Ep. 5 - Unexpected Friends

It has been a few days and the narrator has been busy with work and other things so this will be somewhat abbreviated.  It is also a few shorter sessions merged together. However, something is better than nothing so here goes.

The party, led by Pip and Carp, the young boys who knew where the secret entrance to the Redbrand Hideout, found the entrance and told Pip and Carp that they needed to go on home to stay safe.  (Yeah, right)  They entered the cave and it led to the basement of the old Tresendar Manor.  Almost immediately, they could hear - well not really hear; the voice was just placed in their head - a voice whispering that it was hungry.  It was a nothic, guarding the entrance.  Rather than fighting the beast, the party made a deal with the nothic that they would bring him food.  He seemed appeased for the moment and so they took stock of their surroundings.

They were at the southernmost entrance to the basement and saw a crevasse leading to the north with a few rickety looking bridges.  They decided to turn to the left and went down a small flight of stairs and saw a door to their left.  They listened closely at the door and heard gruff voices commanding someone, or something to do demeaning things, such as "Lick the floor, maggot!"  The party decided to burst into the room, taking three bugbears and a meek looking goblin by surprise.  The goblin promptly fainted and the party was able to dispatch the three bugbears.  After looting the bodies, they tossed the bugbears into the crevasse for the nothic to eat. They then turned their attention to the goblin.  After coming to, it was apparent that he was no threat to the party.  His name was Drool, and he was a less than phenomenally intelligent goblin who had been mistreated by the bugbears, and most likely for much of his life.  He was grateful to the party for saving him and he offered to help them out because he knew his way around the hideout... most of the time. Poor Drool was sometimes not the best at remembering important details ahead of time but he certainly meant well. The party seemed somewhat infatuated with the creature and took him in as one of their own. The party went back to the main section of the basement and decided to look farther to the north.  Drool did remember which door was the door to Glasstaf's room, so they went a different way, not wanting to meet the wizard yet.  They found a small armory with some red capes and decided to put them on in case they needed to fool anyone.  The next encounter was with three undead skeletons who had been animated by Glasstaff to guard the room.  However, not having any brains left in their empty skulls, they saw the red capes and let everyone pass.  The next stop was a room being used as slave pens.  In it they found the wife (Mirna) and children (Nilsa, 18, Female and Nars, 13, Male) of the carpenter (Thel Dendrar) who had been killed.  There was also a couple of guards and in one of the cells with Nars, the 13 year old son of Thel, was an immense  barbarian.  The guards were taken by surprise and the barbarian, who hadn't wanted to scare the children, was asked to help in the battle.  He punched a guard in the mouth and ripped his jawbone completely off.  "I just didn't want to scare the children" he said.  Nars stared at him with the open-eyed amazement one would expect from a 13 year old boy.  "Here.  A souvenir," said the barbarian, handing the jawbone to Nars.  The barbarian's name was Njord Gudbrand and had been out hunting orcs when he was captured by the bugbears who also had the wife and kids with them. (This is why he was so easily captured. He didn't want to scare the children.)  The party took the three freed captives to the door, where they found that Pip and Carp had not left, but were sticking around to see what happened.  They were dear friends of Nars and were thrilled to see him.  The boys took Nilsa and Mirna back to the town for medical attention.

There were a few other minor encounters but all were simple with Njord's immense strength.  

One event of note did occur - Tid stripped off his armor and went swimming in a pool and discovered treasure, including an invisibility potion. The party went back over to the west section of the basement to continue their search for Glasstaff, certain that having a barbarian on their side would make it easier to defeat him.