Upon landing in Doncaster, the party was informed that their ship was to be searched again. Halinard excused the party to go explore the town while he dealt with this problem.
Bubbles, being impressed with the silks that the textile merchant was carrying, had purchased some the night before, with the intention of having a suit made of them once he could find a tailor.
"How fast do you think you can have this done?" Bubbles asked.
"Ah, should have it done by tomorrow, but uh...not like you guys are gonna be going anywhere, right?"
"No, we're leaving tonight."
"That...might be difficult."
---
"Whaddaya mean, we can't leave?" Halinard demanded of the guards.
The head guard leaned in close and said, "We've got a bit of a situation here." He then directed the party to look more closely at the town, where they saw an abnormally large number of goblins wandering around.
"The city has been taken over, and while they're more or less letting us go about our daily lives, they've reminded us time and again that our families could be at risk if any funny business happens, and they've made a habit of demanding things of travelling parties who happen upon our lovely city. Do be careful."
Halinard groaned. "Well, you guys go check out the city, and find Bubbles. I'll hang back and take care of this."
---
After being informed of the blockade, Bubbles and Yesmae, along with Jangle whom Bubbles had been carrying with him, returned to the ship to secure some of the less...legal...things that Bubbles had been storing on the ship. Quickly whipping up potions to disguise himself as a goblin and Yesmae as a human, Bubbles and Yesmae infiltrated the ship to grab his things, while Jangle sneaked back into Halinard's chambers to make sure that his own stash was secure.
It was not.
Seeing a guard walk out with a bag full of things that Jangle recognized as his own, Jangle quickly resolved to get it back by whatever means necessary. So, he pretended to be a cat to get the guard to let his...umm...guard down, where he was able to climb onto the guard's shoulder. Jangle's player then said, "Since he's distracted, I'm gonna use Mage Hand to draw my dagger and attack him!"
"Okay," I thought. "He's a rogue, it won't be that bad, right?"
No. He's a rogue. Which means he has Sneak Attack whenever he gets advantage or is flanking, and he most certainly caught this guard unawares. Not only did he roll maximum damage on the initial hit, totaling 8 damage, but of the 3d6 he rolled for Sneak Attack damage, he got a 6, a 5, and a 6. So, in total that's 25. Now, I wasn't planning on this becoming combat, so I had to quickly pull up the guard's stat block because I had hoped that the poor guy would survive long enough to blow the whistle.
Fifth Edition guards are at a 1/8 CR with a grand total of 11 Hit Points! Yeah. He dead. He very dead.
He so dead in fact that when Bubbles, who was a room away, heard the violent thud against the ground, Bubbles was completely unable to resuscitate him.
And since Jangle was quickly able to hide the dagger, in-universe, nobody knew who the culprit of this assassination was, and naturally everyone was on-edge.
Thankfully for Bubbles and his player's quick thinking, Bubbles quickly took charge of the situation to send the rest of the guards on a wild goose chase and get off the ship with Yesmae, while Jangle slinked off to rehide his stash.
---
While all this was going on, Somen had stormed off to get away from all the poor people he was surrounded by, while Grula and Savin followed close by to ensure nothing happened. Eventually, their wanderings took them down an alley where they were accosted by a group of goblins led by a hobgoblin. Since the goblins were bunched together, and since his patience was already ground to near nothingness, Somen quickly fired off a Fireball to thin the ranks of the goblins.
Now that the situation had escalated, the lead hobgoblin blew a whistle for backup, and Savin and Grula quickly joined the fray to dispatch the hobgoblin before help could arrive.
Naturally I, as the Dungeon Master, was not going to take the sudden nuking of my first actual combat encounter in this setting lying down, so I did what any self-respecting DM would do in this situation. I spawned the exact three goblins, this time surrounding the party and forcing them to fight more tactically.
Also with the party possibly ending up in explosion range, I put some pressure on Somen to not nuke all his problems to oblivion. So I won this round.
Anyway, the party quickly mopped up the remaining goblins, knocking the final one into the main thoroughfare, drawing the attention of more people who were already starting to gather around on account of explosion. This gathering of people also included Halinard and the other party members, wondering just what the heck happened while Savin quickly and quietly pulled them into a nearby tavern to first scold Somen on his lack of deescalation skills, second to wait for things to quiet down so they could formulate a strategy for getting out of the city.
After making a deal with the innkeeper for room in exchange for musical performance courtesy of Savin, the party waited for things to die down...
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