The Danger Gang Does A Covert Op In Shushmashush

Feeling well rested, the Danger Gang hops aboard some giant beetles Martialis whipped up. They fly over the majestic Kachelmik army, adorned in their fighting colors of red and black.

They fly into the box canyon described by the eagles, fortunately without any random encounters (much to someone's chagrin). They land behind the western lip or the canyon. There are nine individual caves. Smoke comes out of the ground in front of one of them; they decide against going for that one.

Instead they head over to one on the north side, just east of a landslide. Karl is sent ahead to sneak around. Unfortunately, those were not his strengths in thieving skills. He successfully sneaks past two rooms of goblins singing a call and response song. Then he gets up to a room with a dog baying in it. Karl thinks he's on to him, so he tries to head back. Unfortunately, he's not as lucky heading back and a Goblin spots him. His room chases him out, and then the response side of the call and response singing chase him down too. Luckily, the Danger Gang is able to take these dudes out before they are able to raise the alarm. They stalk on.

They take on the Warg room. There is but one Warg in there, as well as a Goblin, and some kind of fancy Goblin in a headdress. He has a pretty fancy looking ivory bracelet and a sack with both a snake and some platinum in it.

Back out in the main hall of this cave, they find a secret door. Behind the door is a some old shields and arrows and the like. There's another secret door out of there. Karl hears some shuffling behind the door; they carefully slide the door open. It reveals the backside of a tapestry. Karly pokes a small hole in the tapestry and sees a group of huddling Goblin ladies holding knives. There's another tapestry in the ladies' room.

Now, how to deal with these ladies? Gershom casts Tongues to try to talk to them, but then they try to run off. Can casts Web before they can get too far. The ladies explain that they were about to try to lead us into an ambush, and that a Goblin leader named Broketooth had come in to warn them of their coming. Barry Ceasefire cuts ladies goblins out of the webs and ties them up to prevent further meddling. They then proceed to march towards the ambush. They find this Broketooth character with four archers (which Gershom promptly Holds). Marty then Charms the guy and has Gershom tell him that he'll mak him the number one Goblin in town, hands down. He just wants to know where Korrigan is. He says he's probably in the cave they've identified as cave #5. They go to check it out.

As they sneak into said cave, who should they encounter but their old associate HZ. What a coincidence! Turns out HZ was in the area looking for some honey for his pair of trained, giant bees. Everyone strongly advises him to stay away from Karl's gemstones. However, they are glad to have someone slightly more sneaky around, and send him off to scout ahead. He finds a room full of corpses hanging from the ceiling. That's when the skeletons come out. The rest of the party joins poor little HZ (imagine if they did not stumble upon him previously). Gershom manages to turn a few old bonies, but some sort of Goblin cleric gets in the mix and they need to take him out. A Lightning Bolt, Can-style, does a good chunk of damage. Then comes a loud gong noise. A wave of goblins arrives. They are defeated, but not without putting a little hurt on our boys.

There are more Goblins en-route.

Said Goblins charge in, men in the front, followed by some women and children armed with knives. This round of Goblins gets taken out with out too much trouble; and the women and children begin to run, but get cut off before they can get too far. Strangely, one of the Goblins seems immune to their weapons. No matter how hard they try to beat him up, it is of no avail. So they tie him up and drag him around. They'll figure out something to do with him sooner or later. They head down a flight of stairs, prisoner in tow. Suitably, they find a jail cell. Inside, they find a man nude, chained to the wall, and covered in filth. They go inside to free him. It turns out that he's Akhrem the last heir of the Star & Crescent Clan. He was on the run, since the other clan with a legitimate claim to the throne of Albania is trying to kill him. On his way east, he was captured by the Goblins, who have since been throwing feces at him. He also explains that the Kukuth are the surviving members of the Mertalian bloodline. They're vampires or something and descendants of Alexander The Great.

Karl buries the invincible Goblin alive in the floor of the jail.

They agree that they can't just leave Akhrem behind, but they can't leave without the Shadow, and so he must join the party. They feed him a couple of Goodberries to get him back into good health. Then they continue on their journey.

Down the hall from the jail cell, they hear some uproarious laughter. In broken Albanian, they're talking about the Beautiful Fork Tailed Ones they've heard so much about. They decide to not go down there, but instead, check out one of the nearby rooms, despite the fact that these fork tailed ones are so great. Instead they find a room with several sleeping Goblin women. They leave them, unmolested. On the way out, they see a pair of weasels with forked tails. Karl instantly starts fawning over them in the language of burrowing mammals. It seems that they enjoy munching on people's armor and fighting them in they get disrespected. They give them some actual food and tell them how great they are. They tell them about the invincible goblin and how he was disrespecting them, so they ask to check this out. They explain that he's actually not a Goblin, but a Nilbog, the biggest joke amongst monsters.

They bury him alive again.

The Beautiful Fork Tailed Ones move on and the Gang continues their exploration. They head down the stairs to find a trio of Goblins, their armor chewed up by the little weasels. They explain that they're guiding the Caves Of Chaos where the goddess Zana lives. They decide to not check that out. Instead, they get directions to Korrigan's room.

They go in with a knock and find Korrigan with a drunken prostitute named Artiana. He seems to be living large; getting all the money and bloodwine he can drink. It seems he stole the shadow as part of a quest to create chaos in this part of the world as revenge for a werewolf that led an army of wolves into Brittany that subsequently ate all his friends. Now he's just here to watch shit get fucked up. He also says his name is Alan.

Marty asks him how much it would cost them to buy the shadow off of him. He says 70,000 gold, to which the boys counter offer 40,000 gold. He laughs off their offer (a laugh so loud it stuns several of them) and then ties them up in his carpet which they now realize is made out of his hair. The fighting commences. Marty changes into a snake, people are hacking and chopping their way through hair. After a little fighting, Alan whips up some Animated Rocks and the Stone Doors out of there. They try to give chase, Marty in Lion form tries to track his scent, and finds him running off away from the caves.

The Gang, however, believes that he did not take the Shadow with him. So they go track down Broketooth and ask him if he knows where the Shadow might be. He thinks it's in the Caves of Chaos. So they go back that way. The caves are really confusing. They find a room full of poisonous newts that they decide to not wade through. Then they find a pond with the Zana who turns out to be some sort of cave spring nyad or something, and a third level druid. She's actually quite nice, though. It seems the black dog cut off the outflow of the spring that led out to a pond outside. Marty agrees to try to help, but he's a step behind old Karl who has already started swinging his pick axe to dig a way out. Marty then decides to try the showy solution, and he Rock to Muds a small passage out. She's quite grateful and heals them up a bit by way of thanks. She also goes to that room full of newts, and they part to let the boys through. On the other side they find a door, behind which they hear a couple of goblins.

They bust in and take care of these guys without too much trouble. A survivor tells them that the down below are some slave rooms and the room where the shadow is normally kept. He leads them around for a little while till he says he doesn't know where to go any more. So they knock him out and press on. Soon, there are more Goblin guards (so many of these guys around). These guys are dispatched without too much trouble as well. They find another room filled with corpses; some dwarves, some goblins. Doesn't seem to be much else in there though. One Goblin made a run for some sort of pull cord, but they were able to take him out before he could pull it. Said cord hangs in front of a door. Barry cuts the cord so's that none can sneak around and pull it.

Down the hall, though, they find something much more interesting. They hear some slithering noises; probably more newts, right? HZ opens the door, and is immediately shot with a gout of flame. He spies in the room one of Albania's deadliest native monsters: a Kulshedra, its eight hideous heads spewing flame, its breasts shooting out poison milk, its urine generating terrible man-faced maggots.

They slam the door shut. Marty some how gets it in his head that they should ring the bell, as they saw that the cord extends across the the room. He figures whatever it alerts will have to come and fight the Kulshedra. Karl seems cynical. Goblins are dumb, but so dumb that they would lead their compatriots into a room with a Kulshedra by accident. The Danger Gang aint that lucky. They decide to scout around a little more first before trying all that. They double back down an unexplored hall. They find an opulent (by Goblin standards) bedroom. Hiding under the bed, they find a little Goblin named Addertooth. It seems Addertooth is a coward, and his whilst his compatriots marched towards the front. They ask him about the pull cord and he says he heard that they use that when they want to get the big black dog. So, that's where they have to go. They thank Addertooth for his time.

They decide to try to book it past the Kulshedra and through the door they saw on the other side. Marty bursts in with some sort of magical fire protection going. The others leap between larva and into the next room. In there they find a beautiful woman crying over a wounded soldier and a BIG GLITTERING SHADOW hanging on a drying rack. Marty breaks into the room just in time for Barry to slam the door behind him. Meanwhile, Karl has said to himself, "Fuck that!" and has taken it upon himself to stab this crying woman. Turns out, this was the right call, sort of. The woman morphs into a goblin with glowing eyes and rippling muscles; the soldier turns into a black sword. The dude chops the shit out of Karl in response. He crawls away, but it is then that the shadow catches his eye. The stories of it's beauty did it no justice. He grabs it and uses it to bind his wounds. Meanwhile, the rest of the gang has engaged with the black dog goblin. This dude is tough. And by tough I mean strong. He chopping the shit about everybody. Barry and Lleryn get knocked down pretty quickly, though a Heal scroll read by Gershom gets Barry back in the thick of things briefly. Can, while engaged in melee, gets shot in the back by a crossbow by Karl; totally by accident. Then the black dog goblin chops him in twain. Soon just Marty and the villain remain, standing toe to toe, and it looks like Marty might not have the stuff. Karl leaps to his feet, grabbing the Clord, cuts him down, though he suffers massive organ failure as a result. Still, they have taken the day. But at what cost?

They decide to hold up here for a little while. It seems like they're might be a problem, as Gershom and Marty both become ensorcelled by the power of the shadow. Luckily, Marty is the only person that can really move at all, so it sort of ends the debate as to who gets to hang on to it; at least for now. They try to rest four hours and do. HZ, who was hiding across the hall with the prince and the prostitute, sneaks past the Kulshedra with a mixture of Obscurement and moving silently. They then head back the other way with a Dust Devil serving as a distraction. They then begin working their way out of the Caves Of Chaos. They stop by to visit Zana again, who seems happy to see that some of them are still alive. She heals up who she can, and they press on out of there. Things should start getting better for her with that guy and the Korrigan gone. Once out of the caves of chaos, they run into a squad of 10 goblin archers, apparently led by one named Kills And Eats Children, another contender for toughest Goblin around. They tell him that they think Alan had absconded with the shadow, but they killed the black dog for good measure. Deciding then that these non-goblins are of no use to them, Kills And Eats Children gives the order to open fire.

Marty and HZ duck back behind the door. There's some teasing. Marty tosses out a handful of gold to distract the archers, then some more fighting commences. Kills And Eats Children has a bone-knife at a human woman's throat, and three burly female guards. He slices the woman's throat and begins to float. None the less, the druids are able to take out most of the goblins with the help of a pack of wargs summoned by Marty. Kills And Eats decides to break out of there, ostensibly to track down his friend Gogol, a giant. They head out to the surface. There they find a 16 foot tall gentleman lumbering about. Marty throws up a wall of flame to distract him, and they run for the tree line where they parked the giant bugs. They're gone now. So instead they break east, with the wargs assisting the more wounded party members. Marty sends out his befriended eagle Master Chief to scout ahead; he spies a man riding towards our boys. He seems alright, even though he's riding one of the local man-eating horses. He rides up and they start shooting the shit. He's apparently on a quest to kill the Earthly Beauty, they tell him that it's probably a bad idea, as she is really tough... even for and eighth or ninth level ranger like this guy appears to be. They tell him about the stuff that they encountered guarding her castle. He thanks them for the heads up. They figure it's probably time to camp out for the night. Their new associate agrees to stand watch for the night, but Karl is still a little suspicious and tries to stay up with him. Unfortunately, his eyes start getting heavy...