The party encountered a hole in the ground. While the group argued whether this hole was actually a traversal into a lucrative, goblin-filled tunnel or a forgotten sewage pipe, majority-ruled that they should all enter.

While the entranceway was bathed in the soft morning light, creating tranluscent shadows below the burgeoning shrubs and trees, the inside of the hole was dark and dank. As some of you may have come to realize, it’s difficult to describes things in the dark. Friend and foe, sword and shield, goblin and orc— although these two are still difficult to distinguish in the light— are more or the less the same, at least by sight.

One of the adventurers decided that touch would be the best way to continue down the dark, dank hole. So in pairs, one group took the right side of the cavern and the other to the left. At first, the pairs called out what they felt and, like the soothsayer that foretold their arrangement, they predicted what lay ahead: dragons, trap doors, more slimy walls.

The groans of disgust and boredom slowly gave way to silence.

What the party didn’t see, and what the soothsayer neglected to disclose, is that there were hidden occupants of the hole. Along the roof of the cavern, a small band of bat-goblins patiently followed the group. Putrid things, really. All the ugly of a goblin and all the ugly of a bat. They really could have gotten away with calling them just goblins, or just bats, but who are we to judge?

Something that makes bat-goblins particularly clever tricksters is their impecable vision and hearing. The bat-goblins knew the gnarled twists and turns of the labyrinth like the back of their hand-wing.

They watched as the left-inclined adventurers continued in silence, unaware of the fork in the path. They stifled snickers as they watched the right-inclined adventurers continue down the right path.

The dark, dank hole in that placid clearing would remain a mystery. And the bat-goblins would await their next victim.