As a warm-up for an AD&D campaign I am preparing I decided to run a one-shot game for the guys at the Kingston Gaming Group. I have taken an adventure I read in a Hungarian role-playing magazine and adopted it from D&D 3.0 to AD&D, luckily it didn't take too much effort. I also made 5 pre-generated characters for my players to save some time, and to solely concentrate on the story and the system, because they didn't play AD&D 2nd Edition so far.
In a gaming session of about 4 hours I managed to present half of the story, and I hope we can finish the adventure next time we play. So here is a little summary of the events occured so far:
The party started their adventure in the Scarlet Shield Inn. They arrived in Loudwater just the previous day to investigate some strange disappearances of which they were told on their journeys in the area. Of course, they weren't willing to do anything for the sake of some peasants, they were after some hard cash.
After a good luch Remarda the halfling was just getting warmed-up in the telling of how delicious could unicorn flesh could taste when her daydreaming was rudely interrupted by one of the local lumberjacks, who charged into the inn and made his plea to save his son from the clutches of goblins.
At first our mercenaries were really reluctant to help, not even the offered 200 gold pieces for each of them could sweeten the deal. After some begging of the locals they naggingly decided to set out to Southwood and try to help Pelok, the son of the lumberjack.
After about half an hour there they stood, at the edge of the Southwood, and with the help of the lumberjack, whose name they didn't even care to ask, they quickly found the place where Pelok was abducted by the little beasts. The track were easy to recognise, and they started to follow in a great pace to catch up with the monsters. They marched for the rest of the day, after a few hours they ran into a goblin ambush, but it was nothing they couldn't handle, and they even managed to capture on of their attackers, with Remarda's lucky shot shattering its knee. Fin, the elven wizard wasn't against causing some pain to the goblin, and he hit the injured knee a couple of times to make the little runt more talkative. In the end they found out that they were indeed on the right track, and Palok was still alive, but time was running out for them, because the goblins wanted to sacrifice him for their god, Maglubiyet. They also learned that somethng called "Messenger of Maglubiyet" was aiding the goblins, but they couldn't make it out what it could be.
After disposing of the now useless goblin, they decided to push on to gain on their prey, and with the firm lead of Tastil the dwarf fighter, they even managed to march on by night. Around midnight though they came accross some lost merchants, who were sitting beside a small campfire. Fletcher, priest of Oghma spoke for the party, telling the merchants they mean them no harm, but that they can't stay and share a bread, because they are after the goblins, who have quite an advantage.
While following the tracks of the prey, Fletcher came to a worrying discovery: it was too easy to follow the goblins, they didn't take the least effort to conceal their tracks. Maybe they were leading them? They found out soon enough...
Late in the morning they finally arrived to a great clearing at the feet of a hill. Crude, small huts occupied this space, surrounding a suspicious cave. 20 feet in front of the cave they found Pelok, tied to some totem-pole carved with primitive demonic figures. The most strange feature was the emptiness of the camp, but not for long. After the party entering the camp, more than a hundred goblins emerged from the bushes, surrounding the adventurers. With the lead of their shaman, they began chanting Mag-lu-bi-yet, Mag-lu-bi-yet...
A fearsome roar came as an answer from the cave, and a manticore emerged from its shadows! The beast didn't waste any time, he fired some tail spikes at the adventurers, and after Tastil charged in close quarters, it decided to take flight. Theo, the party's other fighter, who was swinging a greatsword, up to this point was so annoyed with the goblins that he didn't care about the manticore but charged the goblin shaman, inflicting a dangerous wound upon his enemy. But the shaman knew better to retaliate, and just withdrew. Fletcher meanwhile managed to convince the blood-thirsty fighter to seek prey elsewhere, and attack the manitcore. Fin hurled all his spells at the fearsome opponent, while Reamarda, Theo and Tastil attacked it with their ranged weapons. Fletcher cast a Bless spell at his comrades, but the hard marching took its toll on the priest, as he fumbled some words of his prayer because of exhaustion, and his spell fizzled.
With a supreme shot, Theo's arrow struck the manticore right in the heart and the beast fell onto a hut, and moved no more. The goblins, totally demoralized, scattered into the bushes, leaving the party to their triumph over a formidable adversary.
Is this the final victory, or has this adventure something more sinister to offer?
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