I’ve posted a couple of other adventures. This one explores the idea of solving the mystery of some lost villagers in the borderlands.

This is an adventure for a low-level party.

An Earnest Request

A group of peasants were set up in a makeshift village called Hallican to clear a wilderness area of trees to make it into farmland for the new lord of Hallican manor. But they mysteriously disappeared. What happened to them? The heroes are hired to find out.

In the days of the Old Empire, Hallican was a cultivated villa, but it has since been reclaimed by the wilderness… and monsters. The woodland around here is an otherworldly foggy forest of pollarded trees abandoned long ago to grow wild.

Wilderness Encounters

Traveling to the manorial lands, the heroes leave the old road and enter the wilderness by the new Hallican trail. There, they encounter (but don’t necessarily fight) hobgoblins and one or two other random monsters.

They may also encounter the ruins of the ancient villa, which was successfully looted by other adventurers (or could be your party’s precursor adventure to this one or a mini-adventure of its own before or after the village mystery is solved). It’s full of fascinating mosaics, but little else.

The Abandoned Village

The village is little more than three large temporary huts made of wattle in the ancient round-house style. It is partly surrounded by a ditch and earthworks. There is a good deal of disarray, suggesting a hasty exit and likely a search by others later.

Carved into the door frame of a hut is the word “GROTTON”. There is a river several miles away called Grotton (which they might find on a simple map given to them). There are tracks of a group dragging something heavy thru the wilderness toward the river. The heroes get the feeling they’re being watched but see nothing. (It’s hobgoblins.)

There is little light inside the huts. And there are traps set in two of them. In one, a green sapling is lashed to a post and bent back to another post. A length of twine across the doorway will pull a pin if disturbed, loosing the sapling and stabbing the intruder with the sharp stick for 1d6 hp unless he or she goes in with a shield. It was set by hobgoblins for any returning villagers.

In another hut, there is a pit dug just inside the door and camouflaged with a mat woven of rushes (which are commonly used as floor coverings, like carpets). This was dug by the villagers to hide food and valuables and normally covered with a sturdy wooden lid that the hobgoblins removed when they placed sharp stakes in the 3-foot deep pit, which will do 1d4+1 hp damage to an intruder.

If the heroes delay taking the next step, the hobgoblins will eat one of their captives.

Riverside

Following the obvious tracks, the heroes are ambushed by several hobgoblins at the riverside with arrows and then melee weapons. During the battle, the heroes see humans on the other side of the Grotton watching then running away.

The spot is a good crossing, with a fairly shallow ford, but not something you would want to attempt while being attacked.

Hill Fort

After the battle, the heroes cross the river and follow the tracks of the humans to find a small hill fort built by the survivors of the hobgoblin attacks at Hallican. They explain that they endured a pair of attacks at the village site before deciding to flee to a more defensible position with their supplies and some trees they had already cut down (the heavy thing they dragged), which allowed them to quickly erect a stockade (by also chopping down the trees atop the hill).

The peasants beg the heroes to slay the hobgoblins and rescue their captives. If the heroes delay, the hobgoblins will eat another captive and will attack the hill fort at night. They will try to catch it on fire, but the wood is quite green.

Hobgoblin Camp

The heroes might return to the river and follow the hobgoblin tracks to their camp (there’s a fairly obvious trail, since they come here regularly), a temporary outpost led by a boss. There are about 12 hobgoblins, plus any left that fled the river ambush. It would be wise to take them on in small numbers by stealth until the alarm is raised. The hobgoblins cannot be reasoned with, but might be bribed into returning the hostages (they would prefer food, particularly fish or game, over gold or silver). The time the heroes take overall will determine if there are one, two, or three captives still living.

The boss will have an escape planned (a crawl-tunnel leading to a camouflaged exit in the steep riverbank) and use it, if necessary. If the boss is killed, the others will scatter and flee far away to the main body of their tribe, deep in the wilderness. It would be suicide to follow them there and face an army, but the hobgoblins would lose them anyway.

The hobgoblins have very little treasure, so the lord who hired the heroes will provide the bulk of the reward, with a bonus for each captive saved.