After getting the villagers armed and safely out of the caves, the party investigates the northwestern tunnel. Theiafi sneaks through the narrow tunnel, and notices a goblin, who also notices her, and immediately looses an arrow at him, wounding him. This goblin, Snigbat, instead of attacking, gets mad and ask why he was shot. Theiafi responds, explaining that she has had a rough time of it with some other goblins and let instincts take over. She asks Snigbat what he’s doing, and he admits to being on guard duty, and he’s supposed to report to ‘goblin boss Hark’. Landis walks around and offers healing, prying more information out of him, also cutting Pyro off from asking about if Snigbat is in pain.
Landis walks ahead to see what’s around the corner and sees 3 goblins and several giant rats, two of which are eating what appears to be the remains of a young woman. Pyro jumps ahead of everyone, and immediately looses a blast of fire towards them, killing some giant rats and hurting the goblins. Combat ensues, and in the process, Pyro is hurt, causing Landis to yet again taunt and mock him, asking where his Phoenix is now to protect him. Pyro eventually gets knocked out and gets close to death’s door. After some more fighting, Landis attempts to heal Pyro, but as he does so, Pyro erupts into flames, singeing Landis in the process. Combat continues, a few spells are cast, and the last rat standing manages to get a critical bite in on the paladin, who after the bite manages to knock it off right as Theiafi shoots an arrow, critically hitting him and pinning him to the wall. After all this, there’s another burst of fire, and Pyro arises from the ashes, naked as the day he was born, proclaiming in a loud, booming voice “From the ashes, rises Pyrophilus!”. After a few seconds, his clothes reform around him.
After combat, Ratcha leads them through the rest of the caves and to where the ‘blob’ is. From his description of it, Dot recognizes that its most like a Black Pudding. Apparently its been using a hollow stalagmite as a home. Along the way, Arianna finds what seems like a boulder hiding something, and attempts to move it, unsuccessfully. Landis attempts to help her, but together they are still unable to budge it. Dot comes along, looks at it for a moment, and easily moves it with one finger, and walks away after saying “Thanks for loosening it for me”. The group finds some small treasure and a spell scroll.
They continue to the tunnel leading to the blob, and warily approach it. Once they find it, Pyro delivers a spectacular Shocking Grasp to the pudding, but to no avail: in fact, the effort almost kills Pyro as the pudding attacks back, and the lightning causes the pudding to split into two smaller puddings. They realize its going to be hard to hit, so Arianna takes the lead and uses her divine powers to hurt it. Meanwhile, the others explore, some finding a tunnel that appears to leave the caves, and the others find some fresh water from a waterfall, as well as what appears to be some poisonous mushrooms. After one of the two puddings dies, the other emerges from its hidey-hole to better attack, but is swiftly dealt with by the group.
Theiafi still senses other humanoids close by, so they continue exploring the tunnels, and they find approximately 30 goblins: young, old, and sick goblins who cannot fight and must be cared for by the other goblins. They wake one up to convince them to leave and to stop eating meat, which includes people. There’s a discussion about how it’s cruel to deprive them of bacon. Eventually, Vark and Beedo and the others walk in to the caves, and the group reiterates that they are no longer to eat people. With their goblin buddies in charge now, they are able to trust the goblins to stay, but the group will warn the townsfolk about them.
As they return to Nightstone, they find the villagers safe and well. They host a feast for the party, thanking them for their service to the town. After awhile, Morak Ur’gray takes them aside and mentions that Lathan and Melantha Xelbrin, the owner of the tressym (flying cat) Rillix that has taken to Theiafi, have a son named Miros that lives in Goldenfields. He asks the group if they could deliver the sad news of his parents death and return the tressym to him.
After they wake up in the morning, the town suddenly becomes tense as what could only be another cloud giant castle comes flying by, and ‘parks’ next to the town, and extends a massive ‘staircase’ of cloudstuff. A whimsical cloud giant wizard walks out and greats the adventurers as if they were old friends, and declares that he will take them wherever they need to go, and introduces himself as Zephyros.