Spiderlicious!

The group pauses for a moment and reflects on the fact that the orcs are more active at night, polish up their brass balls and saunter back through the orc squalor. Their luck holds and they ride back to the mines. There, they use water from the spring to restore the minds of the mining gnomes.
By the time morning comes, the party is backed by about 300 enraged gnomes that are armed with scaveneged weapons, shovels, picks and sticks. The tide sweeps into the village at dawn, slaughtering all who stand before them. The party rushes ahead of the rest and is unopposed until they encounter a pair of guards who are swiftly slain, and then the group has penetrated a second mine.
They creep about for so e time until it runs across a drunken orc and a basket of deep fried spiders…with tiny human heads. Ugh. The orc is slain and that which might be worth taling is taken. More creeping reveals little save a few spiders and a pair of nasty webbed tunnels no one is eager to explore. Oh, and the burial chamber of some sort of queen, or mayor, or other important gnome officiant.
They return to oversee the slaughter and present the gnome leaders with their finds. They are richly rewarded for their efforts and return to investigate the tunnels. Eventually they run into a juvenile spidercentaur, then a full grown version. A few rounds later, the threat is neutralized and the group finds itself having completed the accidental liberation of the gnome homes. They also find evidence of a more potent evil that oversees the operation inthe gnome homeland.

To round things out, they venture to thenearest village and engage the leaders of the red-hat goblins that have been terrorizing the area. They slay the leader, his advisor and most of his personal guard before the rest flee. They ponder future moves, including the possible destabilization and regime change in Ludensheim.