Dec 22, 2017 - The party goes to Cragmaw Castle, having heard of some other goblins with "tall" prisoners.
The party is level 2. Mike (barbarian), Jamie (wizard), Todd (cleric), Cam (paladin), Shaun (bard/sorc), Jeremy (rogue) via phone
Todd takes the Dust of Disappearance. Jeremy takes the Cloak of the Manta Ray.
About a week has passed. Nightstone is slowly getting back to normal. There are a lot of repairs to be done, bodies to be buried, and things to be figured out. Xolkin and his Zhentarim set up camp in Nandar Keep, and spend the week helping the villagers bury their dead, repair their roofs, and move the boulders out of the way. Todd also helps. Jamie finds his uncle, who is badly concussed, and learns it will be about a week before he's recovered. The party is wary about the Zhentarim helping out, but figure that they're doing it to curry favor with the villagers before they propose establishing a Zhentarim outpost here.
The villagers don't have much gold, but they find one of Lady Nandar's caches at the Keep and give it to the party (something like 20 gold each). Todd gives his portion back. The villager handling this, a dwarf innkeep named Morak, nods in gratitude and thanks him, saying that the village is in for some rough times ahead.
In the meantime, Morak offers the party free board at his inn. Alternately, it is discovered that one house in Nightstone is now vacant - the owner, a single woman, died in the boulder attacks. The party cleans it out and patches the roof and begin to stay there.
Snow is falling. Morak says that the winter has been unseasonably warm until now, but he's glad the snow waited until after the goblins captured them.
Eventually Xolkin asked to meet with village representatives (Morak, innkeep; Hiral, priest; Destiny, midwife; a halfling woman, apothecary and now looking after the Hare's Ear store, after the owner was killed in the goblin caves), as well as the party. Xolkin presents his plan, the townsfolk talk it over among themselves. Morak approaches the party to ask what they think. They think that the village needs the help, and that the Zhentarim have already been helping out. Morak agrees. The party also points out that it's been long enough that the Nandars could have received the news and sent people to come help, but no one has showed up yet. Morak says he's noticed that as well. They ask Morak who would be in charge, if a Zhentarim outpost did get established here. Morak says he's not sure, as that hadn't been brought up yet. He'd prefer it be someone local though.
The villagers talk again. Xolkin comes over to ask the party if they had kept their word and vouched for the Zhents. When asked who would be in charge, Xolkin says that the village clearly needs strong leadership right now, and that he'd be willing to take on the responsibility. The party persuades him to not put himself forward as a leader, but perhaps a group council or etc would be better for everyone. Xolkin mulls it over but agrees.
In the end the villagers give Xolkin permission to establish an outpost, and say that they can use Nandar Keep as their base of operations -- but if the Nandars should show up, that's something they will need to discuss and settle with them. The one request the villagers have is that they want to gather up Lady Nandar's belongings and send them off to Waterdeep to be returned to her family. Xolkin agrees, and even offers to send along two of his men as security to make sure they arrive safely.
All of Nightstone's families survived enough to remain intact except for one, a teenage brother and sister whose parents didn't make it back. They've been floundering a bit the past week, and the village decides that after Lady Nandar's things are gathered and prepared for travel (a few days), the kids should go along to Waterdeep to live with their relatives there. The kids aren't thrilled because Nightstone is their home, but they are too young to take over the family farming business.
While helping clean some of the wreckage out of the village, Todd's character catches sight of motion outside on the road, coming from a bush. Drawing nearer, he sees that it is a goblin -- Snigbat, the female goblin who agreed to a deal with Cam and Jeremy to kill the old goblin leader, Boss Hark, so that she could become the new boss. Appreciative for their help, Snigbat came to alert them of some news she heard from goblins of another tribe. These other goblins mocked Boss Hark for losing his "talls", and said that their tribe had some talls of their own that they wouldn't lose. Snigbat felt she owed the party to come tell them about these other talls, but also she doesn't like this other tribe and wants them dead. She tells them where this tribe - the Cragmaws - live, an old abandoned keep. Todd attempts to get Snigbat to agree to not attack people anymore if the party goes and takes care of this other tribe, but the conversation stalls out a bit as Snigbat doesn't follow what he's saying. Todd asks her to wait after their meeting, and sketches her, saying a boss needs a picture if they're the boss. He crit succeeds, and it's a beautiful portrait. Moved, Snigbat tells Todd to remain here as she has something for him too. He does so, and she gives him a braided cord of dried lizard skins, saying that this has been blessed by the Gob God, Maglubiyet. Todd takes it and puts it on. It gives him a +1 on social interaction checks made with goblinoids.
The party travels to the keep, where they see stairs leading up to a front entrance (the front door is broken down and lying on the ground), as well as a side entrance. Jeremy and Cam sneak around to the side entrance, while Mike, Jamie, Shaun, and Todd cautiously approach from the front. As they climb up the stairs, they are shot at by goblin archers through murder holes, one to the north, one to the south. They rush forward to take away one of their firing lines, and someone makes a deafeningly loud lion roaring sound to scare them (thaumaturgy). An unexpected result of this is that they alert the entire castle of their presence.
The party rushes in and begins fighting some goblins, then hobgoblins. Cam and Jeremy climb up the broken wall, seeing a dining area full of goblins joining the fight, as well as hearing a snarling roaring coming from the east side of the keep. Cam joins the others, who have begun engaging the goblinoids in a long hallway, bottlenecking the goblins through a north and south entrance. (There's also a door to the east leading further into the keep.) Hobgoblins join the fray, shooting through the doorway. The goblins from the dining area don't immediately join the fight, but instead loop around and come in through the "door to the east". They shoot at the party, then retreat, but the party doesn't pursue. So instead the goblins swing back around to the dining area.
Jeremy spots more hobgoblins and a bugbear, with two wolves, joining the fight. Jeremy remains perched up on the wall to throw daggers. Jamie uses a Sleep spell, not realizing it affects friendly targets too. He puts one near-dead hobgoblin, Shaun, himself, and Todd to sleep. They get woken up quickly, but Jeremy is spotted atop the wall and shot by goblin arrows to unconsciousness. Todd casts Sanctuary on himself and Disengage actions through the goblins to spot Jeremy, and heal him.
After a long battle, the party defeats all the goblinoids. At this point Jeremy hears the door smash open to the east, he goes and looks and it's a furious owlbear. The party quickly arranges an ambush, using the Dust of Disappearance they found previously. They lure the owlbear in and all jump it, and make quick work of it. The plan nearly goes awry when, while positioning for the ambush, they almost fall into a covered pit trap in the hall that had just gone untriggered the whole fight.
They explore the rest of the keep and find some miscellaneous stuff...nothing too exciting.
Making their way to the end, they find the missing "talls" as well as a third prisoner - a fat human man with a big white bushy beard and a red suit. Santa. He thanks them for rescuing them, and gives them all special rewards in gratitude.
The party also finds a giant piece of paper with a simple message on it - "Keep doing what you're doing there. Signed, Duke Zalto."
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