Session 19: Chased by Hobgoblins

Hobgoblins are not that smart. They lack skills of planning and strategy. Take their god forsaken keep for instance. The architect must have been drunk. Following the hobgoblins' failed attempt to ambush us in the hall, we wandered their silly castle for some time. Despite the hobgoblins' supposed superior knowledge of the keep's byways, they seemed to be as lost as we were. In our passings, we left traps. We could hear their screams as they fell to the traps in their searchings for us but they did not seem to ever grow any closer.

Eventually, we happened upon a dark, shadowy room where the slaves were being held. The shadows moved about as if alive and the slaves seemed to be bewitched in some way. Thinking the flitting shadows about the room were more ominous than they seemed, the dwarf cast a spell and began to glow with a powerful holy light. We then realized the room was merely creepy. The dwarf feared his spell might harm the slaves so he ventured down the hall to prepare for the approaching hobgoblins while the ranger, paladin, and myself roused the slaves from their stupor and prepared them to flee. At that moment, the drapes grew teeth and attacked the paladin. I told him to hold still lest we harm him as we attacked the hellish curtain but he may have panicked a bit and mistakes were made. We killed the creature but not before the paladin was significantly harmed. Resolved to healing him, I began to sing a spell of curing but, so dusty was the room, that I may have sneezed the last word of the spell and possibly obliterated the paladin's hand. There was no time to remedy that misfortune, however, as the dwarf yelled from down the hall that the hobgoblins were upon us.

Joining the dwarf in the hall, we found ourselves beset by no less than 30 of the cretins. 30 of them. Against 4. They crashed upon us like waves of stupid and foulness and inevitably broke themselves upon the dwarf's spell of protection while the rest of us finished off the survivors of the wave with spell, sword, or arrow. Their captain, an understandably frustrated creature, had the misfortune of wearing metal armor and quickly succumbed to a spell cooking him in his own breastplate. Though we depleted many spells and did not come out unscathed, we managed to prevail due to the hogoblins' idiocy. But our trials are not over. We now face two overfed, mammoth hobgoblins. Being without spells, and minus a hand, I don't like our odds.