Gol’den Chile bars the main doors and looks for a way to secure the others while Brother Bother dispatches the surviving enemies and casts Detect Magic. Finding, amongst other things, a pair of potions on the goblin chief’s body he discusses these with the ailing Aric and concludes that they are likely healing. Administering one to his fallen comrade they are proved right and the half-elf is soon on his feet.

It appears that any goblins in the vicinity either didn’t hear the battle or assumed it was part of the re-enactment. The party checks out a few doors around the throne room: the chief’s bedroom, an armoury and a rather vile-smelling locked larder, which is opened with one of the chief’s keys.

Deciding that escaping back across the rope bridge will be too risky the group follow Bother’s plan to climb the nearest guard tower and hide up there for the night. However after creeping up the stairs, Aric alerts some goblins on the roof when he opens the trap-door. Thinking quickly he apologises in goblin before closing it again – luckily the guards didn’t see him and assume he was a goblin.

So to plan B: back across the rope. However there are now some goblins and their dogs outside scratching their heads at the collapsed bridge. Resolving to quickly dispense with them before escaping, Aric casts Fear on one and GC – glugging the other healing potion – charges the rest. One of the dogs manages to bite GC but the two creatures and their goblin handlers are soon dead; however the fight has alerted the guards on the tower who rush to the battlement and draw their bows.

Wisely deciding that it will be too dangerous to cross the rope under fire, Aric heads off down a narrow passage in the briars. Rounding the corner of the fortress he spies more goblins and their dogs, playing a game of ‘killgull’ in which one goblin holds a captive bird at the end of a length of twine while the other throws stones at it. Aric wastes no time in shooting one dead; GC barges the other off the cliff and with the help of Bother’s lightning bolts the two dogs are also killed. GC’s hands are starting to get itchy though.

The guards from the roof – probably with more goblins in tow – are on their way, so a plan is hatched to climb onto the fort’s roof, clamber across it and hide in a corner inaccessible on foot. Hopefully it’s secure enough …

Experience: 713 each

Brother Bother applies some of his magic to Gol’den Chile who suffered badly at the paws of the shaman’s pet firepelt and feeling a little better, the two monks follow their half-elven guide further into the thistle tunnels. They discover the firepelt’s nest and are about to investigate beyond it when they hear someone – or something – moving northwards through the briars to the east.

After deciding that heading south will take them nowhere and the place they’re aiming for is north, the group decides to head the way the shaman (for it was surely he) was heading. The thistle tunnels open out to reveal a rope bridge strung 60 feet between the cliff and the roundish, flat-topped island of Thistletop, perched on which is the goblins’ wooden stockade. Aric spies the wounded shaman limping across the bridge and quickly puts a well-placed arrow in him; he slumps down onto the planks.

As the party begins to cross the bridge themselves, suddenly – just as Brother Bother galumphs onto it – the western support posts on both shores tear free and the planks drop away to dangle vertically. Quick reactions mean that Chile manages to jump back onto the cliff while Aric and Bother are able to grab the eastern rope. The unconscious shaman is not so lucky and plunges eighty feet into the crashing surf. After the dangling pair manage to get themselves back on land Chile comes up with a plan for getting everyone across to the island and eventually everyone arrives safely.

The stockade seems to be made of old boats and despite having two thirty-foot tall watch-towers, it seems that nobody is keeping an eye out at the moment – even the gates are ajar. Aric slips through into some sort of trophy room, decorated with manky preserved horse- and dog-heads and a large pair of bat-like wings tacked to the wall with daggers. With Aric leading the way the party heads west through a series of rooms (goblins seem to like doors as much as they hate horses) but turns back when they hear several goblin dogs ahead.

Turning back and heading east, they pass a room behind which several goblins can be heard snoring before they reach another door at the end of a narrow corridor. Gol’den Chile can hear what sounds like goblins fighting and laughing; itching for a fight, he throws open the door and steps right into the goblins’ throne room.

Three goblin commandos are acting out a battle against some clearly illusory humans, while a goblin war-chanter looks on. Also observing from a dais and thoroughly enjoying himself is Ripnugget, the goblin chieftain, next to whom is his faithful giant gecko mount, Stickfoot. GC wastes no time in laying into the war-chanter who immediately goes down like a kicked halfling.

The first half of the fight is quick and one-sided: Aric sticks an arrow in the chief, Bother takes down a commando and Chile punches Stickfoot, who had just taken a bite out of him, unconscious. But then Ripnugget – who had been glugging down a potion – joins the fray. Enraged by Aric’s impertinent peppering he goes straight for the elf with his evil-looking dog-slicer. Bother and Chile finish off the commandos without much trouble but the chief is a lot bigger, a lot stronger and – with his breastplate armour and now oddly barky-looking skin – harder to hurt. The two badly wounded monks are unable to stop Ripnugget striking Aric down.

Things are looking grim, but before Aric fell he wounded the chief enough to make him vulnerable to Bother’s miniature lightning bolts. Two of these see Ripnugget finally go down.

Bother tends to Aric – he is alive but unconscious. The two monks are not in much better shape. There has been a lot of noise and there are more goblins sleeping next door. Have they been woken? Maybe it’s lucky that Ripnugget was having his guards act out a battle …

Experience: 1667 each