We can repurpose Abner Feldman’s farmstead (see yesterday’s hobgoblin daytime wilderness encounter) as the stage for a hobgoblin nighttime wilderness encounter as well. Everything doesn’t need to jump out of the bushes at the party once they bed down beneath the stars for the night, you know. In fact, who’s to say this couldn’t be a nighttime wilderness encounter for the hobgoblins, hmmm?

If the party makes camp, let the characters figure out who will pull guard duty as their companions sleep. Then, as the night passes by, read the following to whichever sentry has the highest passive Wisdom (Perception) score:

Distant voices intermittently echo across the night plains in what sounds vaguely like cheers and raucous shouting, as though some small gathering of nearby folk celebrate beneath the moonlight.

The cheers and shouts are easy enough to follow through the quiet of the night. The closer the characters get to the clamor, the more ragged the cheers become, and the shouting is done in a rough, guttural tongue that is not the common speech (goblinoid).

The hooting and hollering comes from the ramshackle barn of a small farmstead. The soft glow of firelight spills through the barn’s heavy wooden door, which has been left ajar. A hobgoblin warrior guards the door, but is distracted by the clamor he is watching through the door opening. As such, the hobgoblin has disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks to spot intruders.

If the characters take a look inside the barn, read the following:

Torchlight flickers through the barn, where a terrified female commoner stumbles and cries out within a straw-strewn animal pen, recoiling from the snapping beak of a the ugliest rooster you have ever seen. Hobgoblin warriors crowd the rails, laughing at her panic. Standing amid the chaos within the pen is a stone statue.

The bird seen lunging at the commoner woman is a cockatrice, and the statue within the animal pen is her husband, who was petrified as he attempted to protect his wife from the irate bird.

The hobgoblins revelling in this spectacle hoot and holler as the terrified woman dodges the cockatrice’s attacks, pleading with her captors to let her out of the pen. The hobgoblins are distracted and entertained by her plight, and have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks to spot intruders should the characters intervene.

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