I hooked up with the crew from the ruins. The wolfrider halfing, Elian. The pretty elf girl with the fancy clothes, Ama. The gnome girl… I forget her name. And the bald robed guy Cadfell, I think. Instead of helping me fight those goblins and undead, they were reading scrolls they found laying around. Well, the elf girl helped me. But not the others. Not like I need them to help anyway.

I went with them to the Golden Gargoyle, an inn in the next town. I just got my drink when some more goblins showed up and started roughing some guy up. We all got and and started fighting, except for Cadfell. He’s yelling about “parlay” or whatever. Less talking, more stabbing please.

While I’m wiping goblin blood off of my greatsword, they find a tunnel under the inn. We go down there and find some man-made (more like goblin-made) tunnels where more of them smelly green skinned things are. I was getting real tired or something because I couldn’t hit this one hobgoblin. He was probably a warlock or something and hit me with his bad juju. Yeah, that’s probably what happened.

Anyway we were arguing over a hallway. I wanted to go down a hallway, but they said it was a trap. It didn’t look like one, so I wanted to go down there. Instead, we fought about what to do.

Kill count: 2 goblins.

My name is Soren. I’m a man of few words, but it looks like me and my teammates are going to do some big things in the world. I thought I’d tell the story while I still can, so the bards can sing of my adventures for years.

While travelling with a caravan to the next town, I smelled a storm coming. The sky ripped open with rain, and I ran for some ruins. Some others were already there. Some people and some goblins. We shared a small room for a little while, but then a horde of rats came out of nowhere and swarmed us. I started swinging at them when those dirty goblins pounced on us. The bald guy in robes yelled “Stormpeace!” I don’t know why he thought this stupid truce, one caravan-goers believe will protect them from enemies during storms, would actually work.

While he was busy screaming, I was cutting rats and smelly goblins in half. When I was done, the halfling (who was riding a wolf bareback) says that we should go deeper into the ruins. I really don’t know why I agreed to that, but there I was, fighting more goblins, hobgoblins, and a zombie. At least I got a little money out of it.

Kill count: 1 rat, 3 goblins, 1 hobgoblin, 1 zombie bugbear.

“If they do, then you have big problems on your hands.”

The above is a paraphrashed quote from the host of the New Year’s Eve party we attended, mentioning how he wasn’t trying to kill us with the authentic French food he prepared for us. After stuffing ourselves with goose, three different kinds of mashed potatoes, apple sauce mixed with onions, prunes wrapped in bacon, and various meat spreads (called “pa-tay” - that is how it is pronounced, but I have no idea how to spell it correctly), we spent New Year’s Eve the way any geek would - playing D&D.

Our usual D&D sessions run from 7:30 to 10:30. To end the year with a bang, we had a super-sized session that ran from 5:30 to 12:15, with a cheesecake break toward the middle. My barbarian, who is hungry for combat and hates talking to people, threw only one punch during that entire session. He was disappointed.

I’ve been meaning to post session notes. When I finally get around to it, I will post them under the name Soren and tell the story from his point of view.