Murder Hobo Squad: A Lost Mine of Phandelver/Dragon of Icespire Peak & Beyond D&D 5E record (Beware Spoilers!)

DM: Not much to say this week, I’m afraid.  They had one big slow fight which wasn’t particularly interesting to watch, but was hopefully more tense for the people having their faces chewed off by zombies who didn’t always die when they hit 0hp.

They parked the Wagon at the foot of the hill and Melandrach stayed behind to guard it (DM: The player couldn’t make it).  Talindra’s new owl Familiar went ahead and did a flyby of the ruins and reported bask, seeing just a ruined tower and a red tent in a ruined courtyard, nothing else.  Karson and Bilba scouted round the southern edge of the ruins while Talindra and Araloth approached the north-east corner while the others stayed further back.  As the approached they noticed a growing smell of death coming from the area.  The Owl flew over the tower but enough of the floors remained to block any view down to ground level.  The owl then flew back and forth past the door, trying to peek in to the darkness inside.  It was too dark to see anything, but shortly afterwards zombies started to spill out of the tower!

(DM: I’ve been having issues interpreting Dark Vision.  I keep assuming that if you’re in a well-lit area looking in to a dark area then your dark vision is not active, much like my “night vision” stops working when I walk out of a dark room and look back in to it from a well lit room.  My players keep reminding me this is not the case and I’ve never been quite sure.  The wording is not clear on this.  However I saw a discussion earlier saying previous editions had dark vision and low light vision.  Low light worked like my vision and dark vision did not so absence of wording suggests absence of that rule?  Anyway, I probably pooched the rules for it during this and previous encounter, preventing them from seeing in to dark areas they probably could have)

Seeing assailants coming from two directions, the zombies spread out randomly and headed towards the two groups.  Araloth got in to position and readied for a counterattack while Talindra, Bilba and Karson attacked at range as the zombies ran towards them for a couple of rounds.  Ramond, Thorovir and Devere ran up the hill.  Ramond ran to intercept the Zombies heading towards Araloth and Talindra and Devere moved ready to assist with the other group.  Thorovir stayed back and fired an arrow in to an unlucky zombie.  Ramond pocketed his bow, drew his blades and charged forward to meet the oncoming threat, trying to keep them off the archer behind him.  The zombies met him in combat, surrounding him, while the northern group rolled mostly 17s against Ramond, making things look quite desperate.  Then, a pale looking man in red robes and a tattoo on his head emerged from the tent, looked around and demanded, “What is the meaning of this?”

Devere Moved forward and summoned a spiritual weapon to aid Karson, who was now facing 6 zombies.  For whatever reason he summoned a flair whose heads were in the shape of grumpy looking cat heads (DM: I’m gonna need artwork for this roll20!  Help?) and swung it at the nearest zombie.  Ramond then threateningly shouted out, “We have been attacked by these creatures.  If you are responsible we are ready to be tested against you!” and attacked the zombies, then cast Shield of Faith on himself, which did not last the round, but Devere replaced it for him on his next action.  Thorvir stepped up and fired his bow at the necromancer and then backed down, trying to use the hill and the well to break line of sight for any retaliation.  The shot was deflected at the last second by a shield spell, frustrating the party.  The wizard in red advanced and fired a Lightning bolt at him anyway, lightly charring him.  Ramond shouted out, “Get the necromancer first!”

The party whittled away at the Zombies slowly, while Bilba and Thorovir kept taking pot shots from cover.  With Thorovir too far down the hill for line of sight, the wizard in red lightning bolted the only target he could get that wouldn’t also fry a zombie: Araloth. Seeing that the Shield spell had a verbal component, Devere centred a Silence spell on him, which shut down all his spell casting abilities.  Bilba snuck around the back of the tent and put an arrow in to his back.  He tried to cast shield, but no words came out.  Devere then moved up to engage him in melee, preventing him from leaving the spell and casting a spell this turn.  An Eldritch blast landed on him, weakening him further.

As the zombies number slowly dwindled, the mage disengaged from Karson and moved as far away from everyone as he could (and outside of the silence spell), before casting Misty Step and appearing a further 30 feet away.  Bilba had a clear shot from her hiding place, and put an arrow straight through his eye before he could move any further, before ducking in to the tent to hide.  The inside of the tent was surprisingly lush, decorated with fine ornate heavy wooden furniture, and a nice thick rug on the floor.

The zombies attacked again and Karson went down, but the heroes soon finished of the last of them.  Devere and Talindra went over to heal Karson while Thorovir went to loot the corpse.  Araloth stuck his head in the tower to ensure there was nothing of interest there and then went to inspect the corpse too.  Talindra spent a little longer inside the tower and concluded it was much older than the other ruins in the area, and that it looked like digging had been occurring here, but without tool.  There were hand marks clawing through the ground.  Thorovir took a ring, staff and red robes off the corpse and headed back to the group.  Bilba explored the tent and found some money, clothes, a potion and scroll inside a chest, and got herself a nice cup of spiced tea from an urn she saw.

Talindra had everyone gather everything inside the tent and cast detect magic and identify, to reveal that the ring and the tent were magical.  Ramond took the Ring of Protection, and a Travelling Tent (sets up and packs itself up, furniture and all with a simple action) was added to the party supplies. (DM: I await the arguments tonight when they have to decide who sleeps in a regular tent on the floor, and who gets the comfy mattress).

After a short rest, and eating many Goodberries they had a chat about where to head next.  Araloth mentioned he’d heard about ships going missing near the lighthouse and said they should probably investigate, but the group decided Wyvern Tor should be their next destination.They returned down the hill to find Melandrach holding off a group of wolves who were surrounding the wagon.

It was here we had to call the session, unfortunately.