Previously: Chapter 08: Into the Jaded Wilds
Breaching the Castle Walls
Realizing that Venomfang has most likely abandoned their deal or at the very least plans to backstab them, the party realizes they have no choice now: they have to take on Cragmaw Castle alone. They examine the sword that belongs to Sildar that Demetrius grabbed, with Willowbark examining it. She determines that it is not magical, but probably an heirloom, or at least very valuable to Sildar, so they should return it to him. Now the party has to decide, do they go through the front doors, or sneak in through the back. Having done some recon of the castle, they know of at least two entrances, but there may be more.
While the party talks about tactics, Willowbark glances up into the sky, and can see a shadow swooping behind some clouds, before disappearing. She thinks it might be the dragon, but it isn’t moving closer to them, so no point dwelling on it. Demetrius, having been inside, thinks that the smartest would be to go through the side entrance, where they saw the goblin appear, as they are probably watching the front carefully, considering the traps. The party agrees, and so decide to sneak up to the side, hoping to catch the goblins by surprise.
When they approach the wall and stairs leading up to the side entrance, they can hear a great commotion inside, with the sound of cutlery hitting plates, as well as smell a whiff of some sort of food, and think that they might be walking into the kitchen. As the door is locked, Demetrius uses his lockpicking skills to open it, and lets the party in. Penny enters first, and can see that she is standing in a dark hallway, but luckily, no goblins wait for them. To her left, they can hear the sounds of the commotion through a closed door, indicating a large group of goblins are just beyond.
Skulking Around in the Dark
Seeing as the hallway is poorly lit, Willowbark and Kal, who are the only members without darkvision, hold on to the closest party members to be guided through the darkness. The remaining party members can see that they are surrounded by collapsed walls and roofs. In front of them there is some cloth covering a hallway, so they decide to go through there first. On the other side they are in what once was an old tower in the castle, with a camouflaged opening to the outside north of them. Penny takes a listen at the only door in the room, and thinks she can hear a faint movement, but cannot tell what it is.
Demetrius checks the door for traps, and finds that it should be safe, and carefully opens it, leading into another hallway. To the south, beyond another curtain, Demetrius can tell that there are a few creatures that sound bigger than goblins, and to the east, through the door, Willowbark can hear a couple of individuals speaking elvish and discussing a deal, and haggling about price. They determine that it is most likely the king and the Black Spider talking about Gundren, so they realize they have to hurry. Not wanting the creatures behind the curtain to interfere, they decide to take them out first, and decide to do the classic pincer move of attacking them from both sides, with Demetrius, Granny and Penny doubling back, while Theren, Willowbark and Kal taking the north.
Not wanting the large goblin gathering to interfere with the conflict just yet, Penny uses her bardic creation powers to summon a stone block that blocks the door right by the entrance, hindering it from opening. Feeling confident that they have the element of surprise, they position themselves and get ready for the signal, as they use Sending to communicate with each other. Demetrius, starting to get impatient, suddenly kicks open the door to attack before everyone is in place.
Luckily, the three hobgoblins lying on the other side of the door, resting, were unprepared for the sudden emergence of the party and are caught by surprise, allowing them to easily be taken down. The party tries to be as careful and silent as they can, so that the Black Spider doesn’t know of their incursion. They kill two of the hobgoblins, but knock out the last one. Hoping to interrogate him later, they tie him up where he lay and search the room, picking up whatever valuables they can find.
An Unexpected Prisoner
Noticing another door to the south, they listen at the door, and can hear something very large breathing from within. Curious as to why whatever is inside didn’t come to help since it surely must have heard the commotion in the room, the party decides to carefully open the door. Willowbark takes a listen, and recognizes the distinct breathing to be that of an owlbear. Not wanting to hurt it, she tries talking to it through the door, but it just growls at her, being obviously scared. She keeps trying to talk to it, hoping to make it promise not to hurt the party. She decides to go for it, and the party clears a path to the outside for it, keeping the door they came in through open.
Willowbark carefully opens the door, and can see a starving, hurt owlbear being held in captivity in the dark room within. It blinks a few times at the light coming from Kal’s sword, before running straight past them to freedom. The party can hear its footfalls slowly grow weaker as it heads north out of the castle. As the owlbear is free, the party enters the room, and finds it mostly empty, with broken glass all over the floor, as well as the furniture being broken. Up near the roof however, on a shelf, they can see a chest. Granny climbs up and retrieves it. Inside they find some gold, an old potion of healing, as well as a couple of spell scrolls, one of them being revivify, which Kal takes.
Having taken care of the potential reinforcement, as well as having blocked off the large goblin group, the party feels confident that they can try to save Gundren, so they congregate near the door leading into the eastern room. Penny uses disguise self on herself to look like what appeared to be the hobgoblin captain they knocked out, and enters, while the rest of the party stays out of sight. Inside she can see a fierce older bugbear in plate armor, presumably King Grol, talking to a Drow. They are accompanied by a couple of hobgoblins, as well as the leader's wolf which snarls at Penny as she enters. On the bed she can see a dwarf, Gundren, and he does not appear to be conscious. Trying to distract the enemy and give her party an opening, she talks over to one of the windows and mumbles something, trying to sound like a hobgoblin. Then the rest of the party runs in and attacks.
The Drow
The king immediately goes on the defensive, sending his wolf to attack Penny as he now sees through her disguise, while the drow tries to escape by running through a door near the back of the room. The two bugbears who were sitting playing cards tries to defend themselves, but they are easily overwhelmed by the party. The king however manages to hold off for a surprising amount of time, almost managing to take out Penny before Willowbark saves her, but he too succumbs in the end.
Having defeated the king, the party quickly realizes that the drow walked into a dead end, and tells her in elvish to come out. Penny asks Kal to heal Gundren, which she does, and takes him away from the door where the drow entered. He thanks Kal for helping him, and sits back, waiting for the drow to come back out.
Eventually, realizing that she has no way out, she emerges with her hands up, indicating that she is peaceful. They question her, asking if she is the Black Spider, but she just laughs at them. She just works for him, and she says it with a hint of pride in her voice. The party questions her about who she is and what she and her master wants. She introduces herself as Zelya, and says that she wants “freedom”. The party asks her to elaborate, and she does.
“All we want is for everyone to be free. That is what my master is working towards. A free society, free from the influence of the gods. Free from magic. If magic disappeared, then everyone would be truly free to be themselves.”
Theren points out that if the world is rid of magic that would mean that her master, whom he presumes is a magic user, would also be without magic. She just laughs at him, and says he doesn’t understand. She is doing this for her people. While this is happening, Penny is rummaging through the king’s belongings, and finds a bronze ring with a shield on it, and takes it for herself.
As Zelya finishes speaking, she gives a glare at Gundren, and takes a hand up to her back, which the party notices, and runs to grab her as she makes a leap towards Gundren, saying that he cannot be allowed to live. They try to hold her back, with Gundren cowering against the wall, but the drow is surprisingly strong, managing to wrestle herself free, and stabs Gundren several times in the neck. Granny comes up from behind and uses the blunt side of her ax to try to knock her out, but she immediately keels over, and transforms into a pale, indistinguishable monstrosity. Theren recognizes this as a doppelganger.
Kal immediately runs over to Gundren to heal him, managing to close the wounds and bring him back once more. Willowbark searches the corpse of the doppelganger, and finds a ring, which Theren identifies as a band of loyalty, worn by spies who do not want to be captured by the enemy.
Safe At Last
Gundren is extremely relieved to be saved by the party, and says he doesn’t remember much since the attack on the road to Phandalin, saying he has been in and out of consciousness since then, but remembers that the drow, or doppelganger, was asking for the map, but the king wanted more money as he realized the importance of it. Gundren then ask how long it has been, and when they tell him that it has been a couple of weeks, he starts stressing out, saying they have no time to waste. He jumps to his feet, being reinvigorated by the healing, and starts looking for his map. The party helps him, and Demetrius eventually finds it underneath the bed of the king, as well as some healing potions and a bunch of gold and silver.
Gundren sits the group down at the nearby table, and explains that Wave Echo Cave contains a great power, the Forge of Spells, which greatly enhances the process of making magic items. It apparently was lost over 400 years ago, but he and his brothers have found it again, and want to put it back into commission. The party tells him that they have been told that The Black Spider are looking for something of great importance in the cave, and after meeting the orcs and learning that they too looked for something in the cave they are beginning to think that the forge itself is secondary to all this.
The party decides to take a short breather to regain some stamina, before clearing out the rest of the castle. They ask Gundren to remain in the king’s chambers, as they don’t want to lose him again, to which he happily obliges. Willowbark summons an owl familiar to keep him company and warn the party if he is in danger.
They spend the rest of the day clearing out the castle of whatever dangers remain, and as they have already taken out the king and come from within, they have the element of surprise on their side. Reaching the center room where Demetrius and Willowbark sensed the weird smell, they are ambushed by a grick, which was camouflaged in the stone walls, and severely hurt Granny, but not enough to take her down. After defeating it and the three goblins who heard the commotion from the shrine, they search the room, and find a magical statue hidden in the unlit brazier, which allows them to cast augury once per person. Kal, looking at the murals, recognizes several of the gods, among them Adea, Ilene and Shehemis, indicating that the original builders of the castle were not goblins.
The party fights their way through the castle, clearing it room by room, and in the end, all that remains is the room with all the commotion. Managing to catch them by surprise, they find that the remaining goblins are having a feast, with a large rotund goblin holding the feast. With a well placed shatter, Kal manages to take out most of them, with the remaining goblins being taken out as they desperately try to make their way through the door to the back that Penny had blocked.
Now the Loot
Having taken out every enemy in the castle, they search every nook and cranny, finding a bunch of gold, some weapons, a magical compass, as well as a barrel containing a very fine dwarven brandy. They decide to gather it all to take with them, but decide to sleep in the castle for the evening. Gundren asks why they cannot just leave, and the party explains to them that they made a deal with a green dragon to help them clear out the castle, and as it has not appeared, they fear that it will attack them the moment they step outside. Not wanting to be a meal, Gundren agrees that sleeping in the castle for the night will be the best course of action, allowing the party to regain their strength.
During the night, Kal sneaks out to the hobgoblin captain that they captured, and silently slits his throat, so that he cannot escape or attack the party in return, but she tells nobody of this. The rest of the party have already forgotten the hobgoblin in the midst of all the commotion.
In the morning, Penny is searching the king’s chambers once more, waking Willowbark, who asks her what she is looking for. Penny tells her that she is looking for her flute, and when Willowbark asks her why it would be here, she tells her that her mentor Morgan took it when he disappeared, and she had a desperate hope that he had been here. Sadly, she finds nothing.
An Expected Betrayal
The party, still seeing no sign of Venomfang, decides that they have overstayed their welcome, and begins gathering their loot to head to the horses which they hid in the forest south of the castle. As they exit the front doors, careful not to trigger the trap in the entrance hall, they can see some horses approaching, with a band of returning hobgoblins riding them. They can see that the party is not of their group, so they demand to see the king. Kal takes charge and tells them that they have killed the king, and it is in all of their best interest to just turn around and leave, as they have killed enough already.
The hobgoblins discuss amongst themselves, looking nervously at the party holding their loot, but wisely come to the realization that this is not a battle they are guaranteed to win, so they take Kal up on her offer, and turn around to leave. As they do, a large green dragon comes crashing down to the ground, cutting off their escape, before it kills the hobgoblins and their mounts with its breath weapon. Venomfang turns to the party.
“Thank you so much for clearing out my new lair, but I am afraid that I cannot let you leave alive. I’d rather not have to worry about you returning to finish me off later.”