Day 2, What's cooking?

Our intrepid adventurers decided to take refuge in the chamber that had held the goblins and walking dead monstrosity defeated in the previous session. They secured the doors and locked the remaining goblin a cell, then Riardon the high elf took watch and meditated over his precious and strange spell book while the others slept. Someone or something tried the door handle during the night, but went away again without further action.

Deciding to press further into the goblin warrens then entered the next chamber which they already heard muffled voices coming from. The goblins here, some of whom were unarmed, demanded to be left in peace rather than attacking the party and after various threats they put their arms down and surrendered without a fight. Apart from a huge green eye painted on the ceiling that the goblins said had been there 'forever' this was quite an unremarkable room that seemed to serve as quarters from the goblins.

One of these goblins with an artistic bent drew a map for the party that seemed to show some key points, namely the 'cook', 'nasty hexer' and 'boss' locations. As the cook was the nearest they decided to head in that direction, but not before exploring two more rooms they found. The first seem to be a nest of goblin-kids and apart from a brief discussion on morality the group ignored them. The second chamber though was some sort of temple to the goblin god Maglubiyet and was defended by goblin warriors and an acolyte, who seemed to gain power from the rough clay statue of the god that he stood next to. After a well fought battle Helja triumphantly took the magical amulet that hung from the statues neck. Thanus the dwarven war-priest of Kord struck down the statue in disgusted, bravely ignoring the possible curse that might come from such an act. It seems that the amulet protects the wearer from falling into pits and other dangers.     

Then finally they went into the goblin kitchen, which was a sprawling mess of pots and pans, horrible pieces of hanging meat, great steaming pots of foul smelling liquid and a number of goblin undercooks, lead by a huge blotted goblin creature, clutching a vicious meat cleaver.

At this point the party realized that they faced their first 'elite' foe, and immediately fell to planning the best way to maximize their damage. This was mostly down to the thief, whose sneak attack did a great deal of damage but relied on him having combat advantage. The wizard's Burning Hands spell dispatched a number of the undercooks, while the knight took the brunt of the attack from the cleaver. The head cook was turned out to be surprisingly nimble, but was eventually taken down from a combined weight of attacks from the party. A search of the chief revealed little of use, but the kitchen itself has yet to be and may reveal treasures beyond dried rat and boiled cabbage soup.