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

Two miles outside of Gnomengarde the party made camp for the night and finally had some in character introductions lead by Talindra, which was long overdue, and a little awkward, but everyone made the effort.  They followed this up with a chat about events, feeling they were being distracted by lots of jobs that weren’t helping them find Gundren, but admitted they had nothing else to go on yet.  Their current plan is to follow the path of quests on the way to Thundertree (Dwarven Expedition, to the Lighthouse, then north to Thundertree) to see if the Druid there can help.

They headed to bed and then I had to ask lots of pointed questions about watches, and who sleeps in what tent which totally didn’t give away that they were about to be attacked.  They stuck with the established watch order and I made them declare what they do during their watches.  I rolled a dice to see which watch would get attacked and made each watch play out in turn for a minute or two.  During the final watch (Melandrach and Talindra, but Thorovir had also finished his 4 hours of trance and was sat by a bush relaxing) they camp was attacked by a band of eight Goblins coming from the north.  Talindra, Melandrach and Thorovir moved to intercept them, alerting Devere and Ramond along the way, but the goblins charged in.  A fight broke out, waking everyone up over the next couple of rounds.  Due to a series of morning pranks, Araloth decided this was all an illusion at first and went back to sleep.  He eventually concluded this was real, but he was going to ignore it as he was fed up of being picked on.  Melandrach had wedged his staff between the spokes of the wagon Araloth was sleeping under so he would bang his head on it when he wakes up.  On the final round of combat Araloth shoved this staff through as a missile attack against a goblin.  Melandrach was able to knock out a few Goblins and the party killed the rest.

Ramond grabbed Karson (he speaks goblin), and the two went to interrogate the prisoners.  Ramond grabbed the nearest goblin, shook him awake, and screamed, “Where is Cragmaw?!”  The terrified goblin took in his situation and replied, “We are the Cragmaw”.  “Then where are you based?” replied Ramond and began smacking him in to the ground.  While this was happening Karson leaned over the other Goblin, woke him up, shoved a map in his face and demanded he show them where their castle is.  He saw the goblin being abused by Ramond and franticly started stabbing the map with his finger and blurting out confused directions.  They had Ramond’s goblin confirm this location then the group made a decision about what to do with the characters.  Thorovir went away to look up his alignment to see if he was allowed to make cruel suggestions.  Talindra weaved some illusions in to sickly green lights dancing around the Goblins while spouting gibberish in celestial, and told them they had just been cursed.  “You must leave these lands forever.  If you remain your flesh will rot from your bones.  You cannot return to your castle.  If you return, your fate will be worse than death.  Now go.”  Ramond was still holding one, which he put down, and backed away looking scared of being cursed himself.  The goblins looked around, and then ran directly away from the camp as far as they could.  Thorovir fired an arrow over their heads as they ran, and Thorovir had his owl familiar follow them for a while.

The party, now all awake, but tired after an interrupted night’s sleep (Con saves vs exhaustion and no benefit from a long rest) gathered for a chat about what to do.  Only half a day away from the dwarves, they felt it best to warn them about the dragon, and then head north to Cragmaw Castle, forgetting the other stops they had planned.  They packed up camp and headed west along the base of the mountains until early afternoon when they came to a small canyon.  At the end of the canyon, a twenty-foot-high wall of black stone had a broken gate carved into it, with one stone door hanging precariously by a hinge and the other door missing. Beyond the open gate, in the shadow of a great mountain to the east, a ruined settlement could be made out in the darkness.  All was quiet.

They moved carefully though the dark ruins and encountered a couple of friendly dwarves having their lunch behind a pile of rubble, just in front of a thirty foot high temple facade. Cut in to this facade was a ten foot high open doorway flanked by crumbling, life-sized granite statues of cloaked dwarves. Evil grins could be seen on their weatherworn faces.  The dwarves introduced themselves as Dazlyn and Norbus, and enquired why they were there.  The party relayed the warning and offered to take them back to town.  The dwarves explained that they had uncovered these ruins and been excavating them in hopes of uncovering their origin and hopefully some artefacts or treasure and they didn’t really want to leave until they had explored the place.  They had a problem though.  That mornings dig has revealed a slime monster and they had ran away to decide what to do about it while they ate lunch.  They asked the party to help.

The party were exhausted and had not recovered spells or hit points last night and were keen to go rescue Gundren so they discussed how to proceed.  They agreed that if they took a long rest now and then dealt with this it and then took the dwarves back to town, it shouldn’t slow them down much overall.  Dazlyn and Norbus agreed to watch them while they rested, but Araloth decided it best to scout a little further ahead, so they could be better prepared in the morning.  Unfortunately, he entered a large room with an altar and 4 columns and a large Ochre Jelly dropped off the ceiling in front of him.  He ran away and started closing the heavy stone doors behind him.  As he did that Thorovir shot an arrow enchanted with Grasping Vines at the Jelly to slow it down.  Araloth closed the double doors, which had small gaps between them, and the party readied their actions to attack anything, should it breech the doors.  Three rounds later four small oozes followed by two large ones slimed through the gaps in the door, one by one.  With actions readied, and Jellies being slow, they were able to kill three of them before they could reach the party and beat down the rest only taking three slimy acidic hits in the process.

With the party battered, beaten and exhausted, giving dirty looks to Araloth, they retreated away from the doors to make camp both in and out of the game.