Kobolds
As the two reed and brown speckled kobolds charge forward with shrill war cries and drawn daggers, Eddie shouts from the back a request of parlay. The kobolds stop in their tracks, seemingly confused by the word, and Eddie clarifies that he means to talk with them. The kobolds stand wary, but have halted their charge. Eddie inquires as to what they want.
“Trex says miners want their mine back. Trex wants something better in return. Trex says we be safer in town. There’s food in town! You want talk, you talk Trex.”
The two kobolds lead the party through a room where a table and two chairs are set to create a space for the miners to take breaks. The fresh corpse of a giant rat sits on the table, several stab wounds poked in its sides. The party is led through more tunnels, and they can feel the gentle slope carrying them deeper still. The echoing sounds of the crashing waterfall get louder as the party follows the tunnel’s downward slope. It ends where it opens onto the center shaft. A damp wooden walkway extends from this opening and then runs westward to another tunnel in the rock. In front of you, a large bucket like the one the party saw earlier dangles from a taut rope that stretches southward across the shaft and is connected to another wooden platform 15 feet away. The two kobolds lead the party into the small tunnel.
Lurking in this dusty tunnel are three, now five, skittish kobolds. One of them carries a threadbare satchel and wears a fake pair of dragon wings made of thin wood and tattered white cloth. This kobold immediately raises its hands in surrender, saying in Common, “We mean you no harm. Please don’t hurt us. I am Trex, who might you be?”
Trex
Eddie acts as the negotiator and asks the kobolds to give the mine back to termalaine.
“I would be happy to offer a trade, but I cannot freely give up our only leverage,” Trex explains, “The everlasting winter has made the wilderness unsafe for my kind, and the preternatural cold dulls our wits. Please, we only want a place to stay so we can keep out of this horrible weather. We can work, and we won’t cause trouble. Termalaine would be richer for having us.”
In the tight tunnel, with thunderous echoes of falling water threatening to drown out the negotiations, Ghaileigh and Maddy pick up hints of deception in the kobolds statements, sensing that he may not be as altruistic as he claims. They let the rest of the party know discreetly. Maddy extends her arcane senses to possibly see why this kobold is so articulate, seeing a small aura around him and the satchel on his side. The party accuses Trex of his deceit, and one by one fail to intimidate the kobold.
“I do not appreciate you calling me a liar,” Trex says, ”I would ask that you please leave my mine now, before this negotiation breaks down completely.”
The rest of the kobolds take out their daggers and javelins, looking nervously between Trex and the party. The party stands adamant, not leaving. Maddy focuses on the aura around Trex, and realizes that it has the pale green coloration of necromancy.
“I warned you to leave, now I will remove you by force!” Trex draws his dagger, but Brarr is faster, having been ready for this confrontation. His axe clips the cave wall, sending a harmless spray of dust and sparks at the kobold before swinging again and chopping Trex’s head clean off. The other kobolds stare in fear and disbelief as the reptilian head falls off the body and hits the ground with a dull thud.
Suddenly, the corpse begins to glow with a blue ethereal light, and a translucent humanoid form, clothed in cold weather gear and wearing glasses, rises from the kobold’s corpse. Spectral blood flows from wounds on the ghost’s neck, and as the ghost turns to look at the party, it howls in anger. Brarr, gazing upon this phantom, makes a tactical retreat. One of the kobolds hastily stabs at his ankle and draws some blood, but is too frightened of the ghost to make too deep of a wound.
The ghost, now without a body flys through the tunnel and slams into Maddy, merging with her. Maddy gasps as her eyes glow, and she whips her head around to face the rest of the party. The first and last thing it sees through Maddy’s eyes, is Ghaileigh raising her shield and chanting a prayer. With a massive exhalation, the ghost is expelled from Maddy, and turns to run further down the tunnel.
Maddy, now in control of her body again, puts her index and middle fingers to her temple and shoots a lance of psychic energy into the ghost’s head. The spectral cranium discorporates briefly before reforming and turning to face the party again. A golden bolt of flame slams into its right shoulder as Eddie shouts words of encouragement that turn the remaining kobolds against their ghastly former leader. The kobolds are encouraged, and turn their daggers and javelins to assault the ghost.
Devi pierces its chest and draws back her rapier, now covered in some form of ectoplasm, as Brarr charges in with his battle axe, clipping the wall again with his long reach.
The ghost wails in pain, tearing spectral flesh from its phantom face, revealing a horrifying visage for everyone to behold. Maddy and one of the Kobolds are frightened and seem to age several decades. The ghost flesh turns to mist and reforms back upon its face.
Ghaileigh drops her shield and mace to fire off her crossbow. The bolt flies straight through the ghost and slams into the forehead of one of the kobolds, knocking them clear out. Feeling bad, she throws out a healing word that brings back the kobold, now with a crossbow bolt sticking out of their forehead.
Maddy fires off another mind sliver, once again discorporating its head temporarily. Not wanting to hit any of his allies, Eddie shoots a firebolt over all of their heads and then uses his innate connection to the weave to pull it back around and scorch the back of the ghost’s head. The golden flames shine through its horrible visage as it lets out another howl of pain.
The kobolds and Devi continue to stab at it with mundane weapons, doing less damage than they would hope, but still drawing ectoplasmic blood.
Brarr drops his shield and steels his nerves as he charges in with two hands on his battle axe. He brings the blade down on the ghost’s head, and at first, it looks like it had no effect, passing straight through its phantom body. Bracing for an undead assault, Brarr watches as instead the ghost begins to split and fall apart, strands of ectoplasm stringing between the two halves, stretching and snapping. Once completely severed the two halves fall to the ground, disintegrating into spectral mist and dust.
Aftermath
The kobolds prostrate themselves before the party, wailing apologies and cries for mercy.
“Please! Mercy!” shouts the kobold named Grek, the same kobold with the bolt sticking out of his forehead, ”Kobolds no know that Trex was ghost! Kobolds follow Trex because of wings! Mercy! We give mine back! PLEASE!”
The party spares them and makes a deal for the kobolds to work in the town in exchange for housing and food. As Eddie and Ghaileigh go back to town to inform Speaker Masthew of their success, Maddy, Devi, and Brarr put the kobolds to work mining tourmalines. In total, they find two ten GP tourmalines and a single one GP tourmaline.
Back in town, speaker Masthew opens the door in his pajamas. Eddie and Ghaileigh explain the situation and ask him to come down to the mine to negotiate with the kobolds himself. He puts on his cold weather gear and walks back to the mine, where he negotiates with Grek. They determine that the kobolds will work in the mine in exchange for food and housing. Speaker Masthew returns to town while the party delves deeper and uses the bucket shuttle to cross the central shaft.
In the smaller cave, a fossilized skull partially juts out of the east wall of this small cave, five feet off the ground. The skull has larger than normal eye sockets, a curious ridge between the eyes, nothing that would pass for a nose, and four small holes where one would expect to see teeth. Maddy realizes it belongs to a mindflayer. She reaches up to dislodge it from the rockface, but ends up breaking it, revealing a small purple crystal where the brain should be. She reaches up and takes it, realizing that it is a Psi Crystal that can bestow her with telepathy. Sparkling geodes greet the party as they enter the other cavern. The gems are partially exposed in places, sticking out from the walls like glassy shards. The floor rises near the eastern wall, leaving a natural ridge with stone ramps leading upward on either end.
Return to Termalaine
The party takes their leave and returns to Termalaine, finding food and drink in a dockside tavern called the Blue Clam. The fishers of Termalaine typically finish their days here, seated on benches near one of the building’s long hearths to warm their feet while they fill their bellies with spiced chowder. Beautiful works of scrimshaw are hung on the walls. Vernon Braig, the Blue Clam’s half-orc owner and chef, knows some of the hunters and trappers in Lonelywood, and occasionally a sled comes down the north trail with a sack of hares or a haunch of moose, courtesy of one of Vernon’s friends, Dain Morningfall. On those nights, the Blue Clam’s hearths are full of roasting meat, and the patrons stay later and sing louder, enjoying the good times while they last.
Unfortunately, there is no roast tonight, and as a patron asks about it, Vernon explains that he hasn’t gotten any meat lately. He says that his hunter friends found a logger dead in the forest, and have been hunting whatever killed him on the orders of Town Speaker Huddle of Lonelywood. He has heard rumors that the beast in question is a large white moose. Vernon is unsure of what the possible reward might be, but asks the adventurers to ask Dain to send him more meat.
The party pays for their meals and goes to find the Eastside Inn. What looks from the outside like separate houses turns out to be a single structure with rooms connected by underground passages, with cozy guest accommodations in the cellar. The innkeeper is Marta Peskryk, a willowy teenager who as she performs her daily chores, sings a quiet song to herself. The party pays for a cheap room and walks through the warm underground tunnels to a small room with six cots, warmed by a small bed of coals. Eddie places his bed over the only egress, a trapdoor in the floor. As sleep finds the party, the wind howls and snow whirls past the single window; a blizzard rolls into town, hopefully not an omen of events to come.