The party sets out on their first actual real adventure together, even Dabi is a little bit excited about it. Never had a group to travel with before. Dabi thought to himself. Might be kind of nice. The journey to Mirstone is about a day and a half by foot along the main roadway. The party arrives outside of Mirstone mostly uneventfully, when staying along the main road the guard do a good job of keeping the path safe.
Once in the small town the party has now discovered is called Orangegrove, they meet up with the development company's foreman running the operation. "May I help you travelers?" The foreman asks.
"Yes, hello we're from the Champions of Milos, we are responding to a request sent out by your company I believe." Felix responds.
"Ah, yes welcome, good afternoon, my name is Tim. I'm the foreman on this job, it's good to meet you all." Tim welcomes them.
Tim goes over the details of the job once again, essentially repeating what the job posting already told the party. He guides them over to the entrance of the cave and says. "Since we got here we've heard many strange noises coming from down there, so we're fairly confident there's at least a handful of monsters. But judging by the aura permeating from the cave, they shouldn't be anything a wood ranked adventurer can't handle."
"Got it, you can count on us." Felix replied.
The party headed down into the cave, and after a couple of minutes the cave became completely void of light. Everyone in the party except for Felix had some degree of dark vision. Dabi being a Dark Gnome not only could see the furthest, but felt very at home in the cave. Roxie could see about half as far as Dabi, and Krysis and Zander could see about half as far as that, but poor Felix couldn't see his hand in front of his face. "Well this is bullshit." Felix snorted. "What am I supposed to do?" He asked.
"Be better prepared." Dabi snarked as he handed Felix a lantern.
"That was shockingly kind of you Dabi, are you Dabi?" Felix questioned.
"My current ability to make money is solely tied to your survival, and that goes for the rest of you too. Don't confuse this with kindness, I'm only looking out for my coin purse." Dabi said smugly.
As the party progressed they came to a crossroads rather quickly with three potential paths. Not knowing which path to take first, they converged and between Dabi's cave expertise and Zander's intuition, they proceeded down the far right path. Soon after, a rather foul smell began to fall upon Krysis's adept nose, stopping him in his tracks. Not long after the rest of the party followed suit. "What is that stench?" Krysis asked.
"That is the smell of death." Dabi said bluntly.
The party hesitantly continued down the cave, till they came upon a pile of rotting carcasses. The party could barely stand the sight, Zander covering his mouth and Roxie vomiting on the other side of the cave. "What foul beast left this behind?" Krysis asked, repulsed.
"Only one way to find out." Felix replied.
The party continued further down the cave till they found a small room carved off the side of the wall. As they party peaked into the room they noticed a couple of goblins ripping up miscellaneous meats into piles to throw into a pot of what they can only imagine is a soup of some sort. Roxie pretends she doesn't notice fragments of clothing in the piles of miscellaneous meat. They all look at each other and signal to keep going further in. Now the smell of death has stained their noses to the point it's begun to fade from their attention. They find an open area with more small rooms carved into the walls in a few directions, and in the center of the room five more goblins lay there asleep.
They decide to investigate the small rooms before disturbing the sleeping goblins. In the first room they found a rather large chest, filled with a rather small amount of coins. In the second room they find a pile of fresh vegetables and freshly deceased farm animals piled up. In the third and fourth rooms they found more sleeping goblins, and in the fifth room they found the entrance was blocked by a large boulder. Zander also noticed that the ceiling of the cave looked like it had a hole in it, potentially another exit the development company was unaware of.
As the party attempts to move the boulder to investigate the fifth room, they accidentally wake up one of the sleeping goblins. The goblin who woke up, notices their presence and lets out a gut wrenching screech that wakes up all the remaining goblins and alerts the ones who were shredding meat. The party members all look at each other with a sort of, "well fuck" expression on their faces.
The goblins begin to charge at the party members. Felix draws his twin swords and engages into a duel with multiple goblins. He fights them back enough, giving the others ample opportunity to get away from the wall the goblins forced them against. Roxie runs back towards the entrance, and begins firing a barrage of crossbow bolts. Zander runs over to a group of goblins and disarms their weapons with his bare hands, before pummeling their faces causing them to choke on their own teeth. Krysis sees Dabi struggling and throws a smoke bomb of sorts to give him enough cover to get away. "Thank you for that fishman, mean words don't do much when they lack the intelligence to understand their being insulted." Dabi said, panting. Just then a nearby goblin fell to his knees, completely defeated with no will to fight left in him. "Oh I guess I got one." Dabi said jokingly before plunging his dagger into the back of the goblins neck. "Look at me, contributing."
Afterwards Krysis and Dabi run towards Roxie taking cover behind her, while Krysis hurls explosive potions towards the entrances to the carved out rooms the goblins were sleeping in. "Don't want to give them any place to hide." Krysis said. While Roxie offered support with her crossbows, Felix and Zander finished off the last of the remaining goblins.The party regrouped near the fifth room.
"You sure did talk a big game for what little I saw back there." Felix snarked at Dabi.
"They were unintelligent creatures, what do you want from me? I'm surprised you didn't feel a sense of kinship with them. That's probably the only reason my taunting hasn't reduced you to a feeble state yet." Dabi replied angrily.
Now that the goblins were disposed of, they finished moving the boulder blocking the fifth room. Behind the boulder they found seven young girls ranging from ten to fifteen years old tied up and blindfolded in the back of the room, four young boys about the same age also tied up and blindfolded in the back. Near the front of the room they found three older girls and one older boy, probably in their early twenties chained to the wall. Their clothes were ripped from their bodies and they were covered head to toe in various bodily fluids from the goblins. Once again Roxie had to turn away to vomit, Zander and Krysis both began to shed tears and cover their mouths, Dabi and Felix looked at each other with distraught expressions before looking back at the victims.
"It's ok we're here to help." Felix says with a somber tone.
The party began to help all of the young children out of the room. "We're gonna get them out of the cave first, they don't need to see this." Dabi said. Roxie and Krysis led the younger children towards the entrance before removing their blindfolds.
"Come on, we'll lead yall out." Krysis told the children.
Felix took his swords and cut the chains that bound the older people to the wall. As Felix and Dabi reached down to help them up they winced immediately as if they had no idea who was touching them or what was going on, void of any emotion they were unable to speak, just show body language. Zander pulled out some cloth and wrapped it around their bodies, Felix and Dabi each grabbed a young girl and Zander carried the two remaining people, and they carried them out of the cave.
Once back on the surface they laid their bodies in the grass to take in the warmth of the sun. Tim rushed over to check on the young people they brought out. "Dear god, what happened in there?" Tim asked.
"It's better not to talk about it right now." Felix replied. "For now can you get them some help?"