Baergar hears the laden two-horse cart approach Brigand Bridge. Only there aren’t two horses, just one horse and the cart’s goliath pilot making clip-clop noises, putting on airs.
O’shute makes this run of Marley’s Marvelous Mead to Nightstone a couple times a year and personally knows Morak at Knightstone Inn. He shares a rumor of Nightstone’s little giant problem and offers a lift to the battle-weary adventurers.
Grund and Adrik help themselves to one of the crates of Marley’s and take a long rest. O’shute gets compensated regardless of the amount of mead that actually gets delivered so that’s fine by him. When the cart arrives at Nightstone’s natural moat, he simply drops the crates off on the west-facing drawbridge and skedaddles.
A wooden palisade surrounds Nightstone inside the moat. Guard towers flank the lowered drawbridge. A keep overlooks the town from its own moated islet to the south.
Orphaned Baergar grew up in Nightstone under the tiefling guardianship of village midwife Destiny Agganor. There is no need to mention her affiliation with Asmodeus in this distinguished company of Moradin, but suffice to say Baerger did not spend much time in the temple of Lathander and Mielikki, present source of an unceasingly tolling bell assailing their ears.
The mead-napping bulks of Grund and Adrik are neatly arranged behind the crates of Marley’s right along the edge of the drawbridge and abandoned for their own safety. The vertical threesome of Harry, Mel, and Baergar sets off to find Morak.
Right away the party notices boulders embedded into the streets and buildings as though lobbed from some great height. No townsfolk can be seen. The guard towers are empty. A pair of wargs worry on a bloody piece of meat up the road right where Baergar remembers the nightstone proper used to stand at a crossroads. The party uses the temple for cover to avoid the wargs and hears goblin merriment accompanying the pealing bell above.
Baergar leads the party through the adjacent graveyard in an attempt to get to Morak’s inn without attracting the wargs. The wargs notice them and charge into the graveyard right for tasty Harry. The party drops into a nearby crypt too narrow for the wargs to enter.
The crypt is the final resting place of Nightstone founder Drezlin Nandar. It disappointingly contains neither valuables nor secret passages.
Harry uses his knowledge of handling animals to convince the wargs that these dwarves won’t be easy pickings. They return to their road kill, allowing the party to escape the crypt and cross to the inn where a boulder has conveniently smashed open a corner of the building into the pantry.
A terrified goblin screeches at being discovered while plundering the inn’s larder. Fortunately, Mel studied goblin at seminary, although Gum-gum’s screechy dialect gives her some trouble. Mel determines that Gum-gum is provisioning her boss, Boss Hark, with assorted foodstuffs and valuables. Gum-gum panics and tries to flee, comically encumbered by her overstuffed bag. Mel lines up a beautiful shot with her warhammer and splits Gum-gum’s skull. She checks Gum-gum’s pockets and finds a box engraved with the symbol of Lionshield Coster containing ten silvered darts.
Another goblin, skewered by a crossbow bolt, lies dead on the floor of the dining room. Although thoroughly wrecked, there is no sign of Morak or human casualties on the inn’s first floor. Mel looks up. A woman on the second floor is looking down through the boulder hole, but hides when Mel speaks to her.
Grund awakens refreshed, but his head is ringing like a goblin at a temple bell. He stomps into Nightstone, ready to settle grudges and chew bubblegum. The wargs have no difficulty spotting him and run over to eat him where a boulder juts from the road. Grund runs up the boulder and jumps onto a warg, grabbing its rope bridle. He adds one warg to his inventory. The other warg counts itself lucky and goes back to eating.
Grund steers his warg through town yelling for Osstra to come out and settle grudge #1273, but Osstra does not present himself. In fact, no one is visible at all except for a couple of goblins chasing chickens around a farmyard. They draw shortbows but can’t hit speeding Grund. He steers the warg at them, intent on running them down. They jump out of the way.
Baergar runs upstairs to find Mel’s peeking woman. He finds Kella Darkhope, itinerant monk, cowering in her room holding, of all things, a flying snake. She explains that Morak lead the townies to the dripping caves to flee an attack of cloud giants who dropped the boulders on Nightstone. The subsequent goblin raid is just one of those unfortunate things that happens to undefended towns. Kella would just as soon stay where she is than join with the adventurers.
They can hear Grund outside yelling. Baergar uses Kella’s second floor window to attract Grund’s attention. Grund barrels through the goblins toward the inn. The goblins shoot arrows into his back, the cowards, forcing Grund to heal himself. The goblins confer with someone unseen in the farm house and pursue Grund to the inn as he reunites with the party.
The goblins switch to scimitars. Mel cures Grund’s wounds so he can charge back into battle. One of the goblins pulls a Marley’s bottle, cracks the end, and hucks it at Grund. The bottle strikes the warg who howls in pain. Some of the warg’s hair falls out. Now this is serious.
Harry drops goblin Pojo with a trio of sapphire-colored magic missiles. Pojo’s friend Tot vows revenge despite Mel’s handaxe thrown into his shin. Tot throws an acid bottle at Grund which hits this time. Three strands of Grund’s beard fall out. He collects the three strands for later burial. Tot readies another bottle but Harry’s magic missiles slay Tot, splashing the acid all over him, and Tot dies, balding.
Sticky-fingered Baergar finds a gold ring on Pojo and a spare acid bottle on Tot. Tot also has a live chicken which Baergar gives to Grund. Baergar slips upstairs to see what other treasures might be found in the rooms. He cracks into Morak’s bedroom chest and secretly pockets a pair of gemstones and some loose gold pieces. Harry claims a potion of heroism.
Downstairs, Grund puzzles over how to put down the warg in some considerate dwarvane manner to prevent it from turning on him. Ultimately he just allows it outside to eat Pojo and Tot.
Kella has had her fill of adventurers and seems reluctant to speak with Grund, but he doesn’t take no for an answer and persuades her to allow him in. Grund follows a hunch that something about Kella’s story is not legit and she cracks under questioning. She admits in fact she is not merely a monk, she is a scout for the Zhents who have been summoned to take the undefended town away from Lionshield Coster and Lady Nander for the Black Network. Grund checks her wardrobe despite Kella’s concern for her unmentionables. Her unmentionables turn out to be weapons. Grund offers to allow her to go in peace with her weapons if she promises not to mess with the party. Fine. Done.
The Zhents won’t arrive for a few days, but it seems there are goblins infesting every building. A long rest would be nice but it’s still early in the day, the breached inn is difficult to defend, especially with Kella hanging about, and the temple bell continues to toll keeping everyone awake and irritable.
Baergar drops out of a window, avoiding the wargs, and sneaks back across the street to the temple’s side window. The first floor appears empty so he opens the door and beckons everyone over.
The bell-ringing goblins are in the tower up a ladder from the cleric’s quarters. Baergar sets some ball bearings in the doorway and hides on one side of the door. Mel gets ready on the other side of the door. Harry waits in a corner where he can line up magic missiles. Grund declares very loudly that he’s just going to sit right down for some prayer after a long day of lugging around his enormous sack of gold. He certainly hopes some goblins don’t attack woeful him because he’s just too tired to put up any defense at all. Predictably, the bell ringing stops.
Two goblins hop off the ladder and approach Grund slowly at first. Then they hit the ball bearings and their pace quickens. Mel hits the first one, Beedo, and the last thing that goes through his mind is his face. Baergar stabs the grieving second goblin, Vark, reuniting him with Beedo.
The temple valuables are found in the goblin loot bags. Grund and Mel serve Moradin’s good will and re-consecrate the temple, putting it back in working order.
Grund makes luau chicken in the temple dirt floor so that no smoke escapes and everyone turns in for an uneventful evening.