The Caves of Erratic Decision Making

Continuing from last time, our heroes had survived a goblin ambush and found both the trail to the goblin's lair and evidence of survivors being dragged away from the last ambush. I can't go into too much detail on this because at this point he players have intersected with the material I'm re-purposing unchanged from the module that came with the D&D Starter Kit.

Suffice it to say that they engaged quietly, overextended, recovered, moved forward, engaged quietly, overextended, recovered, moved forward, rinse, alter repeat until they fled somewhat ignominiously back to their base camp.

Ya'know - First Level.

Their base camp was making use of the depression that held the cache, covering it with the canvas, covering the canvas with a layer of sand. That preparation proved prescient as the quintet spent the night lying silently in the sand as the goblins and their wolf scoured the island for them. Luck or divine assistance saw them through the night (I ruled the searchers needed an outcome of 15 or more to find them and their rolls were 4 and 14).

The next morning our heroes take stock - they don't have any good way off the island, they know the Goblins are likely prepared for them, and they don't know what the pirates (or whoever left the cache) were doing on the island. After some debate they decided to follow the pirates trail tos ee if they could find another boat. Moving past the original ambush point they cross the island to find another cove that does indeed contain a boat. And another. And another - more than two dozen shipwrecks dating back at least 400 years jumbled up against one another like a mad jigsaw puzzle, held in place by the orange-grey coral that has grown up between and around them.

"That's not possible" Roberto whispers.

Between them and the mass of wrecks seagulls and crabs are congregating, hiding something in the sand. Shooing them away with magic and yells they find a group of eight bodies, all as decomposed as the ones the goblins were using for the ambush. Brock surveys the area with a soldiers eye and discerns that these people were fighting one another - 3 on 5 from the looks of it - and accounted for most of the damage before they were struck by a third party with bows. The arrows were taken, and the bodies stripped just as the ones at the ambush site.

Roberto examines the bodies and finds markings of both Talos and Malar worship amongst the fallen - both chaos gods, and erstwhile allies.

There's also evidence that whatever these people salvaged from the shipwreck mass was stolen by the Goblins and brought back to their camp.

"What," Olam asks, 'In the Nine Hells is going on here?"

We'll find out more next month!