armour armed with maces of bows, one a warcaster in red robes, were gathered around a halfling. They were taking it in turns to cuff him around the back of the head and laughing viciously.
Hobgoblins are never up to anything that's good so I took the decision that the halfling had to be freed. I released an arrow from the doorway that struck the sentry in the chest before he realised what was going on. I quickly ran into the room and saw an unoccupied bench against the left hand wall. I leapt atop it and loosed another arrow at the sentry but missed. My sudden assault took the hobgoblins by surprise and they did little more than turn uncomprehending stares at me. There was one exception however. A heavily armoured soldier with a long pike came running in from a side room shouting curses at his unwary sentry and headed straight for me.
Before he was able to get anywhere near me Vic, Dief, Minron and Glen came charging into the room. The former pair attacked the sentry, the latter the pikeman. Recovering from their initial surprise the hobgoblin soldiers formed a line centred on the pikeman. Glen, Minron and Eligos stood toe to toe with them; two shieldwalls face to face, spanning the full width of the room. For a while there was stalemate as neither side conced an inch of ground to the other. No force of goblins however can allow myself, Rodney and Vicrael to engage in combat on our own terms without suffering painful consequences. Before long our assaults began to take their toll on the pikeman. He was finally dispatched as Vic and Glen combined to separate his head from his shoulders.
The hobgoblins mainstay removed from the fray, Minron and Eligos redoubled their efforts against the remaining soldiers and drove them back towards the so far ineffectual warcaster at the back of the room. One by one the warriors fell under a barrage of spells and arrows and a flurry of blades until only the caster remained standing. Finding himself alone the mage lashed out with everything he had. A massive burst of force-energy causing Minron, Eligos and Vicreal to go crashing to the ground. For his trouble I pin-cushioned the caster with a couple of arrows, buying the warriors the time they needed to regain their feet without the hobgoblin doing further damage. A flurry of swinging weapons followed as my furious companions re-engaged with our foe, most of them wide of the mark. Despite the profligacy of our attacks the death of the warcaster was now inevitable. The final blow came from the direction of Rodney who finished him off with a magical bolt of energy.
The hobgoblins dispatched we surrounded the desk at which the Halfling had been suffering interrogation. He was now cowering beneath the table. After Vic convinced him that we meant him no harm he crawled out and introduced himself to us as Rendil Half-moon. He claimed that the hobgoblins were slavers who had been stalking his family and took him hostage when he attempted to track them to their lair. Three and a half feet tall and dressed in sturdy but unadorned brown doublet and breeches, Rendil was no warrior and would have been powerless to resist once the hobgoblins discovered him. It seems that outside of a place called the Seven Pillared Hall, which is protected by a group of mages, lawlessness is a problem in this mountain. He offered to take us to a tavern in this hall owned by his family and buy us a drink. Glen had him marching out the door leading the way before any of the rest of us had the chance to respond. I just hope he doesn't get Vicrael a full pint; I can't go through that again.
3rd Day of Meloramensis – Part III
Thunderspire Mountain – The Severn Pillared Hall
Rendil lead us out of the storeroom and back into the corridor. After only a short while we emerged into an enormous cavern that disappeared into darkness both above and in front of us. Torches mounted at regular intervals in the wall spat warm light into the void revealing squat stone buildings occupied by countless people of all shapes, sizes and races.
To our left a huge column descended from the infinite blackness of the ceiling all the way to the floor, a natural monolith of lime and water. It gave silent testament to the power of Moradin and the immense age of the cavern. This was presumably one of the "Seven Pillars" of the hall repeated another six times further into the gloom.
We followed Rendil past a wainwright's shop to be absorbed into the wall of noise caused by the presence of so many people. The sound of people buying, selling, greeting, chatting, arguing, consoling and joking, sometimes all at the same time, echoed from the invisible walls of the cavern.
The very first building we passed turned out to be a customs house populated with the usual eagle eyed tax collectors. Despite the hundreds of people milling about, the ogre on duty still managed to spot that six new faces had entered the hall. He lumbered over to us in the company of a warder, an animated bronze statue of a minotaur. He demanded ten gold pieces from each of us as a tax to pay for the upkeep of the hall. I was ready to tell them where to go but Vic and Glen must've been intimidated by the presence of the warder as they immediately started negotiating the figure down to a still extortionate five gold each. Apparently this pays for the mages to protect the hall, which is clearly all they protect with slavers running amok in the labyrinth itself.
Our purses suitably lightened we were free to move around the hall and set off once again for Rendil's tavern. It is a rather grand establishment of two stories. If was contructed of stone and sprawled out to encompass several single story extensions and outbuildings. By comparison to the Lucky Gnome in Fallcrest it was a palace. We passed under the painted sign of a yellow half moon and through a warm, welcoming entrance into the jollity of the Halfmoon Inn.
We emerged into a large room with a bar running all along the left hand side. Several round tables were arranged throughout the room with squat stools surrounding them. At Rendil's arrival a plump middle aged female halfling came bustling from behind the bar, anxious to know where he had been these past days. She was, to say the least, unhappy with his explanation and disgusted with his rash decision to try and follow the slavers. The telling off that she gave Rendil was nothing however when compared to the welcome she gave to us when she heard of our efforts in his rescue. We were immediately ushered into a private dining room at the back of the tavern.
Food, ale (wine for Old Vic) and Mrs Halfmoon appeared at regular intervals throughout the evening together with stories of the Bloodreavers and the misery they have been bringing to the halfling population within the mountain. The Bloodreavers are a gang of slavers, mainly hobgoblins but also some lesser goblins, Halflings and assorted others. They operate from deep within the labyrinth where the influence of the mages does not reach. Their hidden base is somewhere called the Chamber of Eyes which everyone knows about but few know its location. No sooner had Vic expressed an interest in dealing with these Bloodreavers than Mrs Halfmoon declared that she had a patron by the name of Terrlen Darkseeker who would know the location of the chamber if anyone did.
She sent a serving boy to fetch this Terrlen to the tavern. A short while later she introduced him to us. A middle aged man with a deeply lined face and haunted eyes joined us. He earns his living by guiding trade caravans across the Vale Road and exploring the labyrinth for treasure. It turns out that he does indeed know the location of the Bloodreavers' lair and has agreed to lead us there for a fee of 42 gold (a figure agreed after some negotiation from Glen). He is going to meet us here first thing in the morning.