plan of action: morrik and the hunt.

Okay, as long as they aren't in any mortal danger, I don't see any harm in letting them take their punishments.

I have proficiency in intimidation using strength, and since Morrik is my favored enemy, I could likely have advantage agains the intimidation since I might have a deeper understanding of how to do it correctly (maybe).

I could probably get some information from him using that, without actually using any violence, just perceived violence. I would threaten him based on the fact that he is likely to know who I am, and my reputation, and should fear my wrath... that sort of thing.

If interogation failes, we could set up a situation where the hobgoblin would believe he had escaped himself. Maybe we could weaken his bonds, or pretend to be a guard that accidentally walks to close with his keys or something. That way, there wouldn't be any blowback on us for intentionally releasing him. Then when he "escapes" we can just track him.

Yeah, Blackarrow'll pursue the professor angle, and if you need the hobgoblin to escape, he'll take scapegoat duties. Since the stocks are lumped together, he can even break open all three in the escape and let the guards leave some lumps on him, making sure somebody of importance and authority sees it. That seemed to get Fargrim a lot of brownie points, so it may help them too. I mean, what's better proof of being committed to a cause than being willing to face a trained combatant while unarmed and unarmored?

Well I'm up to hear what you guys want to do at this point.

Oloric has good persuasion, deception, stealth. Malik has good persuasion, deception, insight, intimidation. I think that we could easily let the goblin free and have him lead us where we need to go. Malik/Hraken seem like the "keep him intimidated or even maul him as needed to meet the ends of getting what we want".

Malik has vengeance plans against the leaders of the goblins and his motto is "whatever it takes to get the dead done". Anyone who asks around would know he likes games of chance but always cheats and has a thing for games of chance involving HIGH stakes. He will be staying out of the general interrogation unless specifically asked afraid he might just kill the bugger. He can intimidate like Hraken but i'm figuring we might not need that. He will be happy to do whatever it takes to find the leaders but he will likely beat the goblin and wants to avoid that until a plan is set.

Oloric is generally good natured but cares little for the law. He is smart enough to know the goblin is our best chance to finding them and bringing him is likely the only way to avoid he lies. I think my attempt to offer him his life as our scout will work. The question is where do we take it now? DO we break him out or ask the leaders to take him?

As for the guards Oloric sees no point in worrying about them. Let them rot. He'll gladly put a sleep spell on them to ensure they didn't see us actually take the goblin. It'll be obvious we did but they'll have no real proof of what happened other than they slept and woke and he was gone?

Well, if we're planning on coming back here and GETTING PAID for this gig, we might not wanna go around busting imprisoned war criminals out of jail, at least in public. Like, for example, casting spells on the guards while he "mysteriously vanishes". That might be kinda obvious; these folks are chumps, but they're not brain-damaged. I think we should see if we can get anything out of him with finesse and/or magic, and then see about what we're authorized to offer him as far as release goes. If THAT doesn't work out, then we can have Blackarrow break him out later, and get some plausible deniability going. I'm not worried about "breaking the law", I'm worried about "being SEEN breaking the law".

In other news, do any of our persuasive types speak Goblin, so's we don't have to worry about the guards that're STANDING RIGHT THERE hearing any "promises" we might have to make?

I don't think he would. This is a hobgoblin, not a regular goblin. He is more likely to hold fast and be more willing to die. We might be able to determine his rank in the army or something like that, but I doubt he would willing lead us to the base.

I don't think we should tell Morrik we are setting him free.


If he thinks we let him free, he would know something was up and wouldn't go back to his base. It is completely dumb for us to let him know we let him go.

If we are going to track him to his base, it needs to look like he just escaped by his own strength. This would work from both his, and the towns perspective. The town will think he just escaped because he's a badass, and he will think he got lucky. At that point, we follow him secretly so he leads us to where we want to go.

Either way, I speak goblin and can try to intimidate him for some information before hand. If we have to let him escape, we could wait until dark and cast a sleep spell on him, then have a rogue go and weaken his bindings. That way, when he tries to break free, he will think he did it all by himself.

Alternatively, we could use polymorph, and turn one of us into a goblin, and then "break" him out as a goblin. We have spare fire-pots that we could use to make it more convincing, and I have some of their facepaint we could leave as evidence. We could then make it look to Morrik as if that goblin was killed while helping him.

Also, who are Red, Noddic and Mark the Barbarian? I'm really confused all of a sudden.