Group
After an early morningfeast, you assemble for your raid on the hobgoblins. Sirenya cloaks Krackor in invisibility, then summons a bubble of invisibility to hide the rest of the attacking team. She then makes herself invisible as well and moves out onto the roof to cover the front door with an illusion and keep watch.
Myth Drannor is silent as a grave, heavy mist flowing down the street and between the buildings like ghostly fingers. Something roars once, way off in the west. The silence weighs heavier afterward.
Kitheras completes his scouting, keeping to the shadows with the help of his cloak, and returns to brief the group in whispers. Krackor casts a few spells over himself and the rest of the group, then makes his way towards the kitchen entrance. His plate mail clanks a little in the misty air, but doesn't seem to attract any attention.
The front group waits for Krackor, holding until he begins his attack and becomes visible. Krackor carefully and quietly covers the kitchen's entrance with silence and his anti-vermin ward, then summons a swarm of insects. His invisibility drops as the swarm of bees sweeps into the kitchen, surrounding one of the hobgoblin sentries in a stinging mass.
Kitheras leads the charge into the taproom. His team doesn't have magical silence, but they make up for it in numbers and Kitheras's detailed plan. The four hobgoblin sentries are cut down before they have a chance to scream.
Kitheras stops for a moment to survey the room. Karilla doesn't. She keeps right on moving, kicking down the door that once led further into the inn. Two surprised hobgoblins are on the other side. She cuts one down with her obsidian long sword; the other swings his mace at her face. Karilla doesn't even try to block, and the mace stops abruptly as it touches her skin. With her backswing, she decapitates the hobgoblin and presses forward. The other elves belatedly start to follow.
At the rear of the former inn, the hobgoblin being attacked by the swarm turns and flees deeper inside. The other two drop behind the ruined counters and start shooting arrows at Krackor with their longbows. One arrow manages to find a seam in Krackor's armor, ruining his next spell, so he charges in and kills both of them with his axe.
Front and back, the two forces push forward into Curiosities Cold and Clear, clearing rooms that used to be used for meeting, dining, and running the inn. They meet up near the middle, where a wide set of stairs lead down to a second, fully subterranean level. Karilla runs down the stairs, hunched almost double against the low ceiling, and the rest of the group follows.
Qasida and Euin
Your visit to Myth Drannor hasn't gone at all the way you'd planned.
For Qasida, it's been a long, long ride from Athkatla, made more enjoyable by the wide variety of songs the tuneservants sang as you rode, and around the campfires and in the inns each night. For Euin, the group's guide since Tilverton, it's been a chance to walk deeper into Cormanthor than your usual duties permit, a chance to see the city your father and grandfather so cared for.
The voices of the tuneservants are silent now. The ruins of Myth Drannor hadn't seemed so dangerous for the first bell you explored them. Now you wonder if that had just been to lure you in. First a group of tanar'ri attacked you, great ape-like fiends six feet tall that tore into the group with suicidal abandon. You managed to kill them, but not before they slew Harmonian Adarra Voundsarr, the group's leader, and badly injured many of the other tuneservants.
The noise attracted more monsters who attacked you as you tried to retreat out of the ruins to regroup. This time it was a pack of giant, flying eels twenty feet long, swirling through the air like giant corkscrews. Most of the rest of the tuneservants were killed, and Qasida's noble steed was slain saving her life.
Badly wounded, the two of you and a sole remaining tuneservant fled for the edge of the city. You were so busy looking back and up, you didn't notice the hobgoblin ambush until they were on top of you. Kas and Euin were clubbed unconscious, and when you awoke you found yourselves tied up in a dirt cellar. Your armor and weapons had been taken from you, but crude dressings had been put on your wounds.
That was about a day ago, you think. A large hobgoblin has come in several times to shout at you, but so far they haven't done anything worse.
You've gotten a bit of rest and have been quietly trying to plot an escape before hunger and thirst, or hobgoblin viciousness, become debilitating. You're close to getting yourselves out of the ropes when you hear shouting in the hall outside. Heavy footfalls go running from left to right, and there's a choked gurgle.
Suddenly the door slams open, kicked in by a moon elven woman whose face is mostly covered in sun-bleached cloth. Her cold eyes sweep over you, judging you quickly, then turn away. A hobgoblin rushes her from further down the hall, screaming. She parries his blade with a jet black long sword and slams the palm of her hand into his chest. The hobgoblin flies backward, his body bursting apart like a bladder of goat's blood.
Silence falls once again.
((ooc: While it's not a perfect match for the upper floor layout, have a map of Bag End to get a general feel for the layout of this former inn and tavern. The upper floor had the taproom, kitchen, and most of the guest rooms. The lower level, which you've just finished clearing, was mostly food and supply storage, but also had a couple of stone-lined rooms decorated to gnomish sensibilities. It's in one of those that you've found Kas and Euin. Karilla is in the door, the rest of the group is in the hall outside unless you say otherwise.
And welcome to the game, Euin and Qasida))