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Ugmo, Chieftan of Orc clan Skull Cruncher, and his posse, set out into the streets. We yelled to a lone hobgoblin asking where the local watering hole was. He pointed us in the general direction, so we headed off to the monster mash inn.

We walked in, an dispersed with a plan of causing a little havoc, and getting some information, and possibly some (pretend) friends/allies. Thilius headed up to the bar, and almost screwed things up with the bartender, an Ogrelon, right away. But he managed to salvage the situation by chugging the Ogrelon's motor-oil drink like it wasn't no thang.

Then I stirred up some trouble by going up to a table of hobgoblins and demanding they leave. When their leader gave me lip, I felt this burning on the fringes of my periphiary, but with a very obvious “don't do that” shake of the head from Cade, I just gave him lip back until Logru “Ugmo” came up and put a fist through the guy's chin. Then, of course, a fist fight broke out. I stood aside and yawned, while surruptitiously flanking various of the enemies in order to give Logru a leg up. I couldn't really cast anything for fear of them knowing I had those abilities at all. I mean sure, right time, right place. But this was not that place. Logru was establishing both his identity, and his place in the pecking order.

One by one, Logru fist-pummeled the hobgoblins into submission, and eventually had them all laid up on the floor. The Ogrelon snorted, told everyone to move their unconscious comrades out of the way, and get back to it. Apparently, this was a pretty common occurance.

The Orcs gave Logru a nod of respect, while the other tables of hobgoblins glared at us, and the tables of goblins seemed undecided about the incident.

But Logru singlehandedly taking care of a group of hobgoblins bought him some respect, so we had some friendly banter with the neighboring tabel of Orcs, seeking what information we could. Well, it was a good thing Logru had made the good judgement call of pulling his punches. There was an unspoken rule of no lethal hostilities among the monsters by order of the Lord of the Ruins. He had enforcers that puttered about town with very obvious magical yellow eyes. We'd have to look out for them.

We spent a bit, enough to get some good info, and then headed out. As soon as we were in an alley way, I healed Logru back up to full so that if the hobgoblins got any funny ideas, we'd be able to put a hurtin' on them.

But, we made it back to our hideout without incident. Cade and Kethys went out scouting while the rest of us rested. They returned with info about a hideout of Ruins Enforcers in our quadrant (SE), and over in the quadrant where we felt was most likely where Doral was (NW), Kethys ran across a gnome roguish type which was horribly out of place for this area. Might be part of the green hand.

We decided, when the boys got back, we should head over to where the gnome was spotted and see if we could track her down. Kethys did a few spells, which indicated that this was the best course of action so we basically wandered around until we ran across her.

We had a short discussion with her, and yes, she was part of the green hand, without really coming out and saying she was. She directed us through a building into a tunnel system that headed underground. I figured we'd have to prove ourselves to get into their good graces. It may even be the case that Doral had been down here this whole time, helping the “resistence” cause problems from the monsters, who knows.

We headed into the building then down into the tunnel….