okay here's the full rundown of what i remember happened in #dnd last night. thread:

a little backstory: the party is crossing some mountains to sneak into the Zor, neighboring country, unnoticed. we saved a little goblin girl from a yeti and now she's our mountain guide.

we start off camping for the night. Arji has a nightmare involving a) every traumatic event he's experienced or witnessed, b) his whole "running away from deadly danger" problem, and c) a premonition that something bad will happen to his friends & he won't be able to save them.

next morning, goblin girl leads us to a crossroads where we have to choose between a valley of dangerous beasts or a treacherous path over the peak of a mountain. we opt for the latter cuz arji (sorcerer) can polymorph and neph (cleric) has an amulet that lets him cast wildshape.

we decide to both transform into giant eagles and carry caelin (rogue), vynn (fighter), ginkgo (goblin kid), and gringear (arji's boyfriend). neph can stay wildshaped for 4 hours, which is enough to make it over the treacherous area.

arji can only polymorph for an hour at a time and even then can only cast it 3 times (two 4th level spell slots, then spend 6 sorcery points to restore another 4th level slot) so he's really gotta hustle to make it to the other side before he runs out of Eagle Juice.

Neph makes it over okay, the passengers are cold and miserable, and Arji has 2 levels of exhaustion (disadv. on skill checks and movement halved) by the time everyone lands. The whole party decides to find shelter and turn in for the night ASAP. We settle down in a cave.

Like, an hour into first watch, the CAVE FLOOR OPENS UP and DROPS US DOWN A SHAFT into the heart of the mountain, directly into THE CAVERN OF A MILLION GOBLINS!!! There are platforms, bridges, ladders, and a goblin king who wants to kill us. We kill him first. However:

During the fight, everyone gets pretty roughed up. Arji is at around 25% HP and he is CRANKY. He hurls a fireball at the goblin king, and the platform everyone is standing on catches on fire. This is a Big Problem because the only exit is past the flaming wooden platform.

The goblin king is dead, and now there are swarms of goblins coming in from behind us. We run, because that's pretty much all we can do, and the goblin girl shows us to jump down to the lower platforms to the door.

On the last platform, Vynn lands too hard and breaks wood planks under her and FALLS INTO THE CHASM. Arji casts Fly and dives after her, and the rest of the party keeps running, failing dexterity saves left & right. Caelin falls ~40 feet and loses A Lot of HP.

Meanwhile, Vynn and Arji are STILL FALLING. Arji tries to catch Vynn, but his exhaustion means his arms are made of wet pasta and he can't fly AND carry her, so they both plummet at the same speed. The rest of the party makes it to a path on the cavern wall and relative safety.

Like... 80 feet down, Arji remembers he has a potion of feather falling in his pocket, so in a stroke of dumb luck he manages to let go of Vynn, dig in his pockets, shove a glass vial in his mouth (because there's no time to uncork it obviously) and feather fall both of them.

They're both still falling pretty fast, but now they won't turn into slurry when they hit the ground. So that's good.
At the bottom of the chasm is a lake with a dock at the edge, so we paddle to shore. Arji hates it!!! Vynn is pretty chill about pretty much the whole situation.

The rest of the party finds us down at the docks, goblin girl gets us a boat, and we ride the lake to a river out of the mountain. Done, right? NOPE!!!

The river turns into dangerous rapids, and our boat is careening straight towards some jagged rocks. And then Gringear pulls a bomb out of his backpack.

Gringear hands the bomb to Caelin and she chucks it across the river. The resulting explosion pushes the boat away from the rocks and kills our momentum enough to safely navigate the rest of the way. At the end of the river is another lake. And at the shore of the lake is Zor.