The party picked up at 3 PM, fresh off the long rest they'd barricaded themselves into the session before. First order of business: figure out what was down the tunnel nobody had explored yet, and do it without anyone sticking a hand somewhere they'd regret. Nysera sent her familiar Skrillex ahead into the dark to scout before anyone committed to it.
A Bath, a Poison Garden, and a Vial of Acid
Skrillex's scouting paid off. The tunnel opened into a small cavern with a waterfall spilling eight feet down into a five-foot-deep pool — a genuinely clean spring, untouched by the goblins who clearly knew better than to come near it. A sharp investigation check (a 22, and later a confirmed 21) turned up why the goblins gave it a wide berth: a patch of twenty green mushrooms growing along the southeast wall.
A nature check came back 21 — poisonous, but only if introduced by injection, meaning the party could handle them safely and still turn them into something nasty later. The DM was blunt about the upside: the toxin stacks cumulatively, so five mushrooms means five hours of poison damage on whoever eats them, and a full harvest ground down with the right accelerant could make one seriously unpleasant dose for "some big bad" down the road. One attempt to gather them fumbled badly (a 7), but a second, gentler hand plucked nineteen of the twenty clean, damaging only one in the process. All twenty went into the loot pile — nobody in this party leaves anything behind.
With the mushrooms secured, the party did the obvious thing and bathed in the spring. Someone also remembered the cave's other resident from recent memory — the black pudding — and asked whether its acidic residue was worth bottling. The DM allowed it, with a catch: collecting acid barehanded costs you a Constitution save. The roll came back a clean 19, and an empty four-ounce vial went from "container" to "improvised acid flask."
A Bargain with the Rats
Bathed and re-supplied, the party started clearing bodies on the way back out — and found the bodies weren't done moving. Six giant rats, each wearing a collar, emerged from the corpses, clearly someone's pets rather than wild vermin.
Elaris burned a spell slot on Speak with Animals and opened negotiations. What she learned was uglier than expected: the rats' master had been starving them, feeding them only scraps — and the last "scrap" had been a human child, hairless and small, who "didn't fight back much." The rats had kin held hostage by the same master, a small goblin who carried a strange, squiggly metal wand or staff. Elaris pressed for an alliance — free the rats' kin, and the rats fight alongside the party instead. A 26 on the persuasion check was about as good as a roll gets.
It still wasn't enough. The rats wanted a human hostage as their price for defection, and refused to settle for goblin corpses instead ("we don't eat rotten"). Elaris made them spit out something they'd swallowed along the way — six or seven jewels, promptly relieved from rat stomachs — but when it came to trading a human life for a rat pack's cooperation, the party said no. Elaris pulled her hood back up, stepped behind Barzer, and the talking was over.
When the Deal Fell Through
Initiative went Elaris 19, Selena 10, Theren 6 (rolled last on a 1 plus 5, exactly as advertised). The tunnel's width meant only one combatant could engage at a time — a chokepoint that worked in the party's favor.
Barzer opened with a second-level Magic Missile, an auto-hit that obliterated a rat outright before it got a turn. Selena followed with Sacred Flame against a second rat, which failed its save and took the damage. A rat trying to disengage and warn the others ate an opportunity attack for an 18 — a clean hit — but three more still broke off and fled in three separate directions, racing to warn the master. Elaris capped the round with a Starry Wisp cantrip that landed a natural 20 for 14 damage, dropping a rat where it stood, then used her bonus action to hand Theren a die of Bardic Inspiration for what was coming. Not to be outdone, Barzer finished off another rat with a first-level Magic Missile before taunting the last runner with a flat "keep going the wrong way." Barzer used Misty Step to close the last few feet on a fleeing rat rather than let it slip away entirely.
By the time the dust settled the rat problem was solved completely. All six died in that tunnel — the ones that stood and fought, and the ones that broke for the exits. Nothing got through to warn the master.
Into the Goblin Warren
Scouting continued cautiously, and a good perception check turned up something worse than rats. What had looked like shadows below the ledge were people: human commoners huddled against the wall of a drop that stepped down roughly thirty feet in six-foot tiers.
They saw the party — and signalled for silence. Not for help, not for rescue. Quiet. Whatever they had learned about being noticed in this place, they had learned it well enough to wave off the first armed group they'd seen. The party took the hint, kept its voices down, and signalled back a promise to return once it had gathered everyone. There was a brief hunt for a shared language, and a genuine question asked out loud about whether any of the captives might be deaf. Then the party withdrew across the tunnel to regroup rather than start a fight on a cliff edge with civilians underneath it.
Nearby, what had looked like shadows turned out to be skulls, and a cauldron Barzer had the sense not to touch himself. He told Elaris to investigate it with Mage Hand instead, and she did — human bones first, then an eyeball, then an entire hand riding up on the ladle, still attached to whatever was left of the rest of the body. The soup was, unambiguously, made of people, and Barzer supplied the pun.
Selena left the cauldron to the others and went through the pile of bones instead, which is where the night's first ring turned up. She rubbed it. Nothing happened, to the visible disappointment of a table that had been hoping for a genie. It went into the pack unidentified.
Combat with the warren's goblin warriors kicked off with a Fire Bolt ambush — a 20 to hit for 10 fire damage — before more goblins revealed themselves. Theren marked Goblin Warrior B with Hunter's Mark and put a bow shot in for 10 damage, while Nysera hit the fray with her own Fire Bolt, at one point casting it from ten feet in the air above the very cauldron the party had just found the stew in. Theren pressed the assault on Goblin Warrior A with two-weapon fighting, using his Bardic Inspiration die to turn a would-be miss into a 17, then following Hunter's Mark damage up to a combined 12 on the hit.
The Boulder and the Rag
Deeper in, the tunnel led to what looked unmistakably like a throne room — blocked by a boulder nobody but Theren could shift. Elaris tried first and couldn't budge it; Theren muscled it aside and turned up the real prize behind it: a chest holding 60 gold pieces and three fine-cut rubies worth 100 gold apiece, alongside a filthy, stiff rag that smelled like mildew, smoke, and something nobody wanted to identify.
That rag turned out to be magic — a Goblin Rag, usable once per short rest, that rolls a d4 of chaos when shaken: grease underfoot, a stench that poisons everyone nearby including the user, advantage on a stealth check because the smell convinces nearby goblins you're "one of us," or — worst case — a goblin wandering over convinced you're carrying something valuable. Nobody used it this session. Everybody agreed it was hilarious.
The Goblin Boss Falls
With the boulder cleared, the party set up on the throne room proper. Barzer held position with Fire Bolts ready, Nysera climbed high to bait goblins into the open, and Theren took the first shot at the goblin boss — and missed, the boss not even flinching. He put Hunter's Mark on it and ended his turn.
The shot that mattered came a round later. "Apparently I'm attacking again," he said — and rolled a natural 1. "That was a shitty roll."
It stood. Reece ruled the 1 a critical hit with a consequence attached, which is his standing rule for crits: something spectacular happens, and something breaks. Both halves landed at once. The damage went through — 19, an arrow straight into the goblin boss's eye socket and on into its brain, ending the fight in a single shot — and the same roll took the bow, snapping it clean in half in Theren's hands. "You fired your bow snap. You no longer have your bow."
He's down his ranged weapon for now, though a battlefield full of dead goblins means a replacement is close at hand. A teammate handed him Heroic Inspiration on the spot, whether as thanks or consolation.
The last two goblin warriors didn't last much longer. Barzer closed it out with a second-level Magic Missile, splitting the damage — 10 to one, 7 to the other — enough to finish both.
What's Left Behind
The aftermath turned up plenty to sort through. The "shiny stick" the goblin boss had been holding when it died turned out to be a Scimitar of Warning, and Theren took it — fitting, since the same roll that killed the boss had left him without a weapon. It "warns you of danger while on your person": advantage on initiative, immunity to surprise for the whole party within 30 feet (short of magical incapacitation), and the ability to wake sleeping allies the instant combat starts. He went into that room a ranger with a bow and came out of it one with a magic blade.
Nysera found 10 gold and a 100-gold diamond ring on a second body near a chest that Elaris opened carefully with Mage Hand rather than her own hands. It opened, and nothing happened. The maniacal cackling that followed came from Reece, at the table, and the party got a good few seconds out of not knowing that yet.
The biggest find of the night, though, went straight into Elaris's pocket unopened: a Deck of Many Things. The DM walked through what that actually means — legendary, unpredictable, and permanent in both directions, with cards ranging from Gem (instant wealth) and The Fool (free proficiency and a castle) to Donjon (imprisoned indefinitely with a permanent penalty to every saving throw you'll ever make again) and Ruin (stripped of nearly everything you own). Elaris listened to all of it and decided, wisely, to save her draws for another night.