Heroes on the Borderlands · Session 08
Praal gives up a mine, the dead demand fungus, and a gelatinous cube becomes an ally of convenience.
Scene 01 · A prisoner and a body
The party returned from the fens with Praal restrained and Shannik’s body carried behind them. They took both directly to Castellan Winvarl.
Praal could be questioned. Shannik’s insignia could not argue. Together, the prisoner and the dead sergeant proved that the frontier violence was connected to a conspiracy inside the Keep itself.
Scene 02 · Beneath the Keep
In the dungeon, the party subjected Praal to a brutal interrogation. The performance of injured innocence finally failed him.
He admitted that someone stood above Shannik, though he claimed not to know who. He could offer only two pieces of the larger design: kobolds, and a mine.
“Someone above the Sergeant. A mine. Kobolds.”
Scene 03 · Let the dead identify their master
The party asked the Keep temple to call Shannik back long enough to name the person he served. Fazzir was willing to perform Speak with Dead.
One ritual dish remained empty. The spell required a rare fungus found in the caves beyond the Keep. The shortest route to the truth now ran underground.
Scene 04 · Cave D
Cave D was in the middle of a goblin celebration when Harvey slipped inside to scout. On the way out, he walked into a spider web and turned reconnaissance into a rescue.
The party fought through the spiders, burst into the goblin chief’s revel and defeated her people without killing the chief. Amid the chaos they also freed Vinx, a dwarf spelunker who travelled with them briefly before choosing her own road.
Scene 05 · Cave F
A tunnel from Cave D carried the party into the hobgoblin lair of Cave F—and into the path of a gelatinous cube roaming its corridors.
They slipped around the transparent horror, opened the hobgoblins’ barricades and released it into the occupied passage beyond. The cube rolled forward. The party waited safely and let the dungeon fight itself.
“Why fight the hobgoblins when the corridor can do it for you?”
Scene 06 · The reason they came
Beyond the broken defences, pale fans of fungus climbed a wet stone wall. The material Fazzir needed had survived the cube and the hobgoblins alike.
The party packed it carefully and turned back toward the Keep. Caves D and F were cleared, Vinx was free, and Shannik’s silence now had an end date.
The next answer would come from a dead man.
Session 08 · Aftermath
“Why fight the hobgoblins when the corridor can do it for you?”
