People and Places: Hobb



Hobb:

A tiny hamlet located at the place where the Dawn Way descends out of the Howling Hills, Hobb grew up around a walled inn known as the Cross-Eyed Beholder.  The folk of Hobb grow apples, pears, and chestnuts in orchards sheltered below the hills, while shepherds and goatherds keep their flocks up in the heights.  Most of the inhabitants are human, but smattering of the other common races make their home here as well.

The Dawn Way:

An important east-west trading route linking the more densely settled heartlands of the Old Kingdom of Yvony (West of the Shaelastran River) with rich mining settlements dotting the Spine of the World such as the great mountain city of Overlook.

The Cross-Eyed Beholder:

A fortified, walled inn on the Dawn Way, this sturdy structure was built as a haven from brigands and from the outside looks as though it could withstand the attacks of anything short of an army if properly defended.  Despite this sturdy exterior, the interior of the inn feels warm and hospitable, and is filled with the warm smells of stew and freshly baked bread.  The Cross Eyed Beholder is named for its most eye-catching feature: amid the heads of more mundane game trophies hangs the rather grisly, dessicated stuffed trophy of a beholder (a legendary creature comprising an enormous, disembodied eye surrounded by individual eyestalks; in this case the eye-stalks are 'cross-eyed'). 

Mallie Marchess

The proprietor of the Cross-Eyed Beholder is a broad-shouldered, middle-aged woman with smiling green eyes wavy auburn hair shot through with silver, who looks as though she would be just as comfortable splitting firewood or stringing a hunting bow as she is baking a loaf or serving her clientele.

Mallie owns and runs the Cross-Eyed Beholder inn, where she seems to fill most roles as manager, bartender and host herself.  She comes across as a tough, capable, frontierswoman who is respected as something of a spokesperson and leader for her community.  Along with Arvel (see below), Mallie is responsible for commisioning the construction of a log palisade to defend Hobb, and for sending out the call for adventurers to discover what is causing the goblins sudden aggression and hopefully putting an end to their threat.

The Seven Suns Trading Coaster:

One of the many organized trading coasters which trades with the communities of the Dawn Way, bringing goods backwards and forth between the Old Kingdom of Yvony in the West and the great city of Overlook in the Worldspine Mountains to the East.  The trail-glyph for the Seven Suns Trading Coaster is seven discs, and Seven Suns caravans fly a russet flag with seven golden disks arrayed upon them.

Arvel Durgoden

A proud, powerfully built dwarf in his middle years, magnificently well-groomed and oiled black beard falls in magnificent curls to cover his impressive paunch.  While he is clothed in the characteristicly practical and sombre garb of the dwarves, his attire is of exceptional quality and his belt buckle, thick chain of office and rings glitter with gold.

The wealthy Arvel Durgoden not only runs the Seven Suns trading coaster from a fortified warhouse and base straddling the hill overlooking Hobb, but serves as the hamlet's money-lender.  Along with Mallie (see above), Arvel seems something of an unofficial leader and spokesperson for the hamlet, and was instrumental in organising the construction of the log-palisade and raising the reward for adventurers to end the goblin threat. 

The Shrine

This large building's unpainted exterior clearly shows it to be a recent construction.  Outside, the carved wooden symbols of many gods await their first coat of paint and identify it as a place of worship.  Inside, one large room features shrines honoring different gods spaced evenly along the walls.  Though currently maintained by a novice cleric of Pelor, this temple is dedicated to no single deity and appears to honour most of the good and neutral gods honoured in the Umbrian Marches.

Listra

This willowy, delicate, novice speaks in hushed tones from with the voluminous folds of her pale yellow robes, and keeps her large dark eyes demurely to the floor.  Her robes are clasped by the golden sun-disc of Pelor.

Hobb's only resident cleric, Listra is an aspiring cleric of Pelor, but tends to the shrines of all the deities and sees to the spiritual needs of the locals when they call upon her.  She also serves the community as a healer, and when informed that adventurers would be seeking to end the goblin threat to Hobb she offered them her healing services as well. 

Adventurer's Journal (Howling Hills): Session 1

Day 1:

The adventurers set out along the Dawn Way in response to rumours of troubles in the small hamlet of Hobb.

+- Midday:

·         They chance upon the ambush of an itinerant tinker’s wagon by a band of goblins. 

·         After slaying the foul creatures and saving two of the wagon’s fallen guards from death, the adventurers discover the wagon’s owner, the halfling Garret Goodriver, hiding amid his spilled wares.

·         Garret is seemingly shocked at such goblin aggression on this well travelled portion of the Dawn Way, and begs the adventurers to help him right his wagon, recover his horses, and escort him and his injured guards back to the safety of Hobb.

·         While Garret initially seems almost as terrified by the Accolon’s rather forthright demand for reward as of the goblins, Carrick manages to to smooth tensions and arrange for suitable compensation for the adventurers to act as guards.

+- Dusk:

·         The adventurers escorting Garret’s wagon come upon the scene of an even larger ambush: Accolon and Pharnos notice ravens and other carrion feeders circling overhead, alerting them to bloodshed before them and enabling them to approach the site stealthily.

·         They come across the remains of four merchant wagons, the corpses of horses and about ten human warriors and coachmen, riddled with black goblin arrows and javelins.   The humans obviously sold their lives dearly, at least double that number of fallen goblins litter are carrion for the birds.

·         They recognize the tabards and flags of the destroyed caravan as being those of the Three Suns trading coaster: 3 Golden Disks on a russet field.

·         The adventurers battle a goblin straggler searching for loot remaining in the wreck: bedecked in strange bones and totems and protected by a mangy wolf, the goblin battles the adventurers with dire magics but he is cut down by Pharnos’s twin blades and his beast felled by Accolon.

·         Pharnos is able to find the prints of several more goblins, more humans, and some heavier, deeper prints leading south from the Dawn Way into the hills.  The adventurers consider following the tracks straight away, but eventually give in to the pleas of a very frightened Garret Goodriver to get his wagon and his guards back to Hobb.

+- Nightfall:

·         The adventurers arrive in the small, quiet, orchard and waystop hamlet of Hobb, sheltered amid the hills.  Garret and his rescuers immediately notice that all is not well in the normally sleepy hamlet – several outlying farmsteads are blackened and burned, an earthen and log rampart is under construction and the locals faces are drawn with anxiety and light up at the site of adventurers with strong sword arms.

·         Garret directs the adventurers to the ‘Cross Eyed Beholder’, a local homely but defensable inn, and a meeting with the hamlet’s unofficial authorities: Mallie Marche, a stout, middle aged innkeeper with a frontierswoman’s eminent competence, and one Arvel Durgoden, moneylender and owner of the Three Suns Trading Coaster, who did not take news of his caravans’ loss kindly.

·         Mallie and Arvel reveal that, while there have always been the odd sighting of goblins in the remote hills and occassionally they have stolen sheep and cattle from shepherds and cowherds, the goblins have never before attacked in such numbers and with such ferocity.

·         They say that over the past four months, the goblins have increasingly attacked travellers, shepherds, cowherds and even raided Hobb itself, culminating in news of the current attacks on Garret’s wagon and the Three Suns trading coaster.

·         The adventurers accept the promise of a reward to track the goblins back to their lair, discover what is organizing and driving their sudden aggression, and put an end to the future threat.

·         The heroes seek healing at Hobb’s tiny shrine from the local novice cleric Listra, and are joined by an adventuring cleric of Pelor named Braydon.  They take their rest at the Cross-Eyed Beholder Inn.

Day 2:

First Light: Accolon, Pharnos, Carrick and Braydon head back to the sight of the ambushed 3 Suns Trading Coaster.

+-Mid-morning:  Phanos leads his companions after the goblin tracks, which wind away through the wooded hills to the south.  At points along the way they come across the grizzly corpses of three humans in the tattered garb of the Three Suns Trading Coaster, their legs loosely bound, along with the broken casks and chests they appeared to have been carrying for their captors.  Their heads are set upon black goblin spears.

+-Midday:

·         After about three hours of travel and tracking through the stifling, still woods, the companions begin to hear an eerie wailing sound for which the ‘Howling Hills’ are locally named.  While Carrick has heard tales of the hills being haunted, Pharnos and Accolon dismiss the notion, recognizing the eerie sound as that of the wind through many tiny fissures in the rock.

·         The tracks lead to a small cave, brooding in the rocky face of a hill.  Phanos spies foul goblin guards within, and he and Carrick move silently forward to begin the assualt with a surprise volley of arrows.  One goblin flees further into the cavern screeching warning, while the remaining sentries and a fell mastiff stand to repel the adventurer.  Accolon and Braydon charge the cave mouth, and battle ensues in a cavernous cave mouth.

·         Battle ensues in a gloomy cavern mouth illuminated only by the light of Carrick’s lantern.  The goblin sentries and their rabid dog are quickly silenced, but five more goblins burst from an ancient oaken doorway in the caverns rear.  They rain black feathered arrows and javelins down on the adventurers from the shelter of a rocky ledge; Phanos and Accolon repeatedly hurl themselves at their foes atop the rocky shelf only to be driven back by the goblin line.  Accolon and Braydon’s shields are quickly covered in black arrows, and Carrick falls to the floor unconscious from loss of blood.  Finally, backed by Phanos and Braydon, Accolon is able to cut a path onto the rocky shelf, black blood spraying with every blow, and the remaining two goblins flee.

·         The adventurers fall back below the ledge to  briefly regroup: Braydon calls on the sun god Pelor to close Carrick’s wounds, Phanos sheathes his handaxe to fight double handed with his longsword and the adventurers prepare to press on after the fleeing goblins.

·         Accolon kicks in the oaken door to reveal a guardroom of sorts, in an ancient chamber of well cut stone.  Here they are confronted by the two fleeing goblins returned and the aid they must have sought: a hulking, seven foot goblinoid, all muscle and sinew with hidious fangs and cruel red eyes, armed in black leather with an ornate, beautifully painted wooden shield upon which a red dragon curls amid gouts of hand.  The creature belows a hideous warcry and battle is joined.  Accolon flies into a savage rage and hurls himself at the foes, while Phanos deftly dances along a solid table, jumping out of the foul goblins’ reach and striking out with his longsword.  The lesser goblins are quickly cut down but the seven foot beast wields its wicked morningstar with deadly abandon, backing into a corner to prevent himself from being surrounded and contemptuously warding off the blows of the adventurers.  He deals three mighty blows to Accolon, and the raging barbarian seems about to fall, when he uses his last strength to strike the brutal goblinoid.  Snarling with hate, both mighty warriors collapse together, first to their knees, then to the ground.  But only Accolon has comrades standing to tend his wounds, and his brutal foe’s lifeblood flows black on the cold stone floor.  

Rules Update: Rangers and Two-Weapon Fighting

Some clarifications of rangers and two-weapon fighting from our last session:

Rangers and Two-Weapon Fighting:

A ranger gets the benefits of Two-Weapon Fighting AND Ambidexterity feats provided that they are wearing light armour or no armour.  They do NOT need to take these feats to get this benefit.

Drawing Weapons:

Rules for drawing weapons have already been discussed here.  If you have the two-weapon fighting proficiency (or are a ranger with light or no armour) you can draw TWO light or one-handed weapons in the time it would normally take to draw one.  Because rangers have a +1 attack bonus from lvl 1, in practice this means that 1st level rangers can draw TWO weapons as part of a move action.

Attacking with 2 weapons:

Attacking with 2 weapons counts as a 'Full attack'.  Essentially, whenever you have more than one attack per round, either with the same weapon, with two weapons or because of a feat, you can only use the extra attacks if you take a full attack: that is, you don't get ANY movement other than a five foot step, no charging, etc.

Extended Example: The ranger Pharnos is confronted by a vile goblin sentry beneath the Howling Hills.  He uses a MOVE ACTION to close with the goblin (30 ft, 6 squares), reaching behind his back with both hands to draw his longsword and hand-axe as he strides forward.  Because Pharnos's base attack bonus is +1, he can draw a weapon as PART of his movement rather than an EXTRA move, and because he has the TWO WEAPON FIGHTING ability (he is a ranger in light armour) he can draw TWO weapons at once.  After his MOVEMENT ACTION (30 ft. move + draw weapons) he still has a STANDARD ACTION to make an attack - however, because this is not a FULL ATTACK, Pharnos can only attack with his longsword (MAIN HAND WEAPON).  In the next round, if the goblin is still standing, Pharnos can use a FULL ATTACK: he swings with his MAIN WEAPON (longsword) and cuts the goblin down, then takes a FIVE FOOT STEP towards the next foe, and swings with his OFF-HAND WEAPON (handaxe).