SESSION 32: PREPARATIONS
Before they leave the Worishofen family, Uthalin asks Master Worishofen if they are able to talk to the recaptured goblins to find out where the raiders have come from, and in particular, if they've come from the Caves of Chaos and how many of them are there.
"Don't have too" responds the Master of the Worishofen house. "The goblins you've killed, I know where they come from. They come from Ravensburg Mountains. There is a whole tribe of them up there. Hundreds of them. Every now and again, when they run out of food or their numbers get too great, they come down and raid us. Normally there's only ½ a dozen of them or so and they turn up at night and try to take a few chickens or maybe a sheep. There must be a lot of them up there at the moment for so many of them to come down. They are lazy little beasts and unorganised as well so I'm not sure why so many of raided us. In my youth I adventured up there a few times but it's a pretty dangerous place. I wonder if maybe you could go and raid up there. Maybe even kill them all. There are enough of you and you are certainly skilled enough in combat, I've seen that."
"Well" Halee interjects, "we'd love too but we've promised Markis Greylock that first we'd clear the Caves of Chaos and so that must be our first objective."
They thank the Master for his hospitality and head back to the Salty Tusk.
Along the way they discuss selling the magic axe to Fenton and using the proceeds upgrade their current equipment.
When they approach Fenton he gladly exchanges the axe for 1,000gp. He informs the party that he has started to train his son, Rossiter as an apprentice and that he had talked to a couple of caravans and now he will be able to develop multiple masterworked and minor magical weapons and armour at the same time.
Halee orders some masterworked Studded Leather Armour, Risandor a masterworked Breastplate, Thomas a masterworked Composite Longbow (+2 strength modifier) and 20 masterworked arrows and Uthalin provides his family's Urgrosh to be improved to masterwork quality.
They debate whether they should go straight to the caves or wait a week for Fenton and his son to finish masterworking their equipment.
Uthalin reasons that orcs, being orcs, are rather chaotic and whatever additional defences they've developed have already been done and, if anything, over time they'll probably get lazy and may not even man any additional defences that they may have developed. "Although" he adds "they do breed like orcs and so over time they will replace their losses."
[HOUSE RULE #8: Monster Ecology. Evil humanoids breed fast. To give a more military campaign feel to the game, at the end of each month (which consists of 4 x 7 day weeks) humanoid tribes will receive reinforcements at the rate of 10% rounded up of the number of remaining tribe members to a maximum of their original strength. Males will be replaced first, followed by females and then young. Thus a tribe of 11 remaining members will receive 2 reinforcements.]
They decide that on balance it would be better to wait for their new equipment and then to try a big push to wipe out any remaining orcs in one assault.
Halee updates her map of the caves.
She can see that whilst they'd advanced a fair way in the previous assault there is still a long way to go.
They discuss perhaps undertaking a recon in strength as a prelude to the next assault. With 10 party members, including the men at arms, they have sufficient numbers to devise some more complex strategies. Looking closer at the map of the orc cave Halee sees that they've cleared 5 or 6 rooms so far but has no idea what lays beyond the far eastern corridor.
They decide to sleep on it and discuss tomorrow the best way to proceed.
DEW
is getting the contents of his Goblin Box finally painted.
